This time he shook his head, waving the stick gently. "Play," he said.

She threw another stone, eyes warily on the stick. He swung, missed.

He hit the next one, and the sharp crack, and the noise the stone made rattling off into the bushes, flattened him to the ground, eyes searching for sign of men.

She was beside him. He smelled her body and her breath.

They saw no one.

He looked at her lying beside him. She was grinning again.

Then she laughed; and, without knowing what he was doing or why—he could hardly remember ever doing it before—he laughed too.

It felt good. Like the snarl that wasn't a snarl, only better. It seemed to come from way inside. He laughed again, sitting up. He laughed a third time, tight hesitant sounds that came out of his throat and stretched his lips until they wouldn't stretch any more.

Tears were on his cheeks, and he was laughing very tightly, very steadily, and she was laughing the same way, and they lay that way for a few minutes until they were trembling and their stomachs ached, and the laughter was almost crying.

He saw her face, so close by, and felt an impulse. He rolled over and started to scuffle with her. When she realized that he wasn't trying to kill her, that he was playing, she scuffled back, rubbing his face in the dirt harder than he had hers, because she was stronger.

He spat dirt and grass and grinned at her, and they fell apart.

Footsteps.

His knife was out and ready, and so was hers.

Legs moved on the other side of the bushes, stopped.

Silently, almost stepping between the leaves on the ground, Steven and the girl crawled out the other side of the bushes and took up positions against treetrunks, just enough of their heads protruding to see around.

A man came probing into the head-high bushes from the path side ... stood there a moment looking around, only a vague brown shape through the leaves.

He grunted, went out to the path again, walked on.

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