by Max Brand
“I don’t understand,” said the coyote.
“They fill the stomach,” the heron replied. “You must try to think hard when I am speaking to you, because I hate to explain myself. Explanations always are shallow. Take this to heart … ‘He who runs from love shall find it.’”
“Ah?” said the coyote, more bewildered than ever.
“Love,” she went on, “is a secret that should be left in the nest. It is a disease that only one doctor can cure.”
“I hope I’m allowed to ask the doctor’s name?” he said.
“Time!” the heron snapped, with great satisfaction. “Love sits in the stomach and dines on the brain. Love has no mercy. Love laughs in the dark. Is your brain spinning?”
“It is, a little,” said the coyote.
“I nearly always dazzle people,” said the blue heron. “If not with my plumes, with my conversation. But now we have made so much noise with our talk that the musicians here are discouraged. I don’t blame you. Lovers cannot help talking. In parting, let me tell you this a….” She spread her feathers and, springing up, began to beat the air with hollow wings, her long legs trailing behind her, while her final speech drifted back and down to him: “A coyote in love is but half a coyote.” She was almost out of his hearing when she added: “The last word is the wisest.”
So she disappeared, flying low above the river, and the coyote, backing to dry land, went thoughtfully down the valley.
The day still lingered. The moon, rising behind the Kendal Woods, was rosy gold above and purple with mist across its lower face. At the sight of it, a song rose in the throat of the golden coyote that he never had sung before, and yet he had it by heart. It went up with a quick yipping, and then wailed and rang across the valley of the Musquash.
He paused to breathe. He was trembling with sorrow and delight. But before he could sing again and ease his heart with the new music, he heard a thin answer barked from the southern hills. Never had he heard a voice like this before. As though the strings of his soul were set and tense and tuned for it, the sound went through and through him. He turned toward it. The dusky grass was blurred by his speed as he fled for that sound, and, sweeping over a hilltop, he had to check himself with stiffly braced legs, for he had almost blundered into a group of three of his kind.
One was an old fellow who continually shrugged his shoulders at the itch; another was the biggest and heaviest coyote he ever had seen, a forty-five pounder if ever one stepped, a magnificent animal with a very dark coat and enough black at the tip of his tail to have pointed half a dozen ordinary prairie wolves. He was a true brush coyote, such as rarely appeared in the Kendal Mountains. But it was the third of the group that made the heart of the golden coyote leap. She came straight forward and almost touched his nose with hers. She was young. She was slender. She was soft and gray as a mouse.
“How beautiful!” gasped the golden coyote. “Your eyes are as bright as the moon in still water. How beautiful you are!”
“Stand back,” said the brush coyote, bristling his mane.
The golden coyote shrank.
“What a bother!” exclaimed the gray beauty. “Are we to have nothing but fighting, and no conversation whatever?”
“I’m tired of talk,” said the brush coyote. “You know what I am and what I can offer you. I don’t intend to be fubbed off and fubbed off while you listen to the gibbering of a mangy old fool like that first fellow or the maunderings of this half-grown puppy.”
“The loudest voice is not always the sharpest tooth,” remarked the veteran coyote from the background.
“Then stand up to me and I’ll prove it,” said the big fellow. “I despise talk, as I said before, and I know perfectly well that this matter will have to be settled with a fight. It always is. And you know it, too,” he added to the lady.
“I know that you are all three very brave and big and handsome and wise,” she said. “And it’s a beautiful evening, besides.”
She smiled at the golden coyote, and his heart swelled. He could not take his glance from her.
“It is love,” he found himself saying. “Oh, sweet, sweet love. Oh, pain.”
“He’s a fool,” said the brush coyote. “Sweet and painful. It makes me tired to hear such rot. And you, my dear,” he continued to her, “know perfectly that the coyote for you is the tried and proved provider. Now, I ask you to look at me, and then at that withered old scandal-monger, and lastly at this thing.” He advanced with a proud, stiff step toward the young prairie wolf, and the latter shrank a little, though he at least had courage not to budge his feet.
“This,” said the brush coyote, towering and mighty.
“You’re very harsh,” said the lady. “I think he talks extremely well.”
“Stuff,” he said. “Talk never killed ground dog.”
“Talk might keep wives from poisoned baits, however,” said the veteran in the background.
“I’ve a mind to break your back,” said the brush coyote.
“Do,” replied the other. “Do try to catch me.”
“The coward would never stand for an instant,” the big fellow pointed out. “He’s another talker. What in the name of heaven can you offer to a wife?”
“Experience,” said the other, “which is better than fat antelope. I don’t pretend to the sharpest tooth, but my home never has lacked mice, at least. Luxury I don’t pretend to offer … security I do. The best advice, mind you, is worth having. You, for instance, let two of your wives run into an early death, and your litters starved to death.”
“I’ve a mind to finish you now!” growled the brush coyote. “Who can prevent bad fortune?”
The older coyote sat down and scratched his ear. “The bigger the leg, the snugger the trap fits,” he said. “I hope you won’t be lured by the beef and brawn of this big boaster, my child. Brains are what count in this world. As for his talk, what does it amount to? Let’s be practical. He can’t feed you puma or bear meat. And even if he could, would you want it? On the other hand, I don’t want to boast, but simply to advise you of the truth. I have eaten eggs from the chicken house of man.”
At that word, the gray lady almost dropped to her stomach, and showed her teeth, bright and sharp as icicles, and the clear pink of her gums fascinated the golden coyote.
“How beautiful you are,” he said. “Oh, this is love, this is love.”
“I have eaten chicken eggs myself, for that matter,” said the brush coyote sharply. “What else have you to offer?”
“The taste of tender lamb is not unknown to me, either,” said the oldster, “and veal, well hung. I am familiar with young pork … a delicious thing in autumn. I have killed rats in the very cellar of man’s house. Now, my young braggart, how will you match this?”
“I have done everything that you have done,” said the brush coyote, “and more besides. But you’re not worth considering, except to sharpen a tooth on your carcass. I wish you would take a swim before you fight, if you have the heart for that.”
“Well, well,” said the other, “the biggest coyote is not always the soonest married … and the strength of the weak has caught many a field mouse. You have lived off man, you say?”
“I have,” said the brush coyote. “I have looked through man’s cave, at the opening that is closed with ice.”
“You mean a window, I suspect?” yawned the veteran.
At this, the lady laughed, and the brush coyote grew furious.
“Talk, talk, talk,” he said. “I’m tired of it. And here’s a young idiot who has neither words nor deeds to offer. This! Is he a wolf, a dog, or a coyote? I’m sure he has features of them all, but I never saw a mongrel, if he is not one. What have you to offer, my young friend?”
The golden coyote hardly heard the insults. He could only stare at the yellow eyes of the lady, and now he sighed.
“How beautiful. How beautiful. Your muzzle is so exquisitely slender that you could eat the egg of a partridge and leave half the shell
unbroken.”
“A poet, by heaven,” said the brush coyote, and laughed loudly.
“He seems a very mannerly young man,” said the gray coyote. “You needn’t bully him so.”
“What can you do? What can you do? Are you going to stand there mooning about beauty all night?” asked the brush coyote.
The golden coyote roused himself. “I’ve heard a great deal of talk about the way you make a fool of man,” he said, “but let me tell you the truth. I, the golden coyote, have gone down to the house of man, whose smoke we smell at the present moment, and I have stood in the doorway, and have taken food from the hand of man, and have carried it away, and eaten.”
There was a pause, then a loud burst of derision.
He looked at the lady, and his heart ached to see that, although she had dropped her head, she, also, was laughing.
“Furthermore,” said the golden coyote, “I shall go this moment and do it.”
“Let him go,” said the brush coyote, “I have heard bragging before, but this is interesting. He is probably a halfwit.”
“He is only young,” said the veteran. “By all means, let’s go along and watch. My friend, don’t let us keep you, if this is your time.”
“Very well,” said the golden coyote, and, wheeling, he fairly flew across the hills until he came to the sight of the house of man, with its great, bright, far-seeing eyes, and the shadowy forms of new-built barn and sheds, and the skeleton tangle of new fencing, as well. Then he fell back to a stalking trot. The three followed at his heels.
“I believe he means to do it,” said the gray lady. “Is he in his right mind? Man … and guns … and poison … and death. Why I actually tremble to think of it.”
“Save your trembling,” said the veteran quietly. “He will find an excuse that will make him dodge long before he comes to that open doorway.”
The golden coyote heard, and this was the challenge that drove him straight into the eye of the rising breeze, past the tidings of new-cut hay, of resinous, freshly worked pine boards, of pigs, and sheep, and sweet-breathing cattle, and horses, and the dire scent of hunting dogs, of oil and iron, at last, and the dreadful presence of man himself.
For the coyote stood now in the shaft of light that came through the open doorway. To the side, the dogs leaped to the length of their chains with a furious clamor, but he knew that iron held them, and he went straight on until his forepaws rested on the threshold.
Once before he had been there. Starvation, on that day, had driven him. Man himself rose from a table and shouted. The dogs were still at the voice of the master, as all the animals are still when the God of the coyotes thunders in heaven. The woman rose, also, and the little girl, crying: “The golden coyote! Look at him, Daddy! Don’t stir! Look! He knows us, now. He’s not afraid. Good dog … good boy….”
“He has dog in him,” said man, the hunter. “There never was a coyote with an eye like that. Now if we had sense, we’d shoot that thief before he gets back his tooth for uncooked chicken.”
“Oh, Daddy,” said the child. “Shoot the golden coyote that killed the elk for us? Where would we be?”
“I was talkin’, only,” man admitted, growling. “There, honey. You’ve had your hand on him before. Give him that chop, and try to get him inside. Look at him, will you, just as brave as a lion.”
Brave? The golden coyote trembled. Fear stiffened his hair like frost, for their voices and their faces enchanted him with terror, and the odor of oil and iron, which is the odor of death-on-the-wing, was rank in his nostrils.
But he saw the girl coming. He feared her least of all, and he could remember the night of his puppyhood when her arm had held him like a collar, and her hand had kept off the teeth of the dogs. She came to him now, tiptoeing, speaking as gently as the doves that had complained of love, and there was food in her hand. It came closer. It was a span away.
Then the coyote’s head darted, and, snatching the prize, he whirled into the outer darkness.
“He’ll come again. We’ll have him,” said the voice of man.
He found the three waiting. At the feet of the gray lady he laid his prize.
“Poison,” said the brush coyote jealously. “Don’t touch it, my dear.”
He was much too late.
“Delicious,” she said. “And it carries the taste of fire. How wonderful you are!” she went on to the golden coyote. “When I actually saw you standing in the doorway, so big, so handsome, with the light glimmering on you, the light of man … I was so frightened that I nearly turned away and ran. But, of course, I stayed to watch. I never have seen such a thing or even heard of it before today. Such courage never was shown before by a coyote.”
“Coyote? Rot!” said the brush coyote, writhing in jealous anger. He stalked up to the other and planted himself squarely between his rival and the gray beauty. “Even the birds in the trees are chatting about it,” he said. “The blue jays are laughing about the cross-bred mongrel that calls himself a coyote. You son of a yellow dog!”
The golden coyote felt his brain burst into flame. He would as soon have faced a timber wolf as this big warrior, but that temporary madness thrust him straight forward. The wind of his leap was whistling in his teeth as he dove directly for the throat of the brush coyote.
That seasoned campaigner was much taken by surprise. He had fought fifty times before, but always there had been much cursing, snarling, boasting before the final battle began, with skirmishing. This headlong charge like the rush of a ferret was not the tactics of a coyote, yet the brush coyote side-leaped in plenty of time, if only he had been on firm ground. But it was not firm, it was a treacherous, sandy surface, at this point; one hind paw slipped, and the long fighting jaw of the golden coyote closed on his throat. Now, in coyote style, he should have ripped and torn, then sprung back again. But he did not. He knew very well the lunges, the parries, the time thrusts, and the saber strokes of coyote battle. He had practiced them himself since his puppyhood, but in this blind fury another instinct overmastered him, and with closed eyes he held his grip, deeper and deeper.
A weight dragged down on the jaw of the golden coyote. He relaxed his hold and, stepping back, stared at the limp body of the enemy. The red tongue lolled; the open eyes were no brighter than muddy water.
The golden coyote began to shake. “It is death. It is death,” he said. “I have killed him for your sake.” He turned.
She was not there. All the valley lay naked before him, with the smiling moon at its farther end. He thought of the mangy old coyote, and how he had sat down to scratch. Sickness and weakness poured through him, for he had faced death twice for her sake.
He was so weary, now, that he did not even jog, but walked slowly back over the slopes. The wind still rose. On his own hillside he pointed his nose up it and breathed the scent of the budding trees, saw the Musquash flashing in the bottom of the dark valley like a streak of sunlight on the bottom of a pool, and out of the northeast heard again the droning horn that sounded in the upper cañon. It appeared to him that the world was too big, that he had shrunk to the size of a week-old puppy.
“Mother!” he called, but, getting no answer from the cave above him, he dragged himself up the slope toward it. She was angry, of course, because he had run off, and, therefore, she would not speak.
“Mother!” he whimpered again, coming up to the little shoulder before the cave.
But there was neither scent nor sound of her. And from the shadow beside the cave a form stepped out into the full brightness of the moon that turned it all to silver, except the dark tail tip and the yellow eyes.
A greater tremor of weakness came over the golden coyote. “Ah, is it you?” he said.
“Darling!” she answered.
IV
The golden coyote grinned as though he were scratching himself. He was very tired. Since moonrise he had helped carry the five little ones from the old hillside to this, where the forest stretched around them like the horns of
an elk, and then he had caught mice and brought them three at a time, winding up with a rabbit that had run him gaunt. The moon was now a thin shred of silk above the sunrise, and he felt all as faint and worn himself.
“White Foot, Light Foot, Shiver-Nose, Tingle-Toes,” she crooned in the cave.
“If that’s a poem,” he said, “I know it by heart already. And if it’s a song, I wish you would finish it.”
“The children like it,” she said.
“No doubt they do,” he said.
“Poor little darlings,” she murmured absently.
They were to be pitied, he judged, because they had such a father. The injustice of such a remark rankled in him, but he could not think of an appropriate answer. He wanted to sleep, but his very ears twitched with impatience. He knew that it was rash to rouse her temper and her tongue, but the imp of the perverse urged him on.
“White Foot, Light Foot, Tingle-Nose, Shiver-Toes,” he mocked.
“You have it wrong,” she snapped. “If you can’t remember the simplest poetry….”
“Poetry?” he scoffed. “Ah-h-h!” His yawn was followed by a moment of deadly silence.
She then remarked politely: “You’ve heard better, no doubt?”
Shall I, or shall I not? he asked of his irritable heart. Then: “I have listened to the doves at sunset,” he replied.
She did not speak, but he heard her shake herself and knew that she had stood up. With a half-pleasant sense of trouble coming, he looked to the south, where a thin arm of smoke was standing above the woods and putting a ghostly hand flat against the sky.
“You’ve been eating grass again and you’ve upset your digestion,” she decided.
“Have I?” he said. He hated to be explained.
“As a matter of fact,” she said, “when I notice some of your habits, I can’t help remembering what the brush coyote said … that your father must have been at least half dog.”
“I thought the brush coyote’s talk was as dead as himself,” said the golden coyote.
“There, there,” she soothed him. “You see that I’ve given you a chance to put your best foot forward again.”
