They were rolling along in a kind of happy-go-yucky way, particularly after the Bartender opened the hatchway to the actual trailer, which gave everyone more room to manoeuvre, and enabled the Heron (who was fastidious in his own way) to readjust a number of pictures in the bar that had gone awry following the "A River Runs Through It" pantomime episode; including his favourite, a Corot that featured an intoxicating female heron taking her morning dip in a misty pool beneath a stand of silver birches. The painting was marred somewhat by the simultaneous bathing of a set of nymphs that should have known better, but were clearly making enough damn noise to scare the fish. Nevertheless, it was a fine picture to start your day with, especially if you could sit on a bar stool sipping tomato juice, taking the quite pretty scatter of pills the Oracle had prescibed -- "to get you through" -- and hear the miles roll by beneath you. He had got to the part in "The Virginian" where they were about to hang Steve, and he needed all his strength to keep his eye muscles from hurting from the previous night's attempt to recreate the jai lai restaurant on Betelgueuse, which, if he did say so himself, hadn't been a bad imitation, even though they lacked the quintessential ingredient, which they would have had if the state trooper had had a broader mind.

At that moment, the trailer and all that therein was, came to a screaming halt on the highway, so as to avoid an elk that appeared to be taking lessons on directing traffic. The Heron was catapulted forward headlong into the Corot, which surprisingly yielded to his onrush. There was a sound as of flutes, a mist of blue, and the gloop gloop gloop of a heron at play in the pools of the morning, the irritating giggles of dopy maidens, and G.B., raising himself on his unsteady legs, moved forward through the brushwork.