The days and nights that passed until the coming of the expected one were fraught with torture. Charmian was not afraid in the general meaning of the word, but the mysterious sink, so serene and quiet and remote, awed her and filled her with strange forebodings that she could not shuffle off. She spent the days at gathering acorns, scolded at frequently by Douglas squirrels who claimed the entire crop between the valley walls. The piñon nuts, too, they considered theirs, and told her so with angry chatterings, made more emphatic by the gestures of their jerking tails. A slight midnight rain brought to life near the river a bed of mushrooms of a variety which she had often gathered on the Marin hills across the bay from San Francisco. These she garnered eagerly, and they grew in quantities. She feasted on fresh ones for several meals, dipping them in thin batter and frying them in bacon grease, or stewing them. Many she dried. And then she bethought herself to dry wild grapes and huckleberries, whereupon a new and engrossing task took form. All day long she managed to keep busy. This helped to keep away the blues, and at night she found herself so weary that sleep came easily. She had lighted her signal fire, heaping on green boughs to make dense smoke. There was little wind in the valley, and the smoke streamed aloft in a graceful spiral above the treetops. Every morning she rebuilt the fire and heaped on boughs when it was burning brightly. And now came a day when she stood often at the edge of the grove and scanned the zigzag trail into the sink with her binoculars. Or, gathering nuts and acorns and mushrooms in the open, stopped her work and trained her glasses about every fifteen minutes. And at noon one day she was rewarded by the sight of a tiny speck descending along the trail. She shouted in her eagerness and loneliness, unmindful that her lover was miles away. She glanced once to make sure that the smoke was still streaming aloft from her signal fire, then began running toward the river. If she could bring herself to cross the log bridge she could run into the open on the other side and travel a long way in the direction of the northern cliffs before Andy had reached the bottom of the sink. She hesitated only a little when she reached the fallen tree, then climbed astride it and worked her way over the boiling water, gripping with hands and calves. They sighted each other in one of the level meadows of the river bottom. Andy shouted to her; she shrilled a glad reply. Then both started running, came together panting for breath, and hung in each other’s arms.