They crossed the ship canal into Houghton and worked their way south through Atlantic Mine, South Range, and Trimountain, to the village of Painesdale, where they found numerous guards patrolling the streets. The weather was sweltering again. Last week thermometers had climbed above 100 degrees, and tonight felt like 90. Rather than take a room in a hotel or boardinghouse, the two men found a field near the Pilgrim River, parked, and put their bedrolls under the Ford. Bapcat said, “When I was a boy at the orphanage, we sometimes went camping by the Pilgrim River. It was rich in brook trout. I remember a lot more trees then.” “Mines require timber shoring,” Zakov reminded him. “Shoring requires large timber, not the small trees that were here.” “Time passes; trees grow, and some die. Like people,” the Russian said philosophically. “They don’t grow to the size mines need—not in that short a time.
