“I told Jacob that I would check on Mrs. Brown. Take Eric and Jacob and go see how she’s doing.”
Hector and the boys rode the pickup to the farm, stopping a safe distance away. Mary met them with her shotgun.
“Hello, Mrs. Brown,” Jacob called.
“Hello, again, Jacob,” she replied. “Who’s that with you?”
“This is Eric from my camp, and this is Hector,” Jacob explained. “He’s from the logging camp. Our Chief sent us to see if you needed any help or maybe some food. We can share some.”
She hesitated. The boys were okay, but the man worried her. “Well, come on in, then.”
The trio from the camp spent the morning looking over her place. They discussed swapping rice and dry cereal for potatoes and milk. The farm lady milked her cow every day, and her cow produced more than she and her children needed.
“I’ve got two big freezers so I could freeze the milk. It’s not as good frozen as it is fresh, and it’s good for only a few weeks, but it will do in a pinch. I can send some butter, too. I’ve got a lot of that.”
“Wow,” said Eric. “You can make butter? Real butter, not margarine?” Mary nodded. “Do you have, like, a churn that you use to make the butter? Do you have to pump it up and down?” Eric asked eagerly.
Mary laughed. “’Fraid not, Eric. I use a blender and ice to make butter. I wish I could offer you more, but my husband was supposed to pick up our supplies for the summer. Except for milk and butter, the freezers are pretty empty.”
Eric was especially interested in the solar room which could only be accessed from the barn. Mary had filled buckets with dirt, and she was growing cucumbers and tomatoes on trellises.
“Why do you have all these barrels of water in here?” Eric asked.
“I wondered about that too, when my husband, Davis, put these fifty five gallon drums in here. He said that water loses heat slowly. He was right. It can be zero degrees outside, and if we have a sunny day; it will be too warm to stay in here without opening the door to the barn. And if we shut the door before the sun goes down, these barrels will warm this room for a long time.”
Eric had a sudden idea. “Hector, could we move the solar panels from the dining hall to the roof of the Lodge?”
“Yes, I could do that. But why? The roof of the Lodge is too high to use gravity to supply the water. We would need a strong pump to get the water to the top of the roof.”
Eric was thinking. “What about making a closed system? What if we used the solar water pump from Chief’s Headquarters to circulate hot water to barrels inside the Lodge? Wouldn’t that keep the Lodge warmer?”
Hector was struck by the thought. “You’re right, Eric. It would help a lot. And at night the solar pump will automatically shut down. The hot water in the barrels will stay there. We wouldn’t have to burn so much wood. We could save wood, and it would not be as smoky. But, I don’t think there are any usable barrels at the logging camp. I know there’s a few in the storage room that we have for our recycles, but they don’t have tops like these barrels.”
Mary was listening. “I could lend you four barrels,” she said. “That would help a little. My problem is going to be wading out here in the snow to milk our cow. We have a solar milking machine, but it still requires someone to attach it to the cow. My husband always did that in the winter. And when the sun doesn’t shine, I have to milk the cow by hand.”
“I wish I could come up and help you, Mary,” said Hector. “But we have to save the gasoline. I don’t think that we are going to get anymore.”
“There’ll be lots of times when the snow will be so deep that you couldn’t even make it through, Hector,” Mary reminded him. The trio returned to the camp after eating lunch at the farm.
“Sounds like you had a successful visit,” Mike said, after they reported. “I hope Howard’s group does as well.”
Meanwhile, Howard led his party up the small river. It was much smaller now. In some places it could be waded through, even along the section by the camp. They had to be careful though. When it rained hard, it was not uncommon for the small river to become a raging torrent.
It started raining that afternoon. Everyone who attended the camp had been required to bring a poncho, and Mike had insisted that they take them on this trip. Now, they were glad he had done so.
“I guess that’s why he’s the Chief,” Kevin said grumpily, as he stumbled along the path.
“I wish I was back at the Lodge,” Nathan complained.
“You begged Mike to let you come with us,” Ahmad reminded him.
“Yeah, but I didn’t know it was going to rain.”
It rained lightly off and on that afternoon, and then it stopped just as they were making camp. Once they were in their makeshift tent it began raining again, only now it rained much harder. They were thankful that there was no lightning. They passed the night cramped but dry.
Early the next morning, the knocking sounds of a white headed wood pecker woke them. They continued their journey into the dark green forest. At noon they stopped to eat, and then they spread out to look for game. Jacob had taught them how to make snares. By the end of the day, they had caught four rabbits and five grouse. They placed their catch in doubled plastic bags and built a fire. They roasted two of the rabbits for dinner to save the food they had brought with them.
Although the wet conditions made them uncomfortable, it was fun to sit around the camp fire and talk. It was the usual boy talk, about animes and games they liked, and about the various attributes, mostly physical, of girls that they liked. Sometimes they talked about their lost homes and families, but this tended to depress them. They stayed up later than they should have, and then they crawled into their sleeping bags when it began to rain again.
The next morning it was still raining, and no one was much inclined to hunt. Still, the cramped conditions in the tent forced the restless boys to get out and look around. It was almost noon, and Howard was striking the tent, when Nathan came running into the area calling, “Howard! Howard!”
“What is it?” Howard asked.
“There’s a lady back there,” Nathan said, pointing to where he had been. “I think she’s dead.”
Chapter Six
HOWARD AND JEAN
Quickly, Howard called the rest of the boys, and they followed Nathan through a thick patch of brush. Ten minutes later, they came to a clump of small redwood trees. In the midst of the trees, they saw a human form lying face down on the ground. The long reddish hair indicated that it was, indeed, a female.
Howard kneeled next to the body and turned it over. As he did so, it let out a painful groan. She was a young woman, and Howard saw that she was wearing the uniform of a United States Forest Ranger. Her uniform was filthy and torn, and there was a smell about the Ranger that suggested she had not bathed in a long time, or else she was sick.
One of the redwoods had a partially hollow area at its base. The boys carefully moved the young woman into the hollow so that she was out of the rain. There was room for one other person in the hollow, so Howard crept into the space. He stared at her helplessly, not knowing what to do.
He said to Ahmad, “Give me your canteen.”
Ahmad handed the metal container to Howard. Carefully, Howard pressed the canteen to the woman’s lips, and he let a few drops spill into her mouth to see what would happen. Seconds later she coughed, swallowed, and then tried to raise her head toward the canteen. Howard tipped the canteen a little more, and she began to drink thirstily. She took several swallows, and then she lay back. Her eyes opened for an unfocused moment, and then they closed. She fell asleep. Howard shook her, forcing her to wake up. He made her drink some more water, and then he allowed her to lie back and sleep.