At dusk he picked a spot to bed down among a grove of maples. They were settled and half asleep when a high, thin whine swelled in the treetops, then hovered downward until it seethed all around them. When he looked at his arm it was covered in undulating gray fur. He swiped a hand from elbow to wrist, leaving behind a mash of blood and crushed mosquitoes. At once, a rapacious new layer appeared in the slime. Mosquitoes began crawling in his nostrils and ears. The dogs leapt up and snapped at the air and Edgar waved his arms and slapped his neck and face, but in the end they ran and ran, the dogs disappearing ahead into the gloom.

After a while he halted, gasping and disoriented. The forest floor was covered with a layer of pine needles thick enough to choke the underbrush. He listened for the mosquitoes, shuddering. A cloud of them had waited in the forest canopy, and he and the dogs had lain willingly beneath. He’d never heard of such a thing. The dogs trotted out of the gloaming and they made their beds on the pine needles. He lay looking into the treetops. He was hungry, tired, dejected, and now humiliated. The stomachs of the dogs gurgled as they lay around him.

They were going to have to find a road after all, he thought, or they would starve.

By the third day, he was doing the math continually: the dogs had eaten nothing but turtle eggs for two days. He’d eaten maybe thirty blueberries. One moment he told himself it wasn’t a disaster to miss six meals. The next moment his stomach pulsed and contracted. Squirrels and birds were everywhere, but he had no idea how to catch one. The lakes were probably brimming with fish, but he didn’t have a single inch of monofilament line, much less a hook.

They heard the moan of tires along the blacktop half an hour before they reached the road. From behind a balsam they watched a ragged procession of cars pass, then snuck to the embankment and bolted into the woods on the far side and began following the highway as they’d followed the shoreline the day before, staying well hidden in the forest. Twice, streams too deep or marshy forced them back to the road to wait and dash across a bridge before they could move on.

In the afternoon they came to a field of sedge and chokecherry about a quarter of a mile wide and several hundred yards deep. Halfway to the back tree line, Edgar stopped and looked at the road. On the one hand, they would be exposed if they crossed there, but on the other he was starting to tire and it was a significant shortcut. The grass was tall enough to hide the dogs. He could duck if a car appeared. They’d crossed halfway when something chittered through the grass and Tinder leapt after it and the other dogs after Tinder. Edgar caught up with them dancing around a burrow entrance. Out on the road, a car was approaching. He dropped to all fours and waited. For some time the faraway burr of a small airplane had been swelling and fading; when it began to swell again he craned his neck and looked up. He saw nothing against the blue sky. The burr grew louder and then louder still. The moment the car passed he clapped the dogs out of their stays and bolted. By the time he dove into the birch on the far side of the clearing, he could almost hear the individual cylinders firing in the airplane engine. The dogs had stuck close by him for once and he huddled them up beneath a dogwood. When the airplane passed over, it was so low he could read the Forest Service insignia.

Idiot, he thought. You were going to stay in the woods.

They kept hidden there for the better part of an hour, tracking the sound of the airplane as it progressed north and south along its search pattern. After he got the dogs moving again he kept them strictly under tree cover, circling even the smallest glades. Mid-afternoon, they came to a gravel road tightly enclosed by pine forest. There were power lines strung along on creosoted poles. A few hundred yards east the road intersected the blacktop. They tracked it in the opposite direction, staying back in the woods. The dogs had begun moving with their tails down, edgy and wild-looking. Seventy hours, said the counting part of his brain. One turtle egg for every four hours. One blueberry an hour for him. Half a blueberry.

They watched a station wagon rumble by with its backwash of brown dust. They walked to the tree line. Ahead, where the road curved, he saw the first cabin and the lake glittering behind it. Then all the other cabins nestled among the trees. Posts with reflectors marking the driveways. Over the lash of waves against the lakeshore he heard a boat motor sputtering and the cry of sandpipers and inland gulls.

The station wagon had rounded the curve and driven on. He led the dogs along until they were across from the nearest cabin. No car in the grassy drive. The dogs knew something was happening and they circled and poked one another with their muzzles and hopped ticklishly.

Down, he signed. They whined but complied, one after another.

Stay, he signed. Stay.

He’d slipped into bad habits already, he thought. Repeating commands was minor. Failing to trust them, far worse. He forced himself not to repeat the stay a third time and walked out to the road and looked back. The dogs lay panting in the forest shade, watching him. He turned and walked up the cabin driveway, trying to look as if he belonged there.

This was no fisherman’s shack. A window sash had been raised. Curtains ruffled in the breeze behind the screen. A Formica table sat beneath the window covered with folded newspaper and a scattering of mail. Ceramic cows labeled S and P curtseyed to one another. Beyond, he saw a kitchen with plain cupboards and an icebox and a stove. The counter was strewn with cellophaned packages. Cookies. Potato chips. Loaves of bread.

His hands were shaking now. He tried the front door but it was locked. He returned to the window. At the back of the cabin was a screen door, latched with a hook and eye. He rattled the door. The hook wouldn’t shake loose.

He turned to look around. No one sunbathed on the beach. No one swam off the dock. He trotted into the nearby woods and came back with a short, blunt stick and he punched a neat line of screening away from the center bar of the door and threaded his arm through and popped the hook and swung the door open. He stepped over the jumble of toys on the living room floor and then he was in the kitchen, throwing open the cupboards. Cans of SpaghettiOs and pork and beans stood in neat rows beside Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, Jiffy Pop, hot dog buns, bread. In the icebox he found hot dogs, ketchup, mustard, relish. Two six-packs of beer.

He grabbed all the hot dogs, then, thinking better of it, put one package back. He set out the cans of SpaghettiOs and pork and beans. He rifled the drawers and slipped a can opener into his back pocket. Then he lost patience. He’d gathered up the loot and was heading for the back door when something on the Formica table caught his eye. The pepper cow stood atop a white mimeographed page titled in big blue letters.

He could only see the first half: RUNA.

Awkwardly, he set down the food and slipped the sheet from under the newspaper. The pleasant odor of mimeograph fluid rose off the paper. There was a poorly reproduced photograph from the school yearbook and beneath it a short notice:

RUNAWAY

Edgar Sawtelle, disappeared June 18. Age fourteen, height five feet six inches, black hair. Boy cannot speak, though he may use written notes or sign language. He may be accompanied by one or more dogs. Last seen wearing blue jeans, sneakers, and a brown-and-red-checkered short-sleeved shirt near Mellen…

Before he could finish reading, he heard a bark from the direction of the woods. He stuffed the notice in his pocket and scooped up the canned goods and wieners. Outside, he had to dump everything on the ground again to reach through the ripped screen and set the hook into the eye. Then he smoothed the screen into place as best he could, gathered up the food, and ran across the gravel road.