Ray nodded, pulled the cork with his teeth, and emptied the bottle in a matter of two minutes, drinking the cheap whiskey the way he’d drunk water a few minutes ago.
He pulled the saddle from his horse, hobbled him, and rubbed him down with handfuls of dried prairie grass. He let the horse drink again and then stumbled over to the fire pit.
“We got any grub?”
“How ’bout the biggest, thickest buffalo steak you ever seen? Think that’ll do ya?”
“Oh, I’d jus’ say so. Yep—I’d jus’ say so. Get sumabitches cookin’.”
“It’ll put up some smoke.”
“Screw the smoke. Git that shaggy over the fire.” It was an order, not a request.
Ray dropped his saddle and lay down, his head resting against the seat.
“You get through?” Will asked as he snapped a lucifer into flame and lit the kindling he’d arranged earlier.
“ ’Course I did. Wasn’t no pleasure ride, though.” He sat up, reached down to his boots, and unstrapped the pair of flat-roweled spurs he was wearing on his heels. He threw them, one at a time, as far out into the prairie as he could. “I hated to hook my good horse the way I done, but I’ll tell you this: there’s still a bunch of hostiles out there. Anyways, we made it. That’s what counts. All the wires went out. I stood right over the monkey as he sent ’em.”
Will was quiet, feeding the fire. He’d washed the meat and wrapped it in his slicker and wet it every time he thought about it—which was often.
Before long he had a pair of bison steaks skewered on the cleaning rod from his rifle kit.
The scent reached Ray, who’d been dozing. “How long?” he asked.
“Not long. Ten minutes, maybe.”
Ray moved closer to Will, the fire, and the meat. “How’d you come by this feast?” he asked.
Will rolled a cigarette and explained the whole package: his exploratory trip, the dead Indian, Wampus’s howl, the gimp shaggy—all of it.
“You give ol’ Wampus the heart?”
“Yeah. Liver, too.”
“Good. Real good. Ya know, that howlin’ don’t surprise me none. See, a wolf’ll howl like that after he defeats a enemy in front of his pack—or when he’s really proud of what he done. He won’t howl when they pull down a deer or even a elk. A bear, they will, if the bear was sizable ’nuff an’ a fighter.”
“Why this renegade, then?”
“I dunno. Why does the sun come up? Why does a fat baby fart? Thing is, don’t never try to predict what a wolf or a tight cross like Wampus’ll do.”
“But Wampus—”
“But Wampus, my ass! Wampus ain’t no different! Look, I had a friend named Bridger—another trapper an’ bounty hunter. He raised him up the sweetest li’l wolf bitch you ever seen. She purely loved that man, followed him, learned everything he wanted to teach her, slept next to him at night. She’d tear hell outta any man or animal threatened Bridger.” Ray was quiet then.
“And . . . ?” Will asked.
“I swung by Bridger’s cabin one spring a couple years later, ’spectin grub an’ a bottle. What I found was my frien’ ripped into bits an’ pieces, liver an’ heart gone, a arm here an’ another there, tool an’ eggs gone, eyes tore out . . . an’ so forth. So you listen to me good, Will Lewis: Wampus ain’t a puppy dog. One day he’ll turn. I flat-out
Will stared into the fire for several uncomfortable moments. “Looks like the meat’s ready,” he said.
The crippled buffalo was even better than the men expected—and the aroma of it cooking made them expect a lot. Because he was barely older than a yearling, he hadn’t yet developed much muscle that would make his meat tough. And being a gimp slowed him way down, always trailing the herd, spending more time grazing, building up that sweet marbling meat lovers savored.
Buffalo meat isn’t radically different from beef, although it has a distinctive, slightly gamey flavor that makes it yet more appealing to those who are fond of it.
After they’d eaten much more than they needed—including Wampus, who worked off his feed burying knuckle bones and other choice bits and morsels—Will leaned back against his saddle and built a smoke. Ray made up some coffee and set the tin can aside to cool to a handling temperature. He picked the can up with a pair of small branches; both began to smoke as he moved the “coffee pot.”
“Oughta get you a tin can an’ we wouldn’t have to pass this one back an’ forth,” Ray said. “Ain’t that I’m complainin’—there’s nobody else I’d rather share my fine coffee with, mind you—but it’d make things easier.”
“Yeah. I’ll do that. Funny thing—any moron saddle tramp can cook up a shaggy steak, but it takes a special touch to brew real good coffee. An’ I’ll say this: you make the strongest, best-tastin’ java I ever had the damn good luck to drink.”
“Well thanks, Will. You ain’t generally one to hand out compliments.”
“No, I ain’t. Sometimes they’re deserved, though.”
The men watched the embers of their cook fire fade from white to red to almost black. Wampus, asleep next to Will, whimpered, and his front paws scampered a bit, as if reaching out for something.
“Chasin’ a rabbit, I ’spect,” Will said.
“More likely sniffin’ after a wolf bitch, doin’ his best to climb on her. Them stud wolves like their ladies a awful lot.”
“Ya know,” Will said, “I don’t know that I’m sure ’bout how much wolf blood flows in Wampus. I don’t doubt there’s some—maybe a good bit—but I never seen nothin’ wolflike ’bout him.”
“Well, lemme count for you: One—that howl. No dog howls like that. ’Course a blue tick has a howl that’ll carry farther an’ clearer than a wolf’s, but that’s a complete different thing. Two—the way he hunts—hell, Wampus could find and fetch in a jackrabbit in the middle of a ocean. And three—the way he pulls a man down an’ kills him dead quiet in a heartbeat. No dog ever borned can do it like that.”
Will rolled another cigarette. “You might could have some points, I’ll admit,” he said after lighting his smoke with a lucifer. “But look at that critter, Ray. He’s got the heart of a pussycat an’ . . . an’ he loves me. He purely does. He coulda took off the second I got that wire from ’round his neck, but he stayed on with me. Why? Gratitude! Gratitude an’ love. Ain’t a wolf ever lived or will ever live that showed them two things to a man.
“I know you know wolves, Ray. I ain’t disputin’ that fact. Thing is, though, in any breed of animals there’s one or two that’s way different from the others, that goes sideways from his breed. I’d say Wampus is that one—the strange one. Wouldn’t you agree with that?”
Will waited for a response. His only answer was a grinding, nasal snore. Ray was sound asleep. Will rolled another cigarette, smoked it, tossed the nub into the moribund fire, and slept.
The next morning Ray came up on Will, who’d walked a couple hundred yards out into the prairie. “What’re you doin’?” Ray asked.
Will seemed to scramble for words. “I . . . uhh . . . jus’ thought I’d take a little walk ’fore the sun gets to work. Yeah—a little walk.”
Ray sighed. “If any of those boys got the wires yet, it’d be a miracle. We ain’t goin’ to see no one for two, three days at the earliest. You standin’ out here like a totem pole ain’t gonna draw ’em in any sooner.”
“I s’pose.”
“Anyways, Wampus’ll let us know if anyone’s comin’ toward us. Look, c’mon back. I got some coffee brewin’.”
They sat close together, passing the can back and forth until it was empty.
“Wanna play some cards?” Ray asked. “I got a deck in my saddlebag.”
“Ain’t but two of us. Two fellas can’t play poker.”
“Sure they can. We jus’ deal a hand and set it down an’ play ’gainst each other.”
“I’m not much on gamblin’, Ray. I never saw no sense to it.”
“I didn’t say nothin’ ’bout money. We jus’ play for pertend. Thing is, you can’t bet a hundred on a pair of
