The three animals remained there as clouds moved in, the wind picked up. Hours passed. Tucker felt stiff, and Mrs. Murphy shivered. Odin watched them with his glittering yellow eyes.
As what little light there was shifted, the skeleton seemed to smile, then the light faded, the clouds turning Prussian blue.
In the far distance, Mrs. Murphy heard Harry’s truck. Her uncommonly good ears would astonish a human being.
“Tucker, Mom’s home. Start barking.”
Tucker barked and barked.
Harry paid little attention, for the barking was far away. She walked into the house, laid packages on the kitchen table. She took off her coat, seeing only Pewter, thinking the other two were asleep.
“Mom, Murphy and Tucker are up on the mountain,” said Pewter.
“You’re chatty.”
“This is serious,” the cat screeched.
A half hour passed; Harry finally checked each room. No cat or dog. She threw on her coat, walked out to the barn. They weren’t there either. Just then, Fair drove in, and as she was telling him, they both stopped. They heard their corgi barking.
“Tucker?” Fair wondered, then froze, for he heard Odin howl.
Harry hopped behind the wheel.
Fair did the same in the truck’s passenger seat.
“Wait a minute.” Fair quickly got out, opened his big vet truck door, then climbed back in. A .22 revolver rested on his lap. Ratshot could scare off animals.
Harry drove behind the barn on the farm road, keeping on it until the edge of the forest. She stopped, rolled down her window.
They listened intently. Again, they heard Tucker bark. Odin howled too, much closer now.
“This baby might be old, but she’s four-wheel drive,” said Harry. “You ready?” She looked at her husband.
“Yeah, I don’t worry about my body bouncing around. It’s my head hitting the roof.”
“Get ready.” She’d turned the small dials on the old hubcaps to drive through the snow when she came home.
Now she shifted into the lowest gear—the tires were winter tires—then hit the gas, and the rear end fishtailed. They climbed up the side of the mountain on the old road. It had deeper ruts than the farm road.
Each time the wheel slid into a rut, Harry gunned the motor to get out. Poor Fair bounced up, even with the seatbelt on. Finally, he put his hand on top of his head.
They reached a small turnaround.
“You’d better turn this around, keep her in gear, cut the motor. We can’t risk going higher, especially now.” Fair noticed snowflakes in the beams of the headlights.
She did as told, also yanking on the emergency brake. The turnaround was level enough, but she worried about sliding in the snow, even with the truck parked. It might give a little when they climbed out. Both of them, raised in the country, knew dumb things happen.
She cut the lights, pulled her scarf tighter around her neck. Fair stepped out, slid the revolver in his belt, pulled on his gloves.
Tucker was clearly close and to their left, so they walked through the walnuts, brushed by some hollies, tripped on uneven ground covered by the snow.
“We’re here!” Mrs. Murphy yelled.
“Come on.” Tucker yowled as she could see the flashlight swinging right and left.
Odin let out one howl before hurrying off into the darkness, calling over his shoulder, “I wouldn’t have eaten you. My call is louder than yours. I’ll see you tomorrow at the barn.”
Neither animal knew whether or not to believe him. Tucker took no chances. She wasn’t emerging until Harry and Fair reached them. The two animals had forgotten about the skeleton.
Close enough now for Tucker to smell her and Fair, Harry couldn’t see much for the darkness.
Fair, beside her, shined the light right where Tucker still barked. The dog’s eyes glowed in the flashlight. Fair flicked the light upward. There was Mrs. Murphy, whose eyes shone, too.
“What the—” Harry froze.
Fair now focused on the macabre sight.
Both just stood there as the cat backed down the tree and the dog lifted herself out from the roots, brushing by a dangling leg bone, which rattled.
Mrs. Murphy reached onto Harry’s pants leg. Harry bent over and picked her up.
Tucker came next to Fair, who now shined the flashlight over the entire skeleton.
“I’m really cold,” the dog whined as a snowflake landed on her nose.
“Me, too.” Mrs. Murphy rested her face against Harry’s.
Already a half mile distant, Odin belted out one more howl, which added to the fright.
“Let’s get back to the truck,” Fair said.
Thicker now, the snow dropped onto bare tree limbs, making a soft noise as it did so.
They all got into the truck. Harry turned on the motor. The heater, already warm from the trip up, emitted welcome heat. “Do you have your cell?” she asked her husband.
He pulled it from his inside coat pocket and dialed Cooper’s number. “No service up here.”
“We’re in a dead spot.” Harry eased the vehicle back down the mountain road.
“Literally,” quipped Fair.
Back at the farm, Harry flipped open her cellphone again. The snow fell harder. “I’m not getting anywhere. I’ll use the landline.”
Once in the kitchen, Mrs. Murphy and Tucker recounted everything to Pewter.
“See what you missed,” Tucker gloated.
“Freezing my butt off, that’s what I missed. You two are lucky to be alive. What if Odin called down other coyotes? They’d have dug you out. As for you, Murphy, you would have been trapped up there for days. And maybe you wouldn’t have lived either.”
As the animals argued about whether Odin was or was not trustworthy, Harry dialed Cooper and the lights went out, the phone with it.
Fair pulled a flashlight from the drawer by the sink. “Bet someone ran off the road and hit a pole.”
“I’m going to drive over.”
“I’ll come with you.”
Tucker, Mrs. Murphy, and Pewter started for the door.
“Stay,” Harry commanded.
“Bother,” Pewter said and pouted.
Mrs. Murphy and Tucker, now really put out, as they were exhausted, crawled into their special fleece beds.
Fair drove this time. He had respect for bad driving conditions.
They reached Cooper’s house within fifteen minutes, whereas it usually took five. A pinpoint of light shone from the living room window; smoke rose from the chimney, then flattened out.
Out of the truck, they walked to her back door and knocked. Within a few minutes, Cooper—holding a flashlight, as were Harry and Fair—opened the door.
“Come on in. It’s the usual.”
“Coop, I’ve been trying to call you on my cell, but the service isn’t working.”
“Come on into the living room. The fire helps. That and the fact that the power just went off, so it’s not cold inside yet.”
“Pain in the you-know-what.” Harry followed her neighbor into the living room, as did Fair.
“Coop, let me get to the point,” Fair said. “We found a skeleton up in the walnut grove.”
Now on the edge of her chair, the blonde woman asked, “In what condition?”
“Bleached, tree roots growing through it,” Harry matter-of-factly reported.
“It was missing the left arm from the elbow down, but that could be in the ground,” said Fair. “Most of the skeleton is suspended,” he added.
They told her how they heard the howls of Tucker and the coyote, of their shock at seeing the bones.
“This snow will complicate matters.” Cooper checked the weather report on her Droid. “It will be mostly light, with a few heavy periods tapering off tomorrow afternoon.” She looked up at her two friends. “And tomorrow is the big delivery day. I’m in charge for the department. Everyone off duty will be helping. ’Course, I really don’t know who will be off duty tomorrow, thanks to finding Lou.”