The pack riding easily again, he went on up the road. The dog sounded as if it was just beyond the next bend. Maybe I'll see him after all, Stu thought.
He had picked up 302 going east because he supposed that sooner or later it would take him to the ocean. He had made a kind of compact with himself: When I get to the ocean, I'll decide what I'm going to do. Until then, I won't think about it at all. His walk, now in its fourth day, had been a kind of healing process. He had thought about taking a ten-speed bike or maybe a motorcycle with which he could thread his way through - the occasional crashes that blocked the road, but instead had decided to walk. He had always enjoyed hiking, and his body cried out for exercise. Until his escape from Stovington he had been cooped up for nearly two weeks, and he felt flabby and out of shape. He supposed that sooner or later his slow progress would make him impatient and he would get the bike or motorcycle, but for now he was content to hike east on this road, looking at whatever he wanted to look at, taking five when he wanted to, or in the afternoon, dropping off for a snooze during the hottest part of the day. It was good for him to be doing this. Little by little the lunatic search for a way out was fading into memory, just something that had happened instead of a thing so vivid it brought cold sweat out onto his skin. The memory of that feeling of someone following him had been the hardest to shake. The first two nights on the road he had dreamed again and again of his final encounter with Elder, when Elder had come to carry out his orders. In the dreams Stu was always too slow with the chair. Elder stepped back out of its arc, pulled the trigger of his pistol, and Stu felt a heavy but painless boxing glove weighted with lead shot land on his chest. He dreamed this over and over until he woke unrested in the morning, but so glad to be alive that he hardly realized it. Last night the dream hadn't come. He doubted if the willies would stop all at once, but he thought he might be walking the poison out of his system little by little. Maybe he would never get rid of all of it, but when most of it was gone he felt sure he would be able to think better about what came next, whether he had reached the ocean by then or not.
He came around the bend and there was the dog, an auburn-colored Irish setter. It barked joyously at the sight of Stu and ran up the road, toenails clicking on the composition surface, tail wagging frantically back and forth. It jumped up, placing its forepaws on Stu's belly, and its forward motion made him stagger back a step. "Whoa, boy," he said, grinning.
The dog barked happily at the sound of his voice and leaped up again.
"Kojak!" a stern voice said, and Stu jumped and stared around. "Get down! Leave that man alone! You're going to track all over his shirt! Miserable dog!"
Kojak put all four feet on the road again and walked around Stu with his tail between his legs. The tail was still flipping back and forth in suppressed joy despite its confinement, however, and Stu decided this one would never make much of a canine put-on artist.
Now he could see the owner of the voice - and of Kojak, it seemed like. A man of about sixty wearing a ragged sweater, old gray pants... and a beret. He was sitting on a piano stool and holding a palette. An easel with a canvas on it stood before him.
Now he stood up, placed the palette on the piano stool (under his breath Stu heard him mutter, "Now don't forget and sit on that"), and walked toward Stu with his hand extended. Beneath the beret his fluffy grayish hair bounced in a small and mellow breeze.
"I hope you intend no foul play with that rifle, sir. Glen Bateman, at your service."
Stu stepped forward and took the outstretched hand (Kojak was growing frisky again, bouncing around Stu but not daring to renew his leaps - not yet, at least). "Stuart Redman. Don't worry about the gun. I ain't seen enough people to start shootin em. In fact, I ain't seen any, until you."
"Do you like caviar?"
"Never tried it."
"Then it's time you did. And if you don't care for it, there's plenty of other things. Kojak, don't jump. I know you're thinking of renewing your crazed leaps - I can read you like a book - but control yourself. Always remember, Kojak, that control is what separates the higher orders from the lower. Control!"
His better nature thus appealed to, Kojak shrank down on his haunches and began to pant. He had a big grin on his doggy face. It had been Stu's experience that a grinning dog is either a biting dog or a damned good dog. And this didn't look like a biting dog.
"I'm inviting you to lunch," Bateman said. "You're the first human being I've seen, at least in the last week. Will you stay?"
"I'd be glad to."
"Southerner, aren't you?"
"East Texas."
"An Easterner, my mistake." Bateman cackled at his own wit and turned back to his picture, an indifferent watercolor of the woods across the road.