McKean S01 A Dangerous Breed (4 page)

Immediately, another animal colored entirely like a coyote appeared at the other edge of the saltpan directly behind Tanner. It uttered a single sharp “yip!” and Tanner wheeled and fired. Again, the animal seemed prepared for the shot and leaped out of its way. Tanner fired two more shots, ineffectually.

“Sheriff!” I shouted. “How many bullets you got in that gun?” He didn’t answer because yet another coydog, looking mostly collie, had jumped onto a big basalt boulder off his rear quarter and issued more rapid yipping calls, causing him to spin and pull off another wild shot. The animal leaped away and the bullet went wide. Tanner turned to me, suddenly wide-eyed scared. “Ten shots,” he answered as more yaps, sounding like commands spoken in an entirely new canine language, cut the air. Instantly, the bushes parted on his left and half a dozen snarling coydogs came at him in a massed charge. He fired a shot and one of the animals went down yelping. The others scattered. Then, more staccato yaps sounded from the sagebrush thicket and a second group of coydogs charged from behind Tanner, their actions coordinated by the yapped commands. His pistol clicked on an empty chamber as the pack closed on him in a unified assault. I opened my door with an instinct to help Tanner as he went down under their combined weight but McKean grabbed my shirtsleeve and held me back. “Watch out!” he cried. I immediately saw that he was wise to caution me, as my emergence from the car was greeted with more yapped commands and two more animals charged from the brush across the saltpan and raced toward me.

I slammed the door but my window was open. I shoved the key in the ignition, fired the engine and pushed the window-up button on my door. The glass rose with agonizing slowness and was only about halfway to the top when the animals sprang for me. I ducked as they hit the gap jaws-first, snapping and snarling inches from my neck. I held my finger on the button until the window closed and they fell back, leaving rivulets of slavered drool running down the window.

“More of them!” McKean shouted. On his side, a group of five coydogs charged in unison, having worked their way behind us as we watched Tanner. McKean’s already-closed window kept the snarling animals at bay. I glanced at poor, bloodied Tanner, who was trying hopelessly to rise while a dozen coydogs bit and tore flesh from him in chunks. “My God!” I gasped. “They’re eating him alive.”

“We’d better look out for ourselves,” McKean muttered.

He was right. The coydogs hadn’t quit attacking my Mustang. At the front and rear they snapped and tore at the tires as if they understood their vulnerability to puncture.

McKean exclaimed, “If they get after the valves - !”

I glanced again at Tanner. He’d stopped fighting and lay flat on his back with arms and legs outstretched. A huge dark coydog was at his throat.

“He’s gone,” McKean asserted. “Leave him!”

I jammed the shifter into first and floored the gas. The Mustang’s wheels spun and we raced forward, accelerating on the rutted road accompanied by a chorus of snapping, yelping coydogs. I shot a last glance in Tanner’s direction and slowed, despite my pursuers, when I saw a riveting sight. A lone coydog sat on a boulder above the saltpan, observing the sheriff’s demise. The white Border collie markings on its face were terrifyingly familiar. “The Death’s-Head dog!” I cried.

“That’s the alpha bitch,” McKean stated analytically. “The leader of the pack. The one who’s giving the orders. Look at her belly!”

Visible on the animal’s underside between her front legs were rows of teats heavy with milk. Seeing us looking, she snarled, baring fiercely sharp teeth. Then she let out three short yips. In response, several of the animals attacking Tanner peeled away with regimental precision and rushed to join the animals beleaguering my car.

I floored the gas pedal and raced off with coydogs pursuing on both sides. Not wanting to risk turning around where the ditches might trap us I went forward, deeper into the wildlife reserve. The road eventually straightened and I sped up to leave the coydogs behind. McKean punched 9-1-1 on his cell phone with no luck. “All it does is tell me calls in this area are subject to roaming charges.”

As I followed the road around rock outcrops and low mesas I wondered aloud, “Do you think we’re getting ourselves into more trouble by going ahead instead of turning around?”

“Answer: unknown,” McKean replied. “Highway 262 is ahead of us and not too far away. Eventually we may find a through road.”

“Maybe not,” I hedged. Around another curve, we came in view of a challenging length of road. In a low area lay a stretch of windblown sand, in which the road became nothing more than two long dents.

“I don’t like the looks of this,” I muttered but I pressed on into the sand ruts, slowing somewhat. The Mustang’s undercarriage scraped along the sand mounded between the ruts but we moved forward and crossed nearly the entire hundred-foot stretch. I was just breathing a sigh of relief when the Mustang wallowed and its rear wheels dug in and began to spin. We ground to a halt agonizingly close to solid rocky ground.

“Now what?” I asked bitterly as the sinking of the Mustang made me finally let off the accelerator. I put in the clutch and pounded the steering wheel with both palms in frustration.

Without answering, McKean opened his door and stepped out onto the sand, looking around quickly for trouble. “We’re okay,” he said after a moment.

I left the engine idling in neutral, got out beside the Mustang and knelt down to look underneath. Not only were the wheels half covered by sand but the undercarriage was high-centered on a large mound of sand between the ruts. I stood and turned off the ignition and took the keys and opened the trunk, where I keep a small army shovel. Then I went to the front of the car and sprawled myself on the sand and began digging the center mound away in hopes of releasing us. McKean joined in, kneeling beside me and scooping with both hands. We made progress slowly, moving sand by the ton, until McKean paused and sat up for a moment. He pointed to the west. “Sun’s going down.”

“Great,” I muttered, digging with renewed effort until I was stopped by a spine chilling sound - the call of a coyote. We spotted it on top of a nearby mesa. It was a small one, sitting on its haunches, muzzle high, yipping and howling shrilly. McKean murmured, “He’s calling the pack.”

“I know,” I replied, digging frantically as the lone coyote’s cry was answered by a chorus of howls from behind us at some distance and several nearer howls off to each side, as if they might be fellow members of a search party.

I dug far under the front of the car to clear sand that had piled against the transmission and then backed out from underneath and sat up. “Any sign of the pack?” I asked McKean, who’d stopped digging to keep a lookout.

“Answer: yes,” he said softly, pointing a long forefinger down the road behind us. There, a hundred feet away in the lengthening canyon shadows, the skull-faced female watched us with keen interest. She yipped sharply to one side of her and the sagebrush there rustled as if several animals were moving into rapid action. McKean went to his door, saying, “You’d better get in, Fin. Quickly!”

He hurried into his seat and I got in on my side, throwing my shovel onto the back floor. We quickly closed our doors and, within seconds, a dozen growls broke out on either side of the Mustang. I turned the key in the ignition just as coydogs threw themselves against McKean’s side window with an impact great enough to split the glass from top to bottom. It didn’t shatter but I heard and felt the impact of a half-dozen bodies against my window an instant later, accompanied by the hellish sound of snarling mixed with yelped commands from the Death’s-Head dog.

I revved the engine and let out the clutch slowly despite my panic at the coydogs inundating the car, slavering against our windows, jumping onto the hood and trunk, snapping at the tires. The wheels turned slowly, slippingly, but made progress forward until the ground firmed up and became rocky enough for traction. When the rear tires bit in, I floored the accelerator and the Mustang jumped forward. Seconds later we were a quarter mile down the road, careening along the ruts, trailing dust, and leaving the pack behind.

As I raced ahead, the low sun touched a cliff top in the west. After another dusty mile it had gone down and twilight silhouetted the dark mesas. I pressed on, forcing myself to careen along the tortuous ruts as daylight faded, despite any sign of a major road ahead. I began to worry we’d be lost overnight in the heart of the refuge. I turned on my headlights. Shortly after that, as if to confirm my worst fear, the road entered onto a broad shield of hard volcanic stone and seemed to vanish into a maze of sub-trails where the tallest plants were tufts of grass and boulder obstacles made the way circuitous and confusing. Finally I rolled to a halt and admitted, “I’m lost.”

McKean looked up at the sky through the windshield. “According to the Big Dipper and North Star, you’re headed a little north of east. Does that help?”

“No. As I recall, you said the scablands go all the way to Spokane in that direction.”

“True.”

We sat for several minutes discussing what could possibly go wrong next. Then I noticed something moving off to the left outside the light of my headlamps and my heart rate picked up. The form, silhouetted in twilight gloom, appeared shapeless at first. Then it seemed to become a coyote, amplifying my anxiety. Then gradually the form clarified into the shape of a man walking toward us.

“Charlie Moses!” McKean exclaimed just as I recognized the friendly, smiling face in the glow of my headlamps. Moses came to my window and I rolled it down.

“You fellas lost?” he asked.

“How’d you guess?” I responded.

“Everybody gets lost in here,” he said. “Come on, follow me.”

He turned and walked away and I drove behind him until he came to the brink of a low ledge overlooking a small pond. On some open ground was a lean-to made of twigs and tule rushes. In front of it glowed a small campfire.

I stopped the Mustang at the brink of the ledge and called to Moses. “We were hoping you’d show us how to get to the highway.”

“In the morning. Come on. Eat some food. Pond water’s good to drink.”

“We’re not safe here - ” I began.

“What you mean, ‘we,’ white man?” Moses replied, laughing huskily, his broad smile lit in the fire’s glow. I shut off the engine and got out.

“I’m dying of thirst,” I suddenly realized. “I’ve got sand in my mouth and dust in my throat.”

“Drink all you want,” Moses replied, gesturing to the gravelly shore of the pond, where a small iron saucepan sat, lit by the fire’s glow. I took up the pan and dipped out a large portion of clear water and drank heavily. McKean did likewise. As we returned to Moses’ campfire a coyote howled, far off.

“They’ve been chasing us,” I said without trying to hide the fear in my voice. “They want to kill us!”

Moses looked into the darkness and said, “You’re safe here. Sit down, I’ve got fresh-cooked goose.”

Firestorm

With a few sticks, Moses had rigged a rotisserie over the campfire. A goose hung on the spit, browned and dripping juice and smelling like a camp cookout in heaven. Moses sat down on a cottonwood log, unsheathed his knife and began carving off big pieces of dark breast meat and piling them on a wooden plank.

“Eat,” he said.

Astonished by our change of fortune, McKean and I sat on the log without speaking. Crickets chirping in the sagebrush lulled me into a semblance of security and the fire glow relaxed me a little. I picked up a piece of Moses’ goose breast and savored a small bite. Suddenly realizing that I’d grown ravenous with hunger, I devoured the rest as avidly as the coydogs had eaten Tanner. McKean followed my example. We gorged ourselves.

Moses ate a drumstick and threw the bone into the coals. The little fire flared, hissing and popping and giving off meat-scented smoke. Outside the ring of firelight, crickets sang a nighttime chorus and small creatures rustled in the bushes, but there were no sounds of larger animals. By turns, McKean and I told Moses all we’d seen since we’d last met.

“Why haven’t you been attacked?” McKean asked when we’d finished our story.

“Don’t exactly know,” Moses replied, using a small pointed bone as a toothpick. “Maybe “cause I’ve seen “em around here for years. Sometimes I share my catch with them. Gave that white-faced one a whole duck carcass when she was a scrawny little pup.”

“You fed that Death’s-Head bitch?” I exclaimed.

“Death’s-Head bitch?” Moses chuckled. “You white guys got crazy names for things. I call her Tashota. Tashota is Woyotl’s wife.”

A coyote howled a few hundred feet away in the dark moonless night, reminding us we were not out of danger despite our brief interlude with Moses. Another coyote howled a little nearer on the other side of the camp. I shivered despite the warmth of the fire. A third howled somewhere to our rear. Moses calmly watched the flickering embers.

Rustling in the tall grass along the lakeshore caught my attention and I stared into the blackness. The coppery glow of two canine eyes sent a ripple of adrenaline through me. I nudged McKean and pointed them out. A moment later, he pointed to another pair opposite the first. A small twig snapped, drawing our eyes to a third pair behind us to the left. Another pair appeared to the right and soon we were ringed by glowing eyes. I whispered to Moses, “What do we do now?”

Without answering, he reached into his lean-to and took out a tambourine-shaped drum and a small mallet with a rawhide head. He lay the drum in his lap and began gently pounding out a soft beat in Indian time. To this he added a thin, reedy voice in a high register, singing, “Ho-wey-oh-wey-ey-ey-yeh - ” in a supplicating melody. He kept this up for some minutes as we watched the circle of glowing eyes draw nearer.

Moses sang placidly, voicing unfamiliar sounds: a tsoo here, a tlay there, Salish words that might have told a story or asked a favor. He seemed entranced by the slow bum-buh, bum-buh, bum of his drum and for lack of a better option McKean and I allowed ourselves to fall under his spell. We joined him in a calm, ethereal trance that felt somehow beyond our predicament.