Watchers

everything down to the wallpaper.
    The Outsider, not a burglar, worried him.
    The house was deserted.
    Travis checked the barn, too, before driving the pickup inside, but it was also safe.
    In the house, Nora put Einstein down and pulled the blanket off him. He tottered around the kitchen, sniffing at things. In the living room he looked at the cold fireplace and inspected his page-turning machine.
    He returned to the kitchen pantry, clicked on the light with his foot pedal, and pawed letters out of the Lucite tubes.
    HOME.
    Stooping beside the dog, Travis said, “It’s sure good to be here, isn’t it?”
    Einstein nuzzled Travis’s throat and licked his neck. The golden coat was fluffy and smelled clean because Jim Keene had given the dog a bath, in his surgery, under carefully controlled conditions. But as fluffy and fresh as he was, Einstein still did not look himself; he seemed tired, and he was thinner, too, having lost a few pounds in less than a week.
    Pawing out more letters, Einstein spelled the same word again, as if to emphasize his pleasure: HOME.
    Standing at the pantry door, Nora said, “Home is where the heart is, and there’s plenty of heart in this one. Hey, let’s have an early dinner and eat it in the living room while we run the videotape of Mickey’s Christmas Carol. Would you like that?”
    Einstein wagged his tail vigorously.
    Travis said, “Do you think you could handle your favorite food—a few weenies for dinner?”
    Einstein licked his chops. He dispensed more letters, with which he expressed his enthusiastic approval of Travis’s suggestion.
    HOME IS WHERE THE WEENIES ARE.
     
     
     
     
    When Travis woke in the middle of the night, Einstein was at the bedroom window, on his hind feet with his forepaws braced on the sill. He was barely visible in the second-hand glow of the night-light in the adjoining bathroom. The interior shutter was bolted over the window, so the dog had no view of the front yard. But perhaps, for getting a fix on The Outsider, sight was the sense on which he least depended.
    “Something out there, boy?” Travis asked quietly, not wanting to wake Nora unnecessarily.
    Einstein dropped from the window, padded to Travis’s side of the bed, and put his head up on the mattress.
    Petting the dog, Travis whispered, “Is it coming?”
    Replying with only a cryptic mewl, Einstein settled down on the floor beside the bed and went to sleep again.
    In a few minutes, Travis slept, too.
    He woke again near dawn to find Nora sitting on the edge of the bed, petting Einstein. “Go back to sleep,” she told Travis.
    “What’s wrong?”
    “Nothing,” she whispered drowsily. “I woke up and saw him at the window, but it’s nothing. Go to sleep.”
    He did manage to fall asleep a third time, but he dreamed that The Outsider had been smart enough to learn how to use tools during its six-month-long pursuit of Einstein and now, yellow eyes gleaming, it was smashing its way through the bedroom shutters with an ax.
     
     
     
2
    They gave Einstein his medicines on schedule, and he swallowed his pills obediently. They explained to him that he needed to eat well in order to regain his strength. He tried, but his appetite was returning only slowly. He would need a few weeks to regain the pounds he had lost and to recover his old vitality. But day by day his improvement was perceptible.
    By Friday, December 10, Einstein seemed strong enough to risk a short walk outside. He still wobbled a little now and then, but he no longer tottered with every step. He’d had all of his shots at the veterinary clinic; there was no chance of picking up rabies on top of the distemper he’d just beaten.
    The weather was milder than it had been in recent weeks, with temperatures in the low sixties and no wind. The scattered clouds were white, and the sun, when not hidden, laid a warm life-giving caress on the skin.
    Einstein accompanied Travis on an inspection tour of the infrared sensors around the house and the nitrous-oxide tanks in the barn. They moved a bit more slowly than the last time they had walked this line together, but Einstein seemed to enjoy being back on duty.
    Nora was in her studio, working diligently on a new painting: a portrait of Einstein. He was not aware that he was the subject of her latest canvas. The picture was to be one of his Christmas gifts and would, once opened on the holiday, be hung above the fireplace in the living room.
    When Travis and Einstein came