"I never imagined such a thing was possible," Rachel said after a few minutes. "Such incredible passion, such beauty, such pure animal freedom and enjoyment... Sorry, I couldn't help hearing."

"I had forgotten you were here, Mama. I had forgotten there was much else other than David and me, there were times it was so intense that David wasn't even here."

"That's interesting — I wonder if Fritz is still up there. What time is it?" David pulled his left arm out from under Maria's collapsed body. "Five minutes past noon. If they're like the French and the Belge, they'll have stopped for lunch five minutes ago."

"Unfortunately, they are not that predictable," Rachel said. "The Germans will work until the task is done. The French, though, will stop a hundred-hour-job five minutes before final completion if the clock intervenes."

"Mama, can you pass me two pieces of cotton, we're rather messy over here." Maria giggled, then continued, "I must get on with nursing. I've a wounded soldier here in need of care."

David and Maria pulled apart, and she wiped him with one piece of toweling as she sat on the other. "This is still so large, how do you hide all this in your trousers?"

"It'll go down a bit more, it's been up for a long time, and has had some heavy exercise. Usually takes a while longer after this kind of treatment."

David stuck his head out through the triangle and looked around. The sun was coming directly into the gully, and all the pools were bathed in its rays. He leaned out farther and looked across at the entrance ledge. It was empty. He scanned the tops of the cliffs and still saw them as being impossible to approach safely. He looked at his watch again as he unbuckled it. Twelve past noon.

He pulled back inside and smiled. "Bath time. A quick dip, a soap and a rinse. I'm going to rinse under the waterfall."

He and Maria scampered out. The sun had heated the dark sandstone and gabbro, the entire nook was wonderfully warm, almost hot. Rachel hesitated, then shrugged, undressed and joined them. Six minutes later they were back in the shelter, dried and dressing.

"Let me do your cheek stitches," Maria said. "Properly this time."

"That was very proper the last time." He chuckled. "You'll now need to do it improperly."

She carefully snipped and pulled out the stitches and wiped his cheek with an alcohol-soaked piece of gauze. "We're down to your last roll of this, but we won't need so much after..."

There was a series of cracking sounds above them, followed by loud voices, guttural German voices. Excited voices, then more cracking and a scream. There was a sharp crack and thud close beside them and the sounds of falling rocks and branches. Voices came from above again, "Oh, mein Fick! Leutnant Herzog!"

David knew it was impossible to see in on the nook from above, but still he was cautious as he poked his head out through the triangle. Ten feet in front of him was a man in a German officer's uniform. There was a growing pool of blood on the sandstone beneath his head. He was still, face down, his neck at an impossible angle. The strange-looking wood and leather case, which was fastened to his belt, was skewed onto the middle of his back.

Looks like his pistol holster.

He scanned the cliff tops again, listening to the sounds of cracking and rustling tree branches, snapping of shrubs, dislodged rocks. One rock hit the edge of the canvas and bounced off.

A small one, fortunately.

The excited voices continued above. He looked again at the body, paused for a few moments, then crawled out.

He unclipped the cased weapon from the officer's belt and held it out toward Maria, who was in the triangle watching. She stepped across to take it from him and picked up the clips of ammunition he had removed from the pouches. After a pause, David dragged the inert body the six feet to the brink of the slab and rolled it over, listening to the dull thud as it hit the next ledge, barely audible over the chatter of voices and breaking branches on the cliff tops.

"Wir kommen von unten. Bleib ruhig," called a concerned voice from above. The cracking and twig snapping continued, moving away from them as the sounds gradually faded.

David quickly looked around, picked up the lieutenant's spiked black leather helmet, examined it, then dropped it over the edge before he turned and scurried back to the shelter.

"Was he dead?" Maria asked.

"Must have been, his neck appeared snapped. Regardless, after his last fall, he's dead now, and we're still alive. We'll have to remain quiet while they search."

"They said they were going to come from below."

"That's their only logical choice. And they have the time. This is likely a training exercise they're on, but even if it's a patrol, they'll pause to find their missing and injured. Even in battle, an effort is made whenever possible. Fortunately, they've headed across that way," he said pointing to the rock wall beside them. "We're safe for the moment. There's no way into here past the cliffs on this side, and the line of bluffs will lead them below us when they head back across to the stream."

"What if some have gone around the other side," Maria asked.

"We have a few minutes before the first of them could find their way into here. I'll find a way to cover or disguise the blood over there and the trail to the edge. You two rearrange our camouflage to make it appear more natural. Grub out more bushes to place beside the rock to make the shelter impossible to spot from the corner. Quickly, we have only a few minutes."

After they had finished and were back inside, David picked up the strange-looking weapon. He had not previously seen anything like it. He flipped the hinged wooden top of the case and pulled out a long-barrelled pistol. After he had made sure it was unloaded, he read the stamped name:

WAFFENFABRIK MAUSER 
OBENDORF A NECKER

He slid the carved oak case out of its leather harness and examined it. A fitting on its small end clipped into the metal frame of the pistol's handle, converting the pistol into a rifle. He turned it in his hands, admiring ingenuity and engineering.

In the leather harness were a cleaning rod and a pocket with a zigzag spring. A spare magazine spring, he recognised. Attached to the side of the harness were two darker leather pieces, one a sheath with a long sharp knife stamped JA Henckels. Solingen. Zwillingswerk, the other cylindrical and containing a three-section collapsible brass telescope.

David familiarised himself with the gun's operation, cleaned it, flipped the safety lever, loaded it from a ten bullet clip and stood it against the rock just inside the edge of the canvas. "It's semi-automatic, we need only aim and work the trigger. We have five clips, fifty bullets, so we can hold off Fritz here for a while if it comes to that, but I hope it doesn't. I hope we don't need to use this."

After he had finished with the gun, Maria removed the rest of his cheek stitches. Then they sat quietly, leaning against the rock, gnawing on pieces of landjäger. His jaw was working better now, but he was surprised to find it easier to chew on his wounded side.

Probably to do with the levering or twisting of my jaw. The stitches are irritating my gums, but this flavour is too delicious to stop.

The discomfort finally caused him to stop eating. Still unfamiliar with the geography of his two missing teeth, he ran his tongue around and explored, trying to count the stitches in his mouth. Most were too fine and close together for that, but he did count three in the new gap from the missing teeth.

As he was concentrating and running his tongue around, Maria had been watching him. "What's wrong, David? You appear concerned."

"Nothing — I'm exploring to find what the damage was inside. I haven't done it before — guess it's been too sore until now."

"Let me look." She turned and knelt in front of him. "Open wide, let me see."

"I can't open wider than this. Still too sore back in the hinge."

She gently pulled his lower lip down. "I didn't realise you had stitches on the inside. Many fine stitches. I guess I should have examined more carefully when —"

They heard excited voices below them, over the lip of the slab. The soldiers had found their officer. They were about thirty feet below them, at the base of the cliff a few yards away. Fortunately, the splashing of the waterfall erased the sounds of their quiet talking.

There was a loud voice, bellowing like the sound of a drill square sergeant. It broadcast to the searchers across the slopes that they had found Leutnant Herzog. That he was dead. To tell the Feldwebel they would be bringing his body up to the top.

"That is very good for us." David pointed out toward the precipice. "They've found him, so the search is finished. They'll likely feel spooked about this area, probably go well out of their way to avoid it."

"What about the weapon?" Rachel asked, seeming quite concerned. "That's an unusually fine piece. Won't they search for it?"

"Possibly for a short while, then someone in authority will dismiss it as having fallen off his belt and bounced farther down the escarpment. I left the ammunition pouches unfastened, so they'll likely think any clips he had there had fallen out in his tumble, so we're safe here for a while."

"I'm still trembling a bit much to go back to examining your lip just now." Maria looked at her shaking hands. "Let's sit here and be thankful we're all safe, see if we can relax — see if I can relax."

They sat quietly in their private thoughts with their ears finely tuned to the slightest sound. There was none but the murmur of the water cascading down the face and splashing onto the slab.

After a few minutes, she looked at him and said, "I need to get back to work. I hadn't realised your lip was so damaged. It must have been incredibly painful."

"I missed most of the intense pain — I lay in no-man's-land for many hours unconscious. It was almost dawn when I came to, having lain there on the ground for ten or eleven hours." He continued the remainder of the story that had brought him to Freiburg.

"What a horrid thing the Kaiser has done to us all," Rachel said. "Get back to your nursing, Maria, we've got to make sure our young hero mends properly. He needs to lead us the rest of the way to Switzerland."

Maria knelt in front of David again and tenderly probed at the outside of his lip. "It looks very good. Still some swelling, but clean and sweet smelling. Does this hurt?" she asked, pressing gently at the end of the wound, almost at the point of his chin.

"The bone is tender underneath, but there's little pain in the flesh."

She moved her finger up along the line of sutures, asking him to let her know where there was pain. She got to the line of his lip, and he said, "It's numb there. There is almost no sensation." He ran his tongue across his lower lip and then down inside. "The numbness is only on my lip, down the inside," he paused and ran his tongue down again. "Down farther inside there's good feeling."

"Please let me know if this hurts," she said as she carefully pulled his lip out and down.

He said nothing as she pulled and moved it side to side, then put a finger in behind it and gently squeezed with her thumb. "No pain? Not sore?"

"Just a bit tender, but it feels surprisingly fine. I'd much rather have you doing this than anyone else. What do you see in there?"

"It appears we can take out the stitches up your chin to your lip and tape it. The ones in your tooth gap can also come out. I'd like to keep a few of the inside stitches in place a while longer, and also a few on your lip. The split from your smile showed it's quite fragile at the moment with its dryness." She ran a finger along it.

"It looks like your lip had been sliced completely through to the gum line, then down your chin. I don't know if the doctor used deep suturing to hold the internal structure in place, But looking at the rest of his fine work, he probably did, and they're probably absorbable. What do you think?"

"You're the professional here, I'm simply the patient."

"I have almost no training with this, but what I sense seems right. Mama, I need your opinion. Come look at this. Rinse your hands with the alcohol first."

Rachel repeated the examination, pulling, probing and squeezing, and then said, "I think you're right, Maria, it's probably safer to keep a few of the inside stitches and some of the ones in the lip in place another day or so. Do you need help?"

"You can hand me the scissors as I need them and take the removed sutures from me." When she had finished, she wiped his chin and lower lip with alcohol and cut a small piece of tape, rounded its corners and applied it over the scar.

"With the apparent internal sutures, it's safe to remove the stitches from inside the lip. Leave only the two on top where the skin has dried. I wish I had some Vaselineöl to moisten there."

"What about the stitches on the inside of my cheek? They irritate my gums when I chew."

"What? Let me see.." She ran a finger around inside. "There's a vee-shaped line in here, same as the outside. The outside looked so cleanly repaired, I didn't even think to examine inside. That was a terrible wound. Your face had been ripped to shreds."

"It was quite sore for a while, but it's so much better now."

She ran two fingers inside, gently pressing against her thumb from outside. "Is this sore? Does the pain increase when I do this?"

"Not so much anymore. Tender is a better word. A bit strange."

"You're so fortunate to have had a skilled surgeon do all of this, rather than have someone tie you up like a pot roast. I think we can also safely take out all these stitches. Leave only the two on the lip. What do you think, Mama?"

"You're much more the expert than I am with this, Maria. And it appears to me you're also quite the expert with other body parts," she added with a giggle.

"I'm just beginning to learn, Mama." She giggled back.