Page 90 of Blacktail

“No. I thought at first they were hunting us, but no.” He paused. “Not in that way, at any rate.”

“What do you mean?”

“These are holy men. Perhaps holy men hunt in another way.”

“Holy men?” Chester asked, bewildered. “Is it something in their scent, or…?”

“No, not their scent, nor their gait, nor their appearance. It’s the things that they don’t do,” Blacktail said. “You recall those last ones, the ones we ate? When they moved, they looked at things. Rocks, bushes, the horizon. Physical things. They reacted to them, made noises. Their glances would linger on what they found interesting. Their scent would change when they saw something that caught their fancy.”

Chester wagged his understanding. He had seen that as well. He thought nothing of it at the time.

“Those ones down there, though…they aren’t here for the scenery.”

“What, then?”

“Us, I think,” Blacktail said. “Me. You see the one in the middle? The one in the black flowing—What did you call it?”

“Cloth?”

“Yes, cloth. The old one in the black cloth. With the little white collar around his neck. That one in particular bears watching. He is as focused as any hunter I have ever known. But not on this world.” Blacktail paused. “I do not like it. Not at all.”

“Should we turn around?”

Blacktail thought on this for a time. Finally he answered, “No. Not yet.”

The two-legs had indeed been making for the mesa Blacktail pointed out. They reached it well before sunset. One of them began to build things in the area, little dens shaped like turtle shells but of strange colors. Three of them set about gathering wood, going out into the raw land, returning every so often with an armful of twigs and thick scrub. They tossed the wood onto a pile in the center of the camp. Soon the pile had grown to the size of a small hill.

The elder male with the meditative air about him sat still and silent, ignoring all that went on.

“Do you have any idea what that one is doing?” Blacktail asked. “You know them better than I do.”

Chester flushed with pleasure. “Maybe,” he said, after giving it some thought. “You see that pile of leaf-things it holds in its lap?”

“What, the one with the little marks on it, like bird tracks?”

Chester squinted. His eyes weren’t good enough to pick out the little tracks, but he had seen similar leaf-things and already suspected that they were there. “Yes, those. Okay, I think I do know. My two-legs used to have some marked leaves like those, all bound together in little bundles. I’ve no idea what they’re for, but she would sit and stare at them for many breaths, sometimes all day.” Chester paused. “Perhaps it is meat-drunk?”

“No,” Blacktail said. “I think he is praying.”

They were quiet for a time, watching. Chester spoke next. “The little one there, the den-builder—she’s making a fire. Have you seen fire?”

“Oh yes,” Blacktail said. “Twice the lightning struck my hill and it came. It’s a natural thing. I’ve seen it a few times when I traveled at night. I think the two-legs use it to drive the darkness away.”

“The one they’re making looks to be very large.”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve no idea—”

Blacktail nipped him gently, and Chester fell silent. “A hunter speaks only when he has something worth saying,” Blacktail said.

“Yes, lo—Yes.”

vi

They waited in silence while the sun traced its long arc across the sky, watched it sink behind the mountains. By the time it was full dark, the two-legs’ fire had grown enormous. One of them found thick wood from somewhere, a fallen tree perhaps, or several of them. When the fire was large enough, they fed those in as well. The fire ate it greedily. Its yellow-orange glow swelled until it was twice as wide as Blacktail was long. The heat of it was enormous. Little by little it drove the men back until they stood many paces away. Blacktail and Chester felt it even where they lay.

When the fire was at its peak, the two-legs who had been meditating on the collection of leaves stood. As it stood, the others fell silent. It strode toward the fire, getting closer than Chester would have believed possible. The column of flame towered over it, perhaps twice its height. When it was close enough that the heat set its outer skins to smoking, it turned and faced the other four. It began to speak, glancing down at the leaves in its hand from time to time.