by Max Evans
I staggered up and stepped off the distance from me to the horse. To this day I have never told anyone how far it was. No one would believe me.
I got the brown up and we took a few deep breaths together. Then I got back on and rode to the top of the canyon. By that time Uncle Bob and the hounds were out of sight. About a quarter mile to the west I heard him yell. I spurred out on top of a little knoll. I could see the hounds, heads down and tails in the air, chewing the guts out of Mr. Coyote. Uncle Bob and Mandy were standing there, heads down and leaning forward, almost equally interested spectators.
An hour later, out in the flats, we jumped a pack of three. The dogs started to split up, then moved back together and singled out one lone coyote. He was moving off south, hunting a brushy canyon to hide in.
When we first spotted them they were about two hundred yards behind us. Now they moved out in long rhythmic strides that melted the ground from under them. The coyote strained, his small feet hammering the ground and his fur streaming back in the wind. His very life was running out with each yard, each foot, each inch he lost.
As they moved up beside him, one dog reached over and grabbed him in the neck. Down and over they went in a cloud of dust. The other three dogs sailed on past, then, braking and whirling, they leaped in on the coyote, biting down in the breast, the throat, and the entrails, clamping down and tearing his breath away.
We came to a fence—a four-wire fence. I rode down it looking for a gate. No gate. But Uncle Bob and Mandy? Hell, they cleared that wire with a foot to spare, and there they were, in on the kill again.
A man took his life in his hands when he rode behind the hounds of Uncle Bob of Hi Lo, but when he sped along with him in a wheeled conveyance it was a thousand times worse. Many mornings he would arrive at my house at daybreak, puffing, trying to keep his cigar lit and blowing a lot of frost instead, his ancient car steaming and rattling and ready to go.
He invariably knew where a coyote was hiding. Off we’d roar, me shivering in the winter air and him without gloves and his car window rolled down—for better vision—never feeling the cold at all. He chewed his dead cigar and stared hard and intently at every rise and fall, every bush, as he drove forward to that wonderful moment: the kill. When he spotted one he would floorboard the old Plymouth. It would lurch ahead, gaining speed until he figured he was close enough; then he would stomp on the brakes and yell at me, ‘Turn ’em loose!”
Out I would fall, and I do mean fall, for the old Plymouth would still be moving. Scrambling to my feet I’d jerk the trunk door open, and the bawling, wildly excited hounds would bail out, leaping high until they spotted the coyote. The next problem was to get back in the car before Uncle Bob took off after them.
Away we’d go, bursting into bear-grass clumps, dodging gullies and boulders, careening around dangerous slopes, and Uncle Bob swallowing his cigar an inch at a time. The old car usually held together, and we would be on the spot when the dogs nailed their victim. It was a very great sin in Uncle Bob’s book, as well as a total disgrace and humiliation for his dogs, if he wasn’t there for the climax.
We were not always lucky. There was one time we jumped an old white coyote that Uncle Bob had been running for three years. I turned the first team of dogs loose and jumped back in the coupe. For a while it looked as though they’d get him easy, but the coyote twisted through a mass of sharp rocks and lamed the hounds. We turned the next team loose. They didn’t have a chance. The coyote circled a haystack and raced right through the middle of a herd of grazing cows and lost the dogs completely. But that didn’t stop Uncle Bob.
We cut the coyote out into open country about three miles from a canyon. It slowed us down, having to look for gates and places to cross cut-bank arroyos, but we kept the quarry in sight.
Uncle Bob yelled, “Get the gun ready!”
I levered a shell into the thirty-thirty, rolled my window down and started shooting. I fired one whole round and never hit within ten yards of the coyote. The coupe was bucking and pitching and weaving like a rodeo bronc as we flew across the prairie.
Then Tom got excited. “He’s slowin’,” he said. “Look! He ain’t goin’ to last much longer!”
It was true. The coyote had run with all his strength for many miles. We were gaining on him fast. I loaded up again. Then this fence loomed up. There was a narrow horseback gate right in the comer. Uncle Bob sized up the problem, knowing, as I did, that a deep canyon lay about a half-mile past the gate.
He gave the coupe all it had and yelled for me to jump out and open the gate. We could both see that the coupe couldn’t go through at this narrow angle, though. However, I flung open the door and fell out rolling and firing one accidental shot up in the air. I finally got astraddle the whirling world and ran for the gate. At the same time I emptied my gun at the coyote, almost hitting him once.
Uncle Bob was gaining speed as he made a big circle. I got the gate open about a second before he hit it. He didn’t quite clear the posts on either side, but his speed carried him through. One post snapped in two and the other cringed over like it was scared. There was a hell of a screeching of metal, but now Uncle Bob was in the clear and still going. The coyote was getting very close to the canyon, and for a minute I thought Uncle Bob might drive right on in after him. But he whirled the coupe to the side, slammed on the brakes, and tumbled out. The coyote was so tired it was barely moving. Uncle Bob grabbed a rock and took after him afoot. Just as the coyote got to the canyon’s edge, Uncle Bob hurled the rock and hit the coyote right in the hind end. All it did was help him off into the safety of the canyon.
Uncle Bob fell down with the force of the throw and skidded a few feet on his face, doing nothing to improve his already much-scarred features. I saw him get up and run over to the edge of the canyon, raise his arm and shake his fist. He was cursing like a madman. But there was a note of respect in his voice, too.
The coupe was in bad shape. The fenders and running boards were crumpled and both door handles were scraped off slick as a politicians tongue. Its a lucky thing the windows had been rolled down. We crawled in and sadly backtracked, looking for our exhausted hounds.
We both had a severe case of coyote fever about this time. I bought an old army surplus weapons carrier to hunt in. It didn’t have any kind of top on it, and the front windshield was missing.
Big Boy told us he had spotted a pack of coyotes just a little piece off the road this side of Hoover Young’s place. He went along with us that day. We found them before we expected to.
We turned the dogs loose and took out after them at top speed. We had about a three-quarter-mile downhill rim before we hit a snag between two hills. I didn’t know it, but the radiator was low on water and by the time we’d run half a mile the motor was getting pretty hot. Then I saw smoke coming out of the glove compartment. I yelled at Uncle Bob to reach in and take out the box of shotgun shells before they went off.
He was standing, holding onto the steel posts where the windshield had once been, yelling: “They’re goin’ to get him! They’re goin’ to get him! Hurry! Hurry!”
I was hurrying as fast as I could, but at the same time I didn’t want those shotgun shells exploding. Big Boy was bouncing around in the back barely able to stay inside. I kept feeding the gas to the weapons carrier, at the same time leaning over and trying to get hold of the shotgun shells. I needn’t have worried, though, because just then we hit a gully about three feet wide and three feet deep and the vehicle did a flip and the trip was over. Since there was no top to hold us in, all three of us were propelled toward the sky like a trio of big-assed birds.
It took a while to assess the damage. Uncle Bob had broken his right collarbone and added a few new wrinkles and contusions to his face. My left forearm was smashed. Big Boy had three cracked ribs and a busted ankle.
The weapons carrier wasn’t fit for anything but scrap. But the worst of it was that we’d missed getting in on the kill.
Uncle Bob performed a service
for the country that few people realized: he kept the varmints in balance. In other sections of the country the ranchers were always appealing to the state Game Department to come thin them out. As usual they did the job too well. With the coyotes gone, the rabbits and the gophers took over and did even more damage. Then the ranchers prayed for the return of the coyote. But none of this was true in the Hi Lo country—Uncle Bob’s country. He kept things on an even keel, killing just enough coyotes and no more.
We used to take field glasses and sit up on a mesa all day searching the flats for coyotes. Once we watched one chasing a jack rabbit. He ran along behind perhaps thirty or forty yards, never crowding the rabbit. It looked intentional and of course it was. He chased the rabbit in a big circle, and all of a sudden another coyote raised up out of the grass and took up the chase. He circled the rabbit the way a good cutting horse works a yearling heifer. On the third trip around, the first coyote came back and nailed the rabbit in one easy burst of speed. The feast was on. Uncle Bob was breathless with admiration. “Never saw nothin’ like it,” he said. “Goddam things spell each other.”
Another time we watched a coyote lie in a clump of bear grass a short distance from the hole of a prairie dog. He stayed there motionless for almost two hours. Finally the prairie dog ventured far enough from his retreat for the coyote to strike. With a swift, deadly surge he scooped the prairie dog up in his jaws and trotted off to a secluded canyon for his lunch.
One good winter Uncle Bob skinned out over a hundred coyotes. He gutted every one of them to see what they had been eating. “Only one of them had a domestic animal, a chicken it was, in its stomach. The rest were full of mice, rabbits, gophers, grasshoppers, and strings of cowhide from an already dead cow. Just like I told you boys a thousand times: you can’t mess with nature. Them coyotes do more good than harm.” Then he paused a minute to consider before he went on: “Of course, there can be too damn many of them, but your old Uncle Bob will take care of that.”
It was curious. Here was a man who dedicated his life to the destruction of the very thing he so strongly defended and admired. But to Uncle Bob it didn’t seem strange at all—just natural.
Big Boy and I drove up in front of Uncle Bob’s rundown place, and dogs were barking from every post. Uncle Bob shuffled out pulling at the front of his bib overalls with one hand and yanking his hat down firmer on his head with the other. The dry wind tugged at us as we stepped out of the pickup.
“Howdy boys,” he said.
We told him we intended to go coon hunting at the Adkins’ provided he would be kind enough to come along and bring his dogs.
His eyes lit up and he said, “Let me tell the old lady we’re goin’ and I’ll get the dogs.”
He loaded five flop-eared hounds of all colors in the back of our pickup and we took off north toward the Adkins place.
Uncle Bob said: “How in the hell did you ever get an invite to hunt down there? I’ve been tryin’ to for fifteen years. Them are the wildest, orneriest hermits in all New Mexico.”
Big Boy said: “I helped them gather a five-year-old steer out of the brush on Old Sorrel the other day, and they asked me if they could do me any favors. I remembered seeing all those coon tracks and it made me think of you, Uncle Bob.”
Uncle Bob was so touched he couldn’t say a word—just chewed harder on his cigar.
Usually we didn’t drink on a hunt of any kind, but this time Big Boy had brought a pint along for the Adkins boys. “They’re real shy, and I thought this might limber them up a little,” he explained.
Big Boy had arranged to meet them at the crossroads at eight o’clock. The November moon was up cold and sparkly as a two-carat diamond. We got there a little early, so Uncle Bob let the dogs out of the back and tied them to the pickup. All of a sudden they started fidgeting and growling. We looked up, and there stood two horse-faced men with rifles. You could tell it was an effort, but they smiled.
We all said hello, and Big Boy handed them the whisky.
“I’m Clem,” said one. “This here is my brother Ake.” They both took about a third of the bottle each, and it must have pushed the talking button.
“Ake shore is mean,” said Clem proudly. “Want me to tell ya ’bout the time he went to the big city with a sackful of coon hides?”
“Sure.”
“Well,” Clem went on, “Ake had this sackful of prime coon hides he’d trapped fer to sell. Them was the days when they was worth lots of money. Ake had got hisself a sale and was strolling down one of them concrete trails that runs all over them big towns, when a feller stepped out of a alley with a black rag tied around his face and a big black gun in one hand. This here feller says to Ake, ‘Stick ’em up.’ Ake asks him, ‘Stick what up?’ This feller told him to put his hands high in the air like he was pickin’ apples.” Clem started laughing, and for a minute I thought the story was over. But it wasn’t. “Then this feller tells Ake to give him his money, and if he didn’t he’d blow his brains out. Ake worked mighty hard, one whole winter in fact, to make that ketch of coons, and he didn’t much take to this feller robbin’ him. So he says to him: ‘It’s in my left-hand pocket. Go ahead and get it.’ While the feller was goin’ after the money, Ake was agoin’ after his pocket knife. Show ’em your pocket knife, Ake.”
Ake pulled a stick out of his pocket from which he opened a blade. It looked more like a cavalry saber than a pocket knife. Ake waved it suggestively in the air, now and then testing its sharpness with his thumb.
“As I was a sayin’,” continued Clem, “Ake gets his knife out and takes a cut at the feller before he could get the money. This feller looks up sorta surprised like and asks Ake what happened to his gun. Ake tells him. . . . What did you tell him, Ake?” Clem queried.
“Told him it was a-layin’ right there in front of him—to go and pick it up. Catch was, he had to use his other hand ’cuz the fingers of his gun hand was a-layin’ down there along with the gun. I’m perty mean, all right.” With this the two of them doubled up in gales of laughter. It was an interesting-enough story, but none of us laughed. However, we managed sickly grins for the sake of sociability.
The two suddenly straightened up and Clem asked, “You
folks wanna go coon huntin’ tonight or not?”
“We sure do,” Uncle Bob said. “Say, before we go why not
have a quick one for good luck?” With that we killed the bottle and untied the dogs.
“Mighty good,” commented Clem after he had dried up the bottom of the pint. “Mighty good.” He wiped his huge mouth with the back of his shaggy paw.
“Not too strong, but tasty,” said Ake judiciously.
We moved out. Darkness was spreading its silent wings, intensifying the light of the full moon. Clem was carrying a lantern, and Ake had a powerful flashlight. We followed with the long-eared, low-geared, sad-looking hound dogs.
Clem was saying: “There’s a creek aways up there that runs into the lake. That’s where we’ll hunt.” Then he started telling us about the time he and Ake were seining for fish in the creek. A game warden had suddenly jumped out of the brush. Since seining of fish in this particular creek was on the shady side of the law, Clem and Ake had dropped the fish net and run like thieves.
“Ake was in the lead, him havin’ the longest legs,” said Clem. “He could hear me poppin’ brush behind him. Ake thought all the time I was the game warden, and he run three miles afore I could ketch him. Ake sure is fast.” Then he said, “We got to be quiet now, dammit. The dogs are beginning to work.”
The hounds were circling, tails straight up and noses to the ground. The underbrush was thick as the hair on a skunk’s back. The trees were silhouetted against the moonlit sky.
We spread out some now. A voice broke the silence. Ake said: “Two of them hounds has swum over to the other side, Clem. Think I’ll jump across. The creek ain’t very wide here, is it?”
“Naw, you can make it,” replied Clem, adding for our benefit, “Ake shore c
an jump.”
We could see the flashlight bobbing like a dizzy firefly as Ake backed off to make a run before the jump. He sounded like a herd of hydrophobic buffalo tearing through the brush. For a moment there was silence; then there was a splash that sounded as if the moon had rocketed into the Pacific.
Ake was making gurgling noises. Then he said thoughtfully, “Jumped fer enough, but guess I must of left the ground a leedle too fer back from the bank.”
Clem said: “Ya had time to write a letter makin’ that jump. Must’ve gone straight up.”
Ake finally made it to the other bank. He crawled out looking like an alligator, and retrieved his flashlight, which he had tossed across when he realized he would fail to make the whole trip.
We were soon off again. The dogs, indifferent to the cause of the delay, had continued prowling and were now ’way out ahead of us.
Big Boy stopped short, cocking his head to the side. “Listen; what’s that?”
“It’s the hounds—that’s old Bess and Blue bayin’ coons. Come on, let’s go,” cried Uncle Bob.
The brush was crackling now like corn in a hot skillet. Clem was moving ahead fast. The rest of us tried our best to keep up with him. On the other side of the creek, Ake seemed to be skimming over the impeding brush. We caught glimpses of his dark scarecrow shape occasionally. He managed to disappear far ahead of the rest of us.
We had gone our thousandth weary mile through the thick brush that whipped, scratched, and tore at us at every turn when we finally came upon Ake standing on the opposite bank, yelling at the top of his lungs. At the same time, our attention was drawn to a violent commotion taking place in the water. Ake trained his flashlight on the spot.
A fat, oversized coon, intending to escape the hounds, had taken a swim. He was much more at home in this element than the hounds, who were engaged in a watery pursuit. The odds were six to one, but the coon fought so hard, swam so fast, and knew so many devilish tricks that the hounds must have thought the entire universe was swarming with malevolent coons.