Dog Tales

by Jack Dann

  “Well, I sure cain’t understand them like you do. You’d have to tell me what she was sayin’.”

  “Sure, sure.”

  They crossed a shallow run. The ponies stepped daintily, wary of their footing, splashing quickly up the other bank. A range warden appeared from up the hill, paid his respects to Bearbait, then came up to Delbert’s mare with something approaching awe. Del greeted him cheerfully by name, conversed briefly, then reached down to rumple his ears. Satisfied with this evidence of grace, the warden fell back to talk longer with Bearbait before returning to his section.

  “How come they always come up to you?” Jake asked.

  Del shrugged. “I dunno. I always liked them and spent time with them, and I can talk their way pretty good. They mostly understand people talk all right, but I like to talk warden talk, and I reckon they just like it.”

  Ace laughed, turning in his saddle. “Old Delbert spends so much time with them I reckon he’s ’bout near half-warden by now.”

  Presently they stopped for lunch where the run was bridged by a large fallen willow tree. They had brought cold meat sandwiches from the house, which they garnished with cress from the run and washed down with a skin of cider. Several wardens appeared from the surrounding pastures, and they and the house wardens conferred in small, excited groups.

  “What ails them wardens?” Big John said irritably.

  Delbert laughed. “It’s that old wolf we heard the last couple of nights. They think it’s some kind of devil. Talkin’ ’bout huntin’ it tonight.”

  Jake felt a spasm of irritation. “That ain’t no devil. Just a wolf. I seen plenty up north. Why don’t they leave him be? He ain’t done nothing.”

  “Scared of him,” Delbert amplified. “They ain’t never seen no wolf. They just know he’s bigger than ary coyote, and strange, so they figure must be something wrong with it.” He brushed the crumbs from his moustache. “I ain’t never seen one, either. What’s it doing here? Seems kinda funny, don’t it?”

  “Heard them old stories say a wolf can change hisself into a man sometimes,” Ace said.

  “Ah, bullshit,” Big John said nervously.

  “Anyway, he might steal sheep,” Ace said.

  “Not with them wardens watching them.” Jake still felt irritated, as if he and the wolf somehow shared something. “He may be wild, but he ain’t stupid. Tell them to leave him be till he does something.” He stoked his pipe with a touch of vehemence and lit up.

  Delbert shrugged, “You, Bearbait!” The hulking warden left his conference and came up. Delbert conversed with him in low tones.

  “Maybe that’s where all the people went,” Ace suggested. “Up north. All done turned into wolves.” He lay back, tilted his hat across his eyes.

  Jake grunted. “All done moved south, and I should have done a long time ago.”

  “Get away from the ice,” John Hawkins agreed. “Must be cities and everything on down south yet.”

  “Like to see a city someday,” Ace mumbled from under his hat. “Might just go south myself, when I get set.”

  “When you get set,” Delbert scoffed. Bearbait had returned to pass the word.

  “What’s you tell that critter?” Jake demanded.

  “Ain’t no critter, that’s Bearbait,” Delbert protested mildly. “I told him what you said.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “Said that devil left his mark all around the north edge of the grazing. They want to kill it. I told him long as that devil don’t steal stock or something, they can leave him be.”

  “How come you like wolves so much?” Ace lifted his hat slightly to peer at Jake.

  Jake grunted around his pipe stem. “They let me alone, I let them alone.”

  For a moment they sat silent. Presently Big John knocked his pipe against a rock and stood up. The ponies came to his whistle and shortly they rode on.

  * * *

  The wardens were not pleased with the directive from the Masters, and controversy bubbled in the camps all night. Quailflusher lay with his head to the fire and listened to his grandmother inveigh against the northling, the Masters’ folly in tolerating its presence, and the supineness of the House wardens, her grandson Bearbait included. Bearbait had been there earlier in the evening, and there had been harsh words between him and his grandmother. Now Starfall was in a religious rage. Her opinion was known in the clans, and those of like mind had been drifting in all night to confer with her, or more exactly, to hear her speak. Her cause and her audience spurred her to new heights of eloquence, and exorcisms were heard that night that had not been sung since her grandmother’s time. Quailflusher lay bemused while Starfall’s voice rolled over him.

  The fire itself entered his thoughts, itself the greatest of the Masters’ benisons, the symbol of the bond between Master and warden since the first cur dog crept out of the woods to share a hunter’s campfire. The fear of the stranger beat in Quailflusher’s veins and warred with his reverence for the Masters. Could the All-wise be wrong? What reason could They have for protecting the demon? There had been no explanation, only the order. Hunt not the northling. Quailflusher had smelled the creature’s markers himself; the strangeness was eerie, a smell of wildness, the wind, and the north. Quailflusher’s hackles arose again at the thought. His stomach knotted.

  “Quail.” His second cousin, Grabchuck, sniffed his mask politely and lay down beside him. His discomfort showed in the set of his ears. “What do you think?”

  Quailflusher sighed and rested his chin on his paws again. “I don’t know, ’Chuck. Grandmother’s older than anyone, almost. She knows the woods and flocks, she knows medicine and spirits. But . . .”

  Grabchuck flicked an ear. “But Bearbait knows the Masters.”

  Quailflusher sighed again. “If it weren’t Grandmother talking, I’d say let it go. We can’t defy the Masters. We only watch the flocks, and do as the Masters bid us. That’s why They made us. The devil is still north of the range. It hasn’t acted yet, except to mock us. But Grandmother is so sure . . .”

  “I wish it would do something! Then we’d know. But it just stays; it’s like waiting for a storm in the summer.” Sparks flew up as their great-aunt threw more sticks on the fire with a practiced toss of her head. Grabchuck dodged as a spark lit near him. “Listen. Quail, there’s something else. The devil didn’t sing tonight.”

  “So? We know he’s out there. Some of Fisher’s camp found a fawn he killed this morning.”

  “That’s just it. He answered us before. Why not tonight? Look, Quail, have you forgotten about Willow? When she came under forbidding she went outrange to the east. What if the devil finds her?”

  Quailflusher sat up. “Her mother is back. She smelled nothing to the east.”

  “But Fisher’s people said the markers tended east. We’ve heard nothing from her. Shouldn’t we be looking for her?”

  “Impossible!” Quailflusher was shocked. “Go after her, when she’s forbidden? Grandmother would have a fit!”

  “But Willow may be in danger!” Grabchuck turned his head away embarrassedly. “In her present state of mind she can’t be thinking clearly. Someone should investigate, at least make sure she’s all right!”

  “Look, quiet down.” Quailflusher fought his own sense of unease. “Would your state of mind be any clearer if you were near her? It’s easy to get worked up over a forbidden bitch, any young dog would. We know she’s out there, we can imagine her loneliness, we can feel her longing in our own. But it’s forbidden, it’s unlucky even to think of it! Fall heats are unlucky for everyone, and we’ve had three this fall in our camp alone. We’ve got to be especially careful at a time like this.” He lay down again. “And besides,” he added, “she’s forbidden to you, anyway, or to anyone from our clan.”

  “The spirits smite me if I was thinking any such thing!” Grabchuck expostulated. “I’m worried about her!”

  Quailflusher thought for a while. The whelp could be right; there was some dan
ger. Willow was already under evil influences. With the devil at large, who knew what might happen? “Well,” he said. “I’ll head over that way tomorrow when I’m off watch, check around for markers, see if I can get a whiff of something.”

  “I’ll go, too,” urged Grabchuck. “Better if two go . . . because of the forbidding, I mean.”

  “I’ll ask White Rabbit, too. We should have a bitch along.”

  Their grandmother’s voice rose in a new exorcism, and was joined by the voices of her followers. After a moment Quail and Grabchuck joined in, too. The voices rose up, a great bell of sound before the moon.

  ###

  In the house, a couple of kilometers away, Delbert sat by a window listening in rapture to the sound. The rest of the Hawkins clan sat or sprawled about the room, more or less oriented toward the fire. Some occupied themselves with small handiwork. A candle or two supplemented the fire with small puddles of flickering yellow light: in one of them Delbert’s wife, Rida, pored over a large herbal. Conversation murmured desultorily. Wardens, cats, and cur dogs flopped about the floor and furniture. Jake sank deep in an armchair, a large cat in his lap. His eyes rested now on Delbert, now on one or another of the Hawkinses. He said little, and that only when spoken to. A deep disquiet fluttered somewhere in his belly, an unease he could not admit to, could scarcely identify. The soft voices of the others jarred strangely on his nerves. It was just people, he thought, after so long . . . but he was used to being alone now. The people jarred on his presence. The fire was good, and the chair. He kneaded the cat’s neck with his knuckles.

  Delbert’s cousin Little Earl stretched from his couch to pass Delbert the pipe. “Old wardens sure gettin’ down tonight,” he said, smoke rilling from his nostrils.

  Delbert laughed. “Sure thing. Old wolf has really got them going.”

  Jake looked up sourly. “What are they singing?” He reached out to take the pipe from Delbert.

  Delbert chuckled again. “Hexes,” he said. “Trying to make that devil go away. We said they couldn’t hunt him, so now they trying to hex him away. That one voice is old Starfall. She’s a smart old gal. Most as old as old Moonsong there. She’s old Bearbait’s grandmother, ain’t she, ’Bait?” An answering rumble came from the great hulk of the warden slumped at his feet. Delbert rubbed his bare feet across the warden’s shoulders. Jake relapsed into silence.

  ###

  And under a bush a few klicks east, Willow sat listening to the song, her blood roiled with conflicting emotions. The wolf was sitting a few meters away in the shadow of another bush. His attention was focused entirely on Willow; from time to time he would shift his position and whine ingratiatingly. Willow panted slightly.

  She had felt the wolf as a presence before he came seeking her. The impurity she was conceived to be under mandated loneliness; with nothing to do but avoid her own kind, she wandered aimlessly through the forest, hunting desultorily and fretting. She felt useless, and ashamed, and full of vain longings. She thought over all the ritual she knew to see if she might have omitted anything. Thoughts of various males kept drifting in upon her, shaming her further. And among them, the voice of the northling . . .

  The night after she left, she listened almost hungrily to the strange voice, still hovering just beyond comprehension. It echoed in her ears; she scarcely noticed her grandmother’s denunciations ringing down the breeze.

  She spent the next day idling along the run, playing and splashing in the water, startling the fish. She caught and ate a few mice in a meadow, lazed away the afternoon lolling on a flat rock by the stream. In the last light she caught a ’possum and carried it back to the bank to eat it. She had just finished it when the wolf came seeking her.

  She ran, of course. He had appeared quite suddenly, stopped on catching sight of her, then started toward her wagging his tail. She leaped up and backed away, then turned tail and fled. He pursued her at a short distance, not drawing too close, but trying to persuade her of his sincerity. Willow was dumbfounded by the situation. His speech was incomprehensible, his appearance half-savage, half-demon, his intentions unmistakable, and utterly taboo. Willow’s people had no legend of an incubus to victimize helpless females, but their understanding of the estrous phenomenon was highly magical in nature. Its suddenness and the completeness of its distraction suggested demonic possession. At the best of times estrus was carefully surrounded with cultural restrictions; unseasonable heats were presumed the result of devilish machinations. To Willow’s knowledge this was the first time the demon Sex had appeared in such a concrete form. No dog warden would have pursued a bitch under forbidding, however great the temptation.

  Her initial panic dissipated, Willow paused defensively, her back to a tree. The stranger approached cautiously, playfully. His gestures of courtship and deference were crude parodies of the delicate and sophisticated rituals of the wardens, but they had a certain power of their own. With a sudden frenzy of snapping and snarling, she drove him back again and fled down the path. The wolf came after her.

  The sun went down without dimming the wolf’s ardor; and so presently, Willow found herself under a bush, racked with ambivalence, her grandmother’s songs against the wolf ringing in her ears, the awful reality there before her. His presence surrounded her, his scent rank and strange in her nostrils. Every sound seemed magnified. She could hear his heartbeat quite clearly, quick and excited, over the thunder of her own. His voice was urgent, enticing. He seemed almost to be touching her. She whined softly in anxiety and frustration.

  The wolf crawled from under his bush. He rolled on his back, whining, playing the youngling. Willow watched him in the dappled moonlight, her ears alert for every sound. The wolf crawled into the open, slightly closer to her. Abruptly stopping his plaintive whining, he rose slowly to his feet. Willow closed her mouth with a snap. The wolf went into full display, standing to his greatest height, his mane erect, his tail curled tight and bushy over his back. He took a step toward her. Willow came off the ground, sidled away nervously, out from under the bush and up onto a rock break. She stood facing him, tail between her legs, ready to bolt. He advanced stiff-legged, one step at a time, stretching out his nose toward her. His scent rushed upward to her on the light breeze. She felt dizzy, almost lightheaded. She took a step back. He came on steadily, closer and closer, leaning out to her. Putting one foot on the rock, he reached up, and their noses touched. The sound of his sniff was soft in her ear. His nose brushed her cheek, her ruff. His head loomed beside her, his thick mane touched her chin; his scent so familiar, so strange . . . she sniffed warily, unable to help herself. And again, his face, his chin . . . their whiskers mingled, their noses touched. Her face burned, her belly on fire. He turned slightly, took a step, sniffed again at her neck, her flank. She stood rigid, then turned her head toward him. She was burning up. She could still hear her grandmother’s song, but distantly. It seemed strange, irrelevant, unrelated to the living presence beside her. The wolf was more real, more natural. The fire mounted in her loins, and the agonizing, unspecific, seeking desire she had felt for days resolved itself upon the wolf.

  ###

  “Tell us a story, Moonsong,” Delbert said. “Jake wants to hear you tell a story.” Jake sat up in his chair. The old warden lay with her head to the fire, her chin resting on her paws. She lifted it and answered; Jake caught the drift well enough this time: what story would he hear?

  “Any story,” said Delbert. “Tell where wardens came from.” The other Hawkinses sighed and stirred, orienting themselves toward the warden on the hearth. Delbert eased back in his chair and grinned at Jake. “I’ll explain what she’s saying so’s you can understand it better, Jake.”

  Then Moonsong spoke, and Delbert explained her words thus:

  “In the beginning there were two brothers, and they were Cur Dog and Savage. They lived in a field by the edge of the woods, and they ate rabbit and woodchuck and ’possum. When the storm blew, they curled up in their earth; and when the brushfire burn
ed, they fled before it; and they hid from the lion and bear and wolverine, for these were stronger and fiercer than they.

  “One day the Masters came and built Their house in the midst of the field. Around it They fenced and plowed, and the horse and cow and sheep did Their bidding. The cat lazed on Their doorstep, and the chicken pecked in the yard; and when the lion and bear came prowling, the Masters smote them with devices and hung their skins by the door.

  Then Cur Dog said to Savage, ‘Come, let us, too, go to the Masters and seek Their grace. We, too, will lie on Their doorstep, and when the storm blows and the lion roars, we will lie by the fire and chew fat bones and be warm.’ But Savage feared the Masters and said, ‘They will surely destroy us even as the lion and bear. But stay, let us wait until night, and sneak up to the house and steal the chicken.’

  “But Cur Dog was resolute. So he went and scratched at the Master’s door, and when the Master came, he deferred to Him and begged grace. Then the Master said, ‘Since you have come, you may lie by the fire and have fat bones to chew. In exchange, you will guard the house and flocks, and warn against savage and lion and bear.’ So Cur Dog took the bone and lay by the fire, and when Savage came in the night to take chickens, Cur Dog awakened the Masters with his cries, and They smote Savage with Their devices so that he fled crying back to the woods. And ever after there was enmity between Cur Dog and Savage.

  “Then the Masters were many and rich. They built the stone places and lived there in great numbers. In Their wisdom They rose higher and higher, and went to live among the moon and stars. Then there were few Masters left on Earth, and without Them the sons of Cur Dog could not tend all the flocks. So the wards strayed and met accidents, and the sons of Savage ate many. Then the Masters took the flesh of Cur Dog, and from it they made the Warden. They said: