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maybe have been enough for one person, but with two it was skimpy—still, there were some and they worked through the brush in their underwear, eating every berry they could find.
    They also found some chokecherries—what Brian had called gut cherries—but Brian shook his head. “Later, if we have to, and then in small amounts.”
    Brian kept moving along the lake, waiting, walking, and waiting, and he realized at length what he was waiting for—what was in the back of his mind.
    Luck.
    You move and you watch and you work hard and you just keep doing that until luck comes. If it’s bad luck you ride it out and if it comes the other way and you have good luck you’re ready for it.
    They had good luck in the middle of the afternoon. And as so often seems to happen, the good luck came about because of bad luck.

8
    B rian had moved out ahead, down and to the right of Derek, and was working closer to the edge of the lake. Derek worked up and away from the lake, looking for more berries as they moved.
    “Stay in sight of me,” Brian had told him. “Don’t get away from the lake so far that you can’t see, and if you run into a bear don’t look into his eyes.”
    “Bear?”
    “They hunt for food, too, and eat berries. We’ll probably see one. Just back away and don’t look at them—I read that it’s a threat when you do that.”
    “Bear?”
    Brian was glad to see that his warning had been taken and Derek was always within sight.
    Here the land rose as they approached the northern end of the lake. It came up in a low roll that made a sizable hill next to the lake. Because of this rise and the freezing and thawing of the lake, the movement of the ice each winter, the land had been cut away, washed still further away by heavy rains—Brian could see the work of last night’s rain—and all this chewing at the side of the hill had left something close to a small cliff.
    It wasn’t terribly high—thirty feet or so—but it was steep and very unstable, the edge loose and soft from the rain.
    Brian had moved close to the edge. Down below he could see into the green water of the lake and there were fish moving and the sight made him realize how hungry he was becoming. It had been over a day now—they had eaten normally the day before when they flew to the lake—and the hunger was becoming demanding.
    He turned to see Derek, who was coming up the back of the hill. “See the fish—”
    Brian had come too close to the soft soil at the edge, and before he could finish the sentence, the bank let go.
    He dropped like an anvil, his finger still pointing at the fish. Halfway down the face of the cut there was a small outcropping of soil and rocks mixed, held in place because it was made of clay and chalk bound together, and Brian hit this mound on his stomach. Hard.
    “Ooomph!”
He heard himself sound like the air going out of a tire, then he bounced up and sideways and continued on down to the bottom in a shower of mud and rocks, to where a small gravel beach led into the lake.
    I don’t think I’ll move
, he thought, lying flat on his face.
Ever again.
    Derek was by his side in moments, frowning in worry. “Are you hurt?”
    I wonder why people ask that,
Brian thought.
Did he think I could do this and
not
hurt?
    But he shook his head. “No. At least I don’t think so…”
    He rose, or put his hands down to push himself up, and as he made the move he noticed the rocks around him on the beach. Most of them were round and smooth, rubbled by wind and water and weather and time, but mixed in with them were black, hardened shards.
    Where he’d fallen there were fresh ones, not weathered, and he saw that they had come from the bank where he had bounced.
    “Look,” Brian held up one of the black stones. It was chipped and layered. “I think it might be the same kind of stone I used to make fire with the hatchet.”
    “Flint,” Derek said. “I think it is.”
    Brian took out his knife, opened it and locked the