Inside the mineworkers’ sleeping hut, the cedar fire crackled on the hearth. It filled the room with the sweet, pine-scented warmth of dry mountain wood. A single animal fat lamp burned on the center of the low larch table. It cast a steady, amber circle of light across the rough floorboards.
They didn’t waste the evening in sad. The agreement had been made. Then, the four of them reorganized every working detail of their journey around the physical reality of Fellis’s braced left arm.
First came the records. A survey party without written measurements was merely a group of lost travelers wandering through the cold.
Fellis sat on a low three-legged stool near the hearth. Across his knees lay a smooth, twelve-inch square of seasoned larch board that Yseld had planed flat with her drawknife. Two leather harness straps wrapped around the board and buckled beneath his thighs. He held the wooden tray as rigid as a desk across his lap.
From his coat pocket, Fellis drew his ordinary leather field ledger. The working notebook that tracked pace counts, slope angles, ration weights, and anchor descriptions. He laid the book open on the board. With the smooth, rounded wooden heel of his rigid willow splint, he pressed down firmly on the left-hand leaf, pinning the parchment flat against the wood. With his uninjured right hand, he picked up his sharpened charcoal pencil, dipped the lead in a drop of water. Then he began to write.
