The light at the end of the two-mile tunnel had become the golden shine of a noonday sun when Halstead reached at Wally from behind with his left hand and with the Bowie knife he had kept sheathed in his right boot. The would-be victim had smelled the smell of burnt flesh, however, and dashed for the light streaming through the entrance as Halstead’s hands found nothing but cold, dank air.

Halstead’s own run towards the light was swift, but his quarry had twenty steps and twenty years on him, and the hunter could only curse in frustration as he emerged into the blinding light of an autumn day. To avoid the glare, Halstead looked down at the red, gold, and yellow leaves plastered across the mud patch in front of the cave entrance, and it was then that he saw the line of footsteps in the muck. Halstead was running through the forest, down the side of a Catskill foothill, and over fallen logs and slippery leaves in pursuit of a gray wool sweater that could be seen in glimpses through the trees that composed the forest. The well-trained soldier managed to keep up with the pursued, and even narrow the gap created by his blinding at the cave entrance, but an ill-placed step in a mudhole hidden by a thin coat of dead leaves ended the chase.

Halstead got back up immediately, but felt the pain of a twisted ankle as he rose, and instead set his butt on a fallen log. He cursed, rammed his muddied knife into the log, and screamed at the sun spreading patches of light over the forest floor.

Wally stopped running and contented himself with walking when he reached a country road, unpaved and bearing pools of water in its ruts. He ducked behind a large tree trunk to catch his breath, gripped the stitch in his side, and make furtive glances in the direction from which he had come and from which he expected the appearance of Halstead.

Halstead still had not come after several minutes, and Wally set foot on the road to find the nearest town and notify the authorities of the madman in their midst. He walked with his hands stuck firmly underneath his sweater and in the pockets of his Levis, and kept his eyes on the surface of the road to sidestep the puddles and the more slippery patches of mud.