as much as possible about him first. It could always
pick him up some time before he returned to his own world. Just to make
sure, it sent a stinging unit to guard the entrance._

* * * * *

All his life, except for a short period in France, Ed had been a hunter,
never hunted. Still, you don't grow old in the woods by jumping without
looking. Coming into a new situation, he was wary as an old wolf. There
was a little shoulder right above the fork in the trail. He stood there
for several minutes, looking things over, and then went down and crossed
the stream at the next riffle, above the ford. By doing so, although he
did not know it, he missed the trap the Harn maintained at the ford for
chance passers-by.

On the other side of the creek, the trail ran angling off downstream,
skirted a small lake hidden in the trees, climbed over another low
shoulder and dropped into a second valley. As Ed followed along it, he
began to notice a few more signs of life--birds, small scurriers on the
ground and in tree tops--and this set him thinking. The country had a
picked-over feel to it, a hunted and trapped-out feel, worse where he
had first come through, but still noticeable here.

* * * * *

_The Harn did not like to cross water, it could, but it did not like
to._

* * * * *

Ed looked at the sun. It was getting down in the sky. If there was any
activity at all around here, the ford at dusk would be as likely a place
as any to find it. He worked back along the ridge to a point above where
he judged the ford to be. The breeze was drawing up the valley, but
favoring the other side a little. He dropped down and crossed the stream
a quarter mile above the ford, climbed well above the trail and worked
along the hillside until he was in a position where he could watch both
the ford and the fork in the trail. He squatted down against a tree in a
comfortable position, laid his gun across his knees, and rummaged in his
pack for the cold flapjacks, wrapped around slices of duck breast, which
he had packed for lunch.

After he had finished eating he drank from his canteen--the water in
this world might be good, it might not, there was no point in taking
chances till he could try it on the cat--and took an economical chew of
snuff. He settled back to wait.

_The Harn had lost Ed after he crossed the creek--it used a fallen tree
quite a way