Gordon Dickson - Wolf and Iron

A sandwich of layers like that might keep dirt from working up into their rooms from underneath; both at the time of the birth and after the baby had come.

Finally, they were at the end of April, and the snow was rapidly disappearing. It seemed to evaporate almost as much as it seemed to melt. In fact, thought Jeebee, considering their altitude, a good deal of straight evaporation might indeed be removing it. Regretfully, he shaved his beard, and decided it was time to have a look at the ranch.

He chose to ride Sally, as the steadier of the two horses—particularly after a winter in which they had had no work at all, being neither ridden nor fitted with a packload—down to see how the buildings had weathered the winter.

It was necessary for him to pick his way with Sally. There were still spots where he had to get off and lead her, through drifts that still lay fairly deep in places where two slopes came together, but they made it down successfully. Out of curiosity he passed the shale slope and saw, surprisingly, that it was entirely clear of snow in certain places. The hole to the den, or whatever it might be high up on it, was now completely exposed.

That should have prepared him for what he would find at the ranch. But in spite of his realization of the dryness of the air, compared to what he had been used to in Michigan, and the effect of the recently sunny and warm days, he was surprised when he got there.

The ranch was already mostly clear of snow. It lingered only in shady places or where drifts had piled high. He was able to get into the outbuilding with the plastic bags and check the stack of them. Laid empty, and then piled, one on top of the other, he estimated the stack must contain at least a couple of hundred bags. He thought fleetingly that if the sealing of the floor worked, he might also eventually seal the ceiling, then after that, possibly the inside walls.

After a cursory look around the other buildings and what was left of the ranch house, he headed back to the cave, returning with as many bags as Sally could conveniently carry behind the saddle. He had more than enough to let him experiment at finding the right temperature to seal them.

It was something that would have to be discovered by trial and error. He remembered, almost wistfully, electric devices for sealing food-storage bags for the deep freezer. Once they had been for sale everywhere. If the ranch had owned something like that, perhaps with the solar-cell blanket he could have used it to seal the bag edges together.

In the next few weeks he experimented with his heated rod. The work was frustrating. It seemed the iron was always either too hot or too cool. If he got it to just the right temperature for a few moments, it had cooled again before he had completed what he had set out to do with it. But, eventually, he found the right temperature and built a rack over the forge. Then, by resting the rod in hooks on the rack at just the right height, for a specific time, he was able to get it warmed, or rewarmed just enough, but not too much, to work.

In the end he became expert at this, too.

He sealed enough bags together to make a plastic sheet a little larger in area than the floor of the inner room.

Together, he and Merry laid it down, sealing it with strips of narrow boards nailed on top of it at the bases of the vertical walls. After that, it was merely a matter of bringing up and nailing down the planks of the upper floor. They used the trailer to carry the planks. For by this time they were well into April and the ground was dry enough to hitch both horses to that vehicle for trips to the ranch.

Merry went with him on these trips. While there, she carefully planted sections of the potatoes she had saved in a cool corner of the inner room through the winter, for seed in the garden. She had some other seeds, which she planted as well, but Jeebee was too involved in his own concerns to pay much attention to what they were.

“Why do you want to do anything like this?” he asked her. “We’ll be gone by the time fall comes around.”

“You don’t dig and eat new potatoes in the fall,” Merry said.

She was right, of course.

He made no more objections to anything she decided to do, after that. In any case, there were other matters to occupy him.

With the total vanishing of the snow, Jeebee’s inner unease shifted unexpectedly into high gear. With the earth bare and new green stuff sprouting, it was now undeniable that time was on the march.

Until then he had been able to look out on the snow and say to himself, “It’s winter still. There’s a while yet. I’ve still got time to get ready.”

But the sight of the naked, burgeoning earth was like the ticking of a clock. They were little more than two months from the expected birth date.

He had memorized the books that Merry had taught him, line by line, like someone from a time before the written word had been invented. She would give him a sentence, have him repeat it back to her, then repeat it to himself again and again, until it came automatically to him. He found the repetition of the words comforting, even after he already knew the books backward and forward. Their words were something of authority, something to cling to.

At the same time, it did not tell him what he really wanted to hear—the fact that he would be able to handle his share of things when the time came. He searched between the words for that kind of reassurance, but could not find it. Then his mind went off in a dozen different directions to worry about a dozen other, different things.

He worried about Wolf. A pet dog could be jealous when a new baby came. That was common knowledge. Wolf, of course, was no pet. On the other hand, while a pet dog might be jealous, he was not likely to look on the baby as possibly something to eat.

“It’s good you’re going to have the baby in June,” Jeebee said to Merry. “It’s a stroke of luck.”

“Stroke of luck, nothing!” Merry answered cheerfully. “It’s a matter simply of counting the days forward. It takes nine months to produce a baby. That’s all you need to know.”

“Yes, yes,” said Jeebee, “I know that. That isn’t what I’m talking about. June’s the time when the testosterone in wolves is at its lowest. They’re at their least aggressive then.”

Merry, who had been cutting cloth for clothes for the baby, stopped abruptly in what she was doing.

“Aggressive? What do you mean—aggressive?”

“Oh, just what I say,” said Jeebee. He was suddenly upset at having mentioned the matter at all to Merry. “The high testosterone season is during the early winter months. January, February—like that. That’s when the wolves in a pack compete for position and breeding rights. Just the opposite in May and June.

June more than May is the time when they’re least competitive, and it’s at that time that the pups are born. Then all the wolves in a pack are concerned with all the pups. I’ve told you about this. They all help to feed the new ones, and baby-sit them if the mother has to go off for a while. What I was saying, was that we’ll be having our baby at just the time when Wolf is at his most friendly and helpful.”

“You mean he’s the least likely to be aggressive toward the baby?” Merry looked at him with narrowed eyes.

“Well, yes,” said Jeebee, “but aggressive isn’t the word. Just the opposite. It will be a time when Wolf will be most likely to be protective and helpful.”

“I see,” said Merry, and the frown that had drawn a line between her two eyes smoothed somewhat.

Jeebee still felt uneasy at having perhaps planted a worry in her mind. He made a mental note not to bring the subject up again. Merry was perfectly capable of making sure, permanently, that Wolf was not a potential danger to her baby. He did not want any reaction as drastic as that.