Wolf and Iron

CHAPTER 20

Jeebee had time for reading in the days that followed for he continued to travel by night and lie up during the day. The first part of the daylit hours would necessarily be given to sleep, but after that there were always three to four hours before he felt safe to move again with the sundown.

In those few hours he first attended to whatever needed attention about packs and mounts and the welfare of the horses themselves, and refilled the emergency water bag that he carried fastened to his saddle from whatever fresh-water source was handy. He had gotten a large supply of the sterilization tablets from Paul, but realized that he was going through them fast.

Counting them now and looking at the rest of the days of the summer and possibly through the fall, he could see the point was coming where he would be reduced to boiling his drinking water as the only way left to be sure of its safety.

Still, for now at any rate, the time he had left over was at least a couple of hours a day, and in that time he absorbed as much as he could of the books from the library shelves in Neiskamp’s ruined house.

Academic habit made him begin by reading the reference lists, which all but one of the books provided, and then checking them against each other to see which of the volumes he had taken from Neiskamp’s house were most mentioned.

Only two of the titles had rung any kind of bell with him, though he had read neither book. One was Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat, for which he found only two citations, both of which referred to it as “semifictional”—which he knew to be academic shorthand for, “Don’t bother reading. Not a serious work.” The other was Wolf and Man: Evolution in Parallel by Roberta L. Hall and Henry S. Sharp, about which he remembered something. It might have been that a review had attracted his attention because of the idea put forth in the title, which intrigued him.

He read through the lot, beginning with the most-referenced works, L. David Mech’s The Wolf and a similarly titled volume by a Swedish-German biologist, Erik Zimen, and so working his way down his list.

When he finally did get to Never Cry Wolf, he recognized it as evidently the source of a movie he had seen once. Its authenticity may have been questionable, but he realized that besides being a fine work of writing, the author had produced a first-rate piece of prowolf propaganda. He tucked it away against some future day when Wolf’s survival in the cattle country of Montana might require a good bit of public relations.

Though Mech’s The Wolf was obviously—and from what he could see, deservedly—regarded by other authors as something of a Bible, there were several others that offered insights he could apply more directly to what he had observed in his personal relationship with Wolf. One was a volume edited by Harry Frank and published as recently as 1987, entitled Man and Wolf: Advances, Issues, and Problems in Captive Wolf Research. These, and Zimen’s excellent book, really began to supply him with the background his academically trained mind was reaching for, to give him a context into which he could fit his half-formulated speculations.

All but about three of the books he had gathered helped him enormously. It was a curious process, as if a patch of desert, suddenly supplied with water, had begun to sprout in all directions and develop into a green and growing place. He had had absolutely no idea that so much work had been done toward understanding Wolf and his kind.

At the same time it was frustrating. Most of the more scholarly writing left him vastly more informed, but irritatingly much more conscious of how much there was he did not know about the wolf. His limited experience with one member of the species was not enough even to let him make full use of the data that he found in the books, he told himself.

He had been observing Wolf closely all these weeks. But from what he read, Wolf would be a different sort of character if he was an established member of a pack. A lot seemed to turn upon Wolf’s age. He remembered the bulky, scruffy look of Wolf when he had first seen him. If he was understanding what he was reading at all well, this thick, untidy coat and appearance of bulk fitted a wolf still in his youth, possibly no more than a year old, for all his adult size.

If that were the case, Wolf was now much closer to being the sort of person who could partner with him. From those readings that compared wolves with dogs, he gathered that the social behavior of the adult dog was similar in many ways to that of the immature wolf, still agreeable and not yet prepared to challenge adult authority for a place in the status order. Apparently, it was quite common for adults of a domesticated species to retain characteristics found only in juvenile members of their wild ancestors. The books called it “neotenization.” The contrast he had drawn for Merry between childlike dogs and Wolf as an adult person was closer to the mark than he had imagined.

He thrust firmly aside, for the moment, a desire he felt budding within him to speculate on the human race in this light. He had enough to do.

Jeebee knew almost nothing about Wolf’s early history, but some of what he read for the first time helped him make some educated deductions. There was nothing wrong with Wolf’s eyesight, so it was unlikely that he had been orphaned or taken from his mother before he was about ten days or two weeks old. Wolf pups deprived of mothers’ milk before that age apparently tended to develop cataracts.

Of course, Wolf might have been fostered into a litter of nursing dog pups, but the dog owner would probably have left him with the mother until he was weaned at five or six weeks of age. But in that case, Wolf would not have taken to Jeebee the way he had.

Wolf pups who remained with their mothers more than about three weeks after birth apparently lost the capacity to form lasting attachments to human beings and soon began to react to humans much like any feral wolf would. This was documented, even in cases where the mother was herself completely tame. Jeebee reasoned that the same thing would happen if a wolf pup were fostered on a mother dog. So Wolf had probably been hand-raised by the cattleman called Callahan, beginning no earlier than two weeks of age and no later than three.

The books also taught Jeebee that wolves who were raised only among humans were afterward seldom able to establish normal associations with other canines. So Wolf’s relationship with Greta was strong evidence he had been allowed at least periodic contact with other dogs, beginning shortly after he was weaned. Thinking back to Wolf’s behavior with the dogs at the whistle stop, Jeebee now considered it altogether likely that some of the older dogs—possibly including the collie type Wolf had killed as they escaped—had also been residents of the small ranch where Jeebee acquired the jacket that had first attracted Wolf’s attention.

In contrast to wolves, said the books, dog pups apparently passed through two such sensitive periods, or “windows”—one of which allowed them to develop normal social bonds with other dogs, and the second of which allowed them to form attachments to humans.

Dogs were therefore capable of forming “dual identities” and, in this respect, were more flexible than wolves, living quite happily in two worlds. Unlike a dog, even a hand-raised wolf never really lived in a human world.

As one writer had explained it, wolves raised by humans—or in very early association with humans—treated humans as wolves. That is, they seemed to expect humans to honor the same instinctive conventions that governed the social life of wolves. Jeebee guessed that this might be the root of the popular myth that any wolf would eventually “turn on its owner” or “revert” to wild behavior. It also went a long way toward explaining a number of things about Wolf’s actions and general behavior.

But while the books explained much, they did not explain enough, at least to Jeebee, to provide the handle he needed for an overall understanding of Wolf’s character.

There was so frustratingly much in these pages that he knew he was not getting. Information that seemed to lie below the surface of the words, invisible and sensed, but not seen. He asked himself if this was his imagination, and answered himself that it was not. There was knowledge there—his years of searching for answers on the academic level had trained a sensitivity into him, a nose that told him when there was information to be discovered.

His problem, Jeebee thought, riding northward under the stars as he moved into the middle of July under the nearly always clear sky, was mostly that same lack of experience on his part.

The problem was that the people writing the books knew what they were talking about, and they were writing mainly for readers who in most cases also knew what they were writing about. Jeebee did not. He had no context into which to fit much of his new information, and as a result, individual facts wandered loosely in his mind trying to partner with other individual facts and finding holes in every fabric his mind attempted to fit them into, as a pattern to explain Wolf.

He crossed Montana’s southern border to the west of Warren, and moved on northward, crossing highway 310 again and passing to the east of Bridger. The country now was either hills and mountains or open, rising range, with very little tree cover. As Paul had advised, he avoided the Crow Indian reservation, now east of him, and swung in fairly close to Silesia. He also passed close to Laurel, but went unusually wide once more around Billings—or what had once been Billings.

There was an uneasy feeling in him that in this part of the country even cities as large as Billings might have survived the crises that had destroyed the cities further east. Billings might still be dangerous at some distance out. To be on the safe side, he headed generally north toward Broadview and Slayton, swinging around the western side of Molt and up through the Halfbreed and Hailstone Wildlife Refuges.

By this time a lot of what he had come to read had had time to soak and work in the back of his mind. As a result, one conclusion was obvious. He would have to work with whatever the books had been able to tell him, and try to apply as much of that as he could to what he had only half understood, by more and closer observation of Wolf.

Happily, Wolf was not spending so much time away from him now. The other showed up frequently during the day and often for short periods traveled along with Jeebee himself. It was the difference in their speed of travel that caused him to veer off as much as he did, Jeebee guessed. Wolf’s normal traveling pace was a trot that was perhaps a mile to two miles an hour faster than the walking speed of the two horses. The horses traveled at roughly three miles an hour, which was also a human’s normal walking speed. But it was not sensible for Jeebee to push them at any faster rate.

The thoughts that had been growing in him from his first acquaintance with Wolf, however, continued to grow. The books, specifically the writings of Harry Frank, had also told him one other remarkably fascinating thing, that the “mind” of the wolf seemed to be sharply divided into two separate systems.

The higher and—to Jeebee—more interesting system harbored a humanlike intelligence. The sorts of tasks wolves had performed under laboratory conditions suggested capacities comparable to the abilities of dolphins, which had stirred so much popular interest in the 1970’s. Compared to their domesticated cousin the dog, for example, their abilities to solve complex problems were truly remarkable. Jeebee himself had seen Wolf use what he could only think of as deception, by “pretending” to play so that he could work close to, or attract the curiosity of, some small animal he hoped to catch.

He had also seen Wolf puzzle out the problem of crossing a small but very fast-running river. A tree had fallen across the river and was partly supported by a rock in midstream with its further end high in the air above the turbulent water and rocks.

Wolf had apparently realized that if he ran out on it and added his own weight to the end, it would tilt down enough so that he could jump to the further bank. Jeebee had observed this while slipping and sliding over the rocks of the same stream bed twenty-five yards downstream, feeling the fast water tugging at his lower legs and threatening to pull him off his feet—while Wolf lay down dry and comfortable, grinning at him from the opposite bank.

A corner of his mind was still busy puzzling over the problem of why understanding Wolf should be so important to him. Part of the reason was obvious, of course. Wolf had come into his life at a time when he felt desperately lonely, at the culmination, in fact, of a life that had been, in many ways, always lonely. He loved Wolf. He could not really assume that this affection was returned, and for purely human emotional reasons he wanted it to be. At least in one sense he was searching for a way to read into Wolf’s behavior the fact that a real, personal affection for his human associate could exist.

But there was something else. There was also some elusive connection between understanding Wolf and the personal dark shadow and nightmare that had pursued him out of Stoketon. Wolf, once understood, might in the similarity of social instincts between his kind and human, offer a deeper understanding of what Jeebee had been working at with the study group in Michigan.

Certainly, what had happened to the world was something that would have been better off not happening. From the creation of the study group, Jeebee had felt that it had been on the track that would lead to some better understanding of the human race and why things happened to it. Possibly it could even have turned out to be a basis for foreseeing and preventing disasters, such as the Collapse itself had triggered.

Certainly, even now, the world ought to be able to pull itself up by its bootstraps again in no more than a couple of centuries, at most—and possibly in much less time. There was too much twentieth-century technology now in existence for the knowledge of it to be lost completely. People like Paul Sanderson would be finding ways to use it, keep it alive, and build it back toward what it was before everything fell apart.

Somehow, he felt, an understanding of the Collapse and why it happened could be tied in with the understanding he needed of Wolf and of what he was. It was an elusive connection, a ghost of a connection, but he had learned to trust such little tickles of queries in his mind.

He had also learned how to deal with them. Which was to put each of them consciously out of mind as much as possible, push ahead, and wait for the back of his head to make connections that the front had been unable to do.

This reaching out for understanding of Wolf had some tie-in to an understanding of why the human race should commit this sort of partial suicide. That was the other element in his need to understand. Forget it for now, he told himself. But it was not easy to forget it.

They were beyond the large cities now that Billings had been passed. They traveled either in open range or in foothills. It was full summer and the days were often hot. But these passed, and in between them the weather was very pleasant, particularly at night. Jeebee had fallen back into the habit of being the same sort of outdoor creature he had developed into, coming west.

Again he fell into the habit of wearing the same amount of clothing no matter what the temperature was, and being more or less indifferent to whether he needed warmth or was too hot—except that he stowed the leather jacket away. Also, the daily habit of shaving he had resumed briefly at the pass was forgotten. His beard once more was full and black. It was almost as if his clothing had become his pelt, as Wolf’s pelt was his; and there was no reason to think of making changes in it simply to adapt to small changes in temperature.

So he let his beard grow and lived in his clothes. These things were unimportant. Important, was the fact that he was now in territory where he would be more visible and more conspicuous. Consequently his concerns were with the precautions of traveling within the cover of trees, in folds of land, or along river bottoms, as much as possible.

The rivers in these parts, particularly in these midsummer months, were small and not fast flowing. But they tended to have cut their path below the level of the surrounding ground. Also, they were commonly bordered and hidden by thick clumps of willow, occasionally so close-stemmed that passage was difficult.

These willow stands, however, offered a place for him to hide, if he suspected someone else might be about. He could vanish into them, horses and all, and simply stay still until whoever it was had passed, animal or human.

Traveling as he did, any sight of other humans was unusual, even though this was an area that seemed to be almost untouched by the change that had come upon the world. Most of the buildings he saw, he passed at a distance, and many of them had lights showing at night, if it was early, or gave other evidence of being actively lived in at the present time.

But one night he did finally come across a group of ranch buildings that had been burned almost to the ground—and not too long ago, because the smell of burnt wood was still about them—and when he rubbed a finger on the remains of a burned-out window frame, his skin came away black in the moonlight with soot from the wood.

It was true that this was not the season for rain, and in fact there had been remarkably little rain in the last few weeks, so that he was accustomed to finding the cattle clustering around what water was available and grazing as close to it as possible. But still the building must have burned sometime since last winter’s snows, and possibly within the last month or so, for there was little sign of weathering of surfaces in rooms now exposed to the elements.

But the discovery of the dead building alarmed him. A place like this could attract scavengers. He moved further into the foothills, still following stream beds and willow clumps as much as possible. He came at last into an area in which there was a certain amount of tree cover, but willows still clustered by the running water.

Here, up in the hills, he began to let himself travel more into the daylight hours, because the area was so free of people. He got into the habit of going on foot, leading Brute by the reins, with Sally still patiently tethered to the saddle on Brute’s back. This was as much to spare the horses as because he had become more and more able to read the ground before him; at the same time he felt himself to be less visible than he would be sitting up on the back of a horse, even down here in the hollow of the creek bed.

The sky was lightening one morning when Brute suddenly balked—stopping, pushing hard and back with all four feet. Jeebee stiffened and looked swiftly around him. It was just before dawn, all but full day. He could see clearly, except for what was hidden from view by the willow clumps, just ahead and around him and also clustered on the far side of a stream that could be no more than twenty or thirty feet wide. There was no sign of anything to alarm the horse, but Sally was also pulling back on the rope with which she was tied to Jeebee’s saddle.

Jeebee pulled hard on the reins but Brute resisted him with all his equine muscle and did not move an inch.

“What the fuck’s wrong with you?” Jeebee snarled—and was astonished at the sound of his own words in his ears. It was not merely that he had sworn at the horses. It was the fact that even a year ago, it would never have occurred to him to do so.

It was a shock to realize that he had changed so much. The restraint that had been second nature in him as far back as he could remember, had been scoured off by what had happened to him in the last few months. He was uncomfortably reminded of how he had been equally startled to discover in himself a readiness to kill Wolf, if necessary, to keep for himself the food he had found in that root cellar.

Then, suddenly more thoughtful, Jeebee forgot his momentary temper. He had learned to trust the awarenesses of the animals beyond his own. And if horses’ noses were not the superb instruments Wolf’s was, they were still far better than his human one. He was suddenly aware that the breeze was blowing toward them from upstream, in the direction they were going.

He turned, led the horses back until the tension began to go out of them, then tethered them in a small open spot on the riverbank. They might as well browse and drink while waiting for him. Jeebee looked around for Wolf. The other had been with them just a short while ago. Where was he now?

Jeebee cupped his hands around his mouth and howled. He waited. No answer came back. He howled again.

Still no answer. Wolf should not have been able to go beyond hearing range in the short time since Jeebee had last seen him. Jeebee had trusted the other’s natural curiosity to bring him back to investigate what was causing Jeebee to do all the calling. But when no response came to a third howl after a good three-minute wait, Jeebee gave up. He pulled the .30/06 from its scabbard at Brute’s saddle, checked to make sure it was fully loaded, and started upstream once more, by himself.

He went cautiously, on principle. The willow clumps here were thick enough to hide anything as large as a steer or a range bull.

He was carrying the rifle balanced in his right hand, his forefinger on the trigger guard so that the knuckle of that forefinger controlled the grip. His left hand was free to push willow branches out of his way—but quietly, as quietly as possible. A large animal alerted to the point of having already begun an attack on him might not even be slowed by a bullet from a rifle of this caliber.

A willow clump barred his path, followed by a little open space, then another clump and another open spot, more earth than grass. He was down on what was called the false levee. Now, at July, the river had shrunk from its spring volume of water, which would have filled this ground to over his head, inundating the lower halves of the willow stems with rushing, brown, foamy water, clear up to the top of the true banks on either side.

He went a little further and passed a gap in the willows on his left, so that for a moment, out of a corner of his eye, he saw clear to the bank top. In that moment he thought he glimpsed the gray, now lean-looking body of Wolf slipping past, moving parallel to him. But when he turned his head to look squarely, the gap was empty.

Wishful thinking, he told himself. Not that he had any great hope of Wolf coming to his assistance in case of trouble. The other was not one to come rushing to the defense of a human companion, movie-dog style. Wolf’s actions were governed by the practical self-interest of his wild instincts.

But if Wolf had indeed been with him, the lupine sense of smell might have been able to tell him more of whatever had alarmed the horses, and from Wolf’s actions Jeebee might have been able to read a fuller warning of any animal danger ahead.

Jeebee pushed through the last of a clump of willows and stepped into one more clearing. This was the largest so far. It narrowed toward the true bank, but stayed open enough so that at the very top of it he now saw Wolf plainly, after all, looking down at him with interest—but only looking.

Jeebee turned to go forward again. With no sound by way of warning, what seemed to be a couple of black dogs—one as large or larger than Wolf, and one looking very much like a half-grown pup—erupted from the willows ahead and came rushing toward him, the smaller one trailing behind.

He had time to think, Oh no! Some rancher’s dogs! and that, whether they were friendly or not, he must not shoot. Because if they were, their owner might be riding just a little distance off, perfectly able to hear the sound of a rifle.

He poked out with the hand that held the rifle, as anyone might use a stick to hold off an animal that was either threatening, or trying to be too friendly by jumping up on him. Suddenly the larger black creature stood up on its hind legs, and things began to move very swiftly, though he saw everything quite clearly and his mind was quite calm and alert. Only his body seemed to move slowly in obedience to his wishes.

Upright, what he had thought to be a dog had become a night-dark monster with shaggy head and unbelievably toothed jaws. It was as tall as he was. He had a glimpse of deep-set eyes and felt a puff of hot breath on his face.

Now, at the last possible moment, he recognized it as a female black bear, although he would never have imagined an adult bear so lean, and the smaller animal as its cub.

A powerful blow on the rifle sent it spinning out of his hand toward the stream. He had no time to see where it fell, because another heavy blow glanced off the right side of his head and yet one more struck his upper arm on the left side.

Time had suddenly slowed. Jeebee was abruptly aware of Wolf, appearing as if by a magician’s trick, and joining them with impossible swiftness. He registered first, not with the high, bounding leaps with which he had attacked the collie at the station, but as a gray blur, running close to the ground. In the second in which he reached Jeebee and the bear, Jeebee’s memory also registered a momentary still snapshot of Wolf’s tail low behind him, his ears down and jaws slightly open, as he came up behind the bear. Jeebee caught a glimpse of those powerful jaws, closing for a split second on the bear’s left leg, the canine teeth sinking deeply in toward the bone, before Wolf almost immediately let go and leaped backward.

The bear turned, swiftly, but too late to catch Wolf.

Jeebee’s mind, working in what seemed no time at all, but with unusual clarity and calmness, drove him like an impersonal engine. He bent down, reaching for the pistol in his boot. Even as his hands stretched out he realized how useless its light slugs would be in stopping such an enemy. His fingers closed instead on the oversized knife in its sheath on the outside of his right boot.

He gripped the handle and pulled the knife loose, snapping the leather cord holding it from falling out, as if that cord had been thread. As he did so he felt the breath of air above his head from another blow of the bear’s paw that had missed him as he stooped. Coming upright, he was nearly felled by another solid blow, this time on his upper left thigh.

Straightening, he instinctively drove the point of the knife forward as he had been taught by Nick, toward the crotch of the bear; and felt the blade go in and up. Another blow just grazed his left shoulder lightly. Then the black body fell backward away from him. He stared down at it, unbelieving. As Nick had warned, his blade point had gone high. It had entered near the top of the soft stomach area. Somehow, he must have been lucky enough to hit a vital spot—maybe the heart was reachable, up in there behind the breastbone…

The cub had disappeared. Jeebee’s left leg suddenly gave under him and he sat down. Something was obscuring his left eye. He put his hand up and brought it away wet with redness. Reaching higher, he found something ragged hanging down, which turned out to be part of his scalp.

He pushed it back up. Wolf, having attacked again, had just leaped clear when the bear fell, then watchfully circled around toward its hindquarters. Now, with the bear down, he was making cautious approaches, pausing every step or two as he drew closer, and as Jeebee pushed his scalp back in place, Wolf took one last step and stretched his neck until his nose almost touched the black furred hind leg. His ears flagged up and down as he sniffed. Finally, he gave the leg a sharp prod with the top of his nose and leaped back. Then he stood watching, his ears now pricked, his eyes bright.

There was no reaction from the dead bear. Wolf moved forward confidently and began a more thorough inspection of the carcass.

Jeebee forgot about Wolf. His knife was still standing upright in the upper belly of the now plainly dead animal. Instinctively he retrieved it and wiped it on his pants leg before returning it to its sheath.

Surprisingly, he felt no hurt. He would, undoubtedly, any minute now. His mind still held that amazing clarity and calmness. The bear’s claws could have infected him with the bacteria in the dirt on them, he told himself with no emotion whatever. He would need the antibiotics in his pack sack behind Brute’s saddle, as soon as possible. He should get back to the horses while he could still move.

He tried to climb once more onto his feet and found his left leg reluctant to lift him. Looking down at his thigh where he had felt the blow, he saw the trouser leg torn and bloody. Almost enough of his blood available to paint with. The thought was funny, but he did not laugh.

With his fingertips he felt among the redness on his thigh.

Torn cloth, furrows in the flesh, and… holes where the claws had first struck. Surface wounds, then, but the bruising would immobilize him in hours. He would have to reach those horses. Undoubtedly there was internal bleeding under the bruised areas. Cold compresses for that, once back at the horses. The river water would be cold.

He felt his upper left arm and felt wetness there. More blood on his fingers. Happily, nowhere else did he seem to be bleeding. He looked around. His rifle was only about six feet away, teetering, half over the edge of the water. Rolling over on his good right side, he crabbed along the ground to the rifle, and when he got it, used it as a prop to get him up on his one good leg.

He began to hobble along the riverbank, downstream, back toward the horses.