With these he laced the blanket tightly in place around hisinstep, ankle, and leg. He tied the thongs as tightly as he dared without running the risk of cutting off circulation in the leg. Then he rearranged the saddle and backpack so that he could sit with the leg propped up, his back against a tree trunk.
He was left with his thoughts. Uppermost in his mind was fury at himself for being so careless. A second’s thoughtlessness and he was back to being almost helpless again. It was almost as if an inimical fate had deliberately chosen to kick him when he was most vulnerable.
He shook off the self-pity of that thought. He had simply failed to look, and what had happened was all his own doing. He should have been watching at each step, to make sure the foot was set down on something firm. It had been nothing more than his impatience to get off the slope that had led to this situation.
Not for the first time, he realized how even a small hurt—as small as a sore toe—could threaten the life of a wild animal by crippling its normal ability to escape its enemies and gather or capture its food. He was in exactly that position, simply because he had let himself get hurt again at the wrong time. Low on food, immobilized for at least several more days.
He made himself deliberately consider the brighter side of the situation. He was infinitely better off than any hurt animal. His weapons were still as effective, even though he might be crippled, personally. There was little likelihood anyone would stumble across him here, or that anyone would come hunting him. The slaughtered cow would almost undoubtedly be blamed on the horse nomads if anyone came looking. To his surprise, and as far as he could read sign around the burned ruins, no one had. There remained the fact that he could not climb up to his pack-load where his flour and bacon were. He had no food. Well, a few days without food would not hurt him. The Dilaudid had almost completely lulled the pain in his ankle. He gathered some nearby fallen branches for a fire, but did not light it. He would want it more after dark. He sat back against the tree. The afternoon was wearing on.
He slept.
He was wakened by Wolf licking at his face. It was twilight.
They had their usual greetings; differing only in that Wolf almost immediately appeared to take note of the fact that Jeebee, while being as comradely as ever, did not stir about as usual in the process.
In fact, Wolf made play invitations, and Jeebee, knowing the other better now, suspected they were at least partly a test to see if Jeebee had some reason for not moving.
To put an end to any further speculation, Jeebee lit the fire. Wolf gave up his attentions and settled down by it. Jeebee lay looking at the fire and thinking of how the delay from this turned ankle would affect his plans for travel.
Altogether he had lost more than a week with the bear, and it was into August. At the altitudes even of the flatlands of the ranch territories—here around three thousand feet—he could expect fall weather and even snow as early as late August.
He might be lucky. On the other hand he might not. But, since his memory of his boyhood drive to the ranch was all he had to go on, he probably would have to explore a considerable area to locate his brother’s place. Luckily there was one thing that he had clearly in his memory. It was the brand on his brother’s cattle, which was that of two overlapping triangles. If he saw any cattle with that brand on them, he would know he was close to his goal.
He had taken advantage of the camping period to get out his compass and maps and establish where he was.
At his best estimate, the territory in which his brother’s ranch must lie was still some sixty miles northeast as the crow flew, from where he was now. Going back down to the flatlands, circling any possible habitations, and generally staying out of sight, could triple or quadruple that distance. In all, he figured it could take him at least a couple of weeks to reach the general territory he had to search, moving always at night, at a walk, and stopping to gather food where he could. Then no one could guess how much time for the search itself.
Events had cut his timetable dangerously short. The thought of being caught in a sudden blizzard on the open flatlands before he had found his brother’s ranch was frightening. Under those conditions, he would simply not survive. If he had enough warning of the onset of winter to get off into the hills and den up like an animal in one of the holes in the earth like the one above the shale slope or the one here…
But even then, survival was unlikely.
His ankle was beginning to hurt again. He tried three aspirin to head off the pain. In any case he had some days now to do nothing else but think.
CHAPTER 26
Sometime in the night, pain woke Jeebee. Luckily, the night sky was as clear as the daytime sky had been for several weeks now. That could not last. They were getting to the end of summer and the good weather was bound to break.
He fumbled in the medicine container, found the Dilaudid container by feel, and brought it out, opening it with hands that trembled from pain and the urgency for relief. He stopped himself from taking it just in time. He reclosed the container with extra care and went searching for the Tylenol. Rationally, he knew that taking more than the recommended dose would not help cut the pain more; all the same, he counted out four. Then came a search for the water bag, which had evidently been moved by his body as he slept.
He located it less than an arm’s length away under the flap of tarp, and swallowed water from it to get the pills down. He was shaking now from chill, awake enough again to feel the cold. He scraped together some of the dry wood he had saved and got the fire going. But it cast only feeble heat as the flames slowly caught.
Instinct drove him to movement to warm himself. He crawled around and managed to find more fuel for the fire. Finally, his shivering stopped.
Wolf, curled up beyond the flames, with his bushy tail over his nose tip, regarded Jeebee with drowsy eyes.
He could not go on like this, without some kind of cover to hold in his body heat. He would die of exposure as soon as he ran out of fallen branches close enough to find by firelight. But the blankets were all in the packload up out of his reach. There was no way for him to get his hands high enough even to pull one out—
Swearing at himself for being such an idiot, he started off on hands and knees toward the dark shapes of the horses. Even in the dark, Sally’s silhouette and smaller size distinguished her from Brute.
Crawling to the side of her that was away from Brute, he literally climbed up her leg, pulling himself to his feet. Brute would not have put up with that for a moment, but Sally patiently let herself be used as a series of handholds.
“Good girl,” he panted. Sally turned her head to look at him through the dark. He crouched, jumped upward mightily on his good foot, and twisted; somehow he managed to throw his hurt leg up and over her back. The pain of the movement almost blacked him out for a second. A fury in him helped to beat it back. He pulled himself up on her. She braced herself automatically against his off-center weight as he climbed.
Finally on her back, he pulled himself forward along her neck and urged her up to the tree to which her halter was attached. He untied it and, with knee pressures and heel touches, steered her to the tree holding the packload.
He halted her beside it. He could just make out the dark bulk of it, like an enormous morel mushroom, clinging to the dark tree trunk overhead.