Dawn of Fear by Susan Cooper

crossing the field from Tom’s house to the curving thicket.
    He said, “Are you sure you really got it all over there without them seeing you? I mean with the wheelbarrow and all, weren’t you awfully easy for them to spot from over there?”
    Tommy Hicks grinned. “You’d be surprised,” he said. “I used to get across this field every day without being seen when I was a kid your age, and there’s a lot more cover now than there was then. Now listen. The first bit is the most difficult, after you’ve got out through the fence into the field. Nobody can see you while you’re actually getting out, because the top corner of our garden blocks the view, but after that you have to dart very quickly for a yard or two to get to the first bit of cover. That is, you have to dart, run for it, if you’re my size, but four people running across one after the other would be
a bit of a risk, and I reckon you three are small enough to do it better by wriggling through the grass. Indian style. Are you good at that?”
    â€œCourse,” they said, not without pride.
    He looked from one to another of them and nodded seriously, though Derek had the feeling he would have preferred to be laughing at them. Or perhaps not; he was obviously enjoying all of this quite as much as they were.
    â€œWell,” Tom said. “I’ll go first. This is a practice run. Derek, you come after me. Then Geoff, then Pete. We go from one bit of cover to the next, and each of you must watch the one in front of him very carefully to see where he goes to and how he does it. And copy it exactly. Specially you, Derek, because you’ll be watching me and sending back what I do, and I’m the only one who knows the way. You watch me get to the first cover, and then the second, and when I’m there, you leave here for the first. Then when I see you’re at the first, I leave the second for the third, and when I’m there, you leave for the second. And so on. The same for all of you. All right? That means that each of us is always one stage away from the one in front. It sounds a bit slow, but there isn’t enough room behind each bit of cover for more than one person, so the first one has to leave it before the next one gets there.”
    â€œUm,” Geoffrey said doubtfully.
    â€œOh, come on,” Pete said. “That’s not hard.”
    â€œSounds awful complicated.”
    â€œOnly the first time,” Tom said. “Try it anyway. All right? Here we go then.”
    He squeezed out through the gap in the planks and crouched at the other side of the fence; the others stood back so that Derek had a clear view of him. The way was a surprise from the beginning; Tom slipped suddenly sideways, to the right, as if he were making not for the thicket but almost in the opposite direction. Derek saw him run, crouching low, and pause beside a bush that was not much bigger than he was himself—“That’s the first piece of cover,” he thought—and then drop to his hands and knees and crawl rapidly through the long grass to a group of three small trees. Once he was there, they could no longer see him, but it was obviously the second stage.
    â€œGo on, Derry,” Peter said.
    Derek slipped through the gap in the fence, smelling the faint, friendly creosote smell of the thin planks. He stood nervous and excited in the field, and heard the blood thump in his neck, and glanced over at the mysterious wired-in shape of the anti-aircraft camp at the far side of the field: even if the Wiggs gang couldn’t see them, would one of the soldiers notice them and come running from there? Pushing the idea away, he fixed his eyes on the bush that was his first landmark, dropped to the ground, and wriggled through the damp grass with the side-to-side snake crawl that was, they had long ago discovered from experience rather than lessons, the only
wayto stalk without having your