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Show 19. to Stephanie, but she noticed JD didn't have much appetite. He drank his coffee, ate one pancake, then sort of seemed to drift into himself. Mostly she kept up the conversation with the Morrises, telling them where she and JD lived and how they were trying to get pictures of an elk herd for the Times. They were nice people, she decided. She could see they'd like to believe, even if they couldn't. When the sky finally lightened enough for them to see their way around outside, Clarence got back into his coat and suggested they go "take a look-see." Ruth excused herself to get dressed, saying she'd be out with them in a minute, and JD swallowed the last of his coffee. He seemed to have forgotten their plans to seek out the big elk herd from some distant ridge. In Stephanie's mind, yesterday's simple pleasure in catching a family of elk going about their business, seemed remote--like maybe a few light years remote. It didn't help, hunching against the biting, early morning wind, to see JD's shoulders drooping like an old man's, either. The three of them criss-crossed the ground around the camp, but the camera was nowhere to be seen. Then Clarence and JD started out across the clearing. When Stephanie and Ruth finally caught up with the men, they found them staring in disbelief at the ground. "God Almighty," Mr. Morris said softly under his breath. "God Almighty! This is right where she was!" A large circle of scorched ground, maybe thirty feet across, enscribed as true as if by compass, lay before them. "Don't step in there," JD warned Stephanie. "This whole place could be radioactive." "It's been stirred up pretty good," Clarence said. "Some of the plants has been pulled right up by the roots." "JD, I'm scared!" "Now we've got to find that camera," JD turned to Stephanie. "With a picture of this someone might believe us. "Where . . . exactly . . . " he spread his arms to include the whole area, "was I when you found me?" |