from the cave.
'Fletch,' she said, 'we haven't got a thing. We ran off without our packs.'
I hesitated. 'I could go back,' I said. 'You go on up the hollow. I'll catch up with you.'
'We can't separate again,' she said. 'We have to stick together. None of this would have happened if we'd stayed with Elmer.'
'Wolf has got them treed,' I said. 'Either treed or running.'
'No,' she said. 'Some of them up the trees have guns. And there are too many of them for Wolf to handle. They'll scatter. He can't chase them all.'
'You saw them,' I said. 'That's why you hit the big one with the pan.'
'I saw them,' she said, 'slithering down the hillside. But I might have hit him anyhow. We couldn't trust them, Fletch. And you aren't going back. I'd have to go with you and I am scared to go.'
I gave in. I couldn't honestly decide whether it was giving in or not wanting to go back, myself.
'Later on,' I said. 'Later on, when this is all over, we can come back and get the stuff.' Knowing that we probably never would. Or that it might not be there if we did go back.
We started up the hollow. It was as bad as the one we had come down; worse because now we were climbing.
I let Cynthia go ahead and I did some worrying. We must have been in a real panic, both of us, when we left the cave. It would have been simple, using no more than a minute's time, to have grabbed up the packs. But we hadn't done it and now we were without food and blankets, without anything at all. Except fire, I thought. I had the lighter in my pocket. I felt a little better, although not much, when I realized we still had fire.
The way was grueling and there were times when we had to stop to rest. Listening for some sound back at the cave, I heard nothing and began to wonder, rather dazedly, if what I remembered had really happened there. I knew, of course, it had.
We were nearing the top of the ridge and the valley petered out. We clambered to the crest. The ridge was heavily wooded and when we reached the top, we were in a fairyland of beauty. The trees were massive blocks of red and yellow and in some of them were climbing vines that provided slashes of deep gold and brilliant crimson. The day was clear and warm. Looking at the color, I remembered that first day-only a few days ago, but seeming more like weeks-when we had left the Cemetery and gone down the hill to the first autumn-painted forest I had ever seen.
We stood, watching back the way that we had come.
'Why should they be hunting us?' asked Cynthia. 'Sure, we took their horses, but if that is all it is, they should be hunting the horses and not us.'
'Revenge, maybe,' I said. 'A twisted idea of getting even with us. Probably only a part of them are after us. The others must be following the horses.'
'That may be it,' she said, 'but I can't bring myself to think so. There is something more than that.'
'It's Cemetery,' I said and I wasn't entirely clear what I meant by saying it, although it did seem that Cemetery was somehow involved in everything that happened. But as soon as I said it, the whole pattern formed inside my mind.
'Don't you see,' I said. 'Cemetery has a finger in everything that happens. They can bring certain pressures. Back at the settlement someone got a case of whiskey for trying to blow up Bronco. And here are the ghouls…'
'But the ghouls,' she said, 'are different. They're stealing from Cemetery. Cemetery is setting traps for them. They'd make no deals with Cemetery.'
'Look,' I said, 'it may be they're only trying to curry some favor with Cemetery. They found the wolves were after us and who but Cemetery would set the wolves on us. And the wolves had failed. To the kinds of minds the ghouls have it must have seemed a rather simple thing, an opportunity. If, the wolves having failed, they could bring in our heads there might be something in it for them. It's as simple as all that.'
'It could be,' she said. 'Heaven knows, it gets down to simple basics.'
'In which case,' I said, 'we'd best be getting on.' We went down the slope and struck another rock-littered ravine and followed it until it joined another valley, this one a little wider and easier for traveling.
We found a tree that was almost buried beneath a great grapevine and I clambered up it. Birds and little animals had been at the grapes, but I found a few bunches that carried most of their fruit. Picking them, I dropped them through the branches to the ground. The grapes proved somewhat sour, but we didn't mind too much. We were hungry and they helped to fill us up, but I knew that we'd somehow have to manage something other than grapes. We had no fishhooks, but I did have a jacknife and we probably could cut willow branches and rig up a brush seine that would net some fish for us. We had no salt, I remembered, but hungry enough, we could manage without salt. 'Fletch,' said Cynthia, 'do you think we ever will find Elmer?'
'Maybe Elmer will find us,' I aid. 'He must be looking for us.'
'We left the note,' she said.
'The note is gone,' I reminded her. 'The ghouls found the note, remember? They'd not have left it for him.'
The valley was a little wider than the one we followed from the cave, but it never broadened had out.
Rather, the hills seemed to get larger and move in on us. Now there were great rock cliffs that rose a hundred feet or more on either side. It became a less pleasant valley. Progressively, it grew more eerie and frightening. Not only was it stark, but silent. The creek that flowed through it was broad and deep, and there were no shallows or rapids. The water did not talk; it surged along with a look of terrible power.
The sun was low in the west and with some surprise I realized that we had traveled through the day. I was tired, but not tired enough, it seemed, to have walked all day long.
Ahead of us I saw a cleft cutting back into a cliff. The crest of the cliff was crowned with massive trees and occasional ragged cedars clung precariously to its face.
'Let's take a look,' I said. 'We'll have to find a place to spend the night.'
'We'll be cold,' she said. 'We left the blankets.'
'We have fire,' I said.
She shuddered. 'Can we have a fire? Is it safe to have a fire?'
'We have to have a fire,' I told her.
The cleft was dark. The walls of stone enclosed it and we could not see to the end of it because the dark deepened as the fissure ran back into the rock. The floor was pebbles, but off to one side, a little back from the entrance, a slab of rock was raised somewhat above the floor.
'I'll get wood,' I said.
'Fletch!'
'We have to have a fire,' I said. 'We have to chance it. We'll freeze to death without it.'
'I'm scared,' she said.
I looked at her. In the darkness her face was a blur of whiteness.
'Finally I am scared,' she said. 'I thought I wouldn't be. I told myself I wouldn't be. I said to me I'd tough it out. And it was all right as long as we were moving and out in the bright sunlight. But now night is coming, Fletch, and we haven't any food and we don't know where we are..'
I moved close to her and took her in my arms and she I came into them willingly enough. Her arms went around me and clutched me tightly. And for the first time since it all had happened, since that moment I had found her sitting in the car as I walked down the steps from the administration building, I thought of her as a woman and I wondered, with some surprise, why it should have been that way. First, of course, she had been nothing but a nuisance, popping up from nowhere with that ridiculous letter from Thorney clutched tightly in her hand, and since then we'd been run ragged by the events that had come tumbling over one another and there'd been no time in which to think of her as a woman. Rather, she had been a good companion, not doing any bawling, not throwing any fits. I thought somewhat unkindly of myself for the way that I had acted. It would not have hurt me to pay her a few small courtesies along the way, and thinking back, it seemed that I had paid her none.
'We're babes in the woods,' she said. 'You remember the old Earth fairy tale, of course.'
'Sure, I remember it,' I said. 'The birds came with leaves…'
And let it go at that. For the tale, when you came to think of it, was not as pretty as it sounded. I couldn't quite I remember, but the birds, it seemed to me, had covered | them with leaves because they were quite dead.
