The Middle of Somewhere(49)

“Wow!”

Dante came up beside her, grinning. “Wow, indeed.”

A wind blew from the south, crinkling the surface of the lake. They searched for a sheltered spot, and soon found one, tucked into a knoll two hundred feet from the water. A flat area, barely large enough for their tent, was surrounded on three sides by boulders taller than a person. Someone had built a knee-high stone wall on the open end. Liz took it as a sign Evolution Lake could prove to be a windy place. She scolded herself for forgetting to get a weather forecast from the ranger in the valley. At the moment, there was only the usual high-altitude end-of-the-day breeze, but that meant absolutely nothing.

Dante had unpacked and was setting up the kitchen. Liz positioned the groundsheet and erected the tent, crouching against the boulders that crowded the site. She searched the stuff sack for the bag of tent stakes, which she always rolled together with the fly. It wasn’t there. She emptied her backpack and pulled her sleeping bag out of its sack.

“Dante, have you seen the stakes?”

“For the tent?”

“No, the New York sirloins. Seriously, I can’t find them.”

“You always put them in the tent bag.”

“I know. After I count them. Twice.”

They went through everything they had, which took less than five minutes.

He said, “What do we do?”

She regarded the tent, as if it might contribute a solution. “We’ve got one stake in the emergency bag, and I should be able to use rocks to hold down the corners.”

“What about the extra string?”

“The emergency cord? I’ll use it if I have to, but I don’t want to cut it up otherwise.”

Dante stared at her as if he suddenly realized his survival might very well depend on the length of a piece of nylon. “Sounds good to me.”

“I wonder what happened to them.”

He handed her a piece of salami. “Eat this. It’ll take your mind off it.”

A voice came from nearby. “Hello!”

Paul and Linda waved and climbed up to them. Linda said, “We’re neighbors,” and pointed to a stand of pines circling an enormous boulder. “On the other side of Bertha.”

“She names things,” Paul explained.

Dante cut them each a piece of salami, and they traded stories about the day’s hike.

Liz said, “You been here long?”

Paul lifted a shoulder. “A couple of hours.”

Liz was amazed fifty-somethings could set that kind of pace. “Hey, I hate to ask, but do you have extra stakes? All of ours went missing.”

“That’s weird,” Linda said. “We came over to see what your fuel situation was. We’ve got about a half a can, but the extra is gone.”

Paul put a hand on Linda’s arm. “Not that we’re asking for fuel. We can manage. But sometimes people burn off their extra canister near the end.”

Dante said, “We’ll conserve ours.”

Linda added, “And if we’re below ten thousand feet, where there’s plenty of wood, we can all use fire instead.”

“That’s why I wasn’t too worried,” Paul said. “Oh, I can help you a little with the stake situation. Hold on.” He trotted off toward his campsite.

“He’s got a lot of energy,” Dante said.

“He does,” Linda said. “Like a little boy.”

A few moments later, Paul returned brandishing three tent stakes as if proposing they draw straws. Two were aluminum, the other red and slimmer. “Will this help?” He pulled out the red stake. “I found it on the trail today. Pretty expensive litter.”

Liz took it from him, her mind spinning in ten directions.

Dante said, “That’s exactly like ours. But I guess they’re probably common.”

“No,” she said slowly, twisting the stake in her fingers. “These are fairly unusual. See how the cross section would be a Y-shape? They’re called Groundhogs, because they hold extremely well, plus they have a favorable strength-to-weight ratio.”

“Engineer?” Linda asked.

Liz nodded, transfixed by the stake.

“What’s a groundhog?” Dante asked.

“A flatland marmot,” Linda said.

Liz glanced at Linda, who she could tell was also thinking about the Roots. “Paul, where did you find it?”