had fought my way through nearly twelve hours before. Collapsing against the trunk of an uprooted tree, I fought to get hold of myself. It couldn’t be the same one. Tornadoes play leap-frog through a place like this, I told myself desperately, and this is another one. It had to be. I’d been going steadily south for hours. But how did I know I was going south? Part of the time the sun had been invisible down here in the timber, and for the past two hours it had been so nearly overhead it was impossible to tell direction from it.
And why didn’t I hear any guns? There hadn’t been a sound all morning except that of my own desperate plunging through the swamp. If I’d been going in a straight line for all that time, I should be somewhere near Shevlin’s cabin and the main channel of the lake itself, and there would almost certainly be a camp set up there for the searchers. I listened now, trying to hush the sobbing sound of my breathing, and heard nothing but the infinite silence of the swamp.
I don’t know where I am, I thought wildly. I’ll never get out of here. And now, suddenly, I was conscious of the way time was flying past. Every minute of it they would be working on her, firing questions at her, trying to wear her down, and if she broke I’d be better off if I did die in here. I sprang to my feet and tried to run, crazily, the panic washing over me. Again I fell, breaking open the cut on my head. I got up, tearing ahead. Then, somehow, I was past the windfall area, and I plunged headlong into the underbrush. Vines caught me and I collapsed, struggling weakly, like a fly in a spider wed, and sank to my knees and fell.
There was no knowing how long I lay there. Sanity gradually returned, and I began to be conscious of my surroundings and capable of rational thought. Mosquitoes buzzed about my face in clouds, and in the hot, humid stillness among the leaves and vines I was bathed in sweat. Thin shafts of sunlight probed through the dense foliage overhead, and as I watched them I could see they were slanting a little as the sun wheeled over into the west. I’ve got to keep my head, I thought. If I lose it once more I’ll be done. Twenty-four hours have gone by now since they arrested her, and if I don’t find my way out pretty soon she’ll think I’ve run and deserted her and she’ll break. I’ve got to get up and start in a straight line again, going south.
I started again, moving with the shafts of sunlight slanting across my eyes from right to left. Time ran on, like an endless belt, with no beginning and no end and nothing to mark the hours. I noticed I was beginning to fall sometimes now when nothing had tripped me, and wondered if the two blows on my head had affected me that much. No, I thought dizzily, it’s only fatigue, and the weakness of hunger. Five miles through that mud and water and tangle of underbrush were the equivalent of fifty on solid ground, and there was no way of knowing how many miles I had actually walked. At times it seemed as if I were an insect trying to fight its way through a sodden sponge, pressing inward just so far and then being thrown relentlessly back. The swamp gave way before me, swallowed me up, and then closed behind, all of it looking so much alike there was no way of knowing whether I went ahead or was merely raising and lowering my dead-weary legs in some sort of slow-motion and idiotic dance in an endless dream. I began to think of her nearly all the time, forgetting for long stretches to watch the sun or the direction in which the shafts slanted through the leaves. We lay side by side on the ground in mottled shade, whispering to each other; then she was smiling at me, radiant and lovely in her new clothes, while I caught her arms to look at her. I stopped and shook my head, running a hand across my face and seeing it come away covered with dirt and blood. Stop it, I thought. Stop it! Which way was south?
And then, strangely, the forest was more open. Immense oaks