They made a final examination of the area around a large fire pit and found one more object of interest, manmade and man-used. It lay lodged between two of the bark slabs-an eight-inch stick about the thickness of an arrow shaft, broken at one end and tapering to a blunt point that was charred and worn down.
"Is it a fire drill?" Julie asked.
"Yes, the lower part of it. Do you know how it works?"
"Not exactly. Do you rub it against another stick?"
Gideon smiled. "No. Regardless of what any Boy Scouts may tell you, one cannot make sparks by rubbing two sticks together. You need to concentrate the friction in a very small spot. You take another piece of wood, a slab, and you bore a socket just large enough to fit this burned end of the drill. Then you gouge a channel from the socket to the edge of the slab. In the channel you place tinder… Why are you laughing?"
"I love it when you shift into your professorial mode. You get so serious. Not at all the sort of person who would fool around with a lady park ranger in a sleeping bag. But please continue."
"Just because I did it doesn’t make me the sort of person who does it," he said, laughing, "but I’ll skip the rest of the lecture. The point I was going to make, which is important, is that it’s very hard to do. Even when you know how, it takes a lot of muscle and determination. I’ve demonstrated it before classes several times, and I’m always smoking before the tinder is."
"I understand, but why is that important?"
"It’s important because it clinches the fact that these are genuinely primitive people. If I were just playing at returning to the Stone Age, or simply dropping out, the one concession I’d make to civilization would be matches. And if I didn’t have them when I left, I’d sure come back and get some after trying out this thing once or twice."
He turned the drill slowly in his hands. "Indians. For sure."
She frowned. "I still don’t understand why it has to be Indians. All right, forget the twentieth-century dropout idea, but why couldn’t they be some primitive Caucasians who have been living here, maybe for a hundred years?"
"Uh-uh. By the time the first Europeans set foot in Washington, in the eighteenth century, their technology was already way beyond this."
Julie nodded. "You’re right, of course." She shook her head slowly back and forth. "The idea that there might still be people here living in the Stone Age, hiding, watching us…" She shivered. "Gideon, can we go back now?"
He put an arm around her shoulder and squeezed. "Ready to get back to the twentieth century?" he said smiling.
"Desperately."
He tilted her chin up and kissed her softly on the lips. "Me, too. Let’s go."
It took them only four hours to walk back to the trailhead, and an hour later, with Gideon driving, they pulled into the ranger compound at Quinault.
"I don’t know about you," Julie said, stretching as she climbed down from the cab, "but I need a hot shower before I do anything else."
"Me, too," Gideon said. He went to the back of the truck and hauled out the backpacks. "Maybe I can get a room at the lodge. I sure don’t want to drive back to Dungeness tonight."
"Are you joking? You’d have to book a month in advance, what with the crowds."
"Gee, that’s too bad," Gideon said mournfully. "I could really use a shower."
Julie laughed. "All right, you don’t have to look so sad. You can use mine. On the condition that you behave."
"Of course I’ll behave. What do you take me for?"
In an hour, clean, happy, and utterly relaxed after a long, shared, soapy interlude under the shower head, they sat in bathrobes in the living room of the old, forest-green frame house that went with the job of chief ranger.
"See?" Julie said, handing him her empty glass. "Isn’t civilization wonderful?"
Gideon poured a second dry sherry for each of them. "Rahther," he said. He knelt as he brought her her drink, and softly kissed her. "I say, old girl, frightfully considerate of you to suggest I might spend the night here."
"On the condition you conduct yourself in a gentlemanly manner."
"You certainly set a lot of conditions," he said, slipping his hand into her robe to caress her breast.
"God," she said, "aren’t you ever satisfied?"
"I am satisfied. I couldn’t be more satisfied." He put his other hand into her robe and embraced her with both arms. "I’m just being friendly."
Julie put down her glass to hold his face in both hands. "Mmm, I feel friendly, too. But I haven’t called into the office yet to let them know I’m back. I think I’d better do that."
"That’s supposed to motivate me to let go?"
"And the sooner we dress, the sooner we get some dinner."
"The restaurant doesn’t open for another hour."
"And we’ve just killed the last of the sherry. If you want some more, we need to go over to the lodge."
"That’s different." Gideon kissed her and promptly stood up. "You call your office and I’ll dress. Or would you like me to help you into your clothes while you’re on the phone? It’d save time."
"No, thanks. I don’t think it would work, somehow."
The elderly woman at the wicker writing desk looked up from her letter and peered irritatedly over the tops of her reading glasses.
"Be quiet, you children," she said, her voice quivering with annoyance. "Go outside and play."
But the two little boys, falling over themselves in their excitement, dropping their quarters and scrambling after them under chairs, ran unheeding down the elegant old lobby of Lake Quinault Lodge to the far wall, where a table with an electronic game imbedded in its top stood anachronistically among the potted plants and fine old 1920s furniture. Once there, they dropped into the chairs with blissful, adult sighs, inserted their coins, and fell at once into deep trances over the screen, which emitted twitters, splutters, and beeps that could be heard all over the sedate lobby. On its perch the parrot muttered and complained.
Gideon smiled at Julie. "Well, you wanted the twentieth century. Welcome to it."
"I love it," she said, laughing and snuggling farther into her chair, her legs tucked beneath her.
Gideon sipped his amontillado and leaned back, enjoying the crackling fire in the huge brick fireplace. His wicker chair creaked dryly when he moved, a clean, leathery, masculine sound that went well with the sherry.
The woman at the writing desk, unable to bear the noise of the game table any longer, swept up her papers with a snort and marched out. On her way she stopped briefly near Gideon and Julie, her writing materials gathered against a formidable bosom.
"They shouldn’t allow those things in here," she said.
"I agree with you," Gideon said. When she was gone he turned to Julie. "Did she mean the machines or the kids?"
"I don’t know," she said, laughing. "Both, probably."
"Well, I agree with her."
"Gideon," Julie said after they had both looked into the fire again for a while, "I’ve been wondering why those Indians would have left anything as valuable as a spear behind for the Zanders to find. It must take a long time to make one."
"They were probably surprised and left in a hurry. Anyway, I don’t imagine that time management is a particular problem for them. Besides, the binding was rotten and the shaft was split. Those are what take all the time, you know. The point’s nothing."
"No, I didn’t know. There’s a lot they don’t teach you in school. Do you think they’ve deserted the place now?"
"I think so. The Zanders may have been the first people to stumble on that ledge. And now us. They’ve probably gone even farther from the trails and the people."
"That would mean going higher into the mountains. It’s going to be awfully wet and cold up there." She moved her head slowly back and forth, letting her lips brush the rim of the glass. "What a horrible life they must have. Shouldn’t we be trying to find them?"