Last of the Cowboys

They were stringing barbed wire on the posts that ran up the hill along the south pasture when Cooper and Bula raised a howling chorus and went bolting down the slope toward the black oaks on the far side of the field, the greyhounds coursing with their tails down and ears pinned back: sleek, fast, ravenous.

Randall watched the dogs a moment, then glanced back at Clint, but Clint was already moving toward the pickup, the middle finger of his leather work glove between his teeth, tugging it off his hand, then opening the passenger door and fetching the rifle from the gun rack in the rear window.

Randall looked back toward the dogs—couldn’t see them now, just the chevrons they made as they sprinted through the stalks of waist-high wheat—and that was when he spotted the coyote: a gray figure crouched in the brush at the tree line. He’d just let go of the come-along when the rifle went off behind him, the report of the shot and then a sharp crack as the bullet broke the sound barrier, then the echo rolling back to them from the field. He turned to see Clint standing with his feet planted and the Ruger to his shoulder, a white puff of gun smoke already drifting on the autumn breeze. He looked toward the coyote but the coyote was gone.

"You hit it?” he asked.

Clint lowered the rifle. He shook his head and spat, which in Clint meant he wasn’t sure, and they started down the hill.

When they reached the woods on the east side of the pasture, they found the dogs sniffing around a boulder of weathered sandstone, covered with lichen and about the size of a car. Bula and Cooper would circle the rock with their noses to the ground, then stop and lift their heads to howl. Clint stood there with the rifle resting on his shoulder.

“What is it, dummies?” he asked the dogs.

Cooper looked up at him, swatted his tail against the sandstone a few times, then started sniffing again.

Randall was squatting on the ground, studying the sun-bleached leaves: a thousand sheets of veined parchment. He lifted one and turned it on its tiny stem and examined a splotch of bright blood. He scanned the forest floor until he located another drop. Then the next.

“Got a trail,” he told Clint, rising and walking over to Bula, holding the leaf under her wet nose. She gave it a sniff and tried to lick it, then turned her attention back to the boulder. This past summer, he’d driven the hounds up the road twice a week to Sandy Prince’s kennel for tracking lessons and it seemed they’d learned exactly nothing.

Clint reached down to scratch Bula’s back. “Worthless, ain’t you?” he told the dog.

They followed the drops of blood down to the swollen creek where a pair of slender paw prints were stamped in the mud along the bank. Randall looked upstream, then stood in the gloaming beneath the trees, listening to the burbling water.

“We never are going to find it,” said Clint.

“Not now,” said Randall.

“Probably’ll shade up somewhere and die.”

“Probably,” Randall said.

They went back up the hill and found the dogs still circling the outcrop of stone, stopping every few feet to sniff, and in the last light of sunset Randall saw what he’d missed before: a worn burrow on the boulder’s west side.

A sinking sensation slid down his throat.

"I think it might have been a mama," he said.

“How come you think that?” Clint asked. In the slanted glow of evening, his buzzed hair had a reddish hue.

Randall knelt beside the hole and pinched up a little patch of fur the coyote had left going in and out of her den. He held it for Clint to see.

Clint scratched his whiskered cheek with the nails of his left hand in a clawing kind of motion and his face seemed to darken.

“Shit,” he said, “you think she’s got pups under there?”

Bula had walked over to root at the burrow. She stuck her long snout in the hole, then raised her head and began to paw furiously at the earth.

“Could be a whole litter,” Randall said, standing and slapping the dirt from his jeans, left knee and right.

“What do you want to do? Even if we could get the tractor down here, you couldn’t budge this son of a bitch.” He patted the rock with his palm.

“I don’t know,” said Randall. “I don’t know there’s anything we can do.”

At the supper table that evening, Randall told Mr. Shoemaker about shooting the coyote, how the dogs acted, their suspicions about the den.

They’d worked in the oil field and they’d worked construction and they worked, for two weeks, in a warehouse over in Shawnee, loading trucks for UPS. You came home at the end of the day feeling like your body had been cranked through a clothes wringer. They didn’t mind manual labor—preferred it, actually—but all they’d ever wanted was to cowboy. Since old man Shoemaker had hired them last summer, Clint and Randall woke every morning feeling like they were in a movie. Wasn’t much money, but room and board were free, and they loved stringing fences, dehorning calves, getting to start a colt now and then. It was 1995 and they were the last remaining hands at the Crossed Wire Ranch: Shoemaker had fired the others. Now, the only other cowboys they saw were in the rodeo.

The old man sat chewing as he listened to Randall speak, the withered arm cradled in his lap and the other propped on the table’s edge. He’d had a stroke two decades ago; he dragged his left foot and talked out the right side of his mouth. His scalp was bald and covered with dark splotches, face perpetually sunburned. He wore denim overalls and a white T-shirt and a pocket watch on a chain. He had a volcanic temper and rarely let you finish your sentences. He wasn’t short on hatred, but he had a deep well of it for coyotes, pronouncing the word like a two-syllable slur: ki-oats. He’d hunted them for the last four decades and, like other ranchers in the Southwest, strung the carcasses of those he killed from his fences. This was supposed to keep the varmints away, but the little prairie wolves seemed to take it as an invitation.

When Randall was done speaking, Shoemaker nodded his head and swallowed.  “When I said for you to shoot them rascals—” he turned his head to cough, then reached for his coffee and took a sip. “When I said to shoot them, I meant dead. I’ve lost enough calves. I ain’t fixing to lose any more.”

“Yessir,” said Randall.

“What’d you shoot it with?” Shoemaker asked.

So far, Clint hadn’t spoken. He’d been sitting there, staring at his plate.

“That little Ruger,” Randall said.

“.22 won’t do shit,” said Shoemaker.

Lois glared at her husband. She said, “Don’t be cussing at the table.”

Shoemaker looked at her with his bloodshot eyes, then cleared his throat and looked back at Clint.

“Take the thirty-ought,” he said, pointing toward the mahogany gun case that stood on the other side of the room.

“Yessir,” said Randall, but Clint didn’t say anything.

“Do y’all want another pork chop?” Lois asked.

“No, ma’am,” Randall told her. “I’m about stuffed.”

The woman nodded. She was short and plump with plump, round cheeks and gray hair in a nest of tight curls. She fussed over Clint and Randall like they were her children.

“I’m going to wrap up these others,” she said, “and put them in the icebox. I can pack them for y’all’s lunch.”

“Thank you,” said Randall, “this was real good.”

“Real good,” Clint mumbled. Then he looked up at Shoemaker. “Want do you want us to do about those pups?”

“Don’t do nothing,” Shoemaker said. “Without the mama to feed them, they’ll die out. Next one you see, you make sure and put it down. Go on and put the thirty-ought in the truck.”

“Yessir,” said Randall, wiping his mouth with a paper napkin and scooting his chair back from the table.

Shoemaker nodded. “I ain’t loosing no more calves. I only bought those hounds cause Sandy Prince told me they could tackle these goddamned coy—”

“Johnny Shoemaker!” said Lois.          

“Well,” Shoemaker said.

Clint sat sulled up like a possum all the way down the lease road to the single-wide trailer that served as their bunkhouse. They got out of the pickup, climbed the pine-board steps, and went inside.

Randall walked over to the fridge, twisted a beer out of the plastic pack ring, and cracked the tab. He stood there sucking foam from the top of the can, then turned to look at Clint. His friend was sitting in the dark on the small sofa beside the door. Randall switched on a lamp, braced his forearms on the Formica countertop, and stood leaning against it.

“All right,” he said, “let’s have it.”

Clint looked up at him from under the bill of his ball cap, eyes like dim blue bulbs. He said, “Never would’ve shot that coyote if I’d known she had pups.”

“No,” said Randall, “but the old man pays us to shoot them, so we do.”

“Ain’t shot a mama before, though.”

“Far as you know,” said Randall.

“Yeah,” said Clint, “far as I know.”

Randall studied him a few moments and sipped his beer. He said, “I don’t see it makes just a whole lot of difference.”

“Makes a difference to me.”

“Well, little late to fret about it now, don’t you reckon?”

Clint didn’t answer.

Randall tilted the beer to his mouth, drained it, then dropped the can on the linoleum and stomped it flat. He picked up the aluminum disk and pitched it into the trash.

“I’m going to wash up,” he said, opening the refrigerator door and holding up the remaining cans of Coors by one of the empty rings. “You want one of these?”

Clint shook his head. Randall got himself another beer and walked down the narrow hall to the bathroom.

He thought by the time he got out of the shower, Clint would’ve found a better mood, but when he came back down the hall into the kitchen with his hair dripping down the back of his shirt, Clint hadn’t moved.

Randall got a TV dinner out of the freezer, put it in the microwave, and was about the start pressing buttons when Clint said, “Maybe we could go back down there and check.”

“Check for what?” Randall said.

“I don’t know,” said Clint. “Maybe we could figure out how to get them pups.”

“Get them for what?”

“They’re just going to lay down there and starve, Randy.”

“That’s right,” Randall said. “You heard Shoemaker—just leave them be.”

“I don’t know if I can do that,” Clint said.

“Hey,” said Randall, “listen here: you go down there and start assing around, you’re liable to get us run off the place.”

He turned, punched in four minutes on the microwave, and pressed COOK.

Clint said, “What if I don’t care?”

Randall turned back around. “What did you just say?”

“You heard what I said.”

“You don’t care about getting the both of us fired?”

“Say that I don’t.”

“Do I have to remind you how long it took us to find this job?”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” said Clint.

“I must be deaf as a post, cause I don’t think I’m hearing you. All we ever talked about was working on a ranch. And you’d be happy just chucking that out the window. Over some coyotes. That’s what you’re telling me?”

Clint didn’t say anything.

“And once the old man gives us the boot, we’re going to—what—work at the Walmart shoe department or some damned place? Or go back to roughnecking?”

Clint turned to look out the window a few moments, then turned and looked at Randall again.

“It ain’t right,” he said.

“Getting us fired, you mean.”

“You know that ain’t what I mean,” Clint said, and his voice had started to tremble with anger.

“Hey there, buster,” said Randall, pointing a finger at Clint, “ain’t no need to get lathered up. I’m trying to talk some sense into you ‘fore something bad happens, if you can get that through your skull.”

“And it don’t bother you knowing them pups are down there?”

“I don’t think about it,” Randall said. “Or, I wasn’t until you started in.”

“Maybe you should,” Clint said.

“Maybe I should what?”

“Think about it.”

“I swear to God,” said Randall, “if you don’t shut the fuck—”

At that, Clint rose. He was very tall, very lean—he had a good six inches on Randall. They’d been best friends since kindergarten and never once come to blows.

The two of them stood staring at each other for several moments. Randall could hear his heart beating in his ears. The microwave hummed. Then Clint stepped over to the door, went out and closed it very softly behind him. Randall heard the pickup start and then the tires crunching the gravel as the truck puttered down the road.

He squatted and sat on his heels and massaged his temples with his thumbs. The timer went off on the microwave, but he wasn’t hungry anymore.

"Over a goddamned coyote,” he told the empty trailer, then he stood and walked back to his bedroom.

He startled awake a few hours later to find Clint standing over him, a black silhouette against the window, backlit by the gibbous moon.

“What is it?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

“I need you to help me,” Clint told him.

“You need what?”

“Come help me,” Clint said.

He glanced over at the digital clock that sat on the nightstand between their beds: 3:21.

“Help you what?” he said.

Clint took off his ball cap and sat on his bed.

“I think we can get them out,” he said.

“Get what out?” he said, and then the previous day came rushing in to swipe the cobwebs from his brain and he remembered the coyote, the pups, the argument. He’d fallen asleep feeling pretty rotten about that, but at least Clint was talking to him now.

“Bud,” he said, “it’s the middle of the night.”

“I know,” Clint said. “I cain’t help it.”

“Maybe there ain’t any pups,” Randall said, knowing that wasn’t true. “Might be a den of water moccasins under there.”

“It’s not water moccasins, Randy. There’s a litter, sure enough.”

“How do you know that?”

“I saw them,” Clint said.

Randall sat up on the edge of his bed, propped his elbows on his naked thighs, and cradled his forehead in his palms.

Just go on, he thought. Go on and get it over with.

 And so, he slipped on his jeans and a work shirt, pulled on his boots, threaded his arms through the sleeves of his blanket-lined jacket, and started to follow Clint outside. Then he turned, went back and opened the top drawer of the nightstand, reached down under the socks and fetched out his 1911, pulling the slide to make sure a round was chambered. He let the slide snap forward and wedged the pistol in his waistband at the small of his back and went on outside into the early morning chill. The stars were bright and the moon sat in the eastern sky like a pustule.

They drove down the lease road and turned off onto the trail that went across the southern pasture: just a set of tire tracks running through the grass. They got out at the edge of the woods, Clint with a flashlight, Randall with his jacket-collar up and his hands balled in his pockets.

When they got down to the boulder, Randall saw a shovel planted in the earth and then he saw that the hole the mama coyote had been using was completely dug out. A two-foot mound of dirt stood beside it.

Randall pointed at the dirt pile. “How long that take you?”

“I think I got down here a little after midnight,” Clint said. “I dug down to where I could shine the flashlight on them, but I don’t have any idea how to grab ahold of them.”

“Grab ahold of them,” Randall repeated. He motioned for Clint to hand him the flashlight and then he knelt beside the hole.

 “Get my dumbass snakebit,” he mumbled as he wedged his head and shoulders into the cavity.

Under the rock, the dirt was fine as powder, the sandstone worn smooth as an eggshell. How long had the boulder sat here? He aimed the beam of the flashlight toward the far end of the den and half a dozen pairs of milk-blue eyes reflected it back. The pups were brown and white with patches of gray and their ears were pointed straight up. One raised its chin to howl, but the noise coming from its tiny throat was just a whine. The nearest pup was three feet farther than he could hope to reach. He backed out of the hole, sat on his heels and looked up at Clint.

 “There just ain’t no way,” he said.

“What do you want to do?” Clint asked.

Randall snorted. “Well, I want to go back to sleep, but that doesn’t seem like it’s going to work out for me, does it?”

“I’m sorry,” Clint said.

Randall thought about it a few seconds. Then he said, “Is the wire still in the truck?”

“I didn’t take it out.”

“Good,” Randall told him.

Back at the pickup, Randall let down the tailgate and selected one of the galvanized fence stays. It was forty-two inches long and one of the ends had a two-pronged fork. He got the wire-cutters from the toolbox and snipped both of the prongs sharp, testing them against the pad of his thumb.

Down in the hole, he set the flashlight in the powdered earth and slid the fence stay toward the nearest pup. When the forked end touched her, the little coyote tried to retreat, but there was nowhere for her to go. Randall pressed the prongs into the pup’s fur and began to twist. The pup gave a soft yelp, but Randall was already dragging her toward him, the fork tangled in her coat. He backed out of the hole, sat up and pulled the pup against his shirt.

He crossed his legs and sat there with little coyote in his lap. She was biting his thumb with her sharp, tiny teeth, but she didn’t have the strength to break the skin.

Clint stood leaning over him.

“Is it okay?” he asked.

Randall didn’t answer. He’d begun stroking the pup’s fur with his right hand, cradling her in his left. He realized he was petting her, then drew his hand away and reached for the pistol in his waist band. When his palm touched the grips, he stopped and sat there a moment.

He thought, If you just go ahead and do it, this could all be over with.

Then it occurred to him that something else would be over too.

He let go of the pistol and started combing his fingers through the hair on the little coyote’s back.

“The hell with it,” he said. “The absolute hell with it all.”

They drove back up the lease road in the first flush of dawn, all six pups in the bed of the truck. They sat blinking at a daylight world they’d never seen. Randall’s pistol was resting on the bench seat and Clint kept turning around and looking out the rear window.

“They’re fine,” Randall said. “They ain’t going nowhere.”

“No,” Clint said, “I guess not.”

 Randall sniffed. He watched the white gravel road spooling toward them. Birds calling from the branches of pine and blackjack, the oak leaves red and orange.

He said, “You know what’s fixing to happen, don’t you?”

“I can’t help it, Randy.”

“I know,” Randall said.

“It’s got to be somewhere we can take them.”

“You’d think,” Randall said.

“I guess we can’t just drive into Seminole and drop them at the pound.”

“If we come walking in there with a pack of coyotes,” said Randall, “they’re liable to put us in a cage.”

But soon as he said that, he flashed on something. “What about Miss Sandy?”

“Sandy who?”

“Prince,” said Randall. “Sandy Prince.”

“The dog trainer?”

“Yeah,” Randall said. “Might see if she’d take them.”

And so, when they got back to the trailer, Randall got the phone book, looked up her number and called.

“Miss Sandy, this is Randy Taylor—yes, ma’am, down here at Mr. Shoemaker’s. I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“No,” said the woman, “I was just eating breakfast.”

“So,” said Randall, “sorry to bother you,” and then told her about the coyotes and the fix they’d got themselves in. He asked if she might want to take a few of the pups.

“Absolutely,” she said. “I’ll take as many as you’ll give me.”

Randall glanced over at Clint who sat at the little table in the nook beside the kitchenette, and gave him a thumbs up.

“Thing is, Mr. Shoemaker don’t know about this. Could you come in on the lease road?”

“Yeah,” the woman said, and Randall could picture her smiling, “I can do that. Let me put on some clothes and I’ll be right over.”

Randall hung up and shook his head.

“What’d she say?”

“Said she’s on her way.”

“She’s going to take them?”

“Ever one,” Randall said.

Clint slumped down in his seat and rested the back of his head against the cushion. He reached up, gripped the bill of his ballcap in both hands, and exhaled a long breath.

Randall walked over, took the coffee pot from the maker, and turned on the faucet to fill it. He poured several scoops of grounds into the filter, then stood watching the coffee drip, looking out the window over the eastern pasture, the fields shining in the morning light.

“You want some of this?” he asked Clint.

“I’ll take the whole pot,” Clint told him, and he’d just said this when Randall heard a vehicle come crunching up the road.

“That was quick,” Clint said.

Randall opened the door, went down the steps, and when he rounded the corner of the trailer, he saw Johnny Shoemaker climbing out of his old Chevy truck.

 Randall stopped like he’d struck a wall. He’d rather have seen a mountain lion charging across the yard.

Shoemaker shut the truck door with the heel of his good hand, then looked over at Randall and said, “Y’all don’t worry about that fence today. Need you to go down to the barn and stack the bales on yon side of the bay. Got some ole boys bringing…”

The old man stopped and stood there, his jaw slack, right eyebrow raised. He turned and looked at Randall’s pickup.

Randall had heard it too: a soft whining sound. He opened his mouth to say something, but Shoemaker was already hobbling toward the pickup, dragging his left leg as he went. Randall walked up beside the man and stared over the tailgate.

For several seconds, the two of them stood there, watching the pups huddle under the toolbox behind the cab, a pile of gray-brown bodies. The trailer door opened and Clint came down the steps and Randall’s heart started knocking against the thin wall of his chest. He tried to think of something to say, but the words got tangled, twisted together in his brain.

Shoemaker said, “You dug out them pups.”

“Yessir,” said Randall.

“Told y’all to leave them be.”

“Yessir,” Randall said. “We thought maybe Sandy Prince might—”

“Sandy Prince?” the old man said. “Hell’s she want with a pack of ki-oats?”

Randall started to tell him she was on her way over, but then Clint was there, leaning against the side panel. Clint said, “Mr. Shoemaker, this was my doing. If you’re going to chew someone out, it ought to be me.”

Shoemaker ignored him. He turned to face Randall, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and said, “Get them out.”

“Sir?” Randall said.

“Them pups,” Shoemaker told him. “Get them out.”

“Well,” said Randall, “like I was saying, Miss Sandy—”

Shoemaker started trying to work the tailgate handle, couldn’t seem to operate it with one hand, tried again and managed to bring it down with a metallic bang.

Randall studied the old man a moment. Then he climbed onto the tailgate, walked to the far end of the bed, and scooped up one of the pups. He thought it was the same one he’d held earlier, but they all looked pretty much alike. The pup’s pale blue eyes squinted up at him, and Randall felt a warm liquid soaking the front of his shirt.          

“Mr. Johnny,” he said, “Sandy’s already on the way. I appreciate you wanting them off the place and this way they’ll be gone for good.”

“I’ll tell you what I appreciate,” Shoemaker said. “I appreciate when I tell you boys to do something, you do it.”

“Yessir,” said Randall, “but—”

“Ain’t no buts about it. I don’t pay the two of you to misbehave me.” He’d begun to speak louder and faster. He raised a hand and pointed at the pup Randall held. “What’re you making off this deal?”

“Beg pardon?” Randall said.

“I asked you what you’re making. What’s Sandy giving you for them?”

“We didn’t ask for money,” Randall told him. “We just asked if she’d take them.”

Shoemaker snorted and the right side of his mouth curled up in a sneer. “Just out of the kindness of your heart, is it?”

“I don’t know about that,” Randall said. “We didn’t know where else to take them.”

The old man shook his head, turned and looked across the pasture where the sun had cleared the distant tree line. Then he turned back to Randall.

“Tell you what,” he said, gesturing at the cab of Randall’s pickup with his chin, “you get that rifle yonder and you put a bullet through ever one of these rascals’ heads, and then the two of you get your asses down to the barn and start stacking them bales. That don’t suit you, you know where the highway is.”

Randall inhaled a deep breath. Yesterday morning, if you’d told him he’d be standing there with Shoemaker, holding a coyote, he’d have called you crazy. Yesterday morning, he might’ve done as the old man asked.

“Mr. Johnny,” he said, “I’ve enjoyed working for you, but I ain’t going to kill these pups. I just ain’t going to do it.”

Then he heard something and turned.

There was probably no worse time for Sandy Prince to come creeping down the lease road in her Jeep, so of course that’s what happened. She pulled up a dozen feet from where Randall and Shoemaker stood, turned off the engine, and stepped out.

“Morning,” she said, smiling.

She was a thin, wiry women in her early fifties, iron-gray hair pulled back in a ponytail. She wore a red flannel shirt, blue jeans, and hiking boots. When she saw Randall’s face, her smiled faded.

She walked up and stooped to examine the pup he held.

“Would you look at that,” she said, then reached to scratch the coyote’s neck. The pup nuzzled into Randall’s armpit and gave a high-pitched squeal.

“Oh, stop it,” she told the coyote. “I’m not hurting you.”

She looked up at Randall and nodded toward the truck bed. “Are those the others?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Randall, and Shoemaker turned and started to hobble away, cursing under his breath.

“Can I hold him?” Sandy asked.

“Definitely,” Randall said, passing the pup to her. “I think it’s a girl. She’s liable to pee on you, though.”

“Oh,” she said, “I’ve been peed on by everything with four legs, just about.”

Randall watched her stroke the coyote and talk to it. She was saying, “You’re just a tiny thing, aren’t you? It’s all right. You’re all right.”

Randall heard the truck door open behind him. He put his hand on the pup and brushed the pad of his thumb over her head. He was about to ask Sandy if she’d ever raised coyotes when he heard Clint say, “Mr. Johnny, that’s loaded.”

He turned to see Shoemaker coming around the rear of the pickup with the pistol in his good hand, his face the color of a bruise. He was ordering Sandy to put that son of a bitch down, put it down now, advancing in his stagger-step gait.

Randall felt adrenaline charge through his chest like a freight train and the seconds seemed to splinter and stretch. He could smell Shoemaker’s aftershave. He could hear the breeze rattling the oak limbs. He took several steps toward Shoemaker and it felt like he was gliding; his feet hardly touched the ground. He noticed that the pistol’s hammer was cocked and Shoemaker’s index finger was curled inside the trigger guard. Reaching to grab the old man’s wrist, he meant to force the barrel toward the ground, but then his ears were ringing and his legs went out from under him and he was lying on his back, staring up at the blue morning sky.

Sandy was kneeling there beside him. She was telling him something but the words sounded muffled, and when he tried to sit up, she placed a palm on his chest and forced him back down.

“Just lay still for me,” she was saying, her voice seeming to come from very far away. She began to unbuckle his belt and draw it from the loops in his jeans. It wasn’t until she cinched it around his right leg and pulled it tight that he realized he’d been shot. The smell of burned gunpowder was in his nostrils. He turned his head away from the woman and vomited.

Then they were in his pickup, speeding down the highway toward town, Clint behind the wheel, Randall slumped against the passenger door, Sandy between them, still tugging on the belt.

“You’re going to be all right,” she said, and her voice sounded closer. “Just stay awake for me. You’re going to be just fine."

His entire leg was on fire, but the makeshift tourniquet made his thigh feel like it was being crushed in a vice. Every time Sandy pulled on the belt, Randall’s eyes seemed to burst from their sockets. He’d messed himself at some point and felt very ashamed. He leaned his forehead against the cool window-glass and studied the fields and farmland: the barbed-wire fences, cows grazing in the pastures. He heard a high yipping and remembered the coyote pups; they were still in the bed of the truck. He looked over and saw that the little pup he’d been holding was on the bench seat next to Clint. It raised its tiny head and started to howl.

Just outside Seminole, he saw a boy sitting a chestnut mare in the field that fronted Highway 99, just sitting there watching the cars rush past, reins in one hand and his collar turned up against the breeze. Randall turned to get a better look, but the horse and its rider were already blurring by.

They were gleaming in the sunlight.

They were gone.