Gordon Dickson - Wolf and Iron

“You know, the year round,” Jeebee said, “they could come within fifty yards of the cave here and we’d never know it. There can’t be too many grizzlies, and bears move around a lot anyway. They have to find food. Besides, remember I told you that the tracks led into the hole but not out? Whatever it is, if it’s a bear, it’s started hibernating and won’t come out until spring. We’ll just keep it in mind, and I think I’m going to insist on going hunting with just the pistol and the crossbow. You keep the rifle here from now on.”

“There ought to be some way of killing it while it’s still asleep in there,” said Merry, “if it’s a grizzly. I don’t want a grizzly anywhere near Paul.”

“I can’t think of any way,” Jeebee answered, “but if it is a grizzly, the .30/06 is rather light to kill it with a single shot unless you reach a vital area. And I don’t like the idea of trying to hit a vital area in a pitch-dark hole, particularly if it’s curled up, the way I imagine it would be if it was hibernating.”

“We could take the floodlight with the battery,” Merry said. “I could hold the light on it, while you shot it—as many times as it took.”

“And what if it came out after us in spite of the fact it had been shot several times? I’d have a rifle that was already proving it was too light, and you’d just have a revolver.”

“I could take that crazy spear of yours,” said Merry.

Jeebee snorted.

“If it came to that,” he said, “I’d take the spear and the light. You’d do the shooting. You’re the better shot.” He took a deep breath.

“In any case,” he said, “the very idea of trying to shoot it now is ridiculous. We’d just be borrowing trouble. We’d be giving it a chance to kill us both—and then what would happen to Paul? On the other hand, if we just leave it alone, it’ll sleep till spring. Then when it comes out, it’s likely to go in any direction but here. It wouldn’t have denned up here unless it belongs in this territory. If it does, then it knows that there’s cattle down below, and its first instinct on waking is going to be to head down onto the flat. It’ll know that after a winter there’ll be a number of dead cattle that’re still eatable because they were frozen and covered with snow until spring. A hungry grizzly that’s been hibernating is going to think of that dead meat first, and go for it. There’s every reason he should go straight down there, and no particular reason to come our way.”

Merry plainly was not convinced, but neither did she continue to argue. Jeebee had a sneaking feeling that it was his question about what would happen to Paul if they were both killed that had really changed her mind about going after the bear now.

He felt a little guilty, as if he had unfairly bludgeoned his way to winning the argument. But he consoled himself with the fact that after all, what he said was no more than the truth. A bear that size had to be more than a year old. If it was in this district, it knew about the cattle and had seen more than one spring, with its frozen carcasses gradually being uncovered as the snow melted. It would certainly head for the flatlands when it woke.

So they left the matter there. Jeebee sat back and waited for the next snow. Once his tracks were covered, he could relax. But instead of producing more snow, the weather perversely decided to get warmer.

Not only that, but the warming weather continued into the next day, the next, and the next. This unusual spell was then interrupted by a sudden cold snap lasting overnight, followed the next morning by a heavy, but short-term snow shower, the results of which lay on the ground for perhaps half an hour in the already bare spots exposed to the sun, and then vanished. The days went back to being warm again.

The renewal of the warm spell was an unexpected gift from the weather that gave them time to do the last-minute things that Jeebee’s collapse and the first snowstorm seemed to have lost to them.

In one of the outbuildings of the ranch, there had been the dusty, obviously long-unused potbellied stove from which Jeebee had gotten the flue for his forge. For the sake of young Paul, Merry had wanted to bring this up and vent it out their chimney as a replacement for the fireplace. As she pointed out to Jeebee, it would be much better for cooking, and much more efficient at providing heat to the inside of the cave.

During the warm days of fall, Jeebee had put off bringing it up from day to day, until suddenly he had found himself racing the onset of winter to get the skylight finished in time. By the time he did, it had been no longer possible for the two horses to take the trailer down.

The trailer had been absolutely necessary. The stove was too great a weight for either horse to carry alone. The feet would come off it, and a few other extraneous parts, but the main weight of the cast-iron body was more than even Brute could bring up the slopes. With the trailer, on the other hand, the two horses could transport it handily, provided snow had not made the slopes impassable.

Now, thanks to this freak warm spell, there was enough bare ground all the way down to the ranch so that Jeebee could try to take the trailer for it. So he did. Meanwhile, up at the cave, Merry was busy taking down some shelves and putting up new ones, to fit the cooking process more conveniently around a stove rather than a fireplace.

There were a few slippery spots and patches of ground that had been iced by the freeze, then lightly covered with the new snow, that Jeebee had to get the horses and trailer over on the way down to the ranch. Otherwise he had no trouble and found nothing that would keep them from pulling the stove back up.

On the way down, at a point at which he could do so, Jeebee used his binoculars to check on the shale slope from a distance. To his relief, there were large bare patches on it, too, and with the powerful binoculars he was able to focus in closely on the mouth of the hole. All sign of his being near it had already gone.

He noticed for the first time that on top of the bluff that crowned the slope, there was still the unusual, tremendous accumulation of snow. More than he would have thought would have come from the snowfall alone. Perhaps there had been a snow-slide from the slopes higher up, which were more steep, and it had found a natural barrier to pile up against in the upturned lip of the bluff.

He continued to the ranch. It was even more clear of snow than he had expected. He loaded the stove with its flue, and everything else that belonged to it, on the trailer, and lashed the pieces tightly into place. Luckily, all its necessary parts were there, including lids for the two cooking surfaces in the top of the stove, through which fuel could be added, as well as through the door in front.

The horses made relatively easy work of getting back up to the cave. Jeebee, with Merry’s help, spent the rest of that day and the next two, setting the stove up and getting it working.

Jeebee found he regretted losing the open fire of the fireplace. On the other hand, there was no doubt that the stove was more efficient, more practical, and a great deal safer to use. He was pleased that he did not have to rob his smithy of flue sections to get enough to vent the stove up the chimney, and more than pleased to be able to get rid of the smoke up the flue of the fireplace rather than up the nakedly clay-mortared stone walls of his homemade chimney.

He set up the flue within the chimney, pushing it up until it poked into the little weather top he had built aboveground on the top of the bluff for it. The flue would be easier to take apart, section by section, when spring came. It would need to be cleaned then of tars and possible flammable soots. Just as the interior of the chimney had been, though he had done his best to scrub the latter as clean as possible.