He had not gone a dozen paces when he tripped and fell.
He felt ashamed that the girl must put out a slender hand to guide him. “I—I’ve never been in a forest,” he half apologized.
“Not even by day?” The girl’s awed whisper showed her astonishment. Her next remark gave him a shock. “Then you have never truly lived.”
Gladly would he have argued this point. But this was no time for mere talk. It was a time for action. They were on an island within a bay. The bay reached far, to a larger island. The larger island was far from the mainland. If the kidnaper’s statement was to be accepted, there were no people on this larger island save the kidnapers themselves.
“I wonder if there are other cabins on this island?” He whispered this more to himself than to the girl. She answered nevertheless.
“There are none. We must get away as far as we can. To the far end of the island. Then we must think what is to be done next. Come, we must go. Follow close behind me.”
For a full half hour after that they waged a silent battle with nature. Over fallen trees that now tore at them with their tangled branches and now sank treacherously beneath their feet, around rocky ridges that offered dangerous descents into tiny valleys so dark that one might not see his hand before him, they struggled on until with a sigh the girl whispered:
“A trail.”
Too engrossed was Red in the unaccustomed struggle to ask: “What has made this trail?”
He was soon enough to know. In his pocket he carried a small flashlight. Judging that they were now far enough from the cabin to use this, he pressed the button, then cast the light down the trail.