some of the wiredness from her. Now he himself wanted only to sleep.
He went back inside, leaving the outer door open but closing the inner one and making up his own bed on the floor with his body against it, the door itself open just a tiny crack for air. To get in, Wolf or anything else would have to push him aside. And that would wake him. Merry and the baby were protected.
He was woken for short periods at indefinite times after that by Merry wanting something more to eat or drink. Each time, he felt his way to the nearest electric light and switched it on. The second time, Merry suggested a light be put down where she could reach it herself. All the headlamps were on long cords and easy to move. He shifted the one closest to the bed; and, momentarily while awake, as long as he was up, he stepped outside again and found that Wolf had come back. He was curled up in his usual corner of the lower room. Beyond the open outer door, the day showed itself at mid-to-late afternoon.
He went all the way outdoors, to feel again the summertime and reach for a trace of the remarkable feeling of completeness he had felt earlier. Turning back in, his eye caught something by the side of the door and he remembered that sometime after the baby was born, he had wrapped the afterbirth in plastic and put it out here, to dispose of later. It was still there. But the plastic had been neatly ripped away from it. It was completely exposed, but untouched.
The ripping away of the plastic was clearly Wolf’s work. But he—who would eat anything that was eatable— had not touched the afterbirth. Jeebee’s heart gave a curious lurch in his chest. What could have made Wolf respect that, where normally anything eatable would have been snatched up and carried off by him?
Jeebee tried to remember something in the books about wolves that he had read which could explain this. But there was nothing. Slowly the thought formed in him that he was doubtful of accepting, because it simply might be a matter of sheer wish-fulfillment. It had occurred to him that perhaps Wolf might have respected the afterbirth because he had made an association of it with as much of the birth scene as he had witnessed, and with Merry and the baby itself.
If so, then it could have been the beginning of a recognition that the baby was part of their family, part of the pack, as Wolf would have thought of them. It was a long jump into sheer supposition. Jeebee was only too aware of how little he knew about wolves. But he wondered if perhaps Wolf’s experience with the amniotic fluid in his face, and his later shoulder-rolling in the sheet that had been stained when Merry’s water bag burst, as well as his watching of the birth—plus Merry’s warning him off—if all these things had not acted as a form of something like imprinting.
It was pure guesswork, but maybe it was a possibility. When he went back in, he located the chain he had found at the ranch and that he had equipped earlier with a snap on one end so that it could act as a leash, as the storekeeper woman had walked with Wolf on a leash in the town where Jeebee had lost his motorized bike. He had never gotten around to trying whether Wolf would remember and accept the leash with him. Now Jeebee hung it from a nail in the frame of the inner door, where it would be close at hand. Later on, he would try out the leash.
It seemed he had hardly closed his eyes before he was wakened by scratching at the door and Wolf whining and snuffling through the crack, it seemed right into his ear. He sat up as Merry turned the light on, having herself been woken by Wolf’s demands to enter.
“Do you want me to let him in?” said Jeebee, putting his hand up to the chain. “I’ve got the leash here now. I can keep him on that. I really think we want to start getting him used to the baby right from the start.”
He thought fleetingly again of the afterbirth outside with the plastic carefully peeled away from it.
“Shall I leash him and then let him in, just close enough to see you and the baby again?” Jeebee repeated when she did not answer.
“Yes,” said Merry, “but don’t let him get any closer than the edge of the bed.”
Jeebee got up, holding the door shut by leaning against it with all his body weight. He unhooked the chain, and then, still holding the door shut, moved around and opened it only enough to push himself through the opening and push Wolf back. Jeebee looped the ready-held chain loosely around Wolf’s neck as he imprisoned him with his arms and snapped the snap into one of the links. It was attached to Wolf now, but it hung loosely around his neck and the snap would keep that looseness so the chain would not choke him. Wolf did not seem to object. Beyond the wide-open outer door, twilight held the sky. It was the regular time for Wolf’s evening visit.
Still holding tight to the chain and keeping Wolf from pulling away from him, but allowing him into the room, Jeebee stepped backward one pace. Wolf strained against the chain, not fighting it, but trying to get to the inner room. Jeebee let Wolf pull him into the inner room, and only stopped him with the chain some three feet from the near edge of the bed. Merry was sitting up, eyeing Wolf narrowly, with the baby on the far side of her, lying out of sight beyond her body.
Jeebee allowed Wolf to go a step forward; he was still about a foot and a half from the bed, whimpering now, wagging his tail and looking both agreeably and appealingly at Merry.
Without warning, the baby cried, a thin wail, and tossed its arms in the air so that they appeared on the other side of Merry’s body. Merry turned and took the tiny figure up into her arms, laying the little head against her breast.
Long before she had lifted the baby fully into sight, Wolf had jumped backward, and hidden behind Jeebee.
“Will you look at that!” said Jeebee. “He’s afraid of the baby!”
“He’s hungry,” Merry said softly, to the baby rather than to Jeebee or Wolf. “Is he hungry?”
She had lifted the baby to her breast and it found the nipple and nursed—but just for a few moments. It was evidently not as hungry as it thought it had been. It let the nipple out of its mouth and turned its head away toward Jeebee, small blue eyes flashing about.
A long gray muzzle sneaked around the side of Jeebee’s leg. Wolf was peering at the baby.
The baby jerked up an arm in a sudden motion like a reflexive wave, and Wolf’s muzzle was gone behind Jeebee’s leg once more, almost before the arm had started to lift.
The baby looked around for a moment more before deciding to find the nipple again, and went back to nursing. The gray muzzle crept out again.
Silently, almost imperceptibly, Wolf emerged from behind Jeebee, his neck outstretched, his nose flared toward the bed, and his eyes on Merry and the baby. Merry herself was looking down, watching the baby, absorbed in the process of nursing.
Wolf floated gradually forward until most of his body was past Jeebee. The chain, which Jeebee had kept slack, drew tight and stopped him a foot from the near bedside.
Jeebee moved forward a little, himself, slackening his chain; Wolf started to take up the slack and suddenly froze. Jeebee looked at Merry. Merry’s eyes and attention were all on Wolf. Her face was fixed in an expression and her lips had drawn back from her teeth. It was not a welcoming face. The glitter of her teeth in the fluorescent light was like the glitter of the teeth of any carnivore mother. Wolf’s ears had flattened to his head, his head itself had lowered, and his tail had begun to wag as he moved forward. Now he stood still in his same position and began to make little appeasing whines.
“Let him come as far as the edge of the bed?” Jeebee said.
“As far as the edge”—Merry’s face had not changed—“but no farther!”
Jeebee stood where he was, with a slack chain. Gradually Wolf inched forward until his nose was barely inches from the bedside.
“That’s enough!” Merry said suddenly.
Jeebee checked Wolf. He only twitched the chain taut for a second, but Wolf had stopped even before the words were out of Merry’s mouth. Now, Wolf backed a step and then turned to leave, out of the inner room, through the outer door and into the open air.
Outside, Jeebee took the leash off.
With the leash off, Wolf appeared to lose all interest in the cave’s interior. He greeted Jeebee in the usual fashion and tried to get Jeebee to play with him and chase him. Jeebee, however, was too wise in Wolf’s ways by this time to be drawn from his post in the doorway. Wolf had left the inner room on his own decision. But it was one of his oldest tricks to see if he could not get Jeebee’s attention away from something that Wolf himself wanted, and then beat Jeebee back to whatever it was. Wolf might actually have been wanting to romp and roughhouse in the usual fashion; but he could equally well have been trying merely to draw Jeebee out of position so he could slip past him and in through the door again. Perhaps he thought that Merry might let him come closer to the new pup if
