in! And I
can see cleared ground, and what I think are houses, inside a
stockade--"

* * * * *

Murray Hughes walked around the corner of the cabin, into the morning
sunlight, lacing his trousers, with his hunting shirt thrown over his
bare shoulders, and found, without much surprise, that his father had
also slept late. Verner Hughes was just beginning to shave. Inside the
kitchen, his mother and the girls were clattering pots and skillets;
his younger brother, Hector, was noisily chopping wood. Going through
the door, he filled another of the light-metal basins with hot water,
found his razor, and went outside again, setting the basin on the
bench.

Most of the ware in the Hughes cabin was of light-metal; Murray and
his father had mined it in the dead city up the river, from a place
where it had floated to the top of a puddle of slag, back when the
city had been blasted, at the end of the Old Times. It had been hard
work, but the stuff had been easy to carry down to where they had
hidden their boat, and, for once, they'd had no trouble with the
Scowrers. Too bad they couldn't say as much for yesterday's hunting
trip!

As he rubbed lather into the stubble on his face, he cursed with
irritation. That had been a bad-luck hunt, all around. They'd gone out
before dawn, hunting into the hills to the north, they'd spent all day
at it, and shot one small wild pig. Lucky it was small, at that.
They'd have had to abandon a full-grown one, after the Scowrers began
hunting them. Six of them, as big a band as he'd ever seen together at
one time, and they'd gotten between them and the stockade and forced
them to circle miles out of their way. His father had shot one, and
he'd had to leave his hatchet sticking in the skull of another, when
his rifle had misfired.

That meant a trip to the gunsmith's, for a new hatchet and to have the
mainspring of the rifle replaced. Nobody could afford to have a rifle
that couldn't be trusted, least of all a hunter and prospector. And
he'd had words with Alex Barrett, the gunsmith, just the other day.
Not that Barrett wouldn't be more than glad to do business with him,
once he saw that hard tool-steel he'd dug out of that place down the
river. Hardest steel he'd ever found, and hadn't been atom-spoiled,
either.

He cleaned, wiped and stropped his razor and put it back in the case;
he threw out the wash-water on the compost-pile, and went into the
cabin, putt