"I thought it was Rocky," said the Earth Mother.
"No," said Markel, covering the man's face.
In a shed behind one of the shacks he found a pick and shovel, with which he dug a grave. It took him most of the afternoon in the hot sun. Then he buried the old man, rolling him into the grave with the pick handle.
"We're going back," he said, walking to where the Earth Mother sat on the steps of the store.
"Where? What for?"
"Back to the ledge, to wait for Rocky. We can't spend the rest of our lives running from him, and wasting ammunition on every man wearing black."
They went back then to the waterfall, where Markel could command a slope on three sides and where the cliff protected his back. They settled down to wait for Rocky and they both knew Rocky would find them. Markel waited grimly, because if his theory were correct Rocky was a threat to his dream.
Against the cliff Markel built a crude lean-to and the Earth Mother picked flowers, hanging them around the walls. Markel, working constantly, made several traps for Rocky in the area around the ledge. When he finished these there was nothing to do but wait.
Markel liked it there. Big autumn clouds shadowed the ledge; mist drifted in the green valleys in the mornings and at night the loons called through the wind in the woods. The Earth Mother grew tan in the sun and she sang to herself. Markel sat by the waterfall, cleaning and polishing the M-1. And, inevitably, one morning Rocky came.