Coyote Wind by Peter Bowen Read Free Book Online Page B

down the rock face, to measure the scar on the rock. Thirty-odd years and it still showed yellow. These mountains, they rotted very slowly.
    But rot they did.
    “You going to stay tonight,” said Bart, coughing.
    “Yes,” said Du Pré. Why not, I can’t read this man, make anything of him. What do I know to be true about this all?
    What in the hell happened here, exactly? And why?
    Du Pré rolled a cigarette, flicked his lighter to flame. His mustache was wet. The cigarette turned brown. He cursed and threw the sodden butt away.
    Bart pissed. The yellow stream steamed, white tendrils.
    “I’m just going to wander around,” he said. He walked up the path, stooping from time to time.
    Du Pré always thought he could think better if he was moving, it probably was just foolishness, like most of life. In a little patch of grass and brush near him he saw a smooth, rounded boulder, a kind of rock from someplace else to the north. The glaciers had covered this place long ago, and crept down from Canada carrying pieces of other mountains in their guts. A close-grained reddish stone, with black mica in it.
    Du Pré wondered how far it had come.
    The FAA people hadn’t cast out this far, the grass hadn’t seen a foot on it. Du Pré went to the rock, sat on it, felt the cold through his slicker and jeans. He tilted forward, unbuttoned his slicker, brought out his tobacco pouch, rolled a cigarette, wiped his mustache hard. He lit the smoke, hid under his hatbrim, back to the little wind.
    The Olesons ship their stock the day after tomorrow. So I’ll go back in the morning, see Madelaine, get a piece of her sweet ass.
    He dropped the cigarette. The butt hissed in the wet sparse grass, brown stains shot through the paper, it went out. Du Pré stared at it idly.
    A little fleck of white down there between his boots. He poked at it with a finger. A tooth. With a filling in it.
    Another one, white with dried brown roots.
    Du Pré slipped his pocketknife out of his pants, dug carefully. Three more. One had a filling in it, too. Hoo boy.
    Du Pré put the teeth in his shirt pocket, next to the little box with the coyote scat. He snapped the flap.
    Now what about this?
     Whoever hauled that head up here had used this stone for an anvil, knocked the teeth out of the head, probably pounded most of them to dust but these got lost.
    Was it coming on dark?
    Maybe the guy was working drunk.
    Now I got to tell the Sheriff. Now we got a little more, maybe the Headless Man begins to speak.
    Or maybe a drunk just fell on this rock, knocked out his teeth.
    But these are molars.
    The rain ran off Du Pré’s hat, a filmy sheet.
    Du Pré saw a flash of movement off at the edge of his vision. He turned his head, slowly. A coyote, yellow-gray. The animal’s head snapped up. Du Pré had been sitting still thinking and the wet held his scent close.
    The coyote was gone, like so much smoke.
    God’s dogs, the Cree called them. Smart sonsofbitches. Du Pré had seen one robbing a bees’ nest once, big clumsy bumblebees. The coyote had waved his thick tail at the nest, the bees attacked it. Then the coyote had turned slowly, the bees kept after his tail, and the coyote gobbled down the honey and larva while the poor bees tried to sting through five inches of fur on the tail. Poor, dumb bees.
    I feel like them bees with this murder, here. I’m probably after the wrong end.
    Du Pré heard a small plane snarling overhead. In this muck? Better be above it.
    Du Pré stood up. He looked again where the coyote had been. The animal was long gone, and surely looking back at Du Pré from some safe and hidden place.
    When I die, Du Pré thought, I want to come back as a coyote. If they are God’s dogs they must know about everything important. Me, I tell my dog everything.
    I like it when they sing.

CHAPTER 16
    T HE SNOW RATTLED ON the tent, the size of little hard kernels of corn.
    First time that I have eaten caviar in the wilderness, Gabriel thought. First