They camped that night in a little vale. The floor of it was white with the bones of woods goats that had tarried too long the fall before and got caught by an early blizzard. There was still flesh on the bones and scavenger rodents scuttled among the carcasses, feasting.

“We’ll split up now,” he told the others the next morning.

He assigned each of them his position; Steve Schroeder to parallel his course thirty miles to his right, Gene Taylor to go thirty miles to his left, and Tony Chiara to go thirty miles to the left of Taylor.

“We’ll try to hold those distances,” he said. “We can’t look over the country in detail that way but it will give us a good general survey of it. We don’t have too much time left by now and we’ll make as many miles into the north as we can each day. The woods goats will tell us when it’s time for us to turn back.”

They parted company with casual farewells but for Steve Schroeder, who smiled sardonically at the bones of the woods goats in the vale and asked:

“Who’s supposed to tell the woods goats?”

Tip, the black, white-nosed mocker on Lake’s shoulder, kept twisting his neck to watch the departure of the others until he had crossed the next hill and the others were hidden from view.

“All right, Tip,” he said then. “You can unwind your neck now.”

“Unwind⁠—all right⁠—all right,” Tip said. Then, with a sudden burst of energy which was characteristic of mockers, he began to jiggle up and down and chant in time with his movements, “All right all right all right all right⁠—”

“Shut up!” he commanded. “If you want to talk nonsense I don’t care⁠—but don’t say ‘all right’ any more.”

“All right,” Tip agreed amiably, settling down. “Shut up if you want to talk nonsense. I don’t care.”

“And don’t slaughter the punctuation like that. You change the meaning entirely.”