Faded Love

by John R. Erickson

  “He threw me out, you dunce, and it’s all your fault. If it hadn’t been for you, I’d be taking a moonlight ride with a beautiful beagle right this minute. I hope you’re happy.”

  Drover sneezed. “Well, I am kind of happy. I didn’t want to stay here by myself ’cause . . .” He rolled his eyes and looked up in the big cottonwood trees that grew along the bank. “Hank, it’s getting dark and I’m scared and I’m hungry and I want to go home.”

  “Well, that’s tough. We quit our jobs so we could go on the road and find romance, and we ain’t going back until we do. In fact, we ain’t going back period.”

  He started sniffling. “But Hank, you promised I could go back home after we lived off the land.”

  “No, no. If you’ll recall my exact words, I promised I’d take it under advisement. I’ve taken it under advisement and the answer is forget it. Come on, let’s move on down the creek. Stay behind me and I don’t want to hear any more yapping and whimpering out of you.”

  I found a cow trail on the east bank and followed it in a northeasterly direction. I checked the stars and did a few navigational complications . . . commutations . . . what is the danged word? Computations.

  I did my navigation stuff, but even more important, I knew that if we followed this creek far enough, we’d end up on the ranch where Beulah stayed. Ah, sweet Beulah! The mere thought of that fair lady made me see stars that weren’t in the sky.

  Well, I was padding along, lost in delicious thoughts of my one and only true love, when Drover cranked up his Mister Pitiful routine again.

  “Hank!”

  “Hush, Drover.”

  “But Hank!”

  “I said hush, and in my line of work, hush means hush.”

  “But Hank . . . behind you!”

  “Of course you’re behind me. You were behind me the day you were born, and everything you’ve done since then has merely confirmed . . .”

  “Hank, we’re in trouble!”

  I stopped. Drover ran into me. It was very dark by this time, no moon at all because we were beneath big cottonwoods that blocked out the moonlight.

  I poked him in the chest. “Now listen, you sawed-off, stub-tailed, featherbrained little squeak box. I imposed a ban on talking, and for a very good reason. This is coyote country, son, and I don’t think it would be real smart to advertise our location. In case you don’t know it, them guys are basically stupid but very dangerous.”

  Would you believe it? The runt growled at me. Hey, I’ll take a growl or two off some dogs, but not off Drover. I mean, a very important part of heading up the Security Division lies in knowing how to control and motivate your employees, don’t you see. You give ’em just enough slack so they can do their job, but every now and then you have to yank ’em back in line.

  On my outfit, insubordination is not allowed, and growling at the Boss is insubordination.

  I gave him a pop on the nose, just to get his attention. “Now shut your trap and let’s move out.”

  We moved out, through bushes and grape­vines, over rocks and fallen logs. Drover was sure making a lot of noise back there. Sounded like there were four of us on the trail instead of two.

  “Holy cats, Drover, pick up your feet!”

  “Hank!”

  “Hush, silence!”

  I had been aware for a long time that Drover lacked, shall we say, grace and agility. To put it bluntly, he was clumsy. I mean, he lacked the physical gifts you look for in a sure-nuff, top-of-the-line cowdog. I had learned to put up with his shortcomings, but I’d never learned to like ’em.

  Well, there we were on a “silent” march through coyote country, and he sounded like a cow on snowshoes. “Drover, if you don’t pick up your feet and quit running into bushes . . . wait a minute, halt, hold it right here.”

  We came to a stop. I sniffed the air. “I’m getting a reading on a peculiar smell. You picked it up yet?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve smelled it before, I’m sure I have. What do you reckon it is?”

  “Could it be . . . coyotes?”

  I sniffed again. “Not likely. They’d have to be very close for us to get that strong a reading, and there’s no way they could have slipped up on us while I was in the scout position. Don’t forget who’s in charge around here.”

  “Okay. But Hank . . .”

  “Let’s move . . .” There was just enough moonlight filtering through the trees so that I could see a little bit of Drover’s head. “What’s happened to your nose?”

  “What?”

  “Your nose. Looks like it got caught in a pencil sharpener. Has it always been that long and sharp?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you explain . . . hey, your eyes weren’t yellow this morning, were they?”

  “No.”

  “Something’s haywire here. You’ve undergone a complete transformation. You don’t look yourself anymore. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were a . . . HUH?”

  There was a moment of silence, then Drover’s voice: “A coyote, Hank?”

  “Right. Let me ask you one more question, Drover. Are we in T-R-O-U-B-L-E?”

  “Y-E-S.”

  I gulped and cleared my throat. I spoke to the mysterious head with the long nose and the yellow eyes. “Good evening. My name is Hank the Cowdog. Uh, my friend and I were out on a walk, soaking up the sounds and smells of the night, you might say, and uh we hadn’t expected company, but it uh appears that you’ve joined us. May I ask to whom I’m speaking?”

  “You talking Rip and Snort,” came the reply in a deep voice.

  “Rip and Snort! Well I’ll be dadburned, what a coincidence. We were just looking for you guys.”

  “Hunk not smart to look for Rip and Snort. Many time Hunk make Rip and Snort look foolish. Coyote not like that, get mad, fighting and tearing up everything. Now we capture. Hunk in large trouble, not get away this time.”

  “Get away? Captured? Hey listen, we’ve been looking for you guys for over an hour.”

  “Uh. How come you look?”

  I leaned over and whispered in his ear. “Snort, you remember the night me and you and your brother went over to that old silage pit?” He grunted. I guess that meant yes. “Didn’t we have a blast that night?”

  “What means, ‘blast’? It means like boom-boom?”

  In the coyote dialect, “boom-boom” means gun, so as you can see, we had a little problem with the translation. It was a lucky thing that I was fluent in many languages.

  “No, what I’m saying is that we had a great time. You remember?”

  “Um.”

  “We ate that silage, got a little plastered, went up on that hill, and sang all night long?”

  There was just enough moonlight for me to detect a drooling effect in Snort’s mouth. In other words, the mere mention of drinking and carousing had made his mouth water.

  This was all part of my plan, don’t you see, and it was beginning to work.

  “And Snort, the reason we were looking for you tonight is that I kind of forgot how to get over to that silage pit. Now, I’m sure you’re too busy to go with us, but maybe you could give me directions.”

  “Me talk with brother.”

  For several minutes they mumbled and muttered. I had nothing to do but count my heartbeats (three hundred and twenty-seven) and wait. I didn’t hear a peep out of Drover.

  They finished their conference and Snort spoke. “Brother not want take Hunk and little white dog. Brother hungry, want EAT Hunk and little white dog, then go sing and drinking. What Hunk say about that?”

  “Well, uh . . .” I was thinking fast. “. . . As you might expect, guys, I think that’s not a real good plan. In the first place, dog meat’s not all that good—they tell me, I haven’t tried it myself. In the second place, if you guys took the t
ime to eat two whole dogs, you’d be so full and sleepy, you’d never make it to the silage pit.

  “And last but not least, we have the matter of friendship and brotherhood. You guys can’t expect to keep friends if you go around eating them. Oh, and one more thing. You’ll need a tenor for the singing. So I think you’ll agree . . .”

  Snort grunted. “We talk. Hunk not leave.”

  “Me leave? Why I wouldn’t think of it.”

  As a matter of fact, that was a small lie. I’d thought about it a bunch. The major problem in trying to make a run for it was that those two thugs had excellent noses. They could have tracked down a sugar ant in a four-section pasture, in the dead of the night.

  They mumbled and muttered some more. Then Snort turned back to me with the verdict. “We go silage pit, drink, have fun oh boy, sing many coyote song.”

  “Hey, that sounds great, Snort.”

  “Then we think about eat dog.”

  “Uh . . . I still say that eating your friends is bad manners.”

  He poked me in the chest with his paw. “Snort not want dog opinion. And Hunk not try escape.”

  “Who, me?”

  “Or we have early supper and sing without tenor.”

  “We don’t want that, do we?”

  “Make line. Snort in front, Rip behind. Two dogs in middle.”

  “Yes sir.” I took my place in the middle and looked around for little Drover. You know what? The runt had disappeared. Those coyotes had been so busy threatening me, they hadn’t even noticed.

  They held another conference and discussed whether or not they wanted to take the time to hunt him down, which they most certainly could have done. But they had drinking on their minds and decided to forget about Drover.

  As Snort said, sticking his grinning snout right in my face, “Hunk make plenty grub. Save little dog for snack.”

  So we formed a line and off we went to the silage pit. I was determined to have a good time, since this might be my last opportunity.

  Chapter Seven: Rotten Meat

  The silage pit wasn’t too far, just a couple of hills west of us. We started off at a walk, but by the time we got up into those caliche hills west of the creek, Snort had picked up the pace.

  Up on top, the air was clean and cool, heavy with the smell of new grass and wildflowers. We were out of the trees by then and our path was lighted by a nice fat moon.

  Not a bad night for a walk, in other words, unless you happened to be traveling with cannibals. I was kind of sorry Drover wasn’t there to enjoy it, the little dunce, how do you reckon he managed to slip away and leave me . . .

  Every once in a while he pulls a stunt that makes you wonder just how dumb he really is.

  Anyway, the farther we went, the more excited those coyote brothers became. They yipped and howled, skipped and snorted and hopped and laughed. Oh, they were having a big time.

  About halfway there, they couldn’t hold back any longer and cranked up their Coyote National Anthem and Sacred Hymn:

  Me just a worthless coyote, me howling at the moon,

  Me like to sing and holler, me crazy as a loon.

  Me not want job or duties, no church or Sunday school,

  Me just a worthless coyote and me ain’t nobody’s fool!

  I joined in the singing, though I’d have to say that my heart wasn’t in it. I was still studying on how to get out of this mess. It appeared to me that my only hope lay in getting Rip and Snort so drunk on silage that they couldn’t walk.

  Silage, you might know, is fermented feed stalks. In the late summer, the cowboys run a chopper through a field of corn or cane and dump the chopped stuff into a big pit. They leave it sit there for six months or a year and then feed it to the cattle.

  If you’re a cow, you like to eat it in the wintertime. If you’re a lazy, shiftless coyote, you like to drink the squeezings just any time of the day or night, in the winter, spring, summer, or fall. It contains alkylhall, don’t you see.

  When we got within a hundred yards of the pit, Snort couldn’t stand the suspense any longer, and he broke into a dead gallop. I hoped his brother would do the same, but he didn’t. He stayed be­hind me, nudging me along with his sharp nose, and I had no chance to escape.

  When me and Rip got inside the pit, we found old Snort right in the middle of it. His mouth was crammed with silage. He’d chew a while and spit hulls a while, then gobble some more. Rip piled in beside him and started eating his way into the silage.

  I stood back and watched. This was part of my strategy, see, to let them boys make pigs of themselves and then I’d skip out. Worked fine for the first hour. Just as they were starting to weave and get silly, Snort noticed me. Maybe he saw a sly glint in my eyes.

  He ordered me into the silage. I want to make that very clear. He forced it on me.

  “Okay,” I said to myself, “I’ll take a few bites, just to keep up appearances.” So I took a couple of bites. And another couple of bites. And a few more, just for show, and . . .

  An yew no what? That shilage ish pretty good shtuff, once shyou get ushed to the bitter tashte.

  What I’m building up to is that one thing led to another. I sort of got involved in the festivities and forgot I was amongst savages. I forgot all about their plans for supper, but even better, they did too.

  I have hazy memories of much of the night, but I do recall that the sun came up in the east, which meant that it was morning. By this time Rip and Snort and I had become the very best of friends.

  Snort suggested that we go back down to the creek and take a cold bath, so we staggered out of the pit and weaved our way in that direction. Good thing the creek was located at the bottom of a hill. I’m not sure we could have found it anywhere else.

  Well, we were making our way across a grassy flat, heading for the creek, when all of a sudden Snort’s nose flew up in the air and he came to a stop.

  “Ha! Smell something berry good to eat!”

  Rip’s nose went up and so did mine. I gave the air a good sniffing. “That’s funny, Snort, all I smell is a skunk.”

  His yellow eyes sparkled. At the time I didn’t know what that meant. He took off in a kind of sideways lope, and me and Rip came along behind.

  I wasn’t sure what we were doing until I glanced up ahead and saw two big black birds standing in the middle of a feed trail. They appeared to be eating breakfast. I had a suspicion that they were a couple of buzzards named Wallace and Junior, and I had a pretty good idea what they were eating.

  YUCK!!

  Snort took dead aim at the buzzards and picked up speed. He was on the collision course.

  Old man Wallace heard us coming. His ugly bald head shot up and he glared at us. “Hyah! Y’all get on outa here, don’t you dare touch our breakfast we got here first, Junior, don’t you let them, you fight ’em off, son, while I . . .”

  Snort lit right in the middle of them, and you talk about feathers flying! I don’t think Junior ever knew what hit him, but the old man sure did, and he must have lost a bushel of feathers flapping his wings and trying to get airborne.

  He taxied into the wind and finally got himself off the ground, just as Snort made a dive at him and bit off half his tail.

  Junior got knocked over backwards, did a couple of back flips, and came up sitting down. “Oh g-g-gosh, P-Pa, there’s a W-W-Wolf!”

  Old man Wallace flew in a wide circle and landed in a cottonwood tree nearby. Snort came back to the skunk and showed Junior some fangs.

  That was enough for Junior. He scrambled to his feet and took cover behind the cottonwood. “W-w-w-wolf, w-wolf, h-h-help, mu-mu-mu-murder!”

  By this time, the old man was safe on his perch. “Junior, you git yourself out from behind this tree and go out there and fight for our rights!”

  “B-b-b-but P-Pa, it’s a w-w-wolf and th-th-they
b-b-bite, bite.”

  “That’s no excuse, son. We had that skunk first and he’s our property. Now you git out there and quit acting like a danged kid, you hear me?”

  “N-n-n-no. I d-don’t uh hear a th-th-thing.” Junior wasn’t kidding. He really couldn’t hear—because he had covered both ears with his wings.

  “Junior! You git yourself . . .”

  “L-l-louder, P-Pa, I c-can’t hear y-you.”

  “Junior! You uncover your ears this very minute or I’m gonna come down . . . danged ungrateful, irresponsible kid!”

  “W-what did you s-s-say, P-p-pa?”

  “I said, you hush up! And y’all,” he turned to us and beamed us an evil glare, “y’all just better git on outa here and leave our breakfast alone, or I’m liable to lose my temper!”

  Snort was sitting beside the skunk by this time. He grinned up at old man Wallace. Maybe he was remembering the night over in the canyons when Wallace had, shall we say, upchucked on him and Rip. That’s what buzzards do when they get mad, don’t you know, but this time Wallace was out of range, and Snort knew it.

  He grinned and old Wallace fumed and squawked. Then Snort turned to me and Rip and motioned us over. I wasn’t really looking forward to this. Dead skunk has never been one of my favorite foods.

  “Now we sing special coyote song,” said Snort. “Hunk sing tenor.”

  So the three of us got together, me in the middle. Snort gave us the pitch (that was pretty funny, Snort trying to find a pitch), gave us three beats. He couldn’t count to three, so he counted, “One, four, seven!” And we belted out an old coyote favorite called “Rotten Meat.” Snort sang the verses and me and Rip came in on the chorus. Here’s how it went.

  There’s many a mystery’s got lost in our history

  But none more important for us to repeat

  Than this secret potion, this coyote love lotion,

  The wonderful essence of ripe stinking meat

  Oh, rotten meat, rotten meat!

  The odor’s deliciously subtle and sweet.

  Coyotes love to cheat and we love to eat.