Around nine o’clock, Ross and his swamper left to bed down in the barn, the female guests retired, and the little Easterner excused himself for the evening. As he let himself out the front door to visit the outhouse, a stealthy four-legged shape slipped out after him. Karl nudged Sarah’s chair with his foot and nodded toward the door. She looked up just in time to see Moss Face’s long feathery tail disappearing into the night. Grinning at each other, they rose as one and went to the window. Imogene rolled her eyes heavenward and groaned. David joined Sarah and Karl, then Mac came, and Noisy. Soon the two remaining guests, unable to resist the sly glances and mysterious chortlings, came to swell the ranks.
Unaware that he had an audience, the man looked over his shoulder and peered into the darkness, starting at every small night sound. A coyote howled from a distant hill and he quickened his pace, trotting through the sage until he reached the safety of the outhouse.
“A coyote’d be more scared of him than he is of it,” Mac snorted.
“He’s got a coyote stalking him now, Mac,” Sarah reminded him. She giggled and pressed her face near the glass, cupping her hands around her eyes to block the reflections.
The outhouse door swung closed and, true to form, Moss Face glided over the mound of dirt to the side and hunkered down. Mac and Noisy nudged each other, and the two strangers, unable to make heads or tails of the spectacle they were witnessing, craned their necks to see out the window.
A few minutes passed, the outhouse door opened, a widening ribbon of black cracking the weathered wood, and the New Yorker emerged from the darkness, still buttoning the fly of his trousers.
“You avert your eyes, Sare,” David whispered.
Sarah blushed but kept her face pressed against the glass, her eyes on the tuft of fur, spiky and inky black in the moonlight, where Moss Face crouched.
The coyote waited until his victim was several yards from the outhouse. Then, low to the ground, as quick and silent as the cloud shadows, he darted from his hiding place. Growling at the last instant, he threw himself on the man’s feet with a puppy’s delight, sniffing and snapping at the hem of the trouser leg.
The result was spectacular. First the little New Yorker screamed and threw both arms straight in the air like a man held at gunpoint. In a moment he recovered himself and attempted to run. Doggedly, Moss Face hung on, wagging his rear end and pulling in the opposite direction. Tripped up more by his own fear than by the ministrations of the coyote puppy, the man fell to his hands and knees. Encouraged by the success of his game, Moss Face let go of the trouser leg and ran around in front of his chosen playmate to jump at him and bark.
Inside, the six onlookers howled. David laughed so hard his eyes were wet, and Sarah bounced and murmured “Shh, shh,” between fits of the giggles.
Terrified by the eye-level view of his assailant, the New Yorker screamed again and scrambled to his feet. Moss Face danced back and raised one paw, his all-purpose and only trick. Fumbling in his coat pocket, the Easterner pulled out a lady’s handgun and fired. Moss Face scampered several feet away, turned, lay on the ground and rolled belly upward to prove his innocent intentions.
Sarah pounded on the glass, crying, “Mister, no!”
Karl shoved Mac and David aside to get to the door.
The frightened man fired again and the little coyote was still.
Karl threw open the door so hard that one of the wooden panels broke as it struck the wall. He was upon the little man before the fellow had recovered from the fright his own gunshots had given him. Karl snatched him up as though he were a toy, one fist knotted in his shirtfront, the other twisted through his belt, and held him off the ground. Sarah, her face as white as the face of the moon, pushed past her brother and grabbed the gun from the New Yorker’s hand. She threw it down and ran to the coyote pup.
Karl lowered the whimpering man as Imogene retrieved the weapon and dropped it down the one-holer. There was a dull smack as the gun hit the sewage.
“My pistol!” gasped the little man. “That’s an expensive piece!”
Slowly, Karl lifted him again. When the Easterner’s face was level with his own, he said, “I’m stuffing you down after it,” and began walking his human bundle back into the outhouse.
“Put him down,” Imogene said sharply.
“Yeah, put him down, you don’t know where he’s been,” Mac added.
Karl hesitated for a moment, the trembling man clutched in his fists, deciding in his unhurried way whether to please Imogene or himself.
“Put him down, Karl.”
He looked at her, as tall and dark as he, her eyes commanding, and gently he sat the man down.
“Karl,” Sarah called from the shadows where she knelt, “come here. He’s licking me. He’s not dead.”
Somewhat recovered from his terror, the Easterner began to splutter in a vain attempt to recover his dignity. “I ought…I ought…” he flustered at David.
“You ought to shut up before I shove you down the hole myself,” David warned.
Mac watched the man stomping back to the house, his sense of injury stiffening his spine. “Can’t say as I blame him entirely,” Mac said. “The girls ought to mark that dog of theirs so’s folks know he’s a pet.”
Moss Face had suffered only a crease along his jaw. His scratch was cleaned and he lay by the fire near Karl. Sarah and Imogene had stayed up later than usual to visit with David. Sarah, perched on a footstool with her back to the fire, read him the latest letter from home.
“ ‘Your Pa’s no better’-Pa’s taken to coughing since the accident at the mine,” Sarah explained. “Where was I…‘and Walter has gone down into the mine-Sam couldn’t afford to keep him on anymore. This fall, Sam got a disease in amongst that dairy herd. Those milk cows come out in blisters all over their underhooves and teats. It got so bad Sam had to put them down and burn the lot. Couldn’t even be saved for beef. He and a few of the men got together a pile of dead trees and such and burnt the poor things. When a wind came up, the fire took part of the house, but that old stone barn stood fine.
“ ‘Matthew’s growing like a weed and Lizbeth’s almost grown up. She’s going to be the prettiest of all my girls. Gracie’s young man’s gone out West.’ Mam wrote that Gracie’d got a beau,” Sarah interjected. “That was the first I’d heard it was more’n a flirtation. I thought Gracie was too sweet on Sam to pay attention to the boys.”
“Sare!” David sounded slightly shocked.
“Well, it’s so.” Sarah ran her finger down the lines and continued, “ ‘Gracie’s young man will send for her as soon as he’s settled. Give David my love.’ ”
She handed David the letter, and the two of them sat quietly for a while, watching the fire and thinking of home.
Karl was asleep in his chair, his head back, his wide mouth agape, snoring gently. Moss Face lay between his feet, resting his chin on his paws.
Imogene had moved away from the circle of light, leaving brother and sister alone, and busied herself at a table near a window that looked out over the alkali flats to the south. By the steady light of a kerosene lamp, she glued the fragments of a china bowl together. She raised her eyes from the painstaking task and rubbed them. Far to the northeast, along the road to Deep Hole, a plume of silver smudged the roadway. There was no wind and the dust hung undisturbed for miles in the cold, dry air, catching the light of the moon.
“Riders coming,” she remarked. “Maybe a freightwagon.”
“It’s late,” David said. “People come in this time of night?”
“Sometimes. A wagon will break down or a horse throw a shoe.”
She watched the cloud creep along the white track. It moved faster than a laden wagon and threw up too much dust for the plodding hooves of draft animals on a windless night.
“It doesn’t appear to be a wagon,” she said after a while.