If Woodrow Wilson Smith limped back into Separation on foot, his wife riding-miscarried but still alive-it still would not be defeat. He had his hands, he bad his brain, he had the strongest of human incentives: a wife to care for and cherish. In a few years they might try Hopeless Pass again-and not make the mistakes he had made the first time.
In the meantime he was happy, with all the wealth any man could hope for.
Smith leaned out Of the wagon seat. "Hey, Buck! Supper."
"Shupper dime," Buck repeated, then called out, "Shupper dime! Shirko nigh! Shirko nigh!" The lead pair turned left, started bringing the train around in a circle.
Dora said, "The Sun is still high"
"Yes," her husband agreed, "and that's why. The Sun is high, it's very hot, the mules are tired and sweaty and hungry and thirsty. I want them to graze. Tomorrow we'll be up before dawn and rolling at first light-make as many kilometers as possible before it gets too bloody hot. Then another early stop."
"I wasn't questioning it, dear; I simply wanted to know why. I'm finding that being a schoolmarm hasn't taught me all I need to know to be a pioneer wife."
"I understood; that's why I explained. Dora, always ask me if I do anything you don't understand; you do have to know...because if something happens to me, then it'll be up to you. Just hold your questions until later if I seem to be in a hurry."
"I'll try, Woodrow-I am trying. I'm hot and thirsty myself; those poor dears must be feeling it dreadfully. If you can spare me, I'll water them while you unharness."
"No, Dora."
"But- Sorry."
"Damn it, I said always to ask why. But I was about to explain. First we let them graze an hour. That will cool them down some in spite of the Sun, and, being thirsty, they'll look for short green stuff under this tall dry stuff. They will get a little moisture out of that. Meantime I'm' going to measure the water barrels, but I know that we're going on short water rations. Should've yesterday. Dorable, you see that patch of dark green way up there below the pass? I think there water there, dry as it's been...and pray hard that there is, because I don't expect to find water between here and there. We may have no water at all the last day or so. It doesn't take a mule long to die without water and not much longer for a man."
"Woodrow, is it as bad as that?"
"It is, dear. That's why I've been studying the photomaps. The clearest ones Andy and I made a long time ago, when we surveyed this planet-but in early spring for this hemisphere. The shots Zack took for me aren't much; the Andy J. isn't equipped as a survey ship. As may be, I took this route because it looked faster. But every wash we've crossed the past ten days has been bone dry. My mistake and it may be my last one."
"Woodrow! Don't talk that way!"
"Sorry, dear. But there is always a last mistake. I'll do my damndest to see that this is not my last mistake-because it must not happen to you. I'm simply trying to impress you with how carefully we must conserve water."
"You've impressed me. I'll be most careful with cleaning up and so forth."
"I still haven't made it clear. There will be no washing at all-not a face wash, not even a hand wash. Pans and such you'll scour with dirt and grass and put them in the sunshine and hope they sterilize. Water is only for drinking. The mules go on half water rations at once, and you and I, instead of the liter and a half of liquid each day a human is supposed to need, will each try to get by on a half liter. Uh, Mrs. Whiskers will get a full ration of water; she has to make milk for her kids. If it gets too tough, we slaughter the kids and let her dry up."
"Oh, dear."
"We may not have to. But, Dora, we aren't even close to last extremities. If the going gets really tough, we kill a mule and drink its blood."
"What! Why, they're our friends!"
"Dora, listen to your old man. I promise you that we will never kill Buck, or Beulah, or Betty. If I must, it will be a mule we bought n New Pittsburgh. But if one of our three old friends die-we eat him. Her."
"I don't think I could."
"You will when you're hungry enough. If you think about the baby, inside you, you'll eat without hesitation and bless your dead friend for helping to keep your baby alive. Don't talk about what you can't do when the chips are down, dear- because you can. Did Helen ever tell you stories about the first winter here?"
"No. She said I didn't need to know."
"Could be she was mistaken. I'll tell you one of the less grisly ones. We placed-I placed-a heel-and-toe watch over the seed, grain with orders to shoot to kill. And one guard did. A drumhead court-martial exonerated the guard; the man he killed was clearly stealing seed grain-his corpse had half-chewed grain in its mouth. Not Helen's husband, by the way; he died like a gentleman-malnutrition and some fever I never identified."
Smith added, "Buck's got us hauled around. Let's get busy." He jumped down, reached up to help her. "And smile, baby, smile!-this show is being transmitted back to Earth to show those poor crowded people how easy it is to take a new planet-courtesy of DuBarry's Delicious Deodorants, of which I need a bucketful."
She smiled. "I stink worse than you do, my love."
"That's better, darling; we'll make it. It's just the first step that's a dilly. Oh, yes! No cooking fire."
"'No f-' Yes, sir."
"Nor any until we get out of this dry stuff. Don't strike a light for any reason-even if you've dropped your rubies and can't find them."
"'Rubies-' Woodrow, it was wonderful of you to give me rubies. But right now I would swap them for another barrel of water."
"No, you wouldn't, dearest, because rubies don't weigh anything and I took every barrel the mules could haul. I was delighted that Zack had those rubies along and I could give them to you. A bride should be cherished. Let's take care of these tired mules."
After they turned the mules loose, Dora tried to figure out what she could feed her husband without the use of fire while Smith got busy on the fence. The fence was not much, but having only two wagons, they could not form a proper defensive circle; the best that could be done was to angle the wagons as far as the front axle of the second wagon permitted, then surround the bivouac with a fence of sorts-sharpened stakes of brasswood, each two meters long, and held together and spaced by what passed for rope in New Pittsburgh. The result, when held up on two sides by wagons and braced to the ground along the hypotenuse, constituted a high and fairly nasty picket fence. It would not slow up a dragon, but this was not dragon country. Lopers did not like it.
Smith did not like it much, either, but it was made on New Beginnings of all-native materials, could be repaired by a man who was handy, did not weigh much, could be abandoned with no great loss-and contained no metal. Smith had beer able to buy two sturdy, boat-bodied, Conestoga-type wagons in New Pittsburgh only by offering in part payment complete hardware for two other wagons-hardware imported across the light-years in the Andy I. New Pittsburgh was far more "New" than "Pittsburgh"; there was iron ore there and coal, but its' metals industry was still primitive.
The chickens, the sow, the goats, and even the humans were tasty temptations to wild lopers, but with the goats and kids shooed inside the kraal, two alert watchdogs, and sixteen mules grazing on all sides, Smith felt reasonably secure at night. True, a loper might get a mule, but it was much more likely that the mule would get the loper-especially as other mules would close in and help stomp the carnivore. These mules did not run from a loper; they struck out at him. Smith thought that, in time, mules might clean out the varmints even more than man did, make them as scarce as mountain lions had been in his youth.
A mule-stomped loper was readily converted into loper steak, loper Stew, loper jerky-and dog and cat food, and Mrs Porky the sow enjoyed the offal-all at no loss to the mules. Smith did not care much for loper in any form; the meat was too strongly flavored for his taste-but it, was better than nothing and kept them from digging too deeply into food they had hauled along, Dora did not share her husband's distaste for loper meat; born there aid having eaten it now and then since earliest childhood, it seemed to her a normal food.