Spot and Smudge - Book One

by Robert Udulutch

  Spot had picked up the big alpha male’s scent but wasn’t sure if he was coming or going. It appeared the predators had started to care about leaving any signs near the den.

  Spot crouched to crawl away and skirt the sentry when Smudge bit his tail and tugged him back. She pointed out a small ridge on the opposite side of the den where there was another sentry. It was a male. He was well hidden and staying absolutely still. Spot couldn’t smell him, which was impressive as the wild dog was upwind. The male sentry must have picked his way carefully around the far side of the ridge to get to that spot, and dirtied himself to minimize his scent.

  Spot nodded to Smudge, Nice work sister, but he was mad at himself for missing the hidden sentry. Gotta up my game, he thought, These coyotes aren’t like the ones we encountered last time we were here. They aren’t the ones left behind in the den to raise pups. These are the hunters, and they have been doing this a lot longer than we have.

  The male sentry wasn’t the alpha they had seen months ago at Mimi’s pen but Spot was pretty sure he was one of the other four hunters, and he was bigger than Spot had anticipated.

  Spot forced himself to stop staring at the wild dog’s scars, and broad shoulders, and said, Let’s circle around and see if there’s a back—

  He was slammed to the ground and dragged a dozen feet by the back of his neck. Before his vision went dark he saw Smudge hit by two huge wild dogs at the same time.

  Spot roused and could tell he was still moving. He felt branches slashing his face and dirt clogging his nose. It felt like he was being pulled along by a hook through the back of his neck. His vision was blurry but he could make out huge paws walking past his nose as his head bounced along the game trail. He tried to regain his feet but the big male coyote tossed his head and smacked Spot hard into the ground. He drifted away again.

  He snapped awake as he was dropped in the center of a wide ring of wild dogs. They were yapping and circling behind the four huge hunters. He rolled to his belly and saw they were in front of the den. Smudge was lying at the opposite end of the circle. She wasn’t moving and there was a pool of blood on the ground near her mouth.

  Spot’s vision was still clearing but he had no trouble identifying the Alpha, and not only because the big wild dog was standing over him and staring down at him. He was an impressive beast. He was strong and hard and had a small scar above his left eye. The little red blood smear on his chin looked right at home. Spot realized the blood was his, and he also realized he was staring at the dog which could be taken as a sign of aggression. Spot figured the killer didn’t need any additional provocation and he looked away.

  Standing next to the Alpha was one of the hunter males. He was shorter, a little less muscular, and a whole lot uglier than his pack leader. He had a long history of fights written across his face, shoulders, and back. Spot thought he would probably still be considered really unattractive without the scars, even by coyote standards. When the thought, He looks like a weasel, jumped into Spot’s head he couldn’t help himself and snorted out a laugh, which resulted in spraying a little dirt and blood at the ugly coyote’s feet. Spot froze, and looked up at the dog. The weaselly male huffed, turned his back to Spot, and lifted a leg. The hunter urinated on him to approving yaps and hoots from the rest of the pack.

  Spot turned away from the stream and it gave him a chance to get a better look at the two large wild dogs standing over Smudge. The hunter female was almost as big as the Alpha and she was slightly broader through the shoulders. She was missing an ear but was otherwise scarless. The other male was the stealthy second sentry from the ridge, and was clearly a sibling of the other ugly one. They were identically weaselly and equally beat up looking. Only the placement of their many scars was different.

  Smudge was still lying at their feet. Spot couldn’t tell if she was even breathing as he didn’t see her ribs moving, and he couldn’t hear her over the huffing and low growls of the pack.

  The Alpha took a step back, and when Spot looked up he noticed the pack’s lead female, the one he had mounted, was now standing next to her mate. Where the Alpha managed to hide his aggressive posture under a chillingly calm facade, his female was a hackle-raised, stomping, simmering nightmare of rage. Spot was pretty sure she would have already torn him apart if her Alpha wasn’t keeping her in check, which he did with just a look.

  Spot fought to clear his head and started running through his options but they were coming slowly and none of them were overly good. He tried to push out the voice that was telling him to just pick one as it probably wouldn’t matter. He was also sorting out the odd subtleties of the coyote accent. The ring of subordinates were droning on with a seemingly endless stream of chatter which gave Spot a chance to pick up on the dialect.

  He snorted, and cleared out a little more blood from his nose. The pack went quiet, and he yapped to the lead female, Hey baby, miss me?

  The pack did the wild dog equivalent of sucking in a breath, and the Alpha’s head cocked back. He indicated to Spot that he may want to reconsider how he spent his last moments alive.

  Spot slowly got to his feet and the ring of wild dogs behind the hunters burst into a cacophony of grunts and growls when he shook off a cloud of dirt and pee. When he turned in a slow circle the crowd started barking and nipping at each other.

  Spot’s pushed aside the stabbing pain in his neck, as well as the voice in his head asking him how he thought he was going to taste.

  The Alpha shut the pack up with a look and circled Spot, eyeing him up and down. He was clearly interested in something. Spot wasn’t sure why he wasn’t dead yet but delaying worked well for the tattered threads of a plan he was trying to quickly weave together.

  The Alpha indicated his disappointment loud enough for the whole pack to hear. He had hoped the little black runt pups were going to be cunning adversaries like their mother, but how sad was it that a simple decoy sentry and some scent tricks had allowed him to easily trap them both. Alpha gave Spot credit for having the hanging male parts to sneak into the den and mount his mate, and for coming back to challenge him.

  But it takes more to win a pack than bravado, Alpha said.

  Alpha was playing to his audience and the whole pack erupted in a new stream of taunts. He walked past Spot, easily brushing him aside and without bending down gave Smudge a sniff. He indicated he felt bad about Spot’s sister as she was clearly the more significant of the pair. He circled her body as he continued, adding that not often did it require three hunters to take down one runt prey animal.

  Alpha fixed his one-eared female hunter with an exaggerated look of shame, and held it long enough for the entire pack to see. One Ear was fuming mad at the public insult and she bristled. He stared at her for a moment more, and then at Spot. He indicated loudly that his pack, and more specifically his hunters, were not able to see the forest for the trees sometimes. They were good hunters but not yet ready to lead. They didn’t understand what was required to protect the pack past the day’s hunt.

  Spot was starting to put together that Alpha must have struggled to get his hunters, and probably the rest of the pack, to understand his fixation with them. They must have wondered why he had planned such an elaborate ruse to draw the runt pups in. Spot guessed the pack was as curious as he was as to why Alpha had not just hunted them down and dispatched them quickly.

  Alpha had the group hanging on his every movement. He did a full circle in front of the ring of wild dogs and then continued, We must realize small prey with the abilities displayed by this runt’s mother could threaten our entire pack. It could threaten our very existence.

  Alpha paused, and it was suddenly very clear to Spot he was afraid. Spot realized the Alpha must have heard and smelled the hundreds of dogs in those kennels, but he couldn’t see them. All those dogs smelling and sounding just like their mom had him terrified. The Alpha needed to examine Spot and Smudge up close to see what they could do. He had to find out if the pups were going to be as much of a
problem as their cunning, tenacious mom had been.

  Alpha saw Spot’s reaction and knew he had made a mistake. His hunters looked at each other, and then looked at their leader with questioning eyes.

  Alpha quickly decided to switch gears. As he walked past Smudge he bit off a piece of her ear and brought it around to his mate. He dropped it at the lead female’s feet and the Alpha suggested to Spot that he owed his mate an apology.

  Spot looked around the circle of scrappy wild dogs. He looked at each of the hunters and then he looked past them into the woods, and nodded.

  I am sorry, Spot growled louder than was necessary for the pack to hear, I am sorry this pack is led by an old useless fuck like yourself. He started to crouch and held Alpha’s eyes as he yapped even louder, When a captive runt pup can walk in here and mount your mate right under your nose this den had better consider what’s going to happen when all of my bigger brothers and sisters get out of that kennel.

  Alpha flew into a rage. He stomped and clawed at the ground and his hackles stood up. He looked at his hunters and then at Spot and conveyed loudly that he and his sister were never going to challenge another superior animal ever again, and that he would rip the throat out of every smelly piece of meat in their mother’s kennel.

  As Alpha prepared to pounce on Spot all eyes were on him, which was good because too late they saw a massive black German shepherd leap into their midst and clamp his considerable jaws around the One Ear’s head.

  The Alpha turned to look, and that was exactly what Spot had been waiting for. He launched himself, pushing off from the dirt and uncoiling his body with all the force he could generate. He came up right under the big wild dog’s chin, just behind the smear of his blood. Spot didn’t try for a huge bite. He narrowed his jaws and bit down just at the base of the Alpha’s head. With one small twist his small, sharp canine teeth pierced fur, then flesh, then sinew, and finally latched firmly onto the dog’s windpipe.

  Alpha kicked wildly but Spot was small and his huge paws only managed to send Weasel One sprawling.

  Spot hung in mid-air, dangling from the Alpha’s neck as his blood started to flow into Spot’s mouth and down his front. He could hear Max growling, and was amazed how loud it was considering he had One Ear’s whole head in his mouth. The big shepherd had stopped short of crushing the hunter’s skull and just lowered her to the dirt where she lay quietly.

  The Weasel brothers were frozen. They were still trying to figure out what had just happened. The only dogs they had ever taken orders from were not doing so well.

  After a brief pause Weasel Two decided to spring to his Alpha’s defense. As he leapt over Smudge she lunged up at lightning speed and tore out a large section of his nether region. The dog howled in pain and an enormous amount of blood sprayed out behind him as he arced through the air. He landed in a heap in front of the lead female, sending her scurrying backwards into the crowd of stunned dogs.

  Weasel One was back on his feet after having been kicked by Alpha, and he was looking very confused. He tried to make sense of the situation. His brother was gushing blood from the groin, having been bitten by a small, muscular, and apparently un-killable dog. Their finest hunter was lying on the ground with her head in a big black furry trap. His Alpha, the one who had trained him to be a lethal hunter, the one who had stalked and killed every animal in these woods was slowly choking to death at the hands of a captive runt puppy. Weasel One started to question exactly what the order of things was going to be in a few minutes and where a smart coyote should place its loyalties. He decided to wait.

  Spot gave Smudge a wag and said through his clenched teeth, Welcome back from the grave, sister, and by the way, I got this.

  Smudge nodded to her brother and to Max, who wagged and growled a hello around One Ear’s trapped head.

  Smudge flexed and pumped herself up. Her shoulders shook and her hair stood up from the crown of her head to the tip of her tail. She spat out the big bloody hunk that had been the ugly dog’s male parts, and stomped around the perimeter in front of the circle of wild dogs. Any of the pack that had considered jumping into the fray met with Smudge’s rippling shoulders and aggressive posturing and received a bark that rivaled Max’s. For good measure she shook a splatter of blood on a few of them from her wounded ear. She ended up in front of Weasel One and the ugly dog just lay down and lowered his head, and the lead female did the same. Smudge glared at the circle of wild dogs one more time, turned to Spot and said, It’s your bloody show now, brother.

  Spot was still hanging from the Alpha’s neck and all of the dogs, both wild and not, were staring at them. Alpha was frozen with a spreading pool of his blood at his feet. He was finding it very difficult to breathe. Without moving his head, the big dog slowly looked around at the petrified circle of wild dogs that was his pack. He looked at his defeated hunters. He looked at Smudge, and finally down at Spot.

  Through a choked growl he said, Listen to me, runt, you will never…

  Spot twisted once and tore his throat out.

  He stepped away as the Alpha’s gurgling body thumped to the ground behind him.

  He waited for the pack leader’s body to stop twitching, and then he nodded for Max to release One Ear. She got up slowly, avoiding eye contact with the huge shepherd. The hunter walked slowly over to Spot and lay down in front of him. She rolled onto her back and licked his legs, and then his red-stained chin. Weasel One tentatively came over to Smudge and rubbed against her submissively. The lead female and the sentry female followed, and then the rest of the pack joined in.

  Smudge and Max went to Spot’s side as the tentative coyotes pressed in on them. One Ear stood and led the pack from their random, yielding whines to a sustained, harmonized howl of new loyalty. Smudge drew in a big breath and for a long while she stood cheek to cheek with the big female hunter while their long howls echoed out over The Bogs. Spot and Max joined in, and the new alphas dominantly howled with their new pack.

  As the howls subsided Spot sent Max into the woods and had One Ear and the remaining Weasel brother follow him. They returned a few minutes later dragging a large dead human. They pulled Aaron’s body into the center of the circle of wild dogs and backed away. Smudge jumped up on Aaron’s chest and tore off his nose. She spat it out at One Ear’s feet and the big hunter swallowed it whole.

  The rest of the pack waited for Spot and Smudge to give the okay before they descended on Aaron’s carcass.

  Chapter 58

  As the sky began to lighten Spot and Smudge reluctantly tore themselves away from their new pack to head back to the farm. As they trotted down the path together the high of their win helped to push aside their aches and pains from the fight, which was a good thing as they had a lot of ground to cover and Mimi was an early riser.

  They had stayed in the den far longer than they intended but wanted to make sure One Ear was fully established in her new position and clearly understood her instructions. Spot felt it prudent to have Alpha’s old mate take a back seat, and Smudge decided they should put One Ear in charge. She and the big hunter had formed a fast friendship, and were glued to each other the entire night. Spot found One Ear’s almost constant rubbing, nudging, and sniffing of his sister to be a little odd. The big coyote was understandably bewildered by both of her new alphas, but Spot noticed she focused almost all of her curious attention on Smudge. One Ear caught his head-tipped look and explained she was fascinated by his sister. Even with help from both weasel brothers she had real trouble taking Smudge down when they pounced, and she was confused as to why. She was even more confused when Smudge’s pumped up muscles had returned to normal after the fight was over.

  Smudge had been watching One Ear closely as well. She quickly realized the wild dog was far smarter than she let on, even though she was much quieter than the rest of the chatty pack. It was Smudge who first noticed One Ear didn’t communicate any less, she just did it through subtle physical imposition and hard looks more so than vocalizations. It
was very clear those looks were effective and she had the pack’s respect and full attention. She also didn’t hesitate to step into the leadership role offered to her. The pups saw she had a lightning fast nip ready for the rare dog not quickly on board with the new management team. Smudge noticed she actually used several different nips that ranged from an embarrassing little one to a full on attitude adjuster.

  Spot was impressed with the big hunter as well. She removed any lingering apprehension he had when, without prompting or hesitation, she let the whole pack know in no uncertain terms she was their new leader but Spot and Smudge were absolutely in charge. He was surprised by the move, and agreed with his sister it had been pretty damn smart.

  Establishing One Ear as the new alpha was only part of the reason they were late leaving the den. The pups were reveling in their victory, and they were quickly learning to appreciate these silly, rough, complex wild dogs. They enjoyed playing with the den’s curious puppies, getting to know their parents and attentive aunts and uncles, and learning the den’s subtle political dynamics.

  Spot had thought ensuring there were no grudges would take time, but it was clear the wild dogs had an inherent mechanism for taking leadership changes in stride. Even the new pecking order below One Ear worked itself out quickly with just a few minor nips and growls. They supported her choice of Weasel One to be her second in command, and they were pleasantly surprised when the old lead female and her sister-sentries accepted their new, lower ranking roles without incident. It seemed they understood the importance of quickly reconciling and brushing off their bruised prides. Moving forward with whatever was best for the pack was evidently ingrained enough to trump any single dog’s aspirations.

  Spot, Smudge, and One Ear watched with wagging tails as Max was surrounded by the rest of the pack. They were yapping and vying for the remaining positions, and apparently his lack of interest led them to believe he was fair game for subordination. He was included in their testing nose pokes and dominant jostling, even though the biggest of the dogs only came up to Max’s chest. He held his head high above them and looked down at the shifting brown and gray mob like they were the crazy ones. Max didn’t understand their complex hierarchy dance, and when he saw he wasn’t getting a rescue from the entertained management he made it known with a few loud barks the pack should simply consider him to be in the top tier somewhere. It initially didn’t meet with approval from the nipping rabble, so with a final bone-rattling roar he made it clear that was the final word on the subject. The ring of dogs cleared a path for him as he stomped away to join the new pack leadership, but his wagging tail betrayed his bitching. It was obvious the shepherd was having as much fun as the pups, and Smudge also noted it was the first time they’d ever seen the big dummy really let a good tail wagging fly…other than that day she’d convinced him to drag Aaron into the woods and rip open his jugular.