They camped that night in a narrow birch draw three miles beyond the gorge mouth, where overhanging brush hid a small fireless shelter beneath a dry bank.
Nobody lit a twig. Smoke in the clear dusk air would have carried straight up the rock wall toward the observatory pickets, so they ate cold salt pork and hard biscuit with their coats buttoned to their chins. Lilt lay stretched along the outer lip of the bank like a grey drift-log, her broad fins spread flat over the dry leaves to keep the ground frost off Osha’s feet and Chaska’s knees. Osha had wedged her oak archive case under the overhang and was using her folded shawl as a pillow, too tired to open the brass latches even to check whether the three stone copies had shifted during the scramble out of the wash.
The air smelled of wet bark and frost, and Ysabet had to work by the last grey streak of sky to soak a handful of clean blue quarry stone in a tin pan so Pip could eat without jarring its sore jaw and bound antlers.
The original mouse sat inside its half-covered box beside Ysabet’s knee, chewing a dry oat kernel held in both front paws while its bad hind leg rested sideways on the soiled wool rag it refused to give up. Every now and then it paused to tap its nose against the air-slit, checking that Pip’s warm flank was still within reach.
