The justice of Gideon

by Eleanor Gates

Changed in looks he was by now. The black-tipped nose was longer and more pointed; the greyish amber eyes were paler and narrowed in their slits; the head was flat; the ears were upright; the hair was not downy, but coarse to wiriness, blackish and brindled along the back and mane, striped burro-wise across the shoulders, elsewhere of a dusty, sunburned, tawny grey.

With his change in looks there came a change in appetite. He began to crave other food than milk, when the Old Woman gave him to eat of wafer bread and let him lap from a gourd shell filled from her wicker water bottle. Later, the she-goat having gone dry, and there being no second foster mother for him, she fed him with other things—the bean of the mesquite and the sweetish fruit of the prickly pear. One day, he tasted blood. The squaw brought him in a linnet, all plump and juicy beneath its feathery coat. He lay down, holding the tiny thing between his forefeet, and tore at it greedily, with little throaty growls. When he was finished, she tried to pull away the bits of plumage caught in his paws. And for the first time he showed his teeth.

Then the Boy came. Having got the man scent before he reached the hogan, the young prairie wolf was not frightened at the stranger whose blanket was as bright with stripes as the Old Woman’s, and who was otherwise very like her in appearance—except that a gay banda kept back the hair from his forehead. On the other hand, the Boy was startled as, on entering the low hut, he saw two eyes burning out at him from a dim corner.

“What is it?” he asked the Old Woman, speaking in the Navajo tongue.

“It is Little Watcher,” she answered. “For so I have named him. The kids were all stolen away by night. When I prayed to Those Above, I was bidden to do what my father had done—fight poison with poison.”

With the Boy’s coming, the coyote had much meat. For every day the Boy took bow and arrows and climbed to the mesa top. Here grew juniper, piñon, and cedar, and here rabbits were to be found, and reptiles, ground squirrel, buzzard, and hawk. Returning, the hunter threw the whole of his quarry to Little Watcher, who was easy to please but hard to satisfy. The coyote dragged the game out of reach and then fell upon it as if he feared interruption, mumbling his delight.

Meanwhile the Old Woman was not neglecting to train him. When the sunrise sheen was on the desert, and the squaw, singing the early morning song, drove the flock to its scant feeding, she took Little Watcher along. And as the goats slowly travelled, browsing, she taught him to follow and round them.

By the end of twelve moons, what with no long runs and plentiful food, Little Watcher was larger than the wild of his own kind and as big as his kinsman, the grey wolf. Now a wren was not a mouthful for him: a snap, a swallow, and it was gone, and the amber eyes were pleading for more. Yet for all his gorging and his hankering after flesh, he was no less a friend to his foster mother, the she-goat, than before, and having skirted the flock, liked to sprawl near by her, and perhaps tease a lizard by way of entertainment.

There came a night when for the first time his strength, his training, and his affection for her were put to the test. Enemies came.

Only the stars were shining, and the corral lay in the heavy shadow of the precipice. But Little Watcher needed no light to tell him that danger threatened. He lifted his muzzle to the rough path from the mesa, perked his ears, and snuffed noiselessly. Then, as noiselessly, he rose.