LITTLE WATCHER
PICKED from among the litter by the slack of his neck, the coyote whelp opened round eyes of greyish amber and blinked into the face of the Old Woman. The Navajo looked back at him, noting with satisfaction that he did not wriggle. Then she put him carefully to one side and leaned over the other cubs, whimpering and crawling about in their shallow burrow like so many helpless puppies. These she caught up, one by one, and gave each a swift flick against a stone.
But with the baby she had chosen, she was most tender, holding him tucked in a fold of her bright-striped blanket as she descended the steep trail from the butte. When they came out upon the level below, she made at once toward the goats, which were pasturing at some distance, and from the flock drove a young female, fat, and black as the coal streak that furnished her cooking fires. Still carrying the coyote, she led the goat by a riata to the corral at the foot of the mesa precipice, tied her to a cedar post, and promptly put the whelp up to the udder for his first meal of goat’s milk.
He was a wee ball of downy, mouse-coloured fur then, with soft ears, a head shaped like a peach, and a mere wisp of tail. At night, he slept near the Old Woman in the dirt-covered hogan, his bed a square of red flannel on the bottom of a great, olla-like basket which he could neither tip over nor crawlout of. In the daytime, riding in the crook of the aged squaw’s arm, he accompanied her to the desert, where she went to herd, or he lay beneath a brush sun shelter while she worked in the cornfield.
But soon, well suckled by the she-goat, he began to grow amazingly. First he found his legs, and was able to go wabbling after his foster mother as she lonesomely circled the corral. Next, the wabble became a stout little trot. And now the Old Woman found no need of holding him up for his dinner. The goat, when heavy with milk, stood without being tied, and evenuh-uh-uhedto him invitingly if he was slow to come; while he had so lengthened and heightened that he was able to drink without aid. He gave over the olla-like basket, therefore, and the corral became his home. Here he showed an increasing love for the she-goat by yelping mournfully if she started off down the enclosure, and by barking in noisy delight at her return. The squaw still saw him often, and stroked him much so that he might not become hand shy.
Changed in looks he was by now. The black-tipped nose was longer and more pointed; the greyish amber eyes were paler and narrowed in their slits; the head was flat; the ears were upright; the hair was not downy, but coarse to wiriness, blackish and brindled along the back and mane, striped burro-wise across the shoulders, elsewhere of a dusty, sunburned, tawny grey.
With his change in looks there came a change in appetite. He began to crave other food than milk, when the Old Woman gave him to eat of wafer bread and let him lap from a gourd shell filled fromher wicker water bottle. Later, the she-goat having gone dry, and there being no second foster mother for him, she fed him with other things—the bean of the mesquite and the sweetish fruit of the prickly pear. One day, he tasted blood. The squaw brought him in a linnet, all plump and juicy beneath its feathery coat. He lay down, holding the tiny thing between his forefeet, and tore at it greedily, with little throaty growls. When he was finished, she tried to pull away the bits of plumage caught in his paws. And for the first time he showed his teeth.
Then the Boy came. Having got the man scent before he reached the hogan, the young prairie wolf was not frightened at the stranger whose blanket was as bright with stripes as the Old Woman’s, and who was otherwise very like her in appearance—except that a gay banda kept back the hair from his forehead. On the other hand, the Boy was startled as, on entering the low hut, he saw two eyes burning out at him from a dim corner.
“What is it?” he asked the Old Woman, speaking in the Navajo tongue.
“It is Little Watcher,” she answered. “For so I have named him. The kids were all stolen away by night. When I prayed to Those Above, I was bidden to do what my father had done—fight poison with poison.”
With the Boy’s coming, the coyote had much meat. For every day the Boy took bow and arrows and climbed to the mesa top. Here grew juniper, piñon, and cedar, and here rabbits were to be found, and reptiles, ground squirrel, buzzard, and hawk.Returning, the hunter threw the whole of his quarry to Little Watcher, who was easy to please but hard to satisfy. The coyote dragged the game out of reach and then fell upon it as if he feared interruption, mumbling his delight.
Meanwhile the Old Woman was not neglecting to train him. When the sunrise sheen was on the desert, and the squaw, singing the early morning song, drove the flock to its scant feeding, she took Little Watcher along. And as the goats slowly travelled, browsing, she taught him to follow and round them.
By the end of twelve moons, what with no long runs and plentiful food, Little Watcher was larger than the wild of his own kind and as big as his kinsman, the grey wolf. Now a wren was not a mouthful for him: a snap, a swallow, and it was gone, and the amber eyes were pleading for more. Yet for all his gorging and his hankering after flesh, he was no less a friend to his foster mother, the she-goat, than before, and having skirted the flock, liked to sprawl near by her, and perhaps tease a lizard by way of entertainment.
There came a night when for the first time his strength, his training, and his affection for her were put to the test. Enemies came.
Only the stars were shining, and the corral lay in the heavy shadow of the precipice. But Little Watcher needed no light to tell him that danger threatened. He lifted his muzzle to the rough path from the mesa, perked his ears, and snuffed noiselessly. Then, as noiselessly, he rose.
Presently, along the foot of the precipice, came several forms like his own. He was down the windfrom them, and they skulked forward with no halts, their feet softly padding the sand. Soon the foremost was beside the enclosure and reared upon his hind legs.
Once more Little Watcher rose—his body rigid, his head stretched out, his brush on a stiff line with his back, and from crest to tail his hair stood up belligerently. Then, with a shrill yelp of defiance he leaped forward and caught the other by the throat.
His fangs were sharp, his hold was a vise. One rending pull, and the strange coyote pitched end for end between his fellows. They smelled the warm blood—and leaped upon him with a wrangle of exultant cries.
Out of her hogan rushed the Old Woman waving a pine torch above her head and shrieking to scare the intruders. They ran to a safe distance, from where they stopped to look round. The Old Woman did not follow them nor trouble to wake the Boy. When she had gone among the goats to see that none was hurt or missing, she dragged the dead coyote some rods away, and returned to give Little Watcher a caress.
But there was no rest for Little Watcher. Still bristled, he stayed inside the corral, now skirting the goats on fleet foot, now pausing beside his black foster mother, but always licking his chops and mumbling crossly.
It was then the season that follows the first rains. A haze of green lay on the desert—a haze touched here by the yellow of sunflower and marigold masses, there by the purple of the larkspur’s slender wand, again by a fleck of gleaming alkali.
But all too soon that haze was gone again, melting away with the hot kiss of the sun. Greasewood and mesquite showed the only verdure now, and the flock found the picking poor.
So, one dawn, a burro was loaded with blankets, the cooking pottery, and some water bottles filled at the precious spring. Then the squaw said farewell to the Boy, who stayed to tend orchard and corn strips, and drove her bearded company out of the cedar corral. Soon she was well on her way, and the grey and the red sandstone ribbons of the mesa precipice were blending and fading behind her.
Finally, when more than a score of camps had been pitched and broken, the goats were stopped near the cottonwood-lined bed of a dry stream. Here the burro was unloaded, the Old Woman made a sun shelter of boughs on the bare gravel of the arroyo, and dug for, and found, water.
Grazing was good, and the goats fattened. So did Little Watcher, who fared well on the daily spoil of the squaw’s snares. Here, too, almost in the shadow of the wooded Tunicha Mountains, was peace—for a period.
Each night the goats were driven in to the line of cottonwoods, where, bunched together, they lay down. On one side of them was the shelter of boughs, where the Old Woman slept, rousing occasionally to put a length of mesquite root upon her torch fire; on the opposite side, close to his picketed foster mother, dozed Little Watcher, flat upon his belly, his hind legs stretched out straight with his tail, his muzzle on his forepaws. But, like the squaw, he waked now and again, and listened—head high, earsupright and moving, amber eyes glowing in the dark. And he often heard what the other did not—the far-off staccatoyip! yip! yip!of the prairie wolf on a scent.
Then, for a second time during his term of guarding, enemies appeared—boldly, in broad daylight, when the Old Woman was away looking to her traps. It was now the season when the coyote runs in pairs. And but two appeared, out of a patch of cactus to the mountain side of the goats. From the cacti, they came darting down upon the nearest of the flock—Little Watcher’s black foster mother.
But before they could reach her, a streak of tawny grey shot between. And as the she-goat scrambled up, bleating in terror, to join the herd, Little Watcher, all bristled from crest to tail, met the male of the coyote pair and buried his teeth in his flank.
They fought furiously, rolling over and over, sending the sand into the air, tearing up the greasewood, mingling their cries of pain and rage. From the edge of the cactus patch, the female watched them, rather indifferently, however, and with frequent hungry glances in the direction of the goats.
The gaunt stranger was no match for the guardian of the flock. Very soon the battle was over. Then Little Watcher looked up, and at the female. There she was at the summit of the gentle rise, apparently waiting, and turning her head prettily this way and that. Little Watcher loped toward her. She let him come close, then wheeled and sped away through the cacti. He followed.
He was back before nightfall, and lay down at the feet of the aged Navajo, his eyes furtive, as if he wereconscious of neglected duty, his tongue lolling with a long, hard run. Alternately scolding and caressing him, the Old Woman gave him a few laps from her gourd shell, and presently he sought out his foster mother and rested beside her until the goats sought the cottonwoods.
But thereafter he often left his charges to go bounding away toward the mountains, and not even the proffering of food could tempt him to stay. Sometimes of a night he would rise and sneak off. Sometimes of a morning he would trot to the top of a near-by rise, stop, look round upon the goats, give a troubled whine—and disappear.
Then, one day, as suddenly as these excursions had begun, they came to an end. He was returning to the flock after a long jaunt, when, not far to his right, there appeared a moving figure, wound in a blanket and topped with white. It was not unlike a yucca, crowned by a cream-coloured bloom. Now, in a new posture, it was not unlike a stumpy saguaro with one outspread branch. The curiosity of his kind impelled him to halt. As he did so, placing his forefeet on a rock, the better to see, he caught the familiar scent of the Boy, and saw that the latter was holding out toward him a long, strange something upon which the light glinted. The next moment there was a puff of smoke—a report—and Little Watcher fell to the sand.
He lay flat upon his side for a short space, his tail limp and thin, his eyes closed. Then, striving to rise, he found himself able only to control his forelegs, for his hinder ones would not obey his will, and at the small of his back was a spot that stung.This he could reach, and he alternately snapped round at it with a doleful cry or licked it tenderly.
It was early morning then, and he did not mind the heat. But later, as the sun mounted and burned the sand, he pulled himself along to some spiny buck brush, and spent the rest of the day in its meagre shade. He knew the flock was not far, for their rank odour was borne to him on the wind. And so, the sun gone, leaving only great strokes of orange upon the sky and a fire-edged hill where its last light rested, he took his way toward home, dragging his hind quarters.
Twilight was yet on the desert as he came in sight of the goats. There they went, trailing across the purple levels to the long, black, wavering line of cottonwoods, behind them, two herders. Faster he pulled himself along, giving a quick little bark, now and then, that ended in a howl. But he was not able to cross the summit of the ridge from which he looked. And so he dropped down upon a red-black stretch of glassy lava. For hours thirst had cruelly assailed him. As often in times past he had drunk from rain-filled pockets in the sandstone, he now licked feverishly at the still blistering rock.
There night found him. Between his lappings, he lay flat, being too hurt and weary to hold himself up. His muzzle was toward the flock and he could see the place of its lying down. For there burned the evening fire, a dot of light on a vast sheet of blackness. He shivered, giving puppy-like barks, as when, a whelp, he tagged his foster mother, the she-goat; he lifted his muzzle to the stars and mourned.
Behind him, other cries answered—faintly, against the wind. He perked his ears, listening.
Yip! yip! yip! yip! yip!—the running cry of prairie wolves on a scent!
He looked down upon the level, where sparks were flying up from the Old Woman’s fire. Once more, rallying all his strength, he tried to make headway toward the goats. Once more, he could not cross the ridge. He whined helplessly.
Nearer and nearer sounded the coyote cries behind, dulling a little as the pack descended into a draw, redoubling in strength when they came out upon higher ground.
And now they were so near that Little Watcher could hear their short pantings as they loped forward. And now he could see them coming his way through the dark. With a growl, he sat up, ears laid back, hair on end.
Yip! yip! yip! yip! yip!
Up from behind the pine-covered Tunichas rose the moon—full, white, spreading a day-like radiance upon the great slopes and levels of the desert.
From the brush shelter among the cottonwoods, the Old Woman and the Boy lifted their eyes to look, and saw, silhouetted against it, at the summit of the lava stretch, a lone coyote, seemingly seated upon its haunches.
The squaw got to her feet, wristlets and chains tinkling, and leaned to peer among the goats. The Boy sprang up, too, his gaze toward the ridge top.
“Little Watcher!” he called anxiously; “Little Watcher!”
Then into the moonlight on the distant summitthey saw other wolf forms race; and as these centred to where the lone coyote sat, saw him struggle forward to meet them. And through the desert night, there came a shrill yelp of defiance—then a wrangle of exultant cries.