Gordon Dickson - Wolf and Iron

Having said so much, he felt foolish. There was a strong impression in him that he had overexplained himself. Merry was probably not the least bit interested in so much personal detail. On the other hand, she had started it, by asking about his folks.

“So what you mean,” Merry said, “is that you didn’t have time for pets.”

“I suppose so,” said Jeebee.

“I just wondered,” Merry said, “the way you picked up Wolf, and the way you feel about him. I’d have expected you to have a long history of having pets.”

“Wolf’s not a pet!” said Jeebee, and the words came out more sharply than he intended. “He’s my partner.”

“You really believe that, don’t you?” Merry said thoughtfully. “Dad said you told him the same thing. You talk about Wolf as if he were a person. Do you really feel that way?”

Jeebee answered slowly. “I guess it depends on what you mean by ‘person.’ Pets are a lot like children. If you stop and think about it, adults don’t really think of children as ‘persons.’ When we say ‘persons,’ we really mean ‘grown-ups.’ In that sense, Wolf really is a ‘person’—not a human person, maybe, but a self-sufficient individual with his own way of looking at the world. If a dog is going to survive, he’s got to behave as though he looked at the world through his master’s eyes. The same thing’s true of children—teaching them to do that is what psychologists call ‘socialization.’ Maybe that’s why children—and dogs—are so dependent on us, so eager to please us. Their survival depends on it. Not Wolf. He survives just fine looking at the world through his own eyes—just like any other grown-up person. He’s not dependent on me—in any way. He stays with me because he likes me. He’s with me the same way another adult human being would be with me; and he can leave at any time he wants. We both know that.”

“Still… ” said Merry, “is there really any difference between him and the dogs, except that they’re tame and he’s wild?”

“Yes, there is,” said Jeebee. “Oh, I know they can interbreed. We saw that. But there’s more to it. I may not have had a dog, or dogs, but I got to know them, growing up. Some of them were a lot more ‘wild’ than Wolf—but they thought like children. Take a toy away from a dog and hide it, and he’ll act like it never existed. If I hide something Wolf wants, I’d better use a padlock—and then hide the key.”

Merry was watching him closely.

“You seem to understand him awfully well,” she said.

He shook his head.

“I’ve only begun to understand a little bit about him. They told me where I found him that he was a wolf, but I didn’t really believe that. I thought he might be at best a wolf-dog. But the difference runs too deep. That’s why I’m sure now he’s a real wolf. I’ve been hoping someday to run across a place, say a library somewhere, and find out more about wolves. Because even if the library’s been broken into, the people who broke into it probably weren’t very interested in most of the books there. I might just be able to find some informative books on wolves and read up on them. But you know, it’s like the sharpening of those two edges of that doubled-bladed ax head. There hasn’t been any place where I could find information about wolves—yet.”

“I think Dad might be able to tell you something,” Merry said thoughtfully. “We used to stop at a customer a little farther west and south of here, before we stopped going over the mountains, who owned some wolves. I never saw them myself. But Dad saw them.”

“Why didn’t you?” Jeebee asked.

“The man was a little crazy, I think,” Merry answered. “He didn’t want me on his place. He was even a little slow to trust Dad in his house and on his grounds. But he did let Dad in eventually; and Dad got to know him. Then he began leaning on Dad to stay a day or two with him. Evidently he was hungry for company but didn’t trust anyone.”

“I’m not surprised,” Jeebee murmured.

“Dad humored him,” Merry went on, “because he bought a lot of things and needed a lot of things. When Dad came back from one visit, he told me about the wolves. The man had them all separated, each one to a cage. Three of them, or something like that. Dad said he was trying to breed back for what he said were the original breed of wolves. I remember because the man had a whole library of books on wolves. Dad knew something about them and I remember he told me he argued with this man about keeping them like dogs in a boarding kennel. Dad knows a lot more about things than most people realize, you know.”

She looked over at Jeebee.

“And he told me he knew this much about wolves, that they were pack animals and needed company.”

“What did the man say?” Jeebee asked.

“Oh, the man said that he’d tried keeping them together but that they fought too much and he got tired of having the local vet sew them up. I know Dad said that he went and hunted through this man’s books, some of which he recognized—and actually found one study where wolf puppies that were isolated from other members of the litter began to show symptoms of stress. One even died.”

“Doesn’t really surprise me,” Jeebee said thoughtfully. “As independent as Wolf is, he seems to need company from time to time more than he needs food. One night when we were camped above the interstate—where I first saw your wagon—he came back to camp and was expecting our usual romp. I was preoccupied and ignored him. He acted more desperate than I’ve ever seen him act when he’s gone hungry for a couple of days. Whoever that was Paul talked to does sound crazy. How far from where the wagon is now, would you say that this wolf-man’s place is?”

“About two and a half weeks as the wagon travels,” Merry answered. “You could ride it probably in a week if you don’t want to push your horse; and you shouldn’t, of course.”

“I’d like to have a look at those books of his,” Jeebee said wistfully.

“I don’t know if he’d be the kind of person who’d lend them to you. Or even whether he’d let you in,” said Merry. “On the other hand, he may have been raided by this time by somebody or other. If they just robbed and ransacked the house but didn’t necessarily burn it down, maybe the books would still be there. We haven’t seen him for a while, of course.”

“I’ve got to see those books,” Jeebee said.

Merry frowned at him for a second, then the frown went.

“Rein up,” she said abruptly, checking her horse. Jeebee stopped beside her; and behind them the train of packhorses on the lead rope stopped also.

“Let me see the map.”

Jeebee produced the map and handed it over, wordlessly. She unfolded it completely.

“Can you show me where we left the wagon?” she asked.

He leaned over and tapped a faintly marked dot on the map with the pencil. Merry took the pencil from him, studied the map for a moment, and marked a point that looked about a hundred miles southwest by west from where they were now.

“His place is at the end of a box canyon about an hour’s ride north of Glamorgan,” she said.

He looked at it, like a miser might look at a treasure map.

“That’s great,” he said to Merry, “thank you!”

She smiled, her whole face lighting up. But then her expression sobered suddenly. She lifted the reins of her mount and rode on a little ahead of him.

Perhaps, thought Jeebee, traveling with Wolf might have made him a better observer and more sensitive to the little signs of body language. But there was something about this business with the map that gave him a definite feeling that Merry had, for a second at least, offered a sort of truce between them. Or if not a truce, at least the signal of willingness to their having a closer association. He spoke to her back.