were any indication. Large chuckholes forced her to keep her speed to a crawl. Small stones banged against the underside of the car. Increasingly ill at ease, she glanced again to the side of the road, allowing the car to run straight through a particularly bad chuckhole.
Hands shaking, she brought the car to a stop. It was an older model car, one her mother had purchased new many years before. Without knowing much about automobiles, Jennifer nevertheless suspected that this one would not long endure the treatment it was getting on this road.
For a moment she considered returning to Hard Castle for the night and making her way to Kelsey House in the morning. The road, which had thus far offered no sign of habitation, was lined on either side by dense woods. The tall trees and the rapidly fading sunlight left her in a dark gloom. The thought of driving this road after sundown was anything but pleasant.
She looked along the road again. Scarcely more than one lane, it did not even afford room for her to turn the car around. In order to return the way she had come, she would first have to continue on at least until she found a driveway or a lane, or even a wide spot.
Jennifer started off again slowly. Her uneasiness grew as the woods crept by on either side of her car, offering no relief. By now the sun had disappeared behind the tops of the trees and she was obliged to flick on the headlights in order to see where she was going. In their dim glare she nearly missed a narrow lane that cut into the woods on her right.
With a sigh of relief, she turned the car into it and shifted into reverse. She was backed halfway around before the headlights picked up the sign, all but covered over with brush, that identified Bellen Road.
She hesitated, half on and half off the road. The drive back into Hard Castle would be an arduous one in the dark. What’s more, there was no assurance of finding a place to stay once she reached the town. Hard Castle seemed to consist of little more than a main street. A general store and the service station at which she had stopped earlier were the only visible business establishments in the town. Certainly she had seen nothing even resembling a motel.
She was tired and she was hungry, and there was no assurance that Hard Castle could provide relief for either need. On the other hand, the drive on to Kelsey House surely could not be any more difficult than retracing her route, and there at least she was assured of dinner and some degree of hospitality.
Gritting her teeth, she shifted the gears again and turned onto Bellen Road. At least, she comforted herself, this road seemed to be an improvement over the one she had been traveling on previously. This was as narrow, true, and nothing more than dirt, but at least the dirt was solidly packed. In comparison to the last hour of driving, it seemed quite smooth.
She was able to drive faster now, watching to the sides of the road for some sign of a house, although as yet she had seen none.
The daylight was completely gone by this time. The twin beams of the headlights offered the only break in the blackness that surrounded the car. Jennifer’s back had begun to ache from the unaccustomed driving, and her eyes were feeling the strain of staring steadily through the windshield. She gripped the wheel tensely as she steered the car around a curve that appeared before her. As she did so, the lights reflected back to her from the road ahead.
The seconds that it took for her to comprehend the meaning of that phenomenon cost her the distance in which she might have been able to stop the car. She had scarcely gotten her foot to the brake pedal before she hit the stream. A sheet of water dashed across the windshield, blinding her completely. Seized by panic, she felt the car slide out of control before it shuddered to a stop in the center of the stream.
For a long time she could only sit motionless, clenching the steering wheel tightly in her hands, and trembling. At last she said aloud, “Of all the fool things. You’d think they’d have heard of bridges, even here.”
The sound of a voice, even her own, restored her to some semblance of calm. She pressed on the accelerator, and realized for the first time that the motor had stopped. Her attempt to start it again produced nothing more than a sputter and a whine. With each successive attempt, the whine grew fainter, descending in pitch. Finally, her efforts caused nothing but a clicking noise, and she realized that the battery was dead.
CHAPTER THREE
For a full moment she fought off the urge to throw her face into her hands and cry.
“Hysteria isn’t going to get me anywhere,” she insisted to herself, at the same time admitting that she was not sure just what was going to get her anywhere—certainly not her car. Cautiously she opened her door and peered out. The water was not very deep. At least she would not be trapped in her car, where she would have to wait for days to be rescued.
Just what was she to do, though? The business of making decisions was a new one for her, and one that she was not finding to her liking. In the past, her mother would have told her just what she should do, and probably it would have been exactly right for coping with the situation. It would certainly be easier if her mother were in the car just now to take charge.
“Well, she isn’t here,” she told herself angrily. Her annoyance with herself added to her annoyance with the journey and the irritation of finding herself stranded in the middle of a stream. With a determination fired by anger, she slipped off the low shoes she had worn for driving, dropping them into the oversize handbag beside her on the seat.
The water was icy cold on her bare foot, causing her to shudder involuntarily. With stubborn resolution, she grabbed her purse and slid off the seat, standing almost knee deep in the cold water. But despite its depth at this point, the water was slow-moving, and she was in no danger at all of being swept away in the current. She lifted her skirt and waded to the opposite side of the creek, nearly falling when she stepped on a slippery rock. She paused on the bank to put her shoes on and contemplate her predicament.
There was nothing for it but to leave the car and her luggage and start walking. Heaven alone knew how far she would have to walk before finding Kelsey House, or any other house for that matter. In the morning there would be time enough to worry about the car and her luggage. Surely there would be someone at Kelsey House to retrieve them for her.
She started stubbornly down the road. Without the comforting beams of the car’s headlights, the road seemed darker. She found herself frighteningly aware of its narrowness and of the tall trees towering over her on either side, like threatening sentinels. The air was filled with the sweet scent of pine and sage and juniper. What had seemed at first to be silence was not silence after all, but a sighing of leaves and branches in the breeze, and the whisper of birds overhead. There was another sound too, a faint rustling in the underbrush that might have been the breeze again, or that might have been someone moving stealthily through the woods beside her.
She walked carefully down the middle of the road, casting frequent glances about. She remembered the stories she had read as a child, stories of roving bandits who hid in the forests and leapt out to accost unwary travelers.
“There aren’t any roving bandits these days,” she reminded herself aloud, without in the slightest allaying her fears. One could hardly live in the world today without being aware that there were all kinds of people just waiting to do horrible things. And for all she knew, in a place so forlorn and isolated as this, where they did not even know enough to put bridges across streams, there might just still be roving bandits.
The road sloped uphill, leveling off just before it disappeared around another curve. She reached the flat ground again and began to walk more swiftly. The determination that had carried her away from the car had been more than anything else a product of her anger. As her distance from the relative comfort of the car increased, she found both her anger
