Time Enough for Love (49 page)

Beulah shivered but was steady. Buck said inquiringly, “
Paaang?
”

I agreed. He nodded and went back to cropping leaves.

We three went up and took a look. Nice and wide now—Not very level, but three tiny blasts took care of that. “What do you think, Buck?”

He looked carefully up and down trail. “Doo wagon?”

“One wagon.”

“Ogay.”

We explored a little farther, planned the next day’s work; then I turned back at the time promised, was home early.

It took me a week to make a couple of kilometers safe to another little alp, a grassy pocket big enough to turn one wagon around at a time. Then it took all of a long day to move our wagons, one at a time, to this next base. Someone had made it that far; I found a broken wagon wheel—salvaged the steel tire and the hub. It went on that way, day after day, slowly, tediously, and at last we were through the notch and headed—mostly—downhill.

But that was worse, not better. The river I had been sure was there, by photomaps from space, was far below us, and we still had to go down, down, down, and follow it a long way before we would reach the place where the gorge opened out into valley suitable for homesteading. More blasting, lots of brush chopping, and sometimes I had to blast trees. But the nastiest part was rappelling those wagons down the steepest places. I didn’t mind steep places going uphill (which we still encountered); a twelve-mule team can drag a single wagon up any slope they can dig their hooves into. But downhill—

Certainly those wagons had brakes. But if the grade is steep, the wagon slides on its tires—then goes over the edge, mules and all.

I couldn’t let that happen even once. Not ever
risk
letting it happen. We could lose one wagon and six mules and still go on. But
I
was not expendable. (Dora would not be in the wagon.) If that wagon cut loose, my chances of jumping clear would be so-so.

If the grade was steep enough to give me even a trace of doubt that I could hold a wagon with its brakes, we did it the hard way: used that expensive imported line to check it down such pitches. Lead the line out fair and free for running, pass the bitter end three times around a tree stout enough to anchor it, secure it to the rear axle—then our four steadiest mules, Ken and Daisy, Beau and Belle, would take the wagon down at a slow walk (no driver) following Buck, while I kept tension on the line, paying it out very slowly.

If terrain permitted, Dora on Betty would take station halfway down to relay orders to Buck. But I could not permit her to be on the trail itself; if that line parted, It would whip. So maybe half the time Buck and I worked without liaison, doing it dead slow and depending on his judgment.

If there was not a sound anchor tree properly positioned—and it seems to me that this happened more often than not—then we had to wait while I worked something out. This could be anything: a sling between two trees, then rig a fairlead to a third tree—A bare-rock anchor using driven pitons—I hated these as I had to do my checking right at the rear axle, walking behind, and God help us all if I stumbled. Then that was always followed by the time-consuming chore of salvaging those pitons—the harder the rock, the better the anchor, but the tougher the job of getting them out—and I
had
to get them out; I would need them farther along.

Sometimes no trees and no rock—Once the anchor was twelve mules faced back along the trail, with Dora soothing them while I checked at a rear axle and Buck controlled the progress.

On the prairie we often made thirty kilometers a day. Once we were through Hopeless Pass and had started down the gorge the distance made good over the ground could be zero for days on end while I prepared the trail ahead, then up to as high as ten kilometers if there were no steep pitches that required rappelling down by line. I used just one unbreakable rule: The trail had to be fully prepared from one turnaround base to the next before a wagon was moved.

Minerva, it was so confounded slow that my “calendar” caught up with me; the sow tittered—and we were not out of the mountains.

I don’t recall ever making a harder decision. Dora was in good shape, but she was halfway through her pregnancy. Turn back (as I had promised myself, without telling her)—or push on and hope to reach lower and fairly level ground before she came to term? Which would be easier on her?

I had to consult her—but
I
had to decide. Responsibility
cannot
be shared. I knew how she would vote before I took the matter up with her: Push on.

But that would be simply her gallant courage;
I
was the one with experience both in wilderness trekking and in childbirth problems.

I studied those photomaps again without learning anything new. Somewhere ahead the gorge opened out into a broad river valley—but how far? I didn’t know because I didn’t know where we were. We had started with an odometer on the right rear wheel of the lead wagon; I had reset it to zero at the pass—and it had lasted only a day or two; a rock or something did it in. I didn’t even know how much altitude we had managed to drop since the pass, or how much more we must lose to get down.

Livestock and equipment: fair. We had lost two mules. Pretty Girl had wandered over the edge one night and broken a leg; all I could do for her was to put her out of her misery. I didn’t butcher her because we had fresh meat and I could not do it where the other mules could not see it, anyhow. John Barleycorn had simply upped and died one night—or possibly lost to a loper; he was partly eaten when we found him.

Three hens were dead and two piglets failed to make it, but the sow seemed willing to suckle the others.

I had only two spare wheels left. Lose two more and the next broken wheel meant abandoning one wagon.

It was the wheels that made up my mind.

(Omitted: approximately 7,000 words which reiterate difficulties in getting down the gorge.)

When we came out on that plateau, we could see the valley stretching out before us.

A
beautiful
valley, Minerva, wide and green and lovely—thousands and thousands of hectares of ideal farmland. The river from the gorge, tame now, meandered lazily between low banks. Facing us, a long, long way off, was a high peak crowned with snow. Its snow line let me guess how high it was—around six thousand meters, for we had now dropped down into subtropics, and only a very high mountain could keep so much snow through a long and very hot summer.

That beautiful mountain, that lush green valley, gave me a feeling of déjà vu. Then I placed it: Mount Hood in the land of my birth back on old Earth, as I had first seen it as a young man. But this valley, this snowcapped peak, had never before been seen by men.

I called out to Buck to halt the march. “Dorable, we’re home. In sight of it, somewhere down in that valley.”

“‘Home,’” she repeated. “Oh, my darling!”

“Don’t sniffle.”

“I wasn’t sniffling!” she answered, sniffling. “But I’ve got an awful good cry saved up and when I get time to, I’m going to use it.”

“All right, dear,” I agreed, “when you have time. Let’s name that mountain ‘Dora Mountain.’”

She looked thoughtful. “No, that’s not its name. That’s Mount Hope. And all this below is Happy Valley.”

“Durable Dora, you’re incurably sentimental.”

“You should talk!” She patted her belly, swollen almost to term. “That’s Happy Valley because it’s where I’m going to have this hungry little beast…and that’s Mount Hope because it
is
.”

Buck had come back to the first wagon and was waiting to find out why we had stopped. “Buck,” I said, pointing, “that’s home out there. We made it. Home, boy. Farm.”

Buck looked out over the valley. “Ogay.”

—in his sleep, Minerva. Not lopers, there wasn’t a mark on Buck. Massive coronary, I think, although I didn’t cut him open to find out. He was simply old and tired. Before we left, I had tried to put him to pasture with John Magee. But Buck didn’t want that. We were his family, Dora and Beulah and I, and he wanted to come along. So I made him mule boss and didn’t work him—I mean I never rode him and never had him in harness. He
did
work, as mule boss, and his patient good judgment got us safely to Happy Valley. We would not have made it without him.

Maybe he could have lived a few years longer turned out to pasture. Or he might have pined away from loneliness soon after we left. Who’s to judge?

I didn’t even consider butchering him; I think Dora would have miscarried if I had so much as broached the idea. But it is foolish to bury a mule when lopers and weather will soon take care of his carcass. So I buried him.

It takes an hellacious big hole to bury a mule; if it hadn’t been soft river-bottom loam, I’d be there yet.

But first I had to deal with personnel problems. Ken was just junior to Beulah in the water queue and was a steady, strong mule who talked fairly well. On the other hand, Beulah had been Buck’s straw boss the whole trek—but I could not recall a gang of mules bossed by a mare.

Minerva, with H. sapiens this would not matter, at least not today on Secundus. But with some sorts of animals it does matter. A boss elephant is female. A boss chicken is a cock, not a hen. A boss dog can be either sex. In a breed where sex controls the matter a man had better by a damn sight go along with their ways.

I decided to see if Beulah could swing it, so I told her to line ’em up for harness, both as a test and because I wanted to move the mules out of sight while I buried Buck—they were nervy and restless; the boss mule’s death had upset them. I don’t know what mules think about death, but they are not indifferent to it.

She promptly got busy, and I kept an eye on Kenny. He accepted it, took his usual place by Daisy. Once I had them messed, Beulah was the only one left over, three mules dead now.

I told Dora that I wanted them moved a few hundred meters away. Would she handle it, with Beulah as march boss? Or would she feel safer if I did it?—and ran into a second problem: Dora wanted to be present when I buried Buck. More than that—“Woodrow, I can help dig. Buck was my friend, too, you know.”

I said, “Dora, I’ll put up with anything at all from a pregnant woman except allowing her to do something that would hurt her.”

“But, dearest, I feel okay, physically—it’s just that I’m dreadfully upset over Buck. So I want to help.”

“I think you are in good shape, too, and I want you to stay that way. You can help best by staying in the wagon. Dora, I haven’t any way to take care of a premature baby, and I don’t want to have to bury a baby as well as Buck.”

Her eyes widened. “You think that would happen?”

“Sweetheart, I don’t know. I’ve known women to hang onto babies under unbelievable hardships. I’ve seen others lose babies for no reason that I could see. The only rule I have about it is: Don’t take unnecessary chances. This one is not necessary.”

So once again we replanned things to suit both of us, though it took an extra hour. I unshackled the second wagon and set up the fence again, put the four goats inside the fence, and left Dora in that wagon. Then I drove the first wagon three or four hundred meters away, unharnessed the mules, and told Beulah to keep them together—and told Ken to help her, and left Fritz to help her, too, and took Lady Mac back with me to watch for lopers or whatever. The visibility was good—no brush, no high grass; the place looked like a tended park. But I was going to be down in a hole; I didn’t want something sneaking up on me or on the wagon. “Lady Macbeth. High sentry.
Up!
”

By agreement Dora stayed in the wagon.

It took all that day to take care of our old friend, with a stop for lunch and a few short breaks for water and to catch my breath in the shade of the wagon—breaks I shared with Lady Mac, letting her get down each time I came up. Plus one interruption—

It was midafternoon and I had dug almost enough hole when Lady Mac barked for me. I was up out of that hole fast, blaster in hand, expecting lopers.

Just a dragon—

I wasn’t especially surprised, Minerva; the well-cropped state of the turf, almost like a lawn, seemed to indicate dragon rather than prairie goat. Those dragons are not dangerous unless one happens to fall on you. They are slow, stupid, and strictly vegetarian. Oh, they’re ugly enough to be frightening; they look like six-legged triceratops. But that’s all. Lopers left them alone because biting armor is unrewarding.

I joined Dora at the wagon. “Ever seen one, hon?”

“Not up close. Goodness, it’s
huge.
”

“It’s a big one, all right. But it will probably turn away. I won’t waste a charge on it if I don’t have to.”

But the durned thing did not turn away. Minerva, I think it was so stupid that it mistook the wagon for a lady dragon. Or the other way around, it is hard to tell male from female. But they are definitely bisexual; two dragons humping is a remarkable sight.

When it got within a hundred meters, I let myself out the fence and took Lady Mac along, as she was quiveringly eager. I doubt if she had ever seen one; they were cleaned out around Top Dollar long before she was whelped. She danced up to it, barking but wary.

I hoped that Lady would cause it to turn aside, but this misshapen rhinoceros paid no attention; it lumbered slowly along, straight for the wagon. So I tickled it with my needle gun between where it should have had lips, to get its attention. It stopped, astounded I think, and opened its mouth wide. That was what I needed, as I did not want to waste maximum power blasting through that armored hide. So—Blaster at minimum, right into its mouth: Scratch one dragon.

It stood there a moment, then slowly collapsed. I called Lady and went back to the fence. Dora was waiting. “May I go look at it?”

I glanced at the Sun. “Sweetheart, I’m going to be pushed to take care of Buck before dark, then fetch the mules back and move us on a way. Unless you are willing to bivouac with the grave on one side and a dead dragon on the other?”

She did not insist, and I got back to work. In another hour I had it deep enough and wide enough—got out block-and-tackle, a triple purchase, secured it to the rear axle, tied Buck’s hind feet together, hooked over the tie and took up the slack.