Someone had also welded a skid to the middle of the back bar of the frame that held the trailer bed. Jeebee had no idea why. But the skid was ideal for his needs, pulling the loaded wagon up slopes where its back end might otherwise drag on the ground.
As it was, when the two-wheeled wagon stood unhitched on the level, as now, it was tilted only slightly to the rear, resting on the tip of the skid. Obviously, with a tractor pulling it, it would move forward with its bed level and the end of the skid would ride half a foot above the ground.
This was something that Sally and Brute might be able to pull together, if they were willing to work as a team. Also, something they might be able to bring up the untracked slopes between the ranch and his cave.
Jeebee went searching for some sort of double yoke the two horses could wear to pull in tandem. He found nothing, however, and decided he was just as glad he had not.
On the uneven footing of the slopes, where the two horses might not have their backs level at all times, they were probably better off in separate harnesses. With such harnesses, closely tied together, but not so close that one would pull the other off balance by stepping downhill suddenly, they would be much safer.
Accordingly, he made two harnesses out of rope, wrapping soft cloths around any parts of the rope that might chafe. He also worked out a fairly complicated rope tie that would fasten both harnesses to the Y-point of the hitch.
The tie would undoubtedly wear thin and break from time to time, but the ranch had plenty of rope, and the tie could always be replaced.
The day he finished all this it was barely noon. He had come down alone on Brute, so he spent the rest of the day scouting the area between the ranch and his meadow to find a route that followed the gentlest possible slopes. He did not have a great deal of choice in most places. Still, he ended by finding a route that he estimated would probably take three hours or more for the horses with the trailer loaded. But at least it ought to be possible to them.
He had been riding only Brute lately to give Sally a rest after her recent days of having to carry both him and what he was bringing back from the ranch. But the day after scouting the new route, he brought both horses down early.
At the ranch, Brute objected even to being put into his harness. But then, Brute could be expected to object to about anything. Sally was clearly not too pleased with hers, either, but she made no important protest.
The real test came after they had both been harnessed to the empty trailer wagon and Jeebee tried leading them with the wagon behind them. It was well that he had taken a close grip on their halter ropes, because Brute’s first impulse was to bolt. He was clearly under the impression that if he ran quick enough and far enough, he would get rid of the obnoxious device that was trundling behind him.
Jeebee ended by spending most of the afternoon leading the horses around. It was not until late afternoon that he got to the point where he thought he could try standing in the wagon and driving them.
He had rigged long, double reins to each horse. It was not so much that he felt that he needed to hold all four lines in his hands at once as it was the fact that both horses had been trained to neck reining, in which the rein was merely laid against the side of their necks to signal a turn. He had considered that on the slopes with the trailer, a rein could easily fall against the side of a horse’s neck accidentally. Jeebee wanted to take as few chances as possible. If he could train them to mouth reining when they were pulling together like this, it would be safer.
The driving was only partly successful. Jeebee at last gave up trying it. He told himself that in any case, he would not be riding in the trailer when they were actually going up the slopes. He would be walking and leading the horses. Not only was that safer, but they would have load enough without adding his weight to it.
It was getting late in the day. He gave up his original hope of bringing the wagon back to the cave this trip, and unhitched both horses. He rode Brute back, with Sally on a lead rope, as usual.
The next morning early he took them down again, harnessed them to the trailer, and was about to take it back empty as a practice run. But the sheer need to make each trip count as much as possible caused him to put a few items in it.
He bundled these in an old blanket and tied it down to the trailer bed, above the axle. Rope anchored the bundle to the metal railing on all four sides.
Feeling reasonably certain that it would not shift, he began driving the horses along the flatlands, northward, for a little distance. His newer, easier route did not begin until they had reached a sort of cut into the foothills, about half a mile from the ranch house.
Moving across the open flatlands, Brute settled down somewhat to pulling with Sally. Jeebee was optimistic that with time the male horse would become completely used to the work.
When they got to the cut, Jeebee got out of the wagon and began leading the animals. Brute was, if anything, relieved to be led. Still, there were problems of turns, and places where their path was along the bottom of one slope with another at an angle to it, so that the trailer traveled tilted up on one side for a little distance. About twenty minutes into the foothills, the rope hitch broke and had to be retied, so that they were a good four hours finally getting to the cave.
The final half hour of daylight barely saw them into the campsite. Jeebee unhitched the relieved horses inside the closed wire fence to protect the trailer and its load from Wolf. Then he put them in the wooden corral he had been building and carried the bundle into the inner room of the cave.
He started a fire and went back outside to the trailer, closing the fence behind him.
The moment he did, Wolf materialized out of the last of the gathering gloom, and Jeebee came back out of the fenced-in area to go through their regular evening set of greetings. Then Wolf, after some hesitation, gave the trailer as thorough an examination through the fence as he could. Jeebee had carefully placed it so the rope of the harnesses and the trailer hitch were beyond his reach.
Satisfied at last, Wolf came to the fire and lay down.
Sitting, watching the other, Jeebee told himself that Wolf must almost certainly have been following him, out of sight, down to the ranch these last few days, or even weeks. In fact, Wolf had probably been making the route down and back to the ranch parallel to him on many of his trips.
He had certainly not appeared where Jeebee could see him. But that was Wolf’s nature. He had been equally slow to approach Paul’s wagon. He would not want to come into any unknown place until he was sure it was safe to do so, no matter how used he was to seeing it from a distance. Undoubtedly, Jeebee thought as he finally rolled himself in his blankets, Wolf would end up in the long run coming into the buildings with him. Which might pose a problem in Jeebee’s gathering and collecting things he wanted to take back to the cave.
He turned out to be right within the next week. Five days later Wolf appeared just before he got to the ranch and came with him to the edge of its inhabited areas. In the next couple of days he came increasingly closer, until he was actually in among the buildings.
However, after a certain amount of limited exploring, staying as close to Jeebee as he could most of the time, Wolf made himself scarce once more. In the days that followed, Jeebee found that the problem he anticipated never really materialized. Wolf remained shy of entering any enclosed area. Also, many days he simply was not there.
Jeebee realized after some thought that most of his partner’s days needed necessarily to be given to hunting for needed food. Wolf might take some time off from this, but he could not take much. Normally, Jeebee ended up alone with the horses, in his process of getting what he wanted from the ranch.