Gordon Dickson - Wolf and Iron

But he was in no better physical condition to do that than he was to load the horses, right now. A final solution would be to take what was absolutely necessary from it that Brute could carry and simply abandon the rest. Bringing Sally herself, of course, along for future use. That, and hope that he would be able to go back and find at least part of what he had owned.

But knowing the open country as he now did, he knew how unlikely it was that he could come back, even after a single day away, and find a pile of goods and food undisturbed. Humans might not find it, but the wild creatures would, and in less than a week, even if he did come back, there would be nothing worth picking up—probably.

Well, he would wait and see how much, if at all, he had improved by tomorrow. In any case, tomorrow he would be faced with the crawl to the stream. To a certain extent it all depended upon the effectiveness of the antibiotic and whatever aid in recovering he would get from the fact that he was in fairly good physical shape from the last few months of living an active physical life.

His mind went off on another tangent, triggered perhaps by Wolf’s presence. The trouble was, the focus of his interest in his four-legged partner had been sharpened, rather than satisfied, by the wolf books. He had begun just by wanting to understand Wolf because of his own emotional bond with this four-legged partner. Then that had developed into a genuine scientific curiosity about Wolf and his species. Now it had gone even one step further. He could see now that it was not going to be merely satisfying to understand Wolf better, but perhaps vitally necessary—perhaps a matter of life or death somewhere along the line.

For example, Wolf had turned out to astonish him by attacking the bear when Jeebee himself was attacked. A wolf’s instinct for self-preservation should have kept him prudently out of a battle with any predator larger than himself. What had overridden that prudence? It was only in the movies that Jeebee had ever seen one normally wild animal come doglike to the rescue of the human being with which it was familiar. Doglike—maybe that was the answer. Dog behavior had its roots in wolf behavior, and the evolutionary linchpin of wolf survival was social organization and cooperation.

Sharp’s chapter in the parallel evolution book had highlighted the similarities between wolf packs and human hunting bands. Was Wolf’s intervention the instinctive act of a cooperative hunter? Hell! Speculation was a useless self-indulgence. For all he knew, wolves—or some wolves, like some people—were just disposed to help their friends.

The scientist in Jeebee shied away from conclusions based on insufficient data. And the survivor in Jeebee realized that if he were wrong about situations in which Wolf might turn out to aid him, he might be wrong about other situations. Situations in which Wolf might turn out to be an actual threat to him—not merely standing aside in the face of some outside threat, but even attacking him suddenly without warning, because of some unthinking cue Jeebee did not even realize he had given.

What he had to do was read the books again, looking at their contents with different eyes, and do a great deal of comparing and searching to separate the elements that were basic to wolf character from those that were imposed by their social relationship, man and wolf associated as free individuals.

There could be advantages to their being together. If they could work as a team, they could tackle larger animals than either could take on alone. But then they would no longer be independent, and the problems that might arise between two individuals who saw the world through such different eyes were infinitely more difficult to anticipate than those that might arise between human partners.

He thought he could exclude reproductive competition from his worries, but what about competition for food? Did pack mates or nonterritorial pairs quarrel over division of the kill? Probably not, or the lowest-ranking members of a pack would be better off on their own, and the group would soon collapse. But were there other, less obvious sources of tension he ought to consider? Was social ranking, which was evidently so vital to a wolf in a pack, important to a traveling pair such as he and Wolf were… his thoughts abandoned the question of Wolf. The pain was really getting quite bad again; and the idea of more Dilaudid was tempting.

He found suddenly he was weary of speculation. He tried to remember just when he had first been brought fully awake by Wolf licking him.

He looked at the sun now, then suddenly cursed to himself internally for being so stupid.

He lifted his right wrist and looked at the watch upon it. He had completely forgotten that watch with its valuable battery, hoped to have a hundred-year lifetime. It was a digital watch with several modes to it. Countdown, stopwatch, and alarm were the three extra modes. The regular clock mode could show the hour and minutes in either a.m./p.m. fashion or in so-called “military time,” where 1:00 p.m. became 1300 hours.

With this, from now on, he would keep track of his doses of medication. Also, tomorrow, one way or another, he would drag himself to the river, fill his water bags, and get to work on plans to move out of here. He had had enough of playing invalid; and thinking.

The third day after meeting the bear, to his infinite joy, the swelling of his arm and leg had decreased. It still looked like about a third more than normal size. Definitely, however, the wooden stiffness that had come into both the damaged leg and arm from the engorgement of the blood vessels had relaxed somewhat. His torn scalp also felt better under its stiff cap of dried blood and hair.

It was too painful to attempt much flexing of either arm or leg, but he experimented to the point of convincing himself that the improvement was actual, and not just a product of his imagination.

Buoyed up by this and his latest dose of Dilaudid, he was able to creep off his erstwhile bed and drag the unusable parts of his body, with the two depleted water bags, to the river. There, he refilled them one by one and put in each a couple of sterilizing tablets.

It would be half an hour before the water so medicated would be safe for him to drink. But he had drunk most of what had remained in them before he made the attempt to reach the bank and he could easily wait out those thirty minutes or even a bit longer if necessary.

He also had brought along the rough bandages from his leg and arm, by the expedient of tucking them into his belt. He now soaked them in water and wrapped them again in place. The icy touch of the liquid was welcome upon the wounds.

He realized suddenly that while he had remembered the Dilaudid, his mind, occupied with the business of attempting the journey to the riverside, had made him forget his Augmentin.

But a delay of half an hour in taking the antibiotic would not be so desperate a matter to endure.

He had aimed at a slight dip in the bank, which gave him a rise to his left where he could sit down and elevate both the left arm and the left foot. With these up, the wet cloths around them, and the water bags beside him, he relaxed. Having gotten through the difficult journey to the river, there was no point in going back until he had to.

Luckily Wolf had been gone when he started the trip, otherwise Jeebee could imagine the other objecting to the arm and leg being covered again. Jeebee had made up his mind that if Wolf did, he would simply unwrap the limbs himself and let Wolf get at them. The idea of Wolf tugging at the cloth wrapped around his left leg, in the sensitive state it was in at this moment, was something he did not even want to think about.

He would in any case, he thought, unwrap the limbs the moment he saw Wolf, and leave them open. If Wolf went through his process of licking them, no harm should be done. If not, he would simply fold the cloths into a pack and lay them directly on the torn areas of skin so that they could be pulled off by him or lifted off by Wolf’s nose easily.