Coyote Calling
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~~ Chris ~~
It felt like I was standing in the middle of the world and I didn't know where the hell to go. Had Vin gone up or down the mountain? Had he gone left or right?
Too much of it was down to maybes. Maybe Vin had gone there. Maybe he hadn't. Maybe it was already too late. There was no time to gamble everything on a hunch anymore but hunches was all I had left. If I chose the wrong way now we'd end up getting further away from Vin and then it would really be too late. The thought left me with a cold feeling to my gut. There had to be some sign, I just wasn't seeing it yet.
We had come all this way. There just had to be something.
The wind died down and everything became so still. I don't know how long I stood there, looking out at the wild, but it must have been a long time. Slowly I became aware of the cold creeping up my spine and that there was a growing pain in my leg. I had to move so I turned and walked back towards Buck. Didn't help all that much. The cramp in my leg grew worse and got real painful. It felt almost like a blade twisting into the back of my thigh.
Something must have shown on my face because Buck suddenly asked me, "You all right, Chris?"
"Yeah," I said. "Just got a cramp in my leg is all."
Best thing you can do when you've got a cramp in your leg is just to walk it off so I walked around the camp some more until it eased. I kept my eyes on the ground as I walked, searching for signs. I saw nothing that hadn't been there before. When I happened to look up again I saw Buck grinning at me.
"What?" I asked him.
"Cramp in your leg?" he repeated my words and his smile got even wider until his eyes twinkled. "You're getting old, pard."
"Oh really?" Trust Buck to find a way to rile me up and lighten my mood at the same time. "Well then so are you, Bucklin. Seeing how we're nearly the same age and all."
"Me? I'm still in the prime of my youth. Full of spirit-"
"Full of something all right," I interrupted him. "I can still whup you, Buck, so you'd better shut up before I-"
I completely lost my thread as my eyes caught a glimpse of black moving in the distance. It was a bird circling high above about a mile away from where we were standing.
"Buck," I said.
"I see it," Buck replied.
There was no need to waste any more words. We just got on our horses and started off in that direction.
I'd seen that same circling motion many times before so I knew that bird had spotted something dead or dying on the ground. Some animal ... or a man.
I kept my eyes on the bird and trusted my horse to find his own way. Looked like some kind of crow, a real big one. As we came closer it started to dive towards the ground but it reared up at the last moment before it touched the snow. It didn't seem scared of us at all, it was probably too hungry to care. I still couldn't see what it was that it found so interesting. Not until we got real close could I see the small mound of stones and snow that seemed to have been hastily gathered to cover something up on the ground.
I reined in Pony and sat there looking for a while. We had stopped on a narrow strip of level ground situated between a large boulder above us and a gentle slope below. The mound was halfway down the slope. I've never heard of no animal that buries its dead in a shallow grave and gathers stones and snow over the remains. It had to be a man down there. Damn.
The bird silently took flight as we dismounted. It left behind one single black feather right on top of the grave.
I took a deep breath. The air felt good and clean in my chest but the cold it brought with it seemed to settle around my heart as I looked at that grave.
There were no markings that said who it was, all I could see was the sole of a boot sticking out slightly from under the covering of stones and snow. If I wanted to know I'd have to go down there and dig him out. I took another deep breath.
"Chris-" Buck started to say.
"I'll do it," I told him but my feet seemed frozen to the spot. Didn't think it would be this hard to finally find the answer we had been looking for all this time.
"I can go down there," Buck offered.
"Said I'll do it," I told him, trying to sound more firm this time. "You go scout around some, Buck."
"All right," he said softly and walked away. Buck knew me well enough to leave me alone. He should, we had been riding together for a long time now. Only Pony had been with me longer. They were the two pieces left to me from my old life that I wanted to keep with me for as long as I could. But life didn't work that way, I knew that now.
It's a sad truth that you can never unknow something, no matter how much you'd want to. I knew how fast everything could change, how you could lose people that were important to you. It could happen in the blink of an eye. It had taken so long for me to get this far after my wife and son had died. I was almost at the point of getting settled into my new life and it wasn't half bad. In fact it was a rather good life, felt like I had a real purpose again after all these years.
I didn't want to lose any pieces of that new life. Didn't want to lose Vin. From the first I had trusted him. I don't trust many people, but I knew I could count on him. He wasn't afraid of anything and never gave up. Vin could say the damnedest things, made me smile just thinking about it. He was my friend. And I'd sure miss him if he was dead.
I looked at the grave. Maybe it wasn't Vin down there. Then again, maybe it was. Only one way to find out.
I slid down the slope until I was level with the mound. Almost right away, having shoveled away the snow with my hands and moved just a few stones, I could see that it was a white man with hair the same color as Vin. That stopped me cold for a little bit. So it really could be Vin under there. But maybe it wasn't. I tried not to think any more, just to work on steadily, and I had soon moved all the stones away from the head and shoulders so there was just a thin layer of snow left to remove. I hesitated to uncover the face but my hand seemed to move on its own and it brushed away the snow....
It wasn't him.
"Damn, Vin," I whispered and drew a shaky breath. For a moment there I'd almost thought- Well, that didn't matter now.
So, it wasn't Vin. Then who was it? He was young and had an ugly wound to the chest, looked like a knife had done it. The snow was recent so he couldn't have been here more than a few days. That put his death to around the same time as the fight over at the camp. Most likely Vin's handiwork then. Had Vin buried him or was it someone else? If it was someone else that meant more than one enemy for Vin to handle. I really wished I knew what had happened up here.
"Chris," Buck called and I looked up towards where he was standing near the big boulder.
"Can't say who this is but it ain't Vin," I told him as I started to put the grave back in order. Buck looked like he had something he wanted to say so I asked him, "What?"
He looked uncomfortable as he answered, "There's blood here. Quite a lot."
"Must be from the dead guy," I said as I made my way up the slope and went over to the boulder. There were still traces here of a fight to the death. Even a layer of new snow couldn't hide the big pool of blood spilled on the ground.
"Yeah, most likely," Buck agreed. "But I don't think this is."
He led me up a little further on the mountain and squatted down to brush away some of the snow. At first all I could see was clear wolf prints leading up towards a nearby peak.
"Blood trail," Buck said and pointed towards some of the paw prints. That wolf had set his paws down exactly where a splatter of black drops of frozen blood pointed a way up towards the peak. The wolf tracks were quite fresh but the blood trail was at least some days old, must have been from the fight. Two men had fought here, one had walked away wounded while the other remained dead. The blood had been covered by snow but the wolf must have smelled it anyways and set off searching for wounded prey. Must have his heart set on a warm meal, didn't look like he had sniffed around the grave even once. Pretty strange. Lucky thing for us that he had put his paws exactly right so it uncovered the blood trail for us to see, if he hadn't we would have missed it.
Seeing how it wasn't Vin buried down there I figured he had to be the hurt one. So he could still be alive but now he had a wolf trailing him. I was getting mighty tired of having my hopes raised only to see them immediately squashed down again.
Buck stood up straight again and looked at me.
"I think it's time to fire them shots now," he said.
I nodded in agreement and Buck fired first one shot into the air and then two more.
I had the feeling that there was more trouble ahead. It was time for all of us to be together again.
~~ Nathan ~~
For such a beautiful valley it sure didn't seem to like us much. Vin hadn't left any tracks that we could see so we had to look for trails we hoped he had followed instead. There were several narrow trails leading deeper into Ghost Country but there seemed to be only one trail that we could follow. We tried to go in other directions at first but it wasn't any good, we always ended up back where we started. First there was a rock blocking our path and the trees were so thick on either side of it that it was impossible to try and go around it so we had to go back. Then we started up the second trail only to be stopped almost right away where the path had disappeared in a landslide and so we had to turn back once again. Josiah suggested that we might have better luck on the other side of the river instead so we made our way over to the river bank.
The second we tried to cross the river Ezra's horse got spooked by something and Ezra ended up in the water. I was riding right behind so I quickly reached down and hauled his head out of the water so he could breathe again.
"Ezra! Are you all right?"
Ezra came up spluttering and coughing and looking like a drowned rat. He never answered me but he was swearing enough to make me sure that he hadn't gotten much water in his lungs. There was the strangest look on his face as he crawled back onto dry land.
Ever seen a cat trying to walk across a patch of wet grass without getting its paws wet at the same time? It puts down each paw very carefully, and after every step it lifts it and briskly shakes off the clinging wetness. I'd seen that once and couldn't forget it for that cat had such a look on its face that said how bad it thought the whole thing was. Ezra's face had that same look, sort of suffering and disgusted at the same time.
We couldn't help ourselves. Josiah and I both broke out laughing. It was the funniest thing I had seen in a long time.
Ezra's horse stood to the side and looked guilty. Ezra gave the two of us a glare before he noticed his horse standing on the riverbank. He looked startled for a second then he went over to his horse, muttering what sounded like, "Yes, you should be ashamed of yourself."
The water was deep enough that only his pride had been hurt by the fall and not something worse. Ezra was a hard one to figure out so maybe hurting his pride hurt him even more than breaking his neck. Sometimes when you said something he hadn't expected to hear it would take a second or more until the poker face dropped in place. Those times it looked to me that he cared more about what we thought about him than he let us know. But then I as I said, he was a hard one to figure out.
We tried the crossing again. Ezra's horse didn't buck him this time but it was a near thing. I could see the anger build up inside Ezra.
"Do that one more time-" he told his horse. "-and I swear I'll sell you to a glue factory so you'll at least be good for something."
I looked to Josiah again but this time he wasn't even smiling. Instead he looked thoughtful.
"What are you thinking about, Josiah?" I said.
"I think that horse has more sense than us. I don't think we should cross this river."
So we went back a bit and this time we found another trail that we hadn't seen earlier and that turned out to be reasonably easy to travel. There were hoof prints on the trail but they were too smudged around the edges for us to recognize if any of them had been made by Vin's horse. Still, it seemed the most likely way to go so we went on.
Wasn't much to see, just the trail that seemed to go on forever with trees on either side of it. I spotted a wolf half a mile up the trail. It stopped for a moment and gave us a long look before it disappeared among the brush on the left side of the trail.
Seeing that wolf reminded me of the dream I'd had that night. I had been standing up on the side of a mountain in an open place with snow on the ground. I was alone at first but then I felt like there was someone behind me, that happened a lot in that dream. As soon as my back was turned something would turn up or disappear. The first time I turned around there was a wolf there, just sitting there looking at me. It was almost as if it was waiting for something and I think it wanted me to speak so I said, "Who are you?" And the wolf looked at me and I could hear words in my head like it was talking to me, mind to mind.
"I am Wolf," it said. "Who are you?"
"I'm Nathan Jackson."
"Can you help him?" it then said and motioned me to look to the side. There was a hurt wolf lying in the snow. There was blood all over the fur and I could see that it was badly wounded in the leg. It was whimpering softly and looked close to death. I went over to it and sank down on my knees in the snow.
"I don't know," I told Wolf as I slowly reached out my hand to see if the wounded wolf would let me touch it. Suddenly the wolf shape wavered in front of my eyes, like a mirage in the desert, and turned into a man and it was Vin but he was looking at me through wolf eyes.
Startled, I scrambled to my feet and took some steps back. I turned on Wolf, "What is this?"
"Will you help him?" Wolf said and I told him, "I don't know if I can but I will do my best."
But when I turned towards Vin he was gone, instead there was a whole pack of them wolves looking at me. Should have been scary but it wasn't, somehow I knew they meant me no harm. One was barely more than a pup but the rest of them were fully grown. The pup yapped a bit at Wolf who answered him with a soft growl until he quieted down.
Then the whole pack changed into my companions just like the wolf that turned into Vin. The young pup turned into JD but he still had his wolf eyes and so did the rest of them. Seeing Josiah looking at me with yellow eyes was a bit unsettling. I should have been afraid but this pack was my pack. They wouldn't hurt me. I belonged with them.
"Why?"
"Why what?" I said.
"Why do you belong with them? You are not like them."
I had heard that argument countless times before but I still felt disappointed. My skin was darker so I should stay away. I was less of a man so I should stay away. I was different so I deserved to die. It never changed.
"I did not say that I thought you were less of a man," Wolf said.
"Didn't you?"
"No, I think you are a better man than they."
And I felt pleased but also little angry at the same time. Because this truly was my pack and they were good people, let no one say anything else. I had fought beside them and patched up their hurts and they treated me like one of their own. I was one of them.
"In our hearts we are the same," I said. "That's gotta count for something."
"Even him?" Wolf nodded towards Ezra who was sitting a bit apart from the rest of them. Truth was I really didn't know. Ezra and I seemed to disagree about most things that I counted as important. He didn't understand compassion, he thought it was a sign of weakness when I felt it was really the other way around. He would use people for his own gain, and I couldn't understand that. But just when I thought there was no hope for him he would go and do something that took a lot of courage and kindness without thinking about himself at all. He had me confused.
"I think he wants to be the same," I said. And I did think that. I just wasn't sure that it would be enough.
"You defend all of them. You would die for them. Why?"
This was one curious wolf. I didn't know what he was after but somehow I knew that he meant me no harm so I answered as best I could.
"They are good people."
"You want to heal their hurts."
"Yes," I agreed.
"Would you heal your enemy's hurt?"
"I don't know. I think I would try."
"Why? You have many dark memories. Why don't you give in to them? Why don't you take the vengeance that belongs to you?"
My mouth went dry and I could hear in my head the screams of the wounded when I worked as a stretcher bearer in the war. I could smell the blood in the surgeon's tent and feel the weight of a dying man's hand on my arm as he held on to me while his life was slipping away, drop by drop. And then I went further back in my memory and remembered the first slave I had seen whipped in front of me when I was just a boy. And my heart was filled with so many feelings when I thought about it all, it made me burn. Burn with anger sometimes but more often with a will to make sure it didn't happen again, to anybody.
"I've seen too much killing, too much hurt," I said. "Nothing good has ever come of it."
"Yet you have blood on your hands."
And I did. I had inflicted hurts, I had even killed men and I'd told myself every time that they deserved it, they got what was coming to them. Because they had tried to harm someone I cared for or they had tried to hurt someone just because they were stronger, just because they could. Every man who knew the difference between wrong or right had to speak up when injustice was being done but so few did. And I knew that I would do it all again if I had to for every one of those deaths had bought the life of someone who deserved to live.
And yet ... sometimes I thought about the men I had killed and wondered if they really had deserved it or if they'd just been caught up by something bigger than themselves and not been able to fight it. Maybe they could have changed their ways if they'd only had the chance, maybe there had been some goodness in their souls, buried under layers of hurt. Maybe they could have done something good if I hadn't taken their life away from them. Now they never would.
It was a strange feeling, to regret something and yet not regret something at the same time.
"I feel the weight of every drop of that blood," I told Wolf. "I know the cost of it."
Wolf was quiet for a while and then he said, "Go with my blessing, Nathan Jackson."
The last thing I remember from that dream was that it looked like he was grinning at me when he said that. Then I woke up and now here I was.
We were coming up on the spot where the wolf had crossed the road and when I looked to the left I could see that there was a narrow trail there, leading up towards some hills that could be glimpsed through the trees.
"What do you say we go that way for a while?" I suggested and the others agreed, perhaps they were as bored with this trail to nowhere as I was.
We had to ride up that trail in single file with Josiah up front, me in the middle and Ezra riding last. Right after we had gone through a small clearing the trail widened out and I suddenly noticed that it was down to just Josiah and me, Ezra had stopped near the edge of the clearing and was dismounting. I turned my horse around.
"What you doing, Ezra?" I asked.
"I have a most urgent call that needs to be answered with the utmost rapidity."
He made a simple call of nature sound like a secret mission of some kind. I grinned when Ezra couldn't see it.
Josiah said he would go ahead and I told him I would take the opportunity to stretch my legs some. The nearest hill was well within shouting distance so I could see no trouble in splitting us up and it turned out to be a good thing that I stayed with Ezra.
Ezra disappeared in among the shadowy trees and was gone for a short while. I dismounted, tied my horse to a tree and walked around some to get the feeling back in my numb legs. Some dry branches cracked loudly in the silent wood and I knew Ezra was on his way back.
"Damnation!" I suddenly heard him say and looked to where he was standing some fifteen feet or so away from the trail.
"What's wrong?"
"I stepped in some mud," Ezra muttered. Right then I heard Josiah call out that he had found something up the hill and I turned to look at where he was instead.
"Mr Jackson," Ezra said somewhere behind my back.
"Just a minute," I told him. Josiah had just said something I didn't quite hear and I was about to go up towards him when Ezra called me again.
"Mr Jackson, I fear I must prevail upon you to help me quite urgently!" Ezra said sharply and before I could turn he spoke again, calling out my name in panic, "Nathan!"
I turned around and Ezra was already up to his knees in mire and before I could reach him he was up to his hips in it and going down fast. He must have stepped into a mud hole hidden underneath the moss. I threw myself down and anchored myself to the nearest tree I could find with one hand while I reached out to Ezra with the other. He grabbed it in a strong grip with both of his hands and I tried to pull him out. It wasn't enough. I could feel the terrible grip that mud had on him as it tried to swallow him, it was merciless.
"Josiah!" I called in desperation and heard running footsteps answer my cry.
I kept my eyes on Ezra who just kept sinking deeper and deeper and for a moment I thought we would lose him but then Josiah was finally there and his arm shot out and grabbed hold of one of Ezra's hands and between the three of us we slowly won the tug of war. The mud let him go with a wet, sucking sound and Ezra started to inch towards safer ground until finally we could drag him out altogether.
For some time we all lay on the ground just trying to catch our breaths. That had been too close, much too close. I felt totally spent but then I looked at Ezra and I could see him shivering. I thought he must be in shock so I went up and got him a blanket.
"I don't need that," Ezra said and pushed it aside.
"Don't be stupid Ezra, I can see you shivering," I told him but he refused to touch it.
"I don't. I just-" he broke off and took some deep breaths and then looked calmer. "I don't need it," he said again.
"Fine," I said and gave up. If he wanted to make it on his own, then fine by me. Too stubborn to know what was good for him. I knew he distrusted the simplest acts of kindness. Just couldn't understand that man. He complained for hours about the state of his clothes but when he had been in real danger of losing his life he shut everyone out. I didn't feel up to battling Ezra so I shook my head and let it be.
"Josiah...." I asked as I helped him too his feet.
"Yeah?"
"What was it you said up there? I didn't hear you."
"I said that I'd found a grave further up the hill. No more than a few days old it looked like."
"Is it Vin?" Ezra asked softly as I helped him to his feet. He looked much better now than just a short while ago.
"Don't know. Didn't have a chance to get a closer look. I was just about to tell Nathan to get up there when he called for me to come help haul you out."
Josiah was never one to go easy on Ezra. I don't think it was because he didn't like him, it was because he knew Ezra could take it. And Ezra usually had a quick comeback. So it was this time.
"Well..." Ezra replied with venom dripping from every word, "...pardon me for interrupting your conversation with such a trifling thing as coming close to dying."
Sounded to me like Ezra would be just fine. He was almost back to being his old self again.
"For the second time today no less," Ezra added.
Josiah looked at me and then at Ezra. He raised an eyebrow slightly.
"Brother Ezra -" he said and stepped closer to Ezra. "Looks like you've got a speck of mud right here, let me get that for you...." He brushed at some of the mud on the back of Ezra's coat, smearing it into a large dark stain all across the shoulders that was the only place untouched by mud. It had looked bad before but there was no saving that coat now.
"Whoops," Josiah said and shrugged. "Sorry."
Once again Ezra reminded me of a cat, this time of one trying to catch its own tail, as he tried every which way to see over his shoulder and down the back of his coat. I had already laughed at him once today so I tried not to even smile this time. It was hard.
"What? What did you-" Ezra started to say. Then his mouth clamped shut and he got an unholy gleam in his eye. "I expect that this expression of regret will extend into paying for the cleaning of my coat."
"Oh sure," Josiah said and then paused for a short while before he continued, "If we ever make it back, of course. Everyone better look where you're stepping from now on."
Ezra looked like he wanted to say something but then thought the better of it and just shook his head instead. I got him to borrow a dry shirt from me and waited until he had changed out of his wet coat and into a dry jacket. We both kept our silence as we followed Josiah up through the woods towards the grave.
~~ Vin ~~
I blinked. There was a light above me. I blinked again but it didn't go away. It slowly came to me that it must be daylight. Somewhere way up there was a small opening and I could see the sky through it. Seeing that, I could feel something loosening in my chest so I could breathe freely again. I no longer had to bear the weight of the whole mountain.
Must have slept some but not enough, still felt bone weary. I closed my eyes and rested for a while and in my mind I went back to Sorrows and Jeb's cabin. It was real dark in there but I could see light shining in from the outside. Heard children laughing and looking out the window I could see them running around. I put my hand on the door to go out and ask who they were but it was stuck real hard, almost like there was something on the other side keeping it shut. I looked down. There was a crack underneath the door with white light coming through. No shadow fell through that crack, nothing moved on the other side, but I could feel something there. Not the children, something else. Just waiting there. For me. The crack somehow got wider as I was looking at it and something was pushed through it from the outside. My harmonica. Hadn't even known it was gone. It was all black and strange looking but mine without a doubt. I bent down to pick it up but as I reached towards it the blackness turned into a swarm of flies that crawled over my hand, up my arm, all over my face-
I drew a deep breath and stared into the dark rock by my side. Was I awake? I tried to move and my leg hurt something fierce when I shifted just the slightest bit. Bruises protested all along my back and my ribs spoke up too. Didn't feel like they were broken, I knew that much, but they hurt some. Yep, I was awake.
I was also wet. There was water running down the wall beside me and pooling in the small hollows on the ledge underneath my head. Snow must be melting outside and it was pouring in through the cracks in the mountain. I cupped my hand against the rock and let the water trickle down till it filled my palm. My hand was shaking so I spilled almost half of what I had gathered before I could swallow it. The mouthful that was left tasted faintly of metal and earth but it was cool and fresh and the best damned drink I've ever had.
Daylight and water... I could stay here comfortably for a long time now. If it hadn't been for my leg. That was getting worse. Could feel the pulse throbbing underneath the bandanna and it felt hot- hell, it felt like I was on fire. Didn't need to see the wound to know it was turning bad. The fever would get me before long, just like it had ma.
I looked up at the small patch of blue so far up above. Now I could at least die with my eyes towards the sky. That thought gave me comfort.
Every time I moved a bolt of pain shot through my body so I tried not to move too much. My mind was starting to drift and then I think I slept for a while and when I woke I wasn't sure how much time had passed.
The light above seemed as strong as when I'd closed my eyes but something was different. Someone was watching me. He was sitting just a few feet away and dangling his legs over the ledge. I knew him.
I was dreaming, I had to be.
"Chanu," I whispered. He turned to look at me and I could see his eyes glow yellow in the gloomy light.
"No," he said. "I am not Chanu. I took this form that is known to you because I wanted to talk to you the way my brother has."
I wondered if it was Coyote again but somehow I didn't think it was. I can't explain it better than that it didn't feel like it was Coyote.
"Why?" I asked.
"I wanted to see what my brother finds so interesting."
His brother? Who was he talking about? Coyote?
"Yes," he answered as if I had said it out loud, which I knew I hadn't. "I want you all gone. None of your kind will ever touch this small valley ever again, I won't allow it. You do not belong here. This is our place."
"I've never taken anything in here that wasn't freely given," I said. "I'd leave if I could."
I'd never wished more for my words to come true than at that moment. I think he knew that for he softened up a bit.
"You speak true," he said. "That is why I've let you live. And for the wolf."
It took a while, but then I thought I knew what he meant. "The blind one?"
"Yes." He smiled at me. "You surprised me that time. The kindness you showed will be returned. Coyote brought you here. I've brought the others."
"What others?" Must be getting slow, the only thing I could think about was that there weren't anyone who knew where I was.
"The six who are like you."
That almost made me laugh.
"They ain't nothin' like me," I told him.
"When the wind moves through the grass the blades of grass all move together, even if they do not look alike. They all move for the same reason. So it is with you too."
"Yeah - I guess ..." I broke off and coughed. My mouth felt as dry as the desert. It felt so real, not like a dream at all. Just talking was wearing me out. I couldn't last long like this.
"Am I gonna last long enough for them to find me?"
He didn't answer right away and that told me what I wanted to know.
"I can't tell you that. I brought them here so they could find you. If they do then you can all leave. I can not interfere more than I have."
"Cain't or won't?" Had to close my eyes for just a second there.
When he didn't say anything I looked up and found that I was alone on the ledge again. I wished they would just leave me be, all of them. Especially Coyote.
"But that would be no fun, Mr Tanner," I heard Ezra say right near me and found him sitting where Chanu had just been. "And Wolf was wrong. You are not like any of them."
"Ain't I?"
"You say you are?"
I was tired. Didn't want to talk no more. But Coyote was still curious.
"Tell me Mr Tanner... are you afraid?" he said.
"No," I answered him truthfully. I had never feared death.
He looked thoughtful.
"You expected something like his?"
"Yeah," I said and it was true. As much as I had seen death I had never been fooled into thinking that it wouldn't happen to me like some men did. And I had always expected to die alone, much like I lived. This was just ... a bit sooner than I'd thought.
"Is it all you thought it would be?"
"No," I tried to laugh but had to break off since my ribs protested. No, I sure hadn't expected to die alone inside a mountain like this. I had expected to die out there, underneath the boundless sky, fading away until my white bones turned to dust.
A death like that wouldn't have been too bad but a death like this would have to do, I reckoned.
Not that I was ready to die yet. I had changed. I had people I cared about now and for the first time I thought about what it would be like to die among friends. And my soul was once again split in two, one part longing for the friendship of the town and the other part longing for the freedom of the open plains. Now I had neither.
"I told you we might meet up again before the end," Coyote said.
"Ain't there yet."
"But you soon will be. Too bad, I was quite starting to like you. Do you remember our conversation a few days ago, the one about choices?"
"Ain't gonna choose," I told him. But I had almost run out of time and he knew it too.
"You don't have to. It's been decided for you after all." He sounded almost sad as he went on, "I told you it would. You know it now, Vin Tanner. Wild things belong in the wild. In every way and forever."
I think he left me then or maybe I woke up. I was no longer sure of anything except that I felt very alone as I lay there in the darkness.
I win, Coyote whispered in my head.
I could feel something in my hand. Where had it come from? I clutched at it, felt the edges and the smooth surface. A playing card. It was too dark to see the markings but I didn't need the light, I knew what it was.
The Ace of Spades. Ezra's card ... and Coyote's.