by Max Brand
He could hear a softly moaning voice that was barely audible through the uproar of the stream: “Oh, God of the bounding deer, you gave me wings for the mountains, but I have come into the lowlands and, therefore, I am dying. You have given me the keenest of all ears to listen to the flesh-eaters … you have taught me the story of their foul scents in the air … you have sent the blue jay and others to warn me … but still I die by the tooth. I confess my sins. I looked from the bare uplands and coveted the sweet, thick grasses in the valley. I came down to the valley, and I am dead in it.”
“You die, however, in a good cause,” said the golden coyote dryly. “That is to say, five causes, if you prefer exactness.”
“Brother,” said the dying deer, “I forgive you.”
“Let me console you,” said the golden coyote. “I have been at a good many deathbeds, and, although I detest self-praise, I must admit that I have received some notice for my consolings. If you will listen to me, let me suggest that death comes to all things except to the God who maintains in the blue of the sky pleasant meadows filled with mice, and hen yards and sheep closes for good coyotes, with a deer spotted here and there just to give range and piquancy to our diet. Speaking of death, it was once said by a celebrated singer … a relative of mine, I believe … that the evil we do lives after us … but be assured you will be appreciated after death.”
“Ah,” said the deer, “you scorn and deride me now, but remember that we conquer today, but darkness waits for us tomorrow. Yet still I forgive you, for all the proud and the victorious are cruel.”
“I am really sorry,” said the coyote, licking his lips, “to see you bleed so much, and though I know that victory gives no account of her actions, and that he who wins it is always right, yet I wish to remind you that he who forgives gains the triumph.”
“Do with me as you will,” said the blacktail faintly. “My concern is with eternity. For my sinful way took me out of the bright mountains into the dusky valley. Then the deer God made me to hear in the midst of danger the singing and the shouting of water as if it were in my native mountains. I came to it and I crossed it, but I found death on the other side. Oh, God, who made the moose and the antelope, the wapiti and the whitetail, and last and best made the bounding deer, I die among the lowland shadows, but by the light of my death I see my sins. God of the mountains who made the sunrise, also, accept my spirit in your pastures among your pale mountains where the water is blue and still, and where the flesh-eaters never wait by the salt licks, and where man never comes, and it is always dawn….”
“Amen,” said the golden coyote, shivering a little as he heard the last phrase.
The mule deer did not speak again. Its head had fallen. The wind ruffled its hair, and its eyes were filled with the sunrise, but the coyote knew that it was dead.
Now he looked back across the creek, where the two wolves were running up and down, jumping and yelping in their frantic disappointment. The coyote mounted a rock so that his voice could be heard more clearly.
“Cousins,” he said, pitching the words so that they would pass across the thunder of the stream, “how shall I thank you? And how you disprove the old saying, that charity sets a bare table. I thought that charity seldom left her own cave, and yet here I find her on the edge of Poplar Creek.”
“You eater of moldy mice!” screamed lop-ear.
“Therefore, you give me venison for a change,” said the golden coyote. “Many a wolf can give good advice, but very few will give a good meal.”
“Half-breed! Half-breed!” yelled lop-ear’s wife. “Son of a yellow dog!”
The golden coyote was proud of his self-control, but now he showed his teeth. Trust a female tongue to strike the deepest.
“Well,” said the coyote, “I am sorry to see that you would take back your gifts. Come over the water, at least, and help me dine. How wisely you brought down the mule deer to me. I thought he was running in the sky, but my clever cousins brought him down to me. How wisely and well you hunted. Five minutes’ conversation with you, my masters, is better than a year’s study of trails. Though I confess that you sing more than you talk.”
For the wolves now were babbling in high-pitched rage.
“But small speech,” said the coyote, “is the sign of much wisdom. Yet haven’t I heard that a wise wolf keeps on good terms with his stomach as well as his wife. However, a good digestion is better than proverbs. I only add, as I leave you to invite the banqueters, that the greatest wisdom is the knowledge of one’s follies.”
He turned and trotted up the slope, where the roar of the stream diminished, but the furious yelling of the timber wolves followed him through the hills.
He was very contented. The taste of pleasure was still in his mouth. But yet he turned now and then to look into the north where the golden light reached and withdrew like a cat’s paw along the shadowy side of the Kendal Mountains. Lightning, he could have sworn, playing one of its evil tricks, and yet the sky overhead was purest blue, and the sun was up with glorious brightness. However, he told himself that in this full life a coyote must do one thing at a time, and yonder by the bank of Poplar Creek a warm meal was giving tidings of itself to every wind that blew.
So he hurried on to the cave.
When he came to the edge of the little plateau before the cave’s entrance, his two sons sprang up from the brush to greet him. They were almost full grown, and a very shapely pair they made, except that their paws and heads looked a trifle too large for their bodies. Of the two, White Foot was very like his mother, but the bigger puppy, ridiculously called Tingle-Toes by the gray beauty, greatly resembled his father. There were golden splashes about him, and his coat, like that of his sire, was extraordinarily long.
Even this favorite, however, was warned away with a growl. It was all very well for them to dance about him with eager questions, but he felt that their mother should have led them out onto the trail long before.
She lay at the mouth of the cave, looking to the north. And now from the brush at the edge of the little hill shoulder, where she had been lying, the golden coyote’s three-legged mother came hobbling. She kept her distance when her son was not with the rest of his family, for mothers-in-law are not welcome in a coyote home.
“Well? Well?” snapped the wife.
The golden coyote yawned, for he loved to tease.
“Oh, nothing to speak of,” he said. “What’s the news here?”
“Nothing at all,” she said.
“There’s fresh blood on this stone,” he observed, sniffing. “A ground squirrel, I believe.”
“White Foot caught it,” said the wife. “We’ve had some grasshoppers, too, if you call that news.”
“Humph!” said the father of the family. He touched noses with his mother and lay down beside her.
“Where is it?” she whispered.
“Be quiet,” he replied. “There’s time for everything. She’s in a beastly temper, isn’t she?”
“As usual,” said the peacemaker.
“If only Tingle-Toes would show the slightest sense on a trail,” said the wife, “we wouldn’t be half starved all the time, But he must jump up and startle the food right out of our mouths. There was a perfectly delicious mountain grouse … but I won’t talk about it. It’s too irritating to have a numskull for a son.”
“What the puppy never learns, the coyote never knows,” said the mother-in-law calmly. “And, for that matter, teaching others teaches oneself. You ought to go in for their education a little more seriously, my dear, really.”
“Education!” cried the gray beauty, the hair bristling along her back. “As if I haven’t set him the best example. When I hear you talk … I simply pray for patience.”
“Yes,” said the mother of the golden coyote. “A moment’s patience is a ten years’ comfort. Be patient, my dear, and you will have patient children. What a word it is … patience. Your poor dear uncle,” she added to her son, “used to say … ‘At the bottom o
f patience is heaven.’”
“But all that he found,” snapped the wife, “was the jaw of a trap. Patience my foot! No, it’s a beggar’s virtue. Tingle-Toes is simply an idiot, the way he hunts. I wish you’d teach him yourself.”
“The child will hear you in another moment,” said the mother-in-law. “Teach him? Oh, delighted. I’ve never wished to interfere, you know.”
“Except by talking all day long and finding fault!” snapped the young mother.
“Here, here!” said the golden coyote. “Enough of this non-sense.”
“Listen!” snapped his wife. “It’s very well for you to make thunder on an empty stomach, but I’m tired of your tyrannous ways. Disgusted, too. Little you care about the children. Neither does your mother, offering her horrid comments all day long. What has she done for the children?”
“I’ve been afraid of touching them for fear you’d cut my throat,” she said. “And then … dear, dear, how true it is that experience must be paid for. Still, patience, patience, my poor child, and remember that with time and patience the lamb grows into mutton. Which makes harder killing and longer eating.”
“There she goes again,” said the wife. “If you don’t stop her talking, I’ll go mad. Tingle-Toes! Stop eating those pebbles! You’ll ruin your teeth! How many times do I have to tell you! I never saw such a creature! I never did. It’s enough to drive one frantic.”
“There’s White Foot doing the same thing,” said the golden coyote. “Why don’t you reprimand him, now and then?”
“Poor thing. No wonder. Half starved all his life,” she complained.
The golden coyote leaped to his feet. “Is there any justice and logic in you females?” he said loudly.
“Hush, hush!” exclaimed his wife. “If that is not exactly like the voice of a dog … and the children already have heard whisperings. That detestable magpie was here talking at dawn. You must watch your voice, though. Suppose that….”
“What do I care?” rumbled the golden coyote, nevertheless, lowering his tone. “Dogs and coyotes … they all go to one heaven, I dare say.”
“Ah, is that so?” she said.
“Yes, that’s so. And you needn’t be so ugly. Besides, nobody really has dared to tell my mother that my father was actually a dog.”
“The contemptible gossips,” she said, licking the stump of her fourth leg.
The young wife jerked up her head. “I ask you. I ask you now!” she demanded.
The mother of the golden coyote lifted her head in turn. She was growing old and stiff, now. Her sides were perpetually lean, and her coat was turning white, the worst of summer hunting colors. Very little could she kill for herself, now, except an inexperienced mouse, here and there, or a frog, or such watery diet. Upon the charity of her son she lived and found no complaint from him.
“You ask me what?” she asked in turn. She summoned her coldest dignity. “What is it that you are about to say?”
“I have a right to know!” exclaimed the wife. “Are my children thoroughbreds? Are they really good coyotes, or is there somewhere in them the dirty, cringing, cowardly, man-serving, man-loving blood of a dog? Where did Tingle-Toes get the yellow splashes that his father loves so well? Why is my husband called the ‘golden’ coyote? And finally, though I can’t complain of his singing, where did he get his speaking voice? Answer me now! Answer me this minute! I have a right to know. I demand an answer!”
“Ah, ah,” said the mother-in-law, “how young you are, my dear. Young and pretty. Yet I can remember my poor dear dead brother saying that a pretty face could be a foul bargain. Not that I mean that for a direct comment, of course.”
“Do you see how she avoids me, and slips away into insults?” exclaimed the wife.
“My son,” said the mother, “I see that it is time for me to leave. This evil-minded creature….”
“Creature yourself!” shrilled the wife. “And I hope you go. I hope you do! I hope you do! The best of a mother-in-law is the memory of her, and a very little of that will serve my turn. Go! Scat! Laugh! You troublemaker!”
“Be quiet,” said the golden coyote, arching his back dangerously.
“Hush, my boy. Hush, my son, my darling,” said the aged coyote. “This is to be expected. Old age is itself a disease, and it has been the misfortune of many a coyote that he has lived too long, though it is true that my poor dear brother … your own uncle, darling … used to say that he who did not honor age was not worthy of it. But it is time for me to go.”
“You hypocrite! You whining hypocrite!” exclaimed the wife. “Age has made you white on the outside only. Age makes coyotes more wise and foolish. You and your maxims … and your brother that was caught in the trap … shame, shame that you’d hang about here to eat us out of cave and home, you worthless, three-legged….”
“Stop!” said the golden coyote. He spoke quietly, but he spoke through his teeth.
His wife sank suddenly down on her stomach and blinked her eyes, then rolled them to either side.
“You, too,” he said to his mother, “stay where you are. The older you are, the older my love is for you. But this female chattering is worse than lightning.”
The word had been put into his mind by a glance to the north, where a black hood was curling over the mountains, and the thunderheads glittered with electric fire. The two puppies were watching it.
He went to his wife and stood over her. “Stand up,” he said.
“Good heavens!” she exclaimed, slowly rising. “What is on your breath? Where have you been? What have you seen? How did you do it? Is it only a puma’s leaving? Or, did you …?”
“Hush,” he said, “and follow me, everyone, if you’ve really done with your talking.”
She touched his nose. “You great, foolish, wonderful thing!” she cried. “You’ve killed a deer with your own teeth. You’ve done it all alone! How tremendous! Hurry, White Foot! Tingle-Toes, you inexplicable idiot, do you really think you can ever catch your tail? Come this instant. Mother, I’ve been frightfully rude,” she went on as they took the downward trail, “but family cares … you know what they are … grief … worry … trouble … forethought…. Venison,” she broke off. “I’ve had none for a whole month … we can bury some where that unspeakable wolverine will never guess at it. A deer! And you not even out of breath.”
“Oh, no,” said the golden coyote. “I let lop-ear and his wife do the running for me. Let the others do the hunting. I prefer the eating … when a coyote comes to my age. Keep in single file, now, and I’ll lead the way. What a delightful fragrance of young rabbit in the air. Have you noticed?”
“How could I help?” said the wife happily.
Then, well to the rear, her voice broken by her laboring, three-legged gait, they heard the mother calling: “Do you think it is safe, my dears? There certainly is trouble in the sky!”
Trouble there was. The thunderheads had sped half across the heavens and now and then the voice of the storm rumbled to them faintly, as though underground. Those arms of lightning, which had lain naked along the slopes of the North Kendal Mountains at dawn, were now in the prime of the day confined to the black clouds, or else thrusting sharp lariat lines of crooked light toward the earth.
The golden coyote, however, kept on.
“Follow behind me and do everything that I do,” he panted. “When the sky is angry, it is not always at you and me. Avoid green trees in wet places. Shun the poplars and prefer the pines. I think those are the right rules, Mother?”
“Perfectly right,” she panted, and still she had energy to pant: “One lesson by rote is worth ten half learned.”
They approached Poplar Creek as the fringe of the storm swept over them. The long, dark fingers of the rain rushed and rattled among the trees, then they were gathered into a murky twilight with the lightning pulsing like an irregular heartbeat. It smote among the trees before them. Darkness covered the lofty blue vault of the heavens with a flat, slatey ceiling. The wind was
not strong. Only now and again it touched the tops of the highest trees with a roaring like a distant surf, but the lightning struck more thickly, and the thunder burst in awful floods that drowned the senses. Not on the North Kendals, but on the eastern mountains the golden coyote now saw balls of brilliant fire rolling down to the valleys.
To their right, a hundred-foot fir was struck full on the head by a great shaft. Its riches of watery sap were in that instant converted to superheated steam: the flaws of pitch and resin stopped the flow of the electric currents like governors lashed down, and that big trunk, three feet through at the base, exploded like a chunk of gunpowder. Bits of wood and bark were blown toward the file of coyotes, and the puppies howled dismally, and shrank closer to their elders.
“The God of the coyotes is angry,” said the golden coyote, “but we are not the only coyotes in the world. Courage, little ones! Courage all!”
He himself flinched to the side, a moment later, as a blinding current twisted around the trunk of a pine. Then another, a giant, was smitten. Shorn in two, the lower half tossed upward a flare of strong flames like a torch. The nose of the golden coyote burned. Every hair stood erect, so loaded was the air with electricity, but still he kept on, for dinner was waiting, and only one call in the wilderness is stronger than that of meat.
He had his reward, for the heart of the storm passed; the lightning showers flashed far behind them. Not even rain fell upon their wet coats, now, but rushed like wind among the distant trees. Then they came to the view of the kill.
They went at it with little murmurs of joy, the wife and the two puppies first; the mother last because she was so far to the rear. The golden coyote waited for her, assuming a distant and indifferent air, as he walked rather stiffly to and fro. It did not become the provider to express joy in his deeds but rather to take everything for granted, as though this were but an ordinary day’s work.
In fact, his back was turned, when he heard the metallic clang of the closing jaws of the trap and the loud yell of Tingle-Toes. As he turned back, frozen with dread, he saw his favorite son wrenching at something that held him fast, and heard the rattling of the chain. Man had been there before them. Aye, now the scent of man reeked up to him from the soil. Five had been in their litter. The forest fire had taken one; rifle bullets had bitten as deep as the life of two more. Only this pair remained, and now one of these was gone, or else maimed for life.
