Devil Moon

Chapter Eleven

The dark one stirred in his lair and sat up. He was uneasy and his shoulder was bothering him. Rising, he padded onto the ledge and gazed over his domain. He listened and sniffed the air. Birds warbled in the trees. Other than that, the valley he had claimed was quiet and peaceful.

He paced back and forth. It was early, and he didn’t yet feel the pangs of hunger that nightly impelled him to prowl in search of prey. A pair of ravens flapped overhead and he watched them fly off.

The dark one went into the niche in the rock cliff and lay on his belly with his chin on his forepaws. He closed his eyes and dozed. Images filled his head, and his legs twitched. He was running after a doe. He could see the white of her tail and her pumping legs, and he leaped and landed on her back. He bit her neck and slashed with his claws and she crashed down, thrashing and pumping her rich wet blood over him and the grass. He growled and lapped it, and then he was awake again and raised his head.

His uneasiness persisted. He went back out to the ledge. The sun was warm on his body. Lethargy crept over him, and he dozed again. When next he woke, the gray shadows of twilight were spreading and the hunger was on him.

Descending, the dark one tested the wind. Elk had passed by recently. Usually they were higher up, but they had come to graze on the succulent grass. His nose to the ground, he set out on their trail. There were two, a cow and her calf. He walked faster. Calf meat was juicy and sweet.

Their scent hung heavy around a thicket. They were still in there. His keen ears detected the rustling of their bodies. They had lain up in its depths for the day and would soon emerge to feed. They didn’t know he was there; he never let his presence be known.

Circling, the dark one came to a small pine and sank flat under it. The low branches hid him. With the eternal patience of his kind, he waited for his quarry to show.

The sun had been swallowed by the western peaks when the thicket crackled. The mother came out first, raised her head to sniff, and pricked her ears. She was cautious, as all good mothers were, but the dark one wasn’t upwind and she didn’t smell him. She snorted, the signal for her calf to emerge. A male born that spring, it wasn’t half her size.

The dark one focused on the calf. The mother would be harder to kill and he always went for the easiest. There was less chance of being hurt and he could not afford another injury. His limp was a constant reminder of how costly a mistake could be.

The pair started down, the mother in the lead. She was wary and stopped every few steps to look about. She sensed something was amiss, but she didn’t know what.

The dark one tensed his muscles. The calf was looking at her, cuing his action on hers. That was usually the way with the young. It made them vulnerable. It made them slow to react. He bared his fangs but made no sound. Not yet. Not until the kill.

The mother twisted her neck to look behind them. She stared right at the small pine and then looked away. She hadn’t seen him. His dark coat and the dark shadows were one.

The calf stamped as if impatient.

The dark one was ready. When the mother turned, he exploded from under the pine. Two bounds and he was on them. He leaped high and landed on the calf’s back, his weight almost smashing it to the ground. It bleated and tried to run, but its legs were wobbly. The dark one sank his teeth deep into its throat even as his claws churned and sliced. The mother bleated, too, and tried to butt him. He wrenched with his fangs, and a red geyser sprayed his face. The calf took several staggering steps and collapsed. The dark one clung on, tearing and raking. A pain in his side caused him to yowl in fury. The mother had butted him. She drew back and lowered her head to charge again. A black blur, he whirled to confront her. He snarled and spat, his tail lashing. She hesitated. She bleated again, and sniffed, and drew back. Her calf had stopped moving. Whirling, she plowed off into the gathering night.

The dark one let her go. He had what he wanted. He sank onto the calf, lapped at its ravaged throat, and purred. Here was life’s most delicious treat. He loved to lap blood. Meat was good but blood was best. When there was no more blood to be had, he tore off a great chunk of raw flesh and chewed. Around him the world darkened. Stars glimmered. In the woods an owl hooted. Far off a coyote wailed. Farther away, a wolf howled. The other meat-eaters were abroad.

The dark one gorged. When his belly was full, he rose and turned his back to the calf and scratched grass and dirt onto it. He would come back to eat several times.

Cool night air washed over his sinewy form as he loped up the mountain. He caught the scent of a black bear. He had come across it twice already, a big male in its prime. Were it a male of his own kind, he would challenge it for the valley. But bears were not competitors for the same meat; they seldom went after deer or elk. So long as this bear left him alone, he would leave it alone.

He was almost to the ledge when the wind shifted. A new scent caused him to stop in his tracks. He raised his head to pinpoint where the scent was coming from, but the wind shifted. A growl escaped him. It was the scent he hated. The scent he was reminded of every time he put weight on what was left of his forepaw.

Irritated, the dark one climbed to his lair. He stretched out on the ledge and closed his eyes, but sleep eluded him. He was strangely restless. He rose to go into the niche, and froze.

Down on the valley floor a light glimmered. He has seen lights like it before. He had seen the flames that made it and those who made the flames, the two-legged creatures he hated, the creatures responsible for crippling him.

The creatures he would slay.

Evelyn King breathed shallow as she stepped to the body. The stink was atrocious. Using the stock of her Hawken, she rolled the body over. A beetle scuttled from an eye socket, and she recoiled.

“Poor woman,” Dega said. Whites said that a lot when bad things happened to others. Which perplexed him. He understood the whites’ ideas of “poor” and “rich” but not how having a bad thing happen made someone “poor.”

Although she didn’t want to, Evelyn bent down. The body had been there awhile. Scavengers had been at it. Most of the flesh was gone. Only a few shreds of skin remained. Punctures high on the brow gave a clue to the manner of death. “An animal did this.”

Dega gazed about them. The grass had been trampled and worn, and in a patch of dirt was a large print. He squatted and pointed. “Cat,” he said. “Much big cat.” Catching himself, he amended, “Sorry. Very big cat.”

Evelyn came over. “A mountain lion.” It was rare for painters to attack people. Her father, in all his years in the Rockies, had only ever been attacked by mountain lions twice, so far as she knew. Bears, on the other hand, he’d clashed with often.

“How long you think she be dead?” Dega asked.

Evelyn shrugged. “I’m no judge. Pa and my brother would likely know just by looking at her. If I had to guess, I’d say a week, two at the most.” She turned to the lodge. “Anyone in there?” she called out. When there was no answer she switched to Shoshone. “Ne hainji.” No one replied. She pushed on the hide, and her stomach churned. The stench was worse. Ducking, she warily entered. “Oh my.”

Another body was inside. The scavengers had not been at it, but it had rotted and the maggots had done their grisly work. Evelyn gave it a quick scrutiny. “This one was a boy,” she reckoned. Not much younger than Dega, she reckoned.

“Cat again?”

“Yes,” Evelyn said. Slash marks on the dead boy’s buckskins confirmed it. “Let’s get out of here.” She pushed on the hide and took Buttercup’s reins and walked toward the stream. The stink faded and she could breathe again. She sucked air into her lungs and declared, “Thank God.”

Dega shared her revulsion. He never liked being around dead things. The Nansusequa always buried their dead within a day of death, usually with a feast and singing to celebrate passing to the other side. They didn’t weep and cut themselves as some tribes did. To them, death was a cause for happiness, not sorrow. “Those mother and son, you think?”

“Maybe,” Evelyn said. It begged the question of what had happened to the father. Could be the painter had gotten him, too.

“We bury them?”

Evelyn debated. That was the proper thing, she supposed. But there wasn’t much left of either the woman or the boy. And it wasn’t as if they were kin or even Shoshones. They were strangers. She felt no obligation. Besides, it would take time she would rather spend more pleasantly. “I think we should leave them where they are for their own people to find.”

“If you say,” Dega said. Though in his opinion a person should show respect for the dead as well as the living.

“We’ll go up the valley a ways and make camp,” Evelyn proposed. She mounted and clucked to Buttercup. She tried to shut the bodies from her mind and think only of Dega. “Are you hungry?”

“Not after them.”

Neither was Evelyn. The grisly find had spoiled her mood and her appetite. She refused to be discouraged, though. She had gone to all this trouble to be alone with him, and by God, she wasn’t going to let anything spoil it. Forcing a smile, she said, “We can’t let all the food I brought go to waste.”

Dega was shocked. That she could think of eating amazed him. “We eat later if that all right.”

For over a quarter of a mile Evelyn stuck to the tree line. She came on a spot where a crescent of grass indented the forest, and said merrily, “Look what we have here. This will do just fine.”

“What about cat?” Dega asked.

“It’s long gone by now,” Evelyn assured him. “My pa says they roam a large area. Fifty to a hundred miles or better.” She was more worried about a grizzly happening by. “We’re safe enough.”

“I hope,” Dega said.

Evelyn untied the picnic basket. From her parfleche she took a short stake, and using a rock, pounded the stake into the ground. She tied one end of a length of rope to the stake and looped the other end over Buttercup’s neck. “So she won’t stray,” she said when she noticed Dega looking at her.

“What I do with my horse?”

“I have more rope. We’ll tie off yours, too.”

Next Evelyn stripped off her saddle and saddle blanket. She was lowering the saddle when she realized Dega was still standing there. “Something the matter?”

“No.” Dega had been on the verge of bringing up the issue his mother had raised, but he couldn’t muster the courage.

“Make yourself useful. Fetch some firewood.”

“I be right back.” Dega went into the woods. The shadows were lengthening and it was uncommonly still. He marveled at the absence of life. In King Valley there were animals everywhere, but here all he saw were a few birds. His search for fallen limbs took him an arrow’s flight from the clearing. He was bending to pick up a short branch when an impression in the bare earth caught his attention: another cat print, only this one was smaller. To him it appeared as if part of the paw was missing.

Dega straightened. He hoped Evelyn was right about the mountain lion being gone. They were fierce fighters, those big cats. Troubled by his find, he started back. Without warning, the undergrowth to his left rustled. He turned and spied a vague shape low to the ground. Dropping the firewood, he raised his lance. He glimpsed what he took for a tawny hide and tensed, but whatever it was, it ran. He took several steps to try to get a better look, but the thing was gone. He waited to be sure it didn’t circle around. When he was convinced it was safe, he picked up the firewood and struck off for the clearing, more troubled than ever.

Evelyn was waiting for him. She had spread a blanket and set the food out. “There you are. I was beginning to think you got lost.”

Dega was insulted. His people prided themselves on their woodcraft. He could tell direction by the sun and the stars and had never been lost in his entire life. But he didn’t mention that. Instead he said, “I see something.”

“What?”

“I not know.”

“Was it the mountain lion?”

“I think too small,” Dega said.

“Good. That’s the last thing we need.” Evelyn patted the ground. “Why don’t you set that wood down and we’ll get the fire going?” She opened her parfleche and took out a fire steel and flint and her small box of tinder. Her father had taught her how to light a fire when she was little and she was so adept at it that in no time she had puffed a tiny flame to life and their fire was crackling and growing. She put the steel and flint and box in her parfleche and turned to Dega, who had sat across from her. “You can sit closer if you want. That way I don’t have to reach across to hand you food.”

Dega had never really noticed how she was always telling him what to do. He slid around the fire and she handed him a piece of pemmican.

“Help yourself to whatever else you want.” Evelyn was tickled. Here they were, at long last. She gazed on his handsome features and felt a stirring deep inside.

Normally Dega would be famished, but he was nervous, which wasn’t normal for him at all. “We need talk.”

“Yes,” Evelyn agreed. “We do.”

Just then a twig snapped and they both glanced at the ring of woods.

Something was staring back at them.