AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I can show you the statistics from a well-regarded study,” he continued loudly and with a hefty dollop of patronization. “People around here are prejudiced. But if you look at the numbers—”
Wendy snorted. “Before you trot out numbers, you should know that unknown predators is what they say when they can’t a hundred percent say it was a wolf — and only a wolf. A wolf makes the kill, but other predators get after the carcass and that becomes unknown predators.”
“Coyotes kill more livestock than wolves,” he argued.
His clothes were top quality and new enough to crackle, including the retro red paisley neckerchief that immediately made me think of an outlaw pulling it up over his face to mask his identity.
“Lots more. But nobody’s reintroducing coyote packs.”
“The reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone was decades ago—”
“And the monitoring and enforcement gets paid for every year.” I had the feeling Wendy had made this argument before.
“Besides,” Brenda said, “it’s not just Yellowstone. Colorado has a pack that sure doesn’t stop at the border. Those wolves kill livestock and they kill dogs — dogs guarding the livestock and pets.”
“Coyotes kill dogs, too,” Randall Kenyon shot back, not quite as patronizing.
Robin Kenyon had spotted us, was watching us. None of the others picked up on the direction of her attention, though.
Her jeans, boots, shirt, and jacket were the same quality as his — setting them well above the utilitarian rattiness of Wendy’s and Brenda’s. But hers were broken in. They looked less like a store window outfit and more individual pieces chosen that day.
She had those eyebrows that looked like they were painted on with a fat brush. I’d bet my house she didn’t do them herself. Nor the artfully streaked hair pulled back in a low ponytail. She wore her cowboy with considerably more ease than Randall.
“Yeah, but you Easterners don’t get as sentimental about coyotes,” Brenda said. “Probably because you have problems with them back there, too.”
Wendy nodded, united with Brenda on this topic. “People trying to keep livestock alive don’t get sentimental about either one — wolves or coyotes.”
“Sentiment has nothing to do with—” Randall’s vehemence abruptly pivoted toward us. “Who are you? What are you doing?” He interrupted himself a second time and started toward us with the hand out to the camera. “You can’t—”
With her camera going, Diana approached him slowly, with me hanging back slightly for the wider angle.
He kept moving his hand, trying to block the shot.
“Hi,” I said with cheerful friendliness, then tried to sell it more with, “Brenda, Wendy, it’s good to see you again. Randall, Robin, I’m Elizabeth Margaret Danniher and this is Diana Stendhal from—”
“Can see where you’re from.” After shifting his position, he must have seen the big letters on the side of the NewsMobile. “Go away.”
His continued effort to block the camera kept raising the folds of the neckerchief’s fabric, reinforcing the impression of an outlaw masking his lower face.
Boy oh boy, did he need media training.
Made great video for us, though, if we decided to use it.
There wasn’t much that made someone look shiftier — and thus guiltier — than holding their palm out to the camera. You can start a debate about this in most TV newsrooms, with some holding out that it was the perp walk when an arrestee bent nearly double and pulled a sweater or other piece of clothing over his/her head. I fell into the hand-in-front of the camera as shiftier camp.
Yes, because it was active and the sweater-head shuffle was passive. But more important because of how it looked if it aired — like the person on camera’s hand was pushing away the viewer. Like that palm is about to be shoved in the viewer’s face.
Not the way to win over sympathizers.
Not the way to win us over, either, but he did not appear concerned with that.
“You can’t be here.” The dope showed no sign of recognizing he wore the perfect face-blocker on his head — that’s how unaccustomed he was to cowboy attire, including his hat. “This is private property.”
“Yeah,” Wendy said to him. “My private property. Not yours.”
With the advantage of the property owner viewing me momentarily as a friend as a result of the-enemy-of-my-enemy alchemy, I quickly said, “If you’d answer our questions—”
“No reason I should and no reason to let you film me. If you won’t leave, I will. We will.” He moved toward that vehicle that hadn’t been here yesterday, with enough bells and whistles to nearly mask the pickup underneath.
