Jeebee was not there.
In any case, Jeebee stood his ground, and after a while Wolf, panting agreeably, suddenly turned and pulled his usual vanishing act through the trees. Jeebee turned, himself, closing both the front and inner doors behind him as he went back inside.
He doubted that Wolf would still try to come back for a while, or that his disappearing just now meant that he had given up trying to get in. But just to be on the safe side, Jeebee made sure the inner door was firmly latched.
Back inside, the light was still on and Merry still sat up in bed, holding her child.
“I hope it didn’t worry you to have him that close,” said Jeebee.
“Worry me? No,” Merry answered.
Her right hand came up from the hidden side of her where the baby had been lying. It was holding Jeebee’s revolver. “I’ll be carrying this from now on.”
Jeebee gazed at the gun and at her and let out a deep breath. He remembered the moment coming up out of the root cellar with the cans, months before.
“Yes,” he said. “Well, I don’t really think he’ll be a danger to the baby.”
“No,” said Merry.
She put the revolver away, laying it back down where it hadbeen, and her mood changed as abruptly as Wolf’s had seemed to, outside.
“Isn’t he beautiful?” she said fondly, looking down at the baby.
“Yes,” said Jeebee, wondering a little to find that he really did think the baby was beautiful. He was not used to thinking in those terms about men, boys, or even male children. But Merry was right. Their baby was beautiful.
“We’ve got to name him,” Merry said decisively.
There was a little lift to her voice at the end of the sentence. Not enough to make it a question, but enough to invite comment from Jeebee. Or, if not, some kind of response.
“What do you want to name him?” Jeebee said diplomatically.
“Paul,” she answered immediately. Her gaze clouded a little. “He’ll never know his granddaddy, but he can carry his name.”
She looked up at Jeebee.
“You don’t like Paul for him?” Merry asked.
“I hadn’t even thought,” said Jeebee. “No, of course I like Paul.”
His answer was completely truthful. He simply hadn’t thought that far ahead; and in any case, he had no objection to the baby being named after Merry’s father. The thought came to him, too late, that he might have put forward the name of his own father. But Merry had never known his father. In fact Jeebee had all but forgotten him in the years since his father’s death and his own maturing.
Paul, he thought now; Paul was a name he probably would have picked himself, given time to think about it.
“Turn out the light,” Merry said sleepily, settling down with the baby in her arms and closing her eyes. “Leave the doors open a little, though.”
Jeebee did as she had said and went outside again. If Merry was not concerned about Wolf returning, then it was foolish for him to worry about it.
The evening was warm. He looked around at a meadow in the full stride of a northern summer. The pines stood up, straight and dark-needled around a green meadow in which the two streams ran down the natural slope from their point of divergence. The waters were deep blue under a sky that was darkening steadily, enormously high, with a few large clouds at a distance from each other, high to still be bathed in the light of the sun, and moving steadily together like a fleet of treasury galleons sailing eagerly before a westering wind to the lands of gold and promise.
All about him he could feel the world turning forward through time, out of the darkness that had brought him here toward a brighter future.
The warmth, the soft air, the scent of the summer day now ending, filled him, enlarging him as if he was a balloon. He drew it deep into his lungs, feeling as if he grew with the inhalation. He must tell Merry about this moment, later on when she was rested and there was time. In fact, there would be a great deal for them to tell each other about this tremendous achievement at the height and best of the year. He drew the air deep into his lungs for another enormous breath. He was ready to build the cave behind him into a palace. He was ready to rebuild the world. He felt like a giant.
He let the air out, checking on a sudden thought. One other thing he had not talked about with Merry was his original plan of going on after the baby was born to finish finding his brother’s ranch. That whole part of their future had been pushed into the back of his mind as the birth of the baby came close, and he had almost forgotten it himself.
The truth was, he had never really faced the problems of traveling with the new baby. Now that the child was actually born, he could fully realize what would be involved in that. He, Merry, and infant Paul would necessarily be wandering about the higher plains, possibly to be shot at on sight by local ranchers, and living as people on the move had to do. It was suddenly clear how foolish the idea had been.
There could be no moving from here until next summer, at least, when Paul would be a good deal stronger and bigger, even if still young for travel, even carried in a basket of sorts, hung on back or chest, as the Indians had carried their youngest children. Merry must have simply taken it for granted he would eventually realize this. It must have been so obvious to her that he would eventually see this for himself that she had not bothered to point out the impossibility of it. She was very like her father in that.
Consciously, he had not confronted these facts. Unconsciously, he realized now, with all his plans of building the forge and adding on to the cave, he had come to terms with it long since. Jeebee looked around him again. The evening was glorious. He still felt like a giant. It was ridiculous for him to feel so, he thought suddenly. It had all been Merry’s accomplishment, not his. But that was the way he felt, nonetheless. Also, he abruptly recognized, he was hungry.
He went back in, turned on one of the interior lights that was farthest from the bed, and cut some meat and cheese for himself. He made his bed again on the floor against the door and turned the light out. In no time whatsoever, he, with the other two, was sleeping the sleep of the successful and the just.
CHAPTER 36
With the baby’s birth Jeebee went into a blur of activity. They had been concentrating so hard on the birth that they had almost forgotten the inexorable march of the seasons. Now it was as if young Paul was a calendar clock, who by his growth measured off the days for them and emphasized how much was to be done before the snow flew again.
Jeebee found himself coming to begrudge the necessary day a week he spent down on the flat, hunting meat. He could still generally locate at least one cow or calf within the sweep of a day’s ride under good conditions, but the supply would not last forever, although now there were young calves, which would be growing up and providing a future supply.
Still, though these promised well for the future, there was also the possibility that at any time a neighboring rancher might move in to take over this territory. In which case, without warning, he might someday discover armed men on the flatlands directly below him; and hunting would no longer be the safe thing that he had begun to take for granted it would be.
He started giving at least another half a day now and then to checking the foothill and mountain territory within several hours’ ride of the cave, looking for sign of deer travel or presence. He not only found what seemed to be deer trails, but sighted a number of deer.
Aiding him in this, of course, was the fact that fawns had been born with the spring. While these had already grown considerably, still to a certain extent they restricted the travel of their mothers and of such barren female deer who had stayed pretty much together during the winter past.