Red Anger by Geoffrey Household Page B

long, nonretractable claws can be the devil wherever one’s skin is too tight or too thin. It is
then their habit to kiss the wound better and get a snack at the same time.
    ‘He says it’s good, tasty Wiltshire, but that blood may be about when ferrets and others are trusted too easily.’
    ‘I trusted him because I know him. Like trusting you,’ I answered, burying my hand in the shapeless bunch of fine fur and getting very gently nipped in acknowledgment.
    ‘Well, isn’t that nice! But I’m not sure you should, Willie—not all the way. Now, follow the path you know until you come to the ford and then don’t go too far
south or you’ll get tied up among the creeks of the Kingsbridge Estuary. And of course keep clear of Totnes! Once you’re well inland, you’ll take some finding. And I’m going
to give you some money to carry you over and you have to accept it. What will you do?’
    ‘Get taken on wherever I see them starting the potato harvest.’
    She collected Sack who had burrowed under the carpet and become a wave instead of a particle. We decided that I should never risk sending her an address, but I promised an anonymous picture
postcard to let her know that all was well with me.
    The long day passed with the aid of a dog-eared volume called
Everyman’s Farriery
which was as depressing as a medical dictionary and made me wonder how anybody managed to get a
horse on the road at all. When it was full dark I shouldered my knapsack with enough food and drink in it to last me a day and thanked John and Amy. Mrs. Hilliard must have given me a good
character for they treated me as if I were their personal agent about to set off into enemy territory.
    I knew the path as far as the top of the ridge. The narrow ribbon of turf, pitted by hooves, was unmistakable even at night; but when I reached the bare knoll where Tessa had failed to find the
leash I was not sure of the way—what with the sheep tracks and the dead-end alleys into the surrounding bracken where a cow might have calved or hounds crashed in after a hare till John
called them off. The ridge was so familiar to Mrs. Hilliard that I doubt if she realised how it would appear to a stranger in starlight.
    Eventually I found the right opening and started downhill. There was not a sound, and I could not hear my own footsteps on the short turf until I was walking through a mush of last year’s
brown stems which had fallen across the path. The swishing disturbed some creature so close that I could just make out the waving tops of the fern as it pushed through the stems. I stood still,
instinctively alarmed, for the hillside was as lonely as any in England and the forest of waist-high bracken, an intangible surface stretching away like the top of a cloud, could hide anything.
Having dismissed tigers as highly improbable—I used to frighten myself deliciously with them as a boy—I was left with badger or rabbit, both too small for such a marked swaying of the
tops, or deer or sheep which would plunge noisily away. The only common animal I could think of, too bulky to slip between stems but able to wriggle away at ground level, was man. So I did the same
on the opposite side of the path, hoping that the other fellow had only heard my approach and had not caught sight of me.
    Again there was absolute silence for what seemed a very long time. It confirmed my guess that it was not an animal, but a man who was trying to avoid me or lying in wait for me. I ventured to
stick up my head. Nothing to be seen. A light breeze had sprung up from the south which was rustling the fronds. I was impatient to get past him and away, so I pushed very slowly through the stems
causing, I hoped, so delicate a movement above me that it would not be distinguishable in the dark from the effect of the wind. Once on the soundless turf of the path and in the black shadow of the
wall of bracken I started to crawl downhill, paying close attention to fallen fronds and deep