The sky grew darker, the air colder, the snow deeper. The trip was taking hours.
“Stop snowing!” Ereth shouted at the unrelenting sky. “Can’t you see I’m trying to get some salt?”
There was no reply.
Pausing to catch his breath, Ereth began to wonder if he would ever reach the cabin. As he recalled, the trail led over a small hill. Beyond that, right on the shores of Long Lake, was the cabin.
Perhaps he should go home. He turned to look back. Once again he had the brief sensation that something was stalking him. “You’re acting like an old creature,” Ereth chided himself. “Imagining things.” And he moved on.
Marty the Fisher, high in a tree, seeing Ereth look back, ducked away in haste. He need not have bothered. Ereth merely glanced back before continuing on.
“Good,” Marty muttered. “All I need to be is patient. Very patient.”
“No,” Ereth said under his breath as he trudged along. “I’ve come too far to go back.” Besides, he reminded himself for the millionth time, it was his birthday. Back home there was nothing but raucous children. Better to be alone than in the midst of a crowd and ignored.
The porcupine did consider climbing a tree to wait out the storm. He shook his head. “I’m too close to salt.”
On he went.
Ereth blinked open his eyes. Had he fallen asleep? Had he stopped? Had he walked in his sleep? If so, how far had he gone?
Ereth peered to the right and the left. The landscape revealed nothing. The forest was just as white as the last time he had looked. For all he knew he might have gone a mile. Or ten. Or perhaps he’d fallen asleep and hadn’t moved at all. He looked back. Was something there? No. He was getting silly.
With a shake of his quills—sloughing off what felt like a ton of snow—Ereth forced himself forward again. But it had become very hard to walk. Perhaps, he told himself by way of encouragement, he was just climbing the hill, the last obstacle before reaching the cabin. He did know he was feeling light-headed. Hadn’t he thought something was following him? Even so, he took one slow step after another slow step, like a wind-up toy running down.
Suddenly, his way seemed easier. Lifting his head Ereth looked forward. With the swirling snow in his eyes, it took a moment for him to realize he was looking down a hill, beyond which was an open space. At the bottom, Ereth saw a large mound of snow. In one or two places, light seemed to glow from within the mound. Sticking up from the top of the mound was a silver pipe, from which dark smoke drifted. The smoke carried the smell of roasting meat. Ereth, a vegetarian, curled his lips in disgust.
But the evidence was plain: the open space was Long Lake. Buried in the snow was the log cabin. The cabin would have salt. But inside the cabin were . . . humans.
CHAPTER 5
The Cabin
THERE WAS ALMOST no animal or bird in the world Ereth feared. Owls, foxes, beavers—they were all one to him. True, only rarely would any of them bother him. His sharp quills assured him of that. And if the need came, he was more than capable of defending himself.
Humans were quite another matter. Sometimes they merely watched the animals in the forest. Other moments they wanted to touch them. Or run away. On still other occasions, however, the humans stayed and killed. People were that unpredictable.
The last thing the tired Ereth wanted to do was confront one. Besides, if humans were in the cabin, most likely it was because they were hunting. No, it did not bode well at all. And yet, there was the salt . . .
Staring at the cabin, Ereth tried to make up his mind what to do.
Marty the Fisher, perched high on a branch forty yards behind Ereth, looked on with troubled interest. He, too, realized that humans were in residence. As he had followed Ereth through the forest, Marty had wondered where the porcupine was so doggedly heading. Now that he saw the destination, he could guess what the porcupine was after. “Salt,” Marty said to himself. “That stupid beast has come out in a storm in search of human salt.”
Just to know he was close to humans made Marty anxious. He had little doubt these humans were hunters, the worst kind of humans from his point of view. For all he knew, they might even be looking for him, just as they had tracked down his whole family. It made him recall his ironclad rule: keep far away from humans and all things human.
“If Ereth has any brains,” Marty thought, “he’ll back off from that cabin and those people. I hope he does. He’s acting tired. He’s probably cold and hungry. Good! When he turns back from the cabin, he won’t have the energy to resist when I strike.
“Of course, if he’s idiot enough to go forward, I’ll wait him out. There are always ways to lure someone like Ereth to where I’d like him to be.”
Marty flexed his sharp claws, watched, and waited.
Ereth gave a shake of his head. There was, all in all, no choice to be made. He was cold, tired, and hungry. As far as he could determine, the best shelter would be directly under the cabin. Relatively speaking, it would be warm and dry there. It was probably the best place to find some food too. And of course, there was the whole purpose of the trip to consider: salt. How could he come so far without so much as a lick to show for it? Besides, though he did not like to mess with humans, he thought it most unlikely they would go under the house.
Moving downhill slowly, his breath a cloud of frosty vapor, Ereth watched and listened with
