Wolf and Iron

CHAPTER 13

It was just a few minutes to noon, four days later. Jeebee and Merry reined their riding horses to a stop on the top of a small, open rise that gave them the advantage of a little altitude from which to survey the countryside. Behind them, the packhorses on the lead rope that connected them, the end of which was tied to Merry’s saddle, stopped patiently where they were, dropped their heads, and started to crop at the sparse ground cover on the sandy soil of the hill.

They got out their binoculars and began to scan the surrounding territory. What Jeebee was now using was a superb pair of Bausch and Lomb Elite, eight-by-forty glasses that had been lent him by Paul for the trip. Merry, with another pair of glasses just like his, scanned the left half of the visible landscape while he scanned the right.

“We’ll stand out like a bright light up here, if anybody’s watching,” Jeebee grumbled. His months of travel before he had met the wagon had trained him to stay undercover, avoiding places where he might be outlined against the sky; and he felt uneasy in any place as open as this.

“Can’t be helped,” Merry replied, without taking the glasses from her eyes. “All I see on this side is clumps of woods and a few fields. No sign of State Highway 37. But it has to be there, somewhere.”

She lowered her glasses.

“We can see for miles,” she said, “and you didn’t argue when I suggested coming up here.”

“No,” said Jeebee.

He lowered his glasses and saw her putting her own down. They both tucked them back into the binocular cases that were strapped to the side of their saddles, and Merry got out a map, which she unfolded against her saddle horn.

She stopped as she saw Jeebee fumbling for something inside his backpack, which was now secured behind his saddle.

“What’s that?” she asked as he brought it out.

“This is one of my maps,” said Jeebee. “It covers this area, too.”

He unfolded the map. It showed slanting, parallel lines drawn clear across the face of it from top to bottom. “Time to get out the compass.”

As Merry stared, he unbuttoned his shirt and withdrew the compass that hung around his neck. His unfolded map lay on the flat surface of the pack behind his saddle and he turned to lay his compass upon it.

“There!” he said. “You see that bend of the river just beyond those trees about five miles off. Now that’s got to be, according to this map, part of Cross River, and let’s see, the azimuth on that would be… about thirty-seven degrees off of magnetic north and figure about five miles on a back azimuth and that would put us right about here.”

He used the base plate of the compass to draw another line on the map and then made a small dot.

“Now the road we’re after is here… ” He laid the compass on the map once more and rotated the capsule that housed the needle. “About sixty-eight degrees and I’d figure less than two miles before the river takes a bend and runs away from us.”

He folded up the map, put it away, and put the compass—it was a Finnish Suunto on its cord—back around his neck and inside his shirt. He tucked the map away and turned to Merry, who had been watching him intently all this time.

“We go that way,” he said. “It shouldn’t take us much time at all.”

She was still staring at him.

“It’s called orienteering, in simple form,” he said. “If you draw lines on your map parallel to magnetic north, you don’t need to bother with all the fussy little calculations that adjust for the difference between true north and magnetic north. You just use the compass to measure angles—like a protractor.”

He mounted and led off. He did not look back, but he could hear her moving after him, along with the packhorses, as he rode down the hill and off in the direction he had indicated. A pleasant glow of accomplishment encompassed him, but he was too wise by this time to show it to her in any obvious manner.

“Was that,” Merry asked, moving her horse up to ride level with him, “the reason you didn’t object when I first suggested going up there?”

“Partly,” said Jeebee. “We might just have sighted the road, of course.”

“But you hoped we wouldn’t,” said Merry, “so you could show off this orienteering business.”

It was true, of course, but he was not about to admit it. Not when he had at last found something he could do better than she could. “It always pays to check the general area occasionally,” he answered.

Nothing more was said until they were among the trees of a patch of woods along the road they had been seeking.

Meanwhile, Jeebee had been busy thinking. It would not only be quicker but safer to cut straight across to their destination; or at least to the area of their destination, since Jeebee knew only the general location of the former seed farm. It would save them at least a day’s travel time if they went directly. On the other hand, he was hesitant about trying to force his point of view on Merry.

All his weeks of working westward alone, using orienteering as a check to make sure he was traveling in the right direction, had him uneasy now at having to depend on her way of finding their destination. At the same time, he did not want to challenge her methods without strong reason.

She had taken for granted from the start that she would be in command of the expedition. All Jeebee was supposed to supply were directions. This had also been taken for granted by her father and Nick. None of them thought too highly of him as someone who could take care of himself, let alone one other person and a string of valuable horses, while traveling through territory that was unknown and could well contain at least some hostile people.

He had been a little surprised at first that Merry should be the one Paul had chosen to go with him; particularly after Paul’s earlier objections to her going up into the trees by the highway, alone. But this was plainly a decision that required that some risks be taken. In the end, the decision had been obvious. The wagon remained the anchor point for father, daughter, and Nick. Paul himself could not quit it any more easily than a ship captain could abandon his vessel to go off on a side trip or a venture.

Also, if Paul should be lost, Nick and Merry would not be able to carry on the peddling route as well without him. He was the man that the customers along the way were used to dealing with. Even though they might know Merry and Nick, they would not have as much faith in them and some might even try to take advantage of them—which might end in a shoot-out.

No, Paul had to stay with the wagon. Nick was not a good choice for Jeebee’s companion, being a follower by nature. That left Merry. Merry was not only capable of command, she was used to it; since in all things but the overall direction of the wagon, she controlled a great many matters. The horses, the dogs, and apparently a good deal of the internal management of the wagon, aside from most of their personal supply of foodstuffs, were her daily responsibilities.

Jeebee had realized from the first planning of the trip that his orienteering skills, and any suggestion that he plot a straight line course for them to the area that was their destination, would probably be unwelcome—to Paul and Nick as much as to Merry. They had little understanding of his knowledge and skills. His suggestions could only raise suspicions that he was proposing that he lead instead of her. Merry was too valuable to the other two men to be entrusted to the care of a latecomer to the wagon’s people. Only the belief that she would be firmly in command had made her going with Jeebee practical in the eyes of Paul and Nick.

That was why, for a long time, Jeebee had avoided even producing the compass and map. But time was as critical for him as it was for them; and her methods of hunting for roadways to point their route involved too much daylight lost in guesswork and an unnecessary waste of hours in blind searchings for landmarks.

He and Merry rode along now, therefore, in mutual silence, with Jeebee not knowing quite what to do about it. He had not seen any sign of Wolf, but he had a feeling that Wolf was with them, or at least traveling in the same direction and keeping in touch with them. He had been tempted to howl and see if Wolf answered. But since Merry would know why he was howling, he was afraid that that, too, might offend her. He had found himself trapped by a singular feeling of helplessness.

Unexpectedly, Merry spoke.

“How did you happen to learn this orienteering?” Her tone was as calmly conversational as if they had been merely making idle conversation, all along.

“Oh, that,” Jeebee answered, a little embarrassed, “actually, I learned it in the Boy Scouts. I always wanted to do some exploring; but I never really seemed to have time. Also, what I was doing usually didn’t give me the freedom to take off and go hunting around unknown territory.”

He hesitated, uncomfortable talking so much about himself. He made an effort and went on.

“I told myself that anyone—” He broke off. “What I mean is, I thought that I ought to be able, at least, to fly a light plane, and navigate a small, but ocean-going boat by myself. In fact, I tried to take lessons in both things, several times, but other matters always seemed to interrupt. I did get some flying lessons on three separate occasions, but something always seemed to come up each time, and I had to go back and start all over again. After doing that several times, I gave up. The same thing with handling a sailing boat on the ocean. I wasn’t anywhere near the ocean. But orienteering you can do anywhere.”

“Is your family alive? I mean are your parents alive?” Merry asked.

Jeebee shook his head.

“Only my brother,” he said, “and, as I maybe said, he’s eighteen years older than I am. I was an unexpected baby when my mother was in her midforties; and by that time my father had become an architect. You see, my grandfather had the ranch my older brother has now. But Dad and he never got together. I don’t mean they fought. I just mean they saw things differently.”

He paused. “So my father went off to Vietnam. Afterwards he went back to school on the GI Bill and became an architect. He never wanted the ranch, and my brother and grandfather got along real well. So my brother got it when my grandfather died.”

He hesitated again, not sure but what he was saying too much. “My father was killed in a construction accident,” he said, “while I was in college. My mother had died of pneumonia when I was sixteen.”

They rode along in silence for a moment or two.

“It must have been hard for you,” Merry murmured at last. It was hard for Jeebee to tell whether the words were really addressed to him, or only to herself.

“Not really,” said Jeebee. “We were a family of individuals. The three of us all went our own way more or less. My father was wrapped up in his architecture and my mother taught at a number of colleges. Her life was the academic world she was in.”

“Did you ever have a pet? A dog?” Merry asked.

“No,” said Jeebee. “I just read a lot—and experimented with things. I always wanted to know things. For example the grandfather of a friend of mine told me once that the lumberjacks back in the timbering days used to sharpen the two blades of a double-bladed ax differently.”

He steepled his fingers in the air before him to make two sharp sides of a “V,” the fingertips touching in front of his nose.

“One edge was sharpened like that,” he said. He bowed his fingers out. “The other was beveled to an edge—like this. I tried looking it up, but I couldn’t find out anything or anyone that backed him up. So I bought a double-bladed ax head and built a sort of small guillotine. I had the ax head falling down between two uprights into a piece of wood, first with one edge of the ax head, then the other, and comparing the cuts the different edgesmade. I found out there was a real difference; and later on I found out why that difference was useful. When you chop down a tree, you know, you first chop across horizontally, on a level. Then you chop down at an angle through the tree trunk above your first cut, so that you take out chunks at a time.”

“Yes,” said Merry. “I’ve seen trees chopped down.”

“As it turns out,” said Jeebee, “the flat ‘V’ shape leading to an edge is best for cutting across horizontally. The beveled one pries a chip of wood outward as you chop down into the horizontal cut, so it’s best for that. It really didn’t matter whether I found this out for myself or not, but I liked doing it. It’s always been that way with me. My head’s full of all sorts of bits and things I picked up because they were interesting; and I wanted to test them out for myself. It was that way with learning orienteering.”

Having said so much, he felt foolish. There was a strong impression in him that he had overexplained himself. Merry was probably not the least bit interested in so much personal detail. On the other hand, she had started it, by asking about his folks.

“So what you mean,” Merry said, “is that you didn’t have time for pets.”

“I suppose so,” said Jeebee.

“I just wondered,” Merry said, “the way you picked up Wolf, and the way you feel about him. I’d have expected you to have a long history of having pets.”

“Wolf’s not a pet!” said Jeebee, and the words came out more sharply than he intended. “He’s my partner.”

“You really believe that, don’t you?” Merry said thoughtfully. “Dad said you told him the same thing. You talk about Wolf as if he were a person. Do you really feel that way?”

Jeebee answered slowly. “I guess it depends on what you mean by ‘person.’ Pets are a lot like children. If you stop and think about it, adults don’t really think of children as ‘persons.’ When we say ‘persons,’ we really mean ‘grown-ups.’ In that sense, Wolf really is a ‘person’—not a human person, maybe, but a self-sufficient individual with his own way of looking at the world. If a dog is going to survive, he’s got to behave as though he looked at the world through his master’s eyes. The same thing’s true of children—teaching them to do that is what psychologists call ‘socialization.’ Maybe that’s why children—and dogs—are so dependent on us, so eager to please us. Their survival depends on it. Not Wolf. He survives just fine looking at the world through his own eyes—just like any other grown-up person. He’s not dependent on me—in any way. He stays with me because he likes me. He’s with me the same way another adult human being would be with me; and he can leave at any time he wants. We both know that.”

“Still… ” said Merry, “is there really any difference between him and the dogs, except that they’re tame and he’s wild?”

“Yes, there is,” said Jeebee. “Oh, I know they can interbreed. We saw that. But there’s more to it. I may not have had a dog, or dogs, but I got to know them, growing up. Some of them were a lot more ‘wild’ than Wolf—but they thought like children. Take a toy away from a dog and hide it, and he’ll act like it never existed. If I hide something Wolf wants, I’d better use a padlock—and then hide the key.”

Merry was watching him closely.

“You seem to understand him awfully well,” she said.

He shook his head.

“I’ve only begun to understand a little bit about him. They told me where I found him that he was a wolf, but I didn’t really believe that. I thought he might be at best a wolf-dog. But the difference runs too deep. That’s why I’m sure now he’s a real wolf. I’ve been hoping someday to run across a place, say a library somewhere, and find out more about wolves. Because even if the library’s been broken into, the people who broke into it probably weren’t very interested in most of the books there. I might just be able to find some informative books on wolves and read up on them. But you know, it’s like the sharpening of those two edges of that doubled-bladed ax head. There hasn’t been any place where I could find information about wolves—yet.”

“I think Dad might be able to tell you something,” Merry said thoughtfully. “We used to stop at a customer a little farther west and south of here, before we stopped going over the mountains, who owned some wolves. I never saw them myself. But Dad saw them.”

“Why didn’t you?” Jeebee asked.

“The man was a little crazy, I think,” Merry answered. “He didn’t want me on his place. He was even a little slow to trust Dad in his house and on his grounds. But he did let Dad in eventually; and Dad got to know him. Then he began leaning on Dad to stay a day or two with him. Evidently he was hungry for company but didn’t trust anyone.”

“I’m not surprised,” Jeebee murmured.

“Dad humored him,” Merry went on, “because he bought a lot of things and needed a lot of things. When Dad came back from one visit, he told me about the wolves. The man had them all separated, each one to a cage. Three of them, or something like that. Dad said he was trying to breed back for what he said were the original breed of wolves. I remember because the man had a whole library of books on wolves. Dad knew something about them and I remember he told me he argued with this man about keeping them like dogs in a boarding kennel. Dad knows a lot more about things than most people realize, you know.”

She looked over at Jeebee.

“And he told me he knew this much about wolves, that they were pack animals and needed company.”

“What did the man say?” Jeebee asked.

“Oh, the man said that he’d tried keeping them together but that they fought too much and he got tired of having the local vet sew them up. I know Dad said that he went and hunted through this man’s books, some of which he recognized—and actually found one study where wolf puppies that were isolated from other members of the litter began to show symptoms of stress. One even died.”

“Doesn’t really surprise me,” Jeebee said thoughtfully. “As independent as Wolf is, he seems to need company from time to time more than he needs food. One night when we were camped above the interstate—where I first saw your wagon—he came back to camp and was expecting our usual romp. I was preoccupied and ignored him. He acted more desperate than I’ve ever seen him act when he’s gone hungry for a couple of days. Whoever that was Paul talked to does sound crazy. How far from where the wagon is now, would you say that this wolf-man’s place is?”

“About two and a half weeks as the wagon travels,” Merry answered. “You could ride it probably in a week if you don’t want to push your horse; and you shouldn’t, of course.”

“I’d like to have a look at those books of his,” Jeebee said wistfully.

“I don’t know if he’d be the kind of person who’d lend them to you. Or even whether he’d let you in,” said Merry. “On the other hand, he may have been raided by this time by somebody or other. If they just robbed and ransacked the house but didn’t necessarily burn it down, maybe the books would still be there. We haven’t seen him for a while, of course.”

“I’ve got to see those books,” Jeebee said.

Merry frowned at him for a second, then the frown went.

“Rein up,” she said abruptly, checking her horse. Jeebee stopped beside her; and behind them the train of packhorses on the lead rope stopped also.

“Let me see the map.”

Jeebee produced the map and handed it over, wordlessly. She unfolded it completely.

“Can you show me where we left the wagon?” she asked.

He leaned over and tapped a faintly marked dot on the map with the pencil. Merry took the pencil from him, studied the map for a moment, and marked a point that looked about a hundred miles southwest by west from where they were now.

“His place is at the end of a box canyon about an hour’s ride north of Glamorgan,” she said.

He looked at it, like a miser might look at a treasure map.

“That’s great,” he said to Merry, “thank you!”

She smiled, her whole face lighting up. But then her expression sobered suddenly. She lifted the reins of her mount and rode on a little ahead of him.