Page 86 of Blacktail

Chester looked at him doubtfully.

“Do you understand?”

“Honestly…I’m not sure. But I’ll try.” This, apparently, was enough. Blacktail turned back to the hunt. Chester followed.

The man and woman sat together on top of the high mesa, facing the setting sun. The breeze made a gentle roar as it moved through the stone buttes. Blacktail maneuvered through the sandstone, brushing past lily and agave. Soon they were directly downwind. Chester understood that the ears of men were mostly unused. He thought it likely they could howl their throats raw and still go unheard in this wind. Even so, Blacktail took care in his steps, treading carefully on the loose scrabble, careful not to disturb anything that might make a noise.

Blacktail closed in slowly. Chester hung back, watching him. He took great care to think of other things, of the warm den where he had been a puppy, of the strange squeaky thing that had been chewtoy, but something must have slipped through, something must have, because when Blacktail was still many paces away, the female turned and saw him.

His intent was clear, of course. Even a two-legs couldn’t fail to recognize the look of Blacktail, with his careful, frozen stare and the long gentle curve of his fangs. She screamed. The sound of it tore at Chester’s heart, for he was the protector of the den, was he not? When the sounds came in the night, it was his job to drive them away.

Blacktail looked back over his shoulder at this. “The choice is yours,” he said. “Take up against me if you like. I will not strike you down—you can drive me away with only a bark. Who knows? Perhaps they will embrace you for it. If their gratitude is strong enough, you might live again in House of man, and have your ‘sammich’ and ‘chewtoy.’ ”

The two-legs said something at this. The scent of its terror was plain, but its tone was soft and gentle.

Chester giggled.

“What did it say?” Blacktail asked. “Their language is strange to me.”

“It…it said you were a ‘good boy,’ ” Chester said. “It said you were a ‘nice doggie.’ ”

Blacktail bared his front teeth. This time both of the two-legs screamed. In that moment he seemed to Chester a king of the old age, when the forests belonged to the wolves and a strong pack need fear nothing. “Lead me, lord,” he whispered softly, laying his ears low in submission. “I am a penitent to your pack.”

Blacktail wagged his tail at Chester, just once. Then he fixed his gaze on the prey and padded forward.

The two-legs screamed again, a high desperate sound that danced among the stones and the last rays of the sun. Behind it, the moon rose red in the desert twilight.

The male stepped in front of the female. It shed its top skin and wrapped that around its forepaw, moving fast enough to startle Chester. Its eyes cast back and forth, looking for a place to run, but of course there was nowhere. Even the swiftest two-legs that ever lived would be no match for Blacktail, and anyway they were deep in the Starving Rocks. Where could it go? Then he took something from his waist, a small metal stick that glinted in the setting sun.

“Be careful,” Chester said, “that thing is like a fang.”

The male said something that Chester couldn’t understand. The woman did not at first react. She seemed not to hear. She stared at Blacktail, eyes wide, unblinking. After a moment the man repeated himself, shouting this time. Still nothing. The third time he screamed. Hearing that seemed, finally, to break through her terror. She turned to run away from all of them, trying to put distance between herself and Blacktail. Blacktail started after her. The man stepped into Blacktail’s path, guarding her retreat. Blacktail dodged him easily. Three paces later he leapt, jaws wide. His bite caught her low on the leg. She screamed again and fell. She stood back up quickly enough…but her leg no longer seemed to work well.

“When you can reach, you should try for the meat-vine in the back of the prey’s leg,” Blacktail said, impossibly calm. “It cripples them, you see.”

The male rushed up to attack Blacktail from behind, hoping to catch him unaware. Chester almost called out a warning, but then thought better of it. At the last second, Blacktail spun and intersected the arc of the man’s strike. Chester heard its bones crunch in Blacktail’s mouth, and the metal tooth fell to the ground. The two-legs screamed again, not in terror this time but in pain. Its forepaw dangled limp at a strange angle.

The male scuttled back a few paces, then got to its feet.

“What are you doing?” Chester asked. “It’s getting away!”

“I am doing nothing. This one is your kill.”

“But…”

Blacktail took a step closer, looming now over him. Chester took a fearful step back, but when Blacktail spoke, his tone was kind. “If a pack is to eat well, everyone must hunt. This time the burden is on you. They are not fast, Chester, you know that. Run it down. Kill it. Then we shall feast.”

Chester said nothing, but he licked his lips.

“What are you afraid of? You might have been in a pack with one of them once, but those days are finished. In truth, they probably never were real, except perhaps in your mind. They are not capable of loyalty. You might have been in a pack, but your master never was.”

“I loved her,” Chester cried out in a choked, strangled voice. “I really did.”

“I know you did,” Blacktail said. “But your two-legs was only a low beast, whatever you might have thought. It could not love you back. That one there may look afraid to you, but you see only the reflection of your heart. It can’t feel pain the way we do. It has no soul. Run it down and end this. You could be a hunter, Chester,” Blacktail said gently. “You could be strong.”

With an anguished bark that rang out over the desert, Chester set off after his prey. Even as weak as he was, he caught the two-legs after only a few paces. It heard him coming and screamed again. Chester was surprised to find that the sound ignited his heart. He struck at the man without thinking once, then again.

The wounds weren’t so much, but the two-legs fell to the ground. Blood squirted from its ruined forepaw. The smell reawakened Chester’s appetite. Suddenly he was mad with hunger. He tore into the meat of its hind leg, trying to rip off a mouthful.