Wolf and Iron

CHAPTER 32

Within the next week, actual winter moved in. It began with a three-day snowstorm that kept them cave-bound. That was followed by a spell of open weather, then by storms at about two-day intervals, on the average, and lasting anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days.

The snow cover on the ground built up rapidly. Jeebee was only able to make two more trips with the trailer. After that, he was reduced to going on snowshoe, without the horses, and pulling the sledge behind him.

In the foothills, particularly among the trees, the depth of the snow cover was exceedingly varied. Some areas were only very lightly covered. Others were ten feet or more deep in drifts. The shale slope was now a single glistening slope of unknown depth, and the less steep slope at the top of the bluff that crowned it was beginning to build up a massive, many-feet-deep cliff of drifted snow, which overhung all the slope below, threateningly.

Jeebee, after checking the area from a respectful distance, ignored it completely. It might be safe to try to cross it with the sledge, but there was no point in taking unnecessary chances. By this time he was familiar with the foothills in the area in any case, and had a variety of routes available to him down to the flatlands.

He settled on one that took him by means of folds of land, either through relatively sheltered, treed areas or down open slopes that were gentle enough so that he would be able to get the sledge back up them.

Several times, he had tried riding the sledge like a child’s sleigh down a slope. But it was almost impossible to guide. The fourth time it landed him deep in a drift that it took him some minutes to dig himself out of. He did not try again.

The ranch, when he had time and reason to visit it, was effectively being buried. The part of the ranch house that had been opened to the elements by fire was drifted deep with snow. Most of the outbuildings either had drifts within them or about them. No part of it any longer offered the shelter that it had given from wind and sleet, on the occasion of his overnight visit, a little earlier in the fall.

His life became a simple one of working on the cave and at the forge. He steadily enlarged and boarded in the cave. He also began real work at the forge, as much to learn from experience as to make what they needed—but in want of both.

Most of what he hammered into shape were things for the inner room in the cave. He made a more sturdy and permanent support for the hooked rod that had suspended kettles and pots over the flames of the fireplace. He also made brackets and support for shelving. Little by little, the inner cave was becoming more homelike.

Wolf had furred out magnificently with the cold weather. He still slept in his favorite corner of the cold room up front. It was evidently uncomfortable for him, fur-coated as he was, to stay in the warmth of the inner cave for any length of time at all. Still he insisted on coming in for his morning and evening greetings, particularly if he had been away from the cave.

Most of the storm time, however, he spent in that same corner, sleeping. It amazed Jeebee that he could sleep so much. When there was nothing going on, apparently, Wolf could sleep for sixteen or more hours, though his sleep was periodically interrupted by small wakings and movings around.

It was hard to keep him out of the inner room, particularly when they were stormbound for more than a day. But he was completely undisciplined as far as his bowel habits were concerned, and Merry now had the throw rugs down on the floor. Jeebee and Merry had gotten into the habit of going into the outer room, dressed for its temperature, to be with him at dawn and twilight, and he would join Jeebee in the smithy, until the heat of the forge drove him back out again.

In fact, the front room was not all that unpleasant. Its walls kept the wind out, and the pale, but sometimes bright, winter light came through its one window and illuminated even its further corners.

The cold-storage pit for the frozen cooked meat was finished and doing its job admirably, protected by the section of fencing Jeebee had brought up from the ranch. It was that same length of fence that had protected him from Wolf’s teasing playfulness while he built the front wall of the cave.

The books had been right. The fencing effectively guarded the pit from Wolf. Wolf tried to pull it out of place. But he was frustrated by the way Jeebee had anchored it, with large, metal, forge-made anchors, like spikes with their ends turned up. Plainly he did not like to walk or stand upon it. The books had been right in that. Also, they had been right in that he did not try to dig under the recommended three-foot skirt of it, that Jeebee had pegged down outward over the bare earth floor.

The storms tailed off. They became occasional. Sometimes a week or ten days would go without one. Jeebee had been unsure how successful Wolf’s hunting had been under these winter conditions. His conscience prodded him into sharing some of their stored meat with Wolf at intervals.

He had tried to do this always by taking the meat out of the pit when Wolf was away and thawing it in the inside room. Then, after Wolf had returned, Jeebee would carry it outside the front wall for some little distance and simply drop it in the snow. Wolf was never slow in collecting it for himself.

This worked well. But Jeebee could only guess whether he was merely supplementing Wolf’s diet or whether he literally needed to feed Wolf to keep him from starving. But in any case, Jeebee kept on doing it. The one natural and inevitable result was that they went through their stored supply of beef faster than Jeebee had expected. This forced him into taking more days to go on hunting trips.

He made a number of these during clear spots in the weather. Using the sledge to pull back the meat and sometimes the skin from more than one head of beef, however, turned out to be more than he could handle. The loaded sledge was a bastard—that was the only word for it—in the hills. He might have managed it with twice his usual load down on the flat surface of the plain. But going uphill, and over surfaces that frequently tipped sharply and unexpectedly to right or left, the double load was too much.

He had grown accustomed to the feeling that he should be able to make the trip down and back without trouble. Then came a trip on which, the second day out and having found no food animals, he was caught by a storm.

It came too swiftly for him to even think of getting back to the cave.

The first warning he had was a vague difference in the light. He looked up at the sky and saw, he thought, no clouds. But the blue overhead seemed more pale than usual, as if a layer of white gauze had been drawn over it. When he looked at the sun, its outline was unclear, as if a faint haze had developed, high up between him and it.

He took the glasses automatically to skim the horizon and found that the horizon was now indistinct. There was no line where sky and land should meet.

He had been out in the open for more than half a year now. There was nothing specific to fasten on, but an uneasy feeling grew in him as of something titanic and inimical looming over him. If he had been Wolf, Wolf would have been sniffing the still air tensely.

Where he might not have a year before, he now paid attention to that uneasiness. Stopping the sledge, he got out the tent and began setting it up alongside the sledge.

He had barely gotten it up with his blankets inside and one side staked down, when a thick mist seem to congeal around him all at once. The feeling of uneasiness grew. He drove the stakes on the other side of the tent and hammered its poles even tighter into the packed underlayers of hard snow. Taking the blankets out again, he scooped out snow inside to make up for the space he had taken away from the height of the tent.

He climbed within and fastened the ends of the tent as tightly as he could. He slid into his roll of blankets. The enclosed air space warmed quickly about him. Outside, the air remained still. But the uneasiness he felt was still with him. He kept on all his clothes and boots, and waited.

He did not have long to wait. Within minutes he heard the wind in the distance, like the sound of a hunting animal. Almost as soon as he heard it, it hit the tent, rising from a light push to a heavy fist blow of air that turned the tent’s interior icy cold, all at once. With it came the sudden rattling of ice particles against the tent fabric.

He pulled himself up partially out of the blankets so that his arms were free. He dug his mittened hands into the snow on the tent side away from the sledge and took hold of the stakes he had driven in there, putting his weight on them to help hold them down. The walls of the tent sucked inward, then billowed out again suddenly, with a crack. He could feel the pressure of the wind only inches from him, not touching him, but as if a great hand had taken hold of the tent with him inside.

He lay, the tent cracking and vibrating wildly around him, satisfied to just hold on if he could, until the gusts should pass.

But they did not pass. They came at slightly longer intervals for a while and then picked up again more fiercely than before. The foot end of the tent blew out suddenly and flapped wildly in the wind; its inner corners yanked by the force of the wind out from under the heels of his boots, with which he had been pressing them into the snow below.

There was nothing he could do but let it flap. He pushed down with one elbow on the flaps beyond his head, feeling the icy air reaching all around him. The storm was like some enormous living creature, trying to snatch the tent from him and tear it to shreds; to tear him, the sledge and everything else to shreds, leaving only the white sterile world of snow and snow-filled air.

He held on—he held on. But at last the outer side of the tent was snatched from the snow and a moment later the whole tent flew wild, flapping like a mad thing.

He grabbed and caught the inner edge, rolling on it to hold it down, rolling until he wrapped it all around him like an untidy cocoon.

He rolled backward until the low edge of the sledge stopped him.

Squirming around, bound by the rolled tent about him, he got his mittened hands free enough to dig into the snow under the runner.

Like a burrowing mole, he excavated until he could squirm in with the tent wrapped around him. He crawled until he was under the sledge, putting it between himself and the wind, cocked at an angle over his body.

He lay, gasping for breath.

The snow was blowing thickly now. It began to drift around him and around the sledge.

Soon they were completely enclosed; and the fierce tearing of the wind began to be muffled by its thickness. The wind sound grew more and more distant until he could barely hear it. In his heavy clothing, wrapped in the tent and the snow, he was almost warm.

“I mustn’t fall asleep,” he told himself, “I might suffocate.”

He lay there awake, accordingly, staring into an unchanging darkness. It was completely black around him now. It occurred to him that perhaps so much time had gone by that the sun was going down, the daylight leaving as the snow drifted deeper and ever deeper, over him. He could still hear the storm distantly, but now it had softened to a sound almost like a lullaby.

He woke with a start.

He had fallen asleep after all. But he was still breathing. Evidently the drift had not been packed so tightly by the wind that air could not reach him. Perhaps grains of hard snow, like those which had rattled against the tarpaulin tent when he had first been underneath it, would not pack like softer flakes.

He wriggled and pushed his way through the snow surrounding until he suddenly popped out into brilliant sunlight.

The sun was just rising in a bright blue sky. The air was so cold that his first breath of it seemed to shock his lungs. But—it was morning. Habit had woken him close to his usual time of rousing.

Nothing had ever looked so good to him as that sun, and the brilliant blue sky overhead. There were no clouds anywhere in the great blue bowl above the white land. About him, except for the drift that had enclosed and protected both himself and the sledge, the vast snow plain looked unchanged. Only a few small, dark nubs, the tops of frozen vegetation, still protruded through it at large distances from each other.

After a long moment, creakily, he turned to the business of excavating the sledge. He was grateful for the fact that he had not had time to acquire a load, so that he had been able to lift it enough to crawl under it.

He suddenly realized he was ravenous.

His pack was the only thing that had been on the sledge. He looked, and it was still there, securely tied down. He untied it and got out the food he had brought along for the trip. It was frozen as hard as a rock.

Sensibly, Merry had packaged it in small chunks. It was a mixture of dried beef and cooked vegetables with a good deal of beef fat included. Each chunk was about the size of a golf ball. He put half a dozen of these inside the top layers of his clothing so that his body’s heat would thaw them. Stiffly, he got to his feet, took up the reins of the now-freed sledge, and started heading back toward the cave.

The weather, though frigid, had turned good again. Theoretically he could now continue hunting. But he felt in no shape to hunt at the moment. The time he had spent under the snowdrift, and fighting the storm before that, had taken something out of him. He wanted only to get back to the cave, warm up, and rest up. He turned toward the foothills, pulling the heavy, unhandy weight of the sledge along with him only because he could not afford to leave it behind.

It seemed he pulled for some time before he reached the first slopes of the foothills. He had felt barely up to the work of getting here when he had started. But the labor had warmed him. He felt better, instead of worse, for the struggle. At the bottom of the first slope, he stopped and checked the frozen food inside his clothing.

It was thawed enough to eat.

Sitting down heavily on the sledge, he chewed and swallowed. The food seemed to bring him the rest of the way back to life. Particularly, the fat Merry had mixed into it tasted sweeter to him than any sugar, and he could almost feel it refueling his weary body.

When he had finished eating, he felt almost strong enough to go back to his hunting, after all. But caution laid a hand on him. He had barely survived one storm, as much by luck as anything else. He was in no shape to risk another. Before he went down on these winter plains again he must work out, not only a plan, but all the things he would need to carry with him to dig in properly and survive future storms.

For one thing, in the future he should take along more food, extra clothing, and anything else that such an emergency might call for. Thinking of this, he made the long, panting climb back to the cave. It was only a little past noon when he got there, but he felt as if he had barely had the strength to make it home.

He mumbled an explanation to Merry as she helped him off with his outer clothing. He was too worn out to eat even the food she offered. All he wanted was to crawl into their bed under a mountain of blankets; and when at last he did, he dropped immediately into deep slumber.

But this time, as dreamless sleep enclosed him, he was conscious of being finally, undeniably, completely warm.

When he woke, it was in a slow float back into awareness and the realization, from Merry’s activity around the cave, that he had slept only about three or four hours. Wolf had apparently not come home yet, to rouse him for the regular twilight greeting ceremony. Still, Merry had food starting to cook for what must be their evening meal.

“Feel better?” she asked now as he got up and began rubbing the last of the sleep from his eyes.

He sat on the edge of the bed.

“A lot better,” he said. Indeed, he was surprised just how much better he felt. It was as if his sleep during the storm and under the snowdrift afterward had been no real sleep at all. But the few hours he had just passed felt as if they had been some of the most restful unconsciousness he could remember in years. He told himself that the feeling was probably just the fact that he was safely back inside the cave, with her.

“Nothing like home,” he told her.

Merry smiled. The smile was her usual bright smile. But, in addition, there was some sort of glow about her that was brighter than usual. As if someone had just given her a much-wanted present.

He found the lighter pair of pants he normally wore in the warmth of the cave, taking them down from their hook where Merry had hung them, and pulled them on, tucking his shirt in. He had slept in his shirt over her objections, not wanting to give up anything that might help bring warmth back to his body. Dressed, he went over and kissed Merry gratefully, and she kissed him back with particular enthusiasm.

“Have we time?” he asked. Her glow had invaded him.

“Yes—no,” said Merry. She pushed him toward his chair at the table. “Sit down. Dinner’s going to be ready in a minute.”

He sat.

“Wolf hasn’t been around?”

“He got back about half an hour ago,” she answered. “I went outside to be with him for a bit and let you sleep. He was walking sore-footed—you know the way he does when he’s covered a lot of distance. He curled up in his corner. I think he’s still there.”

Jeebee stretched without getting up from his chair, pushing his hands high above his head, which was something he could not do standing upright. The ceiling was still too low. Someday, he told himself, he would fix that.

Sitting there while she got the meal on, he told her more about the storm than he had done in his brief mumble on getting home. She was sympathetic, but he noticed that the glow about her did not diminish. It puzzled and intrigued him. Aside from the fact that he could feel that it would not be right to ask the reason for it, his own nature was not one that asked personal questions easily. So, as he had waited for her to tell him about what had happened to her father and Nick, he waited now for the explanation of why she glowed.

She sat down with him at the table. As they ate, the talk switched to things needing to be done in the cave. Their meat supply called for at most only a couple more successful hunting trips, one being to replace the one he had just aborted because of the storm. He began to tell her what he had in mind to add to his supplies for any such trip, from now on. One would be a sort of homemade sleeping bag, rather than the blankets he usually rolled himself in. Two, he should put a series of blocks or handles on the side of the sledge that would allow him to lift it, even if loaded, while he was lying flat on the snow surface beside it.

Also, he wanted an extra-light emergency pack, in addition to the one he wore always on his back. Another one that would carry only some food and perhaps a few other necessary things. Just such a sudden storm as he had experienced could last up to two days, under the sledge and the snow. He ought to be prepared with adequate means to keep him warm and fed that long.

His curiosity over this glow of hers went unsatisfied all through dinner and until Merry had cleared the table, scraping what little was left to scrape off their dishes into the coals of the fire and putting the dishes themselves to soak in a warm pot of water.

Having done this last, she wiped her hands on one of the cloths from the ranch she had chosen and laundered to act as dish towels and turned from the fire to confront him, still in his chair.

“I’ve got something to tell you,” she said.

Jeebee’s heart skipped a beat. In spite of himself a feeling of alarm kindled inside him. What might be good news from Merry’s viewpoint might well contain the seeds of something that would mean trouble for them both, seeds she might not suspect were there. But he smiled up at her.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I’m pregnant,” Merry almost sang.

“My God!”

Jeebee erupted from the chair. The glow had suddenly gone out of Merry. She stared at him grimly.

“What do you mean, ‘My God!’ she said. “Here I tell you I’m carrying our child, and you say, ‘My God!’ What’s that supposed to mean?”

“There’s no hospital! No doctors!” Jeebee said almost wildly. “We probably couldn’t even lay our hands on a nurse if we searched for miles around! All you’ll have is me, and I’m not worth a damn when it comes to something like having a baby!”

The breath went out of Merry in a long relieved sigh.

“So that’s it,” she said, in a calmer voice. She pushed him backward. “Sit down.”

Numbly, almost tripped up by the edge of his chair seat behind his knees, and under the impulse of Merry’s not inconsiderable strength, Jeebee sat down abruptly.

“Now,” said Merry, sitting down in his lap and speaking directly into his face from only about six inches away, “let me tell you a few things. First, I helped at a birthing the first year Dad had the wagon going on its route, five years ago. I was fourteen. Since then I’ve been at dozens. In fact, I deliberately asked about possible births at every place we stopped, asked if I couldn’t be useful so I could learn as much about what had to be done as possible. Lots of times there was at least a neighbor who was due to give birth, and Dad would hold the wagon there until I had a chance to be part of it. What do you think was one of the things on my list of recommendations to people I might have asked to hire me this winter, if I hadn’t found you? I’m the closest thing to a trained midwife that they’d be likely to find. Now, what do you think about that?”

“But I—” Jeebee began.

“But you, nothing!” said Merry. “Let me tell you as well that Dad not only waited for me when it was necessary so that I could be at a birthing and help and learn, he also got me three books as soon as he could find them, after that first birth I was at when I was fourteen. He came to me and shoved them into my hands. ‘Learn these,’ he said. ‘I mean, memorize them. You’re going to be in situations where maybe there’ll be no one around to help you. I want you to know what’s in them by heart.’ And I did. I memorized every word in those three books. What’s more, I’m going to teach them to you, starting now. By the time I’m through with you, you’re going to have them memorized, too. Now, what do you think of all that?”

“Fine,” said Jeebee, “and believe me I’m going to learn every word you know. But it’s still not going to make me into the equivalent of a real doctor, or even a real nurse. What if something goes wrong?”

“Sweetheart,” said Merry, “nothing is going to go wrong. I’m young, I’m strong, my hips are wide. What with the cheese, the beans, and the rest of the food we’ve been able to put together, and the vitamin tablets, I’m going to have proper nutrition during the months I’m carrying the baby. Nothing is going to go wrong. Just remember that women were having babies, sometimes all by themselves out in the middle of nowhere or in some cave, thousands of years before there were doctors or nurses or midwives. Besides, it’s not something you can change your mind about now. The baby’s on the way and I’m going to have it. Also, it’s going to be the best, prettiest, strongest baby that ever was. So you might as well just get used to the fact.”

“I will,” Jeebee said somewhat feebly, “just give me a little time, will you? I hadn’t thought about anything like this at all.”

Merry kissed him and got up off his lap.

“No, I don’t suppose you have,” she said. “Well, you can sleep on it tonight. But I’m going to start teaching you the first few paragraphs of the first book tomorrow.”

“That’s fine,” said Jeebee. But his voice still sounded a little weak in his own ears.

She grinned at him, her fists on her hips.

“You’re scared,” she said.

“Damn right,” Jeebee answered.