He was beginning to think about what the longing might be when the wolf yawned and moved away. He kicked himself into a trot and disappeared.
CHAPTER VII
The next few days went smoothly.
Lieutenant Dunbar’s hands came back and the awning went up. Twenty minutes after he had raised it, when he was relaxing beneath the sprawling shade, bent over a barrel, rolling a smoke, the breeze kicked up and the awning collapsed.
Feeling ridiculous, he pawed his way out from under, studied the failure for a few minutes, and hit on the idea of guy wires as a solution. He used rope for wire, and before the sun went down, Dunbar was back in the shade, with his eyes closed, puffing on another handmade cigarette while he listened to the pleasant sound of canvas flapping gently overhead.
Using a bayonet, he sawed out a wide window in the sod hut and draped a scrap of canvas over it.
He worked long and hard on the supply house, but except for clearing away a large part of the sagging wall, he made little progress. A gaping hole was the final result. The original sod crumbled each time he tried to build it up, so Lieutenant Dunbar covered the hole with yet another sheet of canvas and washed his hands of the rest. From the start the supply house had been a losing business.
Lying on his bunk in the late afternoons, Dunbar returned over and over to the problem of the supply house, but as the days passed, he thought of it less. The weather had been beautiful, with none of the violence of spring. The temperatures couldn’t be more perfect, the air was feathery and the breeze, which made the canvas window curtain billow above his head on these late afternoons, was sweet.
The day’s little problems seemed easier to solve as time went by, and when his work was finished the lieutenant would lie back on the bunk with his cigarette and marvel at the peace he felt. Invariably his eyes would grow heavy, and he fell into the habit of napping for half an hour before supper.
Two Socks became a habit, too. He appeared at his customary spot on the bluff each afternoon, and after two or three days, Lieutenant Dunbar began to take his silent visitor’s comings and goings for granted. Occasionally he would notice the wolf trotting into view, but more often than not, the lieutenant would glance up from some little task and there he would be, sitting on his haunches, staring across the river with that curious but unmistakable look of longing.
One evening, while Two Socks was watching, he laid a fist-sized chunk of bacon rind on his own side of the river. The morning after, there was no trace of the bacon, and though he had no proof, Dunbar felt certain that Two Socks had taken it.
Lieutenant Dunbar missed some things. He missed the company of people. He missed the pleasure of a stiff drink. Most of all, he missed women, or rather a woman. Sex hardly entered his mind. But sharing did. The more settled he became in the free and easy pattern of life at Fort Sedgewick, the more he wanted to share it with someone, and when the lieutenant thought of this missing element, he would drop his chin and stare morosely at nothing.
Fortunately, these lapses of spirit passed away quickly. What he might have lacked was pale in light of what he had. His mind was free. There was no work and there was no play. Everything was one. It didn’t matter whether he was hauling water up from the stream or tying into a hearty dinner. Everything was the same, and he found it not at all boring. He thought of himself as a single current in a deep river. He was separate and he was whole, all at the same time. It was a wonderful feeling.
He loved the daily reconnaissance rides on Cisco’s bare back. Each day they rode out in a different direction, sometimes as far as five or six miles from the fort. He saw no buffalo and no Indians. But this disappointment was not great. The prairie was glorious, ablaze with wildflowers and overrun with game. The buffalo grass was the best, alive as an ocean, waving in the wind for as far as his eyes could see. It was a sight he knew he would never grow tired of.
On the afternoon before the day Lieutenant Dunbar did his laundry, he and Cisco had ridden less than a mile from the post when, by chance, he looked over his shoulder and there was Two Socks, coming along in his easy trot a couple of hundred yards back.
Lieutenant Dunbar pulled up and the wolf slowed.
But he didn’t stop.
He veered wide, picking up his trot again. When he was abreast of them the old wolf halted in the high grass, fifty yards to the lieutenant’s left, and settled on his haunches, waiting as if for a signal to begin again.
They rode deeper into the prairie and Two Socks went with them. Dunbar’s curiosity led him to perform a series of stops and starts along the way. Two Socks, his yellow eyes always vigilant, followed suit each time.
Even when Dunbar changed course, zigzagging here and there, he kept up, always maintaining his fifty yards of distance.
When he put Cisco into an easy canter, the lieutenant was astounded to see Two Socks ease into a lope of his own.
When they stopped, he looked out at his faithful follower and tried to conjure up an explanation. Surely this animal had known man somewhere along the line. Perhaps he was half-dog. But when the lieutenant’s eyes swept the wilderness all about him, running unbroken toward every horizon, he could not imagine Two Socks as anything but a wolf.
“Okay,” the lieutenant called out.
Two Socks picked up his ears.
“Let’s go.”
The three of them covered another mile before startling a small herd of antelope. The lieutenant watched the white-rumped pronghorns bound over the prairie until they were almost out of sight.
When he turned to check Two Socks’s reaction, he could no longer see him.
The wolf was gone.
Clouds were building in the west, towering thunderheads filled with lightning. As he and Cisco started back,
