He could use those days by riding Sally down, having her pull back a bundle of the twelve-foot-long two-by-fours, with the front ends elevated and the back ends scraping along the ground, plus a few other things that he could not only keep safe from Wolf, but use right away. It was a temptation to bring the posthole digger up without further delay. But it would be awkward to drag, and it was too long and rigid to be carried conveniently behind the saddle.
He reminded himself sensibly that the only way he could use the tool would be by standing firmly on one foot while driving the spade end of the digger into the ground with the other. The sprained ankle was probably still some days away from being used either way.
The thought of redamaging the ankle by trying to drive the posthole digger into the ground, or of turning it again by trying to stand on that foot alone, was unnerving. The last thing he needed now was to be laid up again for another long period.
He measured and marked the spots to erect the two-by-fours before settling down with the fire and Wolf for the night.
The next three days, he was busy bringing up equipment from the ranch, and he brought the posthole digger after all, as well as a saw and other tools and a collapsible metal ladder he found laid up on the rafters of one of the less completely burned outbuildings. He hid the ladder under the two sleeping blankets he lay upon, and was lying upon them when Wolf showed up, the third evening.
He had not been at all sure that Wolf, scenting or otherwise figuring out that something was there, would not root between the blankets to investigate, but Wolf did not. Three days later, using the hole digger by standing gingerly on his bad ankle, he successfully had four of the posts up at the campsite. Wolf investigated these with great interest when he came back, urinated on them, and gnawed on a few of them, but without doing any great damage.
Jeebee, looking over the tooth-marked pieces of lumber, decided that they were usable as they were, after all. Gradually, the rest of the postholes got dug. Wolf showed up at one time when he was still using the posthole digger, and when Jeebee had laid it down for a moment, tried to carry it off. But it was both heavy and awkward, and when Jeebee pretended to become very interested in something at the other side of the meadow, paying no attention to him at all, Wolf dropped the digger and trotted over to find out what was attractive there.
When Wolf came up, Jeebee engaged him for a little time in play, and then lay down on his blankets. Wolf lay down also. But it was still only late afternoon and whatever impulse had brought him back had now been satisfied or forgotten. He disappeared again.
In spite of the fact that Wolf was gone, however, Jeebee prudently ignored the posthole digger, letting it lie where it was overnight. The following day, after Wolf had disappeared, he tried something new. He got down the roll of fencing and fenced himself in against the face of the bluff with the wire in a semicircle around him, held upright by angle-iron posts from the garden patch, its end stakes driven into the vertical face of the bluff.
Jeebee had no doubt that if Wolf made a serious effort, he could pull the stakes out, one by one, but he hoped that organized an effort would not occur to his partner. Certainly the fence was now fastened firmly enough to stand up against being pushed or pawed by Wolf in any less-than-serious fashion.
He went back to work. Eventually Wolf did come, and prowled along the fence. He pawed at it once or twice and whimpered at Jeebee. Jeebee stopped work and stepped over the fence, to greet him, leaving the posthole digger inside. Jeebee greeted him, and in the process moved away from the fence. For a while he enticed Wolf as well as he could into forgetting the fence. Then, while Wolf was still there, he deliberately went back to it, stepped over it, and returned to work.
Wolf came up to the fence once more, and once more protested at it keeping him out. But when Jeebee continued to work, paying him no attention, he turned suddenly and trotted off with an exaggeratedly indifferent air. He went off to lie down in a little hollow among the roots of a tree at the edge of the meadow near the fire, which he had sometime since picked as his favorite resting place.
CHAPTER 28
So began some of the busiest weeks of Jeebee’s life.
Late summer, if not fine early fall weather, clear and warm, still held the land. The days were still long, and it seemed to Jeebee that most of their useful length was in the afternoon hours.
He took the utmost advantage of this, rising before daylight to make his arrival at the ranch as early as possible. Every trip down there, now, he brought back something; even his backpack would be stuffed full of small items such as used nails, screws, or cloth in any size and shape.
Actually, in these early days, his time was spent mainly in working at the ranch itself. In addition to its tractors, cars, pickup trucks, and the one snowmobile, there were the two wagons of different sizes. Both ran on regular car axles and had Y-shaped hitch devices so that they could be pulled by trucks or tractors.
The larger wagon was a flatbed affair, high-sprung to ride over small obstacles, but built to carry heavy and bulky loads. It had a plank bed, ten feet wide by twenty feet in length. Possibly, Jeebee thought, it had been used to bring fodder out where the range cattle could get at it at times of the year when ordinary graze was scarce.
In winter, with snow on the ground, it must have had its wheels changed for the equivalent of skis. He went looking for some such things, and found them, together with skis for the other, much-smaller, two-wheeled wagon, up on rafters in a half-burned outbuilding.
He left them where they were. He had no time to waste even examining them now. In any case, the larger wagon was no use at all to Jeebee. His two horses could certainly pull it across the flatlands, but not with a load of any weight on it.
Even if they had been able to, it would have been impossible to pull it up the open slopes of the foothills, where there were no roads, or even tracks on which to travel. He turned to examining the two-wheel trailer.
It was obviously homemade, mainly of metal. It had the shortened axle from some car, with two ordinary automobile wheels and extra-thick clumps of leaf springs between them and the trailer bed. The bed itself had been made of thick planks, covered with sheet metal to take the wear of use.
It was surrounded by a four-bar railing of welded, one-and-a-half-inch pipe on posts of heavier pipe placed vertically, three feet high. The railing at the back was a gate that hinged at the base and had both planking and sheet metal across it so that it could be let down as a ramp up which the trailer could be loaded. The scraped and worn metal sheeting of the bed was about the dimensions of that in the back of a small pickup truck.
The hitch on its front was obviously designed to be fastened to the back of a tractor or a truck. Probably, thought Jeebee, a tractor. Its heavy construction would make it capable of carrying equipment, and other small but heavy loads, out into open areas where it was needed.
Someone had also welded a skid to the middle of the back bar of the frame that held the trailer bed. Jeebee had no idea why. But the skid was ideal for his needs, pulling the loaded wagon up slopes where its back end might otherwise drag on the ground.
As it was, when the two-wheeled wagon stood unhitched on the level, as now, it was tilted only slightly to the rear, resting on the tip of the skid. Obviously, with a tractor pulling it, it would move forward with its bed level and the end of the skid would ride half a foot above the ground.
This was something that Sally and Brute might be able to pull together, if they were willing to work as a team. Also, something they might be able to bring up the untracked slopes between the ranch and his cave.
Jeebee went searching for some sort of double yoke the two horses could wear to pull in tandem. He found nothing, however, and decided he was just as glad he had not.
On the uneven footing of the slopes, where the two horses might not have their backs level at all times, they were probably better off in separate harnesses. With such harnesses, closely tied together, but not so close that one would
pull the other off balance by stepping downhill suddenly, they would be much safer.
Accordingly, he made two harnesses out of rope, wrapping soft cloths around any parts of the rope that might chafe. He also worked out a fairly complicated rope tie that would fasten both harnesses to the Y-point of the hitch.
The tie would undoubtedly wear thin and break from time to time, but the ranch had plenty of rope, and the tie could always be replaced.
The day he finished all this it was barely noon. He had come down alone on Brute, so he spent the rest of the day scouting the area between the ranch and his meadow to find a route that followed the gentlest possible slopes. He did not have a great deal of choice in most places. Still, he ended by finding a route that he estimated would probably take three hours or more for the horses with the trailer loaded. But at least it ought to be possible to them.
He had been riding only Brute lately to give Sally a rest after her recent days of having to carry both him and what he was bringing back from the ranch. But the day after scouting the new route, he brought both horses down early.
At the ranch, Brute objected even to being put into his harness. But then, Brute could be expected to object to about anything. Sally was clearly not too pleased with hers, either, but she made no important protest.
The real test came after they had both been harnessed to the empty trailer wagon and Jeebee tried leading them with the wagon behind them. It was well that he had taken a close grip on their halter ropes, because Brute’s first impulse was to bolt. He was clearly under the impression that if he ran quick enough and far enough, he would get rid of the obnoxious device that was trundling behind him.
Jeebee ended by spending most of the afternoon leading the horses around. It was not until late afternoon that he got to the point where he thought he could try standing in the wagon and driving them.
He had rigged long, double reins to each horse. It was not so much that he felt that he needed to hold all four lines in his hands at once as it was the fact that both horses had been trained to neck reining, in which the rein was merely laid against the side of their necks to signal a turn. He had considered that on the slopes with the trailer, a rein could easily fall against the side of a horse’s neck accidentally. Jeebee wanted to take as few chances as possible. If he could train them to mouth reining when they were pulling together like this, it would be safer.
The driving was only partly successful. Jeebee at last gave up trying it. He told himself that in any case, he would not be riding in the trailer when they were actually going up the slopes. He would be walking and leading the horses. Not only was that safer, but they would have load enough without adding his weight to it.
It was getting late in the day. He gave up his original hope of bringing the wagon back to the cave this trip, and unhitched both horses. He rode Brute back, with Sally on a lead rope, as usual.
The next morning early he took them down again, harnessed them to the trailer, and was about to take it back empty as a practice run. But the sheer need to make each trip count as much as possible caused him to put a few items in it.
He bundled these in an old blanket and tied it down to the trailer bed, above the axle. Rope anchored the bundle to the metal railing on all four sides.
Feeling reasonably certain that it would not shift, he began driving the horses along the flatlands, northward, for a little distance. His newer, easier route did not begin until they had reached a sort of cut into the foothills, about half a mile from the ranch house.
Moving across the open flatlands, Brute settled down somewhat to pulling with Sally. Jeebee was optimistic that with time the male horse would become completely used to the work.
When they got to the cut, Jeebee got out of the wagon and began leading the animals. Brute was, if anything, relieved to be led. Still, there were problems of turns, and places where their path was along the bottom of one slope with another at an angle to it, so that the trailer traveled tilted up on one side for a little distance. About twenty minutes into the foothills, the rope hitch broke and had to be retied, so that they were a good four hours finally getting to the cave.
The final half hour of daylight barely saw them into the campsite. Jeebee unhitched the relieved horses inside the closed wire fence to protect the trailer and its load from Wolf. Then he put them in the wooden corral he had been building and carried the bundle into the inner room of the cave.
He started a fire and went back outside to the trailer, closing the fence behind him.
The moment he did, Wolf materialized out of the last of the gathering gloom, and Jeebee came back out of the fenced-in area to go through their regular evening set of greetings. Then Wolf, after some hesitation, gave the trailer as thorough an examination through the fence as he could. Jeebee had carefully placed it so the rope of the harnesses and the trailer hitch were beyond his reach.
Satisfied at last, Wolf came to the fire and lay down.
Sitting, watching the other, Jeebee told himself that Wolf must almost certainly have been following him, out of sight, down to the ranch these last few days, or even weeks. In fact, Wolf had probably been making the route down and back to the ranch parallel to him on many of his trips.
He had certainly not appeared where Jeebee could see him. But that was Wolf’s nature. He had been equally slow to approach Paul’s wagon. He would not want to come into any unknown place until he was sure it was safe to do so, no matter how used he was to seeing it from a distance. Undoubtedly, Jeebee thought as he finally rolled himself in his blankets, Wolf would end up in the long run coming into the buildings with him. Which might pose a problem in Jeebee’s gathering and collecting things he wanted to take back to the cave.
He turned out to be right within the next week. Five days later Wolf appeared just before he got to the ranch and came with him to the edge of its inhabited areas. In the next couple of days he came increasingly closer, until he was actually in among the buildings.
However, after a certain amount of limited exploring, staying as close to Jeebee as he could most of the time, Wolf made himself scarce once more. In the days that followed, Jeebee found that the problem he anticipated never really materialized. Wolf remained shy of entering any enclosed area. Also, many days he simply was not there.
Jeebee realized after some thought that most of his partner’s days needed necessarily to be given to hunting for needed food. Wolf might take some time off from this, but he could not take much. Normally, Jeebee ended up alone with the horses, in his process of getting what he wanted from the ranch.
He blamed himself for not thinking of making use of the two-wheeled wagon before. With it, he could have brought up the two-by-fours and much of the other lumber in just a few loads, if not in one large load. He had carefully been increasing the amount carried in the trailer, and watching the horses to be sure he did not work them too hard. It was as necessary to him, as to them, that they keep their strength.
Now he got into necessarily heavier loads, and into loads he had not thought of carrying originally. Ignored by himself as well as the raiders was an aluminum building set off at some distance from the rest of the ranch structures. This was something he recognized as a pole barn, a structure made of poles and aluminum sheets solely for the purpose of housing and protecting baled hay from the weather so that it could be stored into the winter and its contents available for use to whatever horses or other such animals were at the ranch. It had been set apart like that simply because hay caught fire very easily, and the whole structure could be destroyed in a twinkling by a carelessly dropped cigarette.
Now, on seeing it, he realized that he would have to lay in a supply of fodder for the two horses during the winter months up at the cave. Here was the fodder, ready for him, and the trailer could transport it. Not only that, but he found his attention attracted by the pole barn itself. Its doors, sides, and roof were modular, light enough to carry, and of a size that could be carried in the two-wheel trailer.
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p; The side poles were set in the earth. The rafters were attached to horizontal boards nailed between the side and corner poles of the barn. The wall and ceiling strips of aluminum were four feet wide to bridge the distance between poles and some ten feet in height. All together they enclosed a remarkable amount of baled hay.
He could strip the siding and roof off, take the rafters and dig up the poles and simply transport the whole thing to the cave. On second thought, he need not even dig up the poles. He could cut and set log poles at the cave to attach the aluminum strips to. All in all, it was well worth the days it would cost him to take apart and transport the movable part of the pole barn and its contents.
He did so, accordingly, during part of the following week. The segments of the pole barn made an awkward, but not over-heavy load for the trailer. The hay was a slower business, not only to transport but to load—and it drove him crazy with the chaff and straws that worked their way into his hair and through his clothing to itch him to a frenzy.
Nonetheless, finally it was all done, and he had a strange sense of pride at looking at it, set up, filled with fodder, and ready to take care of the horses during the winter.
He turned back to moving his other necessities up to the cave and getting the cave itself finished. He was racing against the calendar. He wanted all his needed materials up at the meadow before snow came.
Two of his most difficult trips came when he began to break loose both the front and back doors of the ranch, complete with their frames. One of these at a time was a full load for the horses to pull to the cave. He was forced to make two trips to get them both up.
It took a good deal of muscle on his part to transfer each one to the trailer, even once he had loosened them from the house. But he must have them. He had decided he would need solid-core, outer doors for his cave because he wanted them to be as resistant to low temperatures, wind, and snow as possible.
Wolf and Iron Page 36