Smeds could have killed him then, but it was too much work to get out of his pack straps and go over and do it.

Maybe the pack was the worst part of it. He had to lug eighty pounds of junk on his back, and what they had eaten of the food part hadn't lightened the load a bit.

They reached their destination shortly after noon eight days after they departed Oar. Smeds stood just inside the edge of the forest and looked out at the Barrowland. "That's what all the fuss was about? Don't look like shit to me." He sloughed his pack, plopped down on it, leaned against a tree, and closed his eyes.

"It ain't what it used to be," Old Man Fish agreed.

"You got a name besides Old Man?"

"Fish."

"I mean a front name."

"Fish is good."

Laconic bastard.

Timmy asked, "That our tree out there?"

Tully answered, "Got to be. It's the only one there is."

Timmy said, "I love you, little tree. You're going to make me rich."

Tully said, "Fish, I think we ought to rest up some before we go after it."

Smeds cracked an eyelid and glimmed his cousin. That was as close as his cousin had come to complaining since the expedition had started. But Tully was a big-time bitcher. Smeds had wondered how long he would hold out. Tully's silence so far had helped Smeds keep going. If Tully wanted it bad enough to take what he had been, then maybe it really was as good as he talked.

The big hit? The one they had been seeking all their lives? Could it be? For that reason alone Smeds would endure.

Fish agreed with Tully. "I wouldn't start before tomorrow night. At the earliest. Maybe the night after. We have a lot of scouting to do. We'll all have to learn the ground the way we learn the geography of a lover." Smeds frowned. Was this no-talk Fish? "We have to find a secure place to camp and establish a secondary base for emergencies."