Watchers

surrounding the property was preternaturally still. The trees stood motionless under a low sky of slate-colored clouds.
    Travis said, “Is The Outsider still coming?”
    With a quick wag of the tail, Einstein said, Yes.
    “Is it close?”
    Einstein sniffed the clean, winter-crisp air. He padded across the yard to the perimeter of the northern woods and sniffed again, cocked his head, peered intently into the trees. He repeated this ritual at the southern end of the property.
    Travis had the feeling that Einstein was not actually employing his eyes, ears, and nose in search of The Outsider. He had some way of monitoring The Outsider that was far different from the means by which he would track a cougar or squirrel. Travis perceived that the dog was employing an inexplicable sixth sense—call it psychic or at least quasi-psychic. The retriever’s use of its ordinary senses was probably either the trigger by which it engaged that psychic ability—or mere habit.
    At last, Einstein returned to him and whined curiously.
    “Is it close?” Travis asked.
    Einstein sniffed the air and surveyed the gloom of the encircling forest, as if he could not decide on an answer.
    “Einstein? Is something wrong?”
    Finally, the retriever barked once: No.
    “Is The Outsider getting close?”
    A hesitation. Then: No.
    “Are you sure?”
    Yes.
    “Really sure?”
    Yes.
    At the house, as Travis opened the door, Einstein turned away from him, padded across the back porch, and stood at the top of the wooden steps, taking one final look around at the yard and at the peaceful, shadowed, soundless forest. Then, with a faint shiver, he followed Travis inside.
    Throughout the inspection of the defenses during the afternoon, Einstein had been more affectionate than usual, rubbing against Travis’s legs a great deal, nuzzling, seeking by one means or another to be petted or patted or scratched. That evening, as they watched television, then played a three-way game of Scrabble on the living-room floor, the dog continued to seek attention. He kept putting his head in Nora’s lap, then in Travis’s. He seemed as if he would be content to be stroked and have his ears gently scratched until next summer.
    From the day of their first encounter in the Santa Ana foothills, Einstein had gone through spells of purely doggy behavior, when it was hard to believe that he was, in his own way, as intelligent as a man. Tonight, he was in one of those moods again. In spite of his cleverness at Scrabble—in which his score was second only to Nora’s, and in which he took devilish pleasure forming words that made sly references to her as yet unnoticeable pregnancy— he was nonetheless, this night, more of a dog than not.
    Nora and Travis chose to finish the evening with a little light reading— detective stories—but Einstein did not want them to bother inserting a book in his page-turning machine. Instead, he lay on the floor in front of Nora’s armchair and went instantly to sleep.
    “He still seems a little draggy,” she said to Travis.
    “He ate all his dinner, though. And we did have a long day.”
    The dog’s breathing, as it slept, was normal, and Travis was not worried. Actually, he was feeling better about their future than he had for some time. The inspection of their defenses had given him renewed confidence in their preparations, and he believed they would be able to handle The Outsider when it arrived. And thanks to Garrison Dilworth’s courage and dedication to their cause, the government had been stymied, perhaps for good, in its efforts to track them down. Nora was painting again with great enthusiasm, and Travis had decided to use his real-estate license, under the name of Samuel Hyatt, to go back to work once The Outsider had been destroyed. And if Einstein was still a little draggy . . . well, he was certainly more energetic than he had been for a while and was sure to be himself by tomorrow or the day after, at the latest.
    That night, Travis slept without dreaming.
    In the morning, he was up before Nora. By the time he showered and dressed, she was up, too. On her way into the shower, she kissed him, nibbled On his lip, and mumbled sleepy vows of love. Her eyes were puffy, and her hair was mussed, and her breath was sour, but he would have rushed her
    straight back into bed if she had not said, “Try me this afternoon, Romeo. Right now, the only lust in my heart is for a couple of eggs, bacon, toast, and coffee.”
    He went