In the woods Ben always had been leader. And there it was Ben's natural way to send his glance flickering everywhere. Reuben recalled the voice of Jesse Plum: "No Inj'an'll ever surprise you, Ben. Swoonds, you could look at a squirrel while the little bugger jumps from one branch to the next, and tell me its age and gender, and if she be female whether she got little 'uns." Jesse had not croaked that in flattery. Wilderness had been near and vital to Jesse; he never made a mock of it, and was capable of scolding either boy for walking noisily in dead leaves.
"Ben, do you feel——"
"All's well. Let's go on."
Reuben walked on ahead, trying to set an easier pace. Surely, surely there was no reason why Ben should fall ill....
In time the forest opened to a park-like region where perhaps in past seasons the Indians had followed their custom of burning over the land, killing new growth and brush, allowing established trees to expand their side branches in isolation. Through more than a mile of this they walked. Ben did not speak.
The sled-tracks passed abruptly over the edge of a slope. Reuben could make out no treetops directly ahead, though a thick cluster of them stood to his left; the part of the slope where the road ran down would be open ground. A ghost of alien sound disturbed him.
He held out his hand, but Ben either failed to see it or was unwilling that his brother should go ahead alone; he still followed closely—more quietly though, more careful of his steps—when Reuben reached the beginning of the slope.
The thing could not be more than thirty feet away, a living blot of long shadow on the trampled white.
The slope ran steeply down. At the bottom, a flat expanse to the right must be the northern end of a pond or lake, frozen, snow-covered. The sled-tracks, plain in moon-shadow, skirted that level surface and disappeared in thicker woods beyond. On Reuben's left, all the way down the slope and connecting with the farther woods, hemlocks loomed densely black, branches bowing to the ground.
The thing gazed up across the wild turkey between its paws, and Reuben understood the sound—crunch of monstrous teeth on frail bone. Ben drew his knife and pushed in front muttering: "He won't attack, Ru. They're timid—Jesse alway said...."