Sixteen
‘W e have to cross it,’ said Peg Leg Joe. ‘There’s no other way.’
They were high up on a grass-covered hill overlooking a city which spread out before them in the valley below. None of them had ever seen a city, except the Guide. It seemed to take up the whole valley, as far as the eye could see.
There were rows and rows of houses unlike the farms they were used to, all piled one on top of the other, with streets running between them. Even from up there, the runaways could imagine swarms of people, horses and cars thronging the place.
On one side the city was lapped by the waters of the river whose course they had been following for weeks. On the other, there was an intricate network of railway tracks, with the station and its platform roof. A water tank and row upon row of cor
