Under these conditions, he went more openly and easily than he would have in full light. Twilight, even nighttime, had become for him a much more secure time for travel than day. At night he could go directly to his goal, down the strip of highway, staying in one of the shallow drainage ditches along either side of both concrete strips so as not to be outlined against the stars.
He would come toward them from a direction which any people there would probably not be watching. It would be most natural for them to expect any attack to be from the dark, open country on either side of them, out of which enemies could approach under the cover of trees and deeper folds of landscape.
Accordingly, he worked down the road until he had covered what he estimated to be at least a couple of miles. To his surprise, whoever was with the vehicle had lit a fire in the open beside it, which could only mean either that they felt unusually secure or that they were unusually foolish.
Just on the chance that they were unusually secure, he abandoned his roadside approach for a small woods that was fairly close to them, less than a hundred yards away. He was upwind, so no animals that might be with them should be able to catch his scent on the relatively light night breeze.
Under cover of the trees, he took out the binoculars again and tried to find out what he could with their help. They were not night glasses; and with the restriction looking through them placed on his field of vision, he had some trouble locating the spot of light that was the blazing fire. But eventually he zeroed in on it. By its illumination he was finally able to make out the shapes of at least two people. One was a good-sized adult, and the other was either a small adult, or perhaps a teenage youngster, wearing a red shirt.
There were also what looked like dogs. At his best count, there were at least five of them. This probably meant that there were more, for he had lost sight of some that moved out of the circle of firelight as he counted, and possibly missed others that had come in without him spotting their entrance. Borne on that same light, night breeze, he faintly heard the distant whicker of horses.
So, they had horses along with them, too. He had been right to be cautious. He could not hope to escape on foot in country like this from a mounted pursuer who could see him.
With the idea of dogs and horses as cotravelers with the two human shapes he had seen, he began to reassess what he could see of the vehicle. This was not easy because the firelight lit only one side of it, and the rest of it was in darkness. But gradually, studying it, he came to the conclusion that it was some kind of large covered wagon, with a boxlike body having high sides and a curving roof. It apparently ran on large wheels with truck tires on them.
It was too large to be drawn by just a couple of horses, but a team of perhaps four or six should be able to move it handily. If those wheels rolled as easily as they looked to, four horses should pull it easily on level, well- paved roads.
The more he examined the situation, the more he became convinced of two things. One, that it was indeed a horse-drawn wagon modeled on the old prairie, or “Conestoga,” type that had been common in the wagon trains of the nineteenth century, during the migration of settlers westward. The rounded, canvas-style top and the rectangular body made something like that almost certain. The second was that he must have a still closer look at it, in daylight.
He decided he would stay where he was until almost dawn. If the wind did not change so as to carry the message of his presence to the noses of those dogs, he should be fairly secure here. With the moon down, in the darkness just before the sun rose, he could get closer, look it over in the predawn light, and be safely gone before full light.
He dozed, accordingly, through the night; lying where he was, waking occasionally to drink from his water flask or empty his bladder. He woke before first light, and realizing from the utter darkness about him that the dawn was close, he began to decide how he would make his approach.
The difficulty was that he was not closely acquainted with the area where he was lying, although he had passed by it in his searches for abandoned farms that might have buildings that would yield things he could use. In the darkness, the wind was still in his favor, and he thought he remembered from his earlier trips up and down along the highway that there was another small stand of trees closer to where the wagon was now. If he could reach those further woods in good time, he could look the outfit over in the first predawn illumination and still be able to get clear away before sunrise.
Accordingly, he began to move. It was almost a matter of feeling his way. But his night running on the first weeks out of Michigan had taught him how to do just that over unfamiliar territory. Necessarily he went slowly, but also directly, down alongside the highway and only about twenty yards off it. Eventually, he reached what he thought was the patch of trees he remembered. He worked slowly through these until he was at their edge, where the open ground to the highway began. He lay down to wait.
His waiting was no more than a matter of minutes. The extreme darkness of predawn had begun to lighten as he entered this final patch of woods, and very shortly along the eastern edge of the sky a paling began, which trumpeted the eventual sunrise.
He looked down in the direction of the freeway at the point where he believed he should see the wagon emerge from the darkness. The fire had died out completely, so there was no help there. He lay utterly still, and— blessedly—the wind stayed in his favor.
Slowly around him the predawn brightened. Slowly the shape of the wagon emerged out of the darkness like a sketch in black and white. It was a little farther down the freeway than he had expected it to be when he finally saw it.
He waited. The light got stronger and soon he could use the opera glasses. The vehicle was as he had thought; an oversized wagon, of the Conestoga type, rolling on eight pairs of large, rubber-tired wheels.
Behind it, enclosed in a sort of stake-and-rope corral, was a herd of perhaps as many as fifteen or twenty horses. Both of the riding and pulling variety. Three other horses were unaccountably together close to the back of the wagon. There was something strange about the shape of those three horses. But the light was not yet strong enough for Jeebee to tell what.
The dogs were sleeping shapes on the ground around the wagon and the ashes of the fire. The wagon, he thought, studying it with the glasses, was really oversized. The top of its roof could be no less than twelve feet above the road surface. Also, its front behind the wagon seat was not open, but closed by a wooden wall. Forward of this, a tongue projected only far enough for a first pair of horses. But Jeebee was confirmed in his guess that it would take at least four to pull it handily.
No people were in evidence this early. They must all be in the wagon; and again he thought that they must be very secure, or else they would have had someone posted on guard. He had been wrong about the number of dogs. He counted eight—no, nine—shapes sleeping around where the fire had been.
As the day brightened, the black and gray of the wagon began to acquire colors and he could see words on the side that faced him. A little more light confirmed that the words had been made in black or red paint against the white surface of the side, which formed a continuous curve up and over the roof.
Perhaps the white was cloth after all. Cloth over an open wooden box. The letters of the words spelled out Paul Sanderson and Company, Peddler.
The letters were a good three feet high, painted in what, as the morning brightened broadly, he saw to be a very brilliant red indeed, upon the white cloth. They looked almost as if they had been freshly painted. Overall, there was an air of unusual cleanliness and competence about the wagon and everything connected with it. It seemed stoutly built, well maintained, and strangely businesslike in this newly disorderly and dirty age.
Just then one of the dogs stirred, got to its feet, and shook itself. It was time to go; but Jeebee wanted one more look at those three horses by the back of the wagon. He swung the binoculars on them and saw they were tethered to the wagon; each one saddled and bridled with a full pack behind each saddle, and a rifle in a scabbard at the right front of each one. This was something to think about. Jeebee began his retreat.
In the brightening light he made it back quickly to the trees where he had spent the night before. From there, he took a longer, and much clearer, observation of the wagon, now aided by the daylight.
Now that the sun had risen, the inhabitants of the wagon evidently began to stir. Smoke rose from a metal flue through the wagon’s roof. Following that first dog on its feet, all the others had roused. Now they began to move around and congregate closely near the front of the wagon. After some time, Jeebee thought he smelled cooking on the breeze that was still toward him from them. Eventually, the smaller—and Jeebee now saw— beardless figure came out and threw a panful of scraps of some kind to the dogs. They dived hungrily at them and gobbled them down.
