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immediately raised its tail and aimed at him—from six feet away—but held fire.
    Brian sat very still and the skunk seemed to shrug and then lowered its tail and went back to snooping around the fire. When it didn’t find anything it looked once more at the screened tent, snorted and waddled off into the night.
    Brian smiled as he watched it leave. He didn’t know if it was a female but thought of it that way because the only other skunk he’d known closely had been a female that had “adopted” him and moved in with him when he’d spent the winter in the North. She had saved him from a bear and he would always have a soft spot for skunks.
    In the east the sky was faintly light and Brian decided to get up and get ready. The pilot had said daylight-thirty and that would be in not much over an hour.
    He made a small fire and put some water on to boil and dropped a pinch of tea in the water. While it was heating and boiling he rolled his bag and took the tent down and repacked it.
    For a time he had nothing to do and he sat watching the fire, feeling hunger come back. The fish and broth had filled him but hadn’t lasted long and he didn’t have time now to fish and cook before it was time to leave. Hunger was an old friend. Once it had been an enemy and he had panicked whenever he felt the edges of it, but now he knew he wouldn’t die if he didn’t eat right away, or even this day, and he mentally tightened his belt.
    Besides, he had some sugar cubes. He put three of them in the tea and drank it out of the pot as soon as it had cooled enough, and the hunger was knocked down.
    He used the empty pot to pour water on the fire, killed it completely and stirred the ashes into slush. Then he loaded his pack and sleeping bag back on the plane and sat on the dock waiting.
    Somewhere nearby a loon called for the morning, the sound flowing gently across the lake, and it seemed then, for a moment, as if he’d never been gone. As if the past two years and more had not existed and he’d stayed in the bush.
    This lasted until he heard a motor and looked up to see an old Jeep Cherokee rattling down the ruts to the shack. There was a canoe on top and the pilot and two men inside.
    Brian stood and waited as the Jeep parked. The three of them got out and took the canoe down and moved onto the dock.
    He’d been dreading meeting the fishermen. All the magazines he’d read and some of the shows he’d watched on television had left a bad taste in his mouth about so-called professional fishermen. He didn’t feel like explaining himself to anybody. The pilot knew who he was, knew the Small horns and that he was going to visit them—or assumed it. Now there were two others who would ask questions.
    But Brian was wrong.
    The men were old—past sixty—but still moving well. They took the canoe down and tied it on the off float of the plane, the one away from the dock, with practiced ease. They looked so much alike that Brian thought they must be brothers. Square-jawed and balding; what hair they had was gray and bristly. They smiled easily, said hello to Brian, but didn’t ask more from him.
    The plane was almost full by the time the men got their gear behind the rear seat. Brian moved his packs back as well and slid into the rear seat. The plane only took four adults so one of the old men sat next to him and oddly enough it was Brian who wanted to question them. Their fishing equipment wasn’t new or high-tech. The reels were old casting reels, obviously well kept, and the men handled them with an almost loving care.
    Brian was silent until they were in the air and then he turned to the man next to him. “Do you fish a lot?”
    The man had been looking out the window, down at the lakes, and he turned and smiled. “Once a year. We go up into the bush lakes and fish for muskies. We catch and release them—actually, we hardly ever catch them because we cast and use plugs we made ourselves. I haven’t caught one now in . . . Ben,