Joe turned to give Hawk a dubious look. "With all this potential, I think we're going to need to buy a bigger plane. Something that might carry a bulldozer." His friend's expression was unreadable but Joe suspected he was harboring some of the same concerns. If the lodge's exterior was any clue, the interior was probably uninhabitable, which left the three of them essentially homeless. Until Tanner's carpentry skills could be proved, they might as well pitch a tent. "Let's see how bad it is," he muttered, crossing the threshold.

Dust motes drifted in the shaft of sunlight that streamed through the hole in the roof. A ragged collection of hand-hewn furniture lay scattered around the room, bits of stuffing littering the floor. A huge moose head stared down at them from above the stone fireplace, as if mocking their high expectations.

"It's not so bad," Tanner said, slowly taking in the disrepair. "Once the roof is patched and we've cleaned up a bit, it will be just fine."

"Fine for raccoons and other wildlife," Joe replied. "We've barely got a roof over our head, O'Neill. And you forget that the nights here are a lot colder than in Seattle."

"Come on, Brennan, where's your sense of adventure?" Tanner teased. "So we'll be roughing it for a while. Suck it up and be a man."

Joe shook his head. "I guess I can always sleep in the cabin of the Otter."

"Or under the stars," Hawk said, distracted by his survey of the hearth. He looked up into the chimney. "Squirrels," was his only comment.

Joe considered his friend's suggestion. For Hawk, sleeping in the wild was no great hardship. In fact, Joe suspected his friend would revel in the rustic living conditions. Hawk would no longer have to leave home to get a wilderness fix as he had done in Seattle, sometimes disappearing for two or three weeks without a word. His buddy was always up for an adventure, the more challenging and spontaneous, the better.