Fair quickly reached into the tree, grabbing the trunk.
“You get out of there,” Harry demanded.
“She has to back down first!” Pewter, eyes wide, shouted.
“Ha! I’ll turn your fat butt into hamburger.” Mrs. Murphy sank claws into the large target.
“She’s killing me!” Pewter cried, ever the drama queen.
“You hold the tree up. I think I have the answer.” Harry dashed into the kitchen, opened a cupboard, returned. She pried open the plastic lid on a small can of catnip. This she held it up as far as she could. The fighting stopped. Mrs. Murphy backed down, jumped off, pine needles sprinkling over the rug as she did.
Harry crushed catnip in her fingers, away from the Christmas tree.
“Pig!” Pewter hollered from her perch.
“You can stay up there all day.” Mrs. Murphy rolled in her herb. “This is good stuff.”
“I hate her.” Pewter cursed as she backed down, Fair still holding the tree, for there was a lot of cat. “I hate her more than anything on this earth.”
As she jumped off, she knocked off a brilliant green ball, which Harry caught.
“Good save.” Fair finally let go of the tree, after making sure it was secure.
“They are mental,” said Harry. “Look at my china lamp. I really liked that lamp.”
Fair knelt down beside her to pick up the pieces. “If I knew for one second what goes through a cat’s mind, I’d be scared.”
“That’s an insult,” a glassy-eyed Pewter managed to slur. The two cats now rolled in the catnip, purred, and batted at each other harmlessly.
Carefully depositing the broken lamp in a cardboard box, closing the top, Harry set it outside on the porch.
“Guess I know what to get you for Christmas,” Fair said.
“You mean I’m not getting my pearl necklace from Keller and George?” For years, Harry had visited a lustrous pearl necklace, the pearls about nine millimeters big.
“When I win the lottery, you get your pearls.” He smiled at her, but he did want to buy them for her.
Someday.
“Honey, what I want for Christmas is continued good health for both of us, laughter, work we enjoy, and time with our friends. The rest is fluff.”
“It is. Before I forget, tomorrow is December twentieth—the big delivery day. Tell me tonight after checking with Susan how many of the husbands you need. I know all of the church ladies have had unexpected labors and have been delivering early, but I expect tomorrow will be over the top.”
“It will. Susan has done a great job.”
“She usually does.” Fair, like everyone, recognized Susan Tucker’s organizing abilities.
He kissed his wife on the cheek. “Thanks. I’ll call in. Looks like an okay day.”
“They always start that way.” She watched as he walked out the door, thinking about the last time Arden and Charlene had seen their husbands, never dreaming they would never see them walk through the door again.
Once both humans left, Mrs. Murphy, coming to her senses after the catnip hit, said, “It’s daytime. Let’s try and find those bones. We’ll be safe. Coyotes usually hunt at night, and the snow has packed down. Let’s do this before another snow.”
“I am not going out in the cold,” said Pewter. “And I don’t care about human bones. They don’t do us any good.”
“Speak for yourself,” Tucker replied.
“You aren’t going to chew on dried-out bones with dirt all over them. You live too good for that.” The gray cat had a point.
“I’m going whether you come with me or not,” said Mrs. Murphy. “That bracelet is expensive, it belonged to whoever is up there.” With that, she pushed through the animal door in the kitchen, followed by Tucker. Pewter pointedly did not move.
Following the farm road where the snow packed down in the ruts, the two loped past the back pastures, past the sunflower plots, the quarter acre of grapes, stakes and wire in place. Beyond that, another lone and wide pasture bordered the forest.
The snow crunched as they trotted over the pastures, the creek running strong on their left. With its beaver dam, this rocky creek divided Harry’s land from the farm that Deputy Cooper rented.
The temperature at thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit felt as though it wouldn’t budge throughout the day. The sun shone precariously through a light cloud cover that promised to thicken. The animals could smell heavier weather approaching.
Every now and then, one of them would blunder into a snowdrift. The crust disguised the snow depth. They’d flounder, then swim their way out.
Reaching the edge of the forest, the base of the eastern slope of the mountains, Tucker sat for a moment. “Take a breath.”
Mrs. Murphy parked next to her. “Odin said to go up the old farm road and where the deer trail crosses to turn left.”
“The good thing about the trotting, and now the climb, is it will keep us warm.”
“Right.”
They started upward, the grade at first not terribly steep. Higher up, switchbacks had been cut into the side of the mountain to offset the steep grade. Onward, they puffed. About a half mile up, they hit the deer trail.
“This is farther up than that coyote said,” said Tucker.
“It’s hard to judge distance in this kind of terrain. Everything takes longer.” The cat breathed in. “This huge old walnut stand, the black bark against the snow, it’s almost spooky.”
The hollies, dotted here and there, provided rich, glossy dark green color enlivened with bright red berries. Heading left on the deer trail, they traveled about two football fields in length. They now saw the uprooted tree.
Reaching it, both animals sat down. The skeleton had roots piercing the rib cage, one root snaked through an open jaw. The bones lifted out of the earth, suspended in the air, whitened with age. They were missing the left arm from the elbow down.
Tucker raised her head and sniffed. “Coyote!”
“Tucker, climb into the hole from the uprooted tree. The thick roots will protect you from him. We won’t be able to outrun him. I’ll climb up the tree.”
Paws crunched on the snow and Odin appeared. He smiled, fangs prominent. “Mrs. Murphy and the dog.”
“Tucker.”
“You can come out of there. I won’t eat you.”
“I don’t believe you.” Tucker growled. “Coyotes eat everything.”
On his haunches, the wild animal stared up at Mrs. Murphy now. “You’re just out of reach. I won’t eat you either.”
Mrs. Murphy didn’t budge. “I’d like to believe that.”
“M-m-m.” He didn’t budge either.
“How many other coyotes live up here?” Tucker’s nose stuck through the snow-covered roots.
“Two families. One at the edge of the high meadow. Another at the Pinnacles.”
Odin named the jutting rock outcropping near the spine of the mountain. “I can walk down to the farm with you and keep anyone else away. Although I don’t think they’ll be down here.”
“Odin, you’d snap my neck in a skinny minute,” Mrs. Murphy called down.
The coyote lay down, head on paws. “You’re going to get very cold. My fur is thicker than yours because I’m never in a really warm place.”