“I wasn’t myself at the time,” Jimmy answered blandly. “Wait till I get my strength back and my true nature will show. Ugh Ugh, the ape man, that’s me. Half Neanderthal and half sleek black leopard.” He beat his chest and coughed.
“Are those the proportions? The Neanderthal strain seems dominant.”
“Don’t be disrespectful. Remember, you are my debtor.”
“I think you read the backs of those cards. They are getting to be like waffles.” When rescued, Jimmy had had on him a pack of playing cards, and had later explained that they were survival equipment.
“In the first place,” he had said, “if I got lost I could sit down and play solitaire. Pretty soon somebody would come along and”
“Tell you to play the black ten on the red jack. We’ve heard that one.”
“Quiet, Rod. In the second place, Jack, I expected to team with old Stoneface here. I can always beat him at cribbage but he doesn’t believe it. I figured that during the test I could win all his next year’s allowance. Survival tactics.”
Whatever his reasoning, Jimmy had had the cards. The three played a family game each evening at a million plutons a point. Jacqueline stayed more or less even but Rod owed Jimmy several hundred millions. They continued the discussion that evening over their game. Rod was still wary of advertising their hideout.
“We might burn a smoke signal somewhere, though,” he said thoughtfully. “Then keep watch from a safe spot. Cut ’em, Jim.”
“Consider the relative risks a five, just what I needed! If you put the fire far enough away to keep this place secret, then it means a trek back and forth at least twice a day. With all that running around you’ll use up your luck; one day you won’t come back. It’s not that I’m fond you, but it would bust up the game. Whose crib?”
“Jack’s. But if we burn it close by and in sight, then we sit up here safe and snug. I’ll have my back to the wall facing the path, with Jack’s phht gun in my lap. If an unfriendly face sticks up blooie! Long pig for dinner. But if we like them, we cut them into the game.
“Your count.”
“Fifteen six, fifteen twelve, a pair, six for jacks and the right jack. That’s going to cost you another million, my friend.”
“One of those jacks is a queen,” Rod said darkly.
“Sure enough? You know, it’s getting too dark to play. Want to concede?”
They adopted Jim’s scheme. It gave more time for cribbage and ran Rod’s debt up into billions. The signal fire was kept burning on the shelf at the downstream end, the prevailing wind being such that smoke usually did not blow back into the cave when the wind did shift was unbearable; they were forced to flee, eyes streaming.
This happened three times in four days. Their advertising had roused no customers and they were all get’ting tired of dragging up dead wood for fuel and green branches for smoke. The third time they fled from smoke Jimmy said, “Rod, I give up. You win. This is not the way to do it.”
“No!”
“Huh? Have a heart, chum. I can’t live on smoke no vitamins. Let’s run up a flag instead. I’ll contribute my shirt.”
Rod thought about it. “We’ll do that.”
“Hey, wait a minute. I was speaking rhetorically. I’m the delicate type. I sunburn easily.”
“You can take it easy and work up a tan. We’ll use your shirt as a signal flag. But we’ll keep the fire going, too. Not up on the shelf, but down there on that mud flat, maybe.”
“And have the smoke blow right back into our summer cottage.”
“Well, farther downstream. We’ll make a bigger fire and a column of smoke that can be seen a long way. The flag we will put up right over the cave.”
“Thereby inviting eviction proceedings from large, hairy individuals with no feeling for property rights.”
“We took that chance when we decided to use a smoke signal. Let’s get busy.”
Rod picked a tall tree on the bluff above. He climbed to where the trunk had thinned down so much that it would hardly take his weight, then spent a tedious hour topping it with his knife. He tied the sleeves of Jim’s shirt to it, then worked down, cutting foliage away as he went. Presently the branches became too large to handle with his knife, but the stripped main stem stuck up for several meters; the shirt could be seen for a long distance up and down stream. The shirt caught the wind and billowed; Rod eyed it, tired but satisfied it was unquestionably a signal flag.