Gordon Dickson - Wolf and Iron

He held on—he held on. But at last the outer side of the tent was snatched from the snow and a moment later the whole tent flew wild, flapping like a mad thing.

He grabbed and caught the inner edge, rolling on it to hold it down, rolling until he wrapped it all around him like an untidy cocoon.

He rolled backward until the low edge of the sledge stopped him.

Squirming around, bound by the rolled tent about him, he got his mittened hands free enough to dig into the snow under the runner.

Like a burrowing mole, he excavated until he could squirm in with the tent wrapped around him. He crawled until he was under the sledge, putting it between himself and the wind, cocked at an angle over his body.

He lay, gasping for breath.

The snow was blowing thickly now. It began to drift around him and around the sledge.

Soon they were completely enclosed; and the fierce tearing of the wind began to be muffled by its thickness. The wind sound grew more and more distant until he could barely hear it. In his heavy clothing, wrapped in the tent and the snow, he was almost warm.

“I mustn’t fall asleep,” he told himself, “I might suffocate.”

He lay there awake, accordingly, staring into an unchanging darkness. It was completely black around him now. It occurred to him that perhaps so much time had gone by that the sun was going down, the daylight leaving as the snow drifted deeper and ever deeper, over him. He could still hear the storm distantly, but now it had softened to a sound almost like a lullaby.

He woke with a start.

He had fallen asleep after all. But he was still breathing. Evidently the drift had not been packed so tightly by the wind that air could not reach him. Perhaps grains of hard snow, like those which had rattled against the tarpaulin tent when he had first been underneath it, would not pack like softer flakes.

He wriggled and pushed his way through the snow surrounding until he suddenly popped out into brilliant sunlight.

The sun was just rising in a bright blue sky. The air was so cold that his first breath of it seemed to shock his lungs. But—it was morning. Habit had woken him close to his usual time of rousing.

Nothing had ever looked so good to him as that sun, and the brilliant blue sky overhead. There were no clouds anywhere in the great blue bowl above the white land. About him, except for the drift that had enclosed and protected both himself and the sledge, the vast snow plain looked unchanged. Only a few small, dark nubs, the tops of frozen vegetation, still protruded through it at large distances from each other.

After a long moment, creakily, he turned to the business of excavating the sledge. He was grateful for the fact that he had not had time to acquire a load, so that he had been able to lift it enough to crawl under it.

He suddenly realized he was ravenous.

His pack was the only thing that had been on the sledge. He looked, and it was still there, securely tied down. He untied it and got out the food he had brought along for the trip. It was frozen as hard as a rock.

Sensibly, Merry had packaged it in small chunks. It was a mixture of dried beef and cooked vegetables with a good deal of beef fat included. Each chunk was about the size of a golf ball. He put half a dozen of these inside the top layers of his clothing so that his body’s heat would thaw them. Stiffly, he got to his feet, took up the reins of the now-freed sledge, and started heading back toward the cave.

The weather, though frigid, had turned good again. Theoretically he could now continue hunting. But he felt in no shape to hunt at the moment. The time he had spent under the snowdrift, and fighting the storm before that, had taken something out of him. He wanted only to get back to the cave, warm up, and rest up. He turned toward the foothills, pulling the heavy, unhandy weight of the sledge along with him only because he could not afford to leave it behind.

It seemed he pulled for some time before he reached the first slopes of the foothills. He had felt barely up to the work of getting here when he had started. But the labor had warmed him. He felt better, instead of worse, for the struggle. At the bottom of the first slope, he stopped and checked the frozen food inside his clothing.

It was thawed enough to eat.

Sitting down heavily on the sledge, he chewed and swallowed. The food seemed to bring him the rest of the way back to life. Particularly, the fat Merry had mixed into it tasted sweeter to him than any sugar, and he could almost feel it refueling his weary body.

When he had finished eating, he felt almost strong enough to go back to his hunting, after all. But caution laid a hand on him. He had barely survived one storm, as much by luck as anything else. He was in no shape to risk another. Before he went down on these winter plains again he must work out, not only a plan, but all the things he would need to carry with him to dig in properly and survive future storms.

For one thing, in the future he should take along more food, extra clothing, and anything else that such an emergency might call for. Thinking of this, he made the long, panting climb back to the cave. It was only a little past noon when he got there, but he felt as if he had barely had the strength to make it home.

He mumbled an explanation to Merry as she helped him off with his outer clothing. He was too worn out to eat even the food she offered. All he wanted was to crawl into their bed under a mountain of blankets; and when at last he did, he dropped immediately into deep slumber.

But this time, as dreamless sleep enclosed him, he was conscious of being finally, undeniably, completely warm.

When he woke, it was in a slow float back into awareness and the realization, from Merry’s activity around the cave, that he had slept only about three or four hours. Wolf had apparently not come home yet, to rouse him for the regular twilight greeting ceremony. Still, Merry had food starting to cook for what must be their evening meal.

“Feel better?” she asked now as he got up and began rubbing the last of the sleep from his eyes.

He sat on the edge of the bed.

“A lot better,” he said. Indeed, he was surprised just how much better he felt. It was as if his sleep during the storm and under the snowdrift afterward had been no real sleep at all. But the few hours he had just passed felt as if they had been some of the most restful unconsciousness he could remember in years. He told himself that the feeling was probably just the fact that he was safely back inside the cave, with her.

“Nothing like home,” he told her.

Merry smiled. The smile was her usual bright smile. But, in addition, there was some sort of glow about her that was brighter than usual. As if someone had just given her a much-wanted present.

He found the lighter pair of pants he normally wore in the warmth of the cave, taking them down from their hook where Merry had hung them, and pulled them on, tucking his shirt in. He had slept in his shirt over her objections, not wanting to give up anything that might help bring warmth back to his body. Dressed, he went over and kissed Merry gratefully, and she kissed him back with particular enthusiasm.

“Have we time?” he asked. Her glow had invaded him.

“Yes—no,” said Merry. She pushed him toward his chair at the table. “Sit down. Dinner’s going to be ready in a minute.”

He sat.

“Wolf hasn’t been around?”

“He got back about half an hour ago,” she answered. “I went outside to be with him for a bit and let you sleep. He was walking sore-footed—you know the way he does when he’s covered a lot of distance. He curled up in his corner. I think he’s still there.”

Jeebee stretched without getting up from his chair, pushing his hands high above his head, which was something he could not do standing upright. The ceiling was still too low. Someday, he told himself, he would fix that.