The Totem

FOUR

They headed toward the spot of light. The darkness was all around them now, the truck's lights on, and they were jouncing across the open bumpy ground, the old man with his hands braced on the dashboard. Bodine glanced at him and then ahead. The spot of light was flickering. A fire, and Bodine had to smile. He hadn't thought to tell his boy to build one, but then he had talked to him when it was day, and clearly they would need a thing to aim for.

Bodine saw a patch of smooth ground up ahead and gathered speed, but then he hit a bump he hadn't seen that jounced the old man very hard, and had to slow. The headlights showed the rangeland stretching off beneath them. Up ahead, a rabbit was paralyzed by them. Bodine veered to miss it. Then he picked up speed again.

The light was now distinctly flames, growing as he neared. He saw his boy stand up and walk in front of the fire, his body silhouetted by it. He saw the motorcycle parked beside the fire. The fire was very close before him as he pulled up and he stopped.

He kept the lights on, then stepped down onto the ground. The old man was already out.

The boy walked toward them.

"Anything?" Bodine asked.

The boy just shook his head.

"No animals? No tearing at the carcass?"

"It's been pretty quiet."

"Well, that's something anyhow. You stayed up here the way I told you? You didn't go down, messing any tracks?"

The boy just shook his head again.

"Okay, then. Doc, it's down there in the gully. Careful of the slope."

The old man walked across the glare of the headlights, standing at the edge of the gully. "I can't see much without more light."

Bodine reached beneath the seat to get a high-powered flashlight. He held it, long and heavy, walking toward the old man as he flicked the switch. The light shot out across the range. He dipped it toward the gully, sweeping back and forth until he found the carcass.

"There."

Its back was toward them, just the way it had been when Bodine had come upon it. As much as he could tell, it looked the same.

The old man started down, and Bodine stopped him.

"I don't know. I think the way to do this is to walk up here a ways, then cut across and come down looking on the other side. I want to keep from messing any tracks."

The old man hesitated, looked at him, and nodded. They went where the gully was more narrow, climbing down, the old man needing help to get up on the other side. The ground was hard and rocky. The old man's breath was forced as he got up and straightened.

"You all right?"

"It's nothing. I'm not used to this."

"You sure?"

"I said I'll be all right."

"Okay then."

And they waited. Then the old man had his breath back, and they walked along the top until they stood across from where the headlights and the fire were. Bodine aimed the flashlight into the ditch. The old man didn't speak.

He didn't speak for quite a while.

"All right, now tell me what the hell it was that did that," Bodine said.

"I don't know." The old man cleared his throat. "Right now I couldn't say."

It wasn't that the sight was shocking. He'd seen worse too many times. But the thing just didn't make much sense. Whatever had disemboweled this steer had done so from below and ravaged at the guts. But nothing seemed to have been eaten. The guts were mashed together, chewed and mangled, but the point was they were here. Whatever did this hadn't eaten at the flesh, had only chewed at organs and then left them. He had never seen this-he had never heard about a thing like this before.

The old man saw the flies that crawled upon the guts, smelled the stench that was coming from the gully, shook his head, and turned away. "I just don't get it."

"You're the expert," Bodine said. "Take a guess."

"Well, process of elimination. What would prey upon a steer?"

"I already thought of that. Bobcats. But they don't come down here. Wolves, the same. Coyotes maybe. I even thought it was a cougar. They don't single out the guts, though. Not when they've got flesh to eat."

"And one thing more. It doesn't look like anything's been eaten," the old man said. "What about those tracks you mentioned? Were they any help?"

"I never found them. If they were around, I didn't want them messed before somebody good came out to have a look."

The old man turned, again toward the gully, and he pointed. "Well, I don't know if I'd mess the tracks, but I should go down and have a look."

"You're the expert."

So the old man slowly worked his way down into the gully, Bodine close behind. But there was nothing he could tell.

"The only thing I notice is the blood."

"Or lack of it."

"That's what I mean. A thing like this, there should be lots of blood." The old man thought a moment. "Could be something spooked whatever did this, and it didn't get a chance to eat. It just licked all the blood."

"Could be. I don't know."

The old man looked around. "Well, I can't tell out here. I'd like to get this into town where I can have it on a table and dissect it. If there's a way for us to move it. What about your herd? There's nothing strange about it?"

"You were out two weeks ago. You said that it was fine."

"Well, something might have happened in the meantime. What I'm getting at is if this steer was sick, whatever tried to eat it might have felt the taste was off and left it."

"Maybe. But I hardly think it's likely," Bodine said.

"I don't think so, either. What about the truck? Can we get this in there?" the old man asked.

"That's no problem. We'll rig a line."

So they climbed up from the ditch, the old man breathing hard, and Bodine got a rope and tied it around the head of the carcass and hitched the rope to the truck and used the truck to drag the steer up onto the level. Then he opened the back and pulled out a ramp and this time hitched the rope around the motorcycle. His boy was working with the bike while Bodine pulled and guided on the rope, and slowly, motorcycle revving hard, the steer was dragged up onto the ramp and then pulled into the back. They stood and frowned at the carcass.

"Well, the guts stayed pretty much the same," the old man said, and Bodine flashed the light around to see if any had been left behind.

The old man walked back toward the gully. "Nothing down there either. But the swath the steer made sure played hell on any tracks."

Bodine turned and studied the old man. "There's one other thing I'd like to show you." He walked toward the woods, the flashlight in his hand, its wide beam sweeping through the trees.

They came to where the stream flowed through the trees, and found a narrow spot to step across and walked up onto the gametrail. Bodine led the way about a hundred yards, then stopped to let the old man come up close to him. He shone the flashlight in among the trees.

The carcass of a deer.

"All right. So what's the point?" the old man asked.

"Well, I saw a lot of these when I came through here just before I saw the steer. I figured, what the hell, the winter was a bad one. Then I didn't know. I came back up and checked on this one." Bodine poked with a stick where he had pushed the carcass from between the trees. "There. See where all the stomach skin's been eaten. Otherwise it isn't touched."

"But it's been dead for several months. Hell, anything could have caused that. Maybe insects."

"Even so."

The old man looked at Bodine and wondered what he must be thinking.