result was ill fitting and almost comical, but warm. Re-placing Con's missing shoe was the biggest problem. The best they could do was one of Rick's sandals, worn with three pairs of socks. Joe made Con take his poncho. 'I'll use the hide, it's bound to soften up in time.'
'We could soften the skin by chewing it,' said Rick. 'That's what Eskimos did.'
'Well, aren't you a font of wisdom,' said Joe.
'We could all help chew,' said Con.
'I don't trust you, Con,' said Joe with a grin. 'You might swallow.' Rick plucked the nightstalker and stuffed its down into the pouch on his poncho before he finished butchering it. Once that task was done, they headed out to find a shelter. The dim light made it difficult to survey the countryside. Most of what they saw was silhouetted or wrapped in shadow. Nevertheless, they stayed close to the river. That was where carrion was found and, with it, their food— the nightstalkers that fed upon it. They followed the river for miles, and though they encountered a few corpses, they saw no scavengers. Then, after they turned a bend, Con said excitedly, 'There's something wading in the river.' She pointed to a small bipedal dinosaur struggling to reach the shore.
'That's not a nightstalker,' said Joe.
'I'd say it's a hypsilophodontid,' said Rick.
'Good eating,' said Joe, turning on his gun.
'Wait till it gets to shore,' said Rick. 'We don't want to lose it to the river.' Whether it was injured or suffering from the cold, the dinosaur moved sluggishly and unsteadily to the bank. When it reached shallow water, three nightstalkers sud-denly appeared. Whether they had been hiding by the bank or had crept up without anyone seeing them was impossible to tell. Although the carnivores were two feet shorter than the plant eater in the river and considerably lighter in build, they approached it boldly. Two circled around their prey to cut off its escape into deeper water, while the third barred its way to shore. The hypsilopho-dontid froze as the nightstalkers slowly advanced. Their attack was sudden and frantic. Using their enlarged toe claws, they slashed at their victim, which seemed inca-pable of defending itself. The wounds they inflicted ini-tially appeared minor, unlike the deep gashes of the Dromaeosauruses. Instead, the nightstalkers bloodied their prey in a rain of lesser blows until it was disem- boweled and collapsed into the water.
Joe turned to Rick. 'You said they ate only little things.'
'Obviously, I was wrong,' Rick replied.
Con said nothing, but she shook as she relived the memory of her last night under the Tyrannosaur. Joe methodically shot the three nightstalkers. 'That's our food, you little bastards.' Rick and Joe waded out into the river to butcher the hypsilophodontid while Con stood guard with the gun. Rick and Joe decided to cache most of the meat in the river by wedging it under stones. Finding enough stones took time, as did finding a suitable site for the cache.
'I hope this is worth all the effort,' said Rick.
'I'm so sick of nightstalker,' said Joe, 'it'd be worth it if it took all day!' Con had borrowed Rick's knife to slice some leg mus-cle into strips while Joe and Rick piled the last rocks on the cache. 'Come and get your hypsilo-whatever,' she called. 'It's rude to make a lady wait for lunch.'
'Start without us,' Joe called back. 'We're almost done.' Then he said to Rick in a low voice, 'I agreed on your crazy journey because of Con, but won't you recon-sider? I don't want her to suffer needlessly.'
'Joe, she's
Joe glanced at Con and shook his head. 'She does.'
'Joe, I'm not fooling myself. I know our chances aren't good, but I can't think of anything better.'
'I just want to take care of her. There are worse deaths than starving.'
'Dying without hope is one of them,' replied Rick.
Joe looked at Con sadly. 'Yeah, I guess you're right.'
The subject of Rick and Joe's conversation was vora-ciously devouring her second strip of raw meat when they came to eat.
'Better than nightstalker?' asked Joe.
Con, her mouth full, nodded vigorously.
