Presently, along the foot of the precipice, came several forms like his own. He was down the wind from them, and they skulked forward with no halts, their feet softly padding the sand. Soon the foremost was beside the enclosure and reared upon his hind legs.
Once more Little Watcher rose—his body rigid, his head stretched out, his brush on a stiff line with his back, and from crest to tail his hair stood up belligerently. Then, with a shrill yelp of defiance he leaped forward and caught the other by the throat.
His fangs were sharp, his hold was a vise. One rending pull, and the strange coyote pitched end for end between his fellows. They smelled the warm blood—and leaped upon him with a wrangle of exultant cries.
Out of her hogan rushed the Old Woman waving a pine torch above her head and shrieking to scare the intruders. They ran to a safe distance, from where they stopped to look round. The Old Woman did not follow them nor trouble to wake the Boy. When she had gone among the goats to see that none was hurt or missing, she dragged the dead coyote some rods away, and returned to give Little Watcher a caress.
But there was no rest for Little Watcher. Still bristled, he stayed inside the corral, now skirting the goats on fleet foot, now pausing beside his black foster mother, but always licking his chops and mumbling crossly.
It was then the season that follows the first rains. A haze of green lay on the desert—a haze touched here by the yellow of sunflower and marigold masses, there by the purple of the larkspur’s slender wand, again by a fleck of gleaming alkali.
But all too soon that haze was gone again, melting away with the hot kiss of the sun. Greasewood and mesquite showed the only verdure now, and the flock found the picking poor.
So, one dawn, a burro was loaded with blankets, the cooking pottery, and some water bottles filled at the precious spring. Then the squaw said farewell to the Boy, who stayed to tend orchard and corn strips, and drove her bearded company out of the cedar corral. Soon she was well on her way, and the grey and the red sandstone ribbons of the mesa precipice were blending and fading behind her.
Finally, when more than a score of camps had been pitched and broken, the goats were stopped near the cottonwood-lined bed of a dry stream. Here the burro was unloaded, the Old Woman made a sun shelter of boughs on the bare gravel of the arroyo, and dug for, and found, water.
Grazing was good, and the goats fattened. So did Little Watcher, who fared well on the daily spoil of the squaw’s snares. Here, too, almost in the shadow of the wooded Tunicha Mountains, was peace—for a period.