It was tempting to take a single battery and headlamp from one of the tractors, where it was easy to get off, and carry it back up to the campsite with him. Up there he might be able to monkey with it and the solar-cell blanket to see if he could not charge up the battery and get the headlamp to light, even if dimly, for a short while.
But it would be wrong to put that much unnecessary weight on Sally in addition to his own; on this first trip at any rate. The horses were his most valuable possession. He must not risk hurting or overworking either of them.
It would be much better to take a few useful but light things in addition to the wire. He ended by bundling a number of small tools into one of the blankets, including paper and some pencils that had been ignored by the raiders. These, in particular, he grabbed up happily.
From his young days, when he had first tried to make drawings of the inner workings of the clocks and radios he worked with, he had developed a habit of thinking with a pencil in his hands. He was used to thinking on paper—or on a computer screen. Now he could sit down and draw plans, not only of the cave, but of the means of bringing up to it some of the heavier, or more awkward, items.
To these items, wadded in the second blanket, he added only one old, tattered blanket-coat that he had found in an outbuilding. All other clothing had apparently been taken by the raiders, who would probably wear it without taking it off until it fell apart on them, then throw it away in the expectation of replacing it from some other looted place down the line.
This bundle he put inside the roll of wire, to secure it for the ride, tying it tightly into place. Happily, the raiders had evidently had no use for most of the light and heavy rope to be found in the outbuildings.
Once more in the saddle, he took the same route back to camp. When he got there, he enclosed everything, including the blanket he had used as a pad for Sally, in the middle of the roll of wire.
Once more, he pulled his trick of kneeling on Sally’s back. It was a great deal more comfortable this time, now that his kneeling was being done on the saddle. He tied the stuffed wire roll up in a different tree from that which held the packload, using some of the extra rope he had brought back from the ranch. He fastened it at a height where he was pretty sure it would be out of reach of Wolf. In any case, there was nothing in the bundle that resembled food, so Wolf’s only attraction to it would be curiosity. That might be enough to keep him from trying to climb the tree just to get his teeth into the bundle.
Wolf had not been there when he got back, and still had not returned by the time he had put the bundle up and unsaddled Sally. In the last few days, Wolf’s unusual, frequent visits had lessened in number, until he was coming in only two or three times a day. It occurred to Jeebee that he might have visited the campsite while Jeebee was gone. If so, any feeling his partner might have that Jeebee was no longer able to find his own food would have been eradicated. Now Jeebee thought that most likely Wolf would probably not return again until his usual time of twilight.
Jeebee spent the nearly two hours of workable daylight at a sketch of what he would build on the front of the cave.
There had been a posthole digger in one of the outbuildings. That, quite naturally, had been one of the things for which the raiders had no use. He decided now that one solution to the problem of bringing long lengths of plank from the ranch up to the cave was to bring a larger number of short ones. As a result he had sketched out a series of postholes running along the face of the bluff, in which he could stand upright lengths of doubled two- by-fours nailed together. Then he could nail the short lengths of planks between them to make a solid wall.
There were some twelve-foot lengths of two-by-fours stored in one of the outbuildings. At least enough to build the series of posts Jeebee had in mind.
He would space his posts not more than three feet apart. Twelve of them, therefore, should mark out the front of his cave-home-to-be. That would include those needed for the extra small wall that would tie the far end of the front into the bluff to make the blacksmithing area.
He was still refining his sketch of this, squinting at the much-erased paper of the large pad he had brought back with him, when a furry face pushed itself between the paper and his nose. Wolf was back.
Jeebee welcomed him with unusual exuberance.
After the greeting ceremony was over, Jeebee got the fire going and began to realize that he had not eaten since morning. He had prudently resolved not to try to get at his cooked meat while Wolf was around. Unfortunately, in this case he had waited until too late in the day.
He was tempted to take Sally over to the tree and reach up into the bag of meat enough to get out several handfuls of the cooked chunks. Then he could stay where he was, throw some of the chunks to Wolf, and eat the rest himself, seated on horseback.
The plan was theoretically workable, but it would draw Wolf’s attention particularly to the bag of cooked meat. At Jeebee’s best estimate, it was out of Wolf’s reach and he already knew it was there. But Jeebee had the sneaking feeling that the less attention paid to it, the better. He did not know how Wolf might find a way to reach it, but he had gotten to the point where he believed almost anything was possible to the other.
Besides, it would not be the first meal he had skipped.
He put the thought of eating out of his mind; and after a while of sitting, gazing into the fire and half thinking, half dreaming of the cave home as it eventually could be, he rolled up in his blankets, ready for sleep. It would be two or three days anyway before his left ankle would be strong enough for him to risk trying to ride Brute and handle the more temperamental horse in the matter of carrying or dragging things back from the ranch.
He could use those days by riding Sally down, having her pull back a bundle of the twelve-foot-long two-by- fours, with the front ends elevated and the back ends scraping along the ground, plus a few other things that he could not only keep safe from Wolf, but use right away. It was a temptation to bring the posthole digger up without further delay. But it would be awkward to drag, and it was too long and rigid to be carried conveniently behind the saddle.
He reminded himself sensibly that the only way he could use the tool would be by standing firmly on one foot while driving the spade end of the digger into the ground with the other. The sprained ankle was probably still some days away from being used either way.
The thought of redamaging the ankle by trying to drive the posthole digger into the ground, or of turning it again by trying to stand on that foot alone, was unnerving. The last thing he needed now was to be laid up again for another long period.
He measured and marked the spots to erect the two-by-fours before settling down with the fire and Wolf for the night.
The next three days, he was busy bringing up equipment from the ranch, and he brought the posthole digger after all, as well as a saw and other tools and a collapsible metal ladder he found laid up on the rafters of one of the less completely burned outbuildings. He hid the ladder under the two sleeping blankets he lay upon, and was lying upon them when Wolf showed up, the third evening.
He had not been at all sure that Wolf, scenting or otherwise figuring out that something was there, would not root between the blankets to investigate, but Wolf did not. Three days later, using the hole digger by standing gingerly on his bad ankle, he successfully had four of the posts up at the campsite. Wolf investigated these with great interest when he came back, urinated on them, and gnawed on a few of them, but without doing any great damage.
Jeebee, looking over the tooth-marked pieces of lumber, decided that they were usable as they were, after all. Gradually, the rest of the postholes got dug. Wolf showed up at one time when he was still using the posthole digger, and when Jeebee had laid it down for a moment, tried to carry it off. But it was both heavy and awkward, and when Jeebee pretended to become very interested in something at the other side of the meadow, paying no attention to him at all, Wolf dropped the digger and trotted over to find out what was attractive there.
When Wolf came up, Jeebee engaged him for a little time in play, and then lay down on his blankets. Wolf lay down also. But it was still only late afternoon and whatever impulse had brought him back had now been satisfied or forgotten. He disappeared again.
In spite of the fact that Wolf was gone, however, Jeebee prudently ignored the posthole digger, letting it lie where it was overnight. The following day, after Wolf had disappeared, he tried something new. He got down the roll of fencing and fenced himself in against the face of the bluff with the wire in a semicircle around him, held upright by angle-iron posts from the garden patch, its end stakes driven into the vertical face of the bluff.
Jeebee had no doubt that if Wolf made a serious effort, he could pull the stakes out, one by one, but he
