adn't prepared me for cross-country
marathons, and there was nothing to be done about it now.

The fairly level, open ground was giving place to a heavily wooded
countryside. After another mile of winding roadway, Wetzel suddenly
turned aside and plunged into the forest. It was as dark as the inside
of an undertaker's hat, and after I had banged into a few dozen trees
and tripped over a few dead branches, making enough racket to alert
half the state, Wetzel slowed his pace to a crawl.

Finally I grabbed one of the fringed sleeves of his buckskin shirt to
stop him and sank down on a fallen log. "How much farther?"

He leaned his folded arms on the muzzle of his long gun and I could
feel his deep-set eyes studying me without approval. "'Nother hour;
p'rhaps more. Dependin' on you."

"Sure," I said with understandable bitterness. "I'm not the man my
granddaddy was. Nobody is. When I take a walk it's down to the corner
for a pack of cigarettes. Anything farther than that I use a horseless
carriage. We don't need steel muscles and superior woodcraft these
days, brother. Just enough eyesight to read the directions on the can,
ears sharp enough to hear the boss bawling you out, enough nose to
smell the whiskey on your neighboring straphanger's breath, reflexes
quick enough to avoid being run down by some politician's Cadillac. If
I'd have known I was going to be called on to go batting around a
jungle, I'd have been down to the Y five days a we--"

He moved like a striking snake. A hand was clapped over my mouth and a
knee forced me to the ground. Before I could make an effort to fight
back, he placed his mouth close to my ear. "Danger! 'Tis death for so
much as a broken twig!"

He removed his hand and I could breathe again. We lay there side by
side close to a huge tree, deep in the shadows. And then faintly as
from far off I heard the crackle of disturbed undergrowth and, slowly
louder and louder, an evenly spaced thumping sound that seemed to
shake the earth.

Through the trees it came, directly toward the spot where Wetzel and I
hugged the ground. It loomed against the night, a tower of steel on
jointed legs, a horrible travesty of the human figure, a head like
King Arthur's helmet. Starlight picked out two round faceted eyes of
glass.

* * * * *

My suddenly dry mouth puckered with the taste of terror. I did not
breathe; even my heart seemed to beat no more. I wanted to close my