Wolf and Iron

CHAPTER 27

The inescapable problem on his mind had been whether his ankle would be healed enough, soon enough, so that he could at least ride Brute. So that in a few days at most, he would be able to get the packload down from the tree and the horses ready to travel. But now that question had given way to one about whether he should go on at all, and try to find his brother’s ranch this year.

It was already August. In mid-August, the traveling should be all right. But by late August, there would be the chance of a freakishly early snowstorm. By late September, snow would begin to be a certainty, even if it was not frequent and steady.

That gave him no more than two months in which to find his brother’s ranch, and he had estimated it could be anywhere within over a thousand square miles of territory. Those thousand-plus square miles would be down in the flatlands. He would be moving across the property of other people who did not know him, and who might not even know, let alone like, his brother.

If he still had not found the ranch by the time the first heavy snowstorm, or series of snowstorms, caught him, he would not last long down below. Even if he was able to make it from where the snow caught him, up into nearby foothills, he would still face having to find or make some kind of winter-long shelter under the beginning of that season’s conditions—an almost impossible task.

But—if he stayed where he was right now and started preparing a winter shelter, he would have those two months in which to work on it.

The odds were overwhelming against going on.

Actually, his only reason for doing so was that all his plans had been based upon reaching his brother’s place before such weather set in.

Now that reason, set against the strong chance of disaster if he went on now, gave him no real choice.

He would stay here and make the best use of his time to build a place in which he could winter. Anything else would be not only foolish but dangerous.

He was surprised to find that finally making this decision seemed to lift an emotional burden from him. All the tension that had come from fretting about getting into physical shape to travel again was suddenly gone. It was only, slowly, that another, if more healthy, tension replaced it. When he began to think of the things he wanted to do, here in the meadow, the two short months he had just gained suddenly seemed to grow shorter.

On more than one occasion while he was lying around waiting for his ankle to mend, he had played with the thought of enlarging something like the hole in the sandy bluff at the end of the meadow. His mind had even ranged into the idea of making a sort of livable cave, with a wooden front on it. With a door in the wooden front, and perhaps even windows.

Now that he had faced his decision, he realized that it must have been a foregone conclusion in the back of his mind for some time. Thinking about what would need to be done, he began to see how much would be involved in building what his imagination had dreamed up so easily and cheerfully.

To begin with, the soil revealed by the hole was very sandy and crumbly. If he merely dug deeply into it, there was a real danger of the sandy roof and sides falling in on him. He knew how miners dealt with such things. They supported the roof and walled the sides with timbers to hold back the weight of the surrounding soil. There was timber, and even planks, available for him down at the ruined ranch. But to put these all together, he would need nails, and that would mean that he would either have to find some supply of unused nails down at the ranch—which he well might, since that was not the sort of thing the raiders would be interested in picking up—or pull nails from the outbuildings and the house itself.

He could do this, of course, while he was stripping the planks he needed to build his cave front. But it all meant a number of trips down to the ranch, a great deal of hauling material back up—it would be easier to drag it, come to think of it, than to carry it on the backs of the horses. Particularly the longer pieces of wood would not carry well on the back of a horse, but extend behind and drag on the ground, in any case.

Meanwhile, as he was doing all this, he would have to keep hunting at regular intervals, to shoot cattle for food.

Things would get easier as far as hunting went once the weather got colder. As soon as the nighttime temperature began to drop below freezing, a deep hole in the ground could act as a refrigerator, or even, later on, as a deep freeze.

Of course, until the ground froze solid, anything he buried, Wolf could dig up. Jeebee had read that wolves in one zoo had become so adept at burrowing under their fence that the zoo had spent thousands of dollars to pour a concrete apron around the inside perimeter of the enclosure. Facilities with tighter budgets—including, he had read with amusement, one connected with the University of Michigan—discovered that a three- or four-foot apron of wire fencing material was almost as effective. If it was securely anchored to the ground, wolves couldn’t get an effective purchase on it with their jaws, and digging at it was evidently uncomfortable to their footpads or toenails.

At the ranch Jeebee had noted some wire fencing with a two-by-four-inch mesh, of the kind ordinarily used in rural areas. It had been put up around a rectangle of darker earth that had evidently been the family’s personal vegetable patch. A section of that wire would do very well to cover a hole for meat storage in cold weather. Though he should probably find some way of either weighing, or staking, it down so that it could not be taken off of the hole by anyone but himself. Meanwhile, according to the books, wolves did not like to try to scramble over a thin barrier, even no higher than four feet.

While cold weather had some advantages for him, it would also make it increasingly hard to work outside. Cold rain could be expected, turning into sleet followed by snow. Work would not only be difficult, but more dangerous to his health—he couldn’t afford to get sick, out here by himself.

Thinking of the weather reminded him that he would have to find some way of heating the cave’s interior. Body heat would help to a certain extent, in such an enclosed, insulated space, but he would need more than that.

One of the first things to do would be to rig some kind of temporary cover for the cave entrance, to keep out rain and snow while he was working inside. The cover should be something heavier than the plastic sheets he had, which were called tarps but actually were not. Maybe some actual waterproof canvas could be found down at the ranch. Probably even a sheet of something that could be weighted along the bottom edge or otherwise secured to resist wind.

His mind ran on, thinking of a number of things. He was letting it freewheel at the moment without yet making it consider the practical problems involved in doing these things. But then, he reminded himself, it was always better to do the large thinking first and get down to the details afterward. One of the things that had come immediately to mind the minute he had thought of staying was that now perhaps he could set up his backwoods forge.

He envisioned the cave—deepened, ceilinged, walled, and floored inside. It would have the wooden front—there was no reason why he could not extend that front off to one side to enclose a blacksmithy.

The nearly vertical face of the bluff itself curved backward slightly as it went away the stream. So that if he extended the front, he would build out straight in front of that curve. The further part of that front would then have a space behind it, widening out like a slice of pie; he could dig further in to widen it, if necessary, and could further enclose it with a short end wall at right angles to the front section, to tie it back to the bluff face, and add a bit of roof.

He might wall it off from the interior, heated area of the cave, since it would be strongly warmed by his forge, once he had it going. The important thing would be to keep out the rain and snow.

Building the forge, as well as the area for it, and the part of the cave he would live in, was going to keep him very busy in whatever time he had before the ground froze. All at once, he found himself desperately eager to get at it immediately. It was frustrating not to be able to ride Brute right now and use Sally as a packhorse.

Then it struck him that there were things he could do while he waited a few more days for the ankle to strengthen. One was to ride down to the ranch and spend some time examining it for things there he could use. Now that his decision was set, it was time for plans to be made, and careful planning was a part of his nature.

It was still early in the day. He saddled Sally. Now that he knew the area better, he knew a way down to the ranch that avoided the shale slope entirely. It took half again as long as going across the shale. But he still got to the ranch in a couple of hours; and he estimated he could spend at least three hours there before he had to head back to the campsite while there was still afternoon left.

He had brought his crutch along. Not because he could not do without it, but to ease the wear and tear on his weak ankle when he was on foot.

He was astonished at what he found when he got there. It was the first time he had looked at any place like this with the eye of a scavenger, rather than simply as a possible temporary shelter. In the outbuildings he located not only a keg of unused nails, but a large variety of hand tools, including some wire clippers with which he was able to cut loose and roll up a twelve-foot section of the four-foot-high wire fence around the former garden patch.

The sheets and blankets had been stripped off the beds and taken by the raiders. But he found more of both among other household items boxed in a storeroom. He also found old and damaged blankets in an outbuilding. With one of these, he made a pad to fasten behind his saddle and carry the roll of wire. He was tempted to take a great many more things. But on this trip he was not prepared to carry or drag them. All around him, in addition to tools, he began to recognize a number of other items that would be useful in building or furnishing the cave.

He looked enviously at a waterwheel-driven electric generator beside the small stream that flowed near the ranch. It had obviously supplied power to the buildings during power outages or other emergencies. There were poles carrying wires to the house and outbuildings that must run out to a power line along a road too far away for him to see from here. The wire would have connected with rural electricity, back when current had been still coming into this area.

Aside from things he need merely pick up, there was a remarkable amount of wood siding on the house that had escaped the flames. Much more than he would need. In addition, there was a store of unused two-by-fours and planks in one of the outbuildings. Even if the nails in the keg turned out to be less than he would need, there was a wealth of them, as he had anticipated, in the still-standing walls of the buildings.

With some kind of hauling sledge, which he could build of materials here, there were larger or heavier things to take apart and transport up into the hills. With both horses pulling the sledge once snow fell, he could move a good load at a time.

He even looked at a bedstead, which could be taken apart for transporting.

Something like that was a ridiculous luxury—at least at this point. He could, however, make use of kitchen chairs and a table. Also, there were cooking utensils, as well as tableware and some dishes, which he would take. Most of what the ranch house had owned of these items had been taken, but much remained, particularly the cooking utensils, large spoons, spatulas, and other things.

On a sudden inspiration, he checked the number of vehicles still standing about the ranch-house area. There were four cars, three of which looked as if they had been in running condition when the supply of gas had dried up. Also, there were one large and one small tractor and a couple of pickup trucks. One of the trucks still had a blade, for snowplowing or some other use, attached to the front of it.

In addition to these, there was a snowmobile vehicle, and tucked inside its basket was a pair of heavy snowmobile boots large enough for him to wear, which would be invaluable when winter set in. There was also a two-wheel fence-sided trailer and a massive, rubber-tired four-wheel flatbed trailer that would need either a tractor or a heavy pickup to pull it, loaded.

There were both skis and snowshoes, as well as a toboggan. But it was none of these that interested him as much as the batteries in the cars and trucks and tractors. They were all dead, of course. There had been no gas available for any motorized vehicles for over a year. But it had occurred to Jeebee that since they were all late model sealed batteries with their acid locked inside them, he mignt be able to use the solar-cell blanket to bring them up to charge again. Then he could use the batteries themselves to run the interior, ceiling lights of the cars for ordinary illumination in his cave. He could even use them to run one or two of the headlights from the cars, briefly, if for some reason a very bright source of light was needed. It was the way the wagon had run light bulbs off a generator attached to its turning wheels that had turned his mind in this direction.

All of the batteries that he found seemed in good shape. They were all sealed, which meant that the acid would still be safely inside them. He tried turning on the lights of the various vehicles, to see if there was any life in any of them. But, of course, there was not.

It was tempting to take a single battery and headlamp from one of the tractors, where it was easy to get off, and carry it back up to the campsite with him. Up there he might be able to monkey with it and the solar-cell blanket to see if he could not charge up the battery and get the headlamp to light, even if dimly, for a short while.

But it would be wrong to put that much unnecessary weight on Sally in addition to his own; on this first trip at any rate. The horses were his most valuable possession. He must not risk hurting or overworking either of them.

It would be much better to take a few useful but light things in addition to the wire. He ended by bundling a number of small tools into one of the blankets, including paper and some pencils that had been ignored by the raiders. These, in particular, he grabbed up happily.

From his young days, when he had first tried to make drawings of the inner workings of the clocks and radios he worked with, he had developed a habit of thinking with a pencil in his hands. He was used to thinking on paper—or on a computer screen. Now he could sit down and draw plans, not only of the cave, but of the means of bringing up to it some of the heavier, or more awkward, items.

To these items, wadded in the second blanket, he added only one old, tattered blanket-coat that he had found in an outbuilding. All other clothing had apparently been taken by the raiders, who would probably wear it without taking it off until it fell apart on them, then throw it away in the expectation of replacing it from some other looted place down the line.

This bundle he put inside the roll of wire, to secure it for the ride, tying it tightly into place. Happily, the raiders had evidently had no use for most of the light and heavy rope to be found in the outbuildings.

Once more in the saddle, he took the same route back to camp. When he got there, he enclosed everything, including the blanket he had used as a pad for Sally, in the middle of the roll of wire.

Once more, he pulled his trick of kneeling on Sally’s back. It was a great deal more comfortable this time, now that his kneeling was being done on the saddle. He tied the stuffed wire roll up in a different tree from that which held the packload, using some of the extra rope he had brought back from the ranch. He fastened it at a height where he was pretty sure it would be out of reach of Wolf. In any case, there was nothing in the bundle that resembled food, so Wolf’s only attraction to it would be curiosity. That might be enough to keep him from trying to climb the tree just to get his teeth into the bundle.

Wolf had not been there when he got back, and still had not returned by the time he had put the bundle up and unsaddled Sally. In the last few days, Wolf’s unusual, frequent visits had lessened in number, until he was coming in only two or three times a day. It occurred to Jeebee that he might have visited the campsite while Jeebee was gone. If so, any feeling his partner might have that Jeebee was no longer able to find his own food would have been eradicated. Now Jeebee thought that most likely Wolf would probably not return again until his usual time of twilight.

Jeebee spent the nearly two hours of workable daylight at a sketch of what he would build on the front of the cave.

There had been a posthole digger in one of the outbuildings. That, quite naturally, had been one of the things for which the raiders had no use. He decided now that one solution to the problem of bringing long lengths of plank from the ranch up to the cave was to bring a larger number of short ones. As a result he had sketched out a series of postholes running along the face of the bluff, in which he could stand upright lengths of doubled two-by-fours nailed together. Then he could nail the short lengths of planks between them to make a solid wall.

There were some twelve-foot lengths of two-by-fours stored in one of the outbuildings. At least enough to build the series of posts Jeebee had in mind.

He would space his posts not more than three feet apart. Twelve of them, therefore, should mark out the front of his cave-home-to-be. That would include those needed for the extra small wall that would tie the far end of the front into the bluff to make the blacksmithing area.

He was still refining his sketch of this, squinting at the much-erased paper of the large pad he had brought back with him, when a furry face pushed itself between the paper and his nose. Wolf was back.

Jeebee welcomed him with unusual exuberance.

After the greeting ceremony was over, Jeebee got the fire going and began to realize that he had not eaten since morning. He had prudently resolved not to try to get at his cooked meat while Wolf was around. Unfortunately, in this case he had waited until too late in the day.

He was tempted to take Sally over to the tree and reach up into the bag of meat enough to get out several handfuls of the cooked chunks. Then he could stay where he was, throw some of the chunks to Wolf, and eat the rest himself, seated on horseback.

The plan was theoretically workable, but it would draw Wolf’s attention particularly to the bag of cooked meat. At Jeebee’s best estimate, it was out of Wolf’s reach and he already knew it was there. But Jeebee had the sneaking feeling that the less attention paid to it, the better. He did not know how Wolf might find a way to reach it, but he had gotten to the point where he believed almost anything was possible to the other.

Besides, it would not be the first meal he had skipped.

He put the thought of eating out of his mind; and after a while of sitting, gazing into the fire and half thinking, half dreaming of the cave home as it eventually could be, he rolled up in his blankets, ready for sleep. It would be two or three days anyway before his left ankle would be strong enough for him to risk trying to ride Brute and handle the more temperamental horse in the matter of carrying or dragging things back from the ranch.

He could use those days by riding Sally down, having her pull back a bundle of the twelve-foot-long two-by-fours, with the front ends elevated and the back ends scraping along the ground, plus a few other things that he could not only keep safe from Wolf, but use right away. It was a temptation to bring the posthole digger up without further delay. But it would be awkward to drag, and it was too long and rigid to be carried conveniently behind the saddle.

He reminded himself sensibly that the only way he could use the tool would be by standing firmly on one foot while driving the spade end of the digger into the ground with the other. The sprained ankle was probably still some days away from being used either way.

The thought of redamaging the ankle by trying to drive the posthole digger into the ground, or of turning it again by trying to stand on that foot alone, was unnerving. The last thing he needed now was to be laid up again for another long period.

He measured and marked the spots to erect the two-by-fours before settling down with the fire and Wolf for the night.

The next three days, he was busy bringing up equipment from the ranch, and he brought the posthole digger after all, as well as a saw and other tools and a collapsible metal ladder he found laid up on the rafters of one of the less completely burned outbuildings. He hid the ladder under the two sleeping blankets he lay upon, and was lying upon them when Wolf showed up, the third evening.

He had not been at all sure that Wolf, scenting or otherwise figuring out that something was there, would not root between the blankets to investigate, but Wolf did not. Three days later, using the hole digger by standing gingerly on his bad ankle, he successfully had four of the posts up at the campsite. Wolf investigated these with great interest when he came back, urinated on them, and gnawed on a few of them, but without doing any great damage.

Jeebee, looking over the tooth-marked pieces of lumber, decided that they were usable as they were, after all. Gradually, the rest of the postholes got dug. Wolf showed up at one time when he was still using the posthole digger, and when Jeebee had laid it down for a moment, tried to carry it off. But it was both heavy and awkward, and when Jeebee pretended to become very interested in something at the other side of the meadow, paying no attention to him at all, Wolf dropped the digger and trotted over to find out what was attractive there.

When Wolf came up, Jeebee engaged him for a little time in play, and then lay down on his blankets. Wolf lay down also. But it was still only late afternoon and whatever impulse had brought him back had now been satisfied or forgotten. He disappeared again.

In spite of the fact that Wolf was gone, however, Jeebee prudently ignored the posthole digger, letting it lie where it was overnight. The following day, after Wolf had disappeared, he tried something new. He got down the roll of fencing and fenced himself in against the face of the bluff with the wire in a semicircle around him, held upright by angle-iron posts from the garden patch, its end stakes driven into the vertical face of the bluff.

Jeebee had no doubt that if Wolf made a serious effort, he could pull the stakes out, one by one, but he hoped that organized an effort would not occur to his partner. Certainly the fence was now fastened firmly enough to stand up against being pushed or pawed by Wolf in any less-than-serious fashion.

He went back to work. Eventually Wolf did come, and prowled along the fence. He pawed at it once or twice and whimpered at Jeebee. Jeebee stopped work and stepped over the fence, to greet him, leaving the posthole digger inside. Jeebee greeted him, and in the process moved away from the fence. For a while he enticed Wolf as well as he could into forgetting the fence. Then, while Wolf was still there, he deliberately went back to it, stepped over it, and returned to work.

Wolf came up to the fence once more, and once more protested at it keeping him out. But when Jeebee continued to work, paying him no attention, he turned suddenly and trotted off with an exaggeratedly indifferent air. He went off to lie down in a little hollow among the roots of a tree at the edge of the meadow near the fire, which he had sometime since picked as his favorite resting place.