Wolf and Iron

best and only friend, as he had come to think of Wolf. By now Jeebee had discovered that his tarp, and everything else he carried, ran the risk of being shredded by a curious Wolf, if he left them available to the other. He had learned from experience that the gnaw and chew marks he had seen in the woman’s store were not entirely, if at all, signs of Wolf attempting to escape, but simply an expression of his kind’s instinctively perverse, destructive nature.

He had believed then—and, in fact, he still thought so in retrospect—that he had less than was necessary of the muscle, the skills, and necessary combative instinct to survive in the new world that had come. But it was undeniable that he was toughening up and learning. It was curious that in some ways, survival in this harsher world required more sensitivity, rather than less.

Life had not trained him to fight his fellowman for survival. But it had trained him to be a superb and close observer, to note everything that was to be seen and put the observations together to produce conclusions that were based on the best understanding he was able to achieve; and this was a possibly critically useful ability.

Now, Wolf was equipped to be a survivor. From the first night when the attention of Jeebee’s mental engine had engaged itself with the question of whether Wolf was a dog or not, Jeebee had automatically noted, and tried to make sense of, everything he had seen the other do. Following that moment of escape from the station, and Wolf’s killing of the collie, he could not do otherwise than accept the fact that Wolf was, indeed, a wolf. On the testimony of the words Jeebee had overheard through the window from the black- bearded man, he had been caught by a trapper, then hand-raised from a pup by the same man who had owned the leather jacket Jeebee now wore. That same leather jacket that had caused Wolf to take to him in the first place. But if he had come to learn more about Wolf, what he had learned had merely opened the door on even greater puzzles. There must be a specific reason for Wolf’s continual leaving—as there must be a reason for his coming back. Just as there would be a reason for the meeting and touching ritual he expected to go through with Jeebee every time he showed up.

There was, Jeebee’s mind told him, a great deal more in meaning to Wolf’s facial and body expressions than he had ever expected in any animal. Dogs might or might not learn to read human facial expressions. Certainly they learned to read human tones of voice. But Wolf was an observer to a degree Jeebee had never seen in a dog.

It would be up to Jeebee to learn to act like a wolf, to think like a wolf—in the end, to “talk” as wolves talk, if he wanted to really communicate with Wolf. He could make a start by beginning to try to see things the way a wolf would see them.

Putting two and two together now, it struck him that Wolf had to be hunting on these absences of his. But the hunting must not take him too far from Jeebee’s line of travel, or else it would be more work than it would be worth to come back and find him—particularly if the reward was no more than Jeebee’s companionship. In short, he must gain something from being with Jeebee, since he was so superbly fitted to survive on his own. But what?

His thoughts were interrupted by Wolf just then getting to his feet. His head lifted, testing whatever odors the breeze brought him for a moment. He lowered his head but stayed standing.

Twilight was giving way to the darkness of night beyond the illumination of the fire. Suddenly, from far off, a banshee cry rose on the still air, quavered, and dropped, ending in a series of yips. For once, Jeebee recognized something heard or seen. It was the howl of a coyote. Radio and television shows had made it familiar.

Wolf got to his feet, lifted his own muzzle into the air, and opened his jaws. A howl, less full-bodied than Jeebee had expected, came from the furry throat. It was, in fact, a high, trilling, almost soprano howl. There were no yips at the end of Wolf’s howl; and, hearing it, something bone-deep stirred in Jeebee. He found himself tilting back his own head, cupping his palms on either side of his mouth, and howling back, himself, at the distant coyote —a long, drawn-out howl.

Wolf immediately howled again, with Jeebee—his voice harmonizing, working in and around Jeebee’s.

Silence flooded in. Jeebee looked over across the fire to see that Wolf had lain down again on his side, his eyes looking once more at Jeebee.

“You know what I hate—” Jeebee began softly and lovingly, then corrected himself, “what I hate and envy about you, you bastard? It’s your damn matter-of-factness about everything!”

For a long moment more the golden eyes continued to watch him while the silence about them filled with the little sounds of the night wood. Then the lupine eyelids drooped sleepily and the eyes closed. Jeebee settled down himself with his pack as a pillow—both for that purpose and to protect it from Wolf’s teeth.

When he woke, somewhat after sunup the next morning, Wolf was gone again. The fire was out and the ashes cold. He felt both cold and grumpy himself, and the thought came that somewhere, right now, Wolf might be finding food, while he had nothing. It put him in an ill humor.

He folded his solar blanket, which he had wrapped around him for sleep, and stowed it in his pack, put the pack on his back, then slung the heavier of the two rifles also over his back with a length of cord hacked from the coil he had carried to make a tent out of the reflecting tarp.

But the .22 was always in one hand or the other, ready for small game or any other use. He carried it loosely, by its middle, in his right hand at his side. More and more, he carried it this way, as he became more and more expert at reading the ground over which he passed, for signs of animal passage over it. So far he had gotten nothing but a couple of ground squirrels or gophers—he was not able to tell one from the other; and these he had eaten hastily, raw, before Wolf might happen to return and he would feel obligated to share his kill with the other.

As he took up his travels again, however, the walking began to warm him and some of the ill humor left. His mind began to work to some purpose.

Somehow, he must come to grips with the food problem. He chewed on dried grasses as he went along, having read somewhere that this would help. But it did not seem to. There was an answer to his need to fuel his body, if only he could think it through.

As usual, however, his mental engine, faced with one problem, immediately went off on another. As it frequently did, it had to do with Wolf. How far afield did the other go when he was gone like this? On impulse, Jeebee stopped, lifted his head, and cupped his hands around his mouth.

As he had done the evening before, he howled.

The sound lifted, hung, and died on the soft morning air. It was another bright day with only flecks of clouds to be seen; and howling seemed ridiculous. The long moments went by, and Jeebee was about to stop listening and go on. Then, from some distance, but so obviously an answer that Jeebee’s hair stood up on the nape of his neck as he heard it, a howl came back in answer. But it was not the high-pitched trilling response Wolf had made to the coyote, the night before. This, while lower in pitch than last night’s, had more in common with the mournful plaint of a train whistle.

Was it Wolf—his Wolf who had answered? It could be another wild one of the same breed. Jeebee lifted his hands to his mouth to howl again, but something very like an instinct seemed to caution him against pushing his luck.

Not now. Later, sometime, he could try again, and if he again got an answer, he would be ready to see if he could be sure it sounded like the answer he had just gotten. It would be unlikely that there would be a strange wolf answering close to him and Wolf far off—and if Wolf was likewise close, why had he not likewise answered?

The question was suddenly wiped from his mind by the glimpse of a small form scurrying out of his sight into the tall grass ahead and to the right of him.

The .22 he had carried in his right hand so long leaped to his shoulder and fired almost before he had registered the movement. Jacking another shell into the chamber, he went forward as cautiously as if he was stalking a wounded bear and came upon a porcupine with its head almost torn off by the .22 slug.

Carefully, he flipped the carcass on its back with the muzzle of the gun. He had read about porcupines. In some states they had been protected as “survival food,” since they were slow enough for a human to run down and kill with a club or heavy stone.

Now, remembering what he had read, he slit the carcass down its belly, hooked a finger in the slit and dragged it back to an open space where he could build a fire. He was overjoyed by the dead weight of it pulling against his finger.

He built a small, hot fire with his tinder sticks and some dead branches from a nearby bush. Then he began, unskillfully but more or less successfully, to get the meat of the animal out of its quill-protected body. He had nearly managed to complete this job when Wolf appeared.

Jeebee stiffened in reaction, knife in hand. He had literally forgotten the other’s existence in the glory of suddenly having a possible full meal in hand. Whether Wolf had returned as a result of the exchanged howls, or