Blackie knew he must hurry if he was to reach the Flatstone valley before dark. Pausing only to stow his plundered supply of food more snugly in his pockets and to shift his blanket-roll to the other shoulder, he set off across an expanse of marshy pasture land toward his first goal. The deer-flies swarmed about his face and neck, stinging pitilessly, and he increased his pace as much as he could to get away from them. He had been prudent enough to wear his heavy hiking shoes, but in several places he floundered into muddy pools and sank into dirty water over his ankles. At last he reached the heavily-wooded base of the mountain, and was forced to slow down and begin a determined climb through the underbrush, up ledges of yellow, mossy rock, and across slippery patches of shale where he had to go slowly and watch his footing. Half-way up the mountainside, he gained the bottom of the terminal moraine. Huge rocks, gray with lichens and scratched in rough, random designs, stretched above him; he was forced to leap precariously from rock to rock, always upward, several times catching himself just in time to avoid a nasty headlong fall. Once, indeed, he slipped on a bit of moss, and toppled sidewise into a cranny between two of the boulders. His blanket-roll saved his body from being more than bruised; but in falling one hand slipped under his body, and his heavy electric flash-lamp banged down upon a rock, crushing one of his finger-tips badly. The darting pain brought tears to his eyes, and he shook the injured finger violently. Scrambling to his feet for fear he might have fallen close to the hiding-place of some vicious, venomous timber-rattler, he struggled on over the great rocks; and after what seemed like hours of toilsome climbing, he at last gained the top of the first ridge.
There, on the mountain’s top, the evening light was brighter, but in the valley he had just left the shadows were long and cool. He turned and faced toward the east. There was the lake, spreading like a polished deep mirror that reflected the gold and blue evening sky, the serried rows of trees along the margin. There were the ordered rows of white tents, the top of the lodge roof with smoke wreathing lazily from the stone chimney and with the bare flagpole standing up beyond. He could see Camp Lenape as if it were a toy model spread out at his feet, almost hidden in the gray-green foliage of the forest. A slight breeze brought to him the faint clatter of trays from the mess hall, the confused hum of campers’ voices. They would be almost finished supper, now. Wally and Haviland and Gallegher and the rest would be sitting about the mess-table, wondering where he had disappeared. Well, let them worry!
The thought of supper made him remember that he had had nothing to eat since dinner-time. He pulled out the piece of cheese he had looted from the ice-box, and began gnawing upon it. He could eat a little while he rested. He turned a bit to the left. Beyond the pasture-land he had crossed on his flight, he saw a line of trees that marked a lane. He knew that lane; it was the one which led to the hermit’s house, the road he had followed the night he had heard murder done by the two tramps, Reno and Lew. He could barely make out the weather-stained, mottled shingles of the roof of the house, and shivered slightly. He would be glad to go anywhere, anywhere away from the neighborhood of that grim house of crime.
Pulling out his compass, he marked a new line of march across the undulating summit of the mountain. It pointed toward a blasted pine taller than the rest, and he resolved to make for that. The going was easier here on the mountain; the daylight was clearer, and the trees were stunted and far apart, scrub pine and small oaks no more than waist-high, for the most part. Blackie trotted along with assurance, chewing upon a piece of raw ham torn from the slice in his pocket in lieu of supper. He crossed a ravine and stumbled up the other side; this took time, and now he could almost watch the sun dropping inch by inch toward the line of trees in the west. There was not a sign that human beings had ever passed that way; Blackie knew that no one ever penetrated that desolate wilderness except deer-hunters and blueberry pickers in the fall of the year. When he again gained level ground, he found that somehow he had lost sight of the blasted pine he had picked as a landmark. This did not trouble him much; he took out the compass and again sighted toward the northwest. His finger was bothering him more than anything else; the tip had swelled, and the nail was fast turning an angry purple color. It felt double its size, and as the boy swung along it throbbed and ached until Blackie was desperate with pain.
He had covered about a mile and a half since landing on the plateau on top of the ridge when he came to a section that was marked by long wooded swales, rank with rotting vegetation, crossing his path. The sun was dropping lower and lower; it shone like a flaming, bloody ball close to the horizon, and its slanting rays blinded his eyes until the woods about him seemed dim and unreal. He determined not to deviate from the line he had laid for himself, for fear of getting off the track; and when he came to the giant bole of a fallen tree, he tried to climb over it instead of going yards around. The knobs and splinters of the rotting trunk caught at his clothing and his equipment; while scrambling over the top he slipped and fell prostrate across it, knocking the breath from his lungs. A train of white ants crossed his arm, and when he crawled slowly and clumsily to his feet, he felt their red-hot stings on his wrist and up his sleeve. It seemed that the insects were everywhere under his clothing, jabbing their poisoned darts of pain into his skin. He jumped from the top of the trunk, landing on his face and scratching it until it was crossed by bloody lines. The ground now became marshy, and he was beset by a humming tribe of mosquitoes. Still he staggered on, until brought to a stop by a spread of green, scummy water that barred his path completely.
Blackie considered. At the rate the sun was disappearing, and at the rate he was taking to make a few miles across the mountains, he would never reach Newmiln by dark. It would mean a night alone in this unexplored region, a night of fighting mosquitoes and unceasing watchfulness for rattlesnakes, night-prowling animals, and perhaps worse. He remembered all the tales he had ever heard of lone travellers caught at nightfall in strange and desolate solitudes, of attacks by bears, wolves, ghosts of slain Indians. And suddenly, like a chilling cloak, fear came to him and enveloped him. He felt the short hairs of his neck rise and prickle; an icy finger trailed down his spine. He would have to get on; he must cross the swamp somehow, anyhow!
The water in the slimy pool was only a few inches deep; through the green scum he could see the muddy, coated bottom. Feverishly he looked about him, and seized a number of fallen branches that lay on the ground, filled with the idea of making a rough bridge by casting them across the few feet of swamp ahead. He worked furiously, and soon had a network of branches thrown ahead, across which he hoped to run and so gain the far side. There was no room behind him for a clear take-off; it would have to be a standing jump. He stood for a second, getting up his nerve; and with a leap he landed upon the center of the improvised bridge. There was a snapping crackle of branches—the ones he had chosen were ground branches, and rotten. They gave under his feet, breaking and sinking into the mud; and he fell headlong on his face into the sticky ooze.
The swamp was a sucking enemy, trying to drag him under and hold him close, until the foul waters should close over his head; it bubbled under him, seeming to chuckle like a fiend. Frantically he fought his way to an upright position; he was standing almost waist-deep in the slime. Urged on by fear, he floundered forward, caught at an overhanging bush, and pulled himself slowly to firm ground. There he lay for a minute, gasping with exhaustion and terror after his exertion. The lower half of his body was soaked with filthy mud; his face and blanket-roll were draggled and stained from his fall. But he must not stop; he must push on, onward to the northwest!
For ten minutes he wandered through the marshy swales, avoiding the frequent pools whenever he could. The forest was too thick for him to spot any landmark ahead, and he gave up the idea of climbing a tree for an observation, because it would take up too much of his precious time. At last the ground sloped upward again; open spaces began to appear; the footing was easier. He pushed on, deadly afraid to halt in that darkening place of horror.
Blackie never remembered afterwards very much what he did during the remainder of that twilight march. He had a picture of himself—a hungry, weary, frightened figure, dwarfed by the bigness and ominous vastness of that solitude, caked with drying muck, scratched with twigs and thorns, and ever followed by a cloud of stinging mosquitoes—fighting his way through the desolation. He had the feeling of one in a nightmare, when the dreamer is pursued by darkness and nameless horrors, and the very ground seems to rise and clutch and hold him back. And he remembered coming to the edge of the rhododendron thickets and feeling that he could not go on.