Wolf and Iron

CHAPTER 12

“Now,” said Paul, “with the map business settled, we’ve got something else to talk about. Remember, we never settled on exactly what you’d get by way of pay?”

Jeebee, who had begun to leave the wagon seat, sat back down again.

“I forgot all about it,” he said.

“You’d make a fine peddler,” Paul said dryly. “Well, let’s talk about it now. You put in well over a month with us—call it two months—so that’d be two months wages plus how many gold pieces did you say you had in that belt of yours?”

“Twenty-three,” Jeebee answered unthinkingly.

“All right,” said Paul. “What I can give you for that is essentially one riding horse, ammunition for those two rifles of yours, and some basic food supplies, flour, bacon, and maybe some other things like baking soda and salt and sugar. I can’t give you winter clothes, but I’ve got blankets and three plastic tarpaulins that’ll match well enough with the one you’ve got to let you set up something more than a pup tent; plus a saddle, rope, and packing gear. But that’s about it.”

“No packhorse?” said Jeebee.

“No packhorse,” said Paul. “If you’re smart, you’ll use the horse I give you as a packhorse and travel on foot. Also, you’d better watch your wolf with a single horse. I’m sorry. But I’m stretching what your stuff’s worth as it is. Oh, I’ll get my money back in the long run when I find somebody who’s really hoarding gold and is willing to pay a good price for those gold coins. But I’m going to have to hang on to them for some time—and that’s just plain not good business. You need to turn over your goods and keep turning them over fast if you want to make enough profit to live on. This wagon has to be practically rebuilt after each year’s trip. Did you realize that? New material for it costs. As it is, I’ll have the equivalent of the worth of the one horse I give you tied up in those coins a year or more, and not likely to get it back until I find a buyer at the price I want.”

“Well,” said Jeebee, dispirited. “If you can’t, you can’t.”

“I’m sorry,” said Paul. “We’ve all ended up liking you, and we’d do what we could for you. But nowadays it just isn’t practical for us to act as a charity. All sorts of things can happen, from me getting sick or killed on down, that could put Merry in a bind. There’s no real cash going around anymore; but what used to be called ‘cash flow’ is still important. You need things that can be turned over fast and you need somebody who knows how to turn them that way. I’m responsible in both directions. We’d help you more if we could. But we can’t.”

“Even Merry?” Jeebee said, with a slight stab of emotion that made him speak before he thought.

“Now look here,” said Paul, “there’s something you’ve got to understand. Merry probably likes you better than anyone else we’ve ever taken on with us at the wagon. But she’s known from the start that you’re going to take off again. And her life is tied to this wagon. It’s her security as well as mine. She couldn’t leave and go with you, for instance. And you’re determined to go. Wasn’t that just what you said?”

Jeebee hesitated.

“If I didn’t have to go, I’d really like to stay,” he said. “I want you to know that.”

“Well, there you are,” said Paul. “It’s self-defense on her part. She can’t afford to get too attached to a young fellow like you, one she’ll never see again, possibly.”

“You mean ‘probably,’ don’t you?” Jeebee said wryly.

“If you want the truth, yes,” Paul answered. “Nick tells me you’re good with weapons. Not the greatest shot, but good at handling and taking care of them. You’ve learned a lot with us about horses and trading and something of blacksmithing, plus a few other things. Count that learning as part of your pay. But there’s something about you. You’re a born innocent, Jeebee. You’ve got to understand that. The same thing that made you look right at your figures, or whatever they were, and see the world was going smash but still believe that somehow it wouldn’t have anything to do with you—that’s still with you. Until you learn this is a different world nowadays, that you’re either top dog or bottom dog but there’s no such thing as in-between dog, you’re a walking risk to yourself.”

“I wish I was Wolf,” said Jeebee.

The words surprised himself. But Paul understood.

“He’s just an animal, but he knows what it’s about, better than you,” Paul said. “That’s because he listens to his instincts. Learn from him if you can, about the way life is, now. It’s exactly the same for you and me now as it is for him.”

“I have,” Jeebee said glumly, “but I don’t think I could ever see things the way he does.”

“You’ve got instincts, too,” Paul said. “Listen to them, and get this top-dog, bottom-dog idea clear in your head. You’ve got to understand that much of it. There’s a reason I run this wagon and everybody in it. There’s a reason my daughter’s one of my hired hands first and my daughter afterwards, in spite of all she means to me. It’s that way because it has to be that way if we’re all going to survive. The same for you. You learn that much, and if you ever run into Merry again, it may be a different situation.”

“No chance until next year.” Jeebee looked at Paul. “Do you think I can last out the winter if I don’t find my brother’s ranch before then?”

“Up to you,” Paul answered.

He flipped the reins.

“Get up there,” he told the team.

Jeebee, knowing he was dismissed, began to leave the wagon seat once more to go back into the wagon interior.

“If you don’t mind,” he said, “I want to make some plans and there’s some things about blacksmithing I want to ask Nick.”

“Go ahead,” Paul answered, without taking his attention off the team and the road, “we’ll be stopping a little early tonight, anyway. Nick wants to have a special dinner to see you off right; even if it’ll be some days before you actually go.”

Jeebee went back into the Quiet Room, found Nick, and asked him where paper and either pens or pencils were to be found.

“What do you want it for?” Nick asked. “Don’t tell me you’re thinking of writing a letter?”

“Nothing like that,” said Jeebee. “I just want to write down some notes and plans.”

Nick got up and went into the forward compartment where the trade goods were kept, rummaged around, and came back with three sharpened lead pencils, a ballpoint pen, and some fairly thin typing paper.

“What notes and plans?” he asked as Jeebee sat down with the paper and pencils at the little table that hinged up against the Quiet Room wall.

“For one thing,” said Jeebee, “I want to write down some of the things you’ve told me about building my own backwoods smithy.”

“Paul told you we’re turning south, then?” Jeebee nodded.

“Well, all right then,” said Nick. “What do you want to hear from me?”

“The whole process,” said Jeebee.

“Let me tell you some other things first,” said Nick. “Might be you’ll find them more important.”

Nick sat down at his seat behind the nearest machine gun, swiveled his chair to face Jeebee at the table, and looked out the window beyond the machine gun’s muzzle, where a flap of the outer canvas shell of the wagon hid the firing slot for the weapon in the wagon’s metal armor. Then he looked back at Jeebee.

“You know much about Montana?” he asked.

“No,” Jeebee confessed. “I was there for a visit to my brother about fifteen years ago. But I don’t remember much, really. My brother’s eighteen years older than I am. In fact, I remember more about making the flight in by myself—it was my first plane trip alone—than I do about the drive up to the ranch. And most of what I remember about the ranch is just the main ranch house and the buildings around it. I know we had to drive more than an hour or so to get to it, from where I got off the plane in Billings. We went up- and down-hill a lot toward the end.”

“It’ll be cattle country. You want land below the pines,” said Nick. “You need to understand something else, too. It’s that a lot of these ranches made the switchover to the way things are now a lot easier and more natural than people closer to the cities. Particularly, easier than someone from farther east. They weren’t that far different in lots of ways from the way things were there in their great-grandfolks’ time. Like some of these farms you’ve seen us trade at, they were almost ready to operate on their own—maybe more so—even before they had to.”

“I can understand that.” Jeebee now knew Nick well enough to understand such a statement meant Nick had more than that to tell him. But Nick liked to be told that his listener was interested. “Why tell me this?”

“Just because you’re going to be traveling through a lot of other people’s country, other ranches owned by people besides your brother,” said Nick. “You’ll do best to just plain keep out of sight as much as possible. Remember, the sound of a gunshot carries a long ways. That’s the bad part. The good part is that if there’s high rock around, the echoes are going to help hide the place the sound came from to start off with. But it’ll still be smart not to use your gun if you don’t have to—and you’re going to have to live off the land. Had you thought of that?”

“I’d thought about living off the land,” said Jeebee. “But only as far as the fact that I thought that there might be more large game up there than I ran into earlier. Deer or something like that.”

“There’s going to be more game, more big game,” said Nick.

“But that’s where the sound of the gunshot comes in. Whatever you do, don’t go shooting any cattle. They all belong to somebody; and it was always rough around there on anybody who killed somebody else’s cows. It’s not like you’re a neighbor who needed meat in a hurry, or some such thing. They don’t know you, so they don’t need you, so they’re not going to let you get away with killing what belongs to them.”

“I see,” said Jeebee. “All right, I’ll watch that. Any other advice?”

“No.” Nick’s eyes went back to the canvas covering the slot outside the wagon. “Now, what was it you wanted to write down about smithing?”

Jeebee told him and got busy with his pencil, noting down the answers and making sketches.

This done, Nick returned to his own duties about the wagon, but Jeebee sat where he was, with his pencils and marked-up papers, thinking.

Paul, he knew, was being as generous as he could be. But what he was offering Jeebee, Jeebee now realized, would give him only a minimal chance of survival—let alone of finding Martin’s ranch. If only there was some way he could justify getting more of what he needed from Paul…

Baffled, his mind went off on a tangent, in spite of himself. He thought of Wolf and wondered if Wolf would really continue to come with him when he went. It might be, seeing Wolf’s occasional warmth toward Merry, plus his attachment to the dog Greta, that he would rather stay with the wagon than travel further, alone with Jeebee.

It would not be at all surprising, Jeebee thought bleakly, if Wolf decided to stay with them. His mind slipped back to a memory of the days before he had met the wagon and those on it, the period in which he and Wolf had been traveling together, isolated from the rest of the world. The emptiness of the land then, seemed to move in on him now. He would be stepping back into that emptiness when he left these others and the wagon.

That thought brought him back to his earlier problem. There must be some way he could justify getting more of what the wagon had to supply; in particular, a second horse for packing so he could ride the first one. Without a horse under him he would be at a serious disadvantage in a country where everyone rode. If there was only some way he could produce something of more value so as to get a second animal…

His mind roamed loosely over a field of wildly different possibilities. If it could only turn out that something he had been carrying all along was worth a great deal to Paul. If he could only think of something that he could point out to Paul, something from which the other man could make an immediate profit—on the rest of this trip—

An idea suddenly jolted him more profoundly than any of the highway’s potholes, in and out of which their wheels would periodically bounce, shaking all the wagon. He went up front and sat down by Paul again.

“You sell mostly to farmers, don’t you?” Jeebee asked.

“Pretty much so.” Paul glanced sideways at him for a moment. “A few other people. But nearly everyone farms some, now. What about it?”

“Farmers plant crops,” said Jeebee. “One of those crops—one of those most important crops—is wheat. Wheat makes bread, wheat is useful in all sorts of ways. But what if the wheat seeds are attacked by some plant disease and the crops become useless?”

Paul laughed.

“The last supply outfits making chemicals to control plant diseases went out of business over a year ago,” he answered, “far as I can find out.”

“I thought so,” said Jeebee, “so when people plant nowadays, they merely plant their seeds and pray that the crop will come up all right without, say, mildew attacking it?”

“Of course,” said Paul, “but what can they do about it now? There’s no way of controlling those diseases if you can’t get the chemicals.”

“As a matter of fact,” said Jeebee, “maybe there is something—”

Paul looked sharply at him.

“So,” Jeebee went on, “I suppose you could find a good market anywhere for a wheat seed that would resist mildew, the seed of each crop could go on, year after year, resisting mildew? Am I right?”

Paul’s look had become more curious than sharp.

“Of course I could,” he said. “What are you getting at?”

Jeebee went on as if Paul had not spoken.

“And something like that would be worth something to you—enough so that if I could bring you some, or show you where you could get some, maybe not right away but eventually, it would be worth something to you?”

Paul nodded slowly.

“What’s on your mind?” Paul said.

“I just thought of something,” said Jeebee. “I think I know where some might be found. The people there were just in the process of experimenting with genetically altered wheat that would have a natural resistance, particularly to wilt, but also to some of the other diseases that attack wheat. I might be able to locate a source of it. If I could do that, what else would you be able to pay me in the way of an extra horse and supplies?”

Paul kept looking at him for a moment, glanced back to check on the horses, and then returned to rest his eyes on Jeebee’s face. He was plainly thinking.

“If you could really lead me to something like that—it would depend on whether you actually produced some seed, or just were able to tell me where it could be found somewhere along the line—it would be worth quite a bit to me,” he answered at last, thoughtfully. “I couldn’t say exactly until I see what you come up with. But there’s a good chance I could give you that extra horse and some other things you’d find useful. Maybe even some things you wouldn’t think of for yourself. Now, do you actually know where some of this genetically changed wheat is? Or where some can be got?”

“I know where there ought to be some,” Jeebee answered. “I won’t know for sure if it’s there until I actually go look for myself. But I don’t know why it wouldn’t be there. If it is, there might be more than you can carry. If that’s the case, I can bring back as much as I can packload on the horses you let me take. If it turns out it’s just a place where the seed’s going to be available—say later this fall sometime—maybe next year you can arrange to swing around here at a time when you can harvest some for yourself.”

“Whoa,” Paul called, pulling back hard on the reins in his fingers. The wagon rolled to a stop, the horses tossed their heads and looked backward and fidgeted, as if they were annoyed to be interrupted at their work by such a sudden and unexplained halt.

“There,” said Paul, looping the reins around the brake post to the left of the seat to set his hands free, “now I can give my mind to it without worrying about the team or the road. Where is this grain you’re talking about, now?”

“I think I can find it,” said Jeebee. “But it’s the location I’m selling you. Once you know where it is—once anybody knows where it is, they can just help themselves. In fact, people around it may have been helping themselves already; but there ought to be enough of it, if I’m right, so that you could pick what you want.”

“Are we close to it?” Paul asked, gazing steadily at Jeebee.

“We’ve passed it, actually,” said Jeebee. “It’s behind us and to the north a ways; in fact, just at a guess, it’d be about five days back by wagon. Then on foot, maybe a three-day walk to the north. Then a day or two to hunt around and gather the grain, and three days coming back.”

“Well”—Paul sat thinking for a minute—“it’d take a couple of people, with packhorses, to make that trip properly. That means, of course, that whoever goes is going to have to cover those five days it took the wagon to get this far, in about a day or two of reasonable riding with the horses, because of all the stops we’ve made. Leg to the north would probably be… maybe two days by horseback?”

“I don’t know,” said Jeebee. “I’ve done all my traveling by myself on foot, I tend to think that way. I know where it was or is, from being told about it, about three years ago. But I’ve never been there, and finding it now that things have changed may take a little time. Exactly where it is, that is. But I definitely remember it was outside a little town called Wayne, north of here.”

Nick stuck his head curiously out the front entrance to the wagon behind them, just as Merry rode up, looking as annoyed as one of the horses.

“What’s going on?” she demanded. “What are we stopping here for?”

“Jeebee may’ve come up with something very good for us,” Paul said briefly.

The look of annoyance disappeared from Merry’s face. She looked at Jeebee curiously and said nothing.

“Go on,” Paul said to Jeebee. “Tell them.”

He did; and they listened.