The Totem

"One thing more. We know that they're not dangerous to one another," Owens said. "When I put some of them together in the same container, they ignored each other, staring fiercely at the light and lunging at the glass around them."

Slaughter thought about the figures he had seen up in the bushes by his barn tonight. "You mean they hunt in packs?"

"Not necessarily, although it's possible."

"But what would make them do that?"

"Look, this virus gives control back to the limbic brain and makes it act the way it once did several hundred thousand years ago. To hunt in packs is natural. It's even a survival trait. Individual behavior, at least in humans, is by contrast very recent."

EIGHT

Wheeler braced himself up in the tree and waited for the sunrise. He'd been up there all night, and his back and legs were sore and twisted from the way he was positioned among the branches. He was numb from lack of sleep, his eyelids heavy, plus his hands were cramped around the rifle he was holding, but for all that, he was satisfied. His effort had been worth the pain. He smiled toward the murky rangeland and the object lying by the sagebrush. Yes, he'd gotten what he had come for, which was something very different for him, getting what he wanted. Things had not gone well for him in quite a while. Since 1970 and that October afternoon when he had shot that hippie. On occasion when he managed to be honest with himself, he recognized that he had been in trouble long before that, with his wife and in particular his son, but if he'd helped to make that trouble, it was nothing that they couldn't have worked out among themselves. What had made the difference were those god-damned hippies who had come to town. They were the cause of this, their loud mouths and their garbage. He remembered how he had gone to town and first had seen them, angered by their sloppiness, their easy answers to the country's problems. Sure, drop out and act like children, more than that, like animals. Oh, that was some solution, all right. They were just afraid to go to Vietnam is all, too god-damned yellow to protect their country. He had been there when the town had forced them from the valley. He had helped to push them out. He'd kicked and thrown rocks as had others. He had shut their filthy mouths for them and hoped they'd learned their lesson. But his son had gone up to that lousy commune then, and he himself had been made to look like a fool. No son of his was going to end up like those freaks, not so that the town could make jokes about him.

Plus, those hippies might be dangerous. The drugs they took, they might do anything. Wheeler had known he had to get his son back. So he'd gone up to the commune, and of course, they tried to fight him, to hide what they were up to. There'd been no choice. He'd had to shoot the hippie who had come at him. It was self-defense. The town would understand that, Wheeler had figured. But it hadn't understood, and his son had turned against him as well, and he himself had gone to prison for two years. Oh, that was fine, the way his friends had turned against him. He couldn't count on anyone. He should have learned that lesson years before, but he had learned it then all right. His son had run off after that, and then while he himself had been in prison, he had gone through all that trouble with the guard. The guy just wouldn't let him alone. There wasn't any choice except to fight. By Jesus, he wouldn't be pushed around, so instead of getting time off for good behavior, he'd been forced to serve the full extent of his sentence.

What did he expect? If they were out to get him, he was powerless, and then his wife had turned against him. She'd been keeping up the ranch while he was gone. She hadn't come to see him, but he'd figured that she'd been so busy that she couldn't get away. The day he came home he found out the truth, however. She told him that she'd stayed to manage things because she didn't want to leave the place to strangers, but she wasn't going to live with him, and now that he was back, she wasn't needed, she was leaving. He had fixed her for that. She had limped out to the taxi when it came for her. He didn't help her with the bags. He let the driver do that. He just stood there on the porch and cracked his knuckles, telling her that he would never take her back, that if she tried to come back, he would beat her even worse, and that had been the last he saw of her. Well, that was fine as far as he was concerned. She'd never been good for him, always nagging at him about how much he was drinking, about the work he didn't want to do. Christ, he was better off without her and without that mouthy, trouble-making son. He didn't need them. He could get along without them.

But Wheeler had trouble, all the same. His former friends avoided him, although he expected that. They really hadn't been his friends. All they'd wanted was a sucker to buy them drinks. Sure, they'd been lying to him all the way. But he'd found new friends, trail hands and a couple ranchers in the valley who were not so god-damned proper that they wouldn't take a little time out to relax. A man got stale if all he did was work. That wasn't any kind of life. But then Wheeler's cattle got sick one year. The next year, there were many stillbirths. After that, the price of beef went down. There wasn't any way to get ahead once everybody turned on you. This year, the bank was making noises about mortgage payments that he hadn't met; the barn was close to falling down; the winter had been so bad that he'd lost more stock than he had counted on; and now the predators were moving in.

Wheeler had found the first steer Friday morning, so disfigured that he almost didn't recognize what it had been. He'd never seen a carcass like it. Not just one wolf or a coyote, but a whole damned pack had done this, in a frenzy. He heard that night about another rancher who had found a steer like this, and in the morning when he'd gone out to check his stock, he'd found three other mangled steers, and he couldn't stop from cursing. Hell, they meant to ruin him. He heard that a dozen ranchers in the valley had also found cattle like this, and they didn't know what they could do except to post some guards and maybe have a meeting. There was no sense in their leaving poison that the cattle might get into. But Wheeler knew what to do. He was not about to let this thing continue. He meant to stop it dead right now. Those predators had picked the wrong man to play games with.

In the afternoon, he chose three steers and led them to the spot where he had found the mutilated carcasses. The predators were in a routine, choosing this location each time. With the foothills so close, they just figured they could slip down for an easy kill and aggravate the man who owned their supper. But tonight he would surprise them. First he staked the cattle, leaving portions of the mangled steers to spread their odor and to hide his scent. If he had lately not been good at ranching, he was very good at hunting, and he'd gone back to his house to eat and get his rifle and the Benzedrine he'd been given by a trucker in a bar one night. He'd walked back toward where he had staked the cattle. That was crucial, not to drive his truck and warn whatever might be watching. When he'd come to within a quarter mile, he had eased down, crawling, inching toward a solitary tree that was between him and the three steers. From there, with the moonlight to help him, he would have a good view, and he stayed low by the tree until sunset, waiting even longer for the darkness to enclose him before slowly standing, hidden by the tree, and climbing through its branches to a cradle near the top.

He moved as silently as he was able. Then he settled back against the trunk and swallowed a Be