'But where would they actually live, sleep? Just out in the open?'
'I doubt it. There must be a shelter. Let's look around some more.'
In fifteen minutes of prowling among the trees they found the first hut. They had walked by it several times before they realized it was not a natural tangle of dead branches but a structure of lashed-together poles thatched with brush and capable of holding three or four people.
It took a while for Gideon to find the entrance, a low, covered opening through which he had to crawl. Inside it was dusky, but some light came through a smoke hole in the domed roof and through the interstices between the branches. It was just tall enough for him to stand slightly stooped. The hut was empty, but there were signs of human habitation. There was a small fire pit in the center, and the walls were black and greasy from many fires, and redolent of smoke. On the floor were a few fish bones. The floor itself was of earth, with many footprints, all naked—and none eighteen inches long.
The whole was drearily depressing, and he was happy to crawl back out into the daylight. There was a second, smaller hut, which received a cursory examination and turned up no additional information.
They made a final examination of the area around a large fire pit and found one more object of interest, manmade and man-used. It lay lodged between two of the bark slabs—an eight-inch stick about the thickness of an arrow shaft, broken at one end and tapering to a blunt point that was charred and worn down.
'Is it a fire drill?” Julie asked.
'Yes, the lower part of it. Do you know how it works?'
'Not exactly. Do you rub it against another stick?'
Gideon smiled. “No. Regardless of what any Boy Scouts may tell you, one cannot make sparks by rubbing two sticks together. You need to concentrate the friction in a very small spot. You take another piece of wood, a slab, and you bore a socket just large enough to fit this burned end of the drill. Then you gouge a channel from the socket to the edge of the slab. In the channel you place tinder... Why are you laughing?'
'I love it when you shift into your professorial mode. You get so serious. Not at all the sort of person who would fool around with a lady park ranger in a sleeping bag. But please continue.'
'Just because I did it doesn't make me the sort of person who does it,” he said, laughing, “but I'll skip the rest of the lecture. The point I was going to make, which is important, is that it's very hard to do. Even when you know how, it takes a lot of muscle and determination. I've demonstrated it before classes several times, and I'm always smoking before the tinder is.'
'I understand, but why is that important?'
'It's important because it clinches the fact that these are genuinely primitive people. If I were just playing at returning to the Stone Age, or simply dropping out, the one concession I'd make to civilization would be matches. And if I didn't have them when I left, I'd sure come back and get some after trying out this thing once or twice.'
He turned the drill slowly in his hands. “Indians. For sure.'
She frowned. “I still don't understand why it has to be
'Uh-uh. By the time the first Europeans set foot in Washington, in the eighteenth century, their technology was already way beyond this.'
Julie nodded. “You're right, of course.” She shook her head slowly back and forth. “The idea that there might still be people here living in the Stone Age, hiding, watching us...” She shivered. “Gideon, can we go back now?'
He put an arm around her shoulder and squeezed. “Ready to get back to the twentieth century?” he said smiling.
'Desperately.'
He tilted her chin up and kissed her softly on the lips. “Me, too. Let's go.'
* * * *
It took them only four hours to walk back to the trailhead, and an hour later, with Gideon driving, they pulled into the ranger compound at Quinault.
'I don't know about you,” Julie said, stretching as she climbed down from the cab, “but I need a hot shower before I do anything else.'
'Me, too,” Gideon said. He went to the back of the truck and hauled out the backpacks. “Maybe I can get a room at the lodge. I sure don't want to drive back to Dungeness tonight.'
'Are you joking? You'd have to book a month in advance, what with the crowds.'
'Gee, that's too bad,” Gideon said mournfully. “I could really use a shower.'
Julie laughed. “All right, you don't have to look so sad. You can use mine. On the condition that you behave.'
'Of course I'll behave. What do you take me for?'
In an hour, clean, happy, and utterly relaxed after a long, shared, soapy interlude under the shower head, they sat in bathrobes in the living room of the old, forest-green frame house that went with the job of chief ranger.
'See?” Julie said, handing him her empty glass. “Isn't civilization wonderful?'
Gideon poured a second dry sherry for each of them. “Rahther,” he said. He knelt as he brought her her drink, and softly kissed her. “I say, old girl, frightfully considerate of you to suggest I might spend the night here.'
'On the condition you conduct yourself in a gentlemanly manner.'
'You certainly set a lot of conditions,” he said, slipping his hand into her robe to caress her breast.
