Nonetheless, the day was aging.
Without warning, his fear came back on him. It made no sense that anyone would bother to lie in wait for the infrequent travelers who would use such a pass.
On the other hand, if someone did—with the mountain rising on one side of the road and the slope falling precipitously on the other—the traveler had no chance of passing safely.
Now, in the large shadow of the mountains and the indirect light overhead, a thought crept into Jeebee’s mind. He had scrupulously shaved himself all the time he had been at the wagon after that first night. He had kept himself clean shaven because he knew Merry preferred him that way. Now, since he had left the wagon, he had paid no attention, and dark stubble had begun to reconstruct the beard on his face.
The impulse came upon him strongly and suddenly to shave. It was as if his being shaved clean would be a sort of talisman protecting him against anything that would keep him from being reunited with Merry again, eventually. It was a feeling even stronger than the one that had challenged him to cross the pass in spite of his reasonless fear of doing so. But in this moment he found himself believing in it utterly.
He stopped the horses, got his shaving materials out of his pack behind the saddle, and used some of the water from the water bag to make a lather with the soap he carried. Carefully he put to use the straight-edged razor that had been one of Merry’s gifts to him, through Nick—although he had not found that out until a couple of weeks after the first day on which Nick had given it to him. With it, he scraped his face clean.
His face now feeling raw and naked to the cooling evening breeze, he put away the shaving things and went on.
The day aged quickly. But shortly after this Wolf reappeared. He had been gone only a few hours, but his homecoming was as enthusiastic and elaborate as if they’d been separated for weeks. Jeebee remembered how the wagon dogs had mobbed Wolf on his return from the seed farm, and it suddenly occurred to him that Wolf’s greeting might actually be an instinctive act of appeasement. He filed the thought away as something else to check on when—and if—he found the books. Formalities satisfied, Wolf dropped to all fours, gave a wet-dog shake, and stood with a quiet air of expectancy, apparently waiting for Jeebee to mount Brute. He seemed puzzled when Jeebee led off up the road into the pass, the lead ropes of both the now-haltered horses in hand. Once convinced that they were indeed on the trail again, Wolf rejoined them, but about twenty minutes later Jeebee noticed that he had disappeared once more.
Jeebee continued, finding himself held to a slow, if steady pace by the upward angle of the road. It was only beginning to climb, but already on occasion the land on one side of it dipped into a deep valley, thick with stands of pines, where the horses could not have made their way. The road surface was only slightly broken up by weather and lack of care, but the air grew cooler.
Meanwhile, overhead the blue and cloudless sky was beginning to pale in the west while it darkened in the east, and the shadows of the depths beyond the left edge of the road were becoming impenetrable.
Still, it was the time of month near the full moon, and the weather had been clear recently. Jeebee had hopes of moonlight to help most of his crossing.
But it would be a while yet before the moon would rise. Now, in the depths to his left and the rising slopes to his right, lodgepole pines covered the ground as thickly as soldiers standing on parade. Tall and straight as the masts of nineteenth-century sailing ships, as a result of struggling with each other to reach the sunlight above this angular pitched ground, they grew more closely together than seemed possible, with branches only near their tops.
Weighing the fading of the daylight against the darkness already between the trees, Jeebee concentrated on the road surface itself as a guide. There was no sign of any kind of habitation, or of other, recent travelers on the route. In the gathering darkness the asphalt looked more and more as if it had been abandoned for years. It was cracked, with potholes here and there, and a litter of branches and pine needles fallen, or blown across it.
His map had shown a distance of fifty-odd miles from Buffalo to Ten Sleep on the other side of the mountains. He had joined the road at a good distance out of Buffalo and did not have to reach Ten Sleep itself, but still, to reach the lower levels at the far side of the pass in one night’s trek would be a long, hard walk.
It would be particularly hard on the loaded horses, but there was little to be done about that.
They plodded forward and upward. At least, he told himself, he had taken the greater burden off at least one of the animals, since Sally’s load weighed little more than a hundred pounds, and he himself was packing nearly twenty-five with his own pack, weapons, and gear. He had been surprised to discover, when he had weighed himself at the wagon before leaving, that he was now up to one hundred and eighty-four pounds, most of it muscle—a weight and condition he had never expected to achieve in his earlier, adult life. Nevertheless, breathing was becoming more difficult, and despite the high-altitude chill, he could feel the sweat plastering his shirt to his back beneath the pack straps.
After a while the moon did, indeed, come up, and they speeded their progress; at least until Wolf rejoined them, and took Jeebee’s traveling on foot as an opportunity to play games, snatching with his teeth at the flapping cuffs of Jeebee’s heavy work pants or his jacket or trying to catch the reins with which Jeebee was leading Brute.
Jeebee, however, was becoming wiser in his companion’s ways. He had more than a small suspicion that Wolf was trying to distract him from the idea of traveling further. He put the reins over his shoulder. Wolf could easily have jumped high enough to catch them and indeed did so a couple of times, but when Jeebee persisted in recovering the reins, they slid rather easily through the gap behind Wolf’s canine teeth. Jeebee knew that if Wolf had been seriously interested in the reins—and not merely enticing him to play—he’d have gripped them with his massive shearing molars, and even Brute would have been hard pressed to get them loose. When it became obvious that Jeebee would not be drawn in, Wolf abandoned the ploy with the wolfish equivalent of a good-natured shrug.
However, the road had been steepening steadily, and though Wolf still took short side excursions from time to time, from then on he was generally with them.
In the time since they had left the wagon, with the dogs no longer around to inhibit him, Wolf had made a few experimental rushes at Sally, possibly sensing that the load she carried made her more vulnerable. But Sally had long ago learned to discourage the unwanted attentions of three or four unruly wagon dogs. A single dog—or wolf—was more of a nuisance than a threat. And the first time that Wolf made a grab for her tail Jeebee had been relieved to discover that the kick he’d received for his efforts had resulted in no broken bones. Brute, on the other hand, had merely rolled his ears back the first time Wolf approached, and Wolf had given him wide berth after that. But Jeebee knew how persistent Wolf could be and had taken to tethering the horses far enough apart so that they would not be tempted to kick each other, but close enough that they could, if necessary, support each other in holding off any approach by Wolf.
The moon had already moved well up from the mountain peaks to their left when they reached a wide spot in the road. It was a lookout point with a plaque on a post notifying travelers that this was the high point of the pass. He could not read it in the darkness, but Jeebee stopped at this point to rest the horses.
He had been giving them short rest stops in any case, roughly every half hour by his watch, so that they would have at least five minutes merely standing, even though still loaded. Their breath steamed a bit, and he let them cool before pouring them some water into his hat. He also made an effort to see if there was anything more in Sally’s load that could be shifted to Brute’s back; but short of completely undoing the loads and spreading everything out, with the resultant turmoil that would occur when Wolf saw all these things on the ground to play with, there was little to be done. So far, both horses
seemed to be facing up to the climb at a walking pace, pretty well. The steep road had not winded them too badly.
For the moment, Wolf was not around again. Jeebee suspected the other might have simply lain down, hoping that Jeebee would come to his senses and give up this nighttime trek. The moon was fully overhead now and its light gleamed off rock, road, and sky. But in spite of that brightness, the stands of pine trees all around merged into a solid black mass at a very short distance. Jeebee reached the high point of the pass and started the horses on the road down the far side of it.
He had planned on going back to riding Brute once they were headed downhill. But now that they were actually at the point where he had meant to swing again into the saddle, he used his own fatigue as a measure and judged that the more he could spare the horses the better. Also, as he found out when they started down the slope in the opposite direction, after a small semilevel bit, he might be tired, but he had a lot of walking left in him.
Nonetheless, he estimated that they had already covered more than twenty miles from their starting point. If he could make another twenty—if they all could make another twenty—he calculated that they should be into Ten Sleep Canyon and be able to pull off the road and find a place where they could camp and rest up.
Shortly thereafter, Wolf was suddenly back with them again, moving out ahead of Jeebee in his customary position when they traveled together.
They slogged along. The moon was now descending to the dark rim of the canyon as they plunged down into the depths beyortd the pass. Slowly the hours went by. Jeebee dared not stop except for the short rests, for fear of putting ideas into the heads of the three with him. Once Wolf abruptly fell back, and Jeebee turned and saw the dark furry shape lying on its side on the road behind him. The meaning of the action could not have been more obvious. Wolf was calling an end to his share in the trip.
Jeebee turned his head forward again and kept on going. There was an emptiness inside him. For the first time in a long time he seriously considered the chance that he had driven Wolf away from him, permanently.
But what drove him from within gave him no choice, and the two horses following him were given no choice. They went on.
But they went on alone for a good fifteen minutes and more before Jeebee’s ears caught, once again between the soft beat of the horses’ hooves on asphalt, the scratch of claws on that same surface. He kept on going without looking back, and a moment later Wolf caught up with them once more, passed them, and assumed his usual position in the lead.
From under his eyelids, as he focused on the road immediately before him, Jeebee saw Wolf glancing back over his shoulder at him. But Jeebee refused to meet those glances. He merely kept going with his gaze on the road surface just ahead of him. So they went on, with only the sounds of their feet on the road, and the moon sank lower and lower to the dark line of the rock topping the canyon wall. Just before it disappeared completely, Wolf whined, once.
Jeebee looked up at him, then, and for a long second gazed into Wolf’s night-hidden face, with the color of its eyes now lost in the darkness. Jeebee said nothing. He did not even change his own expression, but looked away again and continued, leaning into the halter ropes to pull the weary horses along with him.
The four of them continued. Now that the moon had disappeared, the road had become only a dark blur, visible for no more than a half-dozen feet before them, in the starshine overhead. Jeebee was too worn out now to be grateful for the fact that the night was cloudless, so that there could be at least enough light to keep them from walking off the cliff edge of the road.
They went on. The moon had been down so long, Jeebee had almost forgotten what the road had looked like in its light. He and the horses stumbled from time to time, unable to see the breaks in the road surface. But his feet were able to tell by themselves if he wandered off the asphalt, and they kept him on the road.
The time seemed endless. Finally, the sky began to pale slightly from its utter blackness between the points of starlight. Certainly, the slope of the road was less now, even if only slightly so. At his most optimistic guess they had been descending now for somewhere close to fifteen miles, since they had left behind the highest point of the pass.
They were still among the rock walls and precipitous slopes, and even as the sky lightened above, the darkness pooled below. Still, soon they should be moving into territory where it would be safe to try to leave the road and find a place to camp. It might have to be a dry camp; but at least the horses, Wolf, and he would be able to rest. But there was not yet enough light to see if their surroundings were improving in this way.
It seemed that the sky overhead would never brighten, day would never come. Jeebee’s pack felt as if it was stuffed with bricks as he forced one foot in front of another. He was conscious that the horses, and even Wolf, moving ahead of him still, would be equally tired, but he could find no energy left over in him to sympathize with them.
All his attention now was concentrated on keeping his legs moving. They seemed to weigh a ton, each of them. Still, as he kept them going, one step at a time, all the rest of him moved with them.
A fury rose in him that his body was not more capable of going farther and faster and so covering more ground. He tempted and encouraged that fury to make him forget his sore feet and weary body. Surprising himself, he cursed at Wolf, unexpectedly, when it seemed the other would get in the way of his own moving legs.
The words were hardly out of his mouth before reaction set in. He stared at Wolf, braced for whatever reaction Wolf might show. But the other’s eyes, golden again now in the beginnings of the dawn light as the sky whitened overhead, merely looked back at him briefly, and away again. They went on.
Suddenly, without warning it seemed, he became aware that it was day. The sun was not yet above the rock walls about them. But the sky was bright now with morning, and the day star itself would be clearing the mountain rock very soon. Around Jeebee everything was fully visible. It seemed to have become so all at once. Either that, or else he had simply been walking without noticing while things brightened about him, tired as he was. He remembered once reading about World War I and how whole regiments of men had marched into towns in France on forced march after forced march, all in column all together and all asleep on their feet as they walked.
At the time of reading that, he had found it impossible to believe. But could he have fallen asleep, just now, walking? Possibly. Or, maybe he just had not been noticing—too out on his feet to be aware of the moment-by-moment change in illumination around him. At any rate, day had come and now they could find a stop, a place to camp and rest.
He raised his head and looked about. The canyon walls had opened out, and ahead they began to spread far apart. He had become used to the two overtowering walls of vertical rock, seemingly only a couple of hundred yards apart, with a plunging depth between them that descended so steeply he could not see to the bottom of it. Only occasionally had he been able to hear the rush of river water far below. Now, this had suddenly become the same two walls opening out into a wide area, between them. An area in which the land rolled in gigantic waves, like a wild sea of tidal waves gone mad and working against each other, in every direction.
But the waves were unmoving, solid slopes of earth, largely covered by lodgepole pines.
He was through the pass and into the Ten Sleep Canyon, at last.
Their own road still clung to the side of the vertical rock that had been on his right. At his left, however, he could now look out on the vista of black-treed slopes brightening in the new daylight. Into this more open space, the morning sun was reaching brightly here and there, although as yet it had not reached as far as the four of them.
But now, the road was on another small, momentary rise. It had tended generally downward since they had crossed the highest point of the pass, with little rises like this only now and then, as if the road itself was about to change its mind. This, like the earlier rises, would ordinarily h
ardly have been noticeable, but now they were all close to exhaustion from the night’s trek. The extra effort of going upslope, even for a short distance, seemed like a heavy burden. Jeebee’s legs were like rubber, and they gave as he leaned into the upslope of the road.
This rise was large enough to block out sight of the further road beyond it. The horses were still behind Jeebee at the length of their halter ropes. Ahead of him was Wolf, still moving lightly if perhaps a little gingerly, on feet that must be sore.
As he watched, Wolf reached the crest of the rise and moved all at once into the full illumination of the advancing sunlight, and there was a second that became a picture frozen in Jeebee’s memory forever.
It was of Wolf, leading them upward into the sunlight, with the rest of them still toiling in darkness, but mounting also, steadily behind him.
Jeebee’s heart bounded with a new burst of happiness within him. Suddenly he remembered what he had forgotten. Somewhere during the dark hours he had lost it, his apprehension about crossing the pass, and his superstitious fear that if he did, he would never see Merry again.
Now both things together were swept away in the sunlight that suddenly spread golden fire around Wolf. It was over. Jeebee had made the crossing. He had won.
True enough, he had won over nothing more than shadows within him. Still, there was that same feeling that he had had after he had come successfully up through the cellar and past Wolf with the canned food in his arms, and the feeling following that evening in which Wolf had come to him in a new, strangely submissive manner. In both cases, he had known a feeling that he had passed some kind of watershed in his life. That feeling was in him now, very strongly.
He had made another step up the ladder. He was different in this moment than he had ever been before. He had faced the pass and its shadows, had gone through them and left them behind.
Now at last, morning was here. The land between the widening walls of the canyon was no longer too steep for the horses to negotiate. They could find a place to stop, to camp and rest.
Wolf and Iron Page 24