e plateau was turning brown and the streams were dry. They got enough
water, barely, by digging seep holes in the dry stream beds.

Lake's method of stalking unicorns under the concealment of a woods goat
skin had worked well only a few times. After that the unicorns learned
to swing downwind from any lone woods goats. If they smelled a man
inside the goat skin they charged him and killed him.

With the return of the last hunters everything was done that could be
done in preparation for summer. Inventory was taken of the total food
supply and it was even smaller than Lake had feared. It would be far
from enough to last until fall brought the game back from the north and
he instituted rationing much stricter than before.

The heat increased as the yellow sun blazed hotter and the blue sun grew
larger. Each day the vegetation was browner and a morning came when Lake
could see no green wherever he looked.

They numbered eleven hundred and ten that morning, out of what had so
recently been four thousand. Eleven hundred and ten thin, hungry
scarecrows who, already, could do nothing more than sit listlessly in
the shade and wait for the hell that was coming. He thought of the food
supply, so pitifully small, and of the months it would have to last. He
saw the grim, inescapable future for his charges: famine. There was
nothing he could do to prevent it. He could only try to forestall
complete starvation for all by cutting rations to the bare existence
level.

And that would be bare existence for the stronger of them. The weaker
were already doomed.

He had them all gather in front of the caves that evening when the
terrace was in the shadow of the ridge. He stood before them and spoke
to them:

"All of you know we have only a fraction of the amount of food we need
to see us through the summer. Tomorrow the present ration will be cut in
half. That will be enough to live on, just barely. If that cut isn't
made the food supply will be gone long before fall and all of us will
die.

"If anyone has any food of any kind it must be turned in to be added to
the total supply. Some of you may have thought of your children and
kept a little hidden for them. I can understand why you should do
that--but you must turn it in. There may possibly be some who hid food
for themselves, personally. If so, I give them the first and last
warning: turn it in tonight. If any hidden cache of food is found in the
future the one who hid it will