Gordon Dickson - Wolf and Iron

On the other hand he, too, was determined that Wolf must be agreeable to adding this newcomer to their pack. It would have to be a matter of being completely on guard against him when the time came. Jeebee primed himself for that moment, among his other preparations.

Meanwhile, there was an endless list of things to make. He built a framework around the bed, and an extra area of floor next to it that would be the actual birthing area. He set up sheets of plastic made from the bags that could be used to enclose it completely, like a tent within the room, if necessary to protect against dirt or sand.

He had already put a plastic layer tight against the ceiling and the top of the walls of the room. It was impossible to double-plank from underneath, but the ceiling was already as well sealed as was possible. Now, in addition, this tentlike affair would be ready. Merry would probably not want it with its sides down most of the time, simply because it would become intolerably hot inside and possibly shut out a sufficient air supply.

At any rate, there it was, ready to go. It was not difficult to build or to make, after his experience in plastic-coating the floor.

Merry had also wanted an enema syringe for herself, when the pains would first begin. First births, according to the books and her experience, were usually more prolonged than the births of children born later to the same mother. They found such a syringe with a plastic nozzle and a rubber bulb down in the ruins of the ranch house, but the rubber was so old that it had cracked and no longer worked. They kept the nozzle and instead attached a bag Jeebee made up from plastic sealed into the shape of a long, rectangular bag, fastened to the nozzle with tight thongs of rawhide that had been allowed to shrink around the inner end of the nozzle to the point where it was watertight.

Filling the bag was a laborious process of immersing it in a container of warm soapy water and simply holding it under the surface until the air escaped upward and water took its place in the bag. Once the bag was full, it could be emptied simply by rolling up the bag.

Merry had also asked him to build what was in effect a type of birthing stool that had been used for centuries under primitive conditions, with a solid vertical rod before it, with a solid crossbar she could cling to, to help in the muscular effort of the delivery.

Jeebee eventually came up with a tripod with the requisite bars. She drew him a sketch of the birthing stool she wanted him to build for her. This was simply a three-legged stool with a seat. However, the seat was to be cut out in half-moon shape to give the baby room to emerge and to give Jeebee room to reach in and help when the time came.

He had been lucky enough to find a keyhole saw down at the ranch, and with this, since it was small and rather a flimsy saw, but would cut in a curve, he carved out three identical seat shapes from light plywood and glued them together, reinforcing the glue by nailing them together and countersinking the nails. He finished by padding the seat with cloth covered by leather they had tanned themselves from cattle hide.

The tripod, the bars, the stool with its special seat ended up as sturdy pieces of equipment, and Merry was pleased.

His final and most important concern, as they moved on into May and then through May toward the early June date of the birth, was for the lighting in the cave.

He had kept as many as possible of the batteries on standby at full charge ready for use.

He estimated that he had battery enough for light, even using the headlamps, for at least thirty hours.

Still, the illumination he got this way, while good, was not what he might need at the actual moment of birth. For that time he was relying on the solar-powered yard floodlight that had apparently been overlooked by the raiders.

Why this was, Jeebee did not really know. It was true the floodlight had been tucked up under the eaves at the back of the house. But unless the defense of the ranch house, together with the fire, had kept the raiders from looting until daylight when the floodlight would have automatically shut itself off, Jeebee had no idea how they could have missed it.

However, the fact was they had. When he first found it, and tried it, it was dead. He had been about to give up on it when he noticed that its receptor surface had been completely coated with a sort of tarry black substance, which seemed to be ashes mixed with a resin that had possibly bubbled out under the heat of the fire from the roofing material of the ranch.

Carefully, he cleaned this off and exposed it to sunlight, and was impressed at the bright light he got from it, after a full day of exposure to the sunlight.

Its battery was only good for about ten hours; but it would not be required, he thought, until the moment of actual delivery itself, so all its power could be kept in reserve.

Merry was equally delighted with it. Like the bike Jeebee had ridden out of Michigan, it was powered by the most advanced type of solar cell, and it could be switched to various intensities. At high intensity it would be a good equivalent for what would effectively be an operating-room light. He rigged this to its own bar on the tripod, near the top, with a clamp so that it could be rotated into any position necessary. Meanwhile, Merry had finished making baby clothes and blankets, and had insisted on building, by herself, a small, high-sided crib to keep near the fire so the baby would always be warm. It was late spring now, and to Jeebee the nights were only pleasantly cool. But he could understand how a baby might have different needs as far as warmth was concerned.

Unexpectedly, Jeebee found himself with nothing more to do but wait. He puttered around with the bed, the stool, the tripod, and the lamps, essentially making work for himself, until Merry literally drove him out of the inner room.

“Go find something to do someplace else!” she said finally. She was not angry but she was definite.

“What, for instance?” said Jeebee. The expected date of birth was only a week away.

“Find something!” said Merry. “Build something in that forge of yours!”

Jeebee went to the forge and found himself with no ideas whatsoever. Running through his mind were only the words of the various books that Merry had made him memorize. For want of anything else to do he built a fire in the forge. Some weeks since, he had removed that part of the roof that was closest to the bluff, preferring to be soaked by an occasional sprinkle of rain to being roasted alive by the heat of the forge in the enclosed space.

With the fire going, he examined the pieces of metal he had brought up. There was some angle iron, some steel rods, some lengths of steel water pipe, and a couple of pieces of axle stock from one of the older cars.

He examined the shorter piece of axle stock, which was about a foot and a half long and about an inch and a half in diameter. It suggested nothing useful to be made from it, and he looked at it morosely. It was too bad, he thought, he did not have some means of drilling it out and then tightly wrapping it with wire. He could make at least, then, some sort of single-shot equivalent of a rifle, which Merry could have with her after the baby came, when he was gone and had left her only with the revolver.

The episode with the cougar had made a large impression on both of them. The big cat might run away from a full-grown adult—or might not, next time—but if cougars were like wolves, a child would be in worse danger.

Jeebee still felt guilty for being absent at the time. His conscience had been troubling him ever since. He had considered—and discarded—a number of possible ways to leave Merry adequately armed while he hunted down on the flats. He had even considered leaving the rifle and trying to get cattle with the revolver alone.