With the Sun

Colter awoke to the distinct feeling of something gently nibbling on his left ear. His eyes cracked apart, dried blood caked in his eyelashes and down one side of his face, his chest and back feeling like he’d lost a game of chicken with a steam engine. Clear blue sky filled his vision, blurry in the harsh sun. He took a deep, rattling breath, and coughed. The sunlight became kinder to his eyes, and the coyote that had been sampling him took a few gentle steps back.

“Hey...get on...get.”

He fumbled for his knife strapped to his belt. The coyote was still except for a slight cocking of the head, mouth closed and silent. The bone handle felt cool in his palm as it slid out of its sheath. He waved it half-heartedly at the mangy canid.

“Go on, dammit! Get!”

The coyote’s head straightened, and its mouth fell slowly open.

“Come on now. There’s no need for that, friend.” The voice was sharp and crisp, but delicate. It left the coyote’s mouth like a railroad spike wrapped in silk.

Christ alive. The events preceding whatever was unfolding in front of him came hammering back into his brain. The crack of a repeater, held in the hands of a pinch-faced Beauford boy with a fuzzy little moustache as the horses kicked up clouds of dust, racing across the ridge. Colter had felt something like a punch from God himself, and tumbled off his own horse into the dirt. He’d watched the blood pool underneath him, before Alawishus Beauford leveled a revolver at his face and all had gone fuzzy and white. That made sense. He was dead.

The coyote continued to speak, lips moving in a queer manner that made Colter squirmy.

“I don’t suppose you’ve got matches on you do you? I hope you don’t mind, I took a cigarette--but I can’t light the damn things myself. It’d be mighty kind if you could strike a match for me. Call it part of your payment for bringing you back.”

Colter didn’t much feel like asking questions at the moment. He sat up and unbuttoned a pocket that smelled vaguely of sulfur, producing a white-headed match that he struck on his boot. It popped into life and the coyote bowed its head, coming up with a cigarette Colter had hand rolled that morning clenched between its alabaster teeth. Trotting forward, it carefully guided the tip of the cigarette into the flame, and inhaled deeply. Grey smoke rolled out around a pink tongue, and came damp from sensitive nostrils.

“Much obliged.” The coyote remained standing, puffing intermittently.

Colter sat in silence for a few minutes, his senses slowly regaining their clarity. He stared into the dirt, rusty and stiff with his own blood--goddamn there was a lot. Fucking Beaufords. Fucking horse. He was suddenly aware of how hot he was, and he began to think that he wasn’t dead at all--that he had been, but that he wasn’t now. His eyes shifted shrewdly towards the coyote, its face still the impassive gaze of any other scrawny, half-starved pest. It spit the last little bit of the cigarette out and ground it into the dirt with a cracked black paw just like a goddamn person.

“What are you? How...why?”

The mask did not falter. Still just the cunning, unrelenting look.

“I’m the coyote. And call it my idea of a joke. Those men have been unkind to this place and its people far longer than you’ve even been aware of them. They’ve killed you once, but killed these people over and over again. Not that they’re the only white men who have done that, mind you. I think we’re due a laugh, don’t you? I know one of my people when I see them. Though the other half of you came over here on a ship a while back, from a desert a bit like this if I’m not mistaken. Your father knows me, in a sense. He damn near met me once or twice himself. You’re twice damned in this country, son. But not today. Another day, perhaps. I sure am glad I found you though.”

Colter rubbed his face with two cupped hands, and a series of exasperated and hitching groans left his mouth. His own father had never told him the stories his father had told him--he’d never had time to pass that sort of thing down to Colter. His mother had told him stories, though. He’d sit at her feet in front of a campfire, or on a cliff edge, and eventually in front of a small fireplace in a that beautiful little ramshackle house near the edge of the biggest river Colter had ever seen. The near-obsidian sheen of her hands would weave and twist his long hair into braids that wouldn’t come out except by some clever movement of her own slim fingers. As he attempted to unravel this peculiar set of circumstances he came up blank, the braid intact. He couldn’t think of anything to say, or ask. But he could think of a few people he’d like to pay a visit to. He stood.

“D’you know where they went? After they shot me?”

“That I do. I took the liberty of getting your guns back for you. You’ll find them rolled up among your things. I don’t suppose you’ve another cigarette?”

Colter nodded. He offered it to the coyote without hesitation and placed one between his own lips. Again a match popped and flared. He lit the coyote’s first, then his own, and shook the flame out. He scanned the valley that lay beneath him, unfolding, he knew, even farther than the eye could see. The sun had slipped almost entirely underneath the horizon. Through the drifting tendrils of pungent smoke, he saw the faint glow of firelight far in the distance. Small. A campfire. The coyote began to trot casually towards the horizon, jumping down out of sight silently. A moment later its head popped up, silhouetted by the final branches of red sunlight.

“Come, now. We’ve some distance to cover, and I believe I’ve some ground in saying that you owe me.” It disappeared back underneath the ridge.

Twin streams of tobacco smoke puffed from Colter’s nostrils. He bent and retrieved his holster, his pack. The weight was reassuring and familiar. As day finally surrendered to the throng of shining stars and the inky tide of the night sky, Colter and the coyote began their descent into the valley to send the Beaufords with the sun.