The three had already given up the chase. He saw them on the crest of a rise behind him, sitting their horses, watching. They had given up almost too easily, he thought—and then he remembered the sheep. They would not want to go too far from the flock for which they were responsible.
He continued on, throttling back only a little on his speed. Now that they had seen him, he was anxious to get as far out of their area as possible, before they should pass the word to more adult riders on better horses and armed with better weapons. But he did begin, instinctively, to pay a little more attention to the dangers of rocks and holes in his way.
There was a new, gnawing uneasiness inside him. Dogs meant trouble for him, as one had just demonstrated. Other humans he could watch for and slip by unseen, but dogs had noses and ears to sense him in darkness or behind cover; and sheep-herders meant dogs—lots of them. He had expected cattle, but not sheep, out here. According to the road maps that were all he had to direct him, he should be no further west than a third of the way into South Dakota, by now.
A feeling of utter loneliness flooded through him. He was an outcast; and there was no one and no hope of anyone to stand by him. If he had even one companion to make this long hazardous journey with him, there might be a real chance of his reaching his brother’s place. As it was, what he feared most deeply was that in one of these moments of despair he would simply give up, would stop and turn, or wait to be shot down by armed riders like the ones just now following him. Or he would walk nakedly into some camp or town to be killed and robbed; just to get it all over with.
Now he fought the feeling of loneliness, the despair, forcing himself to think without emotion. What was the best thing for him to do under the circumstances? He would be safer apart from the electric bike; but without it he could not cover ground anywhere near so swiftly.
With luck, using the bike, he could be out of this sheep area in a day or so. With the solar blanket to charge its battery, he could cover ground at the low speed of eight miles an hour for some ten hours, before needing to recharge. Four hundred miles—it was like thinking of some incredible distance; but it was actually only fifty hours of such travel away. The bike would get him there, if he just trusted it. It was a case of simply pushing on through; and simply hoping to outrun trouble, as he just had, when he ran into more of it.
But he must go back to hiding out somewhere during the days and traveling nights only. This daytime travel was too dangerous. Starting right now—but even with a good moon he would have trouble spotting all the rocks and potholes in the path of the bike, off-road like this. And road travel increased his chances of being seen. But the yearning for even a rainy daytime like this one was too strong. No, he would make as much time as he could while the day lasted. When night came, he would decide then whether to ride on…
Thinking this, he topped the small rise he had been climbing and looked down at a river, a good two hundred yards across, flowing swiftly from north to south across his direct path west.
Jeebee stared at the river in dismay. Then, carefully, he rode down the slope before him until he halted the bike at the very edge of the swiftly flowing water.
It was a stream clearly swollen by the spring runoff. It was dangerously full of floating debris and swift of current. He got off the bike and squatted to dip a hand in its waters. They numbed his fingers with a temperature like that of freshly melted snow. He got to his feet and remounted the bike, shaking his head. Calm water, warm water, he could have risked swimming, pushing the bike and his other possessions ahead of him on a makeshift raft. But not a river like this.
He would have to go up- or down-stream until he could find some bridge on which to cross it. Which way? He looked downstream. In the past, it had always led to civilization—which in this case meant habitation and possible enemies. He turned the bike upstream and rode off.
Luckily, the land just beside the river here was still-uncovered floodplain, flat and open. He made good time, cutting across sections where the river looped back on itself and saving as much time as possible. Without warning he came around a bend and saw ahead the end of a bridge; straight and high above the gray, swift waters.
It was a railroad bridge.
His first reaction was pure reflex, out of a civilized time when it was dangerous to try to cross a railway bridge for fear of being caught halfway over by traffic on the rails. Then common sense took over, and his heart and hopes leaped up together. For his purpose a railway bridge and the way along further rails, beyond the bridge, was the best thing he could have encountered.
There would be no traffic on these rails nowadays. And for something like the bike, the right-of-way beside the track should be almost as good as a superhighway. He rode up the sloping bank of the river to the railway grading, stopped to lift the bike onto the ties between the rails just for the bridge crossing alone, and remounted. A brief bumpy ride took him safely across what, moments before, had been an uncrossable barrier.
On the far side of the river, as he had expected, there was plenty of room on the grade top beyond the ends of the ties, on either side, for him to ride the bike. He lifted the machine off the ties to the gravel and took up his journey along the track. He was among cottonwoods now, which blocked his view of the surrounding countryside. The embankment top was pitted at intervals where rain had washed some of the top surfacing down the slope and away, but for the most part it was like traveling a well-kept dirt road, and he made steady time with the throttle at a good ten to fifteen miles per hour.
He was now back into the open landscape he had been passing through earlier, although then the land had nourished few stands of trees. Now, on either side of the track, the land was obscured to the near horizon; until, in the far distance ahead, it curved out of sight entirely among some low hills. And nowhere in view were there any sheep, or in fact any sign of man or beast.
For a rare moment he relaxed and let himself hope. Anywhere west of the Mississippi, across the prairie country, a railroad line could run for long distances between towns. With luck, he could be out of this sheep country already. Further west, Martin had written two years before, in the last of the rare letters Jeebee had gotten from his brother while there had still been mail service, the isolated ranchers of the cattle country had been less affected than most by the breakdown of the machinery of civilization. Law and order, after a fashion at least, was still in existence. But in order to reach there, Jeebee needed to trade off the loot he had picked up from the cellar for things he needed.
First would be a more effective rifle than the .22. The .22 was a good little gun, but it lacked punch. Its slug was too light to have the sort of impact that would stop a charging man or large beast. Wolf, bear, and even an occasional mountain lion, still existed in the Montana area toward which he was headed. To say nothing of wild range cattle, which could be dangerous enough.
Moreover, with a heavier gun he could bring down cattle—or even deer or mountain sheep, if he was lucky enough to stumble across them—to supplement whatever other food supplies he was carrying. Which brought him to his second greatest need, the proper type of food supplies. Canned goods were convenient, but heavy; and impractical to carry by backpack. What he really needed was some irradiated meat. Or, failing that, some powdered soups, plain flour, dried beans or such, and possibly bacon.