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been able to prove them one way or another. When did you come through?”
    “Not too long ago,” Linda answered. “Is that your fire making the smoke? We’re awfully hungry and we were just going to eat when we saw it and came along . . .”
    “You have some supplies?” Stroud rammed the slingshot back under the belt of his boiler suit. “All right, come ahead.” He turned a little toward the bush from which he had emerged, put two fingers to his lips and gave a low but carrying whistle. “You ain’t bait as far as I can see.”
    “Bait?” Nick did not like the sound of that.
    Again Stroud gave his crow of laughter. “Bait, yes. You’ll learn, m’ lad, you’ll learn. This way now, an’ mind the bushes . . .”
    He pushed ahead and they followed in a way which to Nick’s eyes used all available cover. But if there was such a need to hide, why then did they allow smoke to rise like a banner in the air? Only a moment later, he realized that they were not heading toward the site of that fire, but well to the left of it.
    Linda must have made the same discovery, for now she asked:
    “Aren’t we going to your camp?”
    “Right ahead—” Stroud’s deep voice reached them. “Mind this vine, enough to trip a man up it is.”
    Nick had to mind the vine, a tough cover on the ground, with attention. It caught at the bike, as well as at his feet, with such persistence one could almost believe it a set trap. Twice he had to stop and untangle it, so that Stroud and Linda had disappeared and he had only the marks of their passing to guide him on a trail that took them farther and farther from the site of the fire and then curved again toward the Run.
    He came out at last in a clearing walled by what seemed a solid siding of thick brush. And there he found Stroud, Linda, and three others. Two were men, the third a woman. They had been facing Linda, but, as Nick pushed his way through with a crackling of brush, they turned almost as one to stare at him.
    The men were in contrast to each other as well as to Stroud. One was elderly, very tall and gaunt, his white hair in a fluff about his head as if it were too fine to be controlled. He had a great forward hook of a nose that was matched by the firmness of the jaw beneath. But his eyes, under the shadow of bushy brows, did not have the fierce hawk glare Nick expected. They were intelligent and full of interest, but they also held an acceptance of others, not the need for dominance that the rest of his face suggested.
    He wore a dark gray suit, much the worse for hard usage, and a sweater underneath its coat that did not come high enough to hide a clergyman’s roundabout collar. On his feet were rough hide moccasins, which were in strange contrast to the rest of his clothing, shabby as that was.
    The younger man was an inch or two taller than Nick and, like Stroud, he was in uniform, but not that of a warden. His blue tunic was much worn, but there were wings on its breast, and he had pushed to the back of his blond head a pilot’s cap.
    Their feminine companion was almost as tall as the pilot and she, too, was in uniform, with badges Nick did not recognize on the shoulder. A helmet like the Warden’s crowned a mass of unruly dark hair. Her figure was almost as lean as that of the clergyman, and her face, weathered and brown, made no pretense to good looks. Yet there was an air of competence and authority about her that was impressive.
    “Americans,” she commented. “Then,” she spoke to the clergyman, “you were entirely right in your surmise, Adrian. We did travel farther than we thought in that cage.”
    The blond pilot also fingered a slingshot. “We’d better shove off.” His eyes had gone from Nick to the brush. He had the attitude of one listening. “No use watching the trap any longer—”
    “Barry is correct,” the clergyman nodded. “We may not have had the kind of success we hoped to obtain. But by attracting our young friends here we have