So Slaughter continued walking. He had thought that with the night light from the stars and moon he'd have no trouble seeing. But the silver glow distorted things. Indeed it made objects seem much nearer, and it obscured details so that everything seemed blurred. He glanced toward the stockpens with their shadows and their faintly moving shapes of cattle and the buildings behind them. He was thinking that he'd better not get too close to the pens, or some guard might mistake him for a thief and pull out his gun. Slaughter was halfway through the field now, and he couldn't find the hollow. He'd been glancing so much all around that he had angled from his course, and now he didn't know if left or right was where he ought to go. The hollow had been rimmed by long grass, he remembered, and he maybe wouldn't find it even if he stood ten feet away. He told himself he should have kept his eyes toward Clifford's house across there, keeping in a line with it, but now that he considered, there was no way drunken Clifford would have staggered in a straight line anyhow. He'd have veered off one way, then the other, so this was still a replication of what had happened, and Slaughter figured that he'd shifted too much toward the stockpens. Moving now the other way, he suddenly was conscious of the wind. Or rather the absence of it. But the rustling through the grass had still continued, coming nearer.

He turned, startled, ready with his flashlight, lurching back to gain some distance, and the tangled strand of broken wire must have been there all along for him to see when he first came here, staring down at Clifford. It was snagged against his heels now, and his arms flew out, his head jerked up to face the moon, and he was falling. He was braced to hit the ground, already calculating how he'd have to roll to break his fall, but he kept dropping, surging heavily past the level of the ground, and then his head struck something hard that set off shock-waves through his brain and left him sightless for a moment. He was rolling. That was all the motive he retained, just reflex and his training, pure adrenaline that scalded him into motion. He was reaching for his gun. He'd lost it. He was in the hollow. Panicked thoughts that he was powerless to order. Christ, the hollow. It had happened just like this to Clifford. Slaughter groped for his flashlight, but he couldn't find it. He heard rustling coming toward him. Scrambling from the hollow toward the open ground where he at least would have the chance to run, he felt the claws flick down his face, and he was screaming, falling backward, landing breathless on another object which was so hard that it seemed to rupture his right kidney. He was fumbling for it, Jesus, and he saw up there the thing as it was crouching now to leap at him, its fur puffed up to make it even larger, hissing, its eyes wild, mouth wide, teeth bare, leaping toward him, and he had the gun from underneath him now. He raised it toward the hissing fury diving toward him, squeezing the trigger, blinded this time by the muzzle flash, knocked flat by the recoil as the fury blew apart above him, thudding on his stomach, and he didn't think the blood would ever stop its shower upon him.

The hotel room was small and musty, space enough for a narrow bed, a desk and chair, a TV on the desk, and that was dial. The desk was scratched, its finish cracked by years of drinks spilled across it, plus the television had no channel dial. You had to grip a tiny metal post and turn until your fingers ached, and even then that didn't do much good because the television only got one channel. The image kept flipping, black and white. The window had no screen. You had to leave it closed to shut the insects out, which partly was the reason for the mustiness in here, but mostly, Dunlap knew, the must was from the aging wooden walls. The place had been erected back in 1922. Dun-lap knew that from a plaque that he had seen embedded in the bar downstairs, as if a hotel so outdated were something the town was proud of. Threadbare carpet, creaky bed, a common toilet at the far end of each hall. He'd had to get up in the night to urinate, had made a wrong turn coming back, and almost hadn't found his room, so involuted were the halls, one merging in a T with others and those others merging yet again with others, like a rabbit's den, a gigantic maze that kept twisting inward. Dunlap was fearful about what he'd do in case of a fire, which considering the tinderlike walls was overdue for several years now, and he didn't like the thought of jumping toward the alley from the second story.

Plus, he didn't have much strength to do it. He was sick again. He tried to think back to a night when he had not been sick, and with his lack of memory, he was doubly fearful. How much longer could he keep doing this? He'd sat and watched the reruns on the TV set behind the bar downstairs from eight o'clock until the place had closed. He had no way of telling just how much he'd drunk, except that near the end the barman had looked strangely at him, and the programs were a blur of ads and station breaks. And don't forget the stock reports. Oh, my, yes, not the stock reports. But out here stock was not the closing points of Xerox, Kodak, or the rest of them. No, stock was cattle, and the market prices came on first at eight and then at ten and then again at sign-off time. Hey, he could not have drunk too much if he could recollect all that in detail. No? Then why was he shaking? Why was he so sick that breakfast was a thought he couldn't tolerate? He had to have a drink before he dared go down the hall and shave, and then another when he came back, before fumbling with the buttons on his shirt. It scared him. This much he could recollect, a time when he had not required one drink in the morning just to function. Now, this morning, he had needed two, and if he weren't careful, he would soon need a third. But there's a difference, he was thinking. Needing one and taking one. Let's make sure you keep in mind the difference. Dunlap picked up his tape recorder and his camera where he'd set them by the television. Vowing to himself that he would clean his life up, feeling virtuous, determined, he didn't pick up his pint of bourbon when he walked out the door.

The hall went to the right, then left, then right again, then opened on three sides to show the lobby down there, a moose head on the wall-from thirty, forty years ago, no doubt; the thing looked shabby enough for that-gray tile floor, discolored wooden check-in counter, a bald wrinkled man in denim clothes behind the counter. Dunlap took a breath and instantly regretted it: the must was even worse up here. He asked himself again what he had ever done to deserve being sent to Potter's Field, then trudged down the stairs, crossing the lobby toward the street.

The sun was like a knife jabbed into his eyes. Eight o'clock, and how hot would the day be with the sun so fierce this early? He didn't want to think about it. Eight o'clock, but he'd been awake since well before dawn, and that was something else his drinking had affected. Now he hardly slept at all, and when he did, not deeply, waking often, drifting back and forth from grotesque dreams. He didn't want to think about that either. Not the image that had constantly been coming to him. He walked toward the corner, concentrating on the coffee he was going to taste. Sure, you could buy a drink back at the hotel, but there wasn't any place to get some coffee. "Try the Grub-steak at the corner," he'd been told, and hell, they either didn't know the way to spell it, or they maybe were more clever than he thought. The one thing he at least was getting was a mess of local color. You don't talk like that, he told himself. You're here one day, and they're infecting you. You'd better keep your mind on what you're doing. Which was fine with him because he didn't want to think about a lot of things, but work was hardly one of them. He sensed that he was on to something.