Dickson Gordon - Wolf and Iron

Jeebee tensed as he climbed. True, Wolf had not so far tried to take from him anything that he was actually holding, even the bits of porcupine meat that were merely close to him. But that was no guarantee Wolf would not try to appropriate the cans he was now carrying, or contrive to make him drop them.

Moreover, Wolf was really an awesomely dangerous animal, with those teeth and the speed and power Jeebee had seen him show over the past few weeks. If it came to a real contest between them…

Nonetheless, as he approached the top of the ladder, he became aware of the strange change inside of him. For days now he had been deeply and sincerely grateful to Wolf for staying with him. Even with the other’s undoglike strangeness and what might fairly be called selfishness, it was hardly an exaggeration to say that Jeebee had come to love him.

Until this moment. Now, somehow, with the prospect of food for his starving body in his pockets, backpack, and arm, everything had suddenly changed. First and foremost, he had become aware of the huge force of the hunger in him. From the equivalent of a sharp pain, the hunger had become more like a deep but steady ache, always with him, but so familiar that it would almost have felt strange to be without it. It was like a vicious animal that had been asleep in his belly but was now awakened. Deep in him a primitive decision was stirring. He had food in his possession now, and no one, not even Wolf, was going to take any of it from him.

He went on up the ladder.

As his head rose above the earth level, and his eyes met Wolf’s, only half a dozen feet away, something seemed to touch him at the base of the back of his skull. A chill flooded out from that part of him as if it was some powerful dye; spreading forward to the back of his ears, down his neck and into the muscles of his back and down his spine. As he continued to come up and step out at last on level ground, his vision focused more and more tightly until he saw nothing but Wolf directly ahead of him—and all this time his eyes had never left Wolf’s.

Wolf’s tongue licked his lips uncertainly and he backed up five or six steps, still watching Jeebee. Jeebee waited but he made no other move. Jeebee stood, prepared to club Wolf with the stock of the rifle if the other made a try for the cans he held.

After a moment of waiting, Jeebee turned, keeping his eyes on Wolf while he put down the cans, pulled the lid up on its hinges, and closed it again over the root cellar, shooting the bolt home. He gathered in the cans once more, the rifle in his hand still pointing in Wolf’s direction, and turned away. Slowly he started off in the direction of his camp, tense and ready for Wolf either to approach him suddenly with that fantastic bounding speed, or move behind him to get at the root-cellar door again.

But Wolf did neither. As Jeebee continued to move away, Wolf turned out in a circle around him to come back in fifteen to twenty feet ahead of him. He continued at a slow trot, looking back over his shoulder at Jeebee every so often; and in this way they both returned to the campsite.

Jeebee had set it up in a patch of woods, not directly overlooking the superhighway, but a good five hundred yards behind the clump on the hill that did; that clump from which he could observe traffic on the highway while lying with the opera glasses, out of sight, himself. When the two of them reached the camp, now, Wolf circled the dead ashes of the previous night’s fire. He stood on the other side of them, watching, as Jeebee went to a cottonwood tree not ten feet from the ashes and lifted, one by one, the cans he had been carrying as high as he could reach, to perch them along several thick limbs coming out from the cotton-wood.

He had leaned the .30/06 reluctantly against the tree so that he could put up the cans. But Wolf merely stood watching, making no move to approach. It was as if he had lost interest in the cans as food and was merely being his old, usual, curious self with his constant observation of everything that happened around him.

With all the cans safe, Jeebee laid the rifle down and pulled himself up onto the lower limbs of the cottonwood until he could get a leg over one of them and hang there. Then he transferred the cans from their present limbs to higher branches—ones to which Wolf could not possibly jump or climb. This done, he let himself back down onto the ground. While he had been in the tree, Wolf had flopped down on one hip, with his muzzle resting across his forelegs and his deceptively sleepy eyes following Jeebee’s every movement. Cautiously, Jeebee produced one of the cans from his pocket—it was a can of stew. His mouth watered and his hands trembled as he held it.

Reaching down for his large hunting knife, he untied the thong that held it firmly in its sheath, pulled it out, and with the heavy blade punched through the lid. He sawed raggedly around the rim of the can until he had it off. All this time, he was watching Wolf, but Wolf seemed to have lost interest. He yawned once or twice, then got to his feet and, angling off to one side of Jeebee, at the edge of the clearing, began to sniff and after a while to dig busily at the foot of a tree.

Jeebee resheathed the knife, placed the open can of stew up in one of the recently vacated lower crotches of the tree limb, and followed it with the .30/06, which he laid across two limbs. Then, careful not to disturb either can or gun, he climbed back up into the tree. Once he was seated on one of the branches, he retrieved the rifle in his left hand, put the open can between his knees, and began gingerly to reach between the ragged edges of the can to get at the stew inside with two fingers.

He began to scoop up fingers loaded with the stew and push them into his mouth. The porcupine meat, as delicious as it was, was a pale memory compared to the reality of what he held in his hand. The fat he licked from his fingers drove him almost wild with hunger even as a nausea began to rise from his shrunken stomach.

He fought to keep the nausea down, but vomited in spite of himself onto the ground beneath. Like a flash Wolf was underneath the tree at what had come up.

Jeebee sat miserably above the other. His body cried out for more food, but his stomach still roiled with upset at the thought of receiving it. But after a while it calmed, and he ventured to feed himself some more, taking small amounts at intervals and working them thoroughly in his mouth before he risked swallowing them.

Eventually, he managed to keep some down. It was not surprising, he told himself, that his stomach, so long empty, should be unable to handle a sudden onslaught of fat and meat.

Regretfully, he threw the empty can down to the ground. It made barely one bounce before Wolf was on it. Jeebee left the rest of the cans still in the tree, took the .30/06, and climbed down. By the time he reached the ground Wolf was lying down with the can held between the toes of his two front paws with a suppleness that was almost that of human fingers, his long tongue having polished the interior until it looked like it had been just washed.

Jeebee felt a momentary pang of conscience.

“Maybe later on—” he began, taking a step toward Wolf. But at Jeebee’s first movement toward him, Wolf growled protectively, leaped to his feet, holding the completely empty can in his jaws, and ran off among the trees. Jeebee sighed and sat down. He took the small whetstone from its leather holster on his belt and began to sharpen the mistreated edge of the knife.

He sat so, sharpening the knife, for about fifteen minutes, then waited another fifteen. But Wolf did not return. He had probably, thought Jeebee, taken the can and hidden it somewhere, then gone off on one of his own hunting expeditions. Though what there should be about the can once Wolf had licked out what little Jeebee had left, stuck to its inner sides, Jeebee had no idea. There could hardly be even a smell remaining of the food that had originally been in it.