Page 1 of Flesh and Bone

“No way a coyotecould take down a steer like this,” Marshall finally said.

It was near midnight. Summer daylight kept long hours in the Prairies, but not long enough. Above, the stars burned cold and distant. To the west, the Rocky Mountains took jagged bites out of the sky. And below—

Everett was trying not to look.

“There’d have been a commotion if a grizzly came up through the herd,” Marshall said, frustrated. “We’d have heard it.”

“A cougar?” Everett offered doubtfully, keeping his face tipped skyward.

The steer was the fifth animal they’d lost in a month. Moving two hundred head of cattle, they expected to lose a couple as they drove west from Saskatchewan into the Porcupine Hills — illness, lameness — but nothing so drastic.

Something was following them.

It didn’t sound like any coyote Everett had ever heard, and it didn’t eat as much as he figured a bigger predator would. He didn’t know what kind of animal that left. Something rabid, maybe. But something rabid wouldn’t have survived so long. Neither he nor Marshall had caught a good look at the thing, no matter how late they kept watch. Everett had seen its eyes once, flat circles reflecting the campfire in the dark, but in the second it took him to haul his rifle up and aim, they blinked away.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that they were still on him, even in the daytime. A tiny itch in between his shoulder blades, digging at him like a thorn under the saddle blanket.

That had been a week ago.

The steer was a mess. Even with its throat torn open and its guts pooling into the dust, it had been alive when they found it. Eyes rolling in their sockets to show the whites, breath coming hard and fast in panicked wheezes. Deep gouges marred its sides, and the lake of blood under it was black and sticky in the darkness. Marshall had put a bullet through its skull to end its misery. How long it had lain there, disembowelled and bleeding out, they couldn’t tell. A few minutes, or half an hour. Longer. The stars had seen what happened, but they weren’t saying. Marshall had been the one to look it over afterwards, trying to figure out what could be responsible. Everett had turned away to be sick.

“Ain’t a hungry animal doing this,” Marshall said, full of conviction. “Show me any animal in its right mind that makes a kill and doesn’t take more’n a bite or two. The flies ate more of the poor bastard than whatever killed him.”

“Whatever it is, it’s been after us since the July moon.” Everett didn’t look at Marshall to mark his reaction. “I’ll take first watch.” He hadn’t been sleeping lately anyhow, lying awake more hours than not.

Marshall didn’t argue, just moved past him and headed back to where they’d pitched their camp, a little fire burning low between their bedrolls. Time was, he’d have clapped Everett on the shoulder, and that change was Everett’s fault, too. “Two hours,” he said.

Everett used to dissect every touch, trying to read Marshall’s intentions in every jostled shoulder, every tap and nudge. Every glance. It hadn’t done either of them any good. It was better, he told himself, that the contact was gone. All that analyzing and second-guessing was a waste of energy. But no matter how he tried, he found himself missing it at the strangest times. They’d spent too many years roughhousing, then working together, sharing space and living in each other’s pockets, to give it up so abruptly. Marshall was a physical man, more so than Everett. That physicality was familiar enough, even if it didn’t come naturally to him, that its sudden absence left him off-balance now that it was gone.

It would be better, maybe, to straight-up ask what Marshall wanted, instead of pussyfooting around the matter, waiting to see what he’d do next. Or not do. The problem was, Everett couldn’t fit those worms back in the can once it was opened. He’d already cracked the lid; he didn’t need to go opening it any further.

They had stopped hobbling the horses after the first cow got killed, figuring to give them a fighting chance of escape, if it came to it. Everett rode his raw-boned gelding in a wide circle around the herd, watching for movement in the dark. His trusty Yellowboy lay against his thigh, ready to swing up at the first sign of anything that wasn’t bovine. Everett was a crack shot at a distance, even if he could never beat Marshall at hitting bottles off the fence with a handgun. He glared into the night, tapping his fingers against the brass frame of his rifle that gave it its moniker. They ought to have dogs for this, those big livestock guardian dogs that farmers used for sheep, the ones unafraidof squaring up against something wild. Dogs could work in the dark a damn sight better than he could. And they were loyal, too. That unconditional loyalty Everett could do with studying.

His gelding tensed under him, ears pricked and head high, blowing hard through his nostrils. Everett couldn’t see Marshall’s horse past the cattle, but he imagined the animals talking to each other, riding each other’s nerves. He dismounted to steady the gelding and the horse danced around, nervous as anything, before bolting. The reins ripped out of Everett’s hands and he cursed as both horses high-tailed it, their hoofbeats thundering away.

“What happened?” Marshall called, his voice groggy like he’d managed to catch a few minutes of sleep.

“Horses ran off,” Everett said tersely.

The prickle in between his shoulders dug deeper like claws hooked in his spine, the anxiety enough to make his bones rattle. Hefting his rifle in both hands, uneasy sweat slicked his palms. Nothing but wide-open space all around, and the light from the campfire didn’t reach far. The full moon’s silver glow was muted as clouds rolled in.

“Shit.” With a groan, Marshall got up, rolling his shoulders and shaking off his slumber before reaching for his revolver.

The nights used to be peaceful. Beautiful, the way the world looked beautiful in between the pages of Whitman’s poetry. Velvet dark like they didn’t get in the city, the whole Milky Way sprawled overhead like jewels spilled from a bank robbery, the fire crackling and spitting out sparks. Cool enough compared to the daytime that they could take the excuse to sit close, shoulders rubbing, thighs pressed together through their jeans.Close enough to pass a can of beans back and forth while they waited for their supper to warm up over the flames. Potatoes baking in the coals, grouse or rabbit turning on the spit.

They shouldn’t have needed the excuse to get close, not in the middle of nowhere without a single witness for a hundred kilometres in any direction, no sounds but the distant yipping of coyotes in the foothills and the soft lowing of the cattle as they settled in for the night. Marshall wouldn’t have needed the excuse at all, but Everett was a coward. Even after he decided he wanted something, he had dropped that wanting in Marshall’s lap for him to take responsibility for it and decide what to do next.

Self-loathing twisted his guts at the memory. His back to the fire, Everett flexed his fingers around his rifle, holding it at the ready. Marshall had been hot and solid in his hand that night; Everett could still feel him every time he let his mind wander.

Something shifted in the dark. Everett froze like a rabbit, heart hammering. A footstep, and then a rush of movement towards the fire, something huge and ragged — a gust of humid breath washed his face, rancid like rotten meat—

He squeezed off a single shot, firing blind.

Hot, wet pain seared his right side.

He was distantly aware of Marshall shouting, shots fired, and the sense that the thing was retreating, but all he could hear was the pounding of his own blood in his ears. His rifle fell from useless fingers as he dropped to his knees. Time slipped; the stars wheeled drunkenly.

“Fuck, c’mon, get up,” Marshall ordered, hauling Everett to his feet. “Can you walk? We gotta go.”

---