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Coyote Waiting
First Part of the Coyote Chronicles
Size: Approx. 140K
Prologue
~~ Coyote ~~
Coyote looked up at the shining disk of the moon and listened to the whispers of time swirling all around him. A man's voice was speaking and Coyote liked the way the words flowed by in a regular rhythm that was almost like the beat of a pulse.
These white humans sometimes fascinated him, as alien to him as he was to them, yet there were some that he understood and some who understood him. The red humans he understood better. They were of the land as he was, as much a part of the web of life in this place as he was, yet not the same as he was. They were mortal while he was not quite a god but something beyond animal or human and beyond the confines of a particular shape or nature.
The words Coyote heard were spoken many years into the future and far across the ocean but years or space had never bound Coyote. He stood outside of normal time and what was and what would be were the same to him. He left his body sitting on the mountain range above the little town the humans had built and let his spirit seek out the talking man.
Parts of the words came quite clearly to Coyote now as the man, who was still a boy in the time he had left behind, read the words aloud that he had just written down;
"Now this is the Law of the Jungle - as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die."Coyote listened as the human read out a long list of instructions for any Cub who wanted to run with the Pack. The voice went on to mention names of animals Coyote knew about but had never seen since they weren't of the land that he kept watch over and therefore didn't interest him. Going to seek out the white ones were a different matter. They had come to him and were strangers to the land and yet becoming a part of it. That made him curious as to who they were and where they came from.
He listened now and grinned in amusement at the imaginative mind of a human who simplified the complex and instinctive patterns of the rules of the Pack and scribbled them down for other humans to know.
Still, amusing as the thought was that any human could even think to try and understand, many of the words rang true. The ending truest of all in it's uncompromising stance.
"Now these are the laws of the Jungle, and many and mighty are they;
But the head and the hoof of the Law and the haunch and the hump is - Obey!"Coyote listened until the voice started to repeat the same words that he had already heard. Taking a deep breath he stepped back into the time where his body was still sitting.
There was a rider coming on the trail outside of town, far below. Coyote knew this one. His coat was made from hides and he had pale skin, long hair and eyes like blue heaven on a stormy day. There was a kinship among all living things out here in the wild and Coyote could always feel the wariness of all the little living things down there when one of the white ones moved among them. Not so when this human moved. His soul was part of the wild and he felt it and Coyote felt it too.
Coyote looked down at the rider. Which was the stronger tug? The wild or the town he had left behind?
Coyote found that he wanted very much to find out what drove this one and he cocked his head and listened into the future until the words he had been waiting for floated by again.
"For the Strength of the Pack is the Wolf and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack."
Having come to a decision Coyote moved away from his perch and started to run down a trail only he could see in the darkness. He moved swiftly until he could drop down on the trail behind the rider.
The rider abruptly reined in his horse and let his eyes sweep around the familiar surroundings, having felt a disturbance somewhere nearby but seeing nothing. He stayed perfectly still for a few minutes before he quietly moved on.
Coyote smiled, unseen in the darkness. This one was closely connected to the land and listened when it spoke. It would be easy to send the dreams to him.
- First Part -
~~ Chris ~~
I knew it was coming long before he ever said anything. You see, Vin gets this look on his face, like he's listening to something that no one else can hear. You can tell the wild is calling to him and it's like every breeze of the wind is whispering to him that he has to go.
I wasn't surprised at all when he came and told me he had to go out somewhere and follow the tumbleweeds for a spell. There wasn't really a choice. It was either to let him go or watch him get a little more distracted every day until it would get dangerous for all of us.
Vin left the same day, just as twilight was creeping up on Four Corners. I'd wished that he would set out at daybreak instead, like any sensible person, but he just smiled and told me he wanted to spend the night out under the stars. It had been a beautiful day, it was gonna be a warm night and I couldn't really blame him for wanting to get out of town.
When you're out there, far away from any light, the sky seems to lower itself down on you until you can almost reach out and touch the stars. To me it was something I liked to see whenever the opportunity presented itself. To Vin it was something else entirely. It was like he needed it. I never knew what he was thinking when he was out there under the open sky but you could see the tension slip off him like he was shedding a heavy coat.
Me and Ezra Standish were the only ones to see him off. The rest of the boys had already said their goodbyes and were busy with other things. Vin had made a habit of going out for a few days once in a while so it certainly wasn't anything remarkable about it.
I could see him turning around once on his way out of town and he gave us a little wave. I raised my hand for a second before I let it fall again. Beside me I could see Ezra staring after Vin as he seemed to melt right into the shadows that were waiting at the end of the street. I could see a long shudder run through Ezra and I wondered if he was getting sick or something.
"What's wrong?" I asked him as he kept staring at the spot where Vin had disappeared.
"I'm not sure," he told me but his voice had a faraway quality to it like he was deep in thought. "I just had the strangest feeling...." His voice trailed off and I could see him suddenly snap back to the present again.
"Well, good night then," he said as he tipped his hat and quickly walked away. I watched him walk across the street and into the saloon before I let my eyes turn back to the twilight that Vin had disappeared into. A shiver came over me for a short second, like something cold running down my spine. I knew exactly what Ezra had just talked about.
It really was the strangest feeling, as if I had just got a glimpse of the future and in it there was no Vin Tanner. It was almost as if I knew somewhere deep inside that I had just seen Vin for the last time.
I told myself it was stupid to feel that way and I ignored the nagging feeling that I shouldn't have let him go alone. Many times through the years I have wished for the ability to foresee the future, no more so than right after my wife and son were killed. If anything I should have felt something the night they died. My whole world was changed, my soul was ripped to shreds. I should have known. But I didn't.
If I couldn't see anything then I sure couldn't see it now either.
So I pushed the thought from my mind and the next day when I woke it was so far away that it was barely noticeable. The day after that I didn't even remember having felt anything strange at all the night Vin left.
Life went on as usual in Four Corners. Almost. Something wasn't right. I couldn't say what it was but it felt as if the whole town was just waiting for something to happen. At one point I felt so edgy that I even had JD telegraph around for news of any disturbances in nearby towns to see if trouble was coming our way, but for once everything seemed quiet.
I didn't think it had anything to do with Vin because he had gone out now and again and always come back. He would be gone a spell and then he would come back. In the meantime we would be one man short but we could work around that like we always did.
Still ... something just wasn't right.
Then the crows came.
~~ Ezra ~~
Odd and decidedly unsettling. That was the feeling I had when I watched Mr Tanner disappear among the shadows.
The whole encounter was quite peculiar. While I always rely on my instinct when it comes to cards it hasn't always been as reliable when it comes to judging other things. I had never considered myself to have any kind of power to predict the future. I've seen more than my share of con-artists playing fortune teller and do in fact find the the whole concept of being able to predict the future quite ridiculous, I assure you.
But this was different and I could not completely ignore the feeling of having just experienced a premonition of some sort.
It was something in the way Mr Tanner turned and gave us a wave just before he was swallowed by the encroaching darkness. I was assaulted by the unshakable feeling that I was seeing him for the last time.
I'm not sure if Mr Larabee had the same feeling, it's always hard to tell what that man is thinking and he certainly didn't mention it to me. In fact, as far as I could tell he seemed to have forgotten all about it the next day but it took me a day or two longer to let go of this thought.
Because something was wrong in town. I know I was not alone in noticing this either. Even the normally so ebullient young JD seemed muted for some reason. Several days went by before things started to change back to the way it had been. Mr Larabee made himself scarce, I played cards with strangers, JD made his rounds and there was patrol duty for all of us. Routine caught all of us once more and threw us into well-known patterns until my earlier apprehension had died down and some semblance of normalcy once again coated our daily lives.
Late one afternoon, nearly a week after Mr Tanner had left our good company, I was sitting by myself and contemplating whether or not it would be profitable to put on a game later that night. There was barely a handful of people in the saloon and I knew some of them by sight but none of them by name.
Suddenly an inhuman shriek cut through the still air and a shadow fell in the doorway to the saloon. A quick rustle of wings and then a large, dark shape came sailing in over the batwing doors. The bird circled the room and looked for a way out but found none and it was obvious it was fleeing from something outside and didn't want to go out that way again. All of us stared and ducked whenever it came too close in its frantic search for freedom. It threw itself once against one of the windows near me but the glass held so it just gave a cry of pain and with a flutter of wings it disappeared back the way it had come.
I got to my feet and quickly followed. JD was standing just outside the door and we almost collided but fortunately I managed to stop my forward momentum before this occurred. JD was looking up at the sky and I tried to follow his gaze but just caught a glimpse of black before the bird vanished beyond my line of sight.
"What the hell was that?" JD asked in astonishment as he kept looking up at the rooftops.
The breeze caught a single black feather left behind and swept it up and around until I could reach out my hand and grab it. My eyes narrowed as I looked for signs of where the bird had disappeared to. There were none.
"What was that?" JD repeated his question.
"Trouble, Mr Dunne," I replied quietly as I was once again gripped by a sense of foreboding. I shook it off and went back into the saloon to continue my solitary game.
~~ JD ~~
Every time I had come into the saloon in the past week Ezra had been at his table as usual but his heart didn't seem to be in the game anymore. One night I was surprised to find that he had been distracted enough to actually lose more than a months wages. It didn't seem to bother him. For me it would have meant a month suffering Buck's endless barbs when I had to borrow money from him, but I guess Ezra had more than enough money to keep going anyway so who was I to say anything.
It was just that there was something worrying him and it was worrying Chris Larabee too and if those two were worried then I had to worry as well cause they both had a knack for staying one step ahead of trouble.
Then the damnedest thing happened. It was Friday afternoon and the sun was shining. I had just taken a step up onto the boardwalk to go into the saloon when a blur of black and gray came shooting out over the swinging doors and almost hit me head on.
I ducked so quickly that my hat fell off my head. As I grabbed it to put it back on I tried at the same time to look up where the bird had gone and so I was almost hit by Ezra who came running out like the place was on fire.
"What the hell was that?" I asked when I saw how upset he looked. Now there's something about Ezra you have to know. When I say looked upset I don't mean upset like you or me would look. It only shows in one place- his eyes. Come to think of it, that could be said for the others as well except for Chris Larabee who's eyes never show anything at all but then he's got this muscle right near his jaw that jumps when he's angry ....
I got sidetracked there, where was I? Oh, yeah - Ezra. Now Ezra is one of the calmest (though some would say laziest) persons I know. He doesn't like to move about unless he really has to, I guess he wants to keep all his energy for thinking. To see him come rushing out of the saloon meant that something strange had happened within and it could only be the bird.
Ezra grabbed something from the air as it came sailing down gently towards us. I looked at it and saw it was a single black feather. He frowned slightly but didn't say anything and so I had to ask him once again, "What was that?" but he just mumbled something about it being trouble and then turned and walked into the saloon. Now I didn't exactly feel that that was enough of an explanation so I decided to follow him. The second I took a step into the dark room old Marty latched on to me and told me all about how this large crow had come in and fluttered about and nearly broken the window near where Ezra was sitting. Marty was a harmless old drunk that I've had to lock up some times before and I knew he wanted a drink out of it but I steered him away from me. He went on to talk excitedly with the others at the bar instead.
I went over to where Ezra was sitting and caught him staring at a large scratch on the window pane where I guess the bird had hit it. It must have hit really hard too, it was a wonder it hadn't broken it's neck and fallen down dead on the table.
Ezra kept shuffling his cards the whole time he was looking at the glass and didn't seem to notice when a small scrap of paper fell out of the deck but some movement must have caught his eye anyways because he suddenly stopped and looked down on the table.
"Where did this come from? How strange...." I heard Ezra mutter as he studied the scrap of paper and I looked over his shoulder to try and see what it was. Before I could read anything he looked up and gave me a sour look.
"Do you mind?" he said, as testy as a magpie that has found something shiny and wants to keep it to itself. But then it seemed as if he had lost interest in it because he just shrugged and threw me the piece of paper before he went back to shuffling his cards. I looked at the scrap. It must have come from a piece of fine writing paper, such as they had over at the hotel, and on it was written in a strong hand;
Now this is the Law of the Jungle - as old and as true as the sky
And that was the whole of it, there was nothing more. Ezra was right. It really was kinda strange but nothing to get riled up about. I don't rightly know why I did it but I folded it up and put it in my waistcoat pocket and then I forgot all about it.
On my way out of the saloon I spotted Josiah out on the street. He was walking down the middle of the street and looking up at the buildings like he was searching for something up on the roof tops. He must have spotted me out of the corner of his eye because he quickly halted and walked over towards me.
"JD," he said to me. "Did you happen to see a bird flying by just now?"
"Yeah," I answered. "It was in the saloon just now spooking Ezra but it's gone."
"Where did it go?"
"Up there somewhere." I pointed and we both looked up but saw only the blue sky. "How did you know?" I asked him.
He gave me a guarded look but didn't answer. I got the feeling that maybe he wasn't quite sure himself how he knew. That man can be strange sometimes when he gets a vision. I don't understand them and I'm glad it ain't me that gets them.
When it was clear that he wouldn't answer the silence got heavy between us and I felt I had to break it so I said I needed to get back to the Sheriff's office, which was the truth anyway, and turned to go. I had barely gone a few feet when he called my name and I stopped and looked back.
"Yeah?"
"JD ... " Josiah looked uneasy and spoke with the utmost hesitation. "Have you had any strange dreams lately? In the last week or so?"
"No," I answered truthfully and he looked both a bit relieved and a bit disappointed at the same time upon hearing this.
"Well, I won't keep you then, son. Go on your business," Josiah said and resolutely went on his way.
I puzzled over this conversation as I sank down in my chair over at the office.
In the last week ... he must mean since Vin had gone away.
I wondered what kind of dreams he could be talking about. As I thought back on the look he had given me I realized with a start that whatever they were they had him worried and more than a little scared.
Why? What on earth could there be that would scare Josiah?
~~ Josiah ~~
I don't see the world exactly like most people do and that can put the fear in them. Thankfully I'm old enough that needing the approval of others don't affect me quite the way it used to. I've always been inclined to go my own way but nowadays I do so with a firmer grasp of why that is the right thing to do. It is no longer an act of rebellion like it was when I was young.
Finding a place to belong is no small thing and I am blessed in having been led here in time to find a purpose in life while I still have a chance to live up to it. There is something about manual labor, seeing what you build grow daily just by hard work and knowing that you have made it happen, it's a feeling like no other. Rebuilding the church is spiritually satisfying and along the way I have found souls who need guidance and people who need protection. Most of all I have found unexpected friendship. Having reached this stage of maturity and found all this I should be content with life. I am not.
There is a price to pay for being a seeker. You can get so used to the thought of there being more to reality than what is directly around us that the borders between this world and the next becomes transparent and you start to see things that most others do not. I have accepted it as the gift it can be when it warns you of danger. I have a harder time accepting it when it acts like it does now.
Ever since Vin left our company a week ago someone had seen fit to send me strange dreams. At first I thought nothing of it, dreams rarely make sense when studied in the light of day. The third night in a row having almost the same dream I was ready to change my mind.
You see, before Vin left to clear his head he dreamt something over and over several nights in a row and was disturbed enough by it to come and ask my counsel. He is a very private man and didn't exactly go into details as to what his dreams were about but I could guess anyway. They had something to do with the price on his head and seem to have been very vivid, enough to frighten him. He asked me what they meant and I told him what I've heard from many different sources, that dreams repeated in this way was either a memory or a sign from a higher power. Not necessarily of something that would happen, maybe just a warning of what could be if certain steps weren't taken. Vin seemed content with that answer but he was still troubled and so I wasn't surprised to find him leaving a few days later. I know he found the town confining and when he needed to really think on something he nearly always went into the wild to do it.
The moment Vin left, something in town changed, or maybe I should say shifted. A precarious balance that I hadn't given much thought to was suddenly disrupted and left me feeling that something was missing. Perhaps it was because this was the closest I had come in years to having a family. Family can become a habit and when one member is away you notice the absence. I can only speak for myself but in my mind I always counted us as seven, no less, no more - always seven.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about any of us being less of a man outside of the group. Frankly speaking we still don't know each other all that well and we have had more than our share of internal fighting. It is just that as a group we are so much more than the sum of our parts. We move with the same purpose and we know that we can count on each other. That is not a small thing, that is more than most men can ever hope to find. But we are still very much individuals with all that entails of different dreams. A more diverse collection of personalities than found in our group must be hard to find, that is what makes us strong. If we lost one of us that would be the end of us as a group and I find that thought harder to cope with than I ever expected.
So I worried a bit about Vin and I worried a bit about the rest of us and this worry simply wouldn't let go of me. I started having dreams, the first one came to me some nights after Vin's departure. I dreamt I was seeing through somebody else's eyes as they were sitting high on a mountain top and looking down a valley of some kind. As I looked down on myself I could see paws. That was a big surprise, it was the first time I have had a dream where I wasn't a human being. Then suddenly the paws transformed right in front of my eyes into moccasin-clad feet, another surprise. In the dream I was waiting for something, I felt that very clearly. As I sat there on my mountain I saw a dust cloud on the horizon and I knew my wait was over. And there the dream ended.
The next night the dream was back, slightly altered but recognizable. I was a rider, going through the same valley I had looked down on before. I could see the horse, I could see my clothes and I got the feeling I should know who I was in the dream but I couldn't quite remember. Wolves were howling all around me but strangely enough I rode on as if I didn't hear anything. As I got nearer to the mountain the dream ended abruptly and I awoke shivering although the weather was pleasantly warm.
The third night I was again sitting on the mountain and looking down on the rider I had been the night before. It was daylight in the dream and not a cloud could be seen in the sky but shadows were flowing across the ground like small streams through the grass and they surrounded the rider who seemed oblivious to their presence. His shape had been just a blur before but now I could see him clearly, it was Vin. He suddenly looked up and I could see a large cloud of crows circling the sky above him. Just as suddenly as he had looked up he turned his face towards me and seemed to look straight at me, as if he could sense somehow that he was not alone. Wolves were howling all around us. I could hear them but I couldn't see even the faintest trace of where they were hiding. They were howling so loudly that I could hardly hear myself think but when Vin opened his mouth to speak I had, strangely enough, no trouble hearing him. The howling seemed to fade into the background and I clearly heard him say "Ghost Country," before I was awake and back in my room once more.
That last dream shook me badly but what happened then was much worse. I had swept away the blanket to cool my overheated skin and as I lay there, trying to calm my breathing, I felt something. It was like a feathersoft touch inside my head, like something was trying to look through my thoughts for unknown purposes. I lay on my bed unable to move as something powerful touched my mind and my soul cringed in the agony of being completely helpless. The experience was over so quickly that I couldn't say what to make of it, the only thing I knew was that it was real in the same way the dreams were.
I moved on shaky legs toward the basin and poured some lukewarm water into it to splash on my face and neck. As I cooled down I could hear a strange scratching sound and I moved quickly to get my gun and then to throw on some clothes before I moved outside. The sun was already well above the horizon but the town was just starting to wake up and no one was in sight as I moved around the church in my quest to locate the scratching sound. Out of the corner of my eye I could see a streak of dirty yellow move behind me and I turned just in time to see a coyote disappear behind some shrubbery. Now there was a sight seldom seen in town in broad daylight and I relaxed a bit and walked back the way the coyote had come. Just outside the church door I noticed some spots of blood and then a black feather and that trail led me to a hollow spot underneath the stairs where I found a few more feathers from the crow that had been unfortunate enough to become coyote breakfast. There were no remains so either the coyote had decided to finish off the bird somewhere else or it had managed to get away. Having solved the mystery of the scratching sound I returned to my room to clean up before I went to get some breakfast for myself.
With some food in my belly I was now in considerably better spirits but no less worried. Seeing the crows has always been a bad omen but I haven't always interpreted it right. When we were in the Seminole village I had seen plenty of crows surrounding us and I was so sure that I was going to die. Luckily I was wrong. I knew that the crows in the dream pointed to danger, but for whom? For Vin or for the rest of us? It could hardly be a coincidence that I had found the crow feathers underneath the church.
Having no other idea what to do about it than to wait for further signs, I set out to work on the church. I had been working hard for many hours stripping the walls of paint when I again heard a strange sound. This time it wasn't so much a scratching sound but rather a soft flapping sound and I walked over to the door to see where it was coming from. As I stood there in the doorway a black shape dove right towards me and I ducked hastily. When I turned around there was a wounded crow sitting on the floor as far away from the door as it could possibly go. I walked over to it, careful not to scare it. The crow fluttered a bit uneasily with its wings when I closed in on it but it didn't move away, instead it opened its beak and out came a hoarse sound that sounded so much like an expression of pain that it could hardly have been anything else.
"I just wanna help you," I tried to reassure it. "Take it easy."
It seemed to understand me and was still as I looked it over to see where it was hurt. It had been in a scuffle all right, there were feathers missing in one wing and in the tail but not enough to hamper it if it wanted to fly. No, the real problem seemed to be with one of its legs, it kept it up under its belly and hopped about on the other in a frantic manner when I came too close. Unfortunately there wasn't much I could do about that but maybe Nathan could if I could get the bird to the clinic. Perhaps I could catch it in my coat.
As soon as I reached for my coat the bird was up in the air, circling the room a few times before it sailed out through the doorway and disappeared. I felt compelled to follow it, just stopping for a short second to put on my coat before I stepped out into the sunshine. Why did I have to follow? I don't know, I just knew that I had to find out what would happen next.
I walked down main street looking for the crow but couldn't see anything. The air was strange. It felt charged with electricity, like before a thunder storm, but the sky was clear and there were no signs that the weather would change anytime soon. It made me wonder if I was the only one who felt like this and if it had something to do with the dreams and the warnings.
I found JD standing right outside the saloon and asked him if he had seen the crow. He told me that he had seen it and that the bird had circled the saloon and upset Ezra before it left for parts unknown. On a hunch I asked him if he had had any strange dreams in the past week but he said he hadn't and I was a bit disappointed. It would have helped if someone else had had the dreams too, to get a different view on them, but I really hadn't expected him to say yes.
I resumed my search for the wounded crow and caught up with it again outside on the stairs leading up to Nathan's room. It was almost as if it had read my mind and tried to get to the only one who could help it. The bird was laid out on the landing in a sorry state and I could see fresh blood lining the edges of new bite marks. Looked like it had lost its fight with the coyote for good this time. It was badly hurt and as I gently picked it up in my hands I felt its little heart flutter once and then be still. I rapped with my elbow on Nathan's door and he opened right away.
"Hey, Josiah," he greeted me. "What you got there?"
"I got a dead crow I found on the landing. Can I come in?"
He stepped aside and went to pour some water in a basin so I could wash away the blood that was now on my hands. I placed the bird carefully on a newspaper that Nathan supplied.
"What you gonna do with it?" he asked me and I said the first thing that came to mind, "I'm gonna bury it." Hearing myself say it I realized that I meant to do just that. Nathan didn't question it, I guess he was used to my ways by now. Anyone else would have said that it was an awful lot of trouble to go through for a simple crow, but Nathan said nothing of that sort. Instead he told me that he didn't have anything else to do right then so he might as well tag along.
We had barely reached the bottom of the stairs when I noticed them. They sat like silent shadows in a neat row on the roof across from where we were and they were watching our every move.
"Do you see them, Nathan?" I asked, not knowing what to make of it.
"Yeah, I see them," Nathan almost whispered back at me. He must have been as unnerved as I was by the eerie stillness of the waiting crows but the fact that he could see them too made me more uneasy than the presence of the crows themselves.
"This is bad," I said with growing certainty.
"What do you mean?" Nathan inquired.
"Count them, brother," I said to him. "Count them."
One, two, three, four, five, six... six crows and the one killed by the coyote made seven. Seven, just like us. If I had had doubts before that this was all deliberate, I doubted no more.
"Someone is trying to tell us something," I said.
I had a another feeling too. It wasn't just that someone wanted to get our attention, it was more than that. Someone - something - was playing with us. Pulling our strings to make us move in a certain direction.
I didn't like it. I didn't like it at all.
~~ Nathan ~~
Josiah had told me in passing earlier that there was something wrong in town but to be honest I hadn't had time to notice anything. The people in and around town were more used to me now and I even got simple jobs, like sewing up cuts and setting bones, out on the small farms. While some people still stayed clear of me on account of my color it helped to have a circle of friends who counted in town.
I owed them a lot, I owed Vin and Chris my life since the very first day we met. I did the best I could to keep them alive long enough so that I could repay them. They didn't much need my help though since they were wily and cunning the pair of them, quick to duck and hard to kill. JD was the one who most needed my help. That poor boy got into more trouble than he could handle on a regular basis and always ended up with knife cuts, bruises or bullet holes.
Things had been quiet in town for some weeks but I had been busy anyway. First helping two ranch hands that had drunk too much and tried to take a short cut home to the bunkhouse over some barbed wire. They were still hanging on the wire when I got there. One of them was upside down and cussing and he used a lot of words I've never heard before. The other ranch hands had a hard time cutting them loose 'cause their hands were shaking, they laughed so hard. I stitched the two of them up and when I got back again there was a couple who came in to hear if I could go tend to their milking cow. She had been torn by some wild beast and it was their only cow, they couldn't afford another. It was good, honest work so I did my best and treated her much as any other patient. I soon had her stitched up and feeling much better and the couple gratefully gave me some very good cheese in payment. After dropping off the remaining cheese in town and telling the boys to help themselves to it, I went to see Rain in the Seminole village for a while. I left one day after Vin had gone and when I came back he was still gone and everyone was acting like a corral full of skittish horses that've just smelled wolf.
I didn't notice it at first since I was too tired from the long ride but the next day I went into the saloon to say hello and saw that nearly everyone was there except for Vin and Buck. I had just seen Buck outside where he was talking to some girl so there was no mystery there. But when I happened to ask where Vin was I might as well have picked up a needle and thread and sown their mouths shut right then cause all I got for an answer was a lot of hemming and hawing. They all left soon after, except for Ezra who sat down and started shuffling his deck. I left too since I didn't feel like trying to wrangle information out of him just then. They were all so busy that I didn't get a chance to ask anyone anything until the next day.
It should have been a good day. It was Friday and the week was drawing to a close and since it was the middle of the month most people didn't have enough money to get drunk and start fights. I decided to put my free time to good use and scrub down the clinic. Yeah, I know what you say, it ain't no real clinic such as most doctors have but it's as close as I reckon I'll ever get to one and I'm as close to a doctor as I reckon this town has ever seen so I like to think of it as my clinic. In the army medical tents I saw enough of wounds and sickness to know what difference a little soap and water could make so I scrubbed the wooden table and then looked over my supply of thread and bandages and such. While I was doing this I suddenly heard a knock on my door and as I opened it there was Josiah asking if he could get in. He was carrying a dead crow and dripping blood all over the floor and I rustled up an old newspaper so he could put it down. I asked him what he was gonna do with it and he said he would bury it.
Ever since I first met him I've wondered about him and his crows. So far as I know Josiah's the only one who sees the special crows and I've often wondered what they look like. They have to be different enough that he can tell they're the special kind and not just any old crow like the ones the rest of us sees. Josiah seems to have a fondness for those as well, though, I've seen him bring them bits of leftover bread sometimes.
The first time I heard him say something about crows warning him of danger I believed he wasn't quite right in the head. I've learned a lot since then. He told me once of how the ancient Romans used to have priests whose only job was to look and see how the birds moved. I can't remember what he said their name was. Based on how the birds moved they could tell if something bad was gonna happen. I could see how he would have been right at home there in the ancient world in one of those temples he spoke of.
I wasn't surprised when he said he was gonna bury the dead crow. He probably felt he owed the bird that. I said I might as well go along with him since all I had to look forward to was more scrubbing. We had barely gone down the stairs when he stopped and stared up at a roof across the street. I looked where he looked and saw a bunch of crows sitting there silent and looking down on us like they knew just what it was we were carrying with us.
"Do you see them, Nathan?" Josiah said to me in a hushed tone of voice as if he was afraid they would hear him.
"Yeah, I see them," I told him and he whipped his head toward me and gave me a look that was as sharp as the edge of one of my throwing knives. Guess he hadn't expected me to say yes and his next words told me so.
"This is bad," Josiah said. In all the time I've known him I haven't ever seen him look more shaken. Tell you the truth I was a bit shaken myself. They didn't look any different from normal crows but there was something unnatural about the way they were sitting all still and quiet and just staring at us.
"What do you mean?" I said. A feeling of uneasiness had overcome me and I wanted very much to find out what he thought about all this.
"Count them, brother," he told me. "Count them."
I did, there was six of them live ones and then there was the dead one that we carried with us. Seven crows. I could see where he was going with this.
"Someone is trying to tell us something," Josiah said.
"What?" I asked.
"I'm not sure," Josiah replied. He was silent for a while before saying, "I think trouble is coming."
I waited for more but when it seemed no more was coming I said, "Josiah, what's happened to Vin?
I figured it had to do with Vin. Why else had everyone acted so strange as soon as I asked where he was?
"Nothing as far as I know," Josiah said but I could see in his eyes that he didn't believe that. "Things have just felt wrong ever since he left us."
"Wrong how?"
"Can't you feel it? You saw the crows."
We both looked over to where the crows had been sitting but they were gone. Funny how I hadn't seen them leave, it was as if they were only there one minute and gone the next.
"Shouldn't we go talk to Chris about this?" This seemed to me the wisest thing to do.
"And say what?" Josiah said and frowned. "That we've both seen seven crows in town and one of them is dead? That I've had dreams? We gotta have more than just a feeling of wrongness to go on if we're gonna find out where Vin has gone."
He was right. The others would take our word for it but they wouldn't quite believe us without evidence. I suddenly missed Vin. I felt that if anyone would have understood it would have been him. He was good at sensing when there was more to something than what met the eye.
I thought back to when I been out in the wild with Vin when we were hunting Chanu. There was a calm in him when he was out there under the stars, a sureness in the way he moved even when he was on edge. He didn't waste many words in the wild. I knew this way of his, of saying as little as possible, probably angered some who measured a man by the way he spoke but I found it relaxing. You could just sit by the fire with him in silence and not feel as if you had to hold a conversation.
I looked down at the dead crow. 'Vin,' I thought to myself, 'I sure hope that ain't you. I sure hope that crow has nothing to do with you.'
"We need to find out more," Josiah said and looked more determined all of a sudden. That man don't give up easy and neither do I. "If someone is giving us clues in this manner he'll give us more until we get the message. We need to look for more strange things in town."
I agreed with that and it was decided that I should go and look for whatever strangeness I could find and Josiah would do the same as soon as he had buried the crow.
"Nathan," Josiah said right before we parted company. "You ever hear of something called Ghost Country?"
"No, I don't think so," I said, but it sounded familiar to my ears all the same.
"Well, tell me if you do. It may be nothing-"
"-but it's more than what we've got right now," I finished what he was saying and he nodded and went about burying the crow.
Ghost Country. The name stuck in my mind as I walked down the street. Ghost Country.
Where had I heard that before?