Sarah Duncan paused on the line.  “Weel, I wouldna stay in this place for a million a month,” she said aloud, and the sound of her voice brought no comfort, for it was so little like she had thought it that she glanced hastily around to see if it had really been she that spoke.  She tremblingly wiped the perspiration from her face with the skirt of her sunbonnet.

“Awfu’ hot,” she panted huskily.  “B’lieve there’s going to be a big storm.  I do hope Freckles will hurry.”

Her chin was quivering as a terrified child’s.  She lifted her bonnet to replace it and brushed against a bush beside her.  Whirr, almost into her face, went a nighthawk stretched along a limb for its daytime nap.  Mrs. Duncan cried out and sprang down the trail, alighting on a frog that was hopping across.  The horrible croak it gave as she crushed it sickened her.  She screamed wildly and jumped to one side.  That carried her into the swale, where the grasses reached almost to her waist, and her horror of snakes returning, she made a flying leap for an old log lying beside the line.  She alighted squarely, but it was so damp and rotten that she sank straight through it to her knees.  She caught at the wire as she went down, and missing, raked her wrist across a barb until she tore a bleeding gash.  Her fingers closed convulsively around the second strand.  She was too frightened to scream now.  Her tongue stiffened.  She clung frantically to the sagging wire, and finally managed to grasp it with the other hand.  Then she could reach the top wire, and so she drew herself up and found solid footing.  She picked up the club that she had dropped in order to extricate herself.  Leaning heavily on it, she managed to return to the trail, but she was trembling so that she scarcely could walk.  Going a few steps farther, she came to the stump of the first tree that had been taken out.

She sat bolt upright and very still, trying to collect her thoughts and reason away her terror.  A squirrel above her dropped a nut, and as it came rattling down, bouncing from branch to branch, every nerve in her tugged wildly.  When the disgusted squirrel barked loudly, she sprang to the trail.

The wind arose higher, the changes from light to darkness were more abrupt, while the thunder came closer and louder at every peal.  In swarms the blackbirds arose from the swale and came flocking to the interior, with a clamoring cry:  “T’CHECK, T’CHECK.”  Grackles marshaled to the tribal call:  “TRALL-A-Hee, TRALL-A-Hee.”  Red-winged blackbirds swept low, calling to belated mates:  “FOL-low-me, FOL-low-me.”  Big, jetty crows gathered close to her, crying, as if warning her to flee before it was everlastingly too late.  A heron, fishing the near-by pool for Freckles’ “find-out” frog, fell into trouble with a muskrat and uttered a rasping note that sent Mrs. Duncan a rod down the line without realizing that she had moved.  She was too shaken to run far.  She stopped and looked around her fearfully.