Gordon Dickson - Wolf and Iron

Then he urged Brute forward.

Brute was even unhappier now than he had been earlier. But he, too, saw the edge of the shale ahead of him and was eager to reach it. In a moment they were on solid ground.

The load of meat Brute had been carrying had been light. The horse was not the least bit tired, but the pain in Jeebee’s leg at each jolt as Brute’s hooves struck the ground kept him from putting the animal to any faster pace than walking; though he would have liked to have headed for his campsite with all possible speed. There turned out to be another three quarters of anhour of traveling before Jeebee at last slid out of the saddle—to the accompaniment of another silent scream of protest from his injured leg and ankle—and tethered Brute with his reins to a tree by the river, close enough so that the horse could drink.

Brute headed immediately to the water. Jeebee, holding on to the saddle and hopping along beside him, loosened the cinch strap while Brute drank, and then, pushing and tugging forward on the reins, got him back to where he could once again tie him to a tree and dropped the saddle off him. In taking off the saddle, he had also gotten his backpack and rifle, the saddle blanket, and a half-filled water bag.

These, his most necessary possessions, he kept always with him. He got down now on hands and knees and crawled, dragging all this, together with his rifle, behind him until he reached his sleeping spot by the water, upstream. Lying on the blanket, with the saddle under his head and the rifle beside him, he was able to dig out from it his medication pouch.

He had told himself he would not take another Dilaudid. But now he did, telling himself he would take this one and no more, just enough so that when it took effect he could get back down to the water, only about some twenty feet away.

In about twenty minutes it began to work. He crawled to the stream and began soaking the ankle in its cold water. With the Dilaudid and the numbing effect of the water, the pain dwindled to the point where he could begin to think of rigging some kind of a splint for the ankle to hold it unmoving. He already had a possibility in mind. It had been part of a ski rescue manual he had studied before he left Stoketon.

He made the crawl back with fair comfort, but taking every care to bend the ankle as little as possible in the process. Once there, he took Brute’s saddle blanket, folded and refolded it until he had a thick, short length he could bend around under the instep of his foot with two sides extending up the sides of his lower leg. He took from a hip pocket the lengths of leather thongs left over from those he had taken to tie shut the plastic sheet in which he had bagged the raw meat.

With these he laced the blanket tightly in place around hisinstep, ankle, and leg. He tied the thongs as tightly as he dared without running the risk of cutting off circulation in the leg. Then he rearranged the saddle and backpack so that he could sit with the leg propped up, his back against a tree trunk.

He was left with his thoughts. Uppermost in his mind was fury at himself for being so careless. A second’s thoughtlessness and he was back to being almost helpless again. It was almost as if an inimical fate had deliberately chosen to kick him when he was most vulnerable.

He shook off the self-pity of that thought. He had simply failed to look, and what had happened was all his own doing. He should have been watching at each step, to make sure the foot was set down on something firm. It had been nothing more than his impatience to get off the slope that had led to this situation.

Not for the first time, he realized how even a small hurt—as small as a sore toe—could threaten the life of a wild animal by crippling its normal ability to escape its enemies and gather or capture its food. He was in exactly that position, simply because he had let himself get hurt again at the wrong time. Low on food, immobilized for at least several more days.

He made himself deliberately consider the brighter side of the situation. He was infinitely better off than any hurt animal. His weapons were still as effective, even though he might be crippled, personally. There was little likelihood anyone would stumble across him here, or that anyone would come hunting him. The slaughtered cow would almost undoubtedly be blamed on the horse nomads if anyone came looking. To his surprise, and as far as he could read sign around the burned ruins, no one had. There remained the fact that he could not climb up to his pack-load where his flour and bacon were. He had no food. Well, a few days without food would not hurt him. The Dilaudid had almost completely lulled the pain in his ankle. He gathered some nearby fallen branches for a fire, but did not light it. He would want it more after dark. He sat back against the tree. The afternoon was wearing on.

He slept.

He was wakened by Wolf licking at his face. It was twilight.

They had their usual greetings; differing only in that Wolf almost immediately appeared to take note of the fact that Jeebee, while being as comradely as ever, did not stir about as usual in the process.

In fact, Wolf made play invitations, and Jeebee, knowing the other better now, suspected they were at least partly a test to see if Jeebee had some reason for not moving.

To put an end to any further speculation, Jeebee lit the fire. Wolf gave up his attentions and settled down by it. Jeebee lay looking at the fire and thinking of how the delay from this turned ankle would affect his plans for travel.

Altogether he had lost more than a week with the bear, and it was into August. At the altitudes even of the flatlands of the ranch territories—here around three thousand feet—he could expect fall weather and even snow as early as late August.

He might be lucky. On the other hand he might not. But, since his memory of his boyhood drive to the ranch was all he had to go on, he probably would have to explore a considerable area to locate his brother’s place. Luckily there was one thing that he had clearly in his memory. It was the brand on his brother’s cattle, which was that of two overlapping triangles. If he saw any cattle with that brand on them, he would know he was close to his goal.

He had taken advantage of the camping period to get out his compass and maps and establish where he was.

At his best estimate, the territory in which his brother’s ranch must lie was still some sixty miles northeast as the crow flew, from where he was now. Going back down to the flatlands, circling any possible habitations, and generally staying out of sight, could triple or quadruple that distance. In all, he figured it could take him at least a couple of weeks to reach the general territory he had to search, moving always at night, at a walk, and stopping to gather food where he could. Then no one could guess how much time for the search itself.

Events had cut his timetable dangerously short. The thought of being caught in a sudden blizzard on the open flatlands before he had found his brother’s ranch was frightening. Under those conditions, he would simply not survive. If he had enough warning of the onset of winter to get off into the hills and den up like an animal in one of the holes in the earth like the one above the shale slope or the one here…

But even then, survival was unlikely.

His ankle was beginning to hurt again. He tried three aspirin to head off the pain. In any case he had some days now to do nothing else but think.

Sometime in the night, pain woke Jeebee. Luckily, the night sky was as clear as the daytime sky had been for several weeks now. That could not last. They were getting to the end of summer and the good weather was bound to break.

He fumbled in the medicine container, found the Dilaudid container by feel, and brought it out, opening it with hands that trembled from pain and the urgency for relief. He stopped himself from taking it just in time. He reclosed the container with extra care and went searching for the Tylenol. Rationally, he knew that taking more than the recommended dose would not help cut the pain more; all the same, he counted out four. Then came a search for the water bag, which had evidently been moved by his body as he slept.