“Do not move!” the other man yells, raising one of his arms. “Stay there.”

That is a command that I would be foolish to obey. There’s only one thing for me to do now.

Run!

Flight is my best hope right now. Just then something whizzes past my face as I take to my heels, moonlight flashing off it as it just misses me.

A knife was just thrown at me, I think, and run even faster.

I hear their feet pounding the earth behind me, but I don’t look back.

“Stop,” the first man shouts again.

The men behind me are larger than me, armed with clubs and perhaps even more knives. Drunk as they are, they will not hesitate to do the worst to me if they catch me. But because they are drunk, perhaps they will not be able to run as swiftly or as sure as they could when sober. And though I am not the fastest runner among the boys of my age, I am far from being the slowest.

My attackers are no longer shouting. They are just concentrating on trying to catch me. But I can tell from the sounds of their heavy breathing and their feet thudding against the trail, that I am gaining ground. They are farther behind me. The moonlight is so bright now that it casts shadows on the trail.

But my mother’s cabin is still some distance away. The moon is bright now, but the clouds are still moving across the sky and its light may be blotted out again soon, well before I reach the safety of my home. And there are narrow places on the trail ahead of me where someone might be waiting in ambush. There is a prickling at the back of my neck, another sense beyond sight or smell or hearing that is warning me of more danger than those two pursuers who are now so far behind they have lost sight of me.

Where?

I slow my pace just enough to scan the trail ahead of me. There! That has to be the spot, there where a huge old oak tree overhangs the main path. If I keep going, I’ll reach that narrower place in the path before the clouds blot out the moon again. I don’t see any motion there, but I can sense a presence. Someone, another attacker, is waiting there to waylay me.

I can’t go on and I can’t turn back. But luck is with me because I have come to the one place along this trail that circles around Willstown where I have a chance of escape. The steep ravine that falls off to my left is the one that holds the hidden path to the Four Bears. I find its entrance just as the moon again begins to slip into its cloak of clouds.