The first man wore a red and yellow bandanna handkerchief over the lower half of his face, pulled tightly across a bony nose. He held a long pistol nearly parallel to his own body; and when he came up to where she was standing he poked the muzzle into her stomach.
She did no flinch; he said nothing; she looked intently into the two ratty eyes fastened on her over the edge of his bandanna.
Five other men were surrounding her, but they all wore white masks of vizard shape, revealing chin and mouth.
They were different otherwise, also, wearing various sorts and patterns of sport clothes, brand new, and giving them an odd, foreign appearance.
What troubled her most was the silence the maintained. The man wearing the bandanna was the only one who seemed at all a familiar figure, — merely, perhaps, because he was American in build, clothing, and movement.
He took her by the shoulder, turned her around and gave her a shove forward. She staggered a step or two; he gave her another shove and she comprehended that she was to keep on going.
Presently she found herself in a steep, wet deer-trail rising upward through a gully. She knew that runway. It led up Star Peak.
Behind her as she climbed she heard the slopping, panting tread of men; her wind was better than theirs; she climbed lithely upward, setting a pace which finally resulted in a violent jerk backward, — a savage, wordless admonition to go more slowly.
As she climbed she wondered whether she should have fired an alarm shot on the chance of the State Trooper, Stormont, hearing it.
But she had thought only of the packet at the moment of surprise. And now she wondered whether, when freed, she could ever again find that rotting log.