begun. It had taken him an hour and a half.
Humbled and much more observant now, he began walking again, carefully following the trail. After an hour it began to climb again. He was beginning to recover some of his confidence when he was stopped short by the opening up of a long view over the valley toward Mount O'Neil and Colonel Bob—the same view he'd seen before. Exactly. At first nothing registered but puzzlement. Could it be possible that he was on a loop trail? That he had been walking in a circle? It must be; there was the rocky overhang under which he'd had the sardines.
When the truth hit him he came near to sitting down in the rain and crying. He had, of course, been simply and stupidly walking in the wrong direction since he'd rediscovered the trail. He'd gone back the way he'd come and never even suspected it! On second thought he did sit down, his back against the rock wall. He sat there awhile, slumped over, wet, and miserable. The wind had sharpened so that the overhang was little protection. The temperature was dropping, too. His hands were red and raw, and from the feel of it, so was his face.
There was now no chance that he'd reach Finley Creek in time to find and talk with the Yahi today. He'd have to camp out in this cold and funereal jungle—and he wasn't going to get much coziness from his five-dollar plastic tent or much warmth from his butane lighter. Certainly, he wasn't going to be able to ignite any of the ubiquitous but waterlogged deadwood of the forest floor. It might make more sense to walk back to his car right now—it was less than two hours away, notwithstanding the five hours he'd been bumbling through the rain forest—and drive off to have a decent dinner somewhere, then find a warm bed someplace, and return in the morning, fresh and —
He cut off the thought with a shake of his head and hauled himself to his feet. He knew very well where his mind was leading him: A good dinner somewhere meant the Lake Quinault Lodge, and a warm bed someplace was Julie's. No, he was more resolute than that, or more stubborn. He wasn't going to melt in the rain, goddamn it, and there was plenty of daylight left in which to make more progress. He adjusted the uncomfortable pack and strode firmly back down the hill. He wasn't ready to admit he was done in yet, not by a long shot.
Three hours later, dispirited and weary, he was ready to admit it. A choppy, erratic wind drove the rain needlelike into his face, stinging his cheeks and eyes, and sometimes even streaming upward into his nostrils to make him cough and sputter. His trousers, poorly protected by the flapping poncho, were soaked, and the waterproofing seemed to be wearing off his shoes. The rough up-and-down trail had long ago slowed his stride to a foot-dragging, mindless trudge.
When he found himself under a little open sky, he stopped and looked gratefully at it. It was malevolent and yellowish-gray, but anything was better than that tossing, dipping roof of solid green. Even the rain didn't seem so bad here, falling more gently, in fat, soft blobs. He was somewhere along Big Creek, still probably a good four miles from Finley Creek, and, he thought dully, it seemed a good place to stop for the day. He found a flat, open space ten or fifteen feet off the path, still with a view of the sky, but surrounded by thick brush and trees that blocked the wind and offered a little protection, more psychological than real, against the rain.
For a few minutes he simply stood there with his eyes closed, catching his breath, thoroughly sick of the rain forest and the endless rain; sick even of the Yahi, though he had yet to meet them. He had, for that matter, yet to confirm their existence. How, he wondered muzzily, had he come to be here? What impossible chain of events had brought a quiet, comfort-loving professor to stand alone in gray-green mist, drenched and shivering, deep in the only damn jungle in the Northern Hemisphere?
Swaying slightly, with the rain pelting his eyelids and thrumming on his poncho, Gideon waited for sensible answers which didn't come. The hell with it, he thought stolidly, I'm here and I'll see it through. Not that he had a choice; he didn't have the energy to make the long walk back to the car.
By shrugging and twisting, he moved the pack around to his chest, keeping the pack under the poncho to protect it from the rain, and managed to dig out the ridiculously unsubstantial-looking tube tent, packed flat in a square not much bigger than a handkerchief. The principle was simple, the salesman had told him: Lay the blue plastic cylinder on the ground, tie ropes to the grommets at each end, tie the other ends of the ropes to supports, and presto, instant tent.
He had neglected to bring a ground cloth, but the spongy forest duff drained well and kept the ground from being muddy. Thank God for small favors. He laid out the tent, ran ropes through the grommets, and found a low, stubby tree limb to serve as one of the anchors. It was massive and sturdy-looking, but when he pulled tentatively on it, it squashed like papier-mache, oozing water between his fingers and dropping in pulpy fragments to the dark forest floor.
This bothered Gideon more than it should have. The entire rain forest seemed suddenly more deceitful, more untrustworthy. He looked around him, noticing for the first time that he had chosen to spend the night in an area in which most of the trees had long ago sprung from what Julie had called nurse logs. These were great, fallen trunks on which seedlings had taken purchase, gradually straddling them with roots that ran down to the ground. Eventually the original trunks had rotted away, leaving the roots straddling nothing but air. The effect was grotesque. Gideon felt as if he were surrounded by the mighty hands of giants, their splayed, gnarled fingers gripping the ground, their powerful forearm-trunks rising to the forest roof.
Now he was getting silly, and he certainly wasn't going to allow himself to be spooked by trees. He tied the two rope ends around a couple of young maple trunks, testing them first to see if they were solid. The tent now looked something like a tent, even if it smelled like a brand-new beach ball. The plastic stench would be overpowering once he tied the ends against the rain.
Which he couldn't do, he realized with a heart that sank a little more with each passing, rain-soaked minute. He hadn't brought any extra rope. Uncharitably, he cursed the salesman for not reminding him. He laid his sleeping bag, which even under the poncho had somehow gotten damp, inside the tent and used twigs to hold together the three grommets at each end, but he could see it wasn't going to work. The sleeping bag would be drenched. Already little puddles were forming on the plastic floor of the tent.
What a night this was going to be, but he was too tired and hungry to think much about it; he would eat something and then try to sleep, even if he had to do it sitting up in his poncho against a tree.
When he got out his plastic bag of food, he found that the bread was thoroughly soaked, more like a wet mush than bread at all, and that the grapes weren't there; he had apparently left them when he'd stopped to eat that morning.
That did not leave much of a dinner menu:
Huddled over the can in the rainy, deepening darkness, Gideon couldn't remember a time when he'd felt so extravagantly glum. He smiled unconvincingly; this would no doubt be most amusing told over a steak dinner in a warm, dry restaurant. But it didn't seem funny now, he thought, looking at the spreading water in his sleeping bag and at his raw, wet hands. And those oily fish.
