The Winds of Autumn by Janette Oke Read Free Book Online

their shoes as close to the fire as they dared, hoping they would be dry enough to wear come morning.
    Then we all crawled into the shelter and settled ourselves in our bed. It was decided that since Avery was the most chilled, he would sleep closest to the fire. And it would be his job to keep it stoked during the night.
    Willie was the most used to sleeping with someone else, so he elected to sleep in the middle. I had the spot at the back— away from the fire and toward the stacked tree limbs that made our shelter.
    It wasn’t the best night I have ever spent, I can tell you that. The prickly little spikes of spruce needles poking up through the blankets scratched you in places where you didn’t need or want to be scratched. The branches on the tree limbs, at the back of the shelter kept swiping at my face every time I moved or even breathed. Avery hogged the blankets, even if he was the closest to the fire. He seemed to roll himself in them, and I hardly had enough at the back to reach around myself.
    I slept fitfully. Willie wasn’t as good about sleeping in the middle as I had thought he would be. He kept twisting this way and that, and in our cramped quarters there just wasn’t room for twisting. Avery slept. In fact, he slept so well he never did replenish the fire, and it was stone cold before it could do us much good. Come morning we were all shivering, the shoes were still soupy wet, and the stack of wood was just as high as it had been the night before.
    We woke up grumpy and stiff before the sun was even in the sky. I fought my way out from the tree branches at the back and over Willie and Avery, pulled on my cold shoes and started to work on another fire, my fingers feeling stiff and icy as I tried to hold the matches steady.
    I found the beat-up tin that Aunt Lou had filled with pancake fixings, added some crik water to the dry ingredients and poured some of the dough into the frying pan even before it was heated enough to sizzle. They didn’t turn out too well—least not those first ones. They were still pale and soggy and wouldn’t flip worth nothing, but we ate them anyway. They weren’t too bad with maple syrup poured over them. By the time I got to the end of the batch, the pan was too hot and they were burning even before they got a chance to cook.
    In spite of all that, they tasted so good I whipped up another batch and we ate them, too. That finished off our pancake fixings. What Aunt Lou had thought would feed us for three breakfasts, we had managed to polish off in one. But then, we reasoned, we hadn’t eaten too well the day before.
    The crik-drowned shoes were still wet, and the clothes and blankets in need of more drying time, so we knew it would be foolish to break up camp yet. We decided to stay right where we were.
    “We have to stay here and get dried out,” said Willie. “We only have one more night to stay. There is just no way we can get up in the mornin’, walk the rest of the way to the spring and then get all the way back home again in one day.”
    “You mean we have to turn around from here and go on home without even seein’ the spring we came all this way to see?” moaned Avery.
    “Well, I’m sure not tryin’ to walk on to that spring in my bare feet,” said Willie. “You wantin’ to?”
    Now I knew Avery had never gone barefoot in the summer months like I had done for many summers. But I knew right well if it came down to seeing or missing that spring, I sure wouldn’t have hesitated to go shoeless, even if it was the fall and even if there wasn’t a decent path through the bush, but I didn’t say anything.
    “Doesn’t seem fair,” grumbled Avery. “Here we were tellin’ all the fellas how we were gonna hike to the spring, and now we hafta go home and say we didn’t see the spring at all.”
    I was feeling pretty low myself.
    “Josh can still go—he’s got shoes,” Willie suddenly cut in.
    Now I hadn’t even thought of going on all alone. But when