Pack Leader Roger had gone missing eight days past. Pack Coyote had arrived at the Big Clean Water one moon before Leaf Fall. They were only eight hunters strong—seven without Roger. The pack had waited on the shore fishing until Geldbred had a vision that seven days doing nothing with but seven hunters would bring down a curse. Old Thumb was the senior out-runner, so it had fallen to him to detail a scout. He had done so on the morning of the sixth day of fishing.

Bailey was that scout. He looked down into the cool clear water that pooled beneath him. He was so thirsty he could have drunk it all. But he just sipped and soaked his coyote tails. He was keen after two days trot. He had lit out toward the Pink Squib Nest—or at least where Old Thumb claimed those dreaming monkeys of folklore slept—dawn, two days gone. It was dusk now, time to find a hide.

He had hoped that when the water settled he would see the face of a fearsome hunter. It was still just Bailey, ‘skinny-assed’ Bailey they said. But he could run, stalk, hide and shoot. So he was here tracing Roger.

He heard something, a slight hiss in the sky, and looked up. He saw above the towering trees a burning star streaking across the sky, down somewhat and toward the Pink Squib Nest, or where it was said to be, as even old Thumb had not claimed to have been there. He stood and watched as the streaking star plunged on over the green saw-toothed mountains that marched toward a place that was only a fable to him. The light in the sky terrified him. The oldies said that is what started it all, things in the sky. There had been a time when things had crowded the sky ruining the world. Ever since the sky fell the packs had been wandering.

Bailey was not a deep thinker. Once it had occurred to him that the thing to do was to follow the falling star and find it he was off with a slow silent trot. He would find where the star had fallen. He would have to be careful. There was a Hat-pen up around this mountain he knew, where the two streams became this tasty sweet one.

Such were the secrets of life, the mysteries of the imperishable universe, that vexed Bailey of Pack Coyote. Bailey was young and unbred. Thoughts of a powdery white plumper mate singing to him by the packfire played across his mind’s eye as he trotted on. Fireside fantasies crowded into his mind as he loped along the clay-banked creek, having convinced himself that Roger needed some help stealing a mate and maybe a little plump friend for his mate too. The star was a sign, a sign that gave him the courage to do a lone scout against a Hat-pen. The absurdity of it did strike him.

Bailey had not stopped for the dark. The night was partially clear so he stayed near the creek where the moonlight filtered through. He knew better than to drop down for a drink, just dipping his coyote tails when they got dry and sucking them as he trotted soundlessly. He was the lightest of all on his feet. Even when trotting his foot could fall on a branch and not break it. If it was after Leaf Fall he would be reduced to an agonizingly slow pace. If it was after Snowfall he would have foot-skins on that would crunch ground clutter before he felt it. But now barefoot and on clay he trotted even in the night, ever mindful for big cats. It was the specter of the big cats that kept him from dropping down for a drink.

The night was strangely silent as he crept along the creek up the lonely mountain that overlooked the Hat-pen. His bow, useless in the night was unstrung and tied down in its case. Bailey got a chill anytime he had to lay aside a weapon. Weapons were all they had, but eight hunters in a wide unfriendly world.

He checked his left thigh beneath his buckskin skirt for the keen knife strapped there in its coyote skin sheath. He brought his hand around as the shadows closed in, clouds creeping in overhead and bringing full night, and touched the keen edge of his tomahawk, held loosely in his right hand.

Pack Coyote took refuge in the idea of their good weapons. Their tools set them apart from the Flat Lander Packs, the Laker Packs, and the Big River Packs. Pack Coyote was a Scrounger Pack. They braved the ruins for old scrap. All of their tools were fashioned of old scrap. Old Thumb even had a gun.

Finally, at what would be midnight he crested the saddle of the mountain. The creek fell away into the bottomland and the moon shone ghostly pale through the tree tops. The trees hid him, but also hid the Hat-pen from view. He knew it was there—knew where, had been brought here to spy before his first whisker. He slid out on the Sentinel Rock, the Three-creek Bottom Hat-pen in this big mountain hollow hidden from his view.

The smells of the settlement below came to his keen nostrils. He could smell wood-smoke—pine. He also smelled roasted squealer, the hairless boar so favored by the Hats. There was another smell too, that he could not quite place, suffused as it was under the stench of their waste trench where the whole overdressed crowd of them pitched their collective mess.

He had dozed, slept for hours lightly squatting on his haunches. He woke as the false dawn chased its tail across the sky. He dozed under the spectral sky of the false dawn.

He woke again after true dawn had streaked the sky. It was the chill that brought him to. His feet had fallen asleep and his face was cold from the updraft, an updraft that brought a new scent, the scent of fear he imagined. The crackle of a Hat gun still reverberated dully below.

He pulled his coyote pelt close over his ears, felt the warmth of his first coyote kill, whose spirit guided him with its crafty ways.

Bailey slung his tomahawk on his hip and uncased his bow. It was a five foot composite. The backing was of sinew-laced whip-wood scales lacquered with pine resin. The core was old stuff—the wood that melts and poisons the air. The bow face was of deer sinew coated with resin. He carried his bow strings in a pouch with his thumb rings. He never took the bracer off. It took all of his weight straining backward to string the bow into its wicked raider moon shape. He could draw it full back to the ear a few times and then needed a rest, he was no bruiser. But even half-drawn this old-scrap bow was as good as a Flatlander or Laker bow—lighter too.

He had seven arrows. Out-runners were lost more often than the others, and were supposed to report back. It was considered unwise and bad luck besides for an out-runner to be hauling a bunch of arrows.

He knocked an arrow, mindful of big cats. Wolves and coyotes would be no problem this time of year. He picked his way down the trace quickly, moving silently faster than a Hat could run in his stupid wood-bottom foot-skins.

He recalled the thicket creek and decided to go down through that soggy side hollow to avoid casting a silhouette on the ridgeline in case one of these Hats had learned some woodcraft.

Shortly he padded down the length of a great deadfall, an ancient elm, and squatted listening to something over the ridge beyond the thicket, the last ridge before Three-creek Bottom.

It was too distant to make out the words, and the Hats spoke stupidly so it was hard to figure the words when heard clearly. Then he heard the baying of Hat hounds—oh mess, me but seven arrows!

Bailey’s thoughts of a lone raid on the Hat-pen evaporated as he heard the baying of many a big hound from over the way. He looked up over the thicket across to the opposite ridge and saw some stupid Hat bouncing off of trees and falling his way down the steep decline.

He let out a smart chuckle when he heard the fool Hat crash into the bottom ground on the other side of the thicket. Then he was thrilled by the sight and sound of a blood mad pack of big Hat hounds plunging down the far side in pursuit.

Then Bailey heard the damndest thing, the Hat was running into the thicket, ripping his fool self to shreds no doubt, in a bid for freedom.

To Bailey’s amazement the fool Hat, a young one like him, and too wide to run much good, came bursting out from the thicket a bloody shredded mess, running like the Dookie was on his heels, and he was. For no sooner had the fool reached the shallow side-creek and looked over his shoulder—as one might expect a damned fool Hat to do—then the biggest beastie of a dog Bailey had ever even heard of came busting out through the thicket, shredded up and all the more blood mad for it.

The Hat boy was splashing through the water and now clawing his way up the mud-clay bank beneath the deadfall, trapped like a squirrel in a knot hole. The fool did not even see Bailey who was perched atop the very deadfall he was now clawing toward. Bailey observed with interest as the big beautiful hound bounded across the creek in three strides. Just as the Hat boy stood and reached for the deadfall—don’t look back fool!—he looked back and froze in his tracks seeing the big beastie taking the final leap for his dumbass.

There was plenty of noise as men and hounds tried to widen the gap in the thicket and that big hound pounced on that Hat with a paw on each shoulder and sunk its teeth into the thick muscles of the Hat’s shoulder.

The Hat boy looked heavy enough, but that hound yanked him back upright. As the Hat was dragged back to his feet by a hound a good deal taller than he his eyes came to rest on Bailey. Bailey never expected to look into a Hat’s eyes when he was doing other than gutting or scalping him. The eyes that looked into his were wide and clear like water, and seemed to see right into a person. This was not a mean Hat face, but the face of a boy Bailey’s age being eaten by a Hat hound—and that Hat hound was doing quite a good job!

Blood began to gush from the big muscle on the shoulder, and the hound’s jaws separated to get a good wrap on the throat. The Hat boy was now on his knees crying, being feasted on by a mighty hound, a hound that Bailey might boast about bagging. Bailey raised his bow and drew with the slow intensifying creak that only a weapon composited of good old stuff and fresh new stuff could. He let loose without hesitation. The arrow took the hound in the throat from the inside just above the tongue and fishtailed out the back of the neck.

The thing was glassy-eyed dead before it hit the clay slope. The Hat boy was gasping and crying and whimpering and making a fuss. Bailey slung the bow, drew his knife and skinned that big bastard in the time it took most people to empty their bladder. The cut was ragged around the lags, but he did the head and neck cut good. It would be a shame he had not time for the teeth.

Bailey now stood over the pink carcass, larger than him by far. A hound slipped through from the gaping hole in the thicket that a Hat man was breaking through. He unslung his bow, knocked an arrow and loosed before the fool Hat boy was on his feet. The arrow took the hound in the belly so that it yelped and squirmed. The Hat man was emerging from the thicket when Bailey took him through the piss bag—always a good shot in the morning!

He turned to the wild-eyed Hat boy who was leaning back against the dead fall. “Me thank ye, Fool Hat, for dis hide en me first man-kill.”

He stooped and drew his arrow from the carcass. “Climb dat deadfall en ye can come ‘ith me. Got fi' more Hat feathers ‘ere.”

Bailey was feeling like a big bruiser now, maybe more than an out-runner. The hound hide draped over his back dripped down his ankles while the Hat boy dragged himself over the deadfall. A black gun barrel poked out through the thicket over the shoulder of the man with the arrow in his gut. The gun boomed with its long cracking hiss and the slug thudded into the deadfall as the Hat boy made the other side with a thumping fall. Bailey drew and loosed, sending the arrow through the gunsmoke and feeling a thrill at the strangled gurgling sound that emerged and the angry shouting of men backed up in the thicket behind, and the confused baying of hounds behind them.

He dare not approach for a scalp as a Hat gun might wait for him in the thicket.

He had to represent Pack Coyote. His mournful howl carried across the thicket. He then bent and cut out a slice of liver from the great hound, stood, and swallowed it whole, howling again. His last blood soaked howl was still drifting over the soggy bottom as he bounded nimbly onto the deadfall and trotted its length while the Hat boy tried desperately to keep pace on the steep clay hillside.

“Keep pace, Fool Hat, don’ lose de trace. Run Hat, run!”

Off he ran: Bailey Hat-killer, hound-killer of Pack Coyote, with a desperate Fool Hat trying to keep pace.

Continued in Hudson Fiord: Hemavore #6