by Max Brand
“Certainly,” said the blue jay with unnecessary loudness. “And don’t be a whit down-hearted. There’s many a famous bar sinister in history, and what are the two of them but mongrels?” He chuckled as he rose, and, flirting away over the hillside, he dipped back again at once. “Three legs never ran better,” said the blue jay, “but they’re closing on her, and they certainly will have her before she gains the cave.”
At this, the golden coyote forgot his troubles. Or rather, he translated them into the headlong speed with which he scaled the slope. Crossing it, he heard the dog voices before him with such a howling note as when they closed on a staggering deer. He ran faster than ever, the loose hide rippling on his back with every stretch of his supple body.
The blue jay dipped down on an easy wing, crying: “Hurry, hurry! They are just beyond the aspen grove! Hurry all you little ones, too, for this will be something to see!”
And, at his call, the songsters whirred up on wings that grew invisible with rapid pulsation; over the farther edge of the wood they showered away out of sight like leaves on a falling wind. The slender trunks and the bright foliage of the aspens were faintly flushed, like a winter cloud by the sunrise color. Through it he rushed, and on the farther side he saw the three.
They almost had her at that moment, but yet on her three legs she could dodge, and so doubled back toward him with gaping mouth and her eyes green. He went by her like a noise in the wind, hearing her gasp: “A fleet foot is better than strong teeth. Strike and away. The old game, child.”
He barely heard her, for he was seeing with all his mind the picture of a sheep dog cowering away from his food before the rush of these great brutes. And a fighting instinct to close and grapple mastered him, sweeping away in an instant all those graceful and dangerous lessons in fencing that his wise mother had taught him long ago.
It was absurdly simple. The mouth of Rusty gaped wide enough to swallow his slender body, but he dipped under that bulky head and locked his jaws on the throat.
He was flung here and there, crashing through a bush, thumped heavily against a log, but he closed his eyes and worked deeper toward the life. Then agony fastened on his right flank.
It was Gray Tom who had him with a grip that encompassed half his body and poured all his vitals full of fire. Rusty flung backward in a last struggle. The golden coyote was strung on a rack between the two, yet he kept the good deep grip until the black dog suddenly crumpled. The rigid power melted from his limbs, he fell loosely to the ground, and the coyote knew he never would rise again.
So he loosed his hold and turned as well as he could. The white old mother had worked her broken teeth into a leg of Gray Tom so that his back was humping with pain, and, when the golden coyote slashed him across the face, Tom had enough. He leaped back, with his jaws red stained. He tucked his tail between his legs and fled with a howl.
The coyote did not follow. His hind legs buckled beneath him, and he lay down on the grass while his mother came to sniff the wound.
“All this for me!” she whimpered. “I who have less remaining in me than a grasshopper in November. Oh, my beautiful and brave, my golden son, tell quickly where the pain runs.”
“It is in all my body, but mostly in my brain,” he said.
She licked his face, whining, but he turned his head and regarded steadily the hopeless ebbing of the blood from his side.
“You are going to live,” she told him. “The good Father of the coyotes, would he pass over my wretched last drop of existence in order to take you in the midst of your strength and your loveliness, my son?”
“Is the God of the coyotes my God?” he asked her bitterly. “Or is it the God of dogs to whom I should pray? Or am I a wretched mongrel shut out from both worlds?”
She did not answer, and he would not look at her. He closed his eyes and dropped his head upon his paws. Then out of the darkness she spoke to him, saying: “When he came into the valley and called to me the first time, I thought I had been waiting all my life to hear his voice. When I looked down into the shadows, it seemed to me that a golden thing had run up the Musquash out of the sunset sky, and how could I help but go down to him, my son?”
He quoted softly: “Oh, love, oh, love … oh, sweet and gentle death.”
He closed his eyes again, and it seemed to him that the world unrolled before him, and all the song of the solitaire rang in music at his ears in praise of morning and sunset, and of warm noon, and shadowy twilight. He saw the white-headed mountains, and the softness of the green valleys. He, at one glance, even as in the prayer of the thrush, saw the world and loved it with the love of one for a home that he is about to leave forever.
“Man is the god of dogs, and, therefore, he is my god,” he said. “If there is strength enough left in me, I am going down the valley to his cave, and there he may put the magic of his hands upon me and make me whole again.”
He rose. It seemed that half his life poured out from his side as he did so, but, after bracing himself for a moment on his numb and failing legs, he began to go down the hill. The blood of Gray Tom led him better than a light, and the white mother went beside him. When they came to the stream, he drank deeply, and saw her face beside his in the water.
“Hush,” he said, though she was as still as the softly flowing current. “I forgive you everything. Let us go on.”
They went on, side-by-side. He knew that she was striving to be quiet, but every breath from her was a moan, saying: “Faster, faster. Patience and courage, for a great heart is more than blood can drain.”
He did not answer. He had no breath to spare.
The red tidings were everywhere, it seemed. On either side of him a whisper ebbed away along the ground. A horned owl swayed above him on wings like a drawn breath, and far away they heard the cry of the timber wolf. Some life was still in him, but he knew that he was the quarry for whom that song was sung.
When he was close to the house, his hind legs sagged beneath him, but, while they shuddered and he threw up his head with effort, he saw far above him the circling buzzard, and, at the sight of that living death, he was able to go on. His mother shrank away from him as he neared the door, but the blue jay perched on the roof ridge, and a magpie dressed in black silk with white facings lighted on the eaves above the door.
Bird song was rippling all through the valley, but the sun was not yet up, though the windows glowed. The smell of wood smoke and hot iron oozed through the cracks of the doors, and, inside, he could hear the muttering and roaring fire, which also was enslaved by the enchanter.
Breathing of these scents, something out of the ancient past came into the mind of the coyote. It was outside of knowledge, but it was like a memory of voices and a touch upon his head.
He whined, and scratched at the door, which opened at once upon wreaths of smoke, some of which clung about the woman who stood there throwing up her hands and crying out. Then came man himself with a heavy, running step that shook the house, and, at the sight of him, the coyote quailed lower on the doorstep. He would have fled, but the last scruple of his strength was gone. Man leaned above him and spoke.
At the sound of this voice, the heart of the golden coyote melted; his tail wagged softly from side to side.
“I said he would come,” said man. Then he stooped lower and passed beneath the body of the coyote his hands, and lifted that inert weight. Exquisite agony filled the wounded flesh, beyond belief, but the coyote gave no sign. On the kitchen table they threw a blanket. On the blanket they laid him, but his head pointed toward the open door, and through it he could see chickens strutting in the yard, ducks waddling down to the pond, and beyond, at the corner of the corral fence, sat his old mother, with all her hair bristling.
Something very hot was laid over his wound, so that the chill aching began to end, and in its place a sleepy comfort stole through his veins. Then the hands of man, with the deadly odor of iron strong upon them, wrapped a cloth about his body. After that, his head was raise
d, his weak jaws parted, and something pungent flowed down his throat. It made his eyes go blind, for a moment. It burned his stomach. The revolting taste of it made him shudder, but afterward a greater comfort followed.
The child came in. There was no fear in her. There never had been, but she took in her arms his fighting head so filled with wisdom, with cunning, and with pain, and she made over him a noise like the crooning of doves and the moaning of a wounded thing. He could hear and feel the throbbing of her heart. She was softer than a puppy of three weeks, and the touch of her hand, stroking his face, was gentler than a mother’s tongue.
He looked up and lifted his head, which wavered with weakness, but for some reason he looked not into her weeping eyes, but straight into the stern and scowling face of man. Long and long he stared, until it seemed to him that all the days of his life were stripped away from him, one by one. He felt naked, weak, and blind.
“I have seen the face of my god,” said the golden coyote, and he knew that he was about to die.
Outside, he could hear the voices of the wild pigeons on the roof. They were saying: “What is inside? Why do you dare to sit over the entrance to the cave of man?”
“It is the golden coyote,” said the magpie crisply.
“Ah, have they managed to kill him at last?” asked the pigeons in their voices that never could be harsh.
“It is far from me to be a gossip, and particularly about a good soul who has furnished me many a meal simply by following his wise footsteps, but I may say that the golden coyote is not dead. I should state it more simply by saying that he has come home, at last.”
The man spoke.
The girl drew back.
The great and all-wise hands of man himself took the weight of the coyote’s head, and the golden coyote licked them, for he had passed beyond fear.
The sun rose, but to his dim eyes it seemed that it was only the dawning of beautiful knowledge that blinded him and filled him with content more infinite than the murmurings of the broad river where it left the valley and passed into the unbounded desert. For he had raised his voice against man, and bared his teeth against him, and hated him, but man was god, and god, in the end, had forgiven him. He that seemed so terrible and grim was kinder than a good spring day and gentler than a mother’s love. This knowledge grew into dazzling brightness, then utter darkness received him.
“Listen,” said the voice of man. “That is his mother wailing. She knows. He came to me at last, but he came too late. We never could have him living, but we have him dead. We’ve been sinful folk, I fear, and the great God forgive us.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Max Brand is the best-known pen name of Frederick Faust, creator of Dr. Kildare, Destry, and many other fictional characters popular with readers and viewers worldwide. Faust wrote for a variety of audiences in many genres. His enormous output, totaling approximately 30,000,000 words or the equivalent of 530 ordinary books, covered nearly every field: crime, fantasy, historical romance, espionage, Westerns, science fiction, adventure, animal stories, love, war, and fashionable society, big business and big medicine. Eighty motion pictures have been based on his work along with many radio and television programs. For good measure he also published four volumes of poetry. Perhaps no other author has reached more people in more different ways. Born in Seattle in 1892, orphaned early, Faust grew up in the rural San Joaquin Valley of California. At Berkeley he became a student rebel and one-man literary movement, contributing prodigiously to all campus publications. Denied a degree because of unconventional conduct, he embarked on a series of adventures culminating in New York City where, after a period of near starvation, he received simultaneous recognition as a serious poet and successful author of fiction. Later, he traveled widely, making his home in New York, then in Florence, and finally in Los Angeles. Once the United States entered the Second World War, Faust abandoned his lucrative writing career and his work as a screenwriter to serve as a war correspondent with the infantry in Italy, despite his fifty-one years and a bad heart. He was killed during a night attack on a hilltop village held by the German army. New books based on magazine serials or unpublished manuscripts or restored versions continue to appear so that, alive or dead, he has averaged a new book every four months for seventy-five years. Beyond this, some work by him is newly reprinted every week of every year in one or another format somewhere in the world. A great deal more about this author and his work can be found in The Max Brand Companion (Greenwood Press, 1997) edited by Jon Tuska and Vicki Piekarski. His Website is www.MaxBrandOnline.com. His next Five Star Western will be Sky Blue.
