governed the social life of wolves. Jeebee guessed that this might be the root of the popular myth that any wolf would eventually “turn on its owner” or “revert” to wild behavior. It also went a long way toward explaining a number of things about Wolf’s actions and general behavior.
But while the books explained much, they did not explain enough, at least to Jeebee, to provide the handle he needed for an overall understanding of Wolf’s character.
There was so frustratingly much in these pages that he knew he was not getting. Information that seemed to lie below the surface of the words, invisible and sensed, but not seen. He asked himself if this was his imagination, and answered himself that it was not. There was knowledge there—his years of searching for answers on the academic level had trained a sensitivity into him, a nose that told him when there was information to be discovered.
His problem, Jeebee thought, riding northward under the stars as he moved into the middle of July under the nearly always clear sky, was mostly that same lack of experience on his part.
The problem was that the people writing the books knew what they were talking about, and they were writing mainly for readers who in most cases also knew what they were writing about. Jeebee did not. He had no context into which to fit much of his new information, and as a result, individual facts wandered loosely in his mind trying to partner with other individual facts and finding holes in every fabric his mind attempted to fit them into, as a pattern to explain Wolf.
He crossed Montana’s southern border to the west of Warren, and moved on northward, crossing highway 310 again and passing to the east of Bridger. The country now was either hills and mountains or open, rising range, with very little tree cover. As Paul had advised, he avoided the Crow Indian reservation, now east of him, and swung in fairly close to Silesia. He also passed close to Laurel, but went unusually wide once more around Billings—or what had once been Billings.
There was an uneasy feeling in him that in this part of the country even cities as large as Billings might have survived the crises that had destroyed the cities further east. Billings might still be dangerous at some distance out. To be on the safe side, he headed generally north toward Broadview and Slayton, swinging around the western side of Molt and up through the Halfbreed and Hailstone Wildlife Refuges.
By this time a lot of what he had come to read had had time to soak and work in the back of his mind. As a result, one conclusion was obvious. He would have to work with whatever the books had been able to tell him, and try to apply as much of that as he could to what he had only half understood, by more and closer observation of Wolf.
Happily, Wolf was not spending so much time away from him now. The other showed up frequently during the day and often for short periods traveled along with Jeebee himself. It was the difference in their speed of travel that caused him to veer off as much as he did, Jeebee guessed. Wolf’s normal traveling pace was a trot that was perhaps a mile to two miles an hour faster than the walking speed of the two horses. The horses traveled at roughly three miles an hour, which was also a human’s normal walking speed. But it was not sensible for Jeebee to push them at any faster rate.
The thoughts that had been growing in him from his first acquaintance with Wolf, however, continued to grow. The books, specifically the writings of Harry Frank, had also told him one other remarkably fascinating thing, that the “mind” of the wolf seemed to be sharply divided into two separate systems.
The higher and—to Jeebee—more interesting system harbored a humanlike intelligence. The sorts of tasks wolves had performed under laboratory conditions suggested capacities comparable to the abilities of dolphins, which had stirred so much popular interest in the 1970’s. Compared to their domesticated cousin the dog, for example, their abilities to solve complex problems were truly remarkable. Jeebee himself had seen Wolf use what he could only think of as deception, by “pretending” to play so that he could work close to, or attract the curiosity of, some small animal he hoped to catch.
He had also seen Wolf puzzle out the problem of crossing a small but very fast-running river. A tree had fallen across the river and was partly supported by a rock in midstream with its further end high in the air above the turbulent water and rocks.
Wolf had apparently realized that if he ran out on it and added his own weight to the end, it would tilt down enough so that he could jump to the further bank. Jeebee had observed this while slipping and sliding over the rocks of the same stream bed twenty-five yards downstream, feeling the fast water tugging at his lower legs and threatening to pull him off his feet—while Wolf lay down dry and comfortable, grinning at him from the opposite bank.
A corner of his mind was still busy puzzling over the problem of why understanding Wolf should be so important to him. Part of the reason was obvious, of course. Wolf had come into his life at a time when he felt desperately lonely, at the culmination, in fact, of a life that had been, in many ways, always lonely. He loved Wolf. He could not really assume that this affection was returned, and for purely human emotional reasons he wanted it to be. At least in one sense he was searching for a way to read into Wolf’s behavior the fact that a real, personal affection for his human associate could exist.
But there was something else. There was also some elusive connection between understanding Wolf and the personal dark shadow and nightmare that had pursued him out of Stoketon. Wolf, once understood, might in the similarity of social instincts between his kind and human, offer a deeper understanding of what Jeebee had been working at with the study group in Michigan.
Certainly, what had happened to the world was something that would have been better off not happening. From the creation of the study group, Jeebee had felt that it had been on the track that would lead to some better understanding of the human race and why things happened to it. Possibly it could even have turned out to be a basis for foreseeing and preventing disasters, such as the Collapse itself had triggered.
Certainly, even now, the world ought to be able to pull itself up by its bootstraps again in no more than a couple of centuries, at most—and possibly in much less time. There was too much twentieth-century technology now in existence for the knowledge of it to be lost completely. People like Paul Sanderson would be finding ways to use it, keep it alive, and build it back toward what it was before everything fell apart.
Somehow, he felt, an understanding of the Collapse and why it happened could be tied in with the understanding he needed of Wolf and of what he was. It was an elusive connection, a ghost of a connection, but he had learned to trust such little tickles of queries in his mind.
He had also learned how to deal with them. Which was to put each of them consciously out of mind as much as possible, push ahead, and wait for the back of his head to make connections that the front had been unable to do.
This reaching out for understanding of Wolf had some tie-in to an understanding of why the human race should commit this sort of partial suicide. That was the other element in his need to understand.
They were beyond the large cities now that Billings had been passed. They traveled either in open range or in foothills. It was full summer and the days were often hot. But these passed, and in between them the weather was very pleasant, particularly at night. Jeebee had fallen back into the habit of being the same sort of outdoor creature he had developed into, coming west.
Again he fell into the habit of wearing the same amount of clothing no matter what the temperature was, and being more or less indifferent to whether he needed warmth or was too hot—except that he stowed the leather jacket away. Also, the daily habit of shaving he had resumed briefly at the pass was forgotten. His beard once more was full and black. It was almost as if his clothing had become his pelt, as Wolf’s pelt was his; and there was no reason to think of making changes in it simply to adapt to small changes in temperature.
So he let his beard grow and lived in his clothes. These things were unimportant. Important, was the fact that he was now in territory where he would be more visible and more conspicuous. Consequently his concerns were with the precautions of traveling within the cover of trees, in folds of land, or along river bottoms, as much as possible.
The rivers in these parts, particularly in these midsummer months, were small and not fast flowing. But they tended to have cut their path below the level of the surrounding ground. Also, they were commonly bordered and hidden by thick clumps of willow, occasionally so close-stemmed that passage was difficult.
These willow stands, however, offered a place for him to hide, if he suspected someone else might be about. He could vanish into them, horses and all, and simply stay still until whoever it was had passed, animal or human.
