He had been exhausted when he finally established his new position and the snow began to build about them again. He did not think he could have worked another fifteen minutes before reaching the limits of his strength. But as it was, he saved not only himself, but the load of frozen meat he already had on the sledge. A load, unfortunately, which had made the sledge that much more difficult to shift.
On one other trip he had missed his shot at a range bull, which had been the only animal he could find. He had wounded it, but not enough to even slow it down. It had charged him. Only the fact that he had dodged behind the sledge and the bull had tripped over a snow-covered corner of it, trying to get to him, had given him time to pump another shot in just behind its shoulder and bring it down. At that, it was still not dead. He had to fire another shot into it before it finally lay still.
In the same icy months of January through early March, up at the cave, Merry had experienced her own near escape. Investigating a slight noise in the outer room one afternoon, she had all but stepped out on top of a cougar, who had come in through the swinging wolf door that Jeebee had built for Wolf, into one wall of the smithy.
The cougar had been attracted by the smell of the stored meat. Frustrated, like Wolf, by the wire netting over the storage pit, it was hooking its claws into the mesh and trying to pull it up, and this had made the sound Merry had heard.
Merry reacted without thinking. She had been drying the last of the morning dishes when the noise caught her attention, and still held the dish towel. She ran at the bewildered cat, flailing at it with the towel and waving her arms wildly.
“Get away from our food!” she screamed.
The mountain lion bounded back past her, back along the cold room and through the wolf door into the smithy, and vanished from there into the brush. It left behind a few hairs on the wooden framing.
The look on its white-haired face had been one of sheer terror, in the face of the flapping dishcloth, and Merry found herself leaning against the frame of the inner door, laughing hysterically at the poor creature’s obvious stark fear and comical retreat.
The image of the predator fleeing from a furious, dish-towel-waving woman sent her into another bout of nearly uncontrollable laughter when she later told Jeebee the story.
Jeebee was not amused. Any wild animal, particularly one hungry enough to enter a place that must smell so thoroughly of humans and Wolf, was unpredictable. Any wild animal was dangerous if cornered, and Merry had very nearly cornered the cougar in the end of the cold room. Moreover, if it was as panic-stricken as Merry had said, it could have injured her just in its efforts to escape. The next day he tripled the two-by-fours reinforcing the vertical sides of the doorframe. Then anchored deeply in them two U-shaped iron hooks, which would hold a bar of axle iron to lock the door.
From then on, Merry kept the door barred, opening it only to Jeebee’s voice, or the whining and scratching of Wolf. Even then, before unbarring the door, she belted the revolver around her waist.
But in spite of the episode of the cougar, the glow that Jeebee had noticed in her on the evening he had learned he was to be a father, remained and deepened. Jeebee found it hard to describe, to himself or her.
“It’s a sort of happiness-of-satisfaction look,” he told Merry once.
“No,” she had answered, patting the beginning bulge of her belly complacently, “it’s just the mother- feeling.
“Isn’t that right, baby?” she said to the child inside her.
But then she looked up into Jeebee’s face.
“You know,” she said, “you look different, too.”
“I do?” Jeebee asked, astonished.
One of the things Merry had brought up from the ranch was the only mirror that had escaped being smashed by the raiders, the cover of the medicine chest in the ranch-house bathroom. Later on, when he was able to do so without Merry catching him at it, Jeebee looked at his bearded features in the glass. He tried very hard to see the difference Merry had mentioned. But as far as he could tell, it was the same old face.
Merry happened to come back to the inside room just as he turned from the mirror.
“Finally decided to shave it off?” she asked.
Merry had never liked Jeebee’s beard, but they had come to a compromise. He could wear it through the cold winter months. He had found it an actual asset in warmth for his face, particularly down in the open winds of the flatlands. But with the melting of the winter’s snow, his beard would also disappear.
“In the spring, as I promised you,” he said now.
He went out to check on his current charcoal-making fire. During his time back up at the cave, his days were filled with things like making more charcoal for his forge. This, and an ever-increasing list of other matters, always needed to be attended to. The consumption of charcoal had gone up because of the many things needing to be made of metal, particularly with the improvements they were both now adding to the interior room.
By the end of March, he had finished excavating back another five feet and walling in the final side of the room. Another week and the ceiling was completed. He and Merry had discussed a number of ways of sealing the walls, floor, and ceiling so that they would be able to keep the area clean. Jeebee had laid down a plank floor. Now even this should be sealed in some fashion that would keep the dirt from working up through the cracks between the planks.
Merry’s original use of old blankets and the like for throw rugs, while successful in creating warmth underfoot, particularly when feet were without boots or socks, was not a practical way to ensure cleanliness. This was because, in their limited space, it was impossible to do the constant, large amounts of washing and rewashing needed to keep the floor coverings fresh and safe.
It was finally decided they would put down a second floor on top of what was already there, with a sheet of plastic as a sealing layer between it and the underfloor. To do this they would have to wait until spring had advanced far enough to make the outbuildings at the ranch clear of drifted snow.
The sealing layer, Jeebee thought, could be made by joining the large plastic bags, each bag measuring three feet five inches by two feet ten inches, of which there was a tall stack, laid flat, in one of the outbuildings. He had come up with the idea of melting the edges of some of these bags together into one large sheet, using an iron rod, heated at the forge. The tricky part would be to get the rod at the right temperature and hold it there.
A sandwich of layers like that might keep dirt from working up into their rooms from underneath; both at the time of the birth and after the baby had come.
Finally, they were at the end of April, and the snow was rapidly disappearing. It seemed to evaporate almost as much as it seemed to melt. In fact, thought Jeebee, considering their altitude, a good deal of straight evaporation might indeed be removing it. Regretfully, he shaved his beard, and decided it was time to have a look at the ranch.
He chose to ride Sally, as the steadier of the two horses—particularly after a winter in which they had had no work at all, being neither ridden nor fitted with a packload—down to see how the buildings had weathered the winter.
It was necessary for him to pick his way with Sally. There were still spots where he had to get off and lead her, through drifts that still lay fairly deep in places where two slopes came together, but they made it down successfully. Out of curiosity he passed the shale slope and saw, surprisingly, that it was entirely clear of snow in certain places. The hole to the den, or whatever it might be high up on it, was now completely exposed.
That should have prepared him for what he would find at the ranch. But in spite of his realization of the dryness of the air, compared to what he had been used to in Michigan, and the effect of the recently sunny and warm days, he was surprised when he got there.
The ranch was already mostly clear of snow. It lingered only in shady places or where drifts had piled high. He was able to get into the outbuilding with the plastic bags and check the stack of them. Laid empty, and then piled, one on top of the other, he estimated the stack must contain at least a couple of hundred bags. He thought fleetingly that if the sealing of the floor worked, he might also eventually seal the ceiling, then after that, possibly the inside walls.
After a cursory look around the other buildings and what was left of the ranch house, he headed back to the cave, returning with as many bags as Sally could conveniently carry behind the saddle. He had more than enough to let him experiment at finding the right temperature to seal them.
It was something that would have to be discovered by trial and error. He remembered, almost wistfully, electric devices for sealing food-storage bags for the deep freezer. Once they had been for sale everywhere. If the
