Children of the Gates Read Online Free PDF

matching that from which they had just emerged. In fact, as far as Nick could see, though the lake curved farther south and that end of it was now hidden, the water was ringed by forest. Suppose they did work through that, and they had no idea how many miles of it there were, what lay beyond? He had a hazy idea, from a novel he had read concerning the early American wilderness, that such growth could extend across a state with very few breaks.
    “I don’t know,” he said frankly again. “But I’d rather be here in the open than under the trees. We can move down to the end of the lake—there’s an outlet—the Deep Run—there, if this is like our lake. Maybe we could work out of the woods using that for a guide.” He was rather proud of himself for remembering that.
    “ If this lake is like the one you know,” she commented. “Does it look like it, really, Nick?”
    He stood up, shading his eyes against the glare of the sun, which was hot now, but not as hot, he thought, as it might have been in their world. Slowly he studied the part of the lake visible from here. It was hard to equate this untouched, wild land with that where cabins and small docks were visible. But he was almost certain the contours of the shoreline were not too dissimilar from those he had known since he was small. And he said so.
    “Do you suppose,” Linda asked, “that we have gone back in time—that we’re in the country that existed long before our people came into it? That—that we may meet Indians?” She shot another wary glance at the woods.
    “That would not explain the unicorn. Nor gray deer—” Nick indicated the peacefully grazing herd. “We could be in an alternate world.” He was unrolling the package of food from the store, but now his hands were still as he thought of what he was saying. Alternate worlds, time travel—such things did not exist! They could not—not for Nick Shaw, a very ordinary person who only wanted a quiet weekend for himself. He was Nick Shaw, he was alive, yet this was happening! Unless, of course, he had really knocked himself out back there with the bike and maybe now was in a hospital with a vivid dream—
    “Alternate world? But unicorns—they never existed at all. They are only fairy tales.” Linda shook her head. “Nick!” For the second time her voice soared up and she caught at him. “Nick, look there! Isn’t that smoke?”
    She pointed south beyond the deer and he followed her finger with his gaze. She was right! From somewhere in the brush beyond the meadowland a beacon of smoke was rising. And smoke could mean only one thing—people! Ted and Ben—trapped here all those years! Nick’s thought flew first to them. But company—company to help them, to let them know they were not alone in a nightmare!
    Hastily he repacked the food, put the bag back on the bike. He wished they dared ride, but it would be folly to try. And they had better be careful about getting around those deer. The animals looked harmless enough but that was not saying they would remain so if alarmed.
    They wanted to run, but the grass tangled and pulled at their feet and the bike wheels, so that they floundered along at little better than a walking pace. Also, at Nick’s insistence, they made a detour around the edge of the open space where the deer were, putting a screen of brush between them and the animals. And they froze once as the stag that was the leader flung up its head and stared straight at the bush behind which they happened to be.
    Nick felt very naked and exposed then. He had heard that if you were absolutely still animals would lose interest in you and he scowled a warning at Linda. She nodded, holding her hand about Lung’s muzzle. But the Peke appeared to understand and did not fight for his freedom and a chance to bark.
    The stag watched them, or at least Nick thought they were its quarry. But after a time when the two dared hardly draw a full breath, the stag grunted and trotted toward