Setosha - the Beating Heart
Copyright© 2010 by Prince von Vlox
Chapter 17
Family Red Ridges, Home
The humans at Red Ridges called him Shaggy. The others in the pack called him Shaggy, too, though as a pup he had been known as Stinky Paw due to an unfortunate accident with the spoor of a prey he had been tracking.
A few of the humans knew his pack name, but that didn’t matter. Today there was serious business scenting the air. Shaggy had never seen so many guns. Like the others in his gene-enhanced pack, he was moving around, sniffing the air, loping to the edge of the brush and back again, anything to work off the excitement in the air.
The radio collar attached to his shunt contact let him talk directly with his special friend, the human known as Julie. “Stupid horses,” he told her as one of the horses half-heartedly kicked at him. “So slow. Why can’t we go? What are we waiting for?”
“Easy, Shaggy.” Julie loved to play, and yet she could be all business when they were on the trail. There were times he was sorry she was a human. If she’d been a coyote, think of the fun they could have had. “We’re waiting for someone.”
Shaggy looked around again, laughing at the stupid horses, sharing the laugh with others in the pack. He could smell adult humans, but he couldn’t see them. Julie was not an adult yet, so, just like Shaggy, she had to wait with the horses. The guns the adults were carrying were big, not like the little one Julie carried. Shaggy had taken a sniff of one of the adults, one in green, and instantly backed away, head lowered, tail between his legs. Every instinct told him to keep as far away from that human as possible.
It wasn’t that she didn’t like him. He’d seen her wrestling playfully with Saddle Back, the adult male named for a dark fur patch that looked just like the saddles humans put on horses. Shaggy knew the green one liked coyotes. Still, she made him nervous. She was like the gun she carried, a gun meant strictly for killing. Everything about those guns made him think of death. They were like that cougar he had seen long ago up in the High Peaks north of Red Ridges. He still remembered what the pack mother had told him about that experience. “It is good to recognize death, so you can avoid it.”
“Aunt Patty says she’s ready,” Julie said through the shunt. Aunt Patty was Julie’s name for the green one. The pack had named her Sudden Death. Adult coyotes like Saddle Back might play with her briefly so they got used to each other and established the order of things. Everyone else kept a respectful distance.
Julie picked up the reins of her horse and looked at Shaggy. “We will be going slow. You and I can run these hills all day, but the horses have to go slow.”
“Slow-footed stupid beasts,” Shaggy repeated. He didn’t have much use for horses, and he made no secret of that. For some reason, the humans had never gene-engineered horses to have intelligence. Shaggy privately thought that was because the horses wouldn’t have much to say even if they had been able to think.
He stood downwind of Sudden Death, inspecting her from a cautious distance. She was sliding a knife into her belt. She winked at him before slipping the strap of her gun over the top of her shoulder so the gun hung under her arm, always at the ready. He expected her to climb into the saddle, just like a tourist. She surprised him. Instead, she picked up the reins and started walking toward the gate in the corral. Julie followed, leading her horse Shufflefoot toward the nearby landing field. Shaggy remembered that horse from other trips. Shufflefoot was stupid, even for a horse.
He caught the eye of Saddle Back and trotted after the horses. On this trip, he and Saddle Back would work as a pair, one watching and one prowling. This was different from when the pack worked as Wardens in the mountains around Red Ridges. Shaggy knew this wasn’t an ordinary trip. The pack mother had explained: there were three pairs of humans searching Red Ridges’ land. Each pair of humans worked with four coyotes. Shaggy was glad he and Saddle Back worked well together. Roan and Dreamer were good to work with too, but he and Saddle Back understood each other.
The first part of the trip was easy. A special aircar took them a ways to the northwest. They landed in a valley and spent the rest of the day going up one hill and down another, following an old trail. The second day was much the same. They were moving fast to get to a particular place. Once there, they slowed down, the humans picking their steps carefully, avoiding open places and looking constantly for something or someone.
Shaggy watched Sudden Death whenever he wasn’t watching Saddle Back. She never complained about the trail; in fact, she didn’t talk much at all. Sometimes she moved so fast Julie and the horses could not keep up with her, and Shaggy saw her force herself to slow down. He watched her eyes constantly sweeping the brush and forest. He watched her strong fingers casually touch her big gun, and knew he wouldn’t want to be whatever she was looking for. He wondered how fast Sudden Death could move without the stupid horses. He wondered if even he and the pack could keep the pace she wanted to set. He remembered the mountain lion. It looked at him in his dreams at night, but when it did, its eyes were the eyes of Sudden Death.
Julie was very quiet, too. She didn’t talk much, except when the horses needed rest. When she did talk to Shaggy or the others, it was to remind them to be careful, to stay alert for any sign of strangers. Early on the third day, they entered rougher ground. Shaggy, Saddle Back, and the others scouted around washouts, landslides, and slumps, and they kept going.
The forest was alive with sights and smells. Birds flitted in the tops of the trees. A squirrel chittered angrily from the safety of an upper branch. Late in the day, Saddle Back found the spoor of a rabbit.
“They’d never know,” he said regretfully as he turned away. He kept his nose to the trail; the rabbit would live to see another day.
“We can come back later,” Shaggy said.
“Unless we scared it away.” Saddle Back sniffed the breeze, and his tail flicked up. “The others are back.”
They loped ahead of the humans, then, as Roan and Dreamer came into sight, swept around to the sides, and then, later, over the back trail. The four coyotes formed a constantly moving screen. They checked every clump, every hole, and every path around the two humans. The coyotes traded again and again, giving each other moments of rest, always looking, listening, sniffing, and thinking.
This wasn’t the same drill they used with tourists. Tourists were noisy and wouldn’t stay on the trail unless reminded. The Pack worked hard when they were with tourists, protecting them from the hazards of the land, and protecting the land from them. Julie and Sudden Death were different. More than once, Shaggy wouldn’t have known they were there but for the smell of the horses.
Shaggy knew that the Red Ridges humans had already tried the noisy, clumsy human way of searching. The humans from Red Ridges had found trouble instead. The Pack Mother had told them that someone, some humans not from Red Ridges, had fired guns at the Red Ridges searchers. Two of the humans from Red Ridges had died, and three more were injured.
Do not be seen, the Pack Mother had told them. Do not let the Red Ridges humans be seen. No more from Red Ridges will die on this hunt, coyote or human. We will find the ones the humans are looking for.
Shaggy watched and listened as Saddle Back slipped over a stream, padding silently across a mossy fallen tree. Saddle Back found a good place to hide, scented the breeze, looked and listened, then glanced back, flicking his ear as a signal. Shaggy crossed the stream, and they moved on, looking for a better ford for the stupid horses, always alert for the strange humans.
The sun had set when they stopped to camp. The humans fed and watered the horses, then ate uncooked food and rolled up in their blankets to sleep. This was a cold camp tonight, no fire. While the humans were busy, the coyotes met to decide who was guarding, who was sleeping, and who was prowling.
“This camp needs little guarding with Sudden Death here,” Dreamer said, yawning. She said this every night. She was a young female who liked to doze away the hours that the others spent hunting.
“Our bond. We guard.” Roan was the oldest male, a veteran of many hunts, and the others had agreed to listen to him first. “Dreamer and I will prowl until the Nebula is overhead, then come back to rest. Saddle Back and Shaggy will rest until we come back, then prowl until sunrise. Tomorrow Dreamer and I will rest first. In the camp one sleeps, one watches, same as the humans.”
“And don’t go begging Julie for treats,” Saddle Back cautioned Dreamer.
“I don’t smell any on her,” Dreamer said, thumping her tail on the ground for emphasis. She took a quick drink of water, and looked at Roan. “Ready, old-timer?”
Roan flicked an ear in reply as he followed her out of the camp.
Shaggy looked at Saddle Back. “Whoever scares the first hopper sleeps first.”
Saddle Back grinned at him, tongue lolling out of his mouth. “Deal.”
They trotted around opposite edges of the clearing. Saddle Back was the lucky one. A small hopping bug darted from cover and flitted away just out of reach. “I’ll keep Julie warm for you,” Saddle Back promised with a tongue-lolling grin.
Shaggy quietly moved downwind of the camp, listening, scenting the night breeze. Smart hunters would approach the camp from downwind, and if they weren’t smart he would smell them. On the off chance that the strange humans might be prowling cross-breeze, Shaggy moved quietly from shadow to shadow all around the camp, watching, listening, and sniffing the night air.
He soon knew all of the local night sounds and smells. When Saddle Back joined him, he pointed them out: the rustle of birds settling on branches high overhead; the almost silent flight of owls hunting mice and other small creatures; the nearby chattering splash of a stream downhill from them; the fresh dirt smell of some burrowing animal, possibly a badger, and the hint of distant wood smoke.
“A quiet night,” Saddle Back wished him.
“And a warm fire,” Shaggy said, tongue hanging out in a silent laugh. When they were escorting tourists, they always slept next to the fire. “I can dream,” he added wistfully when Saddle Back grinned back at him. “Will we see Dreamer or Roan first?”
“Dreamer, if she gets her way, Roan if she’s smart.”
“Dreamer? Smart?” Another tongue-lolling grin. Shaggy headed straight for the food Julie had put out for him. A quick bite, and then he settled into the warm spot where Saddle Back had rested.
The Nebula was directly overhead when Roan nudged him awake with his nose. Shaggy stretched and trotted over to where Saddle Back waited. Together they went to where they could smell Dreamer standing watch.
She sniffed at them. “Nothing. I checked the trail ahead, then downhill. Roan prowled uphill. Nothing.”
Shaggy watched her as she trotted back to the camp. “Are you sure she’s a coyote?” he asked.
“What else could she be?”
“She didn’t even mention the smoke.”
Both coyotes looked at each other. “Smoke?” Saddle Back asked, and sniffed. They separated, sniffing the light breeze. Somewhere, somewhere distant, there was a hint of the wood smoke Shaggy had noticed earlier. It couldn’t be the search teams. They were all camping cold, eating cold rations. That meant strangers or tourists, and the tourists had all been evacuated.
“You slept last, you look,” Saddle Back said regretfully. “I guard.”
Shaggy looked at the Nebula, then at Dreamer. “Wake Julie when it’s halfway down.”
He loped ahead, the trail barely visible in the Nebula glow that filtered through the forest canopy. Around him he could hear the little noises of the night. There were intriguing smells on both sides of the trail, small animals that were braving the world outside their burrows. Moving cautiously through the brush, Shaggy approached the top of the first ridge. The trail curved ahead of him, gradually winding up over the top of the ridge. He recalled that from there it dropped into a little draw and followed a stream up to its source. He hesitated.
The smell of smoke was still in the air, just a faint touch, more a hint, really, but something about the trail up ahead seemed wrong. Something smelled wrong. The ground was scuffed to one side, and there was a smell of wrongness in the air like the smell of the air after lightning struck nearby, but he knew there were no storm clouds in the sky, no thunder and lightning, and there hadn’t been all day. No, this might be a strange human thing. He stood facing into the scent for several minutes, teeth bared. The smell did not change. He turned around and silently moved away.
He trotted back down the path and cut into the brush. Moving slowly uphill, placing his paws carefully so he wouldn’t disturb even a single leaf, he worked his way over the top of the ridge and down the far side. Once he was safely past the wrongness, he turned to regain the trail. Just short of it, he caught a whiff of human smell. He froze, smelling intently for whatever was out there. Another few steps--he paused again, considering.
The night was quiet. That was strange. It shouldn’t be so still. Every animal should be out hunting, being hunted, or eating. It was as if something else was out there, scaring all the others into hiding, some thing, or some one.
Shaggy eased away from the trail still further, circling to cross the stream at the bottom where he was covered by brush. The human-smell was stronger here, and so was that same lightning-strike wrongness he’d smelled earlier. He knew the night creatures smelled the wrongness too, because all of the nearby ones had gone quiet. Oh, not so a human would notice, but he had patrolled these woods since he was a puppy. The brush and the trees should be full of birds and other little things making noises.
He marked the spot where he had crossed the ridge so Saddle Back and the others could find it. Then he moved down the slope, sampling the air in front of him, listening and looking for the strangers. He stopped at the edge of a break in the brush. In front of him, in the glow of light from the Nebula, he could see marks on the ground, just like clumsy tourists made with their boots when they were walking. This was a gentle slope, not the kind where a Red Ridges human would dismount. Shaggy took a sniff; there were no horses with these humans.
The farther up the stream he went, the more forest noises he heard around him. He still moved slowly, drawn by the smell of burning wood. It was coming from his left, down the draw, trickling through the trees. He crossed the stream again and turned parallel to it. He cast around, seeing if there was any spoor left by those he had smelled before. Nothing. Even when he crossed the trail, he smelled nothing, nothing recent, that is.
At the head of the draw, he heard the sound of a human voice. He slid from tree to tree, approaching that voice. The words were unfamiliar. This human spoke a language he had never heard before. But all humans spoke the same language, so were these humans? He took a sniff. Most definitely humans, and not used to the woods. If he could smell their privy from this far away, what must it be like up close?
He squirmed through the brush and trees at the head of the draw, staying on his belly. Human-smell, burning wood-smell, and, faintly, gun-smell. Another team? If so, he would have met one of the other coyotes by now. Which meant this was not another team. Or did it? That was something for Sudden Death to decide.
He marked the spot and followed his own trail back down the draw and up and over the ridge. The night was still silent as he regained the main trail. He loped ahead, catching the breeze as it shifted, catching the first hints of the coming day, catching the distinct smell of horses up ahead.
Saddle Back materialized out of the brush in front of him. Roan appeared off to one side.
“What did you find?” Roan asked.
“Human-smell, fire-smell and gun-smell. They are not from Red Ridges and they are not used to the woods. They don’t speak in words I have heard before. I marked a trail around them.”
“Julie is right behind us,” Roan said. “Saddle Back will follow your trail.”
As Saddle Back trotted away, Shaggy reported his findings to Julie, who relayed them to Sudden Death. She watched that human grow thoughtful and still. Her fingers automatically slid along her rifle, and then retreated.
“Can he get us close?” she asked Julie, looking at Shaggy.
“How close does she want to get?” Shaggy asked.
Julie relayed this. Sudden Death smiled thinly. “Close enough so I can see them,” she said. “We’re the only search team in this sector. I want to know who these are.”
“I can get you close enough you can touch them.” He looked at the horses peacefully munching their oats. “But the horses can’t come. Too rough for them. There is also something strange on the trail.” He tried to describe the wrongness.
Sudden Death looked at her rifle, looked at the horses, and nodded. “That must be some sort of electronic guard.” She sighed. “Which confirms what we already suspected. Whoever they are, they’re not from here.” She crossed to her horse and slipped her gun into its case. “Get rid of anything that uses power,” she ordered Julie.
“What about the radio? I need it to talk to the coyotes.”
Sudden Death hesitated. “It is low-powered,” she said. “We’ll need to do something about that after this is over.” She sighed, one of the first emotions she had shown this entire trip. “All right, it’s a risk, but an acceptable one. You can keep it.”
They left the horses under the watchful, if sleepy, eyes of Dreamer. Instead of following the path as he had before, Shaggy led them directly up the ridge, across the draw, now a respectable gully, and over the next ridge line. From there, he struck off uphill, with Roan pacing ahead and to one side as a guard.
Shaggy had worked with Julie before. For a human, she could move quietly when she had to. Sudden Death was even quieter. “Maybe we should call her Human Ghost,” he suggested to Roan at one stop.
“The humans have stories about one named the Ghost Who Walks,” Roan said. “Maybe it’s her.”
Saddle Back met them shortly thereafter. “No change.” He grinned, tongue lolling out of his mouth. “Smelly, lazy campers. Late sleepers. The sun is almost up.”
“How far are they?” Sudden Death asked.
Understanding the human concept of distance had never been Saddle Back’s greatest accomplishment. He looked around, identifying where he had been and where they had to be now. “I would eat three ration bars in the time it would take to walk there,” he said at last.
”15 minutes walk,” Shaggy translated. Julie and his dam had both made him learn about the strange human concept of time. “He does not like ration bars; he eats them slowly.”
Sudden Death cleared off a piece of ground. “How many are there?” she asked. “How are they camped?”
“Four of them,” Saddle Back said. Sudden Death marked the ground as Saddle Back described it, and Julie spoke for him so Sudden Death would hear. “Fire in the center. One of them stands watch. Three sleep around the fire. Sloping ground down to a stream under an overhang of rock. Privy downstream of camp and out of sight. The only way to approach the camp is from downhill.”
“No others around?”
“The one on guard talks to herself from time to time. She looks at a box from time to time.”
“Landmarks,” Sudden Death said. “I need landmarks.”
Julie looked at the marks on the ground and then looked toward the strangers. “I know where we are,” she said. “There is a large rock about 10 meters high near the spot Shaggy found. When I was younger, my sibs and I used to camp there. The stream has cut out a small cave under it. Not big, not deep, but I think four adults and a fire might fit in there. That could be the location.” She studied the sketch in the dirt. “That would be about right.”
“I need to see this place,” Sudden Death said, “and then we will decide.”
They crossed another ridge and circled around until the rising sun was behind them. Finally, though, Sudden Death eased silently through the brush and looked across the small valley. She looked at the strange humans, then adjusted her binoculars and looked again. She eased back behind a tree and slowly, quietly slid down next to Julie, her face grim.
“I saw their smoke,” she whispered. “I saw them. They have guns and electronics. It isn’t our people. It’s someone else who’s looking for them.”
“What do we do?” Julie was angry and afraid. Shaggy smelled it. Sudden Death reached out and touched Julie’s cheek. Everyone was quiet for a long moment.
“Patience,” Sudden Death said quietly. “We go around them. Can Roan’s team find a way for us without disturbing those people?” Roan just laughed. Sudden Death obviously knew something about coyotes. She looked at Roan and grinned back, tongue hanging out like a coyote, then whispered, “I know, stupid question.”
“Shaggy, to the right. I’ll go to the left. Saddle Back, watch the camp.”
“What about the horses?” Julie asked.
“Maybe too rough for horses,” Roan said, “but maybe not.”
Julie repeated that and looked at Sudden Death. “What do you think?” she whispered.
“I don’t want to leave the horses unless we absolutely have to,” Sudden Death said. “They have all of our supplies.”
“Is there a better way around these people, Roan?”
Roan looked at the other two coyotes. “There is an old animal run south of here,” Shaggy said. “Good rabbits in that area.”
“I know that way,” Saddle Back said. “You have to swim across the stream, but other than that you can move around these people.”
Sudden Death nodded after Julie vocalized for her. They set off back the way they had come without another word. Roan stayed back briefly to make sure they weren’t followed.
Julie and Shaggy led the way back with the horses until they got to where Saddle Back was waiting. He went to tell Roan they were moving on. From there it was uphill, working around and through the trees. The trail was barely visible. They moved slowly so the horses could find good footing. Saddle Back ranged ahead while Dreamer took the rear. By late in the day they had turned north and bypassed the strange people. When the sun was halfway down the sky, Sudden Death called a halt.
“Tomorrow we will be in our search area,” she said. “Tonight the coyotes all rest until the Nebula starts to set. I want all four of them to prowl ahead of us from then until sunset.” She looked from one to the other of them, waiting for Julie to repeat any questions. There were none.
Julie slept the first part of the night, while Sudden Death watched over them. Before he slept, Shaggy watched her sit staring up through the trees at the Nebula. When a cold nose nudged him awake much later, her face was still tilted up, although her eyes were closed. Shaggy saw the subtle motions of her head as she sampled the night.
When the coyotes sat down in front of Sudden Death, she took a paper map out of her pocket and studied it with special glasses she put on.
“This is the area where an air search patrol saw a crashed aircar,” Sudden Death said, pointing at the map then into the night ahead of them. “The birds who searched the area did not see any of the ones we want to find. Roan and Dreamer, search in that direction, the northeast. Shaggy and Saddle Back will search to the northwest.” She pointed them in the proper directions. “Julie and I will remain here. If you find nothing today, then tomorrow we will move to the north side of the canyon. If you find anything, get back to us as quickly as you can. I can bring the whole world in if we need help.”
“See you when the sun goes down,” Shaggy told Julie. He looked at Saddle Back and trotted to the northwest.
Dawn found them near the rim of the canyon. They worked their way along the top of the canyon, methodically checking each copse of trees, looking for anything out of the ordinary. The sun was nearly overhead when Saddle Back made a slight noise. “Found something,” he said. “People were here. Oil, too.”
Shaggy joined him, agreeing after one sniff. “Many people, but none of them smell familiar.”
“None recent, either.”
“Did they go into the canyon?” Shaggy wondered.
“The birds wouldn’t know.” Saddle Back’s opinion of birds was only slightly higher than Shaggy’s opinion of horses. “Wings,” he had often said, “mean you forget about up and down.”
Shaggy looked at the edge of the canyon. It was only a short distance away. “The smart thing is to go to high ground.”
“For a coyote. These are people.”
“Red Ridges people, but true. Let’s search along the edge some more.” Shaggy looked at the sky. “We will have to turn back soon.”
“Just a little farther,” Saddle Back agreed.
Just before turning back, Shaggy heard a voice. He froze, belly on the ground, head low. There, just a short run away, were two people. He didn’t recognize either of them, and he had been told only Red Ridges people should be searching here. They were moving up from the canyon, making all sorts of noise. One of them said something he didn’t hear. The other replied as they stood silhouetted against the other side of the canyon.
He must have been seen; one of them pointed at him. He watched them for just a moment longer, seeing no big gun like Sudden Death carried, then he darted away.
Through one set of brush, then another, he stayed under cover and ducked behind a rocky outcropping before risking another look. One person was looking through binoculars, sweeping the whole canyon while the other spoke into a box. He crept closer, circling to get downwind of them. He found a spot behind a downed log where he could hear them without them seeing him. Like the other strange humans, they spoke with words he had never heard before.
The one with the binoculars turned, holding a dark green box out in front of her. Shaggy ducked down before she pointed it at him, risking another look a short time later. She was pointing the box in another direction while the first one was checking her gun.
Shaggy slipped away, just in case they had scented him with the green box. As they moved towards the setting sun, he looked around, fixing his location in his mind so he could tell Julie where he had seen the strangers. Satisfied, he trotted back to where he had agreed to meet Saddle Back.
“I saw strange people,” Shaggy said when they met. “They have a strange green box. They might have scented me.”
“I found traces of old blood,” Saddle Back said. “Human blood.”
“I can tell Julie where this is,” Shaggy said.
“I can, too.” Saddle Back moved aside slightly. “I left you half a squirrel. Young one.”
“We’re supposed to be hunting people,” Shaggy reminded him, just before wolfing it down. “But I won’t tell if you won’t.”
They made it back to Julie and Sudden Death without seeing or smelling anything else unusual. Sudden Death nodded as Julie marked where they had searched on the map.
“If they’re still searching on this side of the canyon,” Sudden Death said, “that means the people we’re looking for are not here. They would have been found by now. Tomorrow we go north of the canyon.”
“They would know where they shot the aircar down,” Julie said. “They’re not searching near there now. That means our people escaped the aircar and were able to move away from it.”
“You were downstream of the aircar,” Sudden Death said, “which is where they are searching.” She pulled a bundle out of her saddlebags. “I’ll report this.”
“Why can she use that radio but nobody can hear her?” Shaggy asked Julie.
“It’s not a radio, Shaggy,” Julie said. “It doesn’t use radio waves at all. It uses light, instead.” They watched as Sudden Death moved the cone-shaped antenna so it pointed at a particularly bright spot in the sky. Then she began speaking in a low voice. After a bit, she nodded and took the radio apart and stowed it in her saddlebags.