HIS KNIFE WAS OUT AND ready, and so was hers.
Legs moved on the other side of the bushes, stopped.
Silently, almost stepping between the leaves on the ground, Steven and the girl crawled out the other side of the bushes and took up positions against treetrunks, just enough of their heads protruding to see around.
A man came probing into the head-high bushes from the path side ... stood there a moment looking around, only a vague brown shape through the leaves.
He grunted, went out to the path again, walked on.
Steven and the girl followed him by his sounds, trailing about twenty feet behind, until Steven got a good look at him when he passed an open space between the bushes.
He was a big man in brownish-green clothes—new-looking clothes, not full of holes. He walked almost carelessly
