7th Sigma (7 page)

“Ah.”

Rooster looked Kimble over. “How old are you, boy?”

Kimble was working the zucchini patch, checking the stems for squash beetles. They were bad this summer. He looked up at Ruth, but when she didn't say anything, he said, “Thirteen.”

“Huh. Small for your age. But then again, you did all right with Sandy Williams. How'd you like a job?”

“What sort of job?”

“Nighthawk. I fell asleep while on watch last night and I was lucky I didn't lose any. Ewes crying woke me up and I heard the bastards scramble off when I came up shouting. It'd just be a couple of weeks. The missus and me are building a coyote fence around the big pen. But we're not making any progress staying up all night.”

“Margo all right?” Ruth asked.

Rooster grinned. “She's fine. I'm not letting her lift anything. She's just spinning the cord and lashing the uprights.”

“When's she due?”

“Six weeks. But if I don't finish this fence, between the coyotes and the baby I'll
never
get a good night's rest.”

“What's the pay?” Ruth asked.

Rooster gestured at the zucchini. “You got the squash bugs bad, yeah?”

Kimble shrugged. “Yeah. They're going to town on the cucumbers and the zukes.”

Rooster spread his hands. “Chickens would take care of that. Eat up a bunch of your weeds, too. And there'd be eggs. I've got two dozen new chicks running around.”

Kimble looked at Ruth.

“We'd have to build a coop. And
someone
would have to clean it.”

Kimble laughed. “Someone. All right.”

*   *   *

HE
started that night, at sunset, after Rooster guided the sheep into the large pen, a circular, split-rail fenced enclosure, about one hundred feet across, with plastic mesh on the bottom to keep the lambs in. It was a quarter mile away from Rooster's adobe house.

“The sheep dung can get rank,” commented Rooster. He handed a six-foot spear to Kimble, an oak shaft topped with a double-edged fiberglass spearhead. “Just in case, but this is your real defense.” He led Kimble over the fence beside the gate where a hollow log lay across two split chunks of wood. “Thump it,” he said, demonstrating with a broken ax handle leaning against the fence. When he brought it down hard, the resounding boom was impressive. “That should scare 'em off. I'm not gonna get out of bed for an occasional tap but if you need help—” He beat a fast-paced staccato tattoo on the log. “I'll come running but … you ever hear the story of the boy who cried wolf?”

Kimble laughed. “I'll do my best to make sure you can sleep.”

That first night was the hardest. Nothing happened and his body was expecting sleep. He did
jyo
exercises with the spear and walked in circles around the inside and outside of the fence.

It got cold after midnight and since the air was still, he kept a small fire going in Rooster's clay
chimenea
. He used it to warm up, but he didn't sit down near it. The very thought was enough to make his head nod and his eyelids droop.

Rooster came out at dawn. “Any excitement?”

“Fighting sleep. That was hard.”

“Get some rest during the day and it'll be easier.”

The next night, Sensei sent some of her green tea with him and he brewed a cup every couple of hours. When the caffeine stopped working, his full bladder kicked in. Also, about two in the morning, the sheep awoke, bleated, and milled about.

He walked noisily around the fence, spear at the ready, but whatever was out there didn't show itself. He had no trouble keeping awake until Rooster came out at dawn.

That night, when he returned, Rooster said, “There were tracks, maybe six animals.”

“Coyotes?”

“No. Coyotes tend to breeding pairs, not packs. Maybe a family group with half-grown cubs, but these were all large animals. I'm thinking dogs. Feral dogs.”

“What about wolves? Don't they move in packs?”

The Mexican gray wolf and the timber wolf were increasing since the coming of the bugs.

“Just keep your eyes open.”

Nothing disturbed the sheep that night or for the rest of the week. Each day, when Kimble showed up, the tightly spaced uprights of the coyote fence grew around the perimeter of the holding pen. As each section was completed, the Vigils transplanted prickly pear to the base of the fence, to discourage tunneling.

Kimble's patrol became smaller as he concentrated on the sections of fence that were still just horizontal rails.

One night, as he crouched before the
chimenea
feeding small chunks of wood to the fire, he heard a panicked bleating from the far end of the enclosure, squarely in the middle of the new coyote fence. Almost immediately he heard the sound of splintering wood followed by growling.

His eyes were still dazzled by the flames of the fire but the moon was quarter full and high. The entire flock surged toward him, pressed up against the fence. He heard a sheep scream.

He dashed to the hollow log and beat it hard, perhaps thirty taps in ten seconds, then pushed through the sheep toward the growling, holding the spear low, point out in front.

There were several dogs, at least five or six. Two of them were tearing at the screaming ewe. The others were barking and rushing the milling sheep. One other large dog was standing in the shadow of the fence, barely seen, but a hole, created by the splintering of four of the upright saplings, allowed moonlight to spill through the fence. Over the smell of sheep dung Kimble smelled wet dog and ozone, like after a lightning storm.

Kimble lunged, thrusting the spear like a
jyo
at the dog tearing at the ewe. The spear tip went in right behind its shoulder, twisting, hitting the lungs and heart. It dropped with a startled grunt.

Kimble pulled and thrust again, but the other dog jumped sideways. The spear tip scored across the dog's shoulder and it yelped and scrambled for the hole through the fence. The other dogs fled as well, though they ran around the flock toward the old rail fencing. Only the large dark dog, back by the fence, paused as the wounded dog wiggled through, then turned to follow, completely filling the hole torn in the fence.

Kimble skipped forward, thrusting again. There was a dull clanking sound as the tip struck and then moonlight flooded through the hole in the fence again. When he looked at the composite spearhead, he saw that it had snapped in half. He found the broken piece on the ground, sand-encrusted and bloody.

“I think you imagined hitting it. You probably got the fence,” suggested Rooster, when he arrived a few moments later.

Kimble shrugged. He'd seen and felt the spear strike the animal's right flank solidly. Too solidly, apparently. However, he didn't argue.

Rooster was happy Kimble had killed the one dog and driven off the others. The screaming ewe had to be put down, but it could've been much worse. He was less happy about the broken section of new coyote fence. “How the hell did they break that?” he wondered, fingering the splintered ends. “Go home and get some rest but be back here midmorning. I'm getting together a few of the boys and we're gonna track that pack down. No point in building fence if they can do that.”

*   *   *

WHEN
Kimble recounted the night's events to Ruth, she said, “Well, glad you're all right. Get some sleep. I'll get you up in time.” When she woke him, she was wearing her hat and walking boots, and when it was time for him to go, she handed him a
jyo
, took one herself, and walked along.

“I don't know, Rooster,” said Barney Spinoza. “Not sure this is a trip for a woman, 'specially one who needs a stick to walk.”

Shocked, Kimble turned to look at Ruth's reaction, but her eyes only crinkled.

Barney was new to the area and hadn't been around when Sandy Williams had his encounter with Ruth in the marketplace. Rooster just patted him on the shoulder and said, “Don't worry, Barney. It'll be all right.”

Rooster had gotten Rosemary Werito's husband, Frank, to come, not just because he also ran sheep, but because he was a good tracker.

“You got one, all right,” Frank said, as they headed out. “Lots of blood spoor.” He'd brought a traditional bow. Rooster had a crossbow slung over his back and was carrying the same spear Kimble had used the night before, with a newly replaced spearhead. Barney carried a plastic rifle with a quiver of preloaded disposable cardboard barrels. Everyone brought water bottles.

The blood was the best indicator. It had been dry for so long the ground was sandy dust or baked hard. You could make out some vague tracks and sometimes claw scratches on baked dirt. It wasn't until the pack tracked through mud in the riverbed that they got anything clear.

“Yeah. Dogs. Seven, I'm thinking,” said Werito, studying the tracks near the water.

“Well, we knew that,” said Rooster. “There's a dead one back at my place.”

“Didn't know if it was only dogs. They're headed downstream.” He gestured south along the bosque. Barney and Rooster moved out, Ruth following. Kimble was standing by Frank, looking at the tracks, too. Frank pointed out the salient features. “Big dog. Medium dog. Fat dog.”

“Fat dog? Why not another big dog?”

“Look here, where you can see how close its legs are together? Half the length of the others, but it's sinking into the same soil about as deep.” He pointed at another set of footsteps. “That dog is big and heavy. See how far apart back and front paws are? See how deep the tracks—” Frank tilted his head to one side. “Huh.”

“What?”

“It's the same track.”

“Same dog, you mean?”

Werito licked his lips. “Well, I'm not that sure it
is
a dog.”

“A wolf?”

“Uh, no.” He stood up abruptly. He'd been carrying his bow unstrung but now he took a moment to string it. “Let's catch up,” he said and started out briskly.

The blood spoor stopped with the blood's source.

“Huh,” said Rooster. “I guess they turned on … no. What the hell did that?”

It was the medium-sized dog that Kimble had wounded. The pack had chewed on the body, but the head was lying in pieces.

Precise pieces.

It had been split bilaterally, like an anatomy illustration, right down between the ears, eyes, nostrils. One side was lying intact, the plane of the incision tilted toward the sky, displaying sinuses, throat, the top of the spine, and the brain split right down the corpus callosum. The other half had been sliced crosswise, in uniform half-inch sections perpendicular to the first cut and they were spread in order beside the other half. By contrast, the neck looked like it had been torn from the body.

Frank said something heartfelt in Dineh.

“You said it,” agreed Ruth.

Frank opened his mouth to answer, then shut it again, studying the ground around the dead dog. “I guess I noticed something odd back when we found the tracks in the mud.”

“Odder than
this
?” said Barney.

Frank said, “Pretty odd.” He looked down at the precisely cut chunks of dog head. “But, no, maybe not this odd.”

“What was it?” asked Rooster.

“One of the dogs has four right front feet.” He knelt near the dog head but not facing it.

Rooster frowned. “I'm not getting you.”

Frank pointed at the ground in front of him. “Look. That big dog stood right here? I've got good tracks of both front feet and one of its rear feet.”

“Yeah.”

“Every one of those tracks is the same. Look. See that little V-shape in the middle of that pad? Some sort of scarring, probably.”

“Oh,” said Ruth, kneeling down beside him. “That V-mark is in both the front prints.” She shifted. “
And
the back paw print, also. That doesn't make any sense.”

“It's worse than that. Look at the right-left symmetry. They're all right paws, the same right paw. In the mud, I saw all four feet. They were
all
the same.”

“That's just dumb,” said Barney. “Why would a dog have the same paw prints on every foot.”

Rooster just pointed at the sliced chunks of dog head. “Why would a dog do this?” He looked closer, waving his hand to shoo off some of the gathering flies. “How could anybody? Haven't seen cuts this clean, especially through bone, since before the bugs came. Really good metal knives could do it. Maybe you could do this with a ceramic bone saw, but it would sure take a long time and it wouldn't look anywhere near as neat. I mean, the bone looks
polished
!”

Ruth had stopped looking at the ground and was scanning the bluff and the river. “Do you really want to chase …
this
?” Her gesture included both the tracks and the dissected head.

Rooster sucked his lips in and sat back on his haunches. He looked first at Frank, who shrugged slightly, then at Barney, who said, “I think someone's playing a prank on us. How could a dog do that?”

Frank looked amused. “Maybe it wasn't a dog. I don't see any other tracks. I suppose whatever did it could have flown in and then flown off.”

“What do you think, Frank?” asked Rooster.

Frank shrugged again. “I must admit, I'm curious. We had a weird crow last year, that flew wrong, but it was following the other birds around. I didn't get that close to it, but when it settled on a branch, the branch bent. I mean more than it should have. Not sure I want to fight this thing, but at the least I'd like to
see
it.”

“Hell,” said Barney, “no matter what it is, I'd rather fight it out here than back home while it's killing my goats.”

Rooster nodded reluctantly. “There's some sense to that, too.” He flipped his spear and shoved it into the ground, then unslung his crossbow, cocked, and loaded it. He pulled the spear from the ground and looked at it.