They folded their blankets and rolled them.
Tim set about repacking his haversack. He picked it up, pulled out his extra underclothes and socks and turned the pack upside down. A bright little object fell to the ground and Tim leaned over and picked it up. “Devil put in a compass,” he said.
“The man’s been good to us.” Red took a deep breath. “Let’s take a chance and move by day, at least till we see some signs of life.”
There was no water, so they took their cornmeal dry. Tim ran his tongue around his teeth. “My mother used to call this stuff ‘rokeeg.’ I remember we didn’t like it much.”
“Tastes change.”
They moved briskly through the woods.
They came to a stream and knelt to drink. Tim filled the empty canteen. They moved on, crossing streams and small swamps and skirting a couple of little farms.
About noon they came to a cultivated field with some cornstalks still standing around the edges. They found five ears and kept them for cooking when they found a chance to build a fire.
They walked along the edge of the field until they saw a house, then moved to the shelter of a thinly wooded plain.
They had to go slowly so that they wouldn’t be seen. By now Captain Senn would have spread the alarm.