him to see from here. The wire would have connected with rural electricity, back when current had been still coming into this area.
Aside from things he need merely pick up, there was a remarkable amount of wood siding on the house that had escaped the flames. Much more than he would need. In addition, there was a store of unused two-by-fours and planks in one of the outbuildings. Even if the nails in the keg turned out to be less than he would need, there was a wealth of them, as he had anticipated, in the still-standing walls of the buildings.
With some kind of hauling sledge, which he could build of materials here, there were larger or heavier things to take apart and transport up into the hills. With both horses pulling the sledge once snow fell, he could move a good load at a time.
He even looked at a bedstead, which could be taken apart for transporting.
Something like that was a ridiculous luxury—at least at this point. He could, however, make use of kitchen chairs and a table. Also, there were cooking utensils, as well as tableware and some dishes, which he would take. Most of what the ranch house had owned of these items had been taken, but much remained, particularly the cooking utensils, large spoons, spatulas, and other things.
On a sudden inspiration, he checked the number of vehicles still standing about the ranch-house area. There were four cars, three of which looked as if they had been in running condition when the supply of gas had dried up. Also, there were one large and one small tractor and a couple of pickup trucks. One of the trucks still had a blade, for snowplowing or some other use, attached to the front of it.
In addition to these, there was a snowmobile vehicle, and tucked inside its basket was a pair of heavy snowmobile boots large enough for him to wear, which would be invaluable when winter set in. There was also a two-wheel fence-sided trailer and a massive, rubber-tired four-wheel flatbed trailer that would need either a tractor or a heavy pickup to pull it, loaded.
There were both skis and snowshoes, as well as a toboggan. But it was none of these that interested him as much as the batteries in the cars and trucks and tractors. They were all dead, of course. There had been no gas available for any motorized vehicles for over a year. But it had occurred to Jeebee that since they were all late model sealed batteries with their acid locked inside them, he mignt be able to use the solar-cell blanket to bring them up to charge again. Then he could use the batteries themselves to run the interior, ceiling lights of the cars for ordinary illumination in his cave. He could even use them to run one or two of the headlights from the cars, briefly, if for some reason a very bright source of light was needed. It was the way the wagon had run light bulbs off a generator attached to its turning wheels that had turned his mind in this direction.
All of the batteries that he found seemed in good shape. They were all sealed, which meant that the acid would still be safely inside them. He tried turning on the lights of the various vehicles, to see if there was any life in any of them. But, of course, there was not.
It was tempting to take a single battery and headlamp from one of the tractors, where it was easy to get off, and carry it back up to the campsite with him. Up there he might be able to monkey with it and the solar-cell blanket to see if he could not charge up the battery and get the headlamp to light, even if dimly, for a short while.
But it would be wrong to put that much unnecessary weight on Sally in addition to his own; on this first trip at any rate. The horses were his most valuable possession. He must not risk hurting or overworking either of them.
It would be much better to take a few useful but light things in addition to the wire. He ended by bundling a number of small tools into one of the blankets, including paper and some pencils that had been ignored by the raiders. These, in particular, he grabbed up happily.
From his young days, when he had first tried to make drawings of the inner workings of the clocks and radios he worked with, he had developed a habit of thinking with a pencil in his hands. He was used to thinking on paper —or on a computer screen. Now he could sit down and draw plans, not only of the cave, but of the means of bringing up to it some of the heavier, or more awkward, items.
To these items, wadded in the second blanket, he added only one old, tattered blanket-coat that he had found in an outbuilding. All other clothing had apparently been taken by the raiders, who would probably wear it without taking it off until it fell apart on them, then throw it away in the expectation of replacing it from some other looted place down the line.
This bundle he put inside the roll of wire, to secure it for the ride, tying it tightly into place. Happily, the raiders had evidently had no use for most of the light and heavy rope to be found in the outbuildings.
Once more in the saddle, he took the same route back to camp. When he got there, he enclosed everything, including the blanket he had used as a pad for Sally, in the middle of the roll of wire.
Once more, he pulled his trick of kneeling on Sally’s back. It was a great deal more comfortable this time, now that his kneeling was being done on the saddle. He tied the stuffed wire roll up in a different tree from that which held the packload, using some of the extra rope he had brought back from the ranch. He fastened it at a height where he was pretty sure it would be out of reach of Wolf. In any case, there was nothing in the bundle that resembled food, so Wolf’s only attraction to it would be curiosity. That might be enough to keep him from trying to climb the tree just to get his teeth into the bundle.
Wolf had not been there when he got back, and still had not returned by the time he had put the bundle up and unsaddled Sally. In the last few days, Wolf’s unusual, frequent visits had lessened in number, until he was coming in only two or three times a day. It occurred to Jeebee that he might have visited the campsite while Jeebee was gone. If so, any feeling his partner might have that Jeebee was no longer able to find his own food would have been eradicated. Now Jeebee thought that most likely Wolf would probably not return again until his usual time of twilight.
Jeebee spent the nearly two hours of workable daylight at a sketch of what he would build on the front of the cave.
There had been a posthole digger in one of the outbuildings. That, quite naturally, had been one of the things for which the raiders had no use. He decided now that one solution to the problem of bringing long lengths of plank from the ranch up to the cave was to bring a larger number of short ones. As a result he had sketched out a series of postholes running along the face of the bluff, in which he could stand upright lengths of doubled two-by-fours nailed together. Then he could nail the short lengths of planks between them to make a solid wall.
There were some twelve-foot lengths of two-by-fours stored in one of the outbuildings. At least enough to build the series of posts Jeebee had in mind.
He would space his posts not more than three feet apart. Twelve of them, therefore, should mark out the front of his cave-home-to-be. That would include those needed for the extra small wall that would tie the far end of the front into the bluff to make the blacksmithing area.
He was still refining his sketch of this, squinting at the much-erased paper of the large pad he had brought back with him, when a furry face pushed itself between the paper and his nose. Wolf was back.
Jeebee welcomed him with unusual exuberance.
After the greeting ceremony was over, Jeebee got the fire going and began to realize that he had not eaten since morning. He had prudently resolved not to try to get at his cooked meat while Wolf was around. Unfortunately, in this case he had waited until too late in the day.
He was tempted to take Sally over to the tree and reach up into the bag of meat enough to get out several handfuls of the cooked chunks. Then he could stay where he was, throw some of the chunks to Wolf, and eat the rest himself, seated on horseback.
The plan was theoretically workable, but it would draw Wolf’s attention particularly to the bag of cooked meat. At Jeebee’s best estimate, it was out of Wolf’s reach and he already knew it was there. But Jeebee had the sneaking feeling that the less attention paid to it, the better. He did not know how Wolf might find a way to reach it, but he had gotten to the point where he believed almost anything was possible to the other.
Besides, it would not be the first meal he had skipped.
He put the thought of eating out of his mind; and after a while of sitting, gazing into the fire and half thinking, half dreaming of the cave home as it eventually could be, he rolled up in his blankets, ready for sleep. It would be two or three days anyway before his left ankle would be strong enough for him to risk trying to ride Brute and handle the more temperamental horse in the matter of carrying or dragging things back from the ranch.
He could use those days by riding Sally down, having her pull back a bundle of the twelve-foot-long two-by- fours, with the front ends elevated and the back ends scraping along the ground, plus a few other things that he
