Occasionally they would break into a small meadow, a green circle of sunlight with tall grass and wildflowers bent gracefully where the wind had passed. Then they would be back into the shadowed woods, trudging loudly through last winter’s dead leaves, stepping over fallen, rotting logs teeming with insects. Around them was the stench of decay, and the fresh scent of things growing out of decay. As they walked they glanced frequently behind them at the sun, winking at them through their roof of thick foliage. It was the sun that was leading them east, and by whose setting arc they were fixing their path to take them around the State Patrol roadblock. Roebuck felt an odd exhilaration in the woods, a feeling of solitude and safety. Here the two of them walked in a world that demanded nothing but survival, that most important object of life that society had permitted man to place low on his list of concerns. And as they crossed a leaf-filled dry creek and he helped Ellie up the eroded bank, he felt the primeval protective instinct of man for his mate.
