First Blood

Even when he made it to the top, setting the boughs at the cave entrance, he still had to go back down the slope, this time gathering dead leaves and bits of wood that were scattered on the ground. He stuffed what he could inside his wool shirt and filled his arms with large dead branches and carried them back to the cave where he made two trips inside, first with the dead branches he already had in his arms, then with the fir boughs. He was thinking better, doing what he should have done when he had first moved around in the cave. As soon as he was deep in, past where he had wakened, he tested the floor ahead with his feet to be careful of sudden drops. The farther in he went, the lower the roof came, and when he had to crouch, bunching his ribs, he quit. The pain was too much.

This part of the cave was clammy, and he hurried to pile the dead leaves on the floor and spread chips of wood on them and lit the leaves with the matches the old man with the still had given him nights before. The matches had been soaked in the rain and the stream, but there had been time enough for them to dry, and while the first two wouldn't strike, the third did, going out, and the fourth stayed lit, setting flame to the leaves. The flame spread, and he patiently added more leaves, more chips of wood, nursing each lick of fire until they all came together in a blaze that was big enough to add larger chunks of wood and then the dead branches.

The wood was so old that it did not smoke much, and the little smoke that did come off was tugged at by the breeze from the entrance and wafted down the tunnel. He stared at the fire, hands out, warming them, shivering, and directly he looked around at the shadows on the cave walls. He had been wrong. It wasn't a cave, he saw now. Years ago somebody had worked this place as a mine. That much was obvious from the symmetry of the walls and the roof and the flatness of the floor. There were no tools left around, no rusty wheelbarrows or broken picks or rotting buckets - whoever gave up this place had respected it all right, and left it neat. He should have closed the entrance, though. That was strangely careless of him. By now the timber pilings and support beams were old and sagging, and if children ever came in to explore, they might knock against a beam or make too much noise and bring down a part of the roof on them. But what would children be doing out here anyhow? This was miles from where anybody lived. Still, he had found it; others could too. Sure and they would find it tomorrow, so he had better watch his time and leave before then. The quarter moon outside had been up to what he imagined was eleven o'clock. A few hours of rest. That was all he needed, he told himself. Sure. Then he could be gone.

The fire was warm and soothing. He brought the fir boughs next to it and spread them on top of each other in imitation of a mattress, stretching out on them, his bad side towards the fire. Here and there the points of the needles stuck through his clothes and pricked him, but there was nothing he could do about that: he needed the boughs to keep him off the dampness of the floor. In his exhaustion the boughs became soft and restful beneath him, and he closed his eyes and listened to the low crackle of the burning wood. Down the tunnel, water was dripping, echoing.