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Show carrying his r i f l e , his boots crunching the dry pine needles. Already the squirrels had robbed the pinon cones he xjas kicking out of his x-iay of their pine-nuts; the hair on the l a s t two deer he'd killed had been thick and heavy. We're in for a hard winter, he said to himself, and maybe an early one for I haven't seen a migrating bird in x^eeks. They've more sense than that young couple staying on here so l a t e . They have a high mountain range to go over if they go x<rest to Sacramento; a forty mile long desert to cross if they go east,and xjind on that desert can be almost as bad as heavy snox-r on the mountain pass. Travelling along that stretch in September of '^9» Bill had seen the wind tear at the xylite canvas of covered wagons in his t r a i n until they'd f l i p over on t h e i r sides. Nox<; that wind xrould have turned cold. Bill miked faster. During the xilnter months he hunted and cooked for six miners x<rino lived X',Tith him in the shack he'd built about four miles outside of Blue Burg. large game hadn't been plentiful this past month. He'd dried into jerky the l a s t deer he'd shot, and they needed fresh meat today. The picture of that loaded xsagon and the silence around the Dream Mine cabin though kept coming back to him, so that a f t e r he had found and shot a deer he quickly dressed it out and strung i t up. Carrying only the tenderloin he'd cut from i t ' s back, and the l i v e r , he swung back around by the |
