The springs on the trailer were very stiff, designed for heavy loads, like machinery or equipment that needed to be hauled about the ranch. So they were very little use in cushioning the bumps and jolts along the way. Also the trailer was continually tilted either upslope or downslope or sometimes toward one side or another. The result was that Merry had to ride holding on to the top pipe of the fencing that enclosed the body of the trailer, to keep from being thrown off her feet.
In fact, part of the way down there, she got so thoroughly sick of the jolting that she insisted on stopping, getting out, and walking. However, she recognized shortly that she was still not up to an extended tramp of any kind on foot. They compromised by stopping for short rests and Jeebee promised that he would build a sort of padded chair-harness that could be put in the trailer for anyone who wanted to ride in it. It had not occurred to him before, but either one of them could be hurt away from the cave, and need to be transported back to it in the trailer. He began to think about some way of anchoring down and cushioning a bed that could be fastened to the floor of the trailer as well as the harness.
He dropped Merry off at the ranch. He had taken the place so much for granted, he was a little startled to see Merry reacting to it as if it was some sort of potential Christmas tree full of presents. He left her there, worrying a little that she would be disappointed with what a small amount of things there were to find, and went about his hunting.
It turned out to be one of his unsuccessful days. Most of the time he could find cattle fairly easily. But occasionally, from some instinct of self-preservation, they either all seemed to have gone into hiding, or else he was somehow perversely threading a path through all the places where they weren’t.
He had given up and headed back toward the ranch when he found himself startling jackrabbits with the horses and the trailer as he advanced. Apparently, as inexplicably as there were no cattle, there was this area that was suddenly full of the large rodents. The .30/06 was really too heavy a weapon to use on such small animals. A direct hit on the body of one of them simply blew the animal apart. But there were enough of them so that he could try for head shots; and he did end up killing three this way, gutting and cleaning the carcasses and bringing them tied to the railing of the trailer, back to the ranch.
He had hoped that Merry had found a satisfying number of some small things, like the thermometer, so that she would not be disappointed with her visit to the ranch, but he had completely underestimated her.
She apparently caught sight of him while he was still a distance away and came out in the open to wave at him to attract his attention. He waved back and continued on in. She met him happily.
“Bring the trailer around and we’ll load up,” she said.
Jeebee followed her around to the back of the ranch house and found a pile of filled plastic sacks. The sacks he already knew about. There was a stack of them in one of the outbuildings, and no one among the looters had apparently been interested in them. But she now had six of them stuffed full of various things, the actual identity of which he could not see through the milky semi-transparency of the plastic.
CHAPTER 31
“What’s all this?” he said, for there were six of them, the equivalent of large leaf bags, filled full and fastened with wire ties. “I don’t have anything in the trailer. We can carry them all right. But where will we put them when we get back up there?”
“You’ll see,” said Merry. There was very nearly a gleeful look on her face. “Most of it’s light, anyway, and some of the other stuff won’t have to go into the cave at all.”
“What is it?” Jeebee asked.
“Odds and ends—useful things, though,” said Merry, “and a lot of root vegetables from the garden. Some we’ll eat, but a lot we’ll keep as seed to start next spring.”
Jeebee opened his mouth to tell her they would be moving on as soon as the weather was good enough to travel in the spring. But he was stilled by the thought that after what she had been through, it would be wrong to rob her of this moment of pleasure. There would be plenty of time for her to find out that wherever they would be, it would not be around here, when any vegetables they had planted in the spring were ready for harvest.
He had been surprised by the amount of things she had gathered. But he was more surprised—and impressed—when they got back to the cave and she showed him exactly what she had found. The variety was large, from the outdoor thermometer she had talked about earlier, to a number of small cans of various spices, including supplies of salt, sugar, baking powder and baking soda, sacks of dried beans, peas, and other dried vegetables that Jeebee had not even thought to look for.
In addition to these were a number of other small but useful items, including hooks that could be screwed into their plank walls so they could hang up things, and old throw rugs full of holes or half worn away, which had been ignored by the looters—but which Merry now pointed out would be useful not to only make the floor of their cave’s inner room warmer but possibly the walls as well.
She had also brought back a great deal of yarn of various colors.
“Have you done any knitting?” she asked Jeebee.
Jeebee guiltily remembered her pushing knitting needles and yarn on him when he was ready to leave the wagon and emphasizing that he knit things like gloves and caps for his own use.
“No,” he said, “I haven’t had time.”
“Well, you’ll have time this winter,” she told him.
Merry was right about what she had said about the things she had gathered not taking up as much room in the inner part of the cave as Jeebee had expected, once they were stored in an orderly fashion. This was mostly around the walls, except for those things that would be of direct use in the cooking, and these she put next to the fireplace, saying that she would build shelves within reach of the fire to put them.
“In fact,” she said, “we could use a lot of shelving in here. That’s something else I can do while you’re busy with other things.”
Jeebee had to agree with her. Shelves were an obvious thing. He had even thought of them, but not as anything he would get to in the near future. Other things—even the forge for the smithy he needed to build—ranked before such things. But now, of course, the situation was changed.
Jeebee skinned the rabbits—it was a small pat to his ego that he was more experienced at this than Merry. She freely admitted this, saying that she was quite at home with cleaning and preparing domestic animals for cooking, but had little experience with wild game simply because at the wagon they had not eaten much of it.
They put the rabbits on to boil, and Merry cleaned and cut some of the vegetables into the pot with them. Jeebee had taken some from the garden himself, but only from time to time, figuring that it did not have enough vegetables in it so that he could eat them regularly without exhausting the supply.
The vegetables, with the rabbit, therefore, were a treat. The long-term problem of balancing their diet had also been met by Merry in an unexpected way. It had never occurred to Jeebee to look for vitamin pills down at the ranch.
Merry had gone looking and found nearly a year’s supply. She had also come upon a greater find. Jeebee had stared earlier when she pulled a number of bags of dried beans and dried peas from one sack. He had stared harder when, after that, she pulled a good six-inch-wide two-inch-thick wheel of paraffin-covered cheese out of one of the other bags.
“Where did that come from?” Jeebee said. “I could swear I went through that house a dozen times looking for some food that had been missed by the people who robbed it; and they’d taken everything that was ready to eat. I did find some flour, and things like that. But I even looked for a root cellar all around the place and couldn’t find one.”