Where walks the Coyote

Note: This is story/short/semi-short that I ran out of steam on, got into the Canyons and got lost along with the character, part of the problem was that the setting got lost with where I wanted to go with it. I was reading a lot of Tony Hillerman at the time.

Where the Coyote Walks

            Sarah Crow twisted the eagle’s feather in the fingers of her right hand; the brown and white colors sliding between the red of her skin. She looked again down across the rocky expanse of the Deep Water Canyon and considered where the trail would take her next. Her gaze wondered from rock to rock until it returned to the feather in her hand. She stared at it a little surprised to see it still there, a token of the spirit totem, like the one that lay coolly silver between her breasts under her khaki shirt. That eagle hung by a leather thong. Was she waiting for the feather to talk to her or point her way down through this canyon?

            Sarah had been a tracker for the tribal council for the last three years. She had taken the place of her father when he had taken the long walk. She felt that the council would never accept her like they had her father. After all she was a woman and she lacked her father’s bulk, calm steady hands and quiet demeanor that had made him the dependable tracker he had been. She looked downed at her own hands as she remembered her father’s calloused and cracked hands so large around her own as they had watched her brother leave to fight in the white man’s war across the mountains and seas so very far away. Her brother, Littlehorn, has taken the long walk before he could return; vanishing into a jungle and all that remained fit in a small urn that was mailed back the following year.

            Sarah had become her father’s son; she had to become the tracker for the tribe until such time as she could bear a son to replace her. Half her time had been spent out in the canyons with her father learning the wandering ways and singing the hunting songs; the other half spent listening to her mother and sisters at the fire pit. Her mother had fought at first with her father over this crazy notion but he had won her over as he finished each argument by pointing at her two younger sisters. Her mother had relented but only during the day, Sarah had to double time in the evenings learning the maiden way in half the time that her sisters would.

            After she had grown, she had thrown herself into her father’s trade if only to escape the pressure of making the bridal wreath and finding a brave for which to place it at his feet. The first thing was, of course, was that Sarah Crow disliked the braves her age to the point of hate in part due to the ridicule that she had to endure at their hands for taking on the coveted tracker trade of her father. The constant teasing over her childhood had led to bullying and threats from her would be suitors. The end result was that Sarah despised the braves and rejected all that had previously made fun of her.

            Rumors had grown with each rejection as each rejected man added to the growing gossip collecting around the young woman. At first, she was withdrawn and picky, then choosy and the suitor must prove himself worthy. Then it grew ugly as the gossip turned to frigidness and homosexual leanings until even the girls rejected her. This was in part due to the fact that Sarah was taller than most girls and almost the most beautiful maiden in the tribe which explained why all the braves had tried and kept trying to court her. Jealousy and rejection fueled their outrage at her isolation. Sarah found herself isolated from the tribe, although now held in respect as she had taken up the spear while her father began the long walk. At least, her mother would say, your father hadn’t lived to see this disgrace. But Sarah couldn’t care less as it left her more time to track and the situation only presented problem when there was a sing or dance.

            Even her own sisters purported the gossip about her odd situation, making up stories to exacerbate the rumors like Sarah ran with wolves. Or better yet, she went out into the canyons to meet her secret lover, which varied from a witch to a wolf to a Navajo Wolf which was a combination of both to other even more industriously thought out and often spurred ridiculous efforts to top the former rumor. She would come home and listen to her mother fuss and her sisters giggle at the dinner fire. She endured it until one night the story got out that a witch woman had been seen kissing Ms. Crow at Widow’s Rock and Sarah had had it.

            She came home and over her mother’s threats and then pleadings had blocked the Hogan door and captured first one sister and then the next and cut their braids off. The girls to their credit had howled like coyotes and cried bitter tears as the locks fell swearing they would never speak such lies again. Her mother was devastated and made a move to grab the broom saying that her father would have never stood this travesty. Her mother had then brought up her brother until Sarah brandished the sheep shears at her and she had sat down with a thump and a whimper.

            Sarah was not done though; she left her whimpering mother and her sobbing sisters and went to town. She found the braves with the other girls in the town circle. She picked out the biggest hunk of a brave, one named Hawkfall and walked up to him and asked him bold face about the witch woman rumor. Hawkfall laughed in her face which was below his own and flexed his muscles. He said what about it and placed his hand on her right breast- probably by mistake in an effort to push her away out of his space. At twenty years old, Sarah was fit and trim, with the wiry hard muscle of her father hidden under the smooth mud red skin of her mother.

            The shock on his face mirrored the outrage in hers as she had grabbed his thumb and twisting it over and dislocating it as she used her free hand to jab Hawkfall in the face about three times before the large boy hit the ground his noise bloody and his right eye squinting as the bruising started to swell. She stared down at the boy at her feet, kneeling with his arm ajar from his body where she still held his thumb at a sickening angle. She hastily let it go and Hawkfall fell over to cradle his injured hands and whimper. Sarah was shocked at her own violence but the whispering stopped the apology in her throat.

            Without a word she turn to Diana Greenfeather, arguably her biggest rival in the looks department, as she stood behind Tom Longshanks her fiancé. Diana’s eyes grew larger as Sarah strode up to them. Tom looked at her a nervous smile playing on his lips. Sarah put her arms around his neck and kissed the startled brave long and hard as Diana gasped then screamed in horror as Tom did nothing to break Sarah’s embrace. After what seamed a season of sweet warm rain Sarah broke the kiss and stepped back and wiped her mouth. Diana came round Tom in a fit, her black eyes shining with tears and her face scrunched in anger, Sarah considered for a moment kissing the girl as well- but discarded it as too much. Maybe another time, she thought as she turned her back on Diana who had just opened her mouth to speak.

            Sarah noticed with a widening smile that the other girls were now in front of their chosen braves fearing the same reprisal. She strode swiftly from the town circle as the silence of the braves followed her then Diana’s screech rose as she toke her anger out on poor Tom who stood there in dumbfounded silence wondering why he hadn’t ever tried his luck with Sarah Crow.

            A year had passed since then and the rumors had moved on, mostly because her sisters would not respond to inquiries about Sarah except to look about fearfully when asked and avidly denied ever saying anything about saying or knowing anything at all. Their hair had grown back finally, but Sarah could not touch the shears or even a knife without one or the other or both bolting out of the Hogan door. Even her mother was kinder in the few words she spoke to Sarah; a new respect in her eyes betrayed her feelings of loss and hopelessness where Sarah was concerned. She had given up Sarah ever marrying or bearing children and now focused all her fussing on her other daughters.

            Tom had never been given a chance to even talk to Sarah as Diana or her entourage kept him away from any social interaction. They spread a web of closely whispered lies about Sarah being a witch, in fact the same witch woman seen previously by Hawkfall, who had seen Sarah shed the witch skin and assume her own and this had caused him to make the mistake he had made earlier. These girls would give Sarah long looks but cluster into a pack if Sarah even glanced their way. The singers finally announced that Sarah was not a witch nor would they do any sings on her behalf for the tribe. This proclamation ended all but the wildest speculation by the younger generations, when confronted by any such talk, the older Dene would scoff and say the Singers said otherwise and turn to more interesting talk like the weather.

            Hawkfall recovered his boisterous demeanor but always cringed when Sarah came around him- like a beaten dog tucking its tail between its legs. Tribal life became a needless routine and Sarah spent more and more time away from the towns of the tribe. There turned out to be much work a tracker must undertake for the tribe. The council, of course, knowing of Sarah’s reputation, saw fit to keep her away and busy as much as possible. What was more was the fact that Sarah was the best tracker they had or ever had, even better than her father had been.

            Sarah found herself looking at the feather between thumb and forefinger again, as these thoughts sifted through her mind. She gazed back down the rocky, rubble strewn slope at the path winding its way back in the canyon land. Her quarry was below her, she had tracked it here. The tribal council had been clear, there were to be no mistakes this time. The other tracks had let it get away- though Sarah knew it had evaded them. This was no ordinary quarry, this was the Coyote.

            Not a coyote, but the Coyote. She was sure of it, although the council chose to close its eyes and oppose her opinion. It is a wolf they said- “if not an ordinary wolf, then a Navajo Wolf.” There was no way that the elders would believe that one of the old folk walked amongst them again. But Sarah was sure- as sure as if Eagle had swooped down from the clouds lightning in its beak and sung her into rain. The tribal elders had laughed at her determination, why would a fairy tale come to life after all this time and walk with the Dene? Why would one of the most powerful spirits of the Native American people come back when its people no longer needed him? Where had Coyote been during the genocide or the long walk? Why now?

            Sarah had no answers to their questions and claims, so they had scoffed at her conclusions of the quarry. The other trackers seeing her shame and demotion in the council’s eyes had quickly claimed it must be a wolf- a large smart one that had simply eluded the regular traps at the time. Just luck, they said, all the while laughing at her shame. Besides, the council insisted this quarry was much too big to be a coyote anyway.

            Yes, Sarah had stated that evening two nights passed, the paw tracks were larger then those of the coyote and too far apart as well, but what else would know how to climb over fences and walls? What else would ignore a trap and brave trackers and hunters to slip into the village center Hogan and remove the twelve feather hoop of the Talking God from the central Hogan meant for Sarah’s cousin’s coming of age sing. What kind of animal could be capable of such a feat?

            The tribal council had fallen back on the die hard belief in witchcraft. It must have been a Navajo Wolf; only a witch could have done this. Sarah had foolishly laughed at the old men- why couldn’t she think before responding- and asked what the difference between witchcraft and religion was when it came to the theft. The elders had haughtily informed her that a witch was still a man…for the most part. And a spirit out of legend something else entirely. Then they had sent here out with the other trackers to find this Wolf.

            Sarah had rued her words as the other trackers had laughed at her dishonor and fall from First Tracker. She must now labor among the other trackers. The First Tracker had esteem above other trackers, given the hardest and most difficult tasks to accomplish. First Trackers always were given the high seat at sings and dances. Now because of her quick tongue she had been demoted to labor among the lesser trackers who all openly coveted the First tracker role.

            She had become increasingly moody as she began looking at the tracks and remains left in the wake of the theft. She had to wait in line (at the end) while the six other trackers sifted through the scene so by the time that Sarah got to it there was little left to look at. As she sorted her mood darkened as her conclusions returned again and again to the stories of her father about the Coyote. She took to mumbling and grumbling about it in company until she was shunned by all in general fearing that Sarah Crow would blow up soon and take all around her with it.

            Finally when the other trackers had left following a set of tracks that they believed to be the Wolf’s, Sarah had walked out here to the canyon rim and fumed until she had noticed the eagle feather on the rock at her feet. Now she stood here a day later, calmed by the presence of the feather in her fingers and the certain knowledge that the trail of the thief would take down into the canyons of her people’s past and into her own untold future.

            The Sun reached its zenith by the time Sarah gathered her gear and began her descent into the shadows of the canyon land. Her gear consisted of an outfitter’s pack complete with bedroll, box of ammo, change of clothes, matches, bundle of kindling, lighter, basic issue rations, compass, medicine pouch, two maps- one AAA and one of the night sky. She also had a small tarp, water bottles and a small tin pot. Strapped to the side of the back pack was a short leather quiver with arrows and a small unstrung handmade recurve bow.

            Slung on one shoulder she had her father’s Winchester rifle that had been handed down with a new telescopic sight attached. Sarah absently wondered if her father would approve- probably not as much as the bone handled knife that rode her hip that was his as well. She wore her loose jeans and hiking boots along with a tank and button up khaki shirt over that. Her moccasins hung loosely under the pack by their strings.

            Sarah carefully picked her way down between the rocks finding the lone trail into the winding mouth of Footfall Canyon. The trial wound down along one wall of the canyon and Sarah was quickly engulfed in its shadow. She saw no sign of tracks but had expected none since the ground was mostly rock anyway. The temperature cooled swiftly to a lukewarm heat as she descended into the darker shadows. She walked in silence without pausing until she reached the canyon floor and began her search for sign along the sandy bottom. There were sparse vegetation scattered in bunches along the walls of the canyon, Sarah started there but found no scent or droppings larger than a kangaroo rats. Carefully she walked the sands but no tracks revealed them selves. She continued to search until the sweat ran down her shoulders soaking her outer shirt.

            Finally she gave it up and found a shadowed cool rock to drop her gear on. She stripped off the outer shirt, pausing to consider loosing the tank too. Too close to the village yet, she decided and sat down to fish out a water bottle from her pack. As she drank she sat back and reexamined her surroundings. All evidence pointed to this being the most likely entrance to the canyons that the thief would have taken. What defied all understanding was why the thief had run for the back country rather than make for the white man’s refuge of the cities in the opposite direction. Any human thief would run in search of motor vehicles and cities to loose the trackers in quickly. Any Native American thief would have sought out another part of the reservation or another tribal land unfamiliar to her people to make good its escape.

            Instead the thief had come into the canyon lands where little to no one lived or went, where there were no towns or dwellings, no roads of any measure and little water to survive on. There were more hospitable less populated places on the reservation to boot.

The thief had come here, Sarah was sure of it. All she had to do now was find some sign or track that she had been right coming here and that the other trackers had been wrong.

            As she sat there pondering this, her eyes fell upon a bit of gray caught in some briars to the left of the rock. Sarah squinted hard at it until her eyes blurred and she was forced to relax and let her vision clear. As it did the fur became sharp in her vision and with it the knowledge she had found sign at last. She scrambled to her feet, gathered up her gear and carefully crossed to where the briars were. Sure enough there were several bits of coyote fur caught in a knot of brambles. She pulled them free and was amazed by the softness of them. Sarah would have thought that the fur would be coarse and gritty, but this fur was soft like baby’s hair and fine like silk thread.

            As she squatted examining the fur, a partial paw print revealed itself right below the bramble. The first thing she noticed was how large the print was. It was as large as a man’s foot- driving home her theory that this was no ordinary thief or coyote. Second, was that the print gave a clear direction that this creature had gone done deep into the darker depths of the canyon lands

            As she stood, her rational mind forced her to reason that the paw print had been made by a man who either was wearing the paws as shoes and had gotten careless near the brambles. Or rather, it was a man who had place the fur and print there intentionally. Why-to scare off pursuers with the idea of a giant coyote or perhaps the Coyote being down amongst the hot rocks along the canyon floor. This reasoning concreted itself in her mind as she crossed the canyon floor and started to make her way deeper into the darkness of the shadows of Footfall Canyon. No man was scaring her off of this track, she would prove that she, Sarah Crowe, daughter of first tracker Jim Crowe, was worthy of his title and what was more the tribes respect.

           

            Her footfalls echoed between the narrow walls of the canyon proving its namesake. Sarah paused at the bottom of the last turn of the canyon before it widened into the hollow basin that joined Footfall to the other parts of the canyon lands. Here was one of the ancestral borders of the Denata- the people- her people.  After she crossed the basin she would entire the lost lands as her father called them.

            The Peublo and Hopi shared domain on part of them and the white man claimed the rest as part of his national parks. The white man did not come there- at least Sarah had never heard of a white man seen in those canyons. The Hopi had hunted there before the long walk but no more as they had tales of the ghost that wondered there. The Pueblo that had lived there before the coming of the white man had long since disappeared from the Cliffside dwellings leaving only fragments of who they had been or where they had gone. The surviving Pueblo would not go there out of some kind of fear and respect for the event that had caused so many of the people to vanish without a trace.

            The Denata occasionally entered the lands tracking or hunting but to Sarah’s knowledge only her father had gone into the desolation much. Now it was her turn. With a deep breath she strode out into the opening a stared out across the basin that was known as the Moon Mother’s Milk Bowl. It got its name from the white sands of its bottom and the white walls that surrounded it. It was as if a thousand years ago a great river had fallen into a grand whirlpool carving out this basin before racing on south into her people’s lands.

            When she was seven years old, Sarah’s father had told her a story about the Coyote. According to her father, and Sarah later learned- only according to her father as the others in the tribe did not agree with the story at all; the Coyote still walked among the Denai. He looked at his daughter and gestured her for her to come hold his rifle and sit by him as they looked out across the canyons from her father’s favorite rock.

            “Sarah, my heart, I am going to tell you one of the seven stories that my father told me and his father told and so it has been back to when the Coyote first came among the Denai. You see, Coyote has always been the free spirit of all of the peoples of these lands. Coyote occurs like many of the other spirits as a single harmonious link to our brother and sister tribes that live next to us and far away across the Great Plains and mountains.

            Coyote is often alone in his actions from the other gods and spirits; Coyote does things that only he knows to be true- the Talking God might know it but whether he tells that truth to Coyote or allows Coyote to learn of it is anyone’s guess. Coyote continues to follow his own course regardless of what others believe or say of him. My story, our story is about this course that Coyote walks.

            During the brighter days before the Spaniards came looking for gold or the white man came bearing his empty promises, Coyote walked openly among the Denai. Many of the People saw and often met with Coyote. Our own forefathers learned the tracking way from Coyote. These were good times.

            But they came to a close when the Spaniard came to the canyons looking for golden cities and fountains of youth. Such silliness in men who claimed to be civilized, and such brutality and desperation from these same men who failed to find their hearts desire. These men of metal and strange ways soon began to tempt and sway the weaker Denai with their talk of money and possessions and power. Some of the Denai lost their way and would no longer walk in beauty, they chose instead to walk in darkness with the Spaniards. Coyote began to walk less amongst our people as they forgot the old ways and songs of the Talking God and Listening Woman.

            When the first white men came, it seemed as if they had been sent by the Talking God to remind us of the ways which we were losing. They came with honeyed words and promises of community. Several even desired to become a part of the People, and while most were pure of intention there were those who had come to walk in darkness alongside the other lost Denai.

            Coyote came to our village one night long ago and warned us that death and slaughter would come from these white men and Spaniards but there were many who would not see Coyote and more who would not hear Coyote. Coyote laughed at us and said we would walk away from all we were and had ever been to another world where nothing would make any sense. Those that did hear Coyote denied his words having known nothing but the Canyons and the Mesas of the Land all their lives.

            Coyote said that if our people changed their minds, that Coyote would lead us to a new world one that was safe from the scourge these white spirits and Spaniards could not reach. Coyote said the white man and Spaniard could walk a thousand days and not reach it, could sail a thousand nights and not find it. Coyote said that it was the only way to escape what was coming if only we would walk with him.

            The People laughed, many of them that could still see or hear Coyote. But there were a handful that did not laugh and saw and heard Coyote and their hearts were troubled. These were the lands that Talking God and Listening Woman had provided for us; this was our intended home until the coming of the fourth world. How could the people leave with a spirit that was not even a major part of their religion?

            Those that listened to the Coyote’s words took them deep into their hearts and pondered them long. When the Coyote returned, only a few would walk with him. The others that had heard decided to watch and wait since many of the People would not go. Our Great Grandfather was one of the few who chose to walk with Coyote.

            Coyote came to Great Grandfather and said”

            “Silent Stalker, you must not walk with me, you must wait and watch and remember. I need you to watch over the Denai and mind them of the old ways. There will be others not many will see or hear me but a few will. You and them must keep with the People if the Denata are to survive the coming darkness.

            So Silent Stalker stayed when the six families of the Mud and Slow-Talking clans walked away with Coyote never to be seen or heard from again. Silent Stalker watched the Spaniards driven mad by their greed turn from friend to monster as they picked up every stone in their mad quest for gold. Silent Stalker guided those Denai who would listen around these mad men and kept them safe until the white men drove the Spaniards out of the lands.

            The People said “look the white men are surely better than what Coyote said they would be! Let us embrace them as brothers and we will share with them our abundance.”

But Coyote’s words rang true as the Catholic bells of the softer Spaniards, the white men were as greedy as the Spaniard. Their greed was not for something as obvious as gold but more subtle- first they wanted our lands, then they killed the game and then they wanted everything. Control was their true source of greed. The white man wanted to control us.

They forced the people from their homes and made them walk along with other tribes to distant lands to live far from the customs and songs of the Denai.

            Silent Stalker kept his word guiding and protecting those who would see and hear what he said so that they would continue to walk in beauty forgetting nothing and not leaving the lands of the Denata. Silent Stalker and the singers and (medicine men) kept the ways and songs of the People safe. Others who had heard and seen decided to fight the white man but many lost, and joined the other lost Denai in the Long Walk to the other lands.

            Silent Walker kept his word and passed the Coyote’s command to his son. Then he took his long awaited walk with Coyote to this new world. And so it has been, that each other our father’s since, Sarah, has tracked the canyons and the lands of the People keeping the Tracking Way until it is his turn to walk with the Coyote into the next world.

So too it will be your way since I have no other son to take up my rifle and track the game through the canyons. One day I will walk with Coyote into the canyon lands and to the next world as my father and his father has done before him. I hope Coyote will accept you and your son as suitable replacements for me and my father before me.”

            So, her father had told her the seventh and first story he would tell her as she grew up under his guidance. Each story would be told from that rock where the eagles soared, for that was her father secret name, Eagle Soaring, and this was his secret place where he came to sing.

            Sarah looked up instinctively to the west towards her father’s rock far off to the right along the rim of the bowl. She smiled at the memories of her father’s stories told as the two of them sat there. Each time she would cradle her father’s rifle as he taught her of the ways and the songs that she would need to know to become first tracker.

            The sun traveled across the sky as she walked across the Bowl following the now easy to spot paw prints into the soft sands and loam in Mother’s Milk. Sarah tracked the progress of her shadow now more than the prints in the sands. The almost blinding ground hid the tracks from her save where her shadow covered them. She felt as if she knew where to walk, as if she was walking her own long walk into the next life.

            Finally, she sensed the mass of rock as much as saw it and she looked up at the weathered stones of the other side of the Bowl towering above her. She glanced down at the ground at her feet and saw the print at her toe then nothing beyond. She grinned at the obvious thought that the Coyote had spoken to her. He might be saying- now the easy part is over, Sarah Crow, now you must show me what you are really made of.

            Sarah sighed feeling the weight of her pack on her sweat soaked shirt and damp jeans. Even her toes felt squishy. First I must find shade and rest and dry out she thought as she climbed over several mid size boulders to a small cleft and sat down.

            Sarah began by stripping off her shirt and bra and spread them out on the rock within easy reach. Then she unlaced her boots and removed her socks wiggling her toes in the fresh airy relief of exposure. She settled her pack and leaned back against it in the shade, wishing she had a towel to wipe herself or plenty of water to pour over her head and chest. The eagle totem was hot in her cleavage; she reached up and removed it from her chest then held it in front of her face pondering its purpose.

            One of the singers had presented it to her at her coming of age Sing. She had said nothing but simply pressed it into her palm before ambling off to rejoin the others in the Hogan. She had stared at it then until her father had come up and closed her fingers around it with a knowing smile.

            “It’s the symbol of your quest, my child.” He had said before walking her over to the dancing ring and the other girls who had come of age as well.

            It was the look in the Singers eyes that had held the wonder of the silver totem all these years. The singer’s eyes had been grey with white flecks and they had looked deep into Sarah’s own as the singer’s hand had found her own. The woman had never looked for her hand; she had simply known where it was. She often found those eyes looking out of other faces since then. Sarah had never gotten the name of that singer or seen her again. Sometimes she wondered if she had made the whole thing up, but then she would remember the coldness of the silver in her hand and those gray eyes looking into her soul.

            After a time had passed, Sarah sat up and pulled on her shirt, stuffing the bra into her pack then slipping her socks and boots back on. Finished dressing she took a ball cap out of her pack, a Atlanta Braves cap, and sat it low on her head tucking most of her hair under it. Like much of what she carried it had been her father’s. The red Indian had faded along with the blue background. She shoulder her back, gathered her tools and walked down the wall of the cliff until she came to the narrow opening that offered exit to the Bowl.