There was a great rushing sliding iron sound like a guillotine blade slicing the sky. The blow fell. The town shuddered. But it was just the wind from the north.

And down in the center of the ravine, the boys listened for that great stroke of wind to come again.

They stood on the creek–bank making water in the cool sunlight and among them, preoccupied, stood Douglas. They all smiled as they spelled their names in the creek sand with the steaming lemon water. CHARLIE, wrote one. WILL, another. And then: BO, PETE, SAM, HENRY, RALPH, and TOM.

Doug inscribed his initials with flourishes, took a deep breath, and added a postscript: WAR.

Tom squinted at the sand. ‘What?’

‘War of course, dummy. War!’

‘Who’s the enemy?’

Douglas Spaulding glanced up at the green slopes above their great and secret ravine.

Instantly, like clockwork, in four ancient gray–flaked mansion houses, four old men, shaped from leaf–mold and yellowed dry wicker, showed their mummy faces from porches or in coffin–shaped windows.

‘Them,’ whispered Doug. ‘Oh, them!’

Doug whirled and shrieked, ‘Charge!’

‘Who do we kill?’ said Tom.

Chapter Five

CHAPTER FIVE

Above the green ravine, in a dry room at the top of an ancient house, old Braling leaned from a window like a thing from the attic, trembling. Below, the boys ran.

‘God,’ he cried. ‘Make them stop their damned laughing!’

He clutched faintly at his chest as if he were a Swiss watchmaker concerned with keeping something running with that peculiar self–hypnosis he called prayer.

‘Beat, now; one, two!’

Nights when he feared his heart might stop, he set a metronome ticking by his bed, so that his blood would continue to travel on toward dawn.

Footsteps scraped, a cane tip tapped, on the downstairs porch. That would be old Calvin C. Quartermain come to argue school board policy in the husking wicker chairs. Braling half fell down the stairs, emerging onto the porch.

‘Quartermain!’

Calvin C. Quartermain sat like a wild mechanical toy, oversized, rusty, in a reed easy chair.

Braling laughed. ‘I made it!’

‘Not forever,’ Quartermain observed.

‘Hell,’ said Braling. ‘Some day they’ll bury you in a California dried–fruit tin. Christ, what’re those idiot boys up to?’

‘Horsing around. Listen!’

‘Bang!’

Douglas ran by the porch.

‘Get off the lawn!’ cried Braling.

Doug spun and aimed his cap–pistol.

‘Bang!’

Braling, with a pale, wild look, cried, ‘Missed!’

‘Bang!’ Douglas jumped up the porch steps.

He saw two panicked moons in Braling’s eyes.

‘Bang! Your arm!’

‘Who wants an arm?’ Braling snorted.

‘Bang! Your heart!’

‘What?’

‘Heart – bang!’

‘Steady … One, two!’ whispered the old man.

‘Bang!’

‘One, two!’ Braling called to his hands clutching his ribs. ‘Christ! Metronome!’

‘What?’

‘Metronome!’

‘Bang! You’re dead!’

‘One, two!’ Braling gasped.

And dropped dead.

Douglas, cap–gun in hand, slipped and fell back down the steps onto the dry grass.

Chapter Six

CHAPTER SIX