It was a railroad bridge.
His first reaction was pure reflex, out of a civilized time when it was dangerous to try to cross a railway bridge for fear of being caught halfway over by traffic on the rails. Then common sense took over, and his heart and hopes leaped up together. For his purpose a railway bridge and the way along further rails, beyond the bridge, was the best thing he could have encountered.
There would be no traffic on these rails nowadays. And for something like the bike, the right-of-way beside the track should be almost as good as a superhighway. He rode up the sloping bank of the river to the railway grading, stopped to lift the bike onto the ties between the rails just for the bridge crossing alone, and remounted. A brief bumpy ride took him safely across what, moments before, had been an uncrossable barrier.
On the far side of the river, as he had expected, there was plenty of room on the grade top beyond the ends of the ties, on either side, for him to ride the bike. He lifted the machine off the ties to the gravel and took up his journey along the track. He was among cottonwoods now, which blocked his view of the surrounding countryside. The embankment top was pitted at intervals where rain had washed some of the top surfacing down the slope and away, but for the most part it was like traveling a well-kept dirt road, and he made steady time with the throttle at a good ten to fifteen miles per hour.
He was now back into the open landscape he had been passing through earlier, although then the land had nourished few stands of trees. Now, on either side of the track, the land was obscured to the near horizon; until, in the far distance ahead, it curved out of sight entirely among some low hills. And nowhere in view were there any sheep, or in fact any sign of man or beast.
For a rare moment he relaxed and let himself hope. Anywhere west of the Mississippi, across the prairie country, a railroad line could run for long distances between towns. With luck, he could be out of this sheep country already. Further west, Martin had written two years before, in the last of the rare letters Jeebee had gotten from his brother while there had still been mail service, the isolated ranchers of the cattle country had been less affected than most by the breakdown of the machinery of civilization. Law and order, after a fashion at least, was still in existence. But in order to reach there, Jeebee needed to trade off the loot he had picked up from the cellar for things he needed.
First would be a more effective rifle than the .22. The .22 was a good little gun, but it lacked punch. Its slug was too light to have the sort of impact that would stop a charging man or large beast. Wolf, bear, and even an occasional mountain lion, still existed in the Montana area toward which he was headed. To say nothing of wild range cattle, which could be dangerous enough.
Moreover, with a heavier gun he could bring down cattle—or even deer or mountain sheep, if he was lucky enough to stumble across them—to supplement whatever other food supplies he was carrying. Which brought him to his second greatest need, the proper type of food supplies. Canned goods were convenient, but heavy; and impractical to carry by backpack. What he really needed was some irradiated meat. Or, failing that, some powdered soups, plain flour, dried beans or such, and possibly bacon.
He had started with some supplies of that sort in his backpack, when he had finally made his escape alive from Stoketon. In fact, when he had packed to go, it had never actually occurred to him that the locals would not just let him leave, that they might really intend to kill him. In spite of his previous three months of near isolation in the community, he had still felt that after five years of living there, he was one of them.
But of course, he had never been one of them. What had led him to think he knew them was their casual politeness in the supermarket or the post office, plus the real friendship he had had with his housekeeper, Ardyce Prine. Mrs. Prine had lived there all her life, and, in her sixties, was in a position of belonging to the local authoritative generation.
But when the riots became too dangerous for him to risk traveling into Stoketon itself, to the building housing his study group—think tank, his Stoketon neighbors had called it—the local folks had begun to consider him an outsider they were better off without. There was, in fact, no real place for him in their lives. Particularly, as those lives began to shift toward an inward-looking economy, with local produce and meat being traded for locally made shoes and clothing. Jeebee produced nothing they needed.
While Ardyce had still been his housekeeper, they had tolerated him; but the day came when she did not appear; only a short stiff note, delivered by her grandson, saying that she could no longer work for him.
After that, he had felt the invisible enmity of his neighbors beginning to close about him. When he did try to leave and head west to Twin Peaks, he found them lying in wait for him with guns. At the time, he had not been able to understand why. But he understood now. If he had tried to leave naked, they might have let him go. But even the clothes he wore they now regarded as Stoketon property. Buel Mannerly, the druggist, had risen like a demon out of the darkness of the hillside, shotgun in hand, ready to bar his going; and only that lucky misshot from somewhere in the surrounding darkness had let Jeebee get away.
But then, once away, he had foolishly gone through his supplies like a spendthrift, not understanding then how hard it would be to replace them with anything edible at all, let alone more of their special and expensive kind.
He had learned differently the hard way, living off vegetables in abandoned gardens and what he could find in the ruins of isolated and looted houses. There was never much to be found in either kind of place. Now, three weeks later, at least part of him had become bearded, wise, and wary—ears listening, eyes moving, all the time; and a nose sensitive to any scent that might signal danger…
He fell to dreaming of the things he would want to trade for as soon as he found someplace where it was safe to do so.
In addition to a heavier rifle, he badly needed a spare pair of boots. The ones he wore would not last him all the way to Montana, if the bike broke down or he had to abandon or trade it off for any reason. Also—a revolver and ammunition for it would be invaluable. But of course to dream of a handgun like that was like dreaming of a slice of heaven. Weapons were the last thing anyone was likely to trade, these days.
He became so involved in his own thoughts that he found himself entering a curve between two low hills almost unexpectedly. The railroad track curved out of sight ahead between two heavy, grassy shoulders of open land and disappeared in the shadow of a clump of cottonwood trees that lay at the far end of the curve. The rain had stopped sometime before. He followed the tracks around, chugged into the shadow of the cottonwoods and out the other side—to find himself in a small valley, looking down at a railroad station, some sheep-loading pens, and a cluster of buildings, all less than half a mile away.
CHAPTER 2
As it had when he had smelled the sheep, reflex led him to kill the motor of the bike and get both it and himself down on the ground beside the track. He lay where he was on the rough stones of the track ballast, staring through a screen of tall, dry grass at the buildings ahead and a little below him.
Even as he lay there, he knew his hitting the ground like this had almost certainly been a futile effort. If there was anyone in the little community ahead, they could have heard the whine of his electric motor even before it came into view from under the trees. He continued to lie there; but there was no sign of movement in or around the small community he had before him. Nor any sound, although the tin chimneys on several of the buildings were sending up thin streamers of gray smoke against the blue of a now mostly clear, late-afternoon sky.
Overall, what he was looking at seemed like some sort of sheep-loading station that had grown into a semivillage. There were two buildings down there that might be stores; but the majority of the structures he saw—frame buildings sided with gray unpainted boards—could be anything from homes to warehouses.
He rolled half on his side and twisted his body about to get at his
backpack and take out the pair of binoculars. They were only four-power, actually a pair he had bought the previous Christmas to give to a friend in the study group; only to find that the friend, with his wife and son, were gone, hastily and in the night, before that holiday.
They were all he had been able to get his hands on before his own departure had been hurried by the antagonism of his neighbors; and they were something that in ordinary times he would not have bothered to put in his pack. But they did magnify, although the material of their lenses seemed hardly better than window glass.
He put them to his eyes now and squinted at the buildings. This time, with their help, after a long survey, he did discover one dog, apparently asleep beside three wooden steps leading up to a long, windowed building he had guessed might be a store. He stared at the dog for a long time, but it did not move.
Jeebee held the glasses to his eyes until they began to water. Then he lowered them and took his weight off his elbows, which had been badly punished, even through the leather jacket, by the gravel and stones beneath him. He tried to estimate what sort of place and people he might have stumbled upon.
If it had not been for the ascending smoke, the wild wishful thought came sliding into his head, he could almost believe he had stumbled across some community where disease or other cause had killed off the population—including the dogs. In which case, all he would have had to do was step down there and help himself to whatever property might be lying around.
The ridiculousness of such good fortune coming his way helped him push the fanciful notion aside. But certainly, the buildings seemed almost too quiet to be true. Of course, it was late in the afternoon now, and most of the people here could be peacefully indifferent to the arrival of some stranger.
But that, too, was a farfetched notion. No one in these days would be unconcerned about strange visitors. No, there were people below, just like those in Stoketon now and everywhere else. The only question was how they would react once they knew he was here. On that, he needed more evidence.
He lay and waited. In about twenty minutes the door of a storelike building—not the one where the dog lay—opened, and people began to come out. With their appearance, the dog was on his feet, in what, as far as Jeebee could tell from this distance, was a friendly greeting. The dog trotted toward them. They continued emerging until half a dozen men were out, to scatter toward and into other buildings. What they might all have been doing inside the one structure was a question impossible to answer. But it indicated an importance to the building.
Jeebee lay, watching. Shortly after the last one had disappeared, the door opened again and a final figure in skirts emerged, threw something to the dog, and went back inside. The dog ran over and lay down to chew on whatever it was.
Jeebee stayed where he was, thinking. He could hold his position until night and then push the bike around the station and continue on down the track beyond at some safe distance. While he was still thinking this, the rattle of iron wheels on rails broke open the silence below him, and a moment later a hand-propelled railcar, with two men pumping opposite ends of the seesawlike propelling lever, rolled into sight, moving away from him on the track beyond the buildings. It continued up the track, away from him and the station until it was lost to sound and sight.
Jeebee chilled, looking after it. A car like that, pumped by two men, could get its speed up to twenty or more miles an hour along good railway track. It could run down his motorcycle if his battery was as low as it must be by now.
He had been fortunate that it had not come out earlier and been headed toward him, instead of in the other direction. Of course, he could probably have gotten off the embankment and into the cottonwoods before he could have been spotted. But all the same…
Suddenly he had made up his mind. It was a decision out of a sort of emotional exhaustion. He had to stop guessing, sometime. Somewhere, he would have to take a chance on trying to trade and this place looked as good as any. He found he no longer cared what the results of his meeting these people might be.
He lifted the bike and got on it. Taking the .22 out of the bike pack, he fitted it together and loaded it.
Openly, with the rifle in one hand, he rode down the track and off, in among the buildings.
A clamor of barking broke out as he entered. A near-dozen dogs of various breeds, but all of sheepherding type, gathered around him as he rode the bike directly to the steps of the building from which all the people had emerged earlier. The original dog was one of those now following him clamorously. Like the others, it seemed content to voice alarm and challenge, but showed no inclination to bite, which was—he thought—a good sign as far as the attitudes toward strangers of those owning the dogs were concerned.
He stopped the bike, got off, leaned it against the side of the steps where the dog had lain, and climbed the steps, shrugging his backpack higher on his shoulders. He knocked. There was no answer.
After a moment, he knocked again. When there was still no answer, he put his hand on the knob. It turned easily and the door opened. He went in, leaving the yelping of the dog pack behind him. Their noise did not stop once he had disappeared from their view, but went on, only muted by the walls and windows of the building.
Jeebee looked around himself at the room into which he had stepped. The place was barely warmer than outdoors, probably unheated. This particular room, at least, was fair-sized. It held six round tables with four chairs to each. Along one wall was a short, high bar, with nothing but some glasses upside down on the shelves behind it. Beyond the bar was a further door, closed, which Jeebee assumed to lead deeper into the building. Stacked on one end of the bar were some dishes, cups, and silverware, looking as if they had just been left behind by diners.
The barking of the dogs outside had taken on an eager, high-pitched quality interspersed with excited yips, then unaccountably faded to silence, with a few isolated whines. Jeebee moved swiftly to the nearest window and looked through it.
Coming toward the steps of the entrance was a strange female figure. A woman who must have been as tall as, and heavier than, Jeebee himself, unless most of her bulk was extra clothing underneath that dress. She was dressed in a muffling, nineteenth-century-style dress, of rusty black cloth that fell to the tops of her heavy boots below and ended in an actual poke bonnet at the top. Broad-shouldered, bent-shouldered in the black dress, she walked with long and heavy strides, leaning back against the strain in the taut chain leash one end of which was looped around a dog’s neck and secured by a snap lock that just showed above the thick ruff of hair and the nape of that neck.
It was the dog itself that had aroused the rest of the pack. It was an unlikely sheepherding dog, resembling a German shepherd more than any other breed. Also, there was some kind of difference Jeebee could not pin down, in its appearance and the way it walked. It was long-legged and had a loose-gaited, almost shambling way of moving. Its massive body was half again larger than most of the other canines around it, its coat rough with the thick hair of a dog that had spent most of its winter out in the weather.
It paid no attention to the other dogs at all. It ignored them as if they did not exist, walking ahead of the big woman, its head low and thrust forward as if on some purposeful errand. Most of the other dogs had pressed forward at its approach but now drew back and sat or lay down and were watching the newcomer with intense interest. But there were four larger dogs who stood, still on all four legs, out of the path to the steps, but just barely. Foremost of these was the largest, a dog collielike in its markings, but short-haired and heavily boned with a broad skull that reminded Jeebee of the European sheep-guarding dogs he’d seen pictures of in National Geographic.
It did not withdraw as the leashed animal, pulling forward on the chain in advance of the woman, passed it. As the leashed animal went by Jeebee saw it raise its head and look left for a moment to meet the eyes of the collie. Then the leashed dog turned away again, without other movement or expression, and, still p
ulling on the leash, led the woman ahead and up the steps to the door.
Jeebee saw the door handle turn. The door opened and the two of them stepped into the room where Jeebee waited. The woman closed the door with a deliberate movement, behind her. The dog on the leash turned immediately to her, and she, feeling into some sort of deep pocket in her voluminous dress, pulled out something that seemed to be a tidbit of some kind, which she palmed into the dog’s open and waiting mouth.
The dog swallowed it at a gulp and turned toward Jeebee. He tilted his long nose up and tested the air with several deep sniffs.
“Guard!” the woman ordered to the dog, then looked toward Jeebee herself. She spoke again in a hoarse, deep voice like the voice of a very old person: “I saw you on your way in. I just stepped out to get my watchdog, here.”
Jeebee felt the metal of the trigger guard of the .22 slippery in his right hand. The woman, he saw now that she was close, was wearing a black leather belt tight around her waist, with a small holster and the butt of what looked like a short-barreled revolver sticking out of the holster. She smelled, a dirty-clothes sort of smell. He did not doubt that she could and would use the handgun, if she thought it advantageous to do so. And, flooding all through him, was the old doubt that he could lift the .22 and fire back, even to defend his own life.
The German shepherd-like dog lay down, hind legs tucked under his body, his head erect and his weight resting lightly on his elbows and forelegs. His gaze remained on Jeebee, but that was all. The woman lifted her head, looking directly at Jeebee. Her face was tanned, masculine looking, with heavy bones and thin lips. Deep parentheses of lines cut their curves from nose to chin on each side of her mouth. She must be, Jeebee thought, at least fifty.
“All right,” said the woman. “What brings you to town?”
“I came in to trade some things,” said Jeebee.
Wolf and Iron Page 3