“Twenty-three coins,” said Jeebee. “All practically pure gold.”
“Well, I’ll tell you right now,” said Sanderson, “that much gold wouldn’t even begin to buy you a packhorse. Maybe a shovel, an ax, and a sidearm—maybe.”
He looked at Jeebee awhile longer.
“Got anything else to trade?” he asked.
“Nothing I can spare,” said Jeebee.
Sanderson stood for a minute as if thinking. For all that Jeebee overtopped him by about an inch or so, and the fact that he must be twenty years older than Jeebee, Sanderson was square-shouldered, thickly built, and strong looking. He passed his rifle to the young woman. She took it without a word.
“Come on,” Sanderson said to Jeebee, “we’ll go pick up that rifle you threw away, and look at what you’ve got.”
“Dad—” began the girl.
“You just stay here,” Sanderson told her. “I’ll be all right. You’re the one could be made use of by someone hiding up in those woods. If they’ve got me, they’ve got nothing. Everything that’s valuable is down here; and you’ve got Nick.”
Jeebee blinked a little. “Nick” must be the third person he had seen by the light of the fire beside the wagon the night before. He assumed that this Nick, whoever he was, was in the wagon. In any case, Sanderson had already started toward the trees and Jeebee turned and caught up with him. They found the rifle—in fact Sanderson found it before Jeebee did, picked it up, hefted it in his hand, turned it about, and worked its action.
“Nothing great,” he said, “but you’ve kept it in pretty good shape.”
He had ejected the cartridge that Jeebee had automatically jacked into the chamber the moment the wagon appeared in his binoculars, and removed the clip. Now Sanderson picked up the shell and gave it back to Jeebee, along with the clip.
“Put that in your pocket,” he said. Jeebee took them wordlessly. He and Sanderson went on up into the woods and Jeebee found the .22, which he also handed to Sanderson. The .22 was a single-shot and Sanderson jacked the cartridge out of it as well and handed it to Jeebee to pocket, then gave him the rifle. Neither one of them said anything and they went on through the trees back away from the road and the wagon.
“Where’s your camp?” Sanderson asked as they stepped into the dappled shade of the woods.
“It’s in another grove behind this one,” Jeebee answered. “We can go there if you like, but there’s nothing there. Nothing at all. It’s just a place where I light a fire at night and sleep.”
“Let’s look anyway,” said Sanderson.
They went on through the little patch of woods, across the open space behind and into the further trees. When they reached the campsite, Sanderson swept his eyes around and immediately focused on the bag Jeebee had made out of the canvas and hung up in the tree, bulging with canned goods from the root cellar.
“What’s that?”
“Cans of food I got from a root cellar,” Jeebee answered. “Do you want me to climb up and get one to show you or would you like to climb up and see?”
“I’ve got a better idea,” said Sanderson. “You climb up and bring the whole thing down.”
Jeebee shrugged, climbed up the tree, and with some effort brought the container down. He opened it up.
“By God, you weren’t kidding!” Sanderson poked with his boot toe among the cans. “Any of them make you sick?”
“Not so far,” Jeebee answered. “They’re all still short of the expiration date stamped on them.”
“All the same.” Sanderson stopped poking at the cans. “It’s no good for trade with me. We’re not short of food back at the wagon, and I wouldn’t dare trade it to someone else just in case they got sick from it in spite of the date.”
He glanced around the campsite.
“You were right enough,” he said, “there’s nothing here but the ashes of your fire, covered over.”
“I told you,” Jeebee answered.
“Call that wolf of yours in,” said Sanderson. “I’d feel more comfortable with him in sight.”
“He won’t come just because I call,” Jeebee answered. “He comes and goes as he likes.”
Sanderson stared at him. “Then why do you say he’s your wolf?”
“I didn’t want you to shoot him.” Jeebee searched for a word that would explain his connection with a wolf. “He’s my partner.”
The last word sounded strangely on the still air of the little patch of forest. Sanderson smiled. It was just the slightest quirk at the corner of his lips. But his eyes looked back around the empty space of the campsite.
“Maybe,” he said. “In that case how do you know he’s not gone for good?”
“I can try if he’ll answer. He may not,” Jeebee replied.
He cupped his hands around his mouth, put his head back, and howled. They waited but there was no answer. Jeebee shrugged at Sanderson and howled again. Again, no answer.
“He may not be hearing me,” Jeebee said, “or he may just not feel like answering. Let me try it once more.” He turned more toward the interstate and howled a third time. There was a very long moment of silence. Jeebee shook his head, but just as he did so, from a great distance came the long, train-whistle-like howl. Jeebee smiled at Sanderson.
Sanderson nodded. His face still gave nothing away, but Jeebee got the impression from the way he stood that a great deal of the distant element in his manner had gone out of him. It was almost as if Wolf’s answering howl had struck a strange chord of understanding and friendship in the man toward Jeebee.
“Come on back to the wagon,” he said.
They turned and started back together.
“Tell me about yourself,” Sanderson said as they headed back. “Where are you from, and what brings you here?”
“I’m trying to reach my brother’s ranch in Montana,” Jeebee said. “I ought to be welcome there—and safe. I’m not all that safe by myself.”
Sanderson laughed shortly.
“Not these days, right? Even with the wolf for a partner,” said Sanderson. “But go on. What were you before you started coming west? And how did you get that way?”
He kicked at the site of Jeebee’s fire, uncovering the ashes.
“No. We’re none of us safe these days,” he went on before Jeebee could answer. “I was lucky. I saw it coming about five years ago and started getting ready for it. We’re not safe, either, at the wagon. But we’re safer than most. People’ve got use for a peddler.”
Jeebee did not dare ask why. He wanted to know more about this man he might have to deal with. But he did not feel that a direct question about the other’s background would be welcome. He decided to answer Sanderson’s question about his own.
“I was on the staff of a university,” Jeebee said, “part of a special study group from the University of Michigan. A little over a year ago when things started to get bad, the other people in the group began to leave, looking for safer places to be. Most of us felt pretty safe in the smaller place we were in.”
“And that was—where?” Sanderson asked.
“Stoketon, its name was,” Jeebee said. “Small town. Nice. But things began to go bad, even there, after the electricity and water shut off. And of course any long-distance phoning had been out a long time before that. At any rate, the others began to leave, looking for some place safer. I was the last to go, and I just got away with my life. That was some months ago, early this spring. I’ve been trying to make it to Montana ever since.”
Taking a chance, he added, “You make pretty good time with those horses on the interstate.”
“When we move,” said Sanderson, “but we stop for customers. Tell me how you got this far.”
Sanderson listened with what Jeebee found to be a surprising amount of interest for somebody who was simply a passerby on the highway, and who, by the very nature of his business, must be meeting new people all the time. Jeebee had not really finished talking about his background when they emerged from the set of trees over the h
ighway and came down to the wagon. The girl’s horse was tied to the wagon and she herself was on the wagon seat. She jumped down as they came into sight and came partway to meet them.
“I’m glad you’re back, Dad,” she said. “I was just starting to think about leaving Nick here and going after you after all!”
“That wouldn’t have been smart, Mary,” Sanderson said, shaking his head. “You know I’ve always told you—stick with the wagon. That’s your strong point. Stick with it. You’re like somebody who’s got a fort and runs outside it where they can be picked off, if you leave it.”
He turned to Jeebee. “Jeebee,” he said, “this is my daughter—” Again Jeebee thought he heard the name “Mary.”
“M-e-r-r-y,” spelled the girl, looking hard at him. “Merry!”
“I’ll remember,” said Jeebee, to his own surprise, flushing a little under his beard.
“Merry,” said Sanderson, “this is Jeebee—what did you say that full name of yours was?” he added, turning to Jeebee.
“Jeeris Belamy Walthar,” Jeebee answered.
“Glad to meet you, Jeebee,” Merry said levelly. She glanced at the two rifles Jeebee now carried, one in each hand.
“That’s right, Merry,” Sanderson said. “That’s all our friend here owns, except that wolf of his, and he doesn’t even own that. But I’ve been learning about him.”
Swiftly, and briefly, he sketched in Jeebee’s background for her.
“What I’m thinking, Merry,” Sanderson wound up, “is we might offer Jeebee, here, a chance to earn what he needs.” He turned to Jeebee.
“How would you like to work with us for a couple of months before we turn south? You might just be able to pay for at least part of what extra you need.”
CHAPTER 8
“Dad?” Merry said, and gave him a long look. “You’re sure?”
“He’s alone,” Sanderson answered. “I think he’ll do all right for us.”
Merry said nothing more. It had not been a father-daughter interchange. It had been a statement made by a leader to a subordinate.
“Still and all,” said Sanderson to Jeebee, “why don’t you tell Merry something more about yourself, the way you told me.”
Feeling more than a little awkward, Jeebee tried to explain some of the statistical exploration of the world economy he had been engaged in when the world itself collapsed. He got tangled up in his own explanations and finally gave up. But Merry’s tense animosity toward him, surprisingly, seemed to have relaxed. It was oddly as if both father and daughter looked for understandings outside and beyond normal verbal explanations.
“But this wolf of yours,” said Merry, after a moment when he finally fell silent, “how do you know he’s a wolf, and not just a dog that looks a lot like a wolf?”
This, too, was too complicated to explain. It was hard to explain a conviction born from experience in the hard logic of words. But long since Jeebee himself had given up all doubt.
“He’s not a dog,” said Jeebee.
“Could be a mix,” Sanderson put in, “Dog-wolf. But what difference does it make? Merry, why don’t you show Jeebee around everything.”
“Everything?” Merry frowned at her father.
“Well,” said Sanderson, “you don’t need to take him into our own rooms. But let him look inside the rest of the wagon, see the horses, and everything else.”
“How about having him bring that wolf of his in here first?” Merry asked.
“He won’t come,” said Jeebee. “Not with the rest of you here. You’re strange and he doesn’t trust you.”
“Been shot at, has he?” said Merry.
“Something like that,” said Sanderson, a touch of impatience in his voice. “Give him a quick look around, Merry. Then we can get going again.”
“Come on,” Merry said to Jeebee.
She wheeled her horse around and went back down alongside the wagon at a walk. Jeebee hurried to catch up with her. They were back at the end of the wagon in a few steps. Jeebee had expected to find the horses scattered all over, but they had simply stopped where they were and were peacefully cropping the grass of the median.
“Can you ride?” he heard Merry asking bluntly.
He turned to look up at her. With the shadow of that hat brim of hers over her blue eyes—it was a large, Stetson-like hat—she looked severe.
“Not really,” said Jeebee, uncertain what level of horseback skill she meant by “ride.”
“Well, you’re going to have to learn, then,” she said. “I’ll pick out the most easygoing riding horse we have for you to start learning on, but you better be prepared for something a little more than they’d have given you once at a for-hire riding stable.”
She lifted off a coil of rope that was fastened to her saddle, shook it out, and he saw that it was a lasso. Gathering it up again, she rode into the midst of the horses, dropped the loop expertly over the neck of a slim gray animal, and led it, plodding gently, back to Jeebee.
“Here, hold her,” she said, handing the rope of the lasso to Jeebee, so that his hands closed about it only some six inches from the neck of the horse. She dismounted and dropped her reins onto the ground. Her horse stood where it was. The gray mare Jeebee held looked at him with calm eyes.
“I’ll get some gear,” Merry said.
He watched her go and saw that the rear of the wagon was closed with a wooden back wall just like its front, with a regular door inset in it. A boxed-in single step below the door made it easy to reach the entrance from the ground. She went through the door and was gone only a little time before coming back with another saddle and a set of reins, the saddle riding on her forearm with the stirrup leathers dangling down on either side, and the metal stirrups themselves chiming together as she moved.
She put the bridle and saddle on, drew the cinch strap tight, and buckled it under the belly of the gray mare.
“All right now,” she said. “Mount up.”
Jeebee put down his two rifles, took hold of the saddle horn, found the stirrup with the toe of his boot, then stopped himself. He was on the horse’s right side instead of its left, the customary side for mounting.
“It’s all right,” said Merry as he started to go around the animal, with a touch of exasperation very like her father’s in her voice, “any of my horses you can mount from either side. They’ll stand if you drop the reins to the ground and lie down so you can lie between their legs and fire a rifle across their body, if you have to. But we’ll get to that later. Now, mount up!”
Jeebee hoisted himself clumsily into the saddle. His left toe searched for and found the other stirrup. He had a moment’s feeling almost of triumph.
“All right now,” said Merry, “walk her around a bit.”
Jeebee struck with both heels at the side of the horse under him. The mare leaped forward with a suddenness that almost unseated him and in panic he hauled back hard on the reins. The mare skidded to a stop and then began to back up.
“Loose those reins!” the voice of Merry shouted.
Jeebee fumbled with the reins and dropped them on the horse’s neck. The mare came to a standstill. Jeebee looked over at Merry and saw her glaring at him. However, as she continued to look at him, the glare softened and disappeared.
“Well, you can’t help it. You just don’t know,” she said. “Now, to make her walk forward, just lift the reins off her neck. That’s all. Hold them loosely in your hand.”
Gingerly, Jeebee obeyed. To his relief and joy, the mare began to walk slowly but steadily forward. Merry remounted.
“That’s right. Now, guide her around in a circle,” Merry said behind him. “You do that by laying the opposite rein against the side of her neck. Lay the left rein against her neck and she’ll walk to the right.”
Jeebee obeyed; and the mare obeyed. It made the complete circle; and then Merry had him walk the mare around it again in the opposite direction. After that Merry directed him into a trot, and he bounced uncomfortably in
the saddle for a bit before she advanced the trot into a canter, her own horse now moving alongside his. After a little distance, she brought them both to a stop, turned them around, and led Jeebee back to the other horses.
Once there, she ordered him down from the saddle and got down with him, dropping the reins of her own horse to the ground so that it stood as if she had tied it in place. She showed him how to loosen the cinch strap under the belly of the mare and take off both the saddle and the bridle. Then she had him carry both items in the back, through the back door of the wagon into a tiny cubicle with a further, closed door. There the saddle was put to rest, hanging on a hook, and the bridle with some other bridles on a projecting dowel.
He took a moment to pick up his rifles again as she led him back out of the door into the sunlight, ignoring another door that seemed to lead further into the wagon. They walked around to the front of the vehicle, mounted the steps by the wagon seat, and entered the vehicle from its front. Following her, Jeebee stepped into an area dimly lit by the bulb in an old-fashioned auto headlight, glowing with what, to Jeebee’s astonishment, had to be electricity. Merry pointed briefly at it.
“Car battery,” she said briefly, “generator-driven by the wheels.”
The place was crammed and packed to the arching roof with boxes, tightly filled bags of all sizes, and what looked like ranks of tall wooden chests filled vertically with wide, narrow drawers. The room had a mild, pleasant, health-food-store aroma about it.
“Don’t come in here,” Merry told him, “unless Dad, Nick, or myself has said you can.”
There was a narrow aisle down through the center of the close-stacked contents of the place, and she led the way along it to another door. Staying close behind her, Jeebee stepped through into a second, crammed-full area that was barely long enough to allow two net hammocks to hang at full length against its walls, under the arching roof overhead. Both hammocks hung on their further hook at the moment, neatly rolled up.
Down below the roof now, a short, deeply tanned old man with a triangular face sat in a straight, wooden chair behind one of two large firearms, across the room from each other, which Jeebee recognized as heavy, air-cooled machine guns. The guns faced apertures in the steel beyond which was again what looked like white canvas. Something like a periscope tube angled up from the base of the wall to end in a wide, oval lens just above the breech of the machine guns.
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