brain of the animal…
His finger found the trigger and trembled there. The wolf-dog paid no attention. His nose was pushed into the unbuttoned opening at the top of the jacket, sniffing. Abruptly he withdrew his head and looked squarely into Jeebee’s eyes.
In that moment Jeebee knew that he could not do it. Not like this. He could not even kill this creature to save himself. It had done him no harm. It was now even acting almost friendly. His buck fever was back on him… and what did it matter? Even if he killed it, the men outside would kill him, eventually. What kind of an idiot guard animal was it, that would let him put a gun directly to its head and pull the trigger?
The questing nose had now changed its attention and was working down his right sleeve. It reached the end of the sleeve, the long jaws gaped, revealing teeth twice the size of those Jeebee had seen on any dog, and these teeth closed gently on the cuff of the jacket and tugged. It shifted the grip of its jaws on the cuff to further back in its mouth, so that the wide carnasials now closed on the leather. It chewed for a moment; then let go and tilted its head back, looking up at Jeebee with golden eyes.
Jeebee’s mind suddenly made sense of the situation. It was the jacket, of course, his mind told him. The jacket, and the dog alike, must have come from the ruined house where he had found the chain and taken shelter that night. The jacket must still smell of the cattleman the woman had mentioned, who had no doubt been killed by the woman and her friends. A man who had owned this wolf-dog originally. Now, several days of wearing the leather garment had mingled its original owner’s scent with Jeebee’s; until they were one scent only. Also, above all, the jacket and Jeebee both would not smell of sheep and sheep handling, of which all this station, its people and buildings, must reek to the creature’s sensitive nose.
However else the wolf-dog might react to him, it seemed—tentatively, at least—ready to accept him, and should not attack mindlessly. For the first time he remembered what he had noticed but paid no attention to in this room. Around the end of the counter where the two chains were stapled, around the space of the short line, particularly, everything within reach of the chain had been chewed or torn by canine teeth. The heavy wood of the counter had been pitted, a brace to one of the legs of a nearby chair had been gnawed almost in half. For the first time it occurred to Jeebee that this animal might be as alone and friendless as Jeebee himself.
On a sudden impulse he reached down and unsnapped the closure that fastened the chain around the other’s neck.
The wolf-dog shook himself, like one of his kind coming out of water, but briefly, and looked again curiously up at Jeebee.
Now, however, Jeebee felt time pressing on him. He was reminded of the danger close by, in which he still stood. Still holding the .22 in one hand, he snatched up the .30/06 from the counter in the other and ran with both rifles to the door of the room the woman had entered. The wolf-dog went with him.
The door resisted opening when he reached it. But a blow of the butt of his .22 was all that was needed to break the cheap lock of the door handle; and the door itself swung open to show him a rack of rifles and shotguns. He found boxes of ammunition for the .22 and changed the .30/06 rifle the woman had given him for one that also accepted the same ammunition but had been customized to have a square magazine about the size of a box of kitchen matches under it, that would hold sixteen shells instead of the ordinary clip.
He stuffed his pockets full with ammunition for both the .22 and the .30/06.
He would have to give up the bike and the carrier pack that was on it, with all its contents; but perhaps he could still get out of this with his life. Hastily, he loaded the rifle’s box magazine. He went to the single window in the room and found, as he had hoped, that it looked out on the back of the building. Through its dirty pane he saw a slight, grassy slope upward to trees that crowned a low hill, trees that were the beginning of a wood that stretched northward. They were part of the same woods the railroad tracks had curved through before emerging here.
Taking a rifle in each hand, he used their butts to smash out the window glass, then clean as many as possible of the glass shards from the bottom and sides of the window frame. He threw the rifles out, and taking a grip on the inner edge of the window sill, he made a twisting jump out and down onto the grass about four feet below.
He snatched up the rifles and began to run for the trees. The wolf-dog appeared beside him, having clearly followed him out. Although Jeebee was running at top speed, the other was barely loping along with him, and still looked more interested than concerned.
He heard a shout behind him, and glancing briefly back over his shoulder, saw the man with the belt-length black beard had come out around the corner of the house behind him, carrying a rifle. The shout was unintelligible. Jeebee ignored it, continuing to run as fast as he could.
The outer line of trees loomed close before him, perhaps only a dozen more strides away, but now there was also the clamor of barking dogs behind him, and Jeebee knew that dogs could run him down easily. A sudden panicky fear made him skid to a stop and swing around. At least he would go down looking as if he was willing to fight.
The man he had seen a moment before had been joined by another, this one holding a pistol in one hand hanging down at his side. But between those two and Jeebee was a good-size pack of the local dogs he had seen earlier.
They swarmed up the slope after him, the large, short-haired collielike dog in the lead. The two men were merely standing with their firearms, apparently content to let the dogs catch Jeebee and pull him down. It was plain that it was more agreeable to them to have him as a captive, to explain the workings of the electric bike, than it would have been to bring him back as a nontalking corpse.
Now, he thought, was the time when he should shoot. When the two before him were not ready. But he could not do it. He could, however, fire on the dogs.
But, now that he had halted, he saw the collielike dog well in advance of the rest of the pack. The wolf-dog, stopped beside him, had also turned back. Suddenly it moved. It became a blur of gray rushing toward the oncoming dogs. The awkward-looking, shambling gait he had noticed through the window was gone. The wolf-dog, its head and ears erect, was closing the distance in great fluid bounds that reminded Jeebee of dolphins he had once seen, breasting the bow waves of a cruise ship—“lads, before the wind,” Herman Melville had called them in
The dogs right behind the collie spun and bolted, tails between their legs. The collie, however, which Jeebee recognized as the one who had stood forth against Wolf’s entry to the store, checked, lowered its body into a half crouch, and sprang for the wolf-dog’s throat.
The wolf-dog made no effort to evade the attack. He simply closed his jaws around the back of his attacker’s neck. There was no sound, but the collie’s legs suddenly went stiff and its body jerked once as the canine teeth pierced the spinal cord.
It fell.
The wolf-dog stood over it for a moment. The man with the rifle had lifted his weapon to aim at Jeebee after all. Now his aim swung instead to point at Jeebee’s companion, who was now turning from his dead opponent.
Jeebee dropped the .22 and jerked the .30/06 to his shoulder. The imaginary line across the horns of the rear sight and the tip of the front blade bisected the beard above the man’s chest. This time Jeebee fired without hesitation.
Then he snatched up the .22 and turned away himself, hearing the pistol bark behind him, and made it into the shadowed protection of the woods. The wolf-dog had run at the sound of Jeebee’s rifle. Now he was far ahead of him into the trees and out of sight.
CHAPTER 3
Jeebee plodded on through the woods. He had put a good two hours of walking behind him, since he escaped from the station. But now the westering sun was just above the horizon, and he was looking for a place to camp for the night.
He had heard two more shots from the revolver after he was among the trees and out of sight, but none of
