“I can try if he’ll answer. He may not,” Jeebee replied.
He cupped his hands around his mouth, put his head back, and howled. They waited but there was no answer. Jeebee shrugged at Sanderson and howled again. Again, no answer.
“He may not be hearing me,” Jeebee said, “or he may just not feel like answering. Let me try it once more.” He turned more toward the interstate and howled a third time. There was a very long moment of silence. Jeebee shook his head, but just as he did so, from a great distance came the long, train-whistle-like howl. Jeebee smiled at Sanderson.
Sanderson nodded. His face still gave nothing away, but Jeebee got the impression from the way he stood that a great deal of the distant element in his manner had gone out of him. It was almost as if Wolf’s answering howl had struck a strange chord of understanding and friendship in the man toward Jeebee.
“Come on back to the wagon,” he said.
They turned and started back together.
“Tell me about yourself,” Sanderson said as they headed back. “Where are you from, and what brings you here?”
“I’m trying to reach my brother’s ranch in Montana,” Jeebee said. “I ought to be welcome there—and safe. I’m not all that safe by myself.”
Sanderson laughed shortly.
“Not these days, right? Even with the wolf for a partner,” said Sanderson. “But go on. What were you before you started coming west? And how did you get that way?”
He kicked at the site of Jeebee’s fire, uncovering the ashes.
“No. We’re none of us safe these days,” he went on before Jeebee could answer. “I was lucky. I saw it coming about five years ago and started getting ready for it. We’re not safe, either, at the wagon. But we’re safer than most. People’ve got use for a peddler.”
Jeebee did not dare ask why. He wanted to know more about this man he might have to deal with. But he did not feel that a direct question about the other’s background would be welcome. He decided to answer Sanderson’s question about his own.
“I was on the staff of a university,” Jeebee said, “part of a special study group from the University of Michigan. A little over a year ago when things started to get bad, the other people in the group began to leave, looking for safer places to be. Most of us felt pretty safe in the smaller place we were in.”
“And that was—where?” Sanderson asked.
“Stoketon, its name was,” Jeebee said. “Small town. Nice. But things began to go bad, even there, after the electricity and water shut off. And of course any long-distance phoning had been out a long time before that. At any rate, the others began to leave, looking for some place safer. I was the last to go, and I just got away with my life. That was some months ago, early this spring. I’ve been trying to make it to Montana ever since.”
Taking a chance, he added, “You make pretty good time with those horses on the interstate.”
“When we move,” said Sanderson, “but we stop for customers. Tell me how you got this far.”
Sanderson listened with what Jeebee found to be a surprising amount of interest for somebody who was simply a passerby on the highway, and who, by the very nature of his business, must be meeting new people all the time. Jeebee had not really finished talking about his background when they emerged from the set of trees over the highway and came down to the wagon. The girl’s horse was tied to the wagon and she herself was on the wagon seat. She jumped down as they came into sight and came partway to meet them.
“I’m glad you’re back, Dad,” she said. “I was just starting to think about leaving Nick here and going after you after all!”
“That wouldn’t have been smart, Mary,” Sanderson said, shaking his head. “You know I’ve always told you—stick with the wagon. That’s your strong point. Stick with it. You’re like somebody who’s got a fort and runs outside it where they can be picked off, if you leave it.”
He turned to Jeebee. “Jeebee,” he said, “this is my daughter—” Again Jeebee thought he heard the name “Mary.”
“M-e-r-r-y,” spelled the girl, looking hard at him. “Merry!”
“I’ll remember,” said Jeebee, to his own surprise, flushing a little under his beard.
“Merry,” said Sanderson, “this is Jeebee—what did you say that full name of yours was?” he added, turning to Jeebee.
“Jeeris Belamy Walthar,” Jeebee answered.
“Glad to meet you, Jeebee,” Merry said levelly. She glanced at the two rifles Jeebee now carried, one in each hand.
“That’s right, Merry,” Sanderson said. “That’s all our friend here owns, except that wolf of his, and he doesn’t even own that. But I’ve been learning about him.”
Swiftly, and briefly, he sketched in Jeebee’s background for her.
“What I’m thinking, Merry,” Sanderson wound up, “is we might offer Jeebee, here, a chance to earn what he needs.” He turned to Jeebee.
“How would you like to work with us for a couple of months before we turn south? You might just be able to pay for at least part of what extra you need.”
CHAPTER 8
“Dad?” Merry said, and gave him a long look. “You’re sure?”
“He’s alone,” Sanderson answered. “I think he’ll do all right for us.”
Merry said nothing more. It had not been a father-daughter interchange. It had been a statement made by a leader to a subordinate.
“Still and all,” said Sanderson to Jeebee, “why don’t you tell Merry something more about yourself, the way you told me.”
Feeling more than a little awkward, Jeebee tried to explain some of the statistical exploration of the world economy he had been engaged in when the world itself collapsed. He got tangled up in his own explanations and finally gave up. But Merry’s tense animosity toward him, surprisingly, seemed to have relaxed. It was oddly as if both father and daughter looked for understandings outside and beyond normal verbal explanations.
“But this wolf of yours,” said Merry, after a moment when he finally fell silent, “how do you know he’s a wolf, and not just a dog that looks a lot like a wolf?”
This, too, was too complicated to explain. It was hard to explain a conviction born from experience in the hard logic of words. But long since Jeebee himself had given up all doubt.
“He’s not a dog,” said Jeebee.
“Could be a mix,” Sanderson put in, “Dog-wolf. But what difference does it make? Merry, why don’t you show Jeebee around everything.”
“Everything?” Merry frowned at her father.
“Well,” said Sanderson, “you don’t need to take him into our own rooms. But let him look inside the rest of the wagon, see the horses, and everything else.”
“How about having him bring that wolf of his in here first?” Merry asked.
“He won’t come,” said Jeebee. “Not with the rest of you here. You’re strange and he doesn’t trust you.”
“Been shot at, has he?” said Merry.
“Something like that,” said Sanderson, a touch of impatience in his voice. “Give him a quick look around, Merry. Then we can get going again.”
“Come on,” Merry said to Jeebee.
She wheeled her horse around and went back down alongside the wagon at a walk. Jeebee hurried to catch up with her. They were back at the end of the wagon in a few steps. Jeebee had expected to find the horses scattered all over, but they had simply stopped where they were and were peacefully cropping the grass of the median.
“Can you ride?” he heard Merry asking bluntly.
He turned to look up at her. With the shadow of that hat brim of hers over her blue eyes—it was a large, Stetson-like hat—she looked severe.
“Not really,” said Jeebee, uncertain what level of horseback skill she meant by “ride.”