It must be someone who had followed her, she told herself. For this was a road that seemed to lead to nowhere, a steadily worsening road that in a little while, more than likely, would dwindle down to no road at all.
In just a few more seconds the car would reach the wasp nest and what would happen then? The insects would not take such a disturbance lightly. Stirred up by their first encounter, they would come swarming out bent upon full vengeance.
The noise of the branches and the brush scraping against the metal of the car came to an end. The electric motor was humming idly. The car had stopped before it reached the nest.
A door banged and leaves rustled under the scuffing of deliberate footsteps. The footsteps stopped. The silence stretched out thin. The footsteps began, then stopped again.
A man cleared his throat, as if he'd been about to speak and then had decided not to.
The feet upon the road stirred about—not footsteps, but indecisive shuffling.
A voice spoke tentatively, a normal speaking voice, as one might speak who was reluctant to break the woodland spell.
"Miss Harrison," asked the voice, "are you anywhere about?"
She half raised out of the crouch, surprised. She had heard that voice somewhere and she should know it— and suddenly she did.
"Mr. Sutton," she said, as calmly as she could, determined not to shout, not to sound excited, "I'm down here. Watch out for that wasp nest."
"What wasp nest?"
"There's one on the road. Just ahead of you."
"You're all right?"
"Yes, I'm all right. Stung up a little. You see, I drove into the nest and the car went off the road and
She forced herself to stop. The words were coming out too fast, gushing out. She had to hang onto herself. She must fight off hysteria.
He was off the road now, plunging down the hill toward her. She saw him coming—the big, blunt man with the grizzled face.
He stopped and stared at the car.
"Busted up," he said.
"One wheel is broken. Just caved in."
"You ran me quite a chase," he said.
"But why—how did you find me?"
"Just dumb luck," he said. "There are a dozen of us out looking for some trace of you. Covering different areas. And I was the one to pick up your trail. A day or two ago. When you talked to some people in a village."
"I stopped several times," she said, "to ask my way."
He nodded. "Then there was the house up by the fork. They told me you went this way. Said the road petered out. Said you'd get in trouble on it. No proper road at all."
"I didn't see a house."
"Maybe not," he said. "It sets back from the road a piece. Up on a knoll. Not an easy thing to see. Dog came out, barking at me. That is how I knew."
She rose to her feet.
"Now what?" she asked. "Why come after me?"
"We need you. There is something that you have to do. Something that we can't do. Franklin Chapman's dead." "DeadI"
"Heart attack," he said.
"The envelope!" she cried. "He was the only one who knew…"
"It's all right," he said. "We have the envelope. We'd been keeping tab on him. A cabdriver picked him up and took him to a post office…"
"That's where the letter was," she said. "I asked him to rent a box under an assumed name and I gave him the envelope and he mailed it to himself and left it in the box. A legal maneuver. So I wouldn't know where the letter was."
"The cabbie was one of us," said Sutton. "One way we kept track of him. Looked sick when he got into the cab and…"
"Poor Franklin," she said.
"He was dead when he hit the floor. Never knew what happened."
"But there's no second life for him, no…" "A better second life," said Sutton, "than Forever Center plans."
34
Frost sat on the steps that led down from the porch and stared out across the valley. The first shadow of evening had fallen on the river and the bottomlands and above the far-off treetops a straggly line of black forms flew raggedly, a flock of crows heading back to their nesting grounds. On the far side of the river a small white ribbon ran like a snake across the rounded hills, the track of an ancient and abandoned road.
Down the slope below him stood the barn, its ridgepole sagging, and beside it the rusted hulk of a piece of farm machinery. At the far end of the long-fallow field a dark form went leaping through the tall grass, a wild dog, more than likely, possibly a coyote.
Once, he remembered, the lawn had been mowed and the bushes trimmed and the flower beds pampered. Once, in his own memory, the fences had been kept in repair and painted, but now all the paint was gone and half of the fence was gone. The front gate hung drunkenly on a single hinge, half pulled from the post.
Outside the gate stood Mona Campbell's car, the tall grass and weeds reaching halfway to the windows and hiding the wheels. It was an incongruous note, he thought. It had no right to be here. Man had fled from this land and now it should be left alone, it should be allowed to rest from man's long tenancy.
Behind him the door closed softly and footsteps came across the porch. Mona Campbell sat down on the step below him.
"It is a pleasant view," she said. "Don't you find it so?"
He nodded.
"I suppose you remember many pleasant days in this place."
"I suppose I do," said Frost, "but it was so long ago."
"Not so long ago," she told him. "Only twenty years or less."
"It's empty. It's lonesome. It is not the same. But I'm not surprised. That's the way I expected it."
"But you came," she said. "You ran for shelter here."
"I came because I had to. Something made me come. I don't pretend to understand what it was that made me, but that's the way it was."
They sat in silence for a moment and he saw that her hands lay idly and quietly in her lap-hands that had some wrinkles in them, but still small and capable. At one time, he thought, those hands had been beautiful, and in a certain way, they had not lost their beauty yet.
"Mr. Frost," she said, without looking at him, "you didn't kill that man."
"No," he said, "I didn't."
"I didn't think you had," she said. "You have nothing to run for except the marks upon your face. Has it occurred to you that you might reinstate yourself if you turned me in?"
"The thought," said Frost, "had crossed my mind."
"You considered it?"
"Not really. When you're driven in a corner, you think of everything. You even think of things you know you couldn't do. But in this instance, of course, it would have been no good."
"I think it might," she said. "I would imagine they want me pretty bad."
"Tomorrow," Frost finally said, "I'll be leaving. You're in trouble enough without my adding to it. After all, I've had a week of rest and food and it's time to be getting on. It might not be a bad idea if you moved on, too. No one on the lam can afford to sit too long."
"There is no need," she said. "There is no danger. They don't know. How could they know?"
"You took Hicklin to the rescue station."
"At night," she said. "They never really got a look at me. Told them I was driving through and found him on the road."
"That's true enough," he said. "But you're forgetting Hicklin. The man could talk."