It was at that moment that a shadow flickered, and Trevor looked up and saw the hawks.
Many hawks. They had not seen him, they were not heeding the rocks in which he crouched. They were flying straight up the ravine, not circling or searching now but going with a sure purposefulness, back the way he had come.
He watched them uneasily. There were more than he had ever seen together before. But they flew on up the ravine without turning, and were gone.
"They weren't looking for me," he thought. "But...."
Trevor should have felt relieved, but he didn't. His uneasiness grew and grew, stemming from an inescapable conclusion.
The hawks were going to the cave. They were heading toward it in an exact line, turning neither to right nor left, and this time they were not in any doubt. They, or whoever or whatever dominated them, knew this time exactly where to find the fugitives.
"But that's impossible," Trevor tried to tell himself. "There's no way they could suddenly learn exactly where the cave is after all this time."
No way?
A thing was forcing its way up into Trevor's anxious thoughts, a realization that he did not want to look at squarely, not at all. But it would not be put down, it would not stop tormenting him, and suddenly he cried out to it, a cry of pain and guilt,