Wolf and Iron

Either this ranch house was far enough removed from others that its neighbors did not know what had happened, or else these had seen the glow of the flames against the night sky, but prudently decided that they probably were not in numbers sufficient to take on a hundred or more of the horse nomads from an unfortified position. Certainly, none of them were in sight now.

Looking through the glasses, Jeebee was surprised to see how much of the ranch house still stood and how much of it and its outbuildings had survived the fire.

He had noticed before, in crossing the farmlands of northern Indiana, how often a house seemed to have been put on fire and yet the flames had died of their own accord before the building was consumed. Apparently, old and solid pieces of timber, large roof beams and such, had a fair resistance to fire.

It was not simply a matter of starting an edge of one smoldering and expecting the whole thing to continue until the whole thing burned up. Often, he had been able to see where the fire had begun on such a beam and given out. So that sections of the house often still stood, often with part or all of the roof immediately above them in place. He had sheltered in a number of such isolated ruins in his first dash out of Stoketon.

Now, as he looked down, he could see that nearly three quarters of the ranch-house roof seemed intact, although all the windows he could see through the binoculars were little more than blackened holes in the sides of a black and blistered building.

He lowered the binoculars to rest his eyes. It occurred to him that it would not be in the raiders’ best interest to burn the ranch house to the ground, anyway. At least, not until they had a chance to search through it for things they wanted. The first flames to reach it might well have been accidental, blown over from one or more of the burning outbuildings. The raiders might well even have worked to put out the house fire, after resistance from those who lived there ceased, so that the flames would not destroy what they hoped to find within.

However, the more he thought about it, the more it seemed reasonable that there might well be many things still down below that would be useful to him; if and when he had the ability, time, and safety in which to search the ruins.

No live animals were visible about the place. Any horses, milk cattle, dogs or such, which might have once been there, were dead and gone. The bodies of several dead horses, beginning to bloat in the sun, were visible, but at some distance from the ranch house. Possibly they had belonged to the raiders and been killed by the gunfire from the ranch house.

In any case, they were now stripped of their saddles or whatever else they had carried, and simply left to rot.

Jeebee took the binoculars from his eyes and woke to the fact that Wolf was standing beside him. Wolf put his ears back and crouched down slightly as Jeebee’s eyes came on him. He stretched forward to look at Jeebee’s face, and Jeebee reached out reflexively to scratch in the fur under Wolf’s neck and chin.

He was putting the binoculars to his eyes again when he realized he had responded to Wolf without a thought of the guns he had carried, and Wolf must have been beside him for at least several seconds.

Wolves, he remembered from the books he had picked up, never lied. Their intent was always signaled by their body language, and Wolf’s greeting just now had been as friendly as ever.

It struck him that if Wolf was with him now, almost certainly the other had been close to him for most of his trip. It was Wolf’s nature to tag along out of sight, from curiosity. So if Wolf had ever really been instinctively prompted to attack him, it would have happened before now… and his hand would never have had a chance to use any kind of weapon.

A vast, almost guilty sense of relief possessed him. Once more, he admitted to himself bluntly that he had come to love this four-footed companion of his, as he had admitted to himself earlier that he had fallen in love with Merry. Well, he was a human. He had a right to love, because he was capable of loving, whatever other imperatives might drive Wolf’s kind.

A sudden shiver ran through him. He was also capable, he remembered, of killing, too. He had admitted that to himself a long time since, coming up from the root cellar, but he only faced it now as an abiding fact of his character, for the first time. He would kill. He would kill to stay alive, he would kill to get what he needed to survive. He would kill to protect Merry or Wolf.

He was a loving and a killing animal. It was so and there was nothing to be done about it.

His neck muscles were becoming weary from holding his head in a constant lifted position to look over the crest of the ridge. He inched forward slightly with his whole body and lowered his head so that his cheek rested on his good right hand as he stared sideways down at the burned buildings.

Everyone was dead down there. Everyone who could have been down there had to be dead. The ranch house was actually only a couple of hundred yards from him. But it was too far for him to hear anyone pinned under one of those half-burned beams who might still be calling for help, or a baby crying. Common sense said that if there had been any such, the raiders would undoubtedly have slaughtered them, for the sake of killing if for no other reason, just before they left. That kind of killer, he told himself now, he was not—not yet, anyway.

His thoughts went back to the people who had lived below. No, there could be no one alive down there.

He realized abruptly that he was trying to talk himself out of something.

It would be the worst sort of foolishness to go down there. As it was at this moment, the trail of the raiders would draw any attention, if and when the neighbors showed up after all; and if they brought in dogs. Should he go down now, his own trail would be freshest. Though, to be honest, if the books had been correct in telling him that a wolf had to be almost on top of a day-old footprint in order to pick up its scent, it was unlikely that domestic dogs could find or follow anything older.

No, again; it was mostly the thought of the long walk down that hill, the very hard climb back up again, and the possibility of what might result from his going, that made it foolish to go.

But if he did not, he would hear a hurt and abandoned child crying in the back of his mind for the rest of his life.

He got to his feet with the help of his crutch and began cautiously to descend the slope before him. The slope here was greater than the grade a few hundred yards to his right that he must have come up the night before. But straight down would be quicker and he must think about getting back to the horses.

He had gone only a few steps before he realized that Wolf was not with him. He looked back and saw Wolf still standing on the crest of the hill looking down at him.

“That’s right,” Jeebee said to him, “you’re not a damn fool like me.”

He turned his gaze and his attention back to the business of descending the slope. He went down with the end of his crutch dug in, and his feet dug in, sideways to the descent. The last thing he needed now was a fall. The pitch here was not so bad that he would slide or tumble any distance, but the very idea of a fall on the hurt leg and arm made him wince.

He reached the ranch and began his examination of what was left there. He checked all places under or behind which a body might be, and found seven of them. A grown woman, three men, two boys, and a girl—the oldest of the youngsters looking about sixteen. The youngest, which was the girl, looked as if she had been about twelve. They were all dead, and had been dead for some long hours. He did not touch them.

Leaving the ranch buildings, he once more attacked the hill behind it.

There were undoubtedly tools and other things the raiders would not have wanted but he could use, still in the house and outbuildings. Even while searching the house, he had seen a short-handled, three-pound hammer untouched by fire in one of the outbuildings. It was a one-handed sledge or maul, of the kind Nick Gage had described to him. Ideal for use with the sort of backwoods forge Nick had described and Jeebee had lusted to build for his own use someday. But he could not take it now. Even with the crutch, he would have all he could do to make it back to the horses. Besides, the afternoon was getting on.

He turned at last to retrace his way up the slope. The climb was difficult. When he came to the top at last, to relatively level ground, he sat and indulged in rest longer than he had planned. Wolf, he saw, had disappeared again and the day was moving on. Finally, he struggled to his feet and began the long, slow series of small journeys necessary to get back to the horses.

By the time he got there, his arm and leg had begun to hurt very badly indeed. He checked his watch and was relieved to see that somehow he had used up close to six hours since his last Dilaudid. He was entitled to another, although that put him back on the four-pill-a-day dosage he had started with right after the accident. This was the last of the seven days that he had accepted was the most he could risk taking the medication, without