DEATH IN THE HOWL OF COYOTES
LITTLE QUEEN was awake at the very first peep of dawn. With her soft
muzzle pressed against her mother’s warm flank, she watched the
beautiful unfolding of morning. Red streaks appeared above the
southeastern horizon and tinted the heavy clouds that were slowly and
ominously coming out of the north and packing the centre of the sky. The
air was clear and cold. The earth and all things on it were covered with
a thick layer of frost. Every blade of grass was dressed in fanciful and
luxuriant whiteness. Every hair on her mother’s body had turned white
and thick save on a small spot on her flank where the warmth of her
little head had driven the frost away.
All around her lay the still forms of mares and colts and horses. Many
of the strangers had already distinguished themselves from the others in
her mind. The whiteness that covered them all interested little Queen.
She had seen that whiteness on them before, but never had she seen them
so completely covered with it.
She turned her little head to see whether her own body was covered with
it. The discovery that it was rather pleased her; but the lifting of her
head resulted in a slight annoyance. Her lip touched the frost and
became wet and cold. She began to rub the wet lip on the warm spot of
her mother’s flank. Her mother called sleepily to her as if the movement
bothered her, so she pressed the lip tight against the warm spot,
delighting in its comfort. In that position she watched the details of
the world about her as they appeared in the growing light.
A short distance before her, beyond two mares’ backs in front and nearer
to her, she spied the black head of the mischievous colt only partially
covered with frost. He was apparently still sound asleep. She was gazing
at the two frost-covered ears with uneasiness and irritation, when
suddenly as she raised her eyes a bit, she saw a coyote come out of his
den way off on the other slope of the valley. She watched him with fear
and absorbed attention. She remembered having seen one, once before,
somewhere. She remembered too that her mother had become alarmed at
sight of him and she began to worry as she watched. She saw that he was
interested in the forms lying about her. She saw him stretch lazily,
yawn and gaze down at them. He trotted away up to the very rim of the
bowl and there he sat down on his haunches and continued looking at
them.
Little Queen lowered her head not to be conspicuous and continued from
that position to watch his every move. She had been looking so intently
at him that she did not notice a second coyote only a few paces from the
first. When she did notice it, one of the horses jumped to his feet,
shook the frost from his body and began running about to warm up.
Another of the horses followed the first and when little Queen turned to
look at them, she lost sight of the coyotes. She searched for them on
the whiteness, for some time, then discovered them sitting so still that
she had mistaken them for stones; but the horses that had got up ran off
in their direction and she saw the two coyotes take to their heels.
The manner in which they loped away, continually looking back as they
went, showing that they were afraid that the horses meant to run after
them, lessened Queen’s fear of them slightly; and, tired of lying there,
she too, rose to her feet and shook the frost from her body. Like the
big horses she felt that she wanted exercise so she frisked about her
mother, keeping an eye all the while upon the black colt who had by this
time awakened and who was now sleepily watching her.
But as her blood began to circulate rapidly, her delight in motion grew
apace and in her delight she forgot the black colt and the coyotes. The
circle about her mother was altogether too small for the expression of
her joy and she undertook to make a circuit about the lake with the two
other horses that were running. She had gone only half way when she
became aware of the black colt, racing after her.
She did not see him till she had turned and as soon as she spied him she
sent an urgent call for help to her mother, and bounded away with eyes
aglow. Her call brought her mother to her feet. The old mare galloped
away in the opposite direction, intending to meet her before the black
colt got to her. The excitement roused the last of the sleepers and soon
the air was filled with the thumping of lively hoofs. Only the old
sorrel work-horse got safely out of the way and went on, indifferent to
the racket, to eat his breakfast.
The buckskin mare got to her daughter in time to prevent the colt from
fleeing and nipped him savagely on the hip. In the meantime his white
mother had reached him and quite naturally interceded in his behalf. She
made an attempt to nip the buckskin mare, but backed away in time to
avoid two buckskin legs which had shot into the air. The white mare then
turned quickly around and with her hind legs replied in kind.
The rest of the horses seemed to think it just the proper fun to
accompany morning exercises and after a few moments of exhilarating
kicking there followed a joyous stampede resulting at last in their
division into smaller groups, each group in its own corner grazing away
peacefully as if nothing had ever happened.
After a preliminary breakfast of milk, little Queen joined her mother in
a profitable search for the sweetest blades of grass, and grazing side
by side they wandered from the lake shore, up the slope and away over a
level bit of prairie to another hollow where a slough had completely
dried up, leaving a small, barren, muddy bottom exposed. The grass was
exceptionally good around that spot and when little Queen had eaten all
she could eat, she stretched out on the ground in the early afternoon
and slept a long while.
She awoke suddenly. She was very cold and felt that she had been cold
for a long time. A gloomy heaviness hung in the air and the sky was
thick with threatening clouds. All the desires in her little soul merged
into the one great desire to get to her mother. She jumped to her feet
intending to stretch and rid the joints of the sleepy feeling, when
there came upon her the fear that she was alone. She looked anxiously
and rapidly in several directions and then sprang off into space. A
great wave of uneasiness reached up from her heart and confused her.
She had been running around for some time when she discovered four
buckskin legs sticking up out of a trough-like hollow in the dried mud.
She rushed with fear to her mother who lay motionless upon her back,
either unable to get up or strangely unwilling to. She was very glad to
see her and much of the fear that she had just experienced left her at
the very sight of her beloved mother; but she slowly became conscious of
something incomprehensibly dreadful in the situation.
Queen looked at her curiously and called half anxiously, half
admonishingly, as if to say, “Why do you lie there like that when I want
you, and want you standing up straight as one ought to stand?” Receiving
no answer to her calling Queen ceased and gazed at her with growing
terror. There was something so frightfully unusual about her. Queen
began to shake herself as if she hoped to shake off the something that
seemed to cling to her and dim and blur everything for her. She sniffed
at the dear old head and sprang away in terror. There was a pool of
blood near the open mouth and the beloved lips, always so warm and so
soft, were cold and strangely hard. She became more and more alarmed and
confused. But in her little soul there was still hope. Her beloved
mother, so capable of solving the hardest problems, would solve this
one. She approached again and sniffed and sniffed and called and called.
But the more she sniffed and called in vain, the more intense grew her
fear.
She raised her little head high and gazed anxiously away through the
thickening gloom. A last flock of geese was flying south and the
familiar honking which before this had only aroused her curiosity, now
filled her with foreboding and loneliness. Loneliness was a state of
mind heretofore unknown to her; but now it brooded over the plains like
a nebulous dragon dropped from some other world, waiting for an
opportunity to devour her.
She walked off slowly and listlessly to where she had been asleep,
intending to while away the time by grazing until her mother should wake
up; but she could not eat. It was not many minutes before she was
walking right back again, calling more loudly than ever. Getting no
response, she stood still, and looked at the body she loved, trying very
hard to understand.
All the while the day waned. The sky grew blacker. The wind blew
stronger and in the air the something that had been threatening all day
seemed to have come nearer. Grass blades and rosebushes nodded
mournfully over all the lonely earth, and little Queen imagined, as she
turned round and round to look into every gloomy direction, that the
prairie had become peopled with dangerous forms who always fled from
sight just as she turned her eyes toward them.
She made several attempts to graze; but she could not eat. A sickening
feeling like a lump in her throat barred the way for food and she had
strangely lost all desire to eat. At her mother’s side she remained as
the long, fearful moments dragged, sniffing at her occasionally, calling
to her at times in the tone of one who expects no response and looking
off into the desolate wastes with a half-formed wish that something
would arrive to help her, yet fearfully worried of what might come.
Darkness began lowering more rapidly and the wind swept over the plains
moaning with disturbing sadness. Little Queen became desperate. She
pushed at her mother with her nose in passion born of fear, then
realising how useless that effort was, called with all her strength and
ran about her without plan or purpose.
Flakes of snow had been falling now and then for some time. They began
to fall more rapidly and to choke up the atmosphere, whirling through it
with a sort of light indifference and cruelly, boastingly foreshadowing
the approach of a more heartless blizzard. Queen decided at last that
there was nothing for her to do but to lie down beside her cold mother
and to wait for morning. She was whimperingly lowering herself to the
ground when she caught sight of the skulking form of a coyote in the
gloom to her side and sprang back upon her feet.
Again she began to urge her mother to get up. She pushed the rock-like
side with her little nose, but she stopped very soon with the conviction
that it was useless and that she had better keep her eyes on the coyote.
She centred her attention now upon the form that moved about in the dark
grey gloom and discovered a second form behind the first. In an effort
to move nearer to her mother, she stepped on the hard side, tripped and
fell; and as she got up to her feet again, there came out of the
boundless horror of the wind-swept night a blood-curdling howl. Leaping
clearly over her mother’s body she fled from it, and loped away in the
direction of the bowl-like valley and the lake.
Some of the horses were still grazing near the lake, as if they realised
that a blizzard was coming and desired to store away in their bodies all
the food they could gather. They cropped the grass most rapidly as the
wind tore at their tails and manes. Most of the mares were lying down
with their colts and one horse was drinking at a hole in the ice; while
the old sorrel work-horse stood near him patiently waiting for his turn
at the water. With an anxious whimper she sidled up to the old sorrel
who replied at once with his soft, tremulous whinny of good will. When
at last he drank, she cautiously lowered her head too, and seeing that
he had no objections, she drank as if there were fires in her little
heart that she would quench. When he raised his head and started away,
she pulled her head out of the water and ran after him as if it had been
her mother that had started away and was about to leave her behind.
The old sorrel lumbered off to the spot where he had slept the night
before and Queen forlornly followed him, stopping several times as she
went to look into the darkness where she had left her mother and where
she still hoped to find her when the day came again.
The old fellow painfully lowered his body, groaning like a rheumatic old
man. Many years had he toiled in the harness and his limbs were stiff.
Queen waited till he was at rest, then she approached him humbly and
whinnied questioningly. From the ugly old head came a soft, barely
audible neigh which was different from that of any horse she had ever
heard. It encouraged and consoled her little heart with a friendliness
without which she might have died that stormy night.
She whimpered like a baby that was cold and lay down beside him. Then as
the wind annoyed her she moved as near to him as she could get. There
came upon the cold, stinging, moaning wind another coyote howl,
long-drawn, shrill, mad, and lustful. It seemed far away but
inexpressibly terrifying. Little Queen raised her trembling head. The
old sorrel pricked his ears. But she saw the big pointed ears go back
into place again and the big shadowy head take its former sleepy
position. He was not afraid, she was glad of that; but she was afraid.
Strange images, visions she sought to drive from her mind by closing her
eyes, tormented her.
She was lying right against his back. Slowly she lowered her head upon
his neck, testing his willingness by degrees. When her head was finally
resting fully on his neck, he only whinnied softly, and Queen tried her
best to reply gratefully. A feeling of ineffable gratitude swept over
her with the warmth of his body.
All through the night she thought of her mother, when awake, and dreamed
of her when asleep. A thousand times she broke from her light snatches
of slumber, from her horrible dreams of coyotes, to pierce the
storm-filled gloom with her terrified eyes, expecting hopefully to find
her mother standing over her and looking down upon her; but only the
emptiness of the night, obliterating the world she had known, shrieked
with an uncertainty that filled up her soul.
------------------------------------------------------------------------