He was very small and pathetic, a huddled young creature, dead and slavering blood, and I felt that pain which I can never escape when I have killed a young beast. Nevertheless I wasted no time in bleeding him and gralloching him. As the blood poured out on the ground I regretted that I had not taken a tin or a bowl with me to catch it and carry it home for blood puddings; I consoled myself for that loss by cleaning every vestige of fat from his entrails; I trailed the gralloch to the loch and flung it in for the pike to eat, with the exception of the lower gut which I left inside the beast.

On my way home I climbed up the hill to investigate a stream which cascaded down the rock. I had been afraid that in the heat of summer our little pool would dry up and this discovery reassured me. The water was cold like ice.

‘You got a beast,’ Terry commented when I arrived at the cave; ‘you weren’t long. Oh, it’s a calf, poor little thing.’

‘It will be very tender,’ I replied. ‘Did you hear anything?’

‘Not a sound. Were you far away?’

‘Just round the corner. The .22’s the weapon for us, quiet and deadly. But when I skin this beast you must make a wrist-strap for me of its skin to carry bullets. You know, a piece of hide about two inches broad to fasten round my wrist with slits cut in it so that I can carry bullets in a handy way. It’s a nuisance getting them out of my pocket when I’m lying down and don’t want to make a movement, and the grease gets rubbed off in my pocket, which isn’t good for the rifle.’

‘Will we salt it right away?’ she asked.

‘We won’t salt it at all,’ I answered.

‘We must salt it. Meat won’t keep any time—’

‘I found a waterfall along there. The water is as cold as ice. It must rise from a spring higher up. That waterfall will be our larder.’

‘But I don’t understand, Hugh.’

‘If we hang our meat in the fall the cold water will keep it fresh as long as we are likely to leave it. I don’t imagine that will be very long. Carrion beasts won’t reach it there.’

‘I wasn’t very happy about salting meat already,’ she said.

‘We have no fresh vegetables to keep our blood healthy.’

‘He’s not very fat,’ she commented when the skin was off.

‘You’ll scrub the gut and dry it and stuff it with meal and fat and chopped onions,’ I told her.

‘Mealy puddings! Oh how lovely. My, don’t we live well! If you had kept the bladder and the lungs we could have had haggis, Hugh.’