Nevertheless he never could wait to get back to his isolated cocoon after a weekend’s liberty. It was the frantic impulse toward his safe hermitage that always brought him home at top speed in the Jeep. Comes right down to it, I’m happy here and how many can make that claim? He had to smile.

He still had the Sacramento newspaper; he tossed it on the desk and did a sweep of the mountains, searching through the glasses in a deliberate grid pattern until he’d completed the circuit. Down at the foot of the tower the dog was excavating to bury the Milk Bone at the foot of one of the stilts that supported the rickety fire tower. Mackenzie leaned out over the railing. “You’re digging so close you’ll knock the whole thing over, you stupid twirp.” The dog wagged her tail briefly to acknowledge she knew he was talking to her. Mackenzie went back inside the glass enclosure and down with the newspaper.

KILLER SOUGHT AFTER ASYLUM ESCAPE

San Francisco, July 11 (API). Calvin Duggai, 27, committed to a state mental hospital for the criminally insane since his trial in 1972 on five counts of manslaughter, escaped Tuesday night from the California State Hospital at Cochino, in Marin County north of San Francisco.

In making his escape Duggai apparently tunneled through a second-story exterior wall and climbed over a 12-foot steel fence.

Dogs employed in the search failed to trace Duggai because of Tuesday night’s heavy rain, which had washed the spoor away by the time the escape was discovered yesterday morning.

According to Highway Patrol Lt. Richard Loomiston, Duggai allegedly broke into a house one mile from the prison hospital before dawn Wednesday. He may have stolen guns as well as clothing and food from the house. Duggai’s fingerprints were found on several objects in the house, which has been unoccupied for several days, its owners vacationing.