Page 85 of Blacktail

When it came to rest, it burped up a pair of the two-legs, a male and a female. They dug in its hindquarters and came out with two brightly colored bundles. After a certain amount of fussing and fiddling, they strapped the bundles to their backs and set off on foot into the Starving Rocks.

Blacktail waited until they were well out of sight, then turned to Chester. “I thought we’d see something like this if we waited long enough,” he said. “I sometimes see the two-legs in the wild places, walking alone or in pairs. You lived with them, no?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me, why do they come?” Blacktail asked. “They have no place in the desert.”

“I’m not sure. My two-legs and I never did this. Though you’re right, there’s always one or two of them about. I’ve, ah…been keeping my distance.”

“Hmm. That’s probably wise.”

“Perhaps they’re here to mark territory?” Chester said. “They don’t seem to hunt or really do anything. They just walk through.”

“They come a lot?”

“Not these two in particular, not that I remember anyway. Just every now and again, some of them will pass through. I used to go up and ask them for food sometimes, but one of them threw something hot on me. Now I don’t do that anymore.”

“Those days are over, right enough. Begging is for slaves,” Blacktail said, his gaze boring into Chester. “Can you understand that?”

Chester was not sure that he did understand. Food was food, was it not? Who cared how you got it? But he felt uneasy in the shadow of those burning eyes and would not challenge him. He set aside doubt and wagged his tail silently.

Blacktail studied him for a time. “Very well, then,” he said finally. “Follow me.”

Chester had lived in the desert for a long time before Blacktail came, but he had learned almost nothing of the land around him. It never occurred to him to try. He was not precisely loud when he moved—his paws weren’t capable of anything like the noise men made—but he was not above kicking an occasional stone or setting off a small avalanche.

Blacktail, however, moved in nearly total silence. Chester did not notice this at first, but after they had trotted a little ways he came to realize that the only sounds to mark their passing came from him. If he stood still and listened very, very closely, he could hear the sound of Blacktail’s heart beating in his chest, but that was all.

I deserve to starve, Chester realized. The shame rocked him, stopped him in his tracks. I can pick out the sound of a can opener from half a longrun away, but the only prey that fears me is the bobtail trash bag.

Blacktail did not even pause in his stride, though he no doubt knew the nature of Chester’s thought. Wolves who hunt in a pack are of a single mind.

Chester stood for a moment, watching as Blacktail moved away from him, traveling through the canyon like a black wind. I might have waited among these rocks until the sun went black and she would not have returned for me, he thought with sudden and perfect fury. I might have been a ghost and haunted the desert forever, dead and betrayed with nothing but the screams of my stomach for company. I was nothing to her. We are nothing to them.

Then his hunger, which had been calmed somewhat by the small meal but not appeased, awoke. But there is meat aplenty on those two, Chester realized, the idea rising like the sun of a new day. Meat aplenty, hot and fresh. A thin strand of drool ran from the side of his mouth. A dog might eat for days.

Chester trotted to catch up with Blacktail’s receding shadow. This time he took pains to be silent as he moved.

“Decided to join the hunt, have you?” Blacktail asked.

For a long time he looked only at the red dust under his paws. But when he looked up, he met Blacktail’s gaze. “Yes. I believe I have.”

“Good,” Blacktail said. “Have you done this before?”

Chester thought at first to say “of course,” to say “many times.” That was true, was it not? He’d spent quite a bit of time running after prairie dogs. Even before that, he had whiled away many an afternoon in the backyard, terrorizing squirrels and annoying the occasional cat. He had, of course, caught none of them.

Then he thought of the few morsels he had eaten, here among the rocks. He remembered how the raw flesh felt slipping down his throat, the warm contentment that came after. No, he thought. This hunter doesn’t want to hear about my games.

“Lord, I know nothing.”

“All right, then,” Blacktail said. “The first craft is silence. Watch me. Do as I do.” He scented the air for a moment, then bounded up the hill. Chester followed close behind, taking care to place his feet as Blacktail did.

He was still weak, and the pace was difficult. But he thought Blacktail might have moved much quicker if he had hunted alone. By the time they overtook the two-legs, they were nearly at the top of the mesa. Chester was panting hard.

“Hold back a moment,” Blacktail said. “Catch your breath. I’ll take the first one.”

Chester swallowed hard. After a moment he wagged his assent.

“As we get closer, take care that you do not look directly at them. Another thing—and this is important: Don’t linger on the thought of killing, even in your deepest heart. You must hide your thoughts, even from yourself. A creature can feel when it is being stalked. I try to walk as if I’m on a stroll, just out to mark the bounds of my lands. But do whatever works for you.”