we get back, dear. Say that it’s a souvenir of this walk in the woods.”
“You’re not looking, Daddy. Not looking at the giants.” Helen was pointing insistently.
To fall in with her humor, Clay lifted his head and looked.
There were three of them, and not more than thirty yards away, taller than the topmost branches of the gorgeous red-and-gold trees.
Clay could see them from the waist upward, above the thick trailside brush—lumpy, hairy, skin-clad, like the ugliest of colossal statutes come to life. Two had beards—one black, the other grizzled and blond—and the third wore long gun braids hanging like lengths of cable at either side of a gross, hairless face the width of a bureau.
So Helen had not been imagining giants, after all.
In the back of a brain that throbbed and whirled, Clay fenced off a tiny corner for what sensible thoughts he could summon. No time now, he told himself, to wonder how or why. The necessity was to get away—get Helen away, at least. Without rising from where he sat, he caught Helen’s shoulder and pressed her back and back, sliding her off the stone.
“Darling,” he said, wondering why his voice remained steady, “there are bushes near us. Crawl under them. Far under. If there are thorny branches, get under those. Don’t move or make a noise, until Daddy has made those—those things go away from here. When you can’t see or hear them any more, get up and run back along this trail we came. Get to the cabin. Once you start running, don’t stop—”
He heard the dry leaves rustle as she silently obeyed. She was doing her part. Now he must do his.
Springing up suddenly, as high into the air as he could, he flourished both arms over his head. At the top of his voice he yelled:
“Hi! Hi! Hi!”
From his gaping mouth the pipe dropped, bouncing on the mossy ground beside the rock. Clay turned and ran his fastest down trail.
At almost the same moment he heard a mighty crashing, as of elephants among the timber. He permitted himself one backward look. The three great towers of flesh had sprung through the brushy hedge and were lumbering after him. All three. None had paused to hunt for Helen.
He felt a thrill of elation. Thus the parent partridge saves its hidden young—by diverting danger and pursuit after itself. He flourished his arms and yelled again. Then he saved his breath for running.
No use.
Their legs were longer than his entire body. One of their strides made four of his. Behind, then above, he heard a furnacelike panting. A grip fastened upon him—fingers as long as his arms. He was lifted from the ground in mid-career. The air rang with a deep stormy growl—a concert of prodigious laughter.
After one convulsive struggle, like a chicken in the jaws of a fox, Clay made himself go slack. He might have a chance later, had best save his strength for that. If there was no chance, a doomed man should have dignity—The three gathered and exulted grossly over him, the two giants and the giantess. To them he was smaller than Helen would be to him like a doll or a baby. He saw at close hand their eyes—each had but the one, deep set in the middle of the low forehead—as large as tennis balls; their mouths like open satchels, all studded inside with rows of pointed sharky teeth; their hairiness, their patchwork skin garments, their bare feet like toe-fringed bolsters. Dangling in midair, Clay recognized his own handiwork.
