Her eyes clung to Jeebee’s now, as if she was holding on to him with her gaze alone.
“They’d spread out in two fans front and back so that they were out of traverse range of the slots the machine guns could fire through,” she said. “And the fire they’d started at first had gone out. But just as I started watching they got a new fire going, between the wheels and under the bed of the wagon. They were going to heat the metal shell of the wagon, until it drove Dad and Nick out, or cooked them alive.
“I could see them there. They were as thick as crowds used to be at circuses when I was a little girl,” she said. “They were waiting for the fire under the wagon to do their work for them. There was nothing I could do; and I didn’t know what Dad and Nick could do anymore. But he had something to do. He’d just never told me, Dad hadn’t.”
He waited. She bit her lip.
“You didn’t know either what they’d planned, did you?” she said to Jeebee. “They didn’t tell you? No. No, of course, if they wouldn’t tell me, neither Dad nor Nick would ever tell you that. They didn’t tell me because they didn’t want me to know, for fear I might not have ridden off then, in the first place.”
She took a deep breath.
“All of a sudden,” she said, “there was an explosion. It was as if the wagon was one large stick of dynamite. I saw a bright flash for just part of a second, then even from where I was standing, I could feel the air push me, and the sound of it made me deaf for a moment. I was deaf and blind, both, there for a bit—and then I could see that the wagon was gone. All gone. And the raiders who’d been close to it were gone, too. Fifty feet or more away there were things lying that were other, dead raiders. There was no one moving. No one. It was all over. It was done.”
She closed her eyes and sat back in her chair as if she were very weary.
Jeebee got out of his own chair, knelt beside hers, and put his arms around her, holding her head to his head, with the palm of one hand.
“They did it to make sure you got away,” he said. Against the side of his head, he felt her head move in a faint nod.
“Yes,” she whispered.
They stayed together, not moving for some little time. Then Merry stirred, pulling herself out of his arms, and turned to look into his face. She smiled and took his arm, pushing him upward and back toward his seat.
She smiled at him.
“It’s all right now,” she said, “it’s all right now I’ve told you. It’ll never be that bad for me again, now that you know, too.”
Jeebee seated himself, still looking back at her, trying to think of something to say.
There was nothing. After a while she took the coffeepot and filled his cup carefully, then poured a little more into her own and sipped it. They sat there in silence, both of them watching the fire, and from time to time Jeebee bent down to pick up another piece of wood and put it on the fire.
CHAPTER 32
Within the next week, actual winter moved in. It began with a three-day snowstorm that kept them cave-bound. That was followed by a spell of open weather, then by storms at about two-day intervals, on the average, and lasting anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days.
The snow cover on the ground built up rapidly. Jeebee was only able to make two more trips with the trailer. After that, he was reduced to going on snowshoe, without the horses, and pulling the sledge behind him.
In the foothills, particularly among the trees, the depth of the snow cover was exceedingly varied. Some areas were only very lightly covered. Others were ten feet or more deep in drifts. The shale slope was now a single glistening slope of unknown depth, and the less steep slope at the top of the bluff that crowned it was beginning to build up a massive, many-feet-deep cliff of drifted snow, which overhung all the slope below, threateningly.
Jeebee, after checking the area from a respectful distance, ignored it completely. It might be safe to try to cross it with the sledge, but there was no point in taking unnecessary chances. By this time he was familiar with the foothills in the area in any case, and had a variety of routes available to him down to the flatlands.
He settled on one that took him by means of folds of land, either through relatively sheltered, treed areas or down open slopes that were gentle enough so that he would be able to get the sledge back up them.
Several times, he had tried riding the sledge like a child’s sleigh down a slope. But it was almost impossible to guide. The fourth time it landed him deep in a drift that it took him some minutes to dig himself out of. He did not try again.
The ranch, when he had time and reason to visit it, was effectively being buried. The part of the ranch house that had been opened to the elements by fire was drifted deep with snow. Most of the outbuildings either had drifts within them or about them. No part of it any longer offered the shelter that it had given from wind and sleet, on the occasion of his overnight visit, a little earlier in the fall.
His life became a simple one of working on the cave and at the forge. He steadily enlarged and boarded in the cave. He also began real work at the forge, as much to learn from experience as to make what they needed—but in want of both.
Most of what he hammered into shape were things for the inner room in the cave. He made a more sturdy and permanent support for the hooked rod that had suspended kettles and pots over the flames of the fireplace. He also made brackets and support for shelving. Little by little, the inner cave was becoming more homelike.
Wolf had furred out magnificently with the cold weather. He still slept in his favorite corner of the cold room up front. It was evidently uncomfortable for him, fur-coated as he was, to stay in the warmth of the inner cave for any length of time at all. Still he insisted on coming in for his morning and evening greetings, particularly if he had been away from the cave.
Most of the storm time, however, he spent in that same corner, sleeping. It amazed Jeebee that he could sleep so much. When there was nothing going on, apparently, Wolf could sleep for sixteen or more hours, though his sleep was periodically interrupted by small wakings and movings around.
It was hard to keep him out of the inner room, particularly when they were stormbound for more than a day. But he was completely undisciplined as far as his bowel habits were concerned, and Merry now had the throw rugs down on the floor. Jeebee and Merry had gotten into the habit of going into the outer room, dressed for its temperature, to be with him at dawn and twilight, and he would join Jeebee in the smithy, until the heat of the forge drove him back out again.
In fact, the front room was not all that unpleasant. Its walls kept the wind out, and the pale, but sometimes bright, winter light came through its one window and illuminated even its further corners.
The cold-storage pit for the frozen cooked meat was finished and doing its job admirably, protected by the section of fencing Jeebee had brought up from the ranch. It was that same length of fence that had protected him from Wolf’s teasing playfulness while he built the front wall of the cave.