clothes were jeans and a shirt, the scissors were large, and the razor was a straight-edged one. Nick had also brought a towel. He threw them all down beside Jeebee.
“You’re going to have to wash out your own shirt, socks, and underwear,” he said. “Use the bathwater after you’ve cleaned yourself. Wring the clothes out afterward and bring them in the wagon. You’ll find some hooks by your hammock. Hang them on those to dry. Sleep in the fresh shirt. It and the jeans are new. Paul’ll be charging you for those, later on.”
“Thanks,” said Jeebee. “I mean that. It’ll be good to be in clean clothes—new clothes at that.”
Reflexively, he felt his beard and hair.
“I’ll shave the beard,” he said, “but the hair, I think I’ll just cut—some.”
Nick turned to the wagon.
“Good night,” he said. “I’ll turn down the lantern in the Quiet Room. You turn it all the way off after you’ve slung the hammock. By the way, the safe way to get into a hammock is sit down first in the middle of it. I mean, not just in the middle between the two ends, but in the middle of it, crosswise too. Then lay down and swing your legs up, holding on to the hammock edges. If you do it right, it won’t turn over and dump you on the ground. The mosquito netting’s pinned up; and you might as well leave it that way. No mosquitoes this early in the year.”
He went into the wagon and this time did not come out.
Jeebee cut his beard down as close as he could with the scissors; then wet the stubble down thoroughly with bathwater and soap, and gingerly shaved with the straightedge—blind. He had not thought to ask Nick for some kind of mirror.
Done at last, with only five small nicks, he cleaned the razor, peeled off his old clothes, and settled himself slowly into the still-hot water. He sighed, leaning back against the curved metal edge of the big tub. The heat soaked slowly through him.
He thought of Wolf and of the people in the wagon. It was foolish of him, he knew, but he could not help feeling a bit bothered by Merry’s attitude toward him. He told himself that it was simply a weakness in him that wanted everyone to like him. It was also, of course, the fact she was a woman, and he had not seen a woman— barring the monstrous lady in the long black dress at the railroad whistle stop where he had acquired Wolf—for a long time. There had been nothing sexually attractive about the store woman. But Merry was different.
It was not that he lusted strongly after her. It was simply that she was female. He was male, and conscious of her accordingly—he told himself. It seemed to him, now, watching the stars, that she could have at least smiled once at him. It would not have been too much for her to do, and it would have meant a great deal to him.
He shoved the thought from his mind. He was dangerously close to self-pity again. He made himself think once more of Wolf.
Wolf was a free person. Perhaps he was already gone for good. Even if he was not, something that had been between him and Jeebee would be destroyed if Jeebee should ever try to trap him or bring him to someplace like this wagon by force.
But, otherwise, how was he ever going to get Wolf to join them? Well, at least he could keep going from the wagon out into whatever woods were close at twilight, howling and waiting. Perhaps he should have howled from the woods, this evening. But he had been afraid, he faced it now, of getting no answer.
Possibly, somehow, eventually, Wolf might show up and be enticed to come closer to the wagon.
Possibly…
The water was cooling. He washed himself and stepped out. The night breeze was almost instantly at him, robbing him of the water’s warmth, encasing him into a chill that felt as if he was being buried in ice. He toweled himself dry and quickly put on his new pants and shirt. Then he washed the socks and underwear he had been wearing in the bathwater—carefully. He also washed the extra, long-dirty shorts and T-shirt he had carried in his pockets against the day he could clean them. Somehow, the day had never come. Both sets of underwear threatened to come apart in his hands.
After washing his outer clothes, he emptied and rinsed out the washtub.
Picking up the tub with his wet clothing inside it, he went, the night air cool on his naked face. He climbed up and into the wagon, going back past the goods into the weapons room. Nick was in the right-hand hammock and evidently already asleep. He slept silently, without snoring. Jeebee found some empty floor space to put the tub until morning, draping his wet things on hooks and over the tub to dry. He then slung his hammock and found it was not as difficult as Nick had given him to think. It was merely a matter of finding a balance point. Once in, he stretched out, carefully. It was surprisingly comfortable. There had been a blanket rolled with the hammock, and he pulled this over himself now.
He felt the walls and roof and floor close about him, and thought once more of Wolf.
“I’ll never sleep,” he told himself.
But even as he thought this he was falling into a dreamless slumber.
CHAPTER 10
Three nights later at twilight in a little patch of woods near where the wagon had stopped, Wolf came to greet him.
Wolf put his paws on his shoulders, licked his face with an undodgeable tongue, and frisked around Jeebee before stopping to sniff Jeebee carefully all over. He concluded by going back into greeting behavior, ending by rolling on his back and inviting a stomach scratching. Jeebee obliged.
Jeebee had been all but sure within himself that Wolf had left him for good. The return of his partner filled him with warmth and gratitude. He wrestled exuberantly with Wolf and scratched the furry belly with satisfaction. Finally, things calmed down for both of them. The sun had set but there was still light in the sky. Jeebee got up and moved back out of the woods and toward the wagon, some fifty feet away, in the open grassland of the old superhighway.
Wolf followed him to the edge of the trees, but stopped there. Jeebee tried to play with him to entice him further. But Wolf refused to be drawn. He stood watching Jeebee, but not advancing any further into the open, and gradually the dark came upon them.
At last, it was clear that nothing was going to bring Wolf out beyond the trees.
“Good night, Wolf,” Jeebee said softly at last. “Tomorrow night at this same time, maybe?”
Wolf looked back at him agreeably but otherwise, as usual, paid little attention to the sound of Jeebee’s voice. He was very unlike a dog in this. Body attitudes had always seemed to be the basis of his communication rather than sounds. But Jeebee was accustomed to this fact by now. He turned and went down toward the wagon, once more lit from within. Several times he stopped and looked back, but until the darkness hid Wolf completely, he could still be seen just barely inside the woods.
Jeebee went around the wagon to find the others sitting by the fire that was kindled every night. They had clearly already finished eating. Tonight, Paul and Merry were talking over the possibility of getting rid of some of their horses and buying other, younger stock to replace them. Merry wanted to hold off until they had recruited at least one more person. Jeebee had learned in these last few days that the wagon usually carried not merely four, but five people. In other words, besides himself, one more pair of feet and hands were needed.
He turned to Nick, but Nick seemed in no mood for talk. His mind was on something else. He did not reject Jeebee’s attempt to make conversation, but his answers were brief and he kept his eyes on the fire.
Left to himself, Jeebee went about the business of heating what remained in the cooking pot and filling his tray.
He sat down in his folding chair to eat, his mind still busily searching for some way to bring Wolf down to join the wagon group. But that was a search he had been at ever since he himself had joined it. Paul had not yet trusted him to have his weapons back again. But as far as Jeebee could tell, he was getting along well with all of them, except that Merry still held herself at a distance, refusing to commit to any kind of sociability.
Jeebee’s mind went off on a different tangent. He could not tell himself that he had done well, except in a few instances, but certainly he could not have done badly, for someone the three others all knew had never had any experience with this kind of work before.
One of the few times he had earned at least some approval had been from Nick. This had been in the process
