Dickson Gordon - Wolf and Iron

He waited. The light got stronger and soon he could use the opera glasses. The vehicle was as he had thought; an oversized wagon, of the Conestoga type, rolling on eight pairs of large, rubber-tired wheels.

Behind it, enclosed in a sort of stake-and-rope corral, was a herd of perhaps as many as fifteen or twenty horses. Both of the riding and pulling variety. Three other horses were unaccountably together close to the back of the wagon. There was something strange about the shape of those three horses. But the light was not yet strong enough for Jeebee to tell what.

The dogs were sleeping shapes on the ground around the wagon and the ashes of the fire. The wagon, he thought, studying it with the glasses, was really oversized. The top of its roof could be no less than twelve feet above the road surface. Also, its front behind the wagon seat was not open, but closed by a wooden wall. Forward of this, a tongue projected only far enough for a first pair of horses. But Jeebee was confirmed in his guess that it would take at least four to pull it handily.

No people were in evidence this early. They must all be in the wagon; and again he thought that they must be very secure, or else they would have had someone posted on guard. He had been wrong about the number of dogs. He counted eight—no, nine—shapes sleeping around where the fire had been.

As the day brightened, the black and gray of the wagon began to acquire colors and he could see words on the side that faced him. A little more light confirmed that the words had been made in black or red paint against the white surface of the side, which formed a continuous curve up and over the roof.

Perhaps the white was cloth after all. Cloth over an open wooden box. The letters of the words spelled out Paul Sanderson and Company, Peddler.

The letters were a good three feet high, painted in what, as the morning brightened broadly, he saw to be a very brilliant red indeed, upon the white cloth. They looked almost as if they had been freshly painted. Overall, there was an air of unusual cleanliness and competence about the wagon and everything connected with it. It seemed stoutly built, well maintained, and strangely businesslike in this newly disorderly and dirty age.

Just then one of the dogs stirred, got to its feet, and shook itself. It was time to go; but Jeebee wanted one more look at those three horses by the back of the wagon. He swung the binoculars on them and saw they were tethered to the wagon; each one saddled and bridled with a full pack behind each saddle, and a rifle in a scabbard at the right front of each one. This was something to think about. Jeebee began his retreat.

In the brightening light he made it back quickly to the trees where he had spent the night before. From there, he took a longer, and much clearer, observation of the wagon, now aided by the daylight.

Now that the sun had risen, the inhabitants of the wagon evidently began to stir. Smoke rose from a metal flue through the wagon’s roof. Following that first dog on its feet, all the others had roused. Now they began to move around and congregate closely near the front of the wagon. After some time, Jeebee thought he smelled cooking on the breeze that was still toward him from them. Eventually, the smaller—and Jeebee now saw—beardless figure came out and threw a panful of scraps of some kind to the dogs. They dived hungrily at them and gobbled them down.

While they were still eating, another dog burst from the trees in the same patch that Jeebee had been in earlier, and raced down to the wagon. It was the yellow dog Jeebee had seen with Wolf. She jumped up on the slight figure, greeting the human effusively, and receiving a vigorous scratching and petting in return.

With the morning formalities concluded, the human turned toward the front of the wagon. Jeebee could not hear anything, but he got the impression that the person he saw had called out. Within moments two more figures appeared. One was the larger person Jeebee had seen in outline by the fire the night before, clearly a large, somewhat blocky man of middle age, with a short, square beard. He was followed almost immediately by a smaller man, clean shaven and carrying something that turned out to be more scraps, which were fed to the yellow dog.

After a consultation among the three figures, the smaller man went back inside the wagon, the one who had met the yellow dog as she returned went back to the rope corral. This person ducked through the rope and selected six of the heavier of the horses, who allowed themselves to be caught with no protest whatsoever. They had halter ropes loosely about their necks. They were led out of the rope corral and toward the front of the wagon.

They were met halfway by the larger man, who took the horses over, led them to the front of the wagon, and began the process of harnessing them two by two to the wagon tongue. Meanwhile the one that brought the horses to him was now back, bringing three fresh riding horses up to replace the ones who had been tied to the wagon back.

The replacement horses were tied to the end of the wagon, and the handler transferred saddles, bridles, guns, and all gear from the ones who had stood there during the night to the three just brought up. Halter ropes with short, loose ends were put around the necks of the ones just stripped of their gear and they were turned loose. They followed like dogs as the handler returned to the corral and began to take it apart. The horses released from the wagon joined the others, but they all stayed in a close group.

It was plain that the wagon was at last preparing to move on. Whether the decision to start going had anything to do with the return of the yellow dog or not, Jeebee did not know. But he knew that he wanted to start getting away from where he was and back into familiar territory. He crawled backward, stood up, and went off at a slow jog, keeping a fold of land between him and the wagon.

Now that he understood more about the vehicle and those with it, he was less concerned about keeping out of sight as he returned. Simply going back from the highway, he went west in a straight line, shielded by the land between him and the wagon, until he was back among his familiar trees.

As he went, he made some mental computations of the time it might take for the wagon to get under way and to get up level with where he was now. He decided that there would be time to circle back around his own camping place. He could make sure everything there was all right and the .22 was still safely hidden in the tree, as well as the bag of food he had hung up separately.

He did so. All was as he had left it. He took the .22 with him when he returned to his observation point. The .30/06 was still in the rope sling on his back.

Lying down at his usual observation point, he used the opera glasses to study the wagon’s three people as it got closer. There was just a chance these were the kind he could risk approaching.

The legend “Paul Sanderson and Company, Peddler,” was in itself reassuring. It implied that those with the wagon were used to meeting people at all times and in all places. Consequently, they should not be startled into defensive action by someone showing up along the roadside. On the other hand, they had looked like a very efficient outfit. And if they had survived with that kind of a rig to get this far, they must be in a better state to take offensive action, if they wanted to, than they appeared.

With the advantage of the angle from which he viewed their approach, and the small but definite added height from which he viewed them, he began to see not only the wagon, but what was behind it.

The extra horses he had seen earlier were following the wagon in a herd, apparently keeping station there pretty much of their own will. The man who had greeted the yellow dog was now mounted on horseback, and riding gracefully back and forth between the herd and the front of the wagon, where the large man sat driving the team of six horses that pulled it.