David stood and adjusted the pistol case on his belt. "Stay here, relax and think. I'm going to make a reconnaissance of the area to find out if we're alone up here. I might be gone half an hour, don't worry. We need to be thorough."

He picked his way through the trees, over and around large blocks of rock. Looks like a granitic intrusion, he thought, running his mind back to his geology lectures at the Alpine Club camps.

Surrounding softer rock has eroded and left it exposed and proud. Wonderfully frost shattered through the ages. Amazing the power of freezing water.

Several good camp possibilities intrigued him as he explored along the crest of the rib, pausing often to listen. He found no sign of anyone having been in the area, no broken twigs, nothing discarded. Then he rounded the shoulder of the rib and saw the valley spread out below about five hundred feet down.

A hundred and fifty metres. I need to use metric; Maria doesn't understand the British system.

Carefully making his way down to the top of a huge block, he moved to its edge.

This must be the lookout Mama talked about.

He reclined on the warm granite near its lip and looked down. He saw the top of the continuation of the rib all the way down to the line of trees beside the road and railway. He saw the small slough was still covered with a tangle of bushes. He saw the small river, he saw Switzerland, he saw the jagged horizon of the Alps. The problem was, he couldn't see Fritz.

I wonder where they are. Surely they must be guarding this place, it's far too easy to cross. Deserters, men avoiding conscription, escaped prisoners and refugees heading out, spies and saboteurs going both ways.

He looked at the edge of a town in the valley and unfolded his map.

Eggingen appears to be a fair-sized place, probably a thousand or more people and only three hundred metres from the border. They likely have a force based there. Those soldiers who stopped us.

With his finger, he traced the Swiss border on the map and stopped at a place named Erzingen.

This town looks much bigger than Eggingen, and it's also directly beside the border and only five kilometres along. Would Fritz be based there?

He looked across the valley at the low hills on the other side, but he couldn't see Erzingen. Hidden on the other side of the ridge.

Maybe that's where the Germans are based in this area. Maybe not; there's no rail line to it on the map.

He rolled onto his back and stared at the sky while he tried to clear his mind.

Utterly stupid, David. Endangering Maria and Rachel. Should have thought of that. So stupid of me.

He let his mind wander through possibilities of how to proceed.

Don't have enough information. Don't know where Fritz is. Don't know what he's doing.

After listening for sounds, he rolled over to his belly and watched for movement below for several more minutes. There were occasional automobiles on the road, a horse and waggon, a few people walking, but there was nothing he could identify as military activity.

Tough to see detail. Long shadows this time of day.

Rolling onto his back again, he let out a deep sigh.

So strange. Don't want to leave her, even though I know I must. Never before felt this... This attraction. This attachment. Love, I guess. I've told her I love her. Rachel said women enjoy hearing that. I wonder if I mean it.

He blew out a deep breath

But what's love? I love the mountains. I love life. I love good food and that Gewürztraminer... But loving a woman. That's different. That's exclusive. One woman for life. Maybe I actually do love her that way. God, what a dangerous mess I've gotten her into. Have to find a way to get her out of it.

He turned onto his belly again to look into the valley.

Tomorrow. We'll look for Fritz tomorrow. Now we need to make ourselves safe and comfortable for the night.

He got up and began looking for a suitable place to pitch the tent and saw a few possibilities, none of which completely satisfied him.

Nothing big enough that's level. We could make do, but there must be something better.

As he ventured around to the other side of the rib to search, he felt a coolness drifting across the ridge. A small cascade of water was tumbling over the rocks in a shallow gully through the trees just beyond the edge of the granite.

He followed the line of granite up a short distance and arrived at a rather level expanse beneath a thick slab leaning against a huge block.

We won't need the tent — that's a great natural roof — a small patio also.

After checking his watch, he headed up toward the girls. Six minutes later he rejoined them and said, "There's a suitable camp ten minutes down, just before the rounding of the ridge. Our light won't be seen from below. A great lookout over the valley is a short distance beyond and around to the right. To the left, there's running water close at hand. We have a home for the night."

They hoisted their packs and quietly wound their way down through the broken granite and its cover of trees. The going was difficult for Rachel, with its mix of large steps, unyielding sloping surfaces and narrow traverses, but she followed David's slow lead without hesitation or complaint.

"What a splendid spot this is," Maria said, as she stepped around the corner onto the expanse of level granite and spotted the grotto. "This looks very comfortable and private."

"The water is across there thirty or forty feet." He pointed to the left. "And over there," he said, turning around, "about the same distance is a conveniently cleft rock, which will make a fine latrine. We can pause here for the night and think."

"How's the foot, Mama?" Maria asked as she doffed her pack.

"It's throbbing and aching. The boot is now so tight."

"Let's get you some cold towels." David stepped across to Maria as she dug into the pack to the supply. "I'll be right back. Mama, you lie back and put your foot up, Maria will remove your boot."

When he got back, Rachel was lying on folded bedrolls with her foot up on a padded block of rock, and Maria was massaging her ankle. "There's no local pain at the injury," Maria said, "She says it's only a general ache. It's quite hot, but I think all our feet are."

He lifted the foot, took a quick look, then wrapped it in the two cold, wet towels. "Doesn't appear swollen, but the laced boot prevented that. Let's just keep it from swelling now the boot's off. How's the cold feel, Mama?"

"That is such a welcome relief. Massage my calf; it's so tense. I guess I was using different muscles, or using them differently to ease the load."

"It looks like there'll be sun in here through the gap in the trees from mid-morning until late afternoon," he said as he gently manipulated her calf muscle. "Does that feel good? Do you want more pressure?"

"Wonderful. It's wonderfully relieving just like that. That was a long day, but I'm so glad we did it. Made no sense to stop part way here. This is such a marvellous little hiding place. I can't see anyone wandering through here with such easy terrain along both sides."

"Twenty feet down and thirty feet across there." David tilted his head toward the right side of the rib. "There's an ideal lookout. It's probably the one you were talking about. From there I could see the entire rib top all the way down to the line of trees beside the road and railway. The small slough is still covered with a tangle of bushes and it leads across to the lines of trees which run along each side of the river, I forget its name, the one which forms the border."

"Oh, that feels so good, the massage. The river's the Wutach. So the slough is still bushy, what about the crop fields on the Swiss side? Is there still an open stretch from the trees along the stream to the start of the forested ridge?"

"There's two or three hundred yards of open pasture on the Swiss side before the treed slope heads up the other side of the valley. Sit up, you can see the forested ridge top over there, a little lower than we are. What do you know of Erzingen?"

"A large town, a few thousand people. There's a border post there, a customs station. At least there used to be. It's right on the border."

"And what about Eggingen? I could see a bit of the town around the end of the ridge." He continued massaging her calf.

"It's not as big. Maybe half the size, sitting at the junction of two valleys. It has a small train station so that might be a place to base a border guard. But there are so many small communities like it along the border. It's a strange bulge that the Canton of Schaffhausen makes into Germany. It's like a huge head on a thin neck. I forget exactly now, but I think something like a hundred and fifty kilometres around, and the neck is only four or five kilometres across, all on the north side of the Rhein."

"That's a lot of border for Fritz to patrol," David said as he continued massaging Rachel's calf. "They may be doing random patrols, they may be watching only selected places. How stable is the border? What's its history?"

"Edom said his grandfather had told him the last border disputes were the ones around Unterhallau, just across the ridge below us. These involved many square kilometres, including some of his land. Though the area had belonged to Canton Schaffhausen for many centuries, there were still some hunting rights belonging to the Counts of something or other, and to the Grand Duchy of Baden. Finally, in the late 1830s, with some land exchanges and money, a treaty was signed to settle the border as the Wutach."

"The sun is just sinking below the ridge. It'll start cooling quickly. You keep your foot up and dream up a nice dinner for us. Maria and I will set up camp. She'll be back in a moment with fresh cold towels, and I can continue the massage after we're established."

Camp was easy to set up since there was no need to build a shelter. While Maria unpacked, sorted and laid out their possessions and then started preparing a stew, David searched through the large variety of fractured granite from the close area. He had spotted two slabs about four inches thick, one roughly triangular, about twenty by thirty inches. The other was closer to rectangular, about thirty inches by fifteen with one of its long sides curved.

He lifted each of them to test their portability, then he selected five large blocks and tumbled them into the centre of the patio and adjusted their positions. Next, he set the triangular slab straddling three of the blocks and asked Maria to help him place the heavier rectangular piece. After inserting some smaller pieces to adjust the levels and stop a wobble, they had rather flat-topped granite table.

"That looks like the shape of the houses I drew as a child." Maria chuckled. "It's missing only the chimney and the curl of smoke. Can I move the stove onto it?"

"Let's use your little house roof for the kitchen, the stove can be the chimney. We can sit around the rectangular slab."

"This should be another twenty or thirty minutes." Maria looked up from the pot. "Katenspeck Eintopf is the speciality of the house this evening, a dish designed by our Küchenchef, Mama. We're waiting for the lentils and split peas to soften."

"How's your foot, Mama," David asked. "Do you want more cold towels, another calf massage?"

"I had forgotten all about it, totally captivated by watching you two. I guess it must be fine."

In the fading light, he brought two more cold towels from the stream, wrapped them around Rachel's ankle and sat massaging her calf as the dinner finished cooking.

"The swelling appears to be well in control." Rachel flexed and rotated her foot. "The sprain seems to be mending; there's much less ache now as I move it."

"That was a long day for you. I'm extremely proud of you for wanting to push onward each time I suggested we stop and make camp. You're a very strong woman."

"We've got to keep going, we have to keep living. We can't let a little pain get in the way. There is too much energy pushing us forward. All of us."

"But not together from here." David breathed another loud sigh. "We all know it's not safe for us to continue together. I'm a huge danger to you if I'm uncovered. We won't have a sloppy soldier a second time. That was blind luck. I forgot about the number."

Maria wiped her tears with the back of her hand. "I want to stay with you. I don't care how dangerous it is."

"We need to think rationally." David took her wet hand and pressed it lightly. "This seems a rather safe spot to sort out what we're going to do. We can pause here to observe what Fritz is doing down there, sense the best way to continue from here. But let's not concern ourselves about that now. Let's be here now, enjoy this dinner and each other."

They sat around the granite table quietly enjoying their bowls of stew with a candle lantern adding a soft, flickering light from the point of the kitchen slab.

The evening hadn't cooled as much as previous ones, and David suggested it was because they were now below six hundred metres in elevation, but also there was residual heat radiating from the dark grey granite after its day in the sun.

"This dish reminds me of the pea soup we had in Quebec at least twice a week while we were training, but this one is thicker and so much more delicious. How was it made?"

"Cut a bit of fat off a piece of farmhouse ham, render it and throw in half a diced onion to caramelise, add a clove of garlic and half a carrot finely diced and a dozen or so peppercorns," Maria said. "When the carrots start to brown add water, lentils and split peas. After half an hour add half the diced ham plus torn pleurottes and quartered morels. Add water as necessary as it simmers, covered. You don't need salt, there's enough in the ham. Then ten minutes before serving add the remaining diced ham."

"An old family recipe?"

"Yes, it goes back to a delightful camp on a granite ridge above the Wutach in 1915," Rachel said with a giggle. "It was created to make the best use of what we had."

"It's so delicious." He looked back and forth at the women as he nodded. "We need to continue with that theme. Examine what we have, discover what exists around us and sense how to make the best use of it all."