Wolf and Iron

CHAPTER 18

“Damn!”

“The sound of his own voice, within the silence of the lodgepole pines, startled him. Mountains stood on his left hand, the side of the western horizon. He was riding through the north of Wyoming, toward the Montana border.

He reined in Brute; and the packhorse, Sally, feeling the sudden slackening of the line tying her to Jeebee’s saddle, stopped also—Brute being no respecter of sex or familiarity in the case of any other horse crowding his heels. Like a professional boxer reacting to a thrown punch, his two iron-shod hooves would lash out in automatic reflex.

So they all halted, even Wolf, who at the moment was traveling with them. He looked up at Jeebee.

“What’s wrong with me?” Jeebee said to him. “It’s only the end of June! I’ve got plenty of time to find that customer of Paul’s who kept wolves, and maybe get a look at what books on people like you he might have!”

Wolf merely watched him. The only readable expression on his furry mask of a face was one of mild curiosity. Jeebee had not known whether the other would leave with him or not. True, Wolf had gone with him and Merry on their trip to get the seeds, but Jeebee had become more than half convinced that the golden-eyed individual had come to like Merry better than himself, and would choose instead to stay with the wagon.

There were so many questions in Jeebee’s mind about Wolf and his kind—which brought him back to why he had just sworn at himself and pulled up.

It was less than a day and a half since he had parted from Merry, Paul, and Nick. The wagon had turned off Interstate Highway 90 a safe number of miles before reaching the ruins of Buffalo. From there it had swung downward to meet and head south on U.S. Highway 87, on Paul’s customary path to Texas. From Texas it would turn east and go back along a route through the southern states, during the late-summer and fall months, to Paul’s headquarters somewhere in the Carolinas.

Jeebee had headed north since leaving the wagon, planning to follow the route of U.S. Interstate 90 north and west across the Montana border toward Billings. His plan had been to circle Buffalo to the east and follow up on the eastern side of 90.

He was still short of Buffalo and east of highway 87. Both horses were behaving well and his way seemed clear. Except that, suddenly, just now the thought of a change of route had come to him. He reached into his backpack, fastened just behind his saddle.

By feel his fingers identified the case holding his own marked and ruled maps. He found the brown plastic map case, took it out, and located the map he needed.

Instead of heading straight north and crossing I-90 to be on its eastern side as it headed north, it would be very simple for him to turn west, cross 87, and swing northwest until he hit U.S. 16, the road leading out of Buffalo and through the Bighorn Mountains by way of the Powder River Pass and Ten Sleep Canyon.

On the other side of the mountains was Worland, from which a day’s travel northward would bring him to Glamorgan, the small town near which Walter Neiskamp, the man who raised wolves, had his place. Paul had located the position of Neiskamp’s house with a small neat cross in red ink.

Once Jeebee had found Glamorgan, he hoped to be able to talk the man into either selling him some of his wolf books or letting him read them. After that, he would head north into Montana, roughly following U.S. 310, which crossed the border just above Frannie and below Warren, and from there on continue up and around Billings.

Above the Billings area, he could follow the general routes of either State Highway 3 or U.S. 87 up toward the Musselshell River and highway 12, which led eastward toward the town of Musselshell. It was all ranch country there, east of the Little Snowy Mountains, with the Big Snowy Mountains behind them.

It was still early in the day. Only ten miles or less separated him from a point beyond which highway 16, which went through the Powder River Pass, split off from 1-90. He could make highway 16 by noon.

He sat in his saddle, torn two ways, while Brute stirred restlessly beneath him.

The strong desire to reach Neiskamp’s, and at least get a look at the wolf books, was almost like a compulsion on him. Balancing it was what could only be described as a fear of making the crossing of the pass.

It was unlikely that the pickings, which travelers such as he and his two loaded horses could offer, would be worth anyone’s lying in wait along the pass in country like this. But on the other hand, he would undoubtedly be reaching points where the only available path for him would be the road itself, as long as he had the horses.

The cool finger of fear touched him once again, inside. Once committed to the pass, he would be a sitting duck for anyone lying in wait with a rifle along the way. There was nothing to be done about that. But in any case, he would be safer traveling at night, as he had in his early period before he had gotten into South Dakota and met the wagon.

It was remarkable, but for the first time in his life, he was experiencing two interlocked sensations, neither of which he would have believed was possible to him. The fear—it was almost a superstitious fear—of crossing the pass, was there. Irrationally, something inside him seemed to say that if he tried to cross the pass, he would never make it through alive, and as a result, he would never see Merry again. It was the latter possibility, not the former, that now left him hollow inside.

It was a real, if reasonless, apprehension. But strangely, woven with it at the same time—and remarkable after all these months that had taught him the value of taking no chances, of playing safe, of always taking the most protected route—he felt an almost fierce desire to tempt the very fear itself. He had never felt anything like that desire in his life before. It was as if to cross through the pass was something he had to do, a test he must pass for his own sake.

He had always wondered how people could want to dare ridiculous dangers. This danger was not necessarily ridiculous, but he found a grim desire in him to dare it anyway. It was as if the crossing of the pass was an enemy he was required to seek out and cross swords with, when all his life he had avoided crossing swords with anyone.

After a long moment of sitting undecided where he was, it was that last, unreasonable need that won out.

“Well, Wolf, it looks like we turn west,” he said—and suddenly realized that Wolf had already disappeared into the little patch of trees surrounding them.

He turned the horses. The possibility of death lying in wait for him in the pass went before him still, like a wraith in his path. But his desire to go brushed that wraith aside. Something new was stirring in him. A fatalism, an almost physical desire to gamble. The challenge was attractive in a way he had never felt before. He wished that Wolf was with him. It was as if Wolf would be a catalyst of some sort to test his decision. Still riding, he howled.

Brute and Sally, used now to his making such noises, stolidly ignored him and continued walking.

He howled twice, but there was no answer. It was unlikely that Wolf had gotten too far away to hear him in the short time they had been parted, although sounds sometimes played tricks, particularly with mountains nearby. But then there was no guarantee that Wolf would answer a howl, in any case. Jeebee shrugged. There was nothing he could do about it. It would be up to Wolf, just as he had thought earlier, to find them and go along, if he wanted to.

The decision was then to be Jeebee’s, alone, unhelped. The fatalism held him. He lifted his reins again, rode across the road, and turned north.

He and the horses reached the woods just above a patch of highway 16 near noon. He stopped well out of sight of the road and unloaded both saddle and pack from the two horses, then tethered the horses about ten feet apart.

For himself he laid out the groundsheet covering the gear and unrolled the foam mattress on top of it. Wolf was used to the packload, he hoped, and had lost interest in it. But even if his destructive urges were triggered while Jeebee slept, any tugging on the groundsheet by Wolf trying to get at the gear below him would wake Jeebee instantly. The arrangement did not make the most comfortable of beds, however.

But it would do for a nap. He lay down on it, accordingly, deliberately leaving himself uncovered so that the coolness of the afternoon shadows would wake him. The last few months had developed an internal clock in him that could be preset for the time he wanted to awake. Lying on the packload, he closed his eyes, turned on his side, and almost instantly dropped into slumber.

He woke feeling stiff and chilly. But the feeling did not bother him. Like an animal, he knew that getting up and moving about would warm him quickly.

He had chosen a spot not far from a small stream, and he took the horses there to water before splitting Sally’s load between her and Brute. They would both be packhorses on the slopes ahead, and he would cross the pass on foot, himself.

Above, the sky was still bright with late afternoon. The chill that had woken Jeebee had come from the treed slope behind him, falling into shadow from the rise of the mountain behind it. Even when he had finished watering and loading the horses, sections of the road opening eastward below him were still in sunlight.

Nonetheless, the day was aging.

Without warning, his fear came back on him. It made no sense that anyone would bother to lie in wait for the infrequent travelers who would use such a pass.

On the other hand, if someone did—with the mountain rising on one side of the road and the slope falling precipitously on the other—the traveler had no chance of passing safely.

Now, in the large shadow of the mountains and the indirect light overhead, a thought crept into Jeebee’s mind. He had scrupulously shaved himself all the time he had been at the wagon after that first night. He had kept himself clean shaven because he knew Merry preferred him that way. Now, since he had left the wagon, he had paid no attention, and dark stubble had begun to reconstruct the beard on his face.

The impulse came upon him strongly and suddenly to shave. It was as if his being shaved clean would be a sort of talisman protecting him against anything that would keep him from being reunited with Merry again, eventually. It was a feeling even stronger than the one that had challenged him to cross the pass in spite of his reasonless fear of doing so. But in this moment he found himself believing in it utterly.

He stopped the horses, got his shaving materials out of his pack behind the saddle, and used some of the water from the water bag to make a lather with the soap he carried. Carefully he put to use the straight-edged razor that had been one of Merry’s gifts to him, through Nick—although he had not found that out until a couple of weeks after the first day on which Nick had given it to him. With it, he scraped his face clean.

His face now feeling raw and naked to the cooling evening breeze, he put away the shaving things and went on.

The day aged quickly. But shortly after this Wolf reappeared. He had been gone only a few hours, but his homecoming was as enthusiastic and elaborate as if they’d been separated for weeks. Jeebee remembered how the wagon dogs had mobbed Wolf on his return from the seed farm, and it suddenly occurred to him that Wolf’s greeting might actually be an instinctive act of appeasement. He filed the thought away as something else to check on when—and if—he found the books. Formalities satisfied, Wolf dropped to all fours, gave a wet-dog shake, and stood with a quiet air of expectancy, apparently waiting for Jeebee to mount Brute. He seemed puzzled when Jeebee led off up the road into the pass, the lead ropes of both the now-haltered horses in hand. Once convinced that they were indeed on the trail again, Wolf rejoined them, but about twenty minutes later Jeebee noticed that he had disappeared once more.

Jeebee continued, finding himself held to a slow, if steady pace by the upward angle of the road. It was only beginning to climb, but already on occasion the land on one side of it dipped into a deep valley, thick with stands of pines, where the horses could not have made their way. The road surface was only slightly broken up by weather and lack of care, but the air grew cooler.

Meanwhile, overhead the blue and cloudless sky was beginning to pale in the west while it darkened in the east, and the shadows of the depths beyond the left edge of the road were becoming impenetrable.

Still, it was the time of month near the full moon, and the weather had been clear recently. Jeebee had hopes of moonlight to help most of his crossing.

But it would be a while yet before the moon would rise. Now, in the depths to his left and the rising slopes to his right, lodgepole pines covered the ground as thickly as soldiers standing on parade. Tall and straight as the masts of nineteenth-century sailing ships, as a result of struggling with each other to reach the sunlight above this angular pitched ground, they grew more closely together than seemed possible, with branches only near their tops.

Weighing the fading of the daylight against the darkness already between the trees, Jeebee concentrated on the road surface itself as a guide. There was no sign of any kind of habitation, or of other, recent travelers on the route. In the gathering darkness the asphalt looked more and more as if it had been abandoned for years. It was cracked, with potholes here and there, and a litter of branches and pine needles fallen, or blown across it.

His map had shown a distance of fifty-odd miles from Buffalo to Ten Sleep on the other side of the mountains. He had joined the road at a good distance out of Buffalo and did not have to reach Ten Sleep itself, but still, to reach the lower levels at the far side of the pass in one night’s trek would be a long, hard walk.

It would be particularly hard on the loaded horses, but there was little to be done about that.

They plodded forward and upward. At least, he told himself, he had taken the greater burden off at least one of the animals, since Sally’s load weighed little more than a hundred pounds, and he himself was packing nearly twenty-five with his own pack, weapons, and gear. He had been surprised to discover, when he had weighed himself at the wagon before leaving, that he was now up to one hundred and eighty-four pounds, most of it muscle—a weight and condition he had never expected to achieve in his earlier, adult life. Nevertheless, breathing was becoming more difficult, and despite the high-altitude chill, he could feel the sweat plastering his shirt to his back beneath the pack straps.

After a while the moon did, indeed, come up, and they speeded their progress; at least until Wolf rejoined them, and took Jeebee’s traveling on foot as an opportunity to play games, snatching with his teeth at the flapping cuffs of Jeebee’s heavy work pants or his jacket or trying to catch the reins with which Jeebee was leading Brute.

Jeebee, however, was becoming wiser in his companion’s ways. He had more than a small suspicion that Wolf was trying to distract him from the idea of traveling further. He put the reins over his shoulder. Wolf could easily have jumped high enough to catch them and indeed did so a couple of times, but when Jeebee persisted in recovering the reins, they slid rather easily through the gap behind Wolf’s canine teeth. Jeebee knew that if Wolf had been seriously interested in the reins—and not merely enticing him to play—he’d have gripped them with his massive shearing molars, and even Brute would have been hard pressed to get them loose. When it became obvious that Jeebee would not be drawn in, Wolf abandoned the ploy with the wolfish equivalent of a good-natured shrug.

However, the road had been steepening steadily, and though Wolf still took short side excursions from time to time, from then on he was generally with them.

In the time since they had left the wagon, with the dogs no longer around to inhibit him, Wolf had made a few experimental rushes at Sally, possibly sensing that the load she carried made her more vulnerable. But Sally had long ago learned to discourage the unwanted attentions of three or four unruly wagon dogs. A single dog—or wolf—was more of a nuisance than a threat. And the first time that Wolf made a grab for her tail Jeebee had been relieved to discover that the kick he’d received for his efforts had resulted in no broken bones. Brute, on the other hand, had merely rolled his ears back the first time Wolf approached, and Wolf had given him wide berth after that. But Jeebee knew how persistent Wolf could be and had taken to tethering the horses far enough apart so that they would not be tempted to kick each other, but close enough that they could, if necessary, support each other in holding off any approach by Wolf.

The moon had already moved well up from the mountain peaks to their left when they reached a wide spot in the road. It was a lookout point with a plaque on a post notifying travelers that this was the high point of the pass. He could not read it in the darkness, but Jeebee stopped at this point to rest the horses.

He had been giving them short rest stops in any case, roughly every half hour by his watch, so that they would have at least five minutes merely standing, even though still loaded. Their breath steamed a bit, and he let them cool before pouring them some water into his hat. He also made an effort to see if there was anything more in Sally’s load that could be shifted to Brute’s back; but short of completely undoing the loads and spreading everything out, with the resultant turmoil that would occur when Wolf saw all these things on the ground to play with, there was little to be done. So far, both horses seemed to be facing up to the climb at a walking pace, pretty well. The steep road had not winded them too badly.

For the moment, Wolf was not around again. Jeebee suspected the other might have simply lain down, hoping that Jeebee would come to his senses and give up this nighttime trek. The moon was fully overhead now and its light gleamed off rock, road, and sky. But in spite of that brightness, the stands of pine trees all around merged into a solid black mass at a very short distance. Jeebee reached the high point of the pass and started the horses on the road down the far side of it.

He had planned on going back to riding Brute once they were headed downhill. But now that they were actually at the point where he had meant to swing again into the saddle, he used his own fatigue as a measure and judged that the more he could spare the horses the better. Also, as he found out when they started down the slope in the opposite direction, after a small semilevel bit, he might be tired, but he had a lot of walking left in him.

Nonetheless, he estimated that they had already covered more than twenty miles from their starting point. If he could make another twenty—if they all could make another twenty—he calculated that they should be into Ten Sleep Canyon and be able to pull off the road and find a place where they could camp and rest up.

Shortly thereafter, Wolf was suddenly back with them again, moving out ahead of Jeebee in his customary position when they traveled together.

They slogged along. The moon was now descending to the dark rim of the canyon as they plunged down into the depths beyortd the pass. Slowly the hours went by. Jeebee dared not stop except for the short rests, for fear of putting ideas into the heads of the three with him. Once Wolf abruptly fell back, and Jeebee turned and saw the dark furry shape lying on its side on the road behind him. The meaning of the action could not have been more obvious. Wolf was calling an end to his share in the trip.

Jeebee turned his head forward again and kept on going. There was an emptiness inside him. For the first time in a long time he seriously considered the chance that he had driven Wolf away from him, permanently.

But what drove him from within gave him no choice, and the two horses following him were given no choice. They went on.

But they went on alone for a good fifteen minutes and more before Jeebee’s ears caught, once again between the soft beat of the horses’ hooves on asphalt, the scratch of claws on that same surface. He kept on going without looking back, and a moment later Wolf caught up with them once more, passed them, and assumed his usual position in the lead.

From under his eyelids, as he focused on the road immediately before him, Jeebee saw Wolf glancing back over his shoulder at him. But Jeebee refused to meet those glances. He merely kept going with his gaze on the road surface just ahead of him. So they went on, with only the sounds of their feet on the road, and the moon sank lower and lower to the dark line of the rock topping the canyon wall. Just before it disappeared completely, Wolf whined, once.

Jeebee looked up at him, then, and for a long second gazed into Wolf’s night-hidden face, with the color of its eyes now lost in the darkness. Jeebee said nothing. He did not even change his own expression, but looked away again and continued, leaning into the halter ropes to pull the weary horses along with him.

The four of them continued. Now that the moon had disappeared, the road had become only a dark blur, visible for no more than a half-dozen feet before them, in the starshine overhead. Jeebee was too worn out now to be grateful for the fact that the night was cloudless, so that there could be at least enough light to keep them from walking off the cliff edge of the road.

They went on. The moon had been down so long, Jeebee had almost forgotten what the road had looked like in its light. He and the horses stumbled from time to time, unable to see the breaks in the road surface. But his feet were able to tell by themselves if he wandered off the asphalt, and they kept him on the road.

The time seemed endless. Finally, the sky began to pale slightly from its utter blackness between the points of starlight. Certainly, the slope of the road was less now, even if only slightly so. At his most optimistic guess they had been descending now for somewhere close to fifteen miles, since they had left behind the highest point of the pass.

They were still among the rock walls and precipitous slopes, and even as the sky lightened above, the darkness pooled below. Still, soon they should be moving into territory where it would be safe to try to leave the road and find a place to camp. It might have to be a dry camp; but at least the horses, Wolf, and he would be able to rest. But there was not yet enough light to see if their surroundings were improving in this way.

It seemed that the sky overhead would never brighten, day would never come. Jeebee’s pack felt as if it was stuffed with bricks as he forced one foot in front of another. He was conscious that the horses, and even Wolf, moving ahead of him still, would be equally tired, but he could find no energy left over in him to sympathize with them.

All his attention now was concentrated on keeping his legs moving. They seemed to weigh a ton, each of them. Still, as he kept them going, one step at a time, all the rest of him moved with them.

A fury rose in him that his body was not more capable of going farther and faster and so covering more ground. He tempted and encouraged that fury to make him forget his sore feet and weary body. Surprising himself, he cursed at Wolf, unexpectedly, when it seemed the other would get in the way of his own moving legs.

The words were hardly out of his mouth before reaction set in. He stared at Wolf, braced for whatever reaction Wolf might show. But the other’s eyes, golden again now in the beginnings of the dawn light as the sky whitened overhead, merely looked back at him briefly, and away again. They went on.

Suddenly, without warning it seemed, he became aware that it was day. The sun was not yet above the rock walls about them. But the sky was bright now with morning, and the day star itself would be clearing the mountain rock very soon. Around Jeebee everything was fully visible. It seemed to have become so all at once. Either that, or else he had simply been walking without noticing while things brightened about him, tired as he was. He remembered once reading about World War I and how whole regiments of men had marched into towns in France on forced march after forced march, all in column all together and all asleep on their feet as they walked.

At the time of reading that, he had found it impossible to believe. But could he have fallen asleep, just now, walking? Possibly. Or, maybe he just had not been noticing—too out on his feet to be aware of the moment-by-moment change in illumination around him. At any rate, day had come and now they could find a stop, a place to camp and rest.

He raised his head and looked about. The canyon walls had opened out, and ahead they began to spread far apart. He had become used to the two overtowering walls of vertical rock, seemingly only a couple of hundred yards apart, with a plunging depth between them that descended so steeply he could not see to the bottom of it. Only occasionally had he been able to hear the rush of river water far below. Now, this had suddenly become the same two walls opening out into a wide area, between them. An area in which the land rolled in gigantic waves, like a wild sea of tidal waves gone mad and working against each other, in every direction.

But the waves were unmoving, solid slopes of earth, largely covered by lodgepole pines.

He was through the pass and into the Ten Sleep Canyon, at last.

Their own road still clung to the side of the vertical rock that had been on his right. At his left, however, he could now look out on the vista of black-treed slopes brightening in the new daylight. Into this more open space, the morning sun was reaching brightly here and there, although as yet it had not reached as far as the four of them.

But now, the road was on another small, momentary rise. It had tended generally downward since they had crossed the highest point of the pass, with little rises like this only now and then, as if the road itself was about to change its mind. This, like the earlier rises, would ordinarily hardly have been noticeable, but now they were all close to exhaustion from the night’s trek. The extra effort of going upslope, even for a short distance, seemed like a heavy burden. Jeebee’s legs were like rubber, and they gave as he leaned into the upslope of the road.

This rise was large enough to block out sight of the further road beyond it. The horses were still behind Jeebee at the length of their halter ropes. Ahead of him was Wolf, still moving lightly if perhaps a little gingerly, on feet that must be sore.

As he watched, Wolf reached the crest of the rise and moved all at once into the full illumination of the advancing sunlight, and there was a second that became a picture frozen in Jeebee’s memory forever.

It was of Wolf, leading them upward into the sunlight, with the rest of them still toiling in darkness, but mounting also, steadily behind him.

Jeebee’s heart bounded with a new burst of happiness within him. Suddenly he remembered what he had forgotten. Somewhere during the dark hours he had lost it, his apprehension about crossing the pass, and his superstitious fear that if he did, he would never see Merry again.

Now both things together were swept away in the sunlight that suddenly spread golden fire around Wolf. It was over. Jeebee had made the crossing. He had won.

True enough, he had won over nothing more than shadows within him. Still, there was that same feeling that he had had after he had come successfully up through the cellar and past Wolf with the canned food in his arms, and the feeling following that evening in which Wolf had come to him in a new, strangely submissive manner. In both cases, he had known a feeling that he had passed some kind of watershed in his life. That feeling was in him now, very strongly.

He had made another step up the ladder. He was different in this moment than he had ever been before. He had faced the pass and its shadows, had gone through them and left them behind.

Now at last, morning was here. The land between the widening walls of the canyon was no longer too steep for the horses to negotiate. They could find a place to stop, to camp and rest.

“Come on,” he said to the horses.

He turned and led them down the road and at last off among the trees. There was no way that the horses could have known that the night’s trek was at last over. But it seemed that their heads came up, and they moved more willingly.

Down at the bottom of the fold he found a stream that had probably cut its way there over the centuries. It was a remarkably small stream. Only by a little was it too broad for him to jump across, and it varied from mere inches to perhaps a couple of feet in depth, purling softly among the close, branchless lower trunks of the pines. He saw the darkly pale shadows of fish for a moment flickering out toward the middle of the stream, before they lost themselves from sight.

There was no clearing among the trees ideal for a camp. But that did not matter. Wolf ran forward and began to lap from the stream and the horses literally pushed him aside to get past and put their heads down to suck up the water. He himself watched for a second, then turned and walked a little upstream before dropping flat on the ground himself with his head over the edge of the bank, to drink. The water was icy cold. Later, he thought of giardia, of the danger of parasitic infection from the clearest of running streams. But that was only later.

Once he had drunk, it seemed to take a tremendous effort merely to lift his tired body back to his feet. But there were things to be done, even now, before he could dare rest. Wolf had already flopped down in a little natural hollow beneath one of the pines and seemed already asleep.

It was a great temptation for Jeebee to follow his example. But the horses had to be unsaddled and unloaded, and all the gear that had been on them made safe from Wolf’s tendency to tear them apart as soon as he had had sufficient rest to feel frisky. On their trip to gather the seeds, he and Merry had placed their loads in the center of a rope corral that had contained all the horses running loose. Wolf would not have ventured into that corral, because the horses would have taken alarm and attacked him on the assumption that he was after them. One wolf was not going to argue with half a dozen horses.

Now, with only two horses, a rope corral was not the answer. However, back at the wagon with the help of Paul and Nick he had come up with a way, several ways of dealing with this problem, one of them to be used among trees of about this diameter.

The horses had finished drinking. He led them to trees and tied them up temporarily—tied them on short hitches so that they would not be tempted to lie down until he was ready to leave them to their extended rest.

Then, from Sally’s packload he took a hatchet, a block and tackle with rope, and a pair of lineman spurs Nick had made for him in the forge aboard the wagon. He strapped these last to the heels of his boots. He added a wide, long belt, that Nick had also helped him make, which he fastened around his waist and the lower, eight-inch-thick trunk of one of the pines.

It fitted loosely enough so that there were several inches of space between him and the tree trunk. Then, digging in his spurs and hitching the belt up as he went to support his upper body, he climbed some fifteen feet up the trunk.

With spurs dug in, leaning back against the support of the belt, he hacked two deep notches on either side of the tree trunk and anchored the block and tackle by firmly tying it strongly with rope around the tree and in the notches he had made. He climbed back down, bringing with him one end of the rope reeved through the blocks.

Tying that end loosely to the tree, he went to get Sally and retie her to the tree he had just climbed. He loosed the rope of the diamond hitch holding the pack on her back, then brought up from underneath the load the gather ropes of a loose net that had been laid between the blankets padding her back. Now he pulled its ropes out and around to hold the load in a rough sort of bag. The net ends had metal eyes firmly fixed to them and through all of these he ran the loose end of rope from the block and tackle he now carried with him.

Tying it tightly, he switched to the far end of the rope that now ran from the load, up through the double block tied to the tree overhead and back down and up again through the single climbing block he had fixed to the net. He began to pull down on his end of the rope from the ground.

The rope running through the blocks took up the slack between it and the load, and then slowly, jerkily, began to lift the load toward the blocks themselves. Sally heaved a deep breath as the weight of the load came off her. The load itself rose slowly, moving upward with each jerk a fourth of the distance Jeebee had just pulled down on the end of the rope he held. It was slow, but it was certain. The distance lifted was proportionately less, but the amount of force with which Jeebee pulled down was lifting four times its weight at the load end.

So, eventually, he wound the load in its nettinglike sack up to the notches on the tree, high above where even a leaping Wolf could reach it. He then drove his weary body to duplicate the climb and the lifting off of the load Brute had carried, and put it, also, in safety.

This done, he retied both horses on long tethers, fastening them securely to separate trees, but close enough together so that they could reinforce each other against any undue interest shown in them later by Wolf. Right now Wolf was flat on his side by the stream, looking as if dynamite could not wake him.

Both horses lay down almost immediately, a strong indication of their exhaustion after the long march. He himself spread the groundsheet from the gear he had taken off Brute when unsaddling the riding horse, and unrolled his mattress on it, covering himself with the two free horse blankets. Rolling himself up in this, he fell immediately, deeply, asleep.