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The sun reached midday height and slanted down the west. Great thunderheads towered in the west and the air went still. Nothing stirred and there was no sound of any sort. A sign of storm, Frost thought, remembering his grandmother and her weather signs.
For an hour or more he had been watching for landmarks that he might recognize, stopping every now and then at the top of a slight knoll to study the terrain ahead. But the road wound on through the everlasting walls of green, with scarcely anything to distinguish one mile from the next.
The day wore on and the clouds piled higher in the west. Finally the sun disappeared behind the clouds and the air became somewhat cooler.
Frost plodded on, one step and then another, and then another step—and it went on endlessly.
Suddenly he heard the sound of ru
As if it were a place sprung full-bodied out of yesterday, it had a familiarity he had not expected. But despite the familiarity, there was a strangeness, too.
Something was hanging in a tree close beside the spring. There was a path beaten from the road up toward the spring and a sharp smell he could not recognize hung in the air.
Frost felt his body tensing as he stood there in the road and a sense of danger prickled at his scalp.
The sun by now was entirely hidden by the towering clouds and the recesses of the woods were dark and the mosquitoes were coming out again.
The thing hanging in the tree, he saw, was a knapsack, and the smell, he knew now, was the acrid odor of old, wet ashes. Someone had built a campfire by the spring and had gone off, leaving the knapsack hanging in the tree. Whether the campers had gone away for good or would be coming back, there was no way of knowing. But where there was a knapsack, there might possibly be food.
Frost turned off the road and padded cautiously up the path. He came out of the weeds that flanked the path and the little trampled area of the camp lay in front of him.
Someone, he saw, was there. A man lay upon the ground, on his side, with one leg doubled up almost to his belly and the other leg stretched out. Even from where he stood, Frost could see that the stretched-out leg was almost twice the size it should be, swelling out the fabric of the trouser leg so that it seemed to shine. The trouser leg was rolled up just above the ankle and beneath it the ballooning flesh was an angry red and black, puffed out beyond the fabric of the trouser and the shoe.
Dead, thought Frost. Dead and lying here how long? And that was strange, for a helicopter from a rescue station should long ago have picked up the body.
Frost moved forward and his foot caught a small branch that had fallen from a tree. The branch, with its half-dry leaves, made a rustling sound as he moved across it.
The man on the ground stirred weakly, trying to turn over on his back. His head turned to look in the direction of the noise and his face was a puffed-up mask. The eyes were swollen shut. The mouth moved, but there was no sound. Cracks ran across the lips and blood from the cracks had trickled down into the beard. The lips moved again and this time there was a croak.
The dead campfire was a mound of gray and beside it a small kettle lay upon one side.
Frost strode to the campfire, snatched up the kettle, hurried to the spring and came back with water.
He knelt and gently lifted the man, propped him with his body. He lifted the water to his mouth and the man drank, slobbering and choking.
Frost took the kettle away and eased the man back on the ground.
A long rumble of thunder filled the valley and reverberated from the bluffs. Frost glanced up. Black clouds were boiling in the sky. The storm that had threatened all afternoon was about to break.
Rising, Frost went to the tree and took down the knapsack and opened it. A pair of trousers, a shirt, some socks, a few cans of food, some other odds and ends spilled out of it. A fishing rod was leaned against the tree.
He went back to the camper and the man pawed at him blindly. He lifted and gave him more water, then let him down again.
"Snake," said the man. The sound was half word, half croak.
The thunder growled again. It was darker now.
Snake, the man had said. A rattlesnake, perhaps. With the country going back to wilderness, the rattlers would be on the increase.
"Ill have to move you," he told the man. "I'll have to carry you. It may hurt, but…"
The man did not answer.
Frost glanced at his face.
He looked like a man asleep. He had drifted off into a coma, probably. More than likely he'd been drifting in and out of one for hours, perhaps for days.
There was, Frost told himself, no second way about it.
He had to carry the man to the farmhouse that sat atop the bluffs, get him under shelter, find some means to get him comfortable, build a fire, and get some warm food into him. The storm would break any minute now and he couldn't leave him exposed to its fury.
To make the trip he'd need the shoes the man was wearing and there were the trousers and the shirt that had fallen from the knapsack. Some food, too; he'd put a can or two of it in his pockets. And matches-he hoped there would be matches, or perhaps a lighter. He'd have to take the kettle along, tie it to his belt, perhaps. He'd need it when he warmed the food.
Two miles, he thought. At least two miles, and all uphill, over terrible terrain.
But it had to be done. A man's Me was at stake.
The man mumbled and muttered.
"Want another drink?" asked Frost.
The man appeared not to have heard him.
"Jade," he mumbled. "Jade—a lot of jade…"
31
Franklin Chapman was sitting on the bench in front of the library, waiting, as he had waited every Wednesday and Saturday evening since that night he'd talked with Frost, when the first pain hit him. For a moment the streetlights and the lighted windows in the apartment house across the street, the blackness of the trees and the shining, light-streaked surface of the street shifted and revolved like a somber kaleidoscope as he doubled over with the flaming splash of fire that went through his chest and gut and arm.
He stayed huddled, arms wrapped tight around his belly, face lowered above the chest. He stayed quiet and the pain slowly drained from chest and gut, but the left arm still was numb and through the numbness throbbed a misery.
Cautiously, he straightened up and fear touched one corner of his brain, whispering a suspicion of what had caused the pain. He should go home, he thought, or better yet, flag down a cab and ask the driver to take him to the nearest hospital.
But he had to wait, he told himself, just a little longer. For he had said he'd wait, from nine to ten two evenings of the week. And what if Frost should need him?
Although there had been no sign or word of Frost since that night when the cook had been killed in the alley back of the restaurant. And A
What could have happened, he wondered, to the two of them?
He straightened carefully and laid the aching arm across his lap.
Fu
I must not die, he told himself. Somehow I must keep from dying.
He clawed his way erect and stood hunched beside the bench. Down the street he saw the dome light of a cab. He ran, half stumbling, down the walk toward the street, waving his right hand at the oncoming cab.