Coyote

PROLOGUE


Through night vision goggles I watched the coyote the pack had forcefully shunned. He had been driven from the pack with bites and snarls by one of the larger males. I did not see the infraction that caused this worse than death fate, but I had seen the ostracization, some weeks before. The cast out loner attempted over and again to return to the pack. On each attempt he was driven out by other males, sometimes more than one at a time.

On what was to be his final attempt to regain a place in the pack the alpha male drove him out in a brutal full out attack. There was no mistaking this expulsion, and no returning. He was alone, and because he was alone he was in danger.

I had been following and watching this pack of coyotes over three years. At first I would only catch distant glimpses, but over time and with patience I had learned their habits and their range and had managed closer observations. No doubt the pack was always aware of my presence, but there was no possible way one could say that I had achieved some acceptance by them either. I was simply ignored as long as I didn’t get within a certain distance or make any overt moves. I didn’t delude myself that I was accepted or would ever be accepted the way some naturalists have been accepted by primates.

Coyotes are opportunistic predators of the first magnitude. They will prey on other predators as quickly as they prey on the usual prey animals. Bobcat is a favorite meal for coyotes. In this regard there are strong similarities to some humans. For many years I had been a predator of human predators, that is, I was a homicide detective. I was a super predator, preying only on predators. At first I took more than normal pleasure in the hunt and capture of killers, however that pleasure transformed into a form of disgust, both with the killers and with myself, and ultimately even with their victims.

I retired a few years back to a section of land in North Central Texas, about 100 miles west of Fort Worth. I inherited 640 acres, one square mile, of secluded and unimproved ranch land. My section is surrounded on all sides by larger ranches and it is several miles in any direction to even the smallest of towns. Other than myself and four other widely scattered ranch houses, there are no human inhabitants within a 10 square mile block of land around my home. This is rolling country, with steep inclines and drop offs, sometimes with sudden elevation changes of as much as 300 feet. There are creeks, a few with water year round, but most are dry most of the time. There are oak and live oak trees. There are some flat areas that are open pasture, and there are the occasional patches of mesquite trees. Stock tanks are scattered about for cattle, but there are no natural water impoundments. There are cattle here and there, but not many and they tend not to be concentrated. Typically this is dry country with about 20 inches of rain per year. Gravel roads are few and far between, and there are no paved roads in this area at all, in short, a piece of heaven.

I retired here at 40 years of age, because I had saved enough money, and was modestly fortunate in some investments, and because I inherited enough money with the land that combined with what I had, I could retire and live off of the small pension; and because I was sick deep in my bones with dealing with death and it’s crew. I had been good at preying; I could sniff a killer out where others couldn’t find a thread of a trail. I could sense them, I could feel them, I could empathize with them, and ultimately I could find them. It was the empathy that took the worst toll.

I read once that in the back of every human soul there exists a swamp. Most live outside that swamp on higher ground, with a few short incursions into the edge of the swamp from time to time, scary little trips that send the visitor scurrying back to the high ground, looking over their shoulders and shuddering. But there are some who live deep in that swamp and even some who never come out of that swamp at all. I was able to walk deep into my own swamp and see things the way those other swamp dwellers see, become like them, and this may have been the main reason why I could find them when others couldn’t. This is what sickened me. I could see the opportunities that they saw and took. I could understand why they saw those opportunities as opportunities, and understand why those opportunities were appealing to them.

Eventually I was driven from the force in much the way this coyote was driven from his pack. I was still a working member in the force, I wasn’t physically driven off, but I wasn’t of the force. I wasn’t one of them; I was only tolerated because of my case solve rate. I was also watched, and investigated. More of my prey didn’t make it back alive than was thought normal. So when I found I could, I left, to sighs of relief. I had made them edgy.

I first spotted the coyotes when running one of my fitness trails. Soon after moving in I laid out several different trails that crossed the toughest terrain I could find. This included rock scaling and a lot of running up and down steep hills, even some tree climbing. I put in specific work out stations at various locations with barbells and dumbbells as well. I would run one of these trails almost every day. To say I was in good physical condition would be an understatement. Finding the coyotes an interesting diversion I had become a consistent watcher.

The lone coyote had trailed behind the pack for several days, at a safe distance, hoping for a reunion, but it didn’t come. He was dead to the pack, unless he approached too closely when he would receive warning growls. Watching this had kept me up for several nights in a row, as I wanted to see how he would fare. Normally I spend two to three nights per month watching the coyote pack, depending on where they were running in their overall range. I thought of him as “Sol”, short for solo; for obvious reasons. But this was personal to me, somehow, and I had to watch and see. I had quit trailing the pack to watch Sol.

Sol was no longer trying to rejoin his former pack. He was trying to survive, and he was hunting in a more limited range than he had run with the pack. Sol was doing OK so far, living off of rabbits and mice, and the summer grass-hoppers. Sol was aware of my presence just as he had been when in the pack, and seemed to me to be a little comforted by the company. Or maybe I was projecting.

A couple of hours before dawn I headed back home. The night vision goggles made traveling at night easy; even with cloud cover they would pick up and magnify enough light to see quite well, and on a night like this where the stars were unimpeded by cloud cover and shone like cold jewels in a hot sky, it was downright bright. It was bright enough to travel fairly well without them, but I had grown used to them and wanted to move without any stumbling as I had over four miles of rugged cross country to cover to get home.

I got home shortly after daybreak, and just as I was walking up, an unmistakably unmarked police car was coming slowly down my drive, raising little dust. I didn’t have to see inside the car to know who it would be or what he would want. Frank had been out to see me four or five times now and always on the same quest. He wanted me to work for the homicide department as an outside consultant. He wanted me to track down a killer that his team had been unable to catch. I had said no each time. I had wanted no more of that. I could only guess that this one had killed again because Frank seemed to have finally accepted my answer last time. I didn’t owe Frank a thing, though I did not particularly dislike him.

“Hello Rankin”, he said as he got out of the car. “Long time no see”.

“Well hello Frank. Want some coffee?” I asked..

“Coffee sounds good, you still make it strong?” he asked.

“It’s my only true vice and I intend to wallow in it, so yes, it is strong. “Did you miss my company, or did you get lost in downtown Dallas and end up here by accident?” I asked with sarcasm.

“Is that coffee ready or do we have to jab at each other until it’s done?” he asked.

“It’s ready; it was set on timer so it is fresh and hot. Come on in and sit.” I replied. We moved into the house through the living room and into the kitchen where I spent most of my time that was spent in the house.

I mostly use two rooms in the old ranch house, the bedroom and the kitchen, which were connected by an open frame entry that I had put in to connect them. The rest of the house, and there is quite a bit of it, I generally didn’t find any need for. The house is over 100 years old and made of large native cedar logs. These logs were about 20 inches in diameter, which is quite large for a cedar. They were pegged together with wooden pegs, and the whole thing sat on a stone foundation that was made of small boulders that had been set in place with mules and then chipped to level. The floor was made of log beams overlaid with rough hewn cedar planks, over the decades the floor had been worn smooth. This house, if it didn’t burn, would last forever. A great deal of labor and thought had gone into its construction, and it was built by a craftsman of the oldest school.

Due to the thick log walls, and the design that utilized the orientation of the sun and shade trees, prevailing wind and window locations, it stayed at a relatively decent temperature even in the summer, even without air-conditioning. Electricity was a relative newcomer to this house, and there wasn’t much of it at that. This was where I had spent my summers as a kid, and this is the only place I wanted to be. The rest of the world didn’t interest me at all.

Once Frank was seated with a cup of coffee at the kitchen table he said, “This time he skinned her out like a deer. There wasn’t a piece of skin left on her anywhere, including her eyelids. She looked like some kind of anatomy exercise from a medical school.”