Children of the Gates Read Free Page A

lake she would go by herself. And he somehow could not let that happen and be able to look at himself in the mirror when shaving tomorrow.
    It was only a half-mile, perhaps a little more. They could run it in minutes, even if it were rough. The sooner they got through the better. He wondered what this Linda would say if she knew his thoughts. She’d probably decide he’d been smoking pot. Only when you heard about the Cut-Off all your life—well, you had a different point of view.
    He had borrowed a lot of Ham’s books, bought some of his own, knew all the things that did happen now and then that nobody seemed able to explain. Maybe Fort and those other writers who hunted out such stories had the right of it. The scientists, the brains who might have solved, or at least tried to solve, such puzzles, refused even to look at evidence before their eyes because it did not fit in with rational “facts.” There could be facts that were neither rational nor logical at all.
    There was the turnoff ahead. And there certainly had been changes since the last time he was here. Looked as if someone had run a bulldozer in to break trail. Nick gave a sigh of relief at the raw opening. There was a healthy difference between wriggling down an almost closed and ill-reputed trail and this open scraped side road, which now looked as good as the one leading to his own cabin. He flagged the jeep as he came to a stop.
    “This is it,” he called. Something in him still shrank a little from entering that way, but he refused to admit it.
    Only he continued to feel that odd uneasiness, which had come to him earlier as he had seen Rufus watch something invisible that Nick had been convinced against his will was there.
    “Take it slow,” he cautioned, also against his will. He wanted to take that road at the best speed they could make. “I don’t know how good the surface is.”
    “Yes.” The dark glasses masked her face. She surely did not need them here in the shade of the trees, but she had not let them slide off as she had at the store. The Peke was on the seat, his forepaws resting on the dashboard, looking ahead with some of Rufus’ intensity. He did not bark, but there was an eagerness in every line of his small, silky body, as if he wanted to urge them on.
    Nick gunned his motor, swung into the Cut-Off, his speed well down. The jeep snorted along behind him at hardly better than a walking pace. The road crew had run the scraper along, but the rain had cut gullies across, here and there, and those had not been refilled.
    The lane was all rawly new, bushes and even saplings gouged and cut out and flung back to wither and die on either side. It looked ugly—wrong, Nick decided. He supposed it had to be done to open up the road, but it was queer the road crew had not cleaned up more. Maybe the guys who had worked here knew about the sinister history of the Cut-Off and had not wanted to stay around any longer than they had to.
    That broken stuff walled them in as if it were intended to keep them in the middle of the road, allow them no chance to reach the woods. Nick felt more and more trapped. Uneasiness was rising in him so that he had to exert even more control. This was plain stupid! He must keep a grip on his imagination. Just watch the road for those ruts and lumps so he would not hit something—do that and keep going. They would be there in no time at all.
    It was still, not a leaf moved. But the trees arched over well enough to keep out the sun. Probably it was very quiet, too, if the noise of the bike and the jeep had not advertised their coming. Advertised it to what? Nick hoped only to those in the Wilson place.
    Right ahead was the turn, a blind one. And this was a narrow road. No place to meet anyone coming the other way. But surely they were making enough noise—
    Noise! The Peke had begun to yap, almost as when he had challenged Rufus. Nick heard the girl call out: “Down, Lung! Down!”
    He half-turned his head, the