Out on the Lakes, with a slanting deck underfoot and a dim shore-line somewhere off in the night, Pink's soul would have thrilled in unison with the stars, but here, buried in the gloom of the pine stumps,—those straight, blackened poles that stood in endless monotony,—his soul was overwhelmed. A panic seized him; he knew he would be late; and he took to gliding along in the shadows, nearer and nearer, until, seeing plainly that the road swung around to the right, and that the clearing was overgrown with tall weeds and was surrounded by a stump fence, he paused again. His feet sinking at each step in the sand, he made no sound.
He stood motionless. Over the weeds he made out the sagging roof of a small building. Then, forgetting that his own figure was invisible against the black of the forest, he dropped to the ground and, flat on his face, wriggled forward. A row of sunflowers grew inside the fence. At one point was a cluster of them, standing out high above the weeds. Cautiously inch by inch he crept nearer. The bunched stalks, outlined so distinctly against the sky, fascinated him by their resemblance to the hat, head, and shoulders of a human being.
Nearer—nearer—a moment more and he would be able to place his hand against the fence. He was holding his breath now; afterward he could never tell what was the slight noise he must have made. Or perhaps it was the sense that tells one when a person has silently entered a room that caused the figure—just as Pink, lying there on the sand and looking up, had made sure that it was a figure and not a clump of sunflowers—to look around, up and down. Pink scrambled to his feet and plunged recklessly forward. The man, who had been sitting on the fence, quietly dropped down on the inner side.
A stump fence is not easy to climb, and Pink was on the outer side, where the tangled masses of roots spread out into a cheveau-de-frise which, in the dark, seemed insurmountable. When he had finally got to the top, at the expense of a few scratches, a disturbance in the weeds near the front of the house told him where the fugitive had taken refuge. He promptly set up a shout.
“Ho-o-ho!” came simultaneously from Smiley and Beveridge.
“Here he is!”
“Where?”
“In the—” Pink was balancing on the fence. Before he could finish his shout a revolver shot sounded from the house, and he went tumbling down into the enclosure.
“What's that! Are you hit?”
“No—just lost my balance. Close in—he's in the house.” He was getting to his feet during this speech and feeling himself, not sure, in spite of his statement, whether it was the noise or the bullet that had upset him. But he could find no trace of a wound.