But there was no real choice. It was a gamble of possible illness against the near certainty of being immobilized by his wounds, possibly dangerously so. Unable to walk, unable to get up, he would have trouble getting food or water as well as being helpless in the face of any predator or human enemy who found him. As he stepped down into the water that came almost to his waist, feeling the jar of his good foot against the stream bed, he remembered just in time to take the revolver out of his boot and stick it under his belt.
It was common, the books he had taken from the ruins of Walter Neiskamp’s home told him, for wolves that showed signs of weakness or disability to be harassed or mobbed by other members of the pack. An injured wolf that stood high in the ranking order was an especially inviting target of attack. True, the latter was usually supposed to happen only when the attacking wolf was old enough to become “political”—concerned with its ranking in the pack. This could happen, he had gathered, anytime after the wolf’s second year of life, when wolves in packs typically reached sexual maturity.
Wolf best fit the description, Jeebee now guessed, of being only a year or so old, when Jeebee had first met him; too young, theoretically, to be “political” yet. But what all of the books had agreed on—both the formal academic works and the first-person narratives by amateur wolf enthusiasts—was that wolves didn’t read the books that told how they were “supposed” to behave; the only thing predictable about them was their unpredictability. Wolves as decision makers were individual persons, as Jeebee himself had seen at first hand, with Wolf.
And prediction was even more problematic if there was validity in Frank’s claim that some aspects of wolf behavior were governed not by the animal’s own highly developed cognitive system, but by a separate instinctual system—which operated largely independently of the conscious, thinking system. Instinctive behavior patterns, triggered by cues a human might not even recognize, could cause a wolf to act in a manner its own mind could not control. Predatory reactions could be triggered by the awkward, uncoordinated movements of a crippled pack mate as easily as by the thrashing about of an injured deer. Whatever companionable feeling Wolf had for Jeebee, the man’s injuries could provoke an attack. That Wolf might later experience something akin to regret was little consolation; Jeebee must either move as normally as possible when Wolf was around or remain immobile—as sick and injured wolves do.
All the time he was thinking this, he was feeling his way upstream next to the bank, the barrel end of the rifle in his right hand, the rifle butt below the water, tapping the bottom ahead of his feet like a blind person’s cane for potholes or obstacles.
So far he had been lucky, encountering neither. Nor had any roots, projecting from the bank beside him into the water, tripped him up. It was not far to the horses now. Still his mind was glass clear and diamond sharp, concentrating on searching for whatever might need to be done or endured.
Perhaps, he thought, it was his own, human instinctive system, triggered by the need to survive, that was helping him now.
But finally, he was wading around a last bend in the stream and seeing the horses where he had tethered them. It was time to look for a place where he could climb, crippled as he was, out of the stream up onto the bank. There was waist-deep water and two feet of vertical light brown earthen bank to surmount. He solved the problem at last by laying his upper body down on the bank, still holding his rifle, and then rolling his body away from the stream to pull his legs after him out of the water. He rolled over the pistol in his belt, bruising himself.
He hauled himself to his feet with the help of the rifle and limped toward the horses. Wolf was nowhere around, he was glad to see. Perhaps his fear of an instinctive attack was foolish; but he would rather not test the chance.
It was fortunate his left arm rather than his right had been damaged by the bear. He was right-handed. Nick Gage had made him practice with the pistol in his left hand, but he was just not accurate as a lefty marksman.
He bound his wounds with wet compresses made from cut and torn strips of blanket, and swallowed his first dose of antibiotic. It was Augmentin, which he had carried in his backpack from Michigan for just such a moment as this. He washed the pill down with the bag of disinfected water he had always carried at his saddle. Only then did he take time to empty his boots of water and take off the soggy socks beneath them.
He was beginning to feel his wounds now. It was not real pain he felt from them as yet. But he was conscious of them being there. But there were still things to be done before he could give in to them. It seemed that almost as soon as he had stepped out of the cold water, the swelling in his leg and arm had begun to develop and stiffen those limbs. If he was going to lose the ability to move, soon, there were things that had to be taken care of, first.
He might become unable to unload the horses. If so, he would have to leave Sally with her pack and Brute with his saddle for several days, and that was unthinkable. There were no trees here large enough so that he could rope Sally’s pack up out of Wolf’s reach—even if he had been up to climbing a tree at the moment. Even the thought of climbing a tree was ridiculous, now, hurt as he was.
The best he would be able to do would be to dump both the pack and the saddle off their backs, and leave both horses where they could reach water, as well as whatever grass was within reach.
Once the packload was lying flat on the ground, there was no way he could think of to protect its contents from Wolf. Then it occurred to him that he could drop it between the two horses; and lie on it himself. Hopefully, in that case, Wolf would not try to get at it.
It was a gamble, but he had to gamble now. For the first time he realized how even a minor wound could cripple a wolf enough to threaten its ability to survive.
Difficult as it was with one hand, he managed to untie and throw off the rope of the hitch from Sally’s load, and then, with even more difficulty, single-handed, to loosen the cinch strap holding the blanket underneath it. Crowding Sally against some willows so that the slim stems pressed the cinch strap against her far side as it slipped loose, he managed to slow the descent of the pack as he pulled it to the ground with his one good arm.
He was able to do no more than break its fall with that single arm. But he ended up with it in a not too untidy pile, which he was able to rake together so that the groundsheet would cover him and it, once he lay down upon it.
That left several things yet to do. The arm and leg were definitely beginning to hurt now, and he thought of the Dilaudid, the painkiller that was also in his pack.
But it was not that bad yet—in fact probably far from as bad as it was going to get—and also he had to get the saddle off
Brute and the backpack under the groundsheet with him so that he had his drugs at hand if he ended up so that he could barely move.
He undid the cinch strap on Brute and got the saddle, backpack, and saddle blanket off him. By bad luck they all went off on the other side of Brute, but he was able to reach an end of the cinch strap and pull all three things to him underneath Brute’s belly. Brute was either in unusual good humor or indifferent, for he made no attempt to step on either item, or protest at something being done underneath him.
Jeebee hauled to him both saddle and pack, detached the pack, took out from it the drugs, and stowed all of this under the groundsheet, but with the pouch holding the drugs separate and close to his hand once he would be lying down.
There was still a final job to do, but now he was beginning to come out from the strange state of intensive clearheadedness he had been in up until this time. For the first time he was beginning to feel a weakness take over his legs and pain spread out in his leg, arm, and head.
He pushed himself to keep rummaging under the groundsheet until he came up with a spare water bag. He put in it the proper disinfectant pills and limped to the stream to fill it with water, taking advantage of the opportunity to thoroughly soak once more his three clumsy bandages, on leg, arm, and head.
&nb
sp; For a moment he thought resoaking the bandage around his head had disturbed the broken scalp to the point where a heavy flow of blood had started again. But it was merely diluting what had already dried up there. He wiped the reddish wetness out of his eyes with his good hand and took the filled bag, hobbling along with the rifle still to support him, to the groundsheet pile between the two horses. Gratefully, at last, he sat down on it.
Seated, he took the half-full and disinfected water bag he had already had hanging from the saddle, so that he now had a full bag and a half-full one within arm’s reach. He pulled the bags with him under the tarp and moved the softer materials beneath him into something that would do as a bed. He piled these high at the foot end to elevate his legs; and stripped off his wet clothes. He was fortunate enough to find dry underwear, pants, and shirt with the blankets under the packload tarp.
He pulled his wet clothing off and toweled himself dry with a dry shirt. The air temperature of the growing day around him must already be at fifty degrees, but he was beginning to shiver uncontrollably as hypothermia set in. He cursed weakly when he found he could not pull on the dry clothes over his compresses; throwing them down for him to lie upon, he settled for under-shorts and socks. Then he cocooned himself in his blankets and wedged himself under the groundsheet, shivering while his face flushed. He was panting heavily. His eyes hurt and he was beginning to feel very weak indeed, and the pain was coming more fiercely from the wounded areas.
He lay there, thinking that he would put off taking one of the Dilaudids as long as he could. But with nothing else to occupy his mind but the consciousness of it, the pain seemed to grow swiftly toward the point of being unbearable. Meanwhile, he was already feeling so weak that the thought of getting up from where he lay was something to be contemplated only in an emergency.
He warmed finally and tried to doze in the sunlight. He woke in midafternoon, however, shivering again. There were no more blankets to add to his pile. In desperation, he pulled at the groundsheet, feebly struggling for more blanketing. Then he pushed it back to make sure that it still also covered all of the load.
It was time. He fumbled in the drug pouch and brought out the container of Dilaudid. He awkwardly shook one of the small, orange, two-milligram pills from the bottle that held it into the palm of his right hand, and washed it down with a swallow of water from the half-filled water bag.
He held the bottle up to read the prescription directions and they were for one to two of the pills four times a day with a one week limit, but less if possible. He knew that while effective, they were addictive, and the last thing he wanted to happen to him, out here alone, was to become hooked on some medicine. Once it was gone, he would have no way at all of getting more, even if it were safe for him to have more.
He relaxed and closed his eyes. His wounds were alive now, and the pain in them seemed to throb with his heartbeat. But gradually the Dilaudid took effect and he slept.
He woke to the daylight of a young morning and to find Wolf’s large, sticky tongue stropping across his forehead and scalp.
“Get away!” he shouted—or tried to shout—but what should have been a stern roar came out weakly and hoarsely. A moment later, the pain hit him.
It was hard to imagine that he could hurt so much. He looked at his arm and leg and saw them swollen to what seemed gargantuan, unnatural proportions.
With his shaking right hand he scrambled among the gear at his right and underneath him to find the medicine pouch. The groundsheet was now only partially over him and the bandages had been pulled off both arm and leg—and from the feel of the breeze on his head the head bandage had been pulled off, too. But nothing mattered at the moment but the Dilaudid.
He found the pouch, he found the bottle holding the Dilaudid. Clumsily, he shook a pill onto his chest from the bottle. Awkwardly, one-handedly, he screwed the top of the bottle back on and put it away. Then there was another scramble to find the water bag—any water bag. He found it and swallowed a sip, washing the pill down.
He sighed with relief. The pain, of course, had not abated a jot, but he knew now that it would, eventually.
He looked down at the groundsheet that should have been covering him. It had been rooted under and pushed back until both his left arm and leg were exposed, the bandages pulled away, and the wounds themselves licked clean. He lifted his right hand to his head and found his scalp wound lacking any crustiness of dried blood, but covered with the kind of film that a thin, dried solution of sugar syrup might have left on it. From past experience he knew it was the dried remains of Wolf’s saliva.
Wolf must have licked the wounds as he would lick such wounds on himself, or a pack mate.
Now that he was beginning to wake fully, and the Dilaudid was on its way to relieving the pain, fuzzy memories returned of being waked at least once before by Wolf licking him. Jeebee remembered now; he had yelled and snarled at Wolf to make him stop—he also remembered a first frantic fumbling for the pistol before he realized Wolf was only trying to help; and he remembered taking other doses of Dilaudid.
How much had he taken in that confused time? He could not remember, but since he had remembered hurting badly each time he woke, he probably had not exceeded the permissible dose by too much…
“Mhrmmp…? Mhrmmp…? Mhrmmp…?”
Wolf was still by him, now making small, inquiring sounds in the back of his throat. Jeebee half rose on his good elbow, looking at him, and Wolf hastily backed off several steps. He was watching Jeebee now, ears folded far back in a strong signal of peaceful intentions, tail awag. His head was cocked a little on one side, with what, from long experience during their months together, Jeebee recognized as an interested, worried look on his face.
“Sorry,” Jeebee said hoarsely, looking at Wolf. “I’m not mad—”
He tried to lift himself higher—but pain stopped him and his elbow gave way beneath him. Wolf came forward a step. Literally, Jeebee realized, he could not get up. He reached out with his hand toward Wolf, and Wolf came forward another step and licked at it. Jeebee reached up into the thick hair under Wolf’s neck and scratched there.
Wolf licked at his hand again. Then—as suddenly as if a switch had been turned off—all appearance of interest or concern vanished from him. He turned and trotted off into the surrounding willows, leaving Jeebee suddenly alone.
Jeebee lay where he was. Slowly, the Dilaudid began to take effect and the pain to recede. As it did so he was aware of the fact that a full bladder was bothering him.
He found himself in a quandary. He literally could not move. Even with the pain reduced, the left arm and leg were stiff as wood. However, with some effort he was able to roll slightly over on his right side again to the extent that he could urinate beyond the edge of the goods piled underneath him. A suffusing rush of warmth as well as relief spread through him. He remembered then that Dilaudid, like codeine, morphine, and all other opiates, increased parasympathetic activity—which meant that it would be slowing down his normal bowel action and causing constipation. If he was to be confined to the packload for several days, this side effect would be a help. Also, if he remembered correctly, Dilaudid caused nausea, which would lessen his normal hunger for the next day or two.
The physical relief was tremendous.
He lay back, relaxing. He was in shade right now, this early in the day, but the sun would be up and shining directly on him in a couple of hours. Well, there was nothing to be done about that except possibly use something he could reach, either underneath or beside him, to shade his eyes from the direct glare.
He was becoming relatively comfortable with the Dilaudid in him and he was slept out. His mind was much calmer than he had expected. Some of Wolf’s pragmatism had apparently rubbed off on him. He was in danger here by the little river and among the willows. A rancher, a rancher’s dog, even another bear could stumble across him. He must get able to ride, or at least to sit a horse long enough so that he could move out of this grazing land and up
into the country of the foothills, where the cattle would be unlikely to go, and consequently the ranch people as well.
The real problem would be getting the gear below him packed back onto Sally. He might be able to pull himself around after a fashion in a day or two, but it was almost inconceivable that he would be able to repack and resaddle.
On the other hand, there was nothing he could do about that right now. What his body needed was rest. What his wounds needed were cold compresses and to continue to be elevated.
Right now, the cold compresses were out of the question. He could not even pull himself to the edge of the bank so that he could dip into the water the cloths that had been wrapped around the damaged parts of his body. On the other hand, he could after a fashion keep his hurt arm, leg, and head elevated.
Just before he’d fallen asleep, he had evidently built up part of what was beneath him to make the mounds on which both the wounded arm and wounded leg could lie. With Dilaudid reducing the pain, he clumsily pulled them up on these mounds again. Anything beyond this would have to wait until he was stronger.
He remembered now, from the wolf books, that the saliva of wolves was very acidic, and therefore destructive to bacteria. Wolf had probably done him a favor by licking the wounds clean. There was no real bleeding; but if he craned his neck so that he could see arm and leg, he could see, exposed from where the bandages had been pulled away, a certain amount of suppuration from the torn areas. Wolf’s nose would pick up the smell of that, and perhaps he would automatically clean them with his tongue again.
His mind went away on a slight tangent. He was still amazed at Wolf’s concern for him. The thought that had been uppermost in his mind had been of Wolf as a danger, not as an aid. At first thought, his partner’s behavior seemed to run against what he had read in a number of different places in the books.
It was too easy simply to assume that a depth of affection he had not noticed in Wolf before was suddenly operating within the other. He remembered the small noises, somewhere between a whimper and a grunt, that Wolf had made, watching him just before he had left. Certainly, Wolf had sounded concerned.
Wolf and Iron Page 28