“Are we close to it?” Paul asked, gazing steadily at Jeebee.
“We’ve passed it, actually,” said Jeebee. “It’s behind us and to the north a ways; in fact, just at a guess, it’d be about five days back by wagon. Then on foot, maybe a three-day walk to the north. Then a day or two to hunt around and gather the grain, and three days coming back.”
“Well”—Paul sat thinking for a minute—“it’d take a couple of people, with packhorses, to make that trip properly. That means, of course, that whoever goes is going to have to cover those five days it took the wagon to get this far, in about a day or two of reasonable riding with the horses, because of all the stops we’ve made. Leg to the north would probably be… maybe two days by horseback?”
“I don’t know,” said Jeebee. “I’ve done all my traveling by myself on foot, I tend to think that way. I know where it was or is, from being told about it, about three years ago. But I’ve never been there, and finding it now that things have changed may take a little time. Exactly where it is, that is. But I definitely remember it was outside a little town called Wayne, north of here.”
Nick stuck his head curiously out the front entrance to the wagon behind them, just as Merry rode up, looking as annoyed as one of the horses.
“What’s going on?” she demanded. “What are we stopping here for?”
“Jeebee may’ve come up with something very good for us,” Paul said briefly.
The look of annoyance disappeared from Merry’s face. She looked at Jeebee curiously and said nothing.
“Go on,” Paul said to Jeebee. “Tell them.”
He did; and they listened.
CHAPTER 13
It was just a few minutes to noon, four days later. Jeebee and Merry reined their riding horses to a stop on the top of a small, open rise that gave them the advantage of a little altitude from which to survey the countryside. Behind them, the packhorses on the lead rope that connected them, the end of which was tied to Merry’s saddle, stopped patiently where they were, dropped their heads, and started to crop at the sparse ground cover on the sandy soil of the hill.
They got out their binoculars and began to scan the surrounding territory. What Jeebee was now using was a superb pair of Bausch and Lomb Elite, eight-by-forty glasses that had been lent him by Paul for the trip. Merry, with another pair of glasses just like his, scanned the left half of the visible landscape while he scanned the right.
“We’ll stand out like a bright light up here, if anybody’s watching,” Jeebee grumbled. His months of travel before he had met the wagon had trained him to stay undercover, avoiding places where he might be outlined against the sky; and he felt uneasy in any place as open as this.
“Can’t be helped,” Merry replied, without taking the glasses from her eyes. “All I see on this side is clumps of woods and a few fields. No sign of State Highway 37. But it has to be there, somewhere.”
She lowered her glasses.
“We can see for miles,” she said, “and you didn’t argue when I suggested coming up here.”
“No,” said Jeebee.
He lowered his glasses and saw her putting her own down. They both tucked them back into the binocular cases that were strapped to the side of their saddles, and Merry got out a map, which she unfolded against her saddle horn.
She stopped as she saw Jeebee fumbling for something inside his backpack, which was now secured behind his saddle.
“What’s that?” she asked as he brought it out.
“This is one of my maps,” said Jeebee. “It covers this area, too.”
He unfolded the map. It showed slanting, parallel lines drawn clear across the face of it from top to bottom. “Time to get out the compass.”
As Merry stared, he unbuttoned his shirt and withdrew the compass that hung around his neck. His unfolded map lay on the flat surface of the pack behind his saddle and he turned to lay his compass upon it.
“There!” he said. “You see that bend of the river just beyond those trees about five miles off. Now that’s got to be, according to this map, part of Cross River, and let’s see, the azimuth on that would be… about thirty-seven degrees off of magnetic north and figure about five miles on a back azimuth and that would put us right about here.”
He used the base plate of the compass to draw another line on the map and then made a small dot.
“Now the road we’re after is here… ” He laid the compass on the map once more and rotated the capsule that housed the needle. “About sixty-eight degrees and I’d figure less than two miles before the river takes a bend and runs away from us.”
He folded up the map, put it away, and put the compass—it was a Finnish Suunto on its cord—back around his neck and inside his shirt. He tucked the map away and turned to Merry, who had been watching him intently all this time.
“We go that way,” he said. “It shouldn’t take us much time at all.”
She was still staring at him.
“It’s called orienteering, in simple form,” he said. “If you draw lines on your map parallel to magnetic north, you don’t need to bother with all the fussy little calculations that adjust for the difference between true north and magnetic north. You just use the compass to measure angles—like a protractor.”
He mounted and led off. He did not look back, but he could hear her moving after him, along with the packhorses, as he rode down the hill and off in the direction he had indicated. A pleasant glow of accomplishment encompassed him, but he was too wise by this time to show it to her in any obvious manner.
“Was that,” Merry asked, moving her horse up to ride level with him, “the reason you didn’t object when I first suggested going up there?”
“Partly,” said Jeebee. “We might just have sighted the road, of course.”
“But you hoped we wouldn’t,” said Merry, “so you could show off this orienteering business.”
It was true, of course, but he was not about to admit it. Not when he had at last found something he could do better than she could. “It always pays to check the general area occasionally,” he answered.
Nothing more was said until they were among the trees of a patch of woods along the road they had been seeking.
Meanwhile, Jeebee had been busy thinking. It would not only be quicker but safer to cut straight across to their destination; or at least to the area of their destination, since Jeebee knew only the general location of the former seed farm. It would save them at least a day’s travel time if they went directly. On the other hand, he was hesitant about trying to force his point of view on Merry.
All his weeks of working westward alone, using orienteering as a check to make sure he was traveling in the right direction, had him uneasy now at having to depend on her way of finding their destination. At the same time, he did not want to challenge her methods without strong reason.
She had taken for granted from the start that she would be in command of the expedition. All Jeebee was supposed to supply were directions. This had also been taken for granted by her father and Nick. None of them thought too highly of him as someone who could take care of himself, let alone one other person and a string of valuable horses, while traveling through territory that was unknown and could well contain at least some hostile people.
He had been a little surprised at first that Merry should be the one Paul had chosen to go with him; particularly after Paul’s earlier objections to her going up into the trees by the highway, alone. But this was plainly a decision that required that some risks be taken. In the end, the decision had been obvious. The wagon remained the anchor point for father, daughter, and Nick. Paul himself could not quit it any more easily than a ship captain could abandon his vessel to go off on a side trip or a venture.