Time Enough for Love (48 page)

Minerva, it was lucky for me, lucky for Dora, that I was on my sixth pioneering venture and that I had planned how to load spaceships many years before I ever loaded a covered wagon—for the principles are the same; spaceships are the covered wagons of the Galaxy. Get it down to the weight the mules can haul, then chop off 10 percent no matter how it hurts; a broken axle—when you can’t replace it—might as well be a broken neck.

Then add more water to bring it up to 95 percent; the load of water drops off every day.

Knitting needles! Can Dora knit? If not, teach her. I’ve spent many a lonely hour in space knitting sweaters and socks. Yarn? It will be a long time before Dora can tease goat shearings into good yarn—and she can knit for the baby while we travel; keep her happy. Yarn doesn’t weigh much. Wooden needles can be made; even curved metal needles can be shaped from scraps. But pick up both sorts from Rick’s Store.

Oh, my God, I almost missed taking an
ax!

Ax heads and one handle, brush hook, pick-mattock—Minerva, I added and trimmed and discarded, and weighed every item at New Pittsburgh—and we weren’t three kilometers out of there headed for Separation before I knew I had us overloaded. That night we stopped at a homesteader’s cabin, and I traded a new thirty-kilo anvil for his fifteen-kilo one, traded even, with the pound of flesh nearest my heart tossed in for good measure. I swapped other heavy items that we would miss later for a smoked ham and a side of bacon and more corn for the mules—the last being emergency rations.

We lightened the loads again at Separation, and I took another water barrel in trade and filled it because I now had room for another and knew that too heavy a load of water was self-correcting.

I think that extra barrel saved our lives.

The patch of green that Lazarus-Woodrow had pointed out up near the notch of Hopeless Pass proved to be farther away in travel time than he had hoped. On the last day that they struggled toward it neither man nor mule had had anything to drink since dawn the day before. Smith felt lightheaded; the mules were hardly fit to work, they plodded slowly, heads down.

Dora wanted to stop drinking when her husband did. He said to her: “Listen to me, you stupid little tart, you’re
pregnant.
Understand me? Or will it take a fat lip to convince you? I held out four liters when we served the mules; you saw me.”

“I don’t need four liters, Woodrow.”

“Shut up. That’s for you, and the nanny goat, and the chickens. And the cats—cats don’t take much. Dorable, that much water means nothing split among sixteen mules, but it will go a long way among you small fry.”

“Yes, sir. How about Mrs. Porky?”

“Oh, that damned sow! Uh… I’ll give her a half a liter when we stop tonight and I’ll serve her myself. She’s likely to kick it over and take your thumb off, the mood she’s in. And I’ll serve
you
myself, measure it out, and watch you drink it.”

But after a long day and a restless night and then an endless day, they were at last among the first of the trees. It seemed almost cool, and Smith felt that he could smell water—somewhere. He could not see any. “Buck! Oh, Buck! Circle!”

The boss mule did not answer; he had not talked all day. But he brought the column around, cornered the wagons, and nudged the lead pair into the V to be unharnessed.

Smith called the dogs and told them to hunt for water, then started unharnessing. Silently his wife joined him, serving the off mule of each pair while Smith cleared the nigh mule. He appreciated her silence. Dora was, he thought, telepathic to emotions.

Now if I were water somewhere around here, where would I be? Witch for it? Or search the surface first? He felt fairly sure that no stream led away from this stand of trees, but he could not be certain without hiking all the downhill side. Saddle Beulah? Shucks, Beulah was worse off than he was. He started unlashing rolled sections of spike fence from the sides of the second wagon. He had not seen a loper for three days, which meant to him that they were three days closer to their next trouble with the beasts. “Dora, if you feel up to it, you can give me a hand with this.”

She made no comment on the fact that her husband had never before let her help erect the kraal; she simply worried about how drawn and tired he looked and thought about the quarter liter of water she had stolen and hidden—how could she persuade him to drink it?

They were just done when Fritz set up an excited yipping in the distance.

Minerva, it was a water hole—a trickle that came out of a rocky face, ran a couple of meters and formed a pool with no outlet. None that time of year, I should say, as I could see where it overflowed in flood season. I could see also plenty of animal sign—loper tracks and prairie goat and more that I could not identify. I had a feeling that there might be eyes on me, and I tried to grow eyes in the back of my head. It was dusky near the spring; trees and undergrowth were thicker and the Sun was getting low.

I was in a dilemma. I don’t know how it happened that one of the free mules had not found this hole as soon or sooner than the dogs; mules can smell water. But mules were certain to be there soon, and I did not want them to drink too fast. Sensible as a mule is, he’ll drink too fast and too much if he is very thirsty. These mules were extremely thirsty; I wanted to watch each one myself, not let one founder.

Besides that I did not want them walking into that pool; it was clear, seemed clean.

The dogs finished drinking. I looked at Fritz and wished that he could talk as well as a mule. Did I have anything to write on? No, not a durn thing! If I told him to fetch Dora, Fritz would try—but would she come? I had told her flatly to stay in the kraal till I got back. Minerva, I wasn’t thinking straight; the heat and no water had got to me. I should have given Dora contingency instructions…because if I stayed away too long and it started to get dark, she was going to come looking for me no matter what.

Hell, I hadn’t even fetched a bucket!

In the meantime I at least had sense enough to scoop up and drink a couple of handfuls of water, Gideon style. That seemed to clear my head some.

I dropped the straps of my overalls, got my shirt off, soaked it in water, and gave it to Fritz. “Find Dora! Fetch Dora!
Fast!
” I think he thought I had gone nuts, but he left, carrying that wet shirt.

Then the first mule showed up—old Buck, praise Allah!—and I ruined a hat.

That hat Zack had fetched as a present for me. It was alleged to be an all-weather hat, so porous it would let air in, yet so water-repellent that it would keep your head dry in a pouring rain. The former allegation was only moderately true; the latter I had not had a chance to test.

Buck snorted and was all for going into the water up to his knees; I stopped him. Then I offered him a hatful of water. Then a second. And a third.

“Enough for now, Buck. Assembly. Water call.”

With his throat wet Buck could do it. He let out a trumpeting bellow that was mule talk, not English, and I won’t attempt to reproduce it, but it meant “Line up for water” and nothing else. “Fall in to be harnessed” was another sort of bellow.

Then I was trying to cope with a dozen-odd thirst-crazed mules. But between me, Buck, Beulah who was Buck’s straw boss, Lady Macbeth who was used to helping Buck too—and a hat that wasn’t quite all that waterproof—we made it. I never did learn how seniority was established among mules, but the mules knew and Buck enforced it and water call always found them queued up in the same order, and heaven help the youngster who tried crowd in out of turn; the least he could expect was a nipped ear.

By the time the last had been given a hatful of water my hat was a mess—but here came Dora with Fritz, her needle gun in her right fist, and, glory be!—two buckets in her left hand. “Water call!” I told my top sergeant. “Line ’em up again, Buck!”

With two buckets and two of us working we got a full bucket into each mule pretty rapidly. Then I got my shirt back from Fritz, scrubbed out the buckets a bit, filled them, and announced a third water call, telling Buck to let them drink from the pond.

He did so, but he still maintained discipline. As Dora and I left, each with a bucket of water in one hand and a drawn gun in the other, Buck was still requiring them to drink one at a time, by seniority.

It was nearly sundown when Dora and I and the dogs got back to the wagons, almost full dark as we finished watering goats and sow and cats and chickens. Then we celebrated. Minerva, I swear solemnly: On the half bucket of water we saved for ourselves Dora and I got stinkin’ drunk.

Despite earlier resolutions not to stop short of the pass, we bivouacked there three days—but very useful days. The mules grazed steadily and filled out, plenty of water, plenty of forage. I shot a prairie goat at the water hole; what we couldn’t eat, Dora sliced and dried as jerky. I filled all the barrels—not as easy as it sounds as Buck and I had to work out a route to the water hole, then I had to chop some, then I had to take the wagons in one at a time; it took me a day and a half.

But we had cooked fresh meat and all we could eat—and hot baths! With soap. With shampoos. With a shave for me. I carried Dora’s big iron kettle to the pool, she fetched a bucket, I built a fire—then we took turns getting the stink off, one guarding while the other washed.

When we rolled toward the pass the morning of the fourth day, we were not only in fine shape, but Dora and I smelled good and kept telling each other so, in high spirits.

We were never again short of water. There was snow somewhere above us; you could feel it in the breeze and sometimes catch a distant glimpse of white in a saddle between peaks. The higher we got, the oftener we encountered rivulets, water that never reached the prairie in so dry a year. The forage was green and good.

We stopped in a little alp close to the pass. There I left Dora with the wagons and the mules and with flat-footed instructions about what to do in case I did not come back. “I expect to be back by dark. If I am not, you can wait a week. No longer. Understand me?”

“I understand you.”

“All right. At the end of a week, lighten the first wagon by chucking out anything you can do without on trek. Put all food into that wagon, empty the barrels in the second wagon and put them in the first wagon, turn the sow and the chickens loose, and head back. Fill all your barrels at that trickle we crossed earlier today. After that, don’t stop for anything; roll all day from dawn till dark. You should reach Separation in half the time it took to get us up here. Okay?”

“No, sir.”

Minerva, a few centuries earlier I would have started to boil up at that point. But I had learned. It took me about a tenth of a second to realize that I could not make her do anything—if I were gone—and that a promise made under duress won’t hold. “All right, Dora, tell me why not and what you intend to do instead. If I don’t like it, perhaps we both will start back for Separation.”

“Woodrow, while you did not say so, you are asking me to do what I should do—and I
would
do!—if I were a widow.”

I nodded. “Yes, that’s right. Dearest, if I’m not back in a week, you’re a widow. No possible doubt.”

“I understand that. I also understand why you are leaving the wagons here; you can’t be sure that you can turn them around higher up.”

“Yes. That’s probably what happened to earlier parties—reached a place where they couldn’t go forward and couldn’t turn around…then tried one or the other and went over.”

“Yes. But, my husband, you mean to be gone only one day—half a day out, half a day back. Woodrow, I won’t assume that you are dead—I
can’t!
” She looked at me steadily and her eyes filled with tears, but she did not cry. “I must see your dear body, I must be certain. If I am certain, I will go back to Separation as fast and as safely as possible. And then to the Magees as you have told me, and have your child and bring him up to be as much like his father as possible. But I must
know.
”

“Dora, Dora! In one week you
will
know. No need to look for my bones.”

“May I finish, sir? If you aren’t back tonight, I’m on my own. At dawn tomorrow I start out on Betty, with another saddle mule following. At noon I turn back.

“Perhaps, if I can’t find you, I’ll find a spot higher up where I can take one wagon and turn it around. If I find such a spot, I’ll move one wagon up and use it as a base and look farther. I could have missed your track. Or I might have followed mule tracks—but you aren’t on the mule. Whatever it is, I’ll search and search again. Until there’s no hope at all!
Then
… I will go to Separation as fast as mules can get me there.

“But, my darling, if you are alive—maybe with a broken leg but alive—if you still have a knife or even your bare hands, I don’t believe that a loper or anything can kill you. If you are alive, I’ll find you. I will!”

So I backed down and checked watches with her and agreed on what time I would turn back. Then Buck and I, with me up on Beulah, set out to scout ahead.

Minerva, at least four parties had tried that pass; none had come back. I’m certain enough that they each failed from being too eager, not patient enough, unwilling to turn back when the risk was too great.

Patience I have learned. The centuries may not give a man wisdom, but he acquires patience or he doesn’t live through them. That first morning we found the first spot that was too tight. Oh, someone had blasted there and probably got around that turn. But it was too narrow to be safe, so I blasted some more. Nobody in his right mind takes a wagon into the mountains without dynamite or some such; you can’t nibble at solid rock with a toothpick, or even a pickax, without risking being still up there when the snows come.

I was not using dynamite. Oh, anyone with a modicum of chemistry can make both dynamite and black powder, and I planned to do both—later. What I had with me was a more efficient and more flexible blasting jetty—and not shock-sensitive, perfectly safe in wagon and saddlebag.

I placed that first charge in a crack where I thought it would do the most good, set the fuse but did not light it, then walked both mules back around the bend and exerted my histrionic talent to its limit to explain to Buck and Beulah that there was going to be a loud noise, a
bang!—
but it could not hurt them, so don’t worry. Then I went back, lit the fuse, hurried back to them and was in time to have an arm on each neck—watched my watch. “Now!” I said, and the mountain obliged me with
Ka-boom!