Jeebee wondered if perhaps it was the presence of the dogs that was keeping Wolf away from the wagon. He got to the point of actually considering that perhaps Wolf might feel safer if he put him on a leash and tried to bring him down to the wagon that way. Maybe being on a leash would give Wolf a feeling of security, as well as also keeping the other dogs away? Even as he thought this, he knew it was ridiculous. Neither the dogs nor Wolf were likely to cooperate under such conditions.
There was only, like a small nagging pain, the worry in Jeebee of how Merry really felt about Wolf showing up. The dogs and Wolf, as Paul had said, would have to sort things out with each other. Merry had agreed to Wolf’s joining them—if he would—but, it seemed to Jeebee, with no great enthusiasm.
Merry was the one the dogs obviously liked best, and obeyed best, of all the humans around the wagon; though by now they had all gone so far as to approach Jeebee and make more or less polite friends with him. Only in the case of Greta, the yellow female, was this anything close to a warm friendship. When Greta was not on guard duty, she always sought out Merry first, unless Merry was on horseback. But if that was the case, and Jeebee was both outside the wagon and afoot, she would sometimes come to Jeebee, wagging her tail, sniffing him, and licking at his hands or face.
Greta also very clearly was dominant over all the other dogs as well as being larger than the rest of them. It was only later that something Nick had said one day made Jeebee realize that the other dogs were the results of litters she had had from contact with other, unknown dogs, at some of the places they had stopped.
Certainly the rest obeyed her, although usually not without protest if they were involved with something they wanted to keep or do. Watching the attitude of the other dogs to her, a wild thought came to Jeebee, a few days later. Perhaps he could take Greta with him on one of his twilight trips to the woods, and when the two of them came back, maybe Wolf would be reassured enough to follow them.
He actually tried this the next night, picking a moment when neither Nick, Merry, nor Paul was close or was within hearing.
“Come on, girl,” he said to the yellow dog, “come on with me. We’ll go for a walk.”
The female came to him and went with him for a little distance. But at about fifty feet from the wagon, she stopped and would not go any farther. When he called her softly, she wagged her tail, flattened her ears and whimpered a little, but stayed put. Jeebee guessed that perhaps she had been trained not to go beyond a certain distance from the wagon, ordinarily. Certainly none of the other dogs usually did.
He turned and left her, continuing on into the trees and finding Wolf.
This time, including Wolf’s usual greeting, the other, after sniffing around Jeebee’s pant legs suddenly neck- rolled against one of them. Jeebee recognized suddenly that it was the same leg that Greta had pressed against when he had talked to her, just a few minutes earlier. It puzzled him, however, that Wolf would be interested in the scent of Greta now, since the female was no longer in heat.
He tucked the question away into the back of his mind and did not think anymore about it consciously until nearly evening, when Greta came up to him and sniffed with unusual interest at the pant leg against which Wolf had neck-rolled. A little later, when he started to leave the wagon, she trotted along with him almost as if she was now determined to go along with him.
But, again, she went only a little farther than she had before. At that point she hesitated, wagged her tail, put her ears back and whined loudly, but ceased to follow. Jeebee called her, but she would not come. He left her finally and went on, thinking that perhaps he might eventually be able to coax her all the way up, after all. The thought cheered him.
When he reached the woods, Wolf was waiting. He did not neck-roll as he had the day before, but subjected Jeebee to a very prolonged nose search. The demeaning thought struck Jeebee that he seemed to be a sort of human messenger service between the dog and the wolf. Possibly carrying love letters?
The thought made him chuckle, a sound Wolf ignored with complete indifference as he sniffed. The examination over—or the message received—Wolf reverted to his general greeting behavior, which ended up with his rolling over on his back and inviting a belly scratch.
That evening, as darkness settled around them and it came time for Jeebee to head back down to the wagon, he had a secret but strong hope that perhaps this time Wolf would follow him beyond the edge of the woods.
But once more it did not happen. Wolf came as far as he had come before, to the point where he could see into the open area, but that was all. Greta could be seen sitting, touched by the firelight and looking out. Jeebee left him behind and went back down to the wagon.
The next day just before noon, in clear daylight as Jeebee was both helping and learning how to herd the stock from Merry, a howl sounded from some nearby wood.
Jeebee’s answering howl from the wagon was loud in the following stillness, and Merry whirled her horse about to confront Jeebee.
“What did you do that for?” she raged. “Look at them, they’re all shook up and beginning to scatter.”
But it was not Jeebee alone who had answered. So had Greta.
Merry stared increduously at the dog, then put her horse in motion.
“Help me!” she shouted over her shoulder at Jeebee. “We’ve got to get these horses back together again.”
It was not until they two and the dogs had managed to get the stock bunched up once more in its usual pattern that Jeebee noticed that the yellow female was no longer with them.
“Look,” he said to Merry, “she’s gone. Greta’s gone.”
“Greta?” Merry reined in her horse and looked around. “I don’t believe it!”
But Greta was indeed gone. Jeebee waited a little while for the fact to sink in, before he mildly offered a suggestion.
“I think she’s gone up into the woods to meet Wolf,” hesaid.
“She wouldn’t do that—” Merry broke off. She stared angrily at Jeebee. “Hell! Watch the stock!”
She wheeled her horse about and galloped up to the front of the wagon. There were a few moments in which Jeebee could hear a conversation between Paul and his daughter, but could not make out exactly what they were saying. The voices ceased and the wagon came suddenly to a stop. Merry came back to the tail of the wagon again.
“You make sure the stock stays together,” she said. “I’m going up after her and bring her back.”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said Jeebee.
She literally glared at him.
“You know, this is all your fault!” she said. “You and that wolf! Why shouldn’t I go?”
“Why?” Jeebee echoed. “Because if you start up there, Wolf is going to run away when he sees you coming. And Greta’s already shown that she’s going to follow him, so you’re likely to lose them both. You’d be surprised how hard it is to find a couple of animals like that if they want to get away from you and hide.”
He stopped. He felt sorry for her.
“It’s all right, you know,” he said. “As long as we leave them alone, she’s going to meet Wolf just inside the woods there and they’ll be together for a little while and then she’ll come back to the wagon. Just as Wolf doesn’t want to leave me, she doesn’t want to leave the rest of you down here. She’s simply being pulled two ways at the present moment.”
The nearest patch of woods was up a gentle slope and about two hundred yards away. Merry looked past Jeebee at it, stared at it.
“How long will we have to wait?” she asked. Her own voice was suddenly, surprisingly calm.
“I don’t know,” Jeebee answered. “But I don’t think it’ll be long. What I’d suggest is that you stop for maybe half an hour—long enough to have lunch, say—and if Greta hasn’t shown by that time, start to move off. She’ll have been with Wolf long enough to get over her first impulse to go to him, and when she sees you leaving, she’ll be afraid of losing you. I’m pretty sure then she’ll come out and follow—in fact I’m pretty sure she’ll catch up with us right away.”
There was a long silence. Merry looked back at him.
“It makes sense,” she said, more quietly. “Look, I’m sorry I snapped at you. You made it clear enough when you joined us that you couldn’t control that animal. I don’t mean to blame you for what he does, but maybe it’d been better all around if we’d shot him on first sight.”
“If you had,” said Jeebee, “I’d probably have shot at you. I mean that.”
For a moment their eyes locked, and somewhat to Jeebee’s surprise, Merry’s face relaxed, relaxed a little
