Gordon Dickson - Wolf and Iron

The larger wagon was a flatbed affair, high-sprung to ride over small obstacles, but built to carry heavy and bulky loads. It had a plank bed, ten feet wide by twenty feet in length. Possibly, Jeebee thought, it had been used to bring fodder out where the range cattle could get at it at times of the year when ordinary graze was scarce.

In winter, with snow on the ground, it must have had its wheels changed for the equivalent of skis. He went looking for some such things, and found them, together with skis for the other, much-smaller, two-wheeled wagon, up on rafters in a half-burned outbuilding.

He left them where they were. He had no time to waste even examining them now. In any case, the larger wagon was no use at all to Jeebee. His two horses could certainly pull it across the flatlands, but not with a load of any weight on it.

Even if they had been able to, it would have been impossible to pull it up the open slopes of the foothills, where there were no roads, or even tracks on which to travel. He turned to examining the two-wheel trailer.

It was obviously homemade, mainly of metal. It had the shortened axle from some car, with two ordinary automobile wheels and extra-thick clumps of leaf springs between them and the trailer bed. The bed itself had been made of thick planks, covered with sheet metal to take the wear of use.

It was surrounded by a four-bar railing of welded, one-and-a-half-inch pipe on posts of heavier pipe placed vertically, three feet high. The railing at the back was a gate that hinged at the base and had both planking and sheet metal across it so that it could be let down as a ramp up which the trailer could be loaded. The scraped and worn metal sheeting of the bed was about the dimensions of that in the back of a small pickup truck.

The hitch on its front was obviously designed to be fastened to the back of a tractor or a truck. Probably, thought Jeebee, a tractor. Its heavy construction would make it capable of carrying equipment, and other small but heavy loads, out into open areas where it was needed.

Someone had also welded a skid to the middle of the back bar of the frame that held the trailer bed. Jeebee had no idea why. But the skid was ideal for his needs, pulling the loaded wagon up slopes where its back end might otherwise drag on the ground.

As it was, when the two-wheeled wagon stood unhitched on the level, as now, it was tilted only slightly to the rear, resting on the tip of the skid. Obviously, with a tractor pulling it, it would move forward with its bed level and the end of the skid would ride half a foot above the ground.

This was something that Sally and Brute might be able to pull together, if they were willing to work as a team. Also, something they might be able to bring up the untracked slopes between the ranch and his cave.

Jeebee went searching for some sort of double yoke the two horses could wear to pull in tandem. He found nothing, however, and decided he was just as glad he had not.

On the uneven footing of the slopes, where the two horses might not have their backs level at all times, they were probably better off in separate harnesses. With such harnesses, closely tied together, but not so close that one would pull the other off balance by stepping downhill suddenly, they would be much safer.

Accordingly, he made two harnesses out of rope, wrapping soft cloths around any parts of the rope that might chafe. He also worked out a fairly complicated rope tie that would fasten both harnesses to the Y-point of the hitch.

The tie would undoubtedly wear thin and break from time to time, but the ranch had plenty of rope, and the tie could always be replaced.

The day he finished all this it was barely noon. He had come down alone on Brute, so he spent the rest of the day scouting the area between the ranch and his meadow to find a route that followed the gentlest possible slopes. He did not have a great deal of choice in most places. Still, he ended by finding a route that he estimated would probably take three hours or more for the horses with the trailer loaded. But at least it ought to be possible to them.

He had been riding only Brute lately to give Sally a rest after her recent days of having to carry both him and what he was bringing back from the ranch. But the day after scouting the new route, he brought both horses down early.

At the ranch, Brute objected even to being put into his harness. But then, Brute could be expected to object to about anything. Sally was clearly not too pleased with hers, either, but she made no important protest.

The real test came after they had both been harnessed to the empty trailer wagon and Jeebee tried leading them with the wagon behind them. It was well that he had taken a close grip on their halter ropes, because Brute’s first impulse was to bolt. He was clearly under the impression that if he ran quick enough and far enough, he would get rid of the obnoxious device that was trundling behind him.

Jeebee ended by spending most of the afternoon leading the horses around. It was not until late afternoon that he got to the point where he thought he could try standing in the wagon and driving them.

He had rigged long, double reins to each horse. It was not so much that he felt that he needed to hold all four lines in his hands at once as it was the fact that both horses had been trained to neck reining, in which the rein was merely laid against the side of their necks to signal a turn. He had considered that on the slopes with the trailer, a rein could easily fall against the side of a horse’s neck accidentally. Jeebee wanted to take as few chances as possible. If he could train them to mouth reining when they were pulling together like this, it would be safer.

The driving was only partly successful. Jeebee at last gave up trying it. He told himself that in any case, he would not be riding in the trailer when they were actually going up the slopes. He would be walking and leading the horses. Not only was that safer, but they would have load enough without adding his weight to it.

It was getting late in the day. He gave up his original hope of bringing the wagon back to the cave this trip, and unhitched both horses. He rode Brute back, with Sally on a lead rope, as usual.

The next morning early he took them down again, harnessed them to the trailer, and was about to take it back empty as a practice run. But the sheer need to make each trip count as much as possible caused him to put a few items in it.

He bundled these in an old blanket and tied it down to the trailer bed, above the axle. Rope anchored the bundle to the metal railing on all four sides.

Feeling reasonably certain that it would not shift, he began driving the horses along the flatlands, northward, for a little distance. His newer, easier route did not begin until they had reached a sort of cut into the foothills, about half a mile from the ranch house.

Moving across the open flatlands, Brute settled down somewhat to pulling with Sally. Jeebee was optimistic that with time the male horse would become completely used to the work.

When they got to the cut, Jeebee got out of the wagon and began leading the animals. Brute was, if anything, relieved to be led. Still, there were problems of turns, and places where their path was along the bottom of one slope with another at an angle to it, so that the trailer traveled tilted up on one side for a little distance. About twenty minutes into the foothills, the rope hitch broke and had to be retied, so that they were a good four hours finally getting to the cave.

The final half hour of daylight barely saw them into the campsite. Jeebee unhitched the relieved horses inside the closed wire fence to protect the trailer and its load from Wolf. Then he put them in the wooden corral he had been building and carried the bundle into the inner room of the cave.