As it got dark she punched the dash light switch on the mule and the light came on. It looked like it was full brilliance. The battery was still good. She turned it off quickly. She must not waste this. It was her source of power for the cell phone as well as light if she needed it. Although the phone had not brought rescue it was a link to the outside. It had responded to her. She wondered if anyone had seen her messages.

She attached the flashlight to the grab bar with a piece of duct tape and turned it on, then pulled out a pair of slacks, cut the legs off them and wrapped them around her legs and secured them with a few patches of duct tape. She laughed for the first time today as she looked at her work. Her legs were held together with duct tape. It was funny. She urinated and changed her Kotex again. Predictably her period was very heavy. She took out another bottle of root beer to drink and two food bars. She felt the bottle. It was warmer than the outside air. She took two bottles and placed them inside her sweater. The limited warmth felt good and it would be warm when she drank it. It wouldn’t taste great but it wouldn’t cool her. She turned off the flashlight except when she needed it.

She pulled out the cell phone and checked for messages. There was one.

Her sister’s office e-mail account had responded to her with an out of office reply. Her sister left the office before the first message was delivered. She turned on the radio and scanned the channels again. There were several conversations but none of them answered her. By then it was dark and she put the radio away, covered the backpacks and lay back. She slept till the sun came up.

She took care of her personal needs as soon as she got awake. She found a pack of Kleenex in the one backpack and used two of them and some water that had pooled in the cup holders to wash her face and hands. She did not want to waste drinking water. It probably wasn’t important to do but she felt better. The others had commitments for the day and were due to be here by evening. If they didn’t find her in the cabin they would certainly start to look for her. If they noticed the mule was gone that would be a plus.

She ate another food bar and a pack of snacks for breakfast and drank another bottle of the root beer. She knew it had sugar, necessary for her to keep up energy. She had enough food bars and snacks to last a couple days. At the present consumption the Root Beer would last two to three days but she had water for a week without drinking rain water. She had not needed to use the dash light and had not used the flashlight more than a few minutes overnight so both batteries were still up and she had spares. She plugged in the cell phone till it was fully charged then unplugged it to save the mule battery. She made another radio sweep, had one person answer her briefly but when she responded the person was not there. She had two more sets of radio batteries and the one in the radio was still showing nearly full charge.

Noon came and she ate again. She reached down and felt the back of her legs. Just touching them hurt. Her back and shoulders ached. At first she thought they were hurt, then she realized she had been sitting in one position for over a day. She tried to stretch and felt the bones in her legs grind again. She got out the pliers, the straps on her legs had some play, she tightened them. With that done she was able to move enough to relieve the tension in her upper body.