Gordon Dickson - Wolf and Iron

“Damn you,” Jeebee snarled, “walk straight!”

The surprised horse was remarkably obedient from then on through the trip to the cave. Sally followed on her lead rein with her usual good temper.

They rode forward at a walk because for all Jeebee wanted to get Merry back to the cave as quickly as possible, he felt it would be much easier on her if he did not even put the horses into a trot. In any case, they would have to slow down to a walk to climb the foothills.

After a while, he got his glasses out and looked ahead along the line of poles. Sure enough, his glasses picked out the dark tiny shapes of the ranch buildings up ahead. He turned and angled off in the northerly direction. As he got closer to the foothills, he steered for the cut up which he had begun his route with the trailer to the meadow. The easier slopes would be the easiest on Merry.

The route was still slippery, but the horses were more surefooted without the weight of the trailer pulling them back. They came eventually to the meadow and the cave, and Jeebee got down from Brute to carry Merry inside. He lit the electric lights with a reckless disregard for depleting the batteries and got a fire going in the fireplace. Only then did he think of unloading or unsaddling the two horses. They could wait a little longer. Merry came first.

He shut and latched the inside door, leaving the outside door open. He looked at the fire apprehensively. But apparently with the outer door open there were still enough air leaks, in and around the inner door as well as through the inner wall, that the fire continued to have enough draft to burn cheerfully.

He felt Merry’s forehead and it felt hot to him, but then his hands were still cold from being outside.

She grabbed his hand fiercely as he started to move away from her.

“Don’t leave me!” she said.

“It’s all right,” he told her softly. “I’m just going to get a thermometer to take your temperature. We’re home now. You’re safe. I’ll take care of you.”

He took the thermometer from his backpack, the same one he had carried in his medical kit from Stoketon, and put it in her mouth. After five minutes by his watch he took it out. She was not running a fever, as his cold hands had led him to believe. Instead her body temperature was a full three degrees below normal.

He piled everything warm he had upon her and built up the fire in the fireplace.

It came back to him then that the first thing to do with a person who has been overchilled is to get hot food into her. He had kept a soup continuously making over the fire when it was lit—a sort of pot-au-feu—using a bent metal rod from the ruined ranch house. He had stuck the rod into the ground beside the fireplace, its upper six inches bent at a right angle out over the flames, with a hook bent into its further end to hold the wire handle of a pot he had also taken from the ranch house. Swivel-ing the rod now, he put the pot above the flames.

Having done this, he went back and sat holding Merry’s hand while the soup heated. She lay with her eyes closed, and he did not try to talk to her. When the soup was heated, he filled a soup bowl and brought it to her.

The packload bed was so low that even kneeling beside it, he was too high. Still kneeling, he sat down on his heels and put the bowl of soup on the ground beside him. With his left arm he lifted her upper body into a half-sitting position and lifted a spoonful of the soup to her lips.

At first she seemed only able to take small sips. Then, she took larger ones. After a bit she was swallowing eagerly. But abruptly she closed her lips and shook her head slightly.

“No more,” she said. “Let me down.”

He laid her back on the bed. She closed her eyes and went almost immediately to sleep. He continued to sit beside her, feeding the fire and making sure the covers stayed piled on top of her. She had volunteered nothing about Paul, Nick, and the wagon. It was obvious something had happened to them or she would have mentioned them by now.

Plainly, there was a reason for her not speaking of them. Jeebee understood this out of his new knowledge of the world and himself. So he would not ask. When she was ready to tell him, she would. He suddenly remembered the horses.

It was probably better to take a chance and go out now to take care of them.

He did so, first unloading the bundle of meat from Sally. He put it safely within the latch door of the inner room, then took both horses to the corral and removed their saddles and blankets. He left them there and returned to Merry, who seemed not to have stirred. He took the pot of soup off the fire, and kneeling by the fire, filled a larger pot with chunks of the recently butchered calf meat and water.

This time he used another rod, bent roughly into a Y-shape at one end, to help support the increased weight of the bent-over end of the first rod. He hung the pot with the water and raw meat in it above the flames and began the slow process of cooking the meat he had just butchered.

Two hours later, when Jeebee took Merry’s temperature again, it was up to normal. He breathed a sigh of relief and went on with his business of cooking the meat. Wolf came and scratched at the door, but Jeebee ignored him, and after a while the scratching ceased.

Merry slept steadily through that night and through most of the following day, waking for only short intervals. With the second evening, however, he took her temperature again on general principles and found it slightly up. It was only a small rise, barely over a single degree when Jeebee checked it shortly after eight o’clock on his watch, but it concerned him. She seemed no more than exhausted to him, but he did not trust his medical knowledge to be sure that the small temperature increase might not have some unrecognized importance. But by dawn she was a half degree below normal, which Jeebee took to be as much a sign of health as any temperature reading could be.

Wolf scratched on the door again and whimpered outside once more.

“Are you up to seeing him?” Jeebee asked Merry, and then realized he had mentioned Wolf in exactly the same way as he might have brought up the topic of a visiting relative, who wanted to visit.

“Yes,” said Merry, “for a few minutes, just. But I’d like to see him.”

Jeebee went to the door to open it. He did not know whether Merry realized that part of Wolf’s importuning to be let in was probably because of his curiosity. He would have become highly interested on scenting and hearing Merry here in the cave, when he had last seen her many days and miles away.

“Tell me when you want me to get him out,” he said over his shoulder to Merry, and opened the door.

Recently, Wolf had summoned up courage to venture first into the inner room of the cave, then to investigate all of it, and finally to make himself at home there. Jeebee had had to work out a method of evicting him, when his visits became too extended, or whenever he looked suspiciously like he was about to defecate or urinate. Wolf was inclined to relieve himself wherever he happened to be at the moment, and accounts Jeebee had read by people who had reared wolves in their homes agreed that wolves were extraordinarily resistant to housebreaking.

Jeebee opened the door, and Wolf bounded up inside, boldly enough, but checked after entering. He stood, with his attention riveted on Merry in the bed and his head cocked in an attitude of uncertainty, as though he didn’t quite recognize her.

“Hello, old Wolf,” Merry crooned softly. “Did you come to see me? Come on, Wolf. I haven’t seen you for a long time… ”

As soon as she spoke, Wolf pushed past Jeebee and shambled toward the bed. His ears were rolled back deferentially and his tail wagged slightly, but his head was high, signaling neither timidity nor appeasement—just a friendly and comfortable renewal of old acquaintance.