Gordon Dickson - Wolf and Iron

Jeebee spent the nearly two hours of workable daylight at a sketch of what he would build on the front of the cave.

There had been a posthole digger in one of the outbuildings. That, quite naturally, had been one of the things for which the raiders had no use. He decided now that one solution to the problem of bringing long lengths of plank from the ranch up to the cave was to bring a larger number of short ones. As a result he had sketched out a series of postholes running along the face of the bluff, in which he could stand upright lengths of doubled two-by-fours nailed together. Then he could nail the short lengths of planks between them to make a solid wall.

There were some twelve-foot lengths of two-by-fours stored in one of the outbuildings. At least enough to build the series of posts Jeebee had in mind.

He would space his posts not more than three feet apart. Twelve of them, therefore, should mark out the front of his cave-home-to-be. That would include those needed for the extra small wall that would tie the far end of the front into the bluff to make the blacksmithing area.

He was still refining his sketch of this, squinting at the much-erased paper of the large pad he had brought back with him, when a furry face pushed itself between the paper and his nose. Wolf was back.

Jeebee welcomed him with unusual exuberance.

After the greeting ceremony was over, Jeebee got the fire going and began to realize that he had not eaten since morning. He had prudently resolved not to try to get at his cooked meat while Wolf was around. Unfortunately, in this case he had waited until too late in the day.

He was tempted to take Sally over to the tree and reach up into the bag of meat enough to get out several handfuls of the cooked chunks. Then he could stay where he was, throw some of the chunks to Wolf, and eat the rest himself, seated on horseback.

The plan was theoretically workable, but it would draw Wolf’s attention particularly to the bag of cooked meat. At Jeebee’s best estimate, it was out of Wolf’s reach and he already knew it was there. But Jeebee had the sneaking feeling that the less attention paid to it, the better. He did not know how Wolf might find a way to reach it, but he had gotten to the point where he believed almost anything was possible to the other.

Besides, it would not be the first meal he had skipped.

He put the thought of eating out of his mind; and after a while of sitting, gazing into the fire and half thinking, half dreaming of the cave home as it eventually could be, he rolled up in his blankets, ready for sleep. It would be two or three days anyway before his left ankle would be strong enough for him to risk trying to ride Brute and handle the more temperamental horse in the matter of carrying or dragging things back from the ranch.

He could use those days by riding Sally down, having her pull back a bundle of the twelve-foot-long two-by-fours, with the front ends elevated and the back ends scraping along the ground, plus a few other things that he could not only keep safe from Wolf, but use right away. It was a temptation to bring the posthole digger up without further delay. But it would be awkward to drag, and it was too long and rigid to be carried conveniently behind the saddle.

He reminded himself sensibly that the only way he could use the tool would be by standing firmly on one foot while driving the spade end of the digger into the ground with the other. The sprained ankle was probably still some days away from being used either way.

The thought of redamaging the ankle by trying to drive the posthole digger into the ground, or of turning it again by trying to stand on that foot alone, was unnerving. The last thing he needed now was to be laid up again for another long period.

He measured and marked the spots to erect the two-by-fours before settling down with the fire and Wolf for the night.

The next three days, he was busy bringing up equipment from the ranch, and he brought the posthole digger after all, as well as a saw and other tools and a collapsible metal ladder he found laid up on the rafters of one of the less completely burned outbuildings. He hid the ladder under the two sleeping blankets he lay upon, and was lying upon them when Wolf showed up, the third evening.

He had not been at all sure that Wolf, scenting or otherwise figuring out that something was there, would not root between the blankets to investigate, but Wolf did not. Three days later, using the hole digger by standing gingerly on his bad ankle, he successfully had four of the posts up at the campsite. Wolf investigated these with great interest when he came back, urinated on them, and gnawed on a few of them, but without doing any great damage.

Jeebee, looking over the tooth-marked pieces of lumber, decided that they were usable as they were, after all. Gradually, the rest of the postholes got dug. Wolf showed up at one time when he was still using the posthole digger, and when Jeebee had laid it down for a moment, tried to carry it off. But it was both heavy and awkward, and when Jeebee pretended to become very interested in something at the other side of the meadow, paying no attention to him at all, Wolf dropped the digger and trotted over to find out what was attractive there.

When Wolf came up, Jeebee engaged him for a little time in play, and then lay down on his blankets. Wolf lay down also. But it was still only late afternoon and whatever impulse had brought him back had now been satisfied or forgotten. He disappeared again.

In spite of the fact that Wolf was gone, however, Jeebee prudently ignored the posthole digger, letting it lie where it was overnight. The following day, after Wolf had disappeared, he tried something new. He got down the roll of fencing and fenced himself in against the face of the bluff with the wire in a semicircle around him, held upright by angle-iron posts from the garden patch, its end stakes driven into the vertical face of the bluff.

Jeebee had no doubt that if Wolf made a serious effort, he could pull the stakes out, one by one, but he hoped that organized an effort would not occur to his partner. Certainly the fence was now fastened firmly enough to stand up against being pushed or pawed by Wolf in any less-than-serious fashion.

He went back to work. Eventually Wolf did come, and prowled along the fence. He pawed at it once or twice and whimpered at Jeebee. Jeebee stopped work and stepped over the fence, to greet him, leaving the posthole digger inside. Jeebee greeted him, and in the process moved away from the fence. For a while he enticed Wolf as well as he could into forgetting the fence. Then, while Wolf was still there, he deliberately went back to it, stepped over it, and returned to work.

Wolf came up to the fence once more, and once more protested at it keeping him out. But when Jeebee continued to work, paying him no attention, he turned suddenly and trotted off with an exaggeratedly indifferent air. He went off to lie down in a little hollow among the roots of a tree at the edge of the meadow near the fire, which he had sometime since picked as his favorite resting place.

So began some of the busiest weeks of Jeebee’s life.

Late summer, if not fine early fall weather, clear and warm, still held the land. The days were still long, and it seemed to Jeebee that most of their useful length was in the afternoon hours.

He took the utmost advantage of this, rising before daylight to make his arrival at the ranch as early as possible. Every trip down there, now, he brought back something; even his backpack would be stuffed full of small items such as used nails, screws, or cloth in any size and shape.

Actually, in these early days, his time was spent mainly in working at the ranch itself. In addition to its tractors, cars, pickup trucks, and the one snowmobile, there were the two wagons of different sizes. Both ran on regular car axles and had Y-shaped hitch devices so that they could be pulled by trucks or tractors.