She shrank back into the seat, undertaking no reply to his maudlin boastings. She was passing away from the only place in all the world that meant shelter for her now, and already it felt like home, this place that she was leaving. The car shifted and slowed down, apparently on a less used thoroughfare. "Where are you going?" she cried. "You've left the road!" Big Aleck laughed uproariously after his fashion. "I should say we have," said he. "But any road's good enough just so it gets us up to our jungle. You don't know what iss a jungle? Well, it's where the sabcat brothers meets all by theirselves on the Reserve." "Reserve?" asked Mary Warren. "What do you mean?" "Where the timber is that them army scum is cutting for the Government. Pine, some spruce. This road was made to get timber out. I ought to know about it--I was foreman of the road gang! I know every tree that's marked for the Government. My old bunch of bundle stiffs and before-the-war wobblies is in there now. What chance has them Government cockroaches got against my bullies? Wait till the wheat clocks[1] get started and the clothes[2] begins. We ain't forgot what we knew when they tried to draft us. We're free men now, same as in Russia and Germany." He laughed again and again at the vast humor of this situation as it lay before him, exulting in the mystification his thieves' jargon would create. His liquor made him reckless. "It's a rough road, up Tepee Creek," said he, "but nobody comes. This is a Government car--the Cossacks would think I'm going up to work. They got to mark some trees. I'll mark 'em--so they can tell, when they come to saw 'em, heh?" He said little more, but one hand cast over her shoulder was his answer to her panting silence, every time she edged over in the impulse to fling herself out of the car. He was a man of enormous strength. Continually the jolting of the car grew worse and worse. She began to hear the rush of water. Twice she felt the logs of a rude bridge under the wheels as they crossed some stream. They were winding their way up the valley of a stream, into a higher country? Yes. As they climbed now, she could catch the scent of the forest as the wind changed from time to time. The profanity of her captor grew as the difficulty of the trail increased. They were climbing at a gradient as steep as the laboring car could negotiate. At last, after interminable time, they seemed to strike a sandier soil, more level country--indeed, the trail was following the contour of a high sandy ridge among the pines. On ahead she heard a shout. "Halt! Stop there! Who are you?" "Don't shoot, John," replied the driver of the car, laughing. "It's Aleck." "Well, I'll be damned!" was the reply. "Time you was back, Aleck. Who's that with you?" "That's a friend of mine I brought along! She's come up to see how us wobblies lives!"