Steven and the girl followed him by his sounds, trailing about twenty feet behind, until Steven got a good look at him when he passed an open space between the bushes. He was a big man in brownish-green clothes—new-looking clothes, not full of holes. He walked almost carelessly, as if he didn't care who heard him. And Steven saw the reason for that. Men with guns always walked louder. This man wore a holstered gun at his belt, and carried another one—a long gun something like a rifle, only bulkier. Steven's lips curled. He darted a look at the girl. Across his mind flashed the vague idea of sharing whatever the man had with her, but he didn't know how to let her know. She was looking at the guns, eyes wide. Afraid. She shook her head. Steven snarled silently at her, put a hand on her chest, shoved gently. She stayed there as he moved on. Silently he drifted from tree to tree, bush to bush, getting ahead of his quarry. The big man's shoes clumped noisily along. Steven had no trouble telling where he was. At last Steven spotted a good tree, a thick-foliaged one about forty feet up the path, where the sun would be in the man's eyes. If the man kept following the path— He did. And when he passed below the tree, Steven was waiting on the low branch that overhung the path—waiting with his face taut and his eyes staring and his knife ready. One stab at the base of the skull, and the guns would be his. He jumped. They brought them into the camp. By this time Steven and the girl had found that their captors were far too strong and too many to escape from, and quite adept at protecting themselves from the foulest of blows. But still the two of them struggled now and then, panting like animals. Everything at the camp, which was over on Long Island, near Flushing Bay, was neat and trim and olive-drab, and it was almost evening now, and as the jeep rolled up the avenue between the rows of tents Steven and the girl stopped struggling to blink at the first artificial lights they'd seen in a very long
Prev.
Back
Top