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more than 30 yards off the main road, I had already lost my orientation. In desperation, I jerked the pickup to a halt, crawled out, grabbed my survival kit and continued on foot. |
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Another 100 yards down the road, I realized Elliott Grant Wages had made a big mistake. The gravel path narrowed, and the fog began to close in; strange sounds began taunting me from both sides of the tree-shrouded path. A twig snapped. A branch swayed ominously overhead. There was a subtle movement in the underbrush. Then, suddenly came the worst thing of allan eerie, unreal, perhaps deadly silence. I stopped, forced to listen to the sound of my own triphammer heart. It was augmented by strained and shallow breathing. |
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I made an anemic, half-hearted attempt at a whistle. It fluttered out over bone dry lips and sounded a lot like a sputtering steam engine. At the time, it seemed like a futile gesture, but there was some comfort in getting my fingers coiled around the Mauser. When I had it in my right hand with my index finger coiled around the trigger, I felt even better. |
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Thinking back about it, I don't know why I found any security in that cherished chunk of carefully crafted metal. So far, bullets hadn't proved to be all that much of a deterrent. The twisting, rocky path up the hill to the isolated old house of the Widow |
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