McKean S01 A Dangerous Breed (6 page)

“But not against Indians?” I asked.

“You were right about something you said, Fin Morton. When Lewis and Clark came here in 1805, that was a transformation time. We greeted whites in peace but they brought us disease, booze, and boarding schools where we forgot our old ways. Maybe Woyotl came to bring another change. He was no threat to my kind. We’re poor and we sing all night just like coyotes. But you white folks better watch your backsides. Coyotes are transforming back to the time when animals was people and people was animals.”

“Not any more!” I asserted. “The coydogs will all be killed.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Moses replied. “They’s smart pups. Tanner said his dad killed off the coyotes. He was wrong. Coyotes killed him off. Now the soldiers and helicopters are here to kill off the coydogs. I don’t think so.”

“What a horrid thought,” I muttered, feeling sick.

“Only the land lasts forever,” Moses said. “The land stays while humans and animals come and go. We wash over it like floods, then we dry up.”

McKean mused, “Like the lava and ice floods of prehistory.”

Moses nodded. “Once, Indians flooded the land. Now, white folks flood it. Next, maybe coyotes flood it. People and things come and go but the land stays. Land’s the witness of us all and the only thing that remembers who was here.”

* * * * * * * * * *

We left Moses and began our drive home. Under Salazar’s blitzkrieg, brushfires burned on the horizon and their black smoke rose into the sky and streamed off to the east. When we reached the highway I headed west, for Seattle. After I’d driven a dozen miles with neither of us speaking, McKean chuckled.

“What is there about any of this that’s funny?” I grumbled.

“Answer: not much.” McKean’s smile diminished somewhat. “But I was just thinking about Curman. Talk about a man being consumed by his work!”

I hit the brakes and slowed down when I saw a small, scrawny coyote pup trotting westward in the ditch.

“Look at its white face!” McKean exclaimed as we paralleled it for a way. “It’s a son of the Death’s-Head bitch!” He called Salazar on his cell phone and Salazar immediately dispatched an airstrike, but the coydog turned away from us and disappeared into the sagebrush.

“So,” I asked with trepidation as a helicopter keyed on our position and began a search for the animal, “is that an F3 hybrid?”

“F3, F4,” murmured McKean. “It really doesn’t matter once you’ve gone beyond two generations. All the traits become thoroughly mixed. An animal looking like that has half a chance to have its mother’s looks but not her Cog27 gene.”

“And the other half a chance?” I asked.

“Guess,” said McKean.

I drove on toward Seattle over open country, watching the helicopter hovering and shrinking with distance in my rear view mirror. I expected to see it fire its missiles at any moment, sending parallel smoke trails of death lancing down on the unfortunate pup. Instead, I watched it diminish into the distance and disappear without firing a shot.