Wolf and Iron

CHAPTER 8

“Dad?” Merry said, and gave him a long look. “You’re sure?”

“He’s alone,” Sanderson answered. “I think he’ll do all right for us.”

Merry said nothing more. It had not been a father-daughter interchange. It had been a statement made by a leader to a subordinate.

“Still and all,” said Sanderson to Jeebee, “why don’t you tell Merry something more about yourself, the way you told me.”

Feeling more than a little awkward, Jeebee tried to explain some of the statistical exploration of the world economy he had been engaged in when the world itself collapsed. He got tangled up in his own explanations and finally gave up. But Merry’s tense animosity toward him, surprisingly, seemed to have relaxed. It was oddly as if both father and daughter looked for understandings outside and beyond normal verbal explanations.

“But this wolf of yours,” said Merry, after a moment when he finally fell silent, “how do you know he’s a wolf, and not just a dog that looks a lot like a wolf?”

This, too, was too complicated to explain. It was hard to explain a conviction born from experience in the hard logic of words. But long since Jeebee himself had given up all doubt.

“He’s not a dog,” said Jeebee.

“Could be a mix,” Sanderson put in, “Dog-wolf. But what difference does it make? Merry, why don’t you show Jeebee around everything.”

“Everything?” Merry frowned at her father.

“Well,” said Sanderson, “you don’t need to take him into our own rooms. But let him look inside the rest of the wagon, see the horses, and everything else.”

“How about having him bring that wolf of his in here first?” Merry asked.

“He won’t come,” said Jeebee. “Not with the rest of you here. You’re strange and he doesn’t trust you.”

“Been shot at, has he?” said Merry.

“Something like that,” said Sanderson, a touch of impatience in his voice. “Give him a quick look around, Merry. Then we can get going again.”

“Come on,” Merry said to Jeebee.

She wheeled her horse around and went back down alongside the wagon at a walk. Jeebee hurried to catch up with her. They were back at the end of the wagon in a few steps. Jeebee had expected to find the horses scattered all over, but they had simply stopped where they were and were peacefully cropping the grass of the median.

“Can you ride?” he heard Merry asking bluntly.

He turned to look up at her. With the shadow of that hat brim of hers over her blue eyes—it was a large, Stetson-like hat—she looked severe.

“Not really,” said Jeebee, uncertain what level of horseback skill she meant by “ride.”

“Well, you’re going to have to learn, then,” she said. “I’ll pick out the most easygoing riding horse we have for you to start learning on, but you better be prepared for something a little more than they’d have given you once at a for-hire riding stable.”

She lifted off a coil of rope that was fastened to her saddle, shook it out, and he saw that it was a lasso. Gathering it up again, she rode into the midst of the horses, dropped the loop expertly over the neck of a slim gray animal, and led it, plodding gently, back to Jeebee.

“Here, hold her,” she said, handing the rope of the lasso to Jeebee, so that his hands closed about it only some six inches from the neck of the horse. She dismounted and dropped her reins onto the ground. Her horse stood where it was. The gray mare Jeebee held looked at him with calm eyes.

“I’ll get some gear,” Merry said.

He watched her go and saw that the rear of the wagon was closed with a wooden back wall just like its front, with a regular door inset in it. A boxed-in single step below the door made it easy to reach the entrance from the ground. She went through the door and was gone only a little time before coming back with another saddle and a set of reins, the saddle riding on her forearm with the stirrup leathers dangling down on either side, and the metal stirrups themselves chiming together as she moved.

She put the bridle and saddle on, drew the cinch strap tight, and buckled it under the belly of the gray mare.

“All right now,” she said. “Mount up.”

Jeebee put down his two rifles, took hold of the saddle horn, found the stirrup with the toe of his boot, then stopped himself. He was on the horse’s right side instead of its left, the customary side for mounting.

“It’s all right,” said Merry as he started to go around the animal, with a touch of exasperation very like her father’s in her voice, “any of my horses you can mount from either side. They’ll stand if you drop the reins to the ground and lie down so you can lie between their legs and fire a rifle across their body, if you have to. But we’ll get to that later. Now, mount up!”

Jeebee hoisted himself clumsily into the saddle. His left toe searched for and found the other stirrup. He had a moment’s feeling almost of triumph.

“All right now,” said Merry, “walk her around a bit.”

Jeebee struck with both heels at the side of the horse under him. The mare leaped forward with a suddenness that almost unseated him and in panic he hauled back hard on the reins. The mare skidded to a stop and then began to back up.

“Loose those reins!” the voice of Merry shouted.

Jeebee fumbled with the reins and dropped them on the horse’s neck. The mare came to a standstill. Jeebee looked over at Merry and saw her glaring at him. However, as she continued to look at him, the glare softened and disappeared.

“Well, you can’t help it. You just don’t know,” she said. “Now, to make her walk forward, just lift the reins off her neck. That’s all. Hold them loosely in your hand.”

Gingerly, Jeebee obeyed. To his relief and joy, the mare began to walk slowly but steadily forward. Merry remounted.

“That’s right. Now, guide her around in a circle,” Merry said behind him. “You do that by laying the opposite rein against the side of her neck. Lay the left rein against her neck and she’ll walk to the right.”

Jeebee obeyed; and the mare obeyed. It made the complete circle; and then Merry had him walk the mare around it again in the opposite direction. After that Merry directed him into a trot, and he bounced uncomfortably in the saddle for a bit before she advanced the trot into a canter, her own horse now moving alongside his. After a little distance, she brought them both to a stop, turned them around, and led Jeebee back to the other horses.

Once there, she ordered him down from the saddle and got down with him, dropping the reins of her own horse to the ground so that it stood as if she had tied it in place. She showed him how to loosen the cinch strap under the belly of the mare and take off both the saddle and the bridle. Then she had him carry both items in the back, through the back door of the wagon into a tiny cubicle with a further, closed door. There the saddle was put to rest, hanging on a hook, and the bridle with some other bridles on a projecting dowel.

He took a moment to pick up his rifles again as she led him back out of the door into the sunlight, ignoring another door that seemed to lead further into the wagon. They walked around to the front of the vehicle, mounted the steps by the wagon seat, and entered the vehicle from its front. Following her, Jeebee stepped into an area dimly lit by the bulb in an old-fashioned auto headlight, glowing with what, to Jeebee’s astonishment, had to be electricity. Merry pointed briefly at it.

“Car battery,” she said briefly, “generator-driven by the wheels.”

The place was crammed and packed to the arching roof with boxes, tightly filled bags of all sizes, and what looked like ranks of tall wooden chests filled vertically with wide, narrow drawers. The room had a mild, pleasant, health-food-store aroma about it.

“Don’t come in here,” Merry told him, “unless Dad, Nick, or myself has said you can.”

There was a narrow aisle down through the center of the close-stacked contents of the place, and she led the way along it to another door. Staying close behind her, Jeebee stepped through into a second, crammed-full area that was barely long enough to allow two net hammocks to hang at full length against its walls, under the arching roof overhead. Both hammocks hung on their further hook at the moment, neatly rolled up.

Down below the roof now, a short, deeply tanned old man with a triangular face sat in a straight, wooden chair behind one of two large firearms, across the room from each other, which Jeebee recognized as heavy, air-cooled machine guns. The guns faced apertures in the steel beyond which was again what looked like white canvas. Something like a periscope tube angled up from the base of the wall to end in a wide, oval lens just above the breech of the machine guns.

A number of other weapons hung on the walls and filled the room, including four tubes that Jeebee was pleased to discover he could identify as rocket launchers. The ammunition for the rocket launchers was stacked beside them, and the launch tubes were clipped upright to a pole that rose to the center of the arch of roof overhead.

“You can put your rifles with the others in that rack on the side there.” Merry’s voice woke him out of his study of the room. She turned to the old man, who seemed not to have moved, but now held a revolver, loosely. “Nick, this is… ” Merry turned again to Jeebee. “What did you say your name was?”

“Jeeris Belamy Walthar,” Jeebee answered. “Call me Jeebee. Everybody does.”

“Nick Gage,” said the old man. He put the revolver casually away again under the seat of his chair, where it disappeared, apparently supported there somehow.

Jeebee extended his hand to the other, whose blunt, dry fingers closed around it, and who shook it a couple of times formally before letting go, without getting up from his seat at the machine gun.

“I had you in the sights on this from the moment you left the woods,” Nick said, patting the breech of the machine gun.

“Nick can do anything,” Merry said. “He’ll teach you all about the weapons. I’ll get you to riding, eventually, so you can take your shift of riding herd on the spare stock. I don’t suppose you can cook?”

“Not really… ” said Jeebee, embarrassed once more.

“Well, both Nick and I’ll have to teach you about that then, too.”

Merry turned to Nick.

“Dad says we’re going to take him on to replace Willie.”

“Willie knew a few things,” said Nick. His voice had a matter-of-factness that made everything he said come out almost as a monotone. “But maybe we can make even more of this one. Leave him to me.”

“Merry!” came Sanderson’s voice from the front of the wagon. “Can we get under way now?”

“Have you got anything else to pick up?” Merry asked Jeebee. Jeebee shook his head. He had his two rifles, even if they were in the rack some feet from him, and in the backpack he was wearing was everything else he owned.

“All right, Dad!” Merry called back. “We’re all set. I’ll be right out!”

She turned and went, leaving Jeebee alone with Nick Gage.

There was a moment of silence as they looked at each other.

“Did she or Paul tell you much?” said Nick.

“No,” said Jeebee, suddenly thoughtful.

“Thought not. That’s right, too,” said Nick. “It’s my job to tell you. Take a good look at me.”

Jeebee had of course been looking at him all this time. He kept on looking. He did not see anything he had not seen before.

“You see a little old man, right?” said Nick.

“If you want to call yourself that,” said Jeebee. It was a strange conversation and he felt awkward about how to handle it. “I guess I’d have to say you’re right.”

“Right,” said Nick. He held out his left hand, palm up. The skin of the palm was remarkably pink, contrasted to the leathery brownness of the back of the hand and all the rest of the skin surface of Nick that was visible. It was not so much a broad hand as a hand that seemed to have been stretched wide. There were large gaps at the base of the fingers between them. A hand that looked stubby and strong, not overly callused, but used.

“What do you see?” Nick asked.

“Your hand,” Jeebee answered.

“Right,” Nick said again. He closed his hand and magically it now held a knife with about a six-inch blade pointing right at Jeebee. “Now what do you see?”

Jeebee drew in his breath. His stomach muscles had tightened, and he found he was standing closer to Nick than he had thought. The knife point was less than its own length from those same stomach muscles.

“A knife,” he said after a moment, keeping his voice level.

“And that’s right,” said Nick. He put the knife back into one of the capacious pockets of the leather vest he wore over a red shirt and jeans, very like those worn by Merry and her father. “Figure it out if you can and tell me how it was done. When you do, we’ll talk about knives some.”

“I don’t know how you did it,” said Jeebee. “But it had to come from some place. The only place that could be is up your sleeve.”

“Good guess,” said Nick. “We’ll talk about knives then, but not today. Today I’ve got to show you around. Meanwhile… ”

He unbuttoned his left sleeve and pulled it up. A harness with what looked like a leather tube was attached to his forearm.

“That’s what did it,” said Nick. “Take a good look at that. That’s a rig. It’s also damn useless; all rigs are. Rigs will be just what you need one in a thousand times, but one in ten times they’ll get in the way of what you’re doing and get you killed.”

He reached up, unbuttoned something, and the whole contraption slid off his arm. He put it on a tablelike surface hinged to the wall next to his chair. “Meanwhile, remember that’s a trick. I know lots more besides that. Since I know tricks you don’t know, I’m not old and I’m not little. I’m bigger than you are. So you do what I say and I do what Paul says. All right?”

“All right,” said Jeebee, “for the moment, anyway.”

“That’s good enough for me,” Nick said as he got to his feet. “Come on with me now and I’ll begin to teach you what you’ve got to know about everything to do with the wagon here and what you’ll have to do.”

Nick reached into a drawer under the table surface beside his chair and brought out a typed list about three pages long. He handed this to Jeebee.

“This is a checklist of things you’re to do, or check on,” he said. “You’ll go clear through the list every twenty-four hours. The part of the list under Quiet Room is this room here. We call this the Quiet Room so we can mention it with other people around and not advertise we’re armed. After a while you’ll know the list by heart and be able to do the things automatically. Whenever one of us doesn’t have you doing something else like washing dishes or changing a tire or anything at all, fetching and carrying, you go to the next thing on the list and check that out. Now come along with me.”

He led Jeebee all through, around, and underneath the wagon. Jeebee learned that the vehicle was heavily armored inside, everywhere—though Jeebee was not taken everywhere. The two areas into which Nick did not take him were the bedrooms of Paul Sanderson and Merry. Otherwise, Jeebee was introduced to weapons, innumerable storage places, the equipment of the wagon itself, and everything about it.

There was one odd little room with all its inner surfaces covered with metal. It held an anvil on a sturdy support and a large black-metal dish on a tripod of three spread legs. The dish held what looked like the remnants of black chunks surrounded by gray ashes.

“This is where I blacksmith.” He gestured at a couple of large vents, one in one wall near the floor and another in the ceiling. “Battery drives fans behind those. I’ll show you that sometime when I’m working. Gets hot in here, then.”

Jeebee could believe it. There was barely room for both of them in the small room as it was. But he was intrigued by the idea of blacksmithing. It had been one of his dreams as a child, to hammer together pieces of white-hot metal and make things with them.

They left and Jeebee was turned loose to study his list. It included a number of car batteries. Two of these were up and working at any given time, two were live and ready to be put to use, and eight others were brand new, had no acid in them, and were waiting to act as replacements for the present working batteries.

These on-duty batteries were charged by a generator hooked to the wheels, as Merry had said, and produced light when the bulbs were turned on, in each of the rooms of the wagon.

Later on they stopped for lunch and Nick took him around the outside of the wagon. On the far side of it, which was why Jeebee had not seen it before, there was a long pipe built into the body of the wagon, so from outside it showed merely as a slight bulge at the base of the box body, its outside painted black so that it resembled a decoration strip about eight inches wide. The pipe held water, which was purified after it was put in by being run through what was essentially a distilling apparatus. It was warmed by the heat of the sun absorbed by the black paint, to the point where it was hot enough that it came to the boil almost immediately, if put in a pot over the stove that was built into the wagon. That stove could cook things either with electricity or with ordinary fuel like wood.

“The only things you don’t have to worry about,” Nick said as they finished the tour of inspection, “are the wagons and the driving. The driving’s Paul’s responsibility—and he’ll be teaching you how to do that, because you’ll take your turn at that eventually, although he likes doing most of the driving himself. Then there’s the horses, and the horses are all Merry’s responsibility. How well can you shoot?”

Jeebee had gotten a little tired of being deprecating about what he could do.

“I’m not the world’s best marksman—” he began.

“That’s all I need to hear,” Nick cut him off. “Anyone who tells me he’s not the world’s best marksman can’t hit a barrel at five feet. Well, Merry will teach you shooting as well as how to ride. She’s a natural shot; even better than I am—and that’s saying a lot.”

“Oh?” said Jeebee.

“That’s right. You’ll see,” said Nick. “Now, that’s enough of that. It’s time for the wagon to quit pretty soon for the day. We always stop well short of sunset, so anybody around where we are will have a chance to see us in place for a while and spread the word. Brings customers. I’ll be cooking tonight. You can come help me.”