right direction, had him uneasy now at having to depend on her way of finding their destination. At the same time, he did not want to challenge her methods without strong reason.
She had taken for granted from the start that she would be in command of the expedition. All Jeebee was supposed to supply were directions. This had also been taken for granted by her father and Nick. None of them thought too highly of him as someone who could take care of himself, let alone one other person and a string of valuable horses, while traveling through territory that was unknown and could well contain at least some hostile people.
He had been a little surprised at first that Merry should be the one Paul had chosen to go with him; particularly after Paul’s earlier objections to her going up into the trees by the highway, alone. But this was plainly a decision that required that some risks be taken. In the end, the decision had been obvious. The wagon remained the anchor point for father, daughter, and Nick. Paul himself could not quit it any more easily than a ship captain could abandon his vessel to go off on a side trip or a venture.
Also, if Paul should be lost, Nick and Merry would not be able to carry on the peddling route as well without him. He was the man that the customers along the way were used to dealing with. Even though they might know Merry and Nick, they would not have as much faith in them and some might even try to take advantage of them— which might end in a shoot-out.
No, Paul had to stay with the wagon. Nick was not a good choice for Jeebee’s companion, being a follower by nature. That left Merry. Merry was not only capable of command, she was used to it; since in all things but the overall direction of the wagon, she controlled a great many matters. The horses, the dogs, and apparently a good deal of the internal management of the wagon, aside from most of their personal supply of foodstuffs, were her daily responsibilities.
Jeebee had realized from the first planning of the trip that his orienteering skills, and any suggestion that he plot a straight line course for them to the area that was their destination, would probably be unwelcome—to Paul and Nick as much as to Merry. They had little understanding of his knowledge and skills. His suggestions could only raise suspicions that he was proposing that he lead instead of her. Merry was too valuable to the other two men to be entrusted to the care of a latecomer to the wagon’s people. Only the belief that she would be firmly in command had made her going with Jeebee practical in the eyes of Paul and Nick.
That was why, for a long time, Jeebee had avoided even producing the compass and map. But time was as critical for him as it was for them; and her methods of hunting for roadways to point their route involved too much daylight lost in guesswork and an unnecessary waste of hours in blind searchings for landmarks.
He and Merry rode along now, therefore, in mutual silence, with Jeebee not knowing quite what to do about it. He had not seen any sign of Wolf, but he had a feeling that Wolf was with them, or at least traveling in the same direction and keeping in touch with them. He had been tempted to howl and see if Wolf answered. But since Merry would know why he was howling, he was afraid that that, too, might offend her. He had found himself trapped by a singular feeling of helplessness.
Unexpectedly, Merry spoke.
“How did you happen to learn this orienteering?” Her tone was as calmly conversational as if they had been merely making idle conversation, all along.
“Oh, that,” Jeebee answered, a little embarrassed, “actually, I learned it in the Boy Scouts. I always wanted to do some exploring; but I never really seemed to have time. Also, what I was doing usually didn’t give me the freedom to take off and go hunting around unknown territory.”
He hesitated, uncomfortable talking so much about himself. He made an effort and went on.
“I told myself that anyone—” He broke off. “What I mean is, I thought that I ought to be able, at least, to fly a light plane, and navigate a small, but ocean-going boat by myself. In fact, I tried to take lessons in both things, several times, but other matters always seemed to interrupt. I did get some flying lessons on three separate occasions, but something always seemed to come up each time, and I had to go back and start all over again. After doing that several times, I gave up. The same thing with handling a sailing boat on the ocean. I wasn’t anywhere near the ocean. But orienteering you can do anywhere.”
“Is your family alive? I mean are your parents alive?” Merry asked.
Jeebee shook his head.
“Only my brother,” he said, “and, as I maybe said, he’s eighteen years older than I am. I was an unexpected baby when my mother was in her midforties; and by that time my father had become an architect. You see, my grandfather had the ranch my older brother has now. But Dad and he never got together. I don’t mean they fought. I just mean they saw things differently.”
He paused. “So my father went off to Vietnam. Afterwards he went back to school on the GI Bill and became an architect. He never wanted the ranch, and my brother and grandfather got along real well. So my brother got it when my grandfather died.”
He hesitated again, not sure but what he was saying too much. “My father was killed in a construction accident,” he said, “while I was in college. My mother had died of pneumonia when I was sixteen.”
They rode along in silence for a moment or two.
“It must have been hard for you,” Merry murmured at last. It was hard for Jeebee to tell whether the words were really addressed to him, or only to herself.
“Not really,” said Jeebee. “We were a family of individuals. The three of us all went our own way more or less. My father was wrapped up in his architecture and my mother taught at a number of colleges. Her life was the academic world she was in.”
“Did you ever have a pet? A dog?” Merry asked.
“No,” said Jeebee. “I just read a lot—and experimented with things. I always wanted to know things. For example the grandfather of a friend of mine told me once that the lumberjacks back in the timbering days used to sharpen the two blades of a double-bladed ax differently.”
He steepled his fingers in the air before him to make two sharp sides of a “V,” the fingertips touching in front of his nose.
“One edge was sharpened like that,” he said. He bowed his fingers out. “The other was beveled to an edge— like this. I tried looking it up, but I couldn’t find out anything or anyone that backed him up. So I bought a double- bladed ax head and built a sort of small guillotine. I had the ax head falling down between two uprights into a piece of wood, first with one edge of the ax head, then the other, and comparing the cuts the different edgesmade. I found out there was a real difference; and later on I found out why that difference was useful. When you chop down a tree, you know, you first chop across horizontally, on a level. Then you chop down at an angle through the tree trunk above your first cut, so that you take out chunks at a time.”
“Yes,” said Merry. “I’ve seen trees chopped down.”
“As it turns out,” said Jeebee, “the flat ‘V’ shape leading to an edge is best for cutting across horizontally. The beveled one pries a chip of wood outward as you chop down into the horizontal cut, so it’s best for that. It really didn’t matter whether I found this out for myself or not, but I liked doing it. It’s always been that way with me. My head’s full of all sorts of bits and things I picked up because they were interesting; and I wanted to test them out for myself. It was that way with learning orienteering.”
Having said so much, he felt foolish. There was a strong impression in him that he had overexplained himself. Merry was probably not the least bit interested in so much personal detail. On the other hand, she had started it, by asking about his folks.
“So what you mean,” Merry said, “is that you didn’t have time for pets.”
“I suppose so,” said Jeebee.
“I just wondered,” Merry said, “the way you picked up Wolf, and the way you feel about him. I’d have expected you to have a long history of having pets.”
“Wolf’s not a pet!” said Jeebee, and the words came out more sharply than he intended. “He’s my partner.”
“You really believe that, don’t you?” Merry said thoughtfully. “Dad said you told him the same thing. You talk about Wolf as if he were a person. Do you really feel that way?”
Jeebee answered slowly. “I guess it depends on what you mean by ‘person.’ Pets are a lot like children. If you stop and think about it, adults don’t really think of children as ‘persons.’ When we say ‘persons,’ we really mean ‘grown-ups.’ In that sense, Wolf really is a ‘person’—not a human person, maybe, but a self-sufficient individual with his own way of looking at the world. If a dog is going to survive, he’s got to behave as though he looked at the
