'We'd better build one quick,' said Joe. 'It's getting hard to see.' While Con set up the tent, Rick and Joe searched the river's shore for stones to construct a food cache. They dis-covered a rocky stretch of riverbank not too far from camp that was covered with stones of various sizes. They carried the largest ones they could lift to higher ground and fitted them tightly together to form a circle. Working together, they carried two flat rocks to serve as a cover. Rick returned to the campsite and extracted the night's rations from the food bag before bringing it to the cache. He placed it within the circle of stones, then he and Joe lifted the two flat rocks to cover it. As an extra measure, they piled more stones on top and pushed snow around the cache.
'That looks safe enough,' said Joe. 'How much did you leave out for our dinner?' Rick sighed. 'Probably not as much as we need. It's so damned hard to figure out how to do this. If I could be sure how long we'd be walking, that would help.'
'My guess is we're seventy-five to a hundred miles from the sea,' said Joe.
'I figured a hundred,' said Rick. 'If we make twenty miles a day, we'll get there in four more days.'
'Do you think we covered twenty miles today?' asked Joe.
'It's hard to say,' admitted Rick. 'I decided to be pessi-mistic and divide our rations for six more days of travel.'
'You think like an engineer,' said Joe. 'It's good to have a safety factor.'
'It'll make for skimpy meals, unless we find some game.'
'Let's split everything four ways,' said Joe. 'Con gets half and you and I get a quarter each.'
'That sounds like a good plan,' said Rick. 'I hope Con goes along with it.'
'We'll make her,' said Joe.
'She can be real hard headed.'
'She'll eat,' said Joe. 'She has to.'
Joe and Rick returned to find the tent set up. Con had brushed the snow from its interior and spread the conifer boughs for bedding. She was in the process of packing snow around the outside edges of the tent as they arrived.
Rick made one of his calculations and decided to make a fire. That way, they could have warm broth with dinner, and there would be a lighter load to carry the next day. He ra-tioned out the wood, which was almost as precious as the food, to start a blaze. He cleared the snow from a patch of ground close to the tent and set nightstalker down next to some tinder. By the time he had a fire going, it was pitch-dark. While the small fire was cheerful, it also emphasized the totality of the blackness surrounding them. The flames quickly died down to embers, and they barely had enough time to cook their broth. As Rick expected, Con protested the division of the rations, but, in the end, he and Joe pre-vailed. They finished their meal in near-total darkness, with the dull red embers providing more of an impression of light than its actuality. Afterward, they huddled together in the tent and went to sleep.
CON AWOKE TO cold and hunger. Both had become con-stants in her life, waxing and waning in intensity, but never leaving entirely. Usually, the hunger manifested itself as a dull ache and the cold as a wearing discomfort. She had learned to ignore both, and they did not wake her. The sound did. A soft, distant scratching noise dis-turbed the black quiet of the world. Con instantly thought of the meat cache.
'Rick! Joe!' she cried. 'Something's stealing our food.' Instantly, the feeble yellow light of a flashlight broke the darkness inside the tent. It was enough light for Joe to find the gun. He switched it on, and he and Rick burst from the tent. Cold air flowed in as Con stared into the dark. The flashlight's pale beam stabbed into the night, but petered out before reaching the stone cache. Con could not tell if the scratching had stopped or was drowned out by Rick and Joe's noise. She watched the yellow light advance into the darkness until it illuminated a pile of snow- covered stones. When the light stopped moving, Con heard Joe curse and confirm her fears. 'God damn thieving bastards!'
Guided by the light, Con walked over to the food cache. The circle of stones and the heavy stone lid were intact. They had been too heavy for the nightstalkers to move. Instead, they had tunneled beneath them in two places. The tracks in the snow told the story of the raid.
'There were two of them,' said Rick after a moment's study. 'They're traveling together.'
'Our friends from back at the ledge?' asked Joe.
'Maybe,' said Rick. 'Who can tell?'
'I bet it was them,' said Joe. 'They were smart enough to stay out of sight all day, then go straight to the meat.'
Rick said nothing, but began to pull away the stones that lay atop the cache's lid. 'Let's see how much they got.'
