They were urban people. Their families had lived for generations in the crowded cities of Europe. They had no tradition of self sufficiency. When they were hungry they sent out for pies or fish and chips. All the necessities of life were at the corner store.
Now, in the western wilderness nothing came that easy. If they wanted milk, they had to have a cow and that meant taking care of it - milking twice a day and keeping her bred back. They thought they had known about making do back in the Gorbels but how little they planned before striking out into the unknown.
They had no money left, though being so far from town and with no neighbors all the money in the world wouldn't have been much help. They were one family alone. Barbara and William and their children, Alex and Isabel and the baby Betty.
Barbara and William built a cabin. They built it twice because the first time it collapsed half built. Broke Barbara's leg. They used up the last bottle of whiskey setting it. They rethought their design and the cabin now stood fairly solid with a lean-to for the cow. They cut wild hay and stored it in the cabin and the back of the lean-to. There was no crop. It would be a hungry winter and a starving spring. They had a fifty pound sack of beans. That's all.
But they could fish. They could snare small game. They could kill deer and elk.
William shot two deer one morning. He dressed them out and hung them in the branches of a Doug fir while they decided what to do with them. Barbara said they would cut the meat in strips and dry it as the Indians did.
They started a fire in a stump on the cleared land and they fed it with green branches and debris. Alex and Isabel scoured around for more green wood. They wandered away from the cabin and into the forest. As they stood in a sunny clearing eating the last of the huckleberries, Isabel saw the kitty-cat.
``Look Alex, a kitty!''
``A big kitty!'' said Alex.
The mountain lion sauntered up to them, serene and satiated from a feast of two deer he had found hanging in a tree. He allowed a child to caress him once or twice before continuing on his regal way.