Fors leaped out of the cab and dashed for the big door. He pulled down on the counter bar and it gave so that he could push back the ponderous barrier. He looked out upon a street clear of wrecks. A glance up slope told him why. At the head—only a few feet back from the door-one of the great trucks had slewed sidewise, its nose smashed into the wall of a building on the opposite side— an effective barricade. He did not linger after that fleeting examination. Behind, the sound of the dying engine was horrible—grating and grinding out its last few seconds of life.
Fors gained the cabin, bringing Lura in with him. They crouched together with pounding hearts as Arskane fumbled with the wheel. But the last spurt of power set the big truck moving, rubber shredding away from the remains of the tires as they turned. The engine faltered and died as they rolled out of the garage and reached the rise, but the momentum carried on and they sped faster and faster down the steep hill to the valley below.
Only pure luck had given them that clear street ahead. Had it not been for the smashed truck corking the street at its head they might have crashed into wreckage which would have killed them all. Arskane fought the wheel, steering only by instinct, and brought them along the pavement at a pace which grew ever wilder as the truck gained speed.
Twice Fors closed his eyes, only to force them open again. His hands were buried deep in the fur of the squalling Lura who wanted none of this form of travel. But the truck went on and on and they were at last on level land, bumping over the rusted tracks of the railroad. The truck slowed, and at last it stopped as it buried its front bumper in a heap of coal.
For a moment the three simply remained where they were, shaken and weak. Then they roused enough to tumble out. Arskane laughed, but his voice was going up scale as he said.
“If anyone followed us they must be well behind now. And we must labor so that such a distance grows even wider.”
They took advantage of any cover afforded by the wreckage in the train yards, and struck south at a trotting pace until, at last, the valley of the river looped away again from the southern path they had set themselves. Then they climbed the slope and went on across the tree-grown ruins of the city outskirts.
The sun was overhead, hot on head and shoulders. There was a fishy scent in the breeze which blew inland from the lake. Arskane sniffed it loudly.
“Rain,” was his verdict, “and we could not hope for better fortune. It will cover our trail—”
But the Beast Things would not follow any prey out of a city—or would they? They must be ranging farther afield now—there was that track left by the deer hunter. And Fors’ father had been brought down by a pack, not within a city but in the fringes of the true forest land. It was not well to count themselves safe merely because they were drawing out of the ruined area.