The Animal People (v1.0) by Unknown Author

Author:Unknown Author
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XII

“What a rotten break! My sense of direction’s gone all haywire!” Phil grumbled to himself as he made his way beneath a clouded sky deeper and deeper into the brush of the hillside. “I’m sure getting nowhere at record speed!”

He paused, mopped his brow in the increasing heat, leaned on the long walking stick which he had made from a fairly straight fallen tree-limb, and glanced moodily up at the bush-clad and rock-covered slopes, knowing that he was lost. Hunger raged within him; since yesterday he had had nothing to eat except some scraps of unnutritious plants, such as the wild garlic, the sweet nuts or fennel, and the bitter herb known as “miners’ lettuce.”

“If I don’t make my way out of this pretty soon,” he ruminated, “my name will show up on the casuality lists.” However, he could congratulate himself on having thus far eluded those beastly guards.

This thought had hardly come to him when he was dealt a new shock. He had grown vaguely aware of something familiar in the looks of the country—just what, he could not have said. And then in a flash, as he turned a curve in a narrow defile between two hills, he understood the reason for the familiarity. Staring at him not a hundred yards away was a fence of javelin-like sticks. He had traveled around the hill in a circle, and had returned to the very prison he had so recently escaped!

Close to exhaustion, and baffled as to what course to take, he sank to the ground with a groan. All that he knew for certain was that he had returned to the zone of acute danger, from which he must escape soon and at all costs. But where could he go? How would he live?

Hardly had these questions rushed over him when he became aware of something stirring amid the shoulder-high chaparral close to the fence of javelin sticks. One glance was enough—still clutching his walking stick, he crawled into the bushes as far as their bristly resistance permitted, then froze and remained rock-still, listening and waiting. His concealment, however, was not all that he could wish—not when three brown, hairy lumbering apelike forms approached, with heads encircled by rude caps of dried leaves, and with wooden spears in hand.

As the newcomers drew near, he saw them prodding here, there, and everywhere into the bushes, probing for something or someone. He tried to make himself as small as possible, fearing that at any moment he would feel a sharp blade biting into his head or legs. But the enemy either did not look too closely or else was unable to see through the clumps of bushes where he lay. They came within ten feet, then passed on.

For many minutes, as they wound out of view to the left around a bend in the canyon, Phil could hear their voices raised in shouts as if to comrades. But at last, fiercely impatient and judging that the road must now be safe, he arose and started off to the right.

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