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.He knew that there had to be shelter for them somewhere on this imposing, rocky face.He thought desperately, trying to remember what he had seen on the maps at Squaw Valley.Surely he could recall the maps; he had studied them so carefully.As he set up the lean-to again for the night, he forced his mind back, seeking for details that had seemed so unimportant when the maps were in front of him.“Evan,” Thea spoke in a cracked voice as he settled her in the lean-to.“I’m thirsty, Evan.I’m hot.Something’s wrong.”He looked down at her ravaged face and wiped the short hair off her forehead.“I know, Thea.” He wanted to hold her, to make her well by wishing, but instead he began the horrible, necessary job of cleaning her wound.This time, he thought with relief, the infection was no worse.It was also no better.The color was still bad and Thea moaned when the air touched it.As gently as he could, Evan probed it, fearing that the infection might be getting deeper.Thea cried out at this, trying feebly to pull away from him, from the nauseating pain he was giving her.“No, Thea, no.Let me finish.Let me clean it.You’ll be better then, I promise.”She quieted somewhat, leaning against the crook of his arm, hut flinching whenever she moved, and wailing thinly as he tied on clean bandages, taken now from their stores of torn sheets they had brought with them from the lookout station.He hoped the healing would start soon.There was no more gauze and now he was almost out of torn sheets.Her fever rose that night, and the next day he did not try to move her, keeping her warmly wrapped in the lean-to while he bathed her face with their dwindling supply of water.“What’s that?” she screamed, when, in the morning, the ground began to shake.Evan was awake and on his knees in a moment, looking wildly about as the earth tremor continued.With a sense of foreboding he crawled around the lean-to and looked north.There, rolling against the sky, was another, greater cloud, dark and bright at once, laced with lightning and the plume of clouds lit from below.Thea was weeping, her jaw set and her hands moving nervously when Evan came back to her.She beat her left hand against the ground, as if trying to make the shaking stop.When she saw him, she tried to beat him off, fighting against the blankets and sleeping bag that engulfed her.She struck out at his face, but the blows were weak, hardly more than pats.Tenderly he took her hand, speaking in a low, calm voice.“Thea.Thea.It’s me.It’s Evan.It’s Evan, Thea.Evan.”Slowly her thrashing abated and some degree of recognition returned to her face.“Oh.Evan,” she said.“What was that? Did I dream it? The ground was moving.It moved.It moved.And it rumbled…”“No.It wasn’t just the ground.” He sought for words, chafing the hand that lay in his.“One of the volcanoes has gone off,” he explained with difficulty.“Perhaps all the way off.”She tried to keep her attention on what he was saying, watching his lips with a muzzy intensity that hurt him more than the welt on his leg.“That’s bad…I think you said…it was bad.”“Yes, it’s bad.” He bent to kiss the palm of her hand, and felt the dry heat on his lips.“I’m sorry, Thea.I know it isn’t wise, but we have to move on.It isn’t going to be safe up here, not for a while.”She made an effort to rise.“I’ll help you pack,” she began, then gasped and fell back.“I can’t…I can’t…why…”Carefully he hushed her, then set about preparing the sledge to travel once again.Now he was worried about rock slides, and the deeper fear that the cold would be on them again sooner than he thought, and the air would be more harmful than it had been only a few days ago.When they climbed over the rubble of Echo Summit, Thea was delirious.Between her fever and the garish colors in the air, Evan paid little attention to what was going on around them.And because if these things, it was quite by accident that two days later, Evan found the road to Lake Kirkwood.It was almost dark, and the faint afterglow shone blue and yellow-green in the west.The road, which he had found earlier that day, had been in poor repair for nearly two decades and now had cracked into uneven chunks, destroyed by the earth tremor
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