“Did you see a boat in the water?”

“No,” he said. “But there’s a place there where one has been docked. You can see where it’s been run up on shore, and there’s a wooden stake driven in the ground for tying it up.”

“Then he must have gone out on the lake before the storm hit,” I said. “If he had walked along the shore line, his boat would still be here.”

“Or maybe he went to town with his catch,” Tim said.

“I thought of that. But look,” I indicated the furs drying on the wall. Some were well-cured. “Those beaver are ready for the market. Why did he leave them? They’d bring eight or nine dollars apiece. No, I believe he went out to run his trap line and holed up until the storm was over.”

“Unless it caught him in the middle of the lake,” said Tim.

I had thought of that, too, but didn’t wish to linger on it.

We finished eating and spread the last biscuit with cherry jam and shared it for dessert. Then Tim sighed and said, “I could stretch out right now and go to sleep.”

“You do that. I’ll take care of the dishes, and then I wouldn’t be surprised if I didn’t catch forty winks myself.”

He was asleep by the time his head hit the pillow. I had to slip his boots off. He moaned in his sleep, and I touched his cheek. “Shhh,” I said, “sleep, Timmy.”

Bath time.

We had slept like the dead. I got up sometime late in the evening and blew out the lamp to save coal oil and then tumbled back into my own soft bed with a real cotton mattress, and fell into the depths of dreamless sleep. Both Tim and I were fully clothed, which was just as well, because the fire went out during the night and the cabin was chilled when I woke up at dawn. I saw no point in waking Tim, but he heard me moving about and got up too. He went for water while I got the fire going. I had half expected to be awakened during the night by the arrival of the cabin’s owner, but no one came.

After a breakfast of fried dough and margarine, I informed Tim: “I can’t speak for myself, but now that we’re indoors, you smell like a goat. We must both take baths.”

He didn’t resist, which surprised me, for Tim has never been one for excessive bathtaking. Maybe his own ripeness was getting to him.

I heated water and gave him a scrap of cloth for a wash rag and a bar of yellow soap.

“I’ll go outside and look around while you bathe,” I said. “Call me when you’re done. Don’t put on the same clothes. We’ll wash them later. Your other shirt is a little cleaner than the one you’re wearing.”

I bundled up warmly, and as I went out the door, called back: “Wash all over, Tim. Don’t skimp.”