Publisher's Synopsis
THE way led along upon what had once been the embankment of a railroad. But notrain had run upon it for many years. The forest on either side swelled up the slopes of theembankment and crested across it in a green wave of trees and bushes. The trail was asnarrow as a man's body, and was no more than a wild-animal runway. Occasionally, a pieceof rusty iron, showing through the forest-mould, advertised that the rail and the ties stillremained. In one place, a ten-inch tree, bursting through at a connection, had lifted the endof a rail clearly into view. The tie had evidently followed the rail, held to it by the spike longenough for its bed to be filled with gravel and rotten leaves, so that now the crumbling, rotten timber thrust itself up at a curious slant. Old as the road was, it was manifest that ithad been of the mono-rail type.An old man and a boy travelled along this runway. They moved slowly, for the old manwas very old, a touch of palsy made his movements tremulous, and he leaned heavily uponhis staff. A rude skull-cap of goat-skin protected his head from the sun. From beneath thisfell a scant fringe of stained and dirty-white hair. A visor, ingeniously made from a largeleaf, shielded his eyes, and from under this he peered at the way of his feet on the trail. Hisbeard, which should have been snow-white but which showed the same weather-wear andcamp-stain as his hair, fell nearly to his waist in a great tangled mass. About his chest andshoulders hung a single, mangy garment of goat-skin. His arms and legs, withered andskinny, betokened extreme age, as well as did their sunburn and scars and scratchesbetoken long years of exposure to the elements.The boy, who led the way, checking the eagerness of his muscles to the slow progressof the elder, likewise wore a single garment-a ragged-edged piece of bear-skin, with ahole in the middle through which he had thrust his head. He could not have been more thantwelve years old. Tucked coquettishly over one ear was the freshly severed tail of a pig. Inone hand he carried a medium-sized bow and an arrow.On his back was a quiverful of arrows. From a sheath hanging about his neck on athong, projected the battered handle of a hunting knife. He was as brown as a berry, andwalked softly, with almost a catlike tread. In marked contrast with his sunburned skin werehis eyes-blue, deep blue, but keen and sharp as a pair of gimlets. They seemed to bore intoaft about him in a way that was habitual. As he went along he smelled things, as well, hisdistended, quivering nostrils carrying to his brain an endless series of messages from theoutside world. Also, his hearing was acute, and had been so trained that it operatedautomatically. Without conscious effort, he heard all the slight sounds in the apparentquiet-heard, and differentiated, and classified these sounds-whether they were of thewind rustling the leaves, of the humming of bees and gnats, of the distant rumble of the seathat drifted to him only in lulls, or of the gopher, just under his foot, shoving a pouchful ofearth into the entrance of his hole
