I was lucky it was Gerry. The tracker would have brained me by now with a rock. I leaned against another birch trunk. If I sat down I wasn't sure I could get up.

"Get up," I said. Time was not my friend. I didn't have much of it left.

Gerry's head was sunk on his chest. He shook it silently.

"Okay," I said. "See you around."

My voice sounded like someone else's. Someone trying to sound perky. And failing. Pearl bounded over and jumped up to lap my face. She put one paw on my leg. I didn't scream. I held the tree with my left arm and fended her off with my right. I noticed that I was still holding the gun in my hand, but I'd let the hammer down. I didn't remember doing that. There was some nausea. It passed slowly, like a wave slowly easing back out to sea. When it was gone enough to move, I jerked my head at Pearl and started off.

Gerry said, "Hey."

I kept going.

He labored to his feet, using the tree trunk. He was behind me now. I kept going. The gun in my right hand, hanging straight down, Pearl, ahead of me, nose to the forest floor, looking for groundhogs.

"Wait up," Gerry gasped.

It had become ludicrous. My hostage was chasing me. It was darkening and the drizzle had finally stopped when we reached the last rise and below us saw the traffic on the Pike. I took the leash from my pocket and whistled for Pearl. She dashed up and sat. She always dashed up and sat when she saw the leash. To her it meant a walk. Even when she was on a walk. I hooked the leash onto her collar. And we started down the slope. Pearl strained against the leash and my leg hurt exceptionally as I went downhill on it, bracing against Pearl's tug. To my right Gerry started to run toward the highway and fell and rolled noisily through the brush for maybethirty feet before he stopped and struggled up and kept moving.

Most of the cars had their headlights on, though it wasn't really dark yet.

And they paraded by swiftly and sporadically, a pageant of ordinariness, the people in them rushing to dinner, or a late meeting, unwounded, unfeverish, unarmed, dry, and at worst maybe a little stiff from their long commute.

The chances of flagging a ride were negligible, but sooner or later a state cop would cruise by, and he'd stop. If he saw us. I looped Pearl's leash over my wrist so that if I passed out she wouldn't wander off into the traffic. Gerry was standing limply ten feet down the highway. He wasn't looking at me. His head was down. His eyes may have been closed; I couldn't see.

"Walk away from me," I said. "That way. Keep going until you're out of sight. If I see you again I'll kill you."

Gerry had no words. He simply turned in the direction I'd pointed and began to stumble along the highway, his head down, weaving as he walked, as if he were drunk. Pearl was close to my leg, shying closer every time a car passed, stirring the leaves and dust along the margin of the roadbed.

I couldn't remember now who had won that baseball game. Cardinals or

Dodgers? It had probably mattered greatly then; it mattered now not at all.

I felt myself begin to dissolve. I frowned. I concentrated on looking up the Pike at the oncoming headlights. It would be harder to spot me if I keeled over. It would be harder to spot me as it got darker.

I looked down the road after Gerry Broz. I couldn't see him. The turnpike curved fifty yards ahead and he was around the curve now. I holstered the

Browning. Gerry wouldn't have the energy to circle back and jump me. Nor, probably, now that he was alone, the balls. I remembered that once; I had seen Jackie Robinson steal home. Pigeon-toed, elbows pumping, under the tag.

He was dead now. Been dead a long time. Died a young man. He lit up the sky, my Uncle Bob used to say. The headlights blurred in the mist. Except there wasn't any mist. The rain had stopped an hour ago. The first time Robinson had taken the field, Red Barber had said in his soft Southern voice on the radio, He is very definitely brunette. One pair of the blurred headlights swept over me. A car swung up onto the shoulder. The door opened and Hawk got out.

"You are very definitely brunette," I said.

Then Hawk blurred too.

I heard myself say, "Take the dog."

And then I didn't hear anything. Or see anything, except darkness visible.

CHAPTER 28

SOMEONE said, "Where's the dog?"

Somebody else said, "In the car with a soup bone."

"On the leather seats?" someone said.

"You bled all over them already," someone else said. "Figured it didn't matter anymore."

My eyes opened. Hawk was standing at the foot of the bed, wearing a black leather jacket over a black turtleneck. He leaned forward and rested his forearms on the bed rail and I could see the butt of his gun under his arm where the jacket fell open.

"How come you were out riding around on the Pike in western Mass?" I said.

It had been me speaking all along, but I just realized it.

"Paul told me what happened," Hawk said. "I looked at a map, figured you'd get in the woods and loop for the highway. What I woulda done."

"So you been cruising it," I said.

"Un huh. Lee exit to the New York line and back, two tanks of gas."

"Paul's okay?"

"He at your place. So's his momma and her honey."

"My place?"

"You not using it," Hawk said. "Had to stash them someplace."

I shifted in the bed. There was an IV in the back of my left hand, held in place by tape. The tube ran to a drip bottle on a stand. My leg felt sore, but it wasn't throbbing anymore, and it didn't feel distended. I looked around the room. It was private. There was a silent television on a high shelf opposite, and the usual hospital apparatus on the walls, blood pressure gauges, and oxygen outlets, and spigots for purposes unclear to the lay public.

"I'm in a hospital," I said.

"Wow," Hawk said.

"I'm a trained observer," I said. "Where?"

"Pittsfield," Hawk said.

"Susan?"

"I called her," Hawk said. "She on the way, bringing you some clothes."

I was wearing a hospital johnny. I glanced at the night table.

"Wallet's in the nightstand," Hawk said. "Got your gun."

"How am I?"

"You not going to die, you not going to lose the leg, your personality not going to improve."

"So, two out of three," I said.

"Some people say none out of three," Hawk said. "Where's Gerry?"

"Left him on the turnpike," I said. "Walking toward Stockbridge."

"Want to tell me about it?" Hawk said.

I did.

"Been about thirty hours," Hawk said. "Figure Gerry be home by now."

I raised the sheet and looked at my leg. It was bandaged thickly, around the thigh. The part that showed looked a little bruised but not too puffy.

"Cops been around?" I said.

"Yeah. Hospital called them when they saw the gunshot wound. I told them you was out in the woods with the dog while I waiting in Stockbridge. When you didn't come back I went and found you."

"They believe you?"

` No.

"Don't blame them," I said.

A thin-faced, dark-haired nurse came in.

"Awake," she said.

"Yes."

She smiled without thinking about it and took out an electronic thermometer and took my temperature. She read it and nodded to herself and wrote something on her clipboard. She took my pulse, and my blood pressure, and noted those.