The dog sprang into the cargo hold.
  Travis slammed the gate shut and went around the side of the truck. As he pulled open 
the driver's door, he thought he glimpsed movement in nearby brush. Not back toward the 
forest but at the far side of the dirt road. Over there, a narrow field was choked with 
waist-high brown grass as crisp as hay, a few bristly clumps of mesquite, and some 
sprawling oleander bushes with roots deep enough to keep them green. When he stared 
directly at the field, he saw none of the movement he thought he had caught from the 
corner of his eye, but he suspected that he had not imagined it.
  With a renewed sense of urgency, he climbed into the truck and put the revolver on the 
seat beside him. He drove away from there as fast as the
  washboard lane permitted, and with constant consideration for the four-legged passenger 
in the cargo bed.
  Twenty minutes later, when he stopped along Santiago Canyon Road, back in the world of 
blacktop and civilization, he still felt weak and shaky. But the fear that lingered was 
different from that he'd felt in the forest. His heart was no longer drumming. The cold 
sweat had dried on his hands and brow. The odd prickling of nape and scalp was gone-and 
the memory of it seemed unreal. Now he was afraid not of some unknown creature but of his 
own strange behavior. Safely out of the woods, he could not quite recall the degree of 
terror that had gripped him; therefore, his actions seemed irrational.
  He pulled on the handbrake and switched off the engine. It was eleven o'clock, and the 
flurry of morning traffic had gone; only an occasional car passed on the rural two-lane 
blacktop. He sat for a minute, trying to convince himself that he had acted on instincts 
that were good, right, and reliable.
  He had always taken pride in his unshakable equanimity and hardheaded pragmatism-in 
that if in nothing else. He could stay cool in the middle of a bonfire. He could make 
hard decisions under pressure and accept the consequences.
  Except-he found it increasingly difficult to believe something strange had actually 
been stalking him out there. He wondered if he had misinterpreted the dog's behavior and 
had imagined the movement in the brush merely to give himself an excuse to turn his mind 
away from self-pity.
  He got out of the truck and stepped back to the side of it, where he came face-to-face 
with the retriever, which stood in the cargo bed. It shoved its burly head toward him and 
licked his neck, his chin. Though it had snapped and barked earlier, it was an 
affectionate dog, and for the first time its bedraggled condition struck him as having a 
comical aspect. He tried to hold the dog back. But it strained forward, nearly clambering 
over the side of the cargo hold in its eagerness to lick his face. He laughed and ruffled 
its tangled coat.
  The retriever's friskiness and the frenzied wagging of its tail had an unexpected 
effect on Travis. For a long time his mind had been a dark place, filled with thoughts of 
death, culminating in today's journey. But this animal's unadulterated joy in being alive 
was like a spotlight that pierced Travis's inner gloom and reminded him that life had a 
brighter side from which he had long ago turned away.
  "What was that all about back there?" he wondered aloud.
  The dog stopped licking him, stopped wagging its matted tail. It regarded him solemnly, 
and he was suddenly transfixed by the animal's gentle, warm brown eyes. Something in them 
was unusual, compelling. Travis was half-mesmerized, and the dog seemed equally 
captivated. As a mild spring breeze rose from the south, Travis searched the dog's eyes 
for a clue to their special Power and appeal, but he saw nothing extraordinary about 
them. Except. . . well, they seemed somehow more expressive than a dog's eyes usually 
were, more intelligent and aware. Given the short attention span of any dog, the 
retriever's unwavering stare was damned unusual. As the seconds ticked past and as 
neither Travis nor the dog broke the encounter, he felt
  increasingly peculiar. A shiver rippled through him, occasioned not by fear but by a 
sense that something uncanny was happening, that he was teetering on the threshold of an 
awesome revelation.
  Then the dog shook its head and licked Travis's hand, and the spell was broken.
  "Where'd you come from, boy?"
  The dog cocked its head to the left.
  "Who's your owner?"
  The dog cocked its head to the right.
  "What should I do with you?"
  As if in answer, the dog jumped over the truck's tailgate, ran past Travis to the 
driver's door, and climbed into the pickup's cab.
  When Travis peered inside, the retriever was in the passenger's seat, looking straight 
ahead through the windshield. It turned to him and issued a soft woof, as if impatient 
with his dawdling.
  He got in behind the wheel, tucked the revolver under his seat. "Don't believe I can 
take care of you. Too much responsibility, fella. Doesn't fit in with my plans. Sorry 
about that."
  The dog regarded him beseechingly.
  "You look hungry, boy."
  It woofed once, softly.
  "Okay, maybe I can help you that much. I think there's a Hershey's bar in the glove 
compartment . . . and there's a McDonald's not far from here, where they've probably got 
a couple hamburgers with your name on them. But after that . . . well, I'll either have 
to let you loose again or take you to the pound."
  Even as Travis was speaking, the dog raised one foreleg and hit the glove-compartment 
release button with a paw. The lid fell open.
  "What the hell-"
  The dog leaned forward, put its snout into the open box, and withdrew the candy in its 
teeth, holding the bar so lightly that the wrapping was not punctured.
  Travis blinked in surprise.
  The retriever held forth the Hershey's bar, as if requesting that Travis unwrap the 
treat.
  Startled, he took the candy and peeled off the paper.
  The retriever watched, licking its lips.
  Breaking the bar into pieces, Travis paid out the chocolate in morsels. The dog took 
them gratefully and ate almost daintily.
  Travis watched in confusion, not certain if what had happened was truly extraordinary 
or had a reasonable explanation. Had the dog actually understood him when he had said 
there was candy in the glove box? Or had it detected the scent of chocolate? Surely the 
latter.
  To the dog, he said, "But how did you know to press the button to pop the lid open?"
  It stared, licked its chops, and accepted another bit of candy.
  He said, "Okay, okay, so maybe that's a trick you've been taught. Though it's not the 
sort of thing anyone would ordinarily train a dog to do, is it? Roll over, play dead, 
sing for your supper, even walk on your hind feet a little ways . . . yeah, those're 
things that dogs are trained to do . . . but they're not trained to open locks and 
latches.
  The retriever gazed longingly at the last morsel of chocolate, but Travis withheld the