Timmy leaped the gap easily to connect the two remarks, as Phil had thought he would. "Oh, I didn't mean there should be no death. I was thinking of something else. That man they found dead in the bush yesterday."
"A man with a heart condition should never go hunting alone."
"Was it his heart, Uncle Phil?"
"His heart and his head both, if you ask me. He had a bad heart, all right—I saw him have an attack once. You'd think a man like that would have sense enough to avoid overexertion, but he lost his way and started churning through swamp and brush in a straight line instead of looking for the trail again. Must have acted like a moron, running until he dropped."
"Would panic make a man do that?"
"It will make a man do any crazy thing imaginable, if he lets it get the upper hand. There's only a few square miles of marsh and brush here, with the town already crowding up against it. In a few years it will be drained and the land used for industrial development and so on, then the fools will have to find some other way to kill themselves."
"What do you mean?"
"Oh, every so often we have to turn out search parties and have a grand shivaree looking for some idiot who usually turns up dead. Drowned himself in two feet of water, or run himself ragged, or even put a bullet through his head for no good reason. It's happened several times in the past few years, so the place is getting a bad name it doesn't deserve. Even the search parties often get themselves balled up and mill around in circles, perfect examples of mass hysteria. Sometimes I get fed up with the human race."
"I ... didn't know. I mean, about the ... deaths."
Phil laughed outright at the tragic tone.