waiting for him when he found it. So it appeared.

He headed through the night toward the ditched small car.

It seemed a very long way, though he did stop and drink his fill from
a little mountain stream over which a highway bridge had almost been
completed. In the night, though, and with hard going, it was not easy
to estimate how far he'd gone. In fact, he was anxiously debating if
he mightn't have passed the abandoned bulldozer when he came upon the
place where blasting had been going on. Still, it was a very long way
to be negotiated over still-remaining tree stumps and the unfilled
holes from which others had been pulled.

He reached the bulldozer and turned south, and at long last reached
the highway. His car should be no more than a quarter-mile away. He
moved toward it, close to the road's edge. He heard music. It was
faint, but vivid because it was the last sound that anybody would
expect to hear in the hours before dawn in a wilderness deserted by
mankind. He scraped his foot on the roadway. The music stopped
instantly. He said, "Jill?"

He heard her gasp.

"I found where Vale had been," he said steadily. "There was no blood
there. There's no sign that he's been killed. Then I was caught
myself. I was put with three other men who were believed killed but
who are still alive. We escaped. It is within reason to hope that Vale
is unharmed and that he may escape or somehow be rescued."

What he said was partly to make her sure that it was he who appeared