Vanishing Act by Thomas Perry

direction they were traveling now, it was the trail home, to the soft, rolling country where the Seneca felt most safe. The world then was all tall forests that had never been cut, oak and maple and elm and hickory and hemlock and pine, alternating in stands and mixed together. Sometimes runners would move along this trail eastward to tell something urgent—alarms or councils. They ran day and night, naked except for a breech-cloth and belt, their war clubs stuck in the belt at the back and their bows strung across their chests. They always ran in pairs, one behind the other, silent, never speaking. They could cover a hundred miles a day, so the trip from Neahga, the mouth of the Niagara, to Albany, in the country of the Mohawk, took three days. In all that distance there was no point where the trail emerged from the forest. It was marked at intervals by hatchet gouges on the biggest trees, but the runners didn’t need to look. Sometimes they would glance up and to the left to navigate by the constellation of the loon, but most of the time they could feel the trail with the balls of their feet.
    When the trees had thinned out again, Jane replaced them with ghost trees beyond the range of the headlights, so that what was beyond eyesight could be the great forest again, deep and thick and shadowy. The secret was that the forest was still here, the descendants standing tall in parks and groves and windbreaks. The Seneca were still here too, driving this road to jobs in Lockport or Niagara Falls, dreaming Seneca dreams.
    There was a disturbance coming from outside her, a light that rushed up from behind and pushed the forest back on both sides, where she couldn’t feel it around her anymore. She sat up. "How long has that car been behind us?" she asked.
    "I don’t know," said Felker. "He just switched his brights on."
    "Think for a second," she said. "Was it there when we made the turn?" She knew the answer. It wouldn’t have been so dark if the other car had been behind them. It must be all right. They hadn’t been followed.
    "I don’t think so," he said.
    The car came closer and closer, catching up quickly, but the driver didn’t dim his lights. Felker reached up and moved the rearview mirror to cut the glare of the rectangle of light that it threw across his eyes.
    "There’s a long, straight stretch in a minute," said Jane. "When we get there, let him pass."
    "I’d be delighted." He reached the section where the road straightened. On both sides were low, crooked fieldstone walls and houses built far back from the road, as houses had been when these were still farms. Felker slowed to forty, then thirty, but the car slowed too and stayed behind. Finally, he coasted off onto the shoulder and the car came up behind. When he had nearly stopped, the other car pulled to the left, its glaring headlights merging now with his to illuminate the slight decline ahead and then halfway up the compensating slope. The car slowly slid past and gained speed.
    Jane stared at the back window while it was still in the beam of the headlights. There were four heads in it. That usually meant it was kids, probably farm kids who had spent the day in the city. Her eyes moved downward. It had New York plates, and that was a relief. But there was a license-plate holder around it with the name of a dealer.
    "Does Star-Greendale mean anything to you?" she asked.
    "Where did you see that?"
    "People from around here buy their cars around here. I never heard of it."
    "St. Louis," he said, frowning. "Greendale is a town outside St. Louis. But it’s not Star, it’s Starleson Chevrolet."
    "Stop," she said. "Leave the lights on, but give me the keys. Somebody saw you get on the bus in St. Louis."
    She slipped out and closed the door, then ran to the trunk. She pulled everything out and tossed it into the back seat, then climbed over it. He watched her in the back seat as she opened the backpack. "What are you doing?"
    "The car has New York plates. They