Wolf and Iron

CHAPTER 4

They had reached the interstate highway Jeebee had set as a goal for himself, nearly five days before. But now that they were there, he was taking time to explore up and down a twenty-mile length of that double ribbon of concrete before settling on a position of observation, to make sure of both his knowledge of the area and a food supply.

The food-supply question had reached the critical stage. Wolf, gone most of the time, had not shown any signs of suffering from a lack of it. It was impossible for Jeebee to tell how well fed he was simply by looking at him. Underneath his almost ragged-looking summer coat of fur, dark on back and sides but lightening almost to white on the belly, he had appeared lean, almost skinny, since he had shed his winter coat. But without any real proof of the belief, Jeebee felt fairly sure that Wolf, unlike him, had been able to find and hunt down some kind of prey, even if it had been no more than hare or ground squirrels.

In Jeebee’s case, however, the small supply of emergency irradiated food was long since eaten. He had found little to put in his stomach since the porcupine, except for a few mushrooms he had been able to identify safely as morels—one of the three species he could recognize from possibly deadly kinds—that he found growing on the decaying roots of a tree in a wood clump. But these were quickly eaten and not very satisfying to his clamorous belly. He was conscious of a sort of continuous hollow feeling. It could be ignored, if necessary, but in fact it was always with him these last few days. More troubling was a general weakness of body. He tired more quickly than he liked, after even a few hours of walking.

Now, however, on his fourth day of exploration he had come across a farmhouse, abandoned and half broken down, that had at first looked promising. If he could find even some sprouted grain that had been originally stored for feed animals, he could cook and eat that…

But after a thorough search of the barn and what was left of the house, he had found nothing. He was about to leave when he suddenly caught sight of Wolf, who had not been with him since the dawn, also nosing around the place. He paid no attention to Jeebee, but seemed intent on his own investigations.

Jeebee suddenly felt something like resentment. He had been about to give up this place as having nothing worth taking. But now that Wolf was investigating it, he was suddenly reminded of the fact that his comrade’s keen nose and intense curiosity might be able to find things he had missed.

Accordingly, Jeebee went back to searching, himself. He had pretty well examined the house and felt sure he had not overlooked anything at all that he could eat, but now he would look again. He began to search the immediate perimeter of the former dwelling.

His searching took him on a spiral outward from the foundations of the building until it brought him to a fairly large patch of foot-high, year-old dead grass.

It had seemed to be nothing more than that; but as soon as he began searching through it, to his annoyance Wolf came also to nose about in it a few yards from him. Abruptly Wolf appeared to have found something. His tail and ears went up and his muzzle dipped out of sight below the tops of the grass stems. He seemed to be engaged with something.

Jeebee went hastily to join him. After a couple of strides, he saw that Wolf was standing in an open patch in the grass, worrying with his teeth at some kind of bolt that had to be first turned up, then slipped back from a hasp to free up a metal cover that lay level with the ground around it, its gray surface splotched with rust, but having the appearance of a fairly thick piece of sheet iron.

Jeebee knew better by now than to try to push Wolf away and simply take over the hasp himself. Wolf was extraordinarily protective of anything that he had near his mouth. On the other hand, there was that curiosity of his…

Jeebee backed off a little way out of the patch of grass and quietly picked up a couple of plum-sized rocks. Wolf’s head was down, still worrying with the hasp. Jeebee chucked one rock into the grass about fifteen feet beyond Wolf and another one as much again further on a second later. Wolf’s head came up, his ears pricked, and he bounded forward, searching into the grass about where the first rock had fallen, and then continued on, searching further out. In four quick strides, Jeebee reached the metal plate lying in the ground. He reached down and took hold of the hasp, just as Wolf’s muzzle poked back into his circle of vision.

But Jeebee was holding the hasp now, and if Wolf was protective about things right under his nose, he had so far likewise seemed to respect Jeebee’s ownership of anything he held. Of course, this respect had not been tested with anything that Jeebee suspected Wolf really wanted.

Now that the bolt was back, it was obvious to Jeebee that the metal plate had been a trapdoor over something. He looked for what must be there and now saw the two hinges, overgrown with grass in the edge opposite the one in which the bolt had been set. He took hold of the bolt and lifted. The cover was heavy, but it came up without too much trouble, though with some squealing that signaled long unuse.

Wolf backed away. Ahead of them and beneath Jeebee was a black hole of unknown depth in the ground. The top of a ladder led down into it.

Jeebee looked over at Wolf. He was five or six steps back. His posture was a picture of conflict between timidity and curiosity; and his raised and furrowed eyebrows gave a humanlike impression of concern as he craned his neck toward the darkness below.

It occurred to Jeebee he would be wise to get down the ladder as soon as possible, before Wolf overcame his original reaction at finding what was underneath the metal.

He turned, cradling the .22 in the crook of his arms, and began cautiously to back down the ladder. The .30/06 was in its sling on his back and pressed against him in unusual fashion as he descended. He went down into the darkness.

A moment later the toe of his left boot, searching downward, encountered something solid, and he stepped down on to what had enough give to feel like a dirt floor. He searched around with the toe of the boot to make sure there was adequate standing room at the foot of the ladder, then came all the way down with both feet.

For several long moments he could see nothing. He heard an almost querulous whimpering above him and looked up at a suddenly blinding patch of blue sky framed by the opening, and just a slice of Wolf’s muzzle, still some few feet back from one edge of the opening, looking down after him. A gray-furred paw reached tentatively down to the ladder’s topmost rung, and was swiftly withdrawn.

Jeebee made a mental note that Wolf was either not happy about entering unknown dark places belowground, or did not like descending ladders.

Whether the other could even see him or not down here, Jeebee did not know. And it did not matter.

Gradually his eyes, adjusting to the gloom, revealed to him, like a picture developing in a darkroom in its first tray of fluid, a cavelike area lined on all sides with shelves loaded with cans, some boxes, and even a few sealer jars.

Jeebee’s mouth suddenly watered. This was something that used to be common at every farm before rural electricity had come in, bringing with it refrigerators and freezers—a root cellar. Back in that time, these shelves would have been filled with glass sealers like the few he saw. Now, just before or at the time the house was deserted and damaged for whatever reason, its owners must have gone, leaving it still filled with the many things they had not taken with them. What was down here was food. And the canned stuff, at least, might still be edible.

Ignoring the little sounds from time to time of Wolf above him, Jeebee reached over his shoulder to fish in his pack and come up with a candle stub like the one he had used in the cellar where he had found the leather jacket.

Briefly he lit the two-and-a-half-inch piece of candle and began examining the cans closely. With the heat from the candle flame almost searing his eyes and the can at the end of his nose, he was at last able to find that most of them had been dated on the metallic circle of the bottom of each one. To his joy, the date stamped on there was no more than nine months earlier, and in only a couple of cases a year or more beyond what his multimode watch told him was the present date.

Hastily, he stuffed as many of the safely dated cans as he could into his backpack, filled his pockets, was about to pile more in his arms when a thought made him pause.

Wolf’s jaws, from what Jeebee had seen him do with them, would have no problem at all puncturing and tearing open one of these cans.

Slowly, he put back the few extra cans he had just picked up, reached back to take the .30/06 from the sling and replaced it with the .22. He gathered cans again into the crook of his left arm and looked once more about the root cellar before blowing out the candle. It had a wooden roof, braced by two-by-fours, about five feet above the floor, and with stoutly built shelves all around the sides. He would be back.

He blew the candle out, replaced it in the backpack, and took the .30/06 in his right hand, butt foremost, holding it balanced by the middle with the first three fingers while he used the last two to cling to the ladder rungs as he went up them. He mounted slowly and awkwardly. It was not unlikely, he thought, that Wolf had smelled the food that was in the glass sealers, if not that which was in the cans. The food in at least some of the glass sealers had probably gone rotten and the odor of them—detectable to Wolf’s sensitive nose, if not Jeebee’s own—had seeped out. If so, Wolf could not help but know that what he was now carrying up was at least potential food.

Jeebee tensed as he climbed. True, Wolf had not so far tried to take from him anything that he was actually holding, even the bits of porcupine meat that were merely close to him. But that was no guarantee Wolf would not try to appropriate the cans he was now carrying, or contrive to make him drop them.

Moreover, Wolf was really an awesomely dangerous animal, with those teeth and the speed and power Jeebee had seen him show over the past few weeks. If it came to a real contest between them…

Nonetheless, as he approached the top of the ladder, he became aware of the strange change inside of him. For days now he had been deeply and sincerely grateful to Wolf for staying with him. Even with the other’s undoglike strangeness and what might fairly be called selfishness, it was hardly an exaggeration to say that Jeebee had come to love him.

Until this moment. Now, somehow, with the prospect of food for his starving body in his pockets, backpack, and arm, everything had suddenly changed. First and foremost, he had become aware of the huge force of the hunger in him. From the equivalent of a sharp pain, the hunger had become more like a deep but steady ache, always with him, but so familiar that it would almost have felt strange to be without it. It was like a vicious animal that had been asleep in his belly but was now awakened. Deep in him a primitive decision was stirring. He had food in his possession now, and no one, not even Wolf, was going to take any of it from him.

He went on up the ladder.

As his head rose above the earth level, and his eyes met Wolf’s, only half a dozen feet away, something seemed to touch him at the base of the back of his skull. A chill flooded out from that part of him as if it was some powerful dye; spreading forward to the back of his ears, down his neck and into the muscles of his back and down his spine. As he continued to come up and step out at last on level ground, his vision focused more and more tightly until he saw nothing but Wolf directly ahead of him—and all this time his eyes had never left Wolf’s.

Wolf’s tongue licked his lips uncertainly and he backed up five or six steps, still watching Jeebee. Jeebee waited but he made no other move. Jeebee stood, prepared to club Wolf with the stock of the rifle if the other made a try for the cans he held.

After a moment of waiting, Jeebee turned, keeping his eyes on Wolf while he put down the cans, pulled the lid up on its hinges, and closed it again over the root cellar, shooting the bolt home. He gathered in the cans once more, the rifle in his hand still pointing in Wolf’s direction, and turned away. Slowly he started off in the direction of his camp, tense and ready for Wolf either to approach him suddenly with that fantastic bounding speed, or move behind him to get at the root-cellar door again.

But Wolf did neither. As Jeebee continued to move away, Wolf turned out in a circle around him to come back in fifteen to twenty feet ahead of him. He continued at a slow trot, looking back over his shoulder at Jeebee every so often; and in this way they both returned to the campsite.

Jeebee had set it up in a patch of woods, not directly overlooking the superhighway, but a good five hundred yards behind the clump on the hill that did; that clump from which he could observe traffic on the highway while lying with the opera glasses, out of sight, himself. When the two of them reached the camp, now, Wolf circled the dead ashes of the previous night’s fire. He stood on the other side of them, watching, as Jeebee went to a cottonwood tree not ten feet from the ashes and lifted, one by one, the cans he had been carrying as high as he could reach, to perch them along several thick limbs coming out from the cotton-wood.

He had leaned the .30/06 reluctantly against the tree so that he could put up the cans. But Wolf merely stood watching, making no move to approach. It was as if he had lost interest in the cans as food and was merely being his old, usual, curious self with his constant observation of everything that happened around him.

With all the cans safe, Jeebee laid the rifle down and pulled himself up onto the lower limbs of the cottonwood until he could get a leg over one of them and hang there. Then he transferred the cans from their present limbs to higher branches—ones to which Wolf could not possibly jump or climb. This done, he let himself back down onto the ground. While he had been in the tree, Wolf had flopped down on one hip, with his muzzle resting across his forelegs and his deceptively sleepy eyes following Jeebee’s every movement. Cautiously, Jeebee produced one of the cans from his pocket—it was a can of stew. His mouth watered and his hands trembled as he held it.

Reaching down for his large hunting knife, he untied the thong that held it firmly in its sheath, pulled it out, and with the heavy blade punched through the lid. He sawed raggedly around the rim of the can until he had it off. All this time, he was watching Wolf, but Wolf seemed to have lost interest. He yawned once or twice, then got to his feet and, angling off to one side of Jeebee, at the edge of the clearing, began to sniff and after a while to dig busily at the foot of a tree.

Jeebee resheathed the knife, placed the open can of stew up in one of the recently vacated lower crotches of the tree limb, and followed it with the .30/06, which he laid across two limbs. Then, careful not to disturb either can or gun, he climbed back up into the tree. Once he was seated on one of the branches, he retrieved the rifle in his left hand, put the open can between his knees, and began gingerly to reach between the ragged edges of the can to get at the stew inside with two fingers.

He began to scoop up fingers loaded with the stew and push them into his mouth. The porcupine meat, as delicious as it was, was a pale memory compared to the reality of what he held in his hand. The fat he licked from his fingers drove him almost wild with hunger even as a nausea began to rise from his shrunken stomach.

He fought to keep the nausea down, but vomited in spite of himself onto the ground beneath. Like a flash Wolf was underneath the tree at what had come up.

Jeebee sat miserably above the other. His body cried out for more food, but his stomach still roiled with upset at the thought of receiving it. But after a while it calmed, and he ventured to feed himself some more, taking small amounts at intervals and working them thoroughly in his mouth before he risked swallowing them.

Eventually, he managed to keep some down. It was not surprising, he told himself, that his stomach, so long empty, should be unable to handle a sudden onslaught of fat and meat.

Regretfully, he threw the empty can down to the ground. It made barely one bounce before Wolf was on it. Jeebee left the rest of the cans still in the tree, took the .30/06, and climbed down. By the time he reached the ground Wolf was lying down with the can held between the toes of his two front paws with a suppleness that was almost that of human fingers, his long tongue having polished the interior until it looked like it had been just washed.

Jeebee felt a momentary pang of conscience.

“Maybe later on—” he began, taking a step toward Wolf. But at Jeebee’s first movement toward him, Wolf growled protectively, leaped to his feet, holding the completely empty can in his jaws, and ran off among the trees. Jeebee sighed and sat down. He took the small whetstone from its leather holster on his belt and began to sharpen the mistreated edge of the knife.

He sat so, sharpening the knife, for about fifteen minutes, then waited another fifteen. But Wolf did not return. He had probably, thought Jeebee, taken the can and hidden it somewhere, then gone off on one of his own hunting expeditions. Though what there should be about the can once Wolf had licked out what little Jeebee had left, stuck to its inner sides, Jeebee had no idea. There could hardly be even a smell remaining of the food that had originally been in it.

He sighed. There was very much more he had to understand about Wolf.

There was also no point in continuing to sit here himself. Jeebee took his two rifles and slung the .30/06 on his back once more. Carrying the .22 in his right hand, he left for the place he had picked out as an observation post, from which he could keep a watch for the sort of traveler along the highway whom he had decided he needed.