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, meandering 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, smiling. "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 it 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 harnessed, 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 MacBeth 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 rnidafternoon 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.