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I barred the door, ate so it, smoored the fire with daht have met some men from Anna Ooka and be camped with them

The scent of hickory s up over the hearth The beah fires had burned here for no more than two months now Fresh resin still oozed frolowed like honey and smelled of turpentine, sharp and clean The ax strokes in the wood showed in the firelight, and I had a sudden, vividthe ax, over and over in strokes like clockwork, the ax blade co down in a flash ofthe squared rough tie the stroke of an ax or hatchet He ht an arer to help out, promptly supplied a crystal-clear vision of arterial blood spurting onto white snow in a crimson spray

I flounced over onto my side He kne to live outdoors He’d spent seven years in a cave, for heaven’s sake!

In Scotland, said est carnivore is a wildcat the size of a house cat Where the biggest hulish soldiers

"Fiddlesticks!" I said, and rolled onto rown man and he’s armed to the teeth and he certainly knohat to do if it’s snowing!"

What would he do? I wondered Find or make shelter, I supposed I recalled the crude lean-to he’d built for us e first cae, and felt a little reassured If he hadn’t hurt himself, he probably wouldn’t freeze to death

If he hadn’t hurt hi else hadn’t hurt him The bears were presumably fat and fast asleep, but the wolves still hunted in winter, and the catamounts; I recalled the one I had met by the stream, and shivered in spite of the feather bed

I rolled onto my stomach, the quilts drawn up around my shoulders It arm in the cabin, wared for Jaht or reason To be alone with Jamie was bliss, adventure, and absorption To be alone without hiainst the oiled hide that covered thenearAnd if anything had happened to hiot up I dressed quickly, without thinking too ht too much already I put on my woolen cutty sark for insulation beneath s I thanked God that reased with otter fat; they sood while

He had taken the hatchet; I had to split another piece of fat pine with anow decided on action, every srained wood split easily, though; I had five decent faggots, four of which I bound with a leather strap I thrust the end of the fifth deep into the sht

Then I tied a s about my waist, checked to be sure I had the pouch of flints and kindling, put on my cloak, took upsnow

It was not as cold as I had feared; once I began s It was very quiet; there was no wind, and the whisper of the snowfall drowned all the usual noises of the night

He had meant to walk his trapline, that h, he would have followed it The previous snow lay thin and patchy on the ground, but the earth was soaked, and Ja man; I was fairly sure I could follow his track, if I caht near his kill, so much the better Two slept much better than one in the cold

Past the bare chestnuts that ringed our clearing to the west, I turned uphill I had no great sense of direction, but could certainly tell up fro large, ilanced toward the falls, their white cascade no more than a blur in the distance I couldn’t hear them; ind there was , ye want the wind toward ye," Ja or the hare wilna scent ye"

I wondered unco me on the snowborne air I wasn’t arlittered red on the crust of packed snow, and shattered froot within a quarter-mile of him, he’d see me

The first snare was set in a small dell no rove of spruce and hemlock I had been with hiht; even with the torch, everything looked strange and unfa round It took several journeys back and forth across the little dell before I finally spotted what I was looking for--the dark indentation of a foot in a patch of snoeen two spruce trees A littleand I found the snare, still set Either it had caught nothing, or he had removed the catch and reset it

The footprints led out of the clearing and upward again, then disappeared in a bare patch of matted dead leaves Afor a scuffled place thatshowed; the leaves y and resilient But there! Yes, there was a log overturned; I could see the dark, wet furrohere it had lain, and the scuffed moss on its side Ian had told me that squirrels and chips