_The fugitive lay face down in the fetid undergrowth, drawing in
spasmodic lungfuls of air through cracked and swollen lips. Long before,
his blue workshirt had been ripped to ribbons and his exposed chest
showed a spiderwork of scratches, where branches and brambles had sought
to restrain him in his frenzied flight. Across his back from shoulder to
shoulder ran a deeper cut around which the caked blood attested to the
needle-sharp viciousness of a thorn bush a mile to the north. With each
tortured breath he winced, as drops of sweat ran down, following the
spiderwork network and burning like acid. Incessantly he rubbed his
bruised torso with mud-caked palms to dislodge the gnats and mosquitoes
that clung to him, gorging shamelessly._
_To the east he could see the lights of Fort Mudge where the railroad
cut through on its way to Jacksonville. He had planned to ride the
freight into Jacksonville but by now they were stopping every train and
searching along every foot of the railroad right of way. In the distance
he heard the eerie keen of a train whistle, and visualized the scene as
it was flagged down and searched from engine to caboose._
_Directly before him loomed the forbidding northern boundary of the
Okefenokee Swamp. Unconsciously he strained his ears, then shuddered at
the night noises that issued from the noisome wilderness. A frenzied
threshing, then a splash, then ... silence. What drama of life and death
was being played out in that strange other-world of perpetual shadows?_
_In sudden panic he jerked erect and cupped his palm round his ear. Far
off; muted by distance, but still unmistakable; he heard the baying of
bloodhounds. Then this was the end. A sob broke from his throat. What
was he, an animal; to be hunted down as a sport? Tears of self-pity
welled to his eyes as he thought back to a party and a girl and laughter
and cleanliness and the scent of magnolias, like a heady wine. But that
was so long ago--so long ago--and now.... He looked down at his
sweating, lacerated body; his blistered calloused palms; the black
broken nails; the cheap workshoes with hemp laces; the shapeless gray
cotton trousers, now wet to the knees._
_He pulled back his shoulders and resolutely faced west toward the
river, but stopped short in horror as he heard the sudden cacophony of
barks, yelps and howls of a pack of bloodhounds that senses the
beginning of the end. He turned in panic. They couldn't be over half a
mile away. In a panic of indecision he turned first east then west, then
facing due south he hesitated a moment to take one last look at the
clear open skies, and with a muffled prayer plunged into the brooding
depths of the Okefenokee._
* * * * *