Posted As Missing

Chapter Eighteen

"We should think of cooking dinner," David said, looking at his watch and winding it. "It's almost five. We have about an hour and a half of daylight left before we have to turn off the stove. Though I much prefer eating later, we need hot food for the night. The sun will soon be around the edge of the gully, and it will cool quickly."

"I can put together a big stew in short order. Carrots, turnips, onions, diced sausage then diced potatoes to thicken," Rachel said. "I'd love to brown the onions first, but the aroma might carry too far. Hold the garlic also. Safer to do a blander stew."

Maria pointed to a block of gabbro. "That rock over there, we can set-up the stove behind it, it's hidden from the entrance and not much more than two metres from here. We can sit inside, keep warm and out of sight while it cooks."

"And we can sit back enjoying cheese, crispbread and wine while we wait," David smiled and shrugged. "This is a spa, after all. Dining is rather refined at spas, from what I've seen. I'll try to convert a piece from that splintered tree trunk into a cheese board. You girls get dinner going."

"Have you something to cut it with?" Rachel asked.

"I have a folding knife. We have Herzog's sharp blade."

"I have a wire saw, a surgical bone saw in my pack. We use it to cut firewood up here when we're camping. I'll get it."

"Oh, my! That looks familiar," he said as she handed him the coiled piece. "Conrad had one exactly like this. He told me he got it from a surgeon from Vienna whom he used to guide in the mountains. We used it a lot in the valleys and up the ridges."

"Edom was given this one by one of his good wine customers, a surgeon from Freiburg..." Rachel paused and looked into David's eyes. "So who's Conrad?"

"An Austrian mountain guide, I met him in the mountains four years ago. The Alpine Club had brought him in to help expand its programs, summer climbing camps, instruction, guiding and so on. The club was newly founded, and he had a lot of spare time, so he climbed mostly solo until we met."

"So that's where your Austrian accent comes from," Maria said. "I was wondering."

"Yes, a wonderful friend. I learned so much from him besides the German. I wonder what he's doing now with the war..." David shook his head. "But, to present things. We have much to do."

They all went to work.

David examined the short piece of shattered tree trunk lying at the edge of the slab. He looked up to see where it might have come from and saw clinging to the cliff a thick, broken trunk with a ring of new branches reaching up toward the light past its splintered head.

Might have blown apart from a lightning strike, could be simply a windfall, but whatever the cause, it was a few years ago. The wood is now nicely seasoned.

He selected a section of a long tapering splinter and cut it off where it was about six inches wide and a little over an inch thick. With the saw a foot farther along, he made a second cut, and another foot farther along, he made a third. He had two foot-long slabs an inch and a quarter thick, one tapering from about six to seven inches wide, the other more regular.

As David sawed, he had thought of Conrad.

Strange. He's the only person I've been close with since Sister Clemencia. The only one I've felt free around... The only one I've allowed near is more the point.

He moved to a flat area of sandstone and sat to begin easing the slab's edges and corners. He then sanded the gently arched top face of the larger slab of wood.