After a long moment, creakily, he turned to the business of excavating the sledge. He was grateful for the fact that he had not had time to acquire a load, so that he had been able to lift it enough to crawl under it.
He suddenly realized he was ravenous.
His pack was the only thing that had been on the sledge. He looked, and it was still there, securely tied down. He untied it and got out the food he had brought along for the trip. It was frozen as hard as a rock.
Sensibly, Merry had packaged it in small chunks. It was a mixture of dried beef and cooked vegetables with a good deal of beef fat included. Each chunk was about the size of a golf ball. He put half a dozen of these inside the top layers of his clothing so that his body’s heat would thaw them. Stiffly, he got to his feet, took up the reins of the now-freed sledge, and started heading back toward the cave.
The weather, though frigid, had turned good again. Theoretically he could now continue hunting. But he felt in no shape to hunt at the moment. The time he had spent under the snowdrift, and fighting the storm before that, had taken something out of him. He wanted only to get back to the cave, warm up, and rest up. He turned toward the foothills, pulling the heavy, unhandy weight of the sledge along with him only because he could not afford to leave it behind.
It seemed he pulled for some time before he reached the first slopes of the foothills. He had felt barely up to the work of getting here when he had started. But the labor had warmed him. He felt better, instead of worse, for the struggle. At the bottom of the first slope, he stopped and checked the frozen food inside his clothing.
It was thawed enough to eat.
Sitting down heavily on the sledge, he chewed and swallowed. The food seemed to bring him the rest of the way back to life. Particularly, the fat Merry had mixed into it tasted sweeter to him than any sugar, and he could almost feel it refueling his weary body.
When he had finished eating, he felt almost strong enough to go back to his hunting, after all. But caution laid a hand on him. He had barely survived one storm, as much by luck as anything else. He was in no shape to risk another. Before he went down on these winter plains again he must work out, not only a plan, but all the things he would need to carry with him to dig in properly and survive future storms.
For one thing, in the future he should take along more food, extra clothing, and anything else that such an emergency might call for. Thinking of this, he made the long, panting climb back to the cave. It was only a little past noon when he got there, but he felt as if he had barely had the strength to make it home.
He mumbled an explanation to Merry as she helped him off with his outer clothing. He was too worn out to eat even the food she offered. All he wanted was to crawl into their bed under a mountain of blankets; and when at last he did, he dropped immediately into deep slumber.
But this time, as dreamless sleep enclosed him, he was conscious of being finally, undeniably, completely warm.
When he woke, it was in a slow float back into awareness and the realization, from Merry’s activity around the cave, that he had slept only about three or four hours. Wolf had apparently not come home yet, to rouse him for the regular twilight greeting ceremony. Still, Merry had food starting to cook for what must be their evening meal.
“Feel better?” she asked now as he got up and began rubbing the last of the sleep from his eyes.
He sat on the edge of the bed.
“A lot better,” he said. Indeed, he was surprised just how much better he felt. It was as if his sleep during the storm and under the snowdrift afterward had been no real sleep at all. But the few hours he had just passed felt as if they had been some of the most restful unconsciousness he could remember in years. He told himself that the feeling was probably just the fact that he was safely back inside the cave, with her.
“Nothing like home,” he told her.
Merry smiled. The smile was her usual bright smile. But, in addition, there was some sort of glow about her that was brighter than usual. As if someone had just given her a much-wanted present.
He found the lighter pair of pants he normally wore in the warmth of the cave, taking them down from their hook where Merry had hung them, and pulled them on, tucking his shirt in. He had slept in his shirt over her objections, not wanting to give up anything that might help bring warmth back to his body. Dressed, he went over and kissed Merry gratefully, and she kissed him back with particular enthusiasm.
“Have we time?” he asked. Her glow had invaded him.
“Yes—no,” said Merry. She pushed him toward his chair at the table. “Sit down. Dinner’s going to be ready in a minute.”
He sat.
“Wolf hasn’t been around?”
“He got back about half an hour ago,” she answered. “I went outside to be with him for a bit and let you sleep. He was walking sore-footed—you know the way he does when he’s covered a lot of distance. He curled up in his corner. I think he’s still there.”
Jeebee stretched without getting up from his chair, pushing his hands high above his head, which was something he could not do standing upright. The ceiling was still too low. Someday, he told himself, he would fix that.
Sitting there while she got the meal on, he told her more about the storm than he had done in his brief mumble on getting home. She was sympathetic, but he noticed that the glow about her did not diminish. It puzzled and intrigued him. Aside from the fact that he could feel that it would not be right to ask the reason for it, his own nature was not one that asked personal questions easily. So, as he had waited for her to tell him about what had happened to her father and Nick, he waited now for the explanation of why she glowed.
She sat down with him at the table. As they ate, the talk switched to things needing to be done in the cave. Their meat supply called for at most only a couple more successful hunting trips, one being to replace the one he had just aborted because of the storm. He began to tell her what he had in mind to add to his supplies for any such trip, from now on. One would be a sort of homemade sleeping bag, rather than the blankets he usually rolled himself in. Two, he should put a series of blocks or handles on the side of the sledge that would allow him to lift it, even if loaded, while he was lying flat on the snow surface beside it.
Also, he wanted an extra-light emergency pack, in addition to the one he wore always on his back. Another one that would carry only some food and perhaps a few other necessary things. Just such a sudden storm as he had experienced could last up to two days, under the sledge and the snow. He ought to be prepared with adequate means to keep him warm and fed that long.
His curiosity over this glow of hers went unsatisfied all through dinner and until Merry had cleared the table, scraping what little was left to scrape off their dishes into the coals of the fire and putting the dishes themselves to soak in a warm pot of water.
Having done this last, she wiped her hands on one of the cloths from the ranch she had chosen and laundered to act as dish towels and turned from the fire to confront him, still in his chair.
“I’ve got something to tell you,” she said.
Jeebee’s heart skipped a beat. In spite of himself a feeling of alarm kindled inside him. What might be good news from Merry’s viewpoint might well contain the seeds of something that would mean trouble for them both, seeds she might not suspect were there. But he smiled up at her.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I’m pregnant,” Merry almost sang.
“My God!”
Jeebee erupted from the chair. The glow had suddenly gone out of Merry. She stared at him grimly.