David Drake: Balefires

"Haven't seen Wiener today, have you?" Kernes asked unexpectedly.

"Not since I took Wendy home this morning," replied Deehalter, his own expression odd. "Barked at the car as usual. You must've heard him."

"Learned to sleep through it, I guess," said Kernes, and the words did not quite ring true… though that might have been the blurred print on the ground and Deehalter's blurred memory of what had made the print. Kernes got into the jeep. "Usually he chases a rabbit, he gets back for breakfast. Kids've about worried me to death about that damn dog."

"I'll ride to the barn with you," Deehalter said. They did not speak about the dog-or the print-for the rest of the afternoon.

In the evening, after Deehalter had finished his turn at milking, Alice came out to the barn to help wash down the equipment. Alice Kernes was ten years younger than her brother. Though they had never been close, there was a thread of mutual affection despite Deehalter's reciprocated hatred for his brother-in-law. Alice hummed as she polished the glass tubing and stainless steel; a short woman with her black hair tied back by a kerchief and a man's shirt flapping over the waistband of her gray skirt.

"Wiener been back yet?" Deehalter asked with feigned disinterest.

"No, have you seen him?"Alice said, pausing to catch the shake of Deehalter's head. "Susie's been crying all day. Tom went out to quiet the dog down this morning and I think he scared him off. But he'll be back tonight, I figure."

Deehalter flipped the switch that would drain the water now being cycled through the transfer piping. "Kernes got up to chase him?"

"Uh-huh. Did you get the big tank?"

"Yeah, we can call it a night," Deehalter said. Bloodstains are hard to identify in heavy grass, harder even than footprints in the sod beneath, so he made no mention of the splotches he had found thirty yards from the drive that afternoon. There had been no body, not even a swatch of dog fur torn off in a struggle.

But despite that, Deehalter guessed that the mongrel would not be coming home that night.

A cow awakened Deehalter with a blat like a cut-off klaxon horn. His Remington. 30-06 leaned against the window frame, bathed in moonlight. Deehalter stripped a shell into the autoloader's chamber from the full magazine before he pulled on his dungarees and boots. Shirtless, his baggy trousers weighted down by the rest of the box of ammunition, Deehalter unlocked the front door and began running across the yard.

There were one hundred and sixty cattle in the barn, and from the noise they had all gone wild. Over their bellows came clatters and splintering as the frantic tons of beef smashed the fittings of the barn. Normally in the summer, the cows were free to wander in and out of the yard and to the pasture beyond, but tonight Deehalter had penned them for safety. He was a hundred feet from the electric fence of the yard, cursing his mistake in having concentrated the herd and then left it unprotected, when one of the black-and-white Holsteins smashed from the barn into the cow yard through both halves of the Dutch door.

There was something behind it.

The thing's tongue and the blood on its jaws were black in the mercury floodlight. Erect against the side of the barn it was almost eight feet tall, though only the shadows gave mass to its spindly limbs. It saw Deehalter and skidded on the slippery concrete, its claws rasping through the slime. Deehalter threw his rifle to his shoulder. It was as if he were aiming at a skeleton made of coat hangers, the thing was so thin. Deehalter's hands shook. The creature bent forward, cocking its hips back for balance. It opened its jaws so wide that every needle tooth seemed pointed at the farmer. Then it screamed like a plunging shell as Deehalter fired. His bullet punched neatly through the side of the barn ten feet above the ground.

With a single stride, the creature disappeared back within the building. Deehalter slammed another shot through the empty doorway.

Panting, the big man knelt and fumbled out the box of ammunition without letting go of the rifle. His shoulder ached. The empty cases shone silver pale on the grass to his right. When Deehalter had reloaded, he shuffled forward again. He held his rifle out as if he were thrusting it through fluid. The yard was filled with milling cows. Deehalter moved past them to the low milking parlor and tried in vain to peer through the dusty windows. Then, holding the rifle awkwardly like a huge pistol, he unlatched the door and flipped on the light. There was nothing in the parlor, and its metal gates to the barn were still closed.

Deehalter turned on the lights in the main building. There was only a score of frightened cows still within. The half-loft eight feet above the bare floor had only a little straw in it. The loft door in the south wall hung askew. There were deep scratches around its broken latch. From the left, Deehalter grimly surveyed the barn. The interior walls were spattered with blood. A heifer was dead in her stall; long gouges reddened the hides of several others of the herd.

It was almost dawn. The black-haired farmer stood at the loft door, cursing and staring out into the red sunrise, which pulled the shadow of the ridge like a long curtain over the pasture.

The door to the milking parlor banged. Deehalter swung around and raised the muzzle of his rifle. It was Kernes barefooted and in torn pajamas with Alice, wide-eyed, behind him. Seeing the blood and the dead heifer, she shouted at her husband, "My God, Tom, have you and George been shooting cows?"

Kernes gaped. Deehalter couldn't understand why the question was directed at his brother-in-law."No, it was a, a-"Deehalter began and stuttered to a halt, uncertain both of the truth and what he should say about it. To change the subject he said, "We got to phone Doc Jepson. Some of the cows' been-cut."

"Phone the vet?" blazed Alice-Kernes still had not spoken. She reached back into the parlor for the extension which hung on the wall higher than a cow carries its head. "We'll call the Sheriff, we'll call-"

"Put down that goddamn phone!" Deehalter said, not loudly but too loudly to be ignored by anyone who knew him well.

Alice was in a rage herself, but she stepped back from the phone and watched her brother descend carefully from the loft. "What did it, George?" she asked.

"I didn't get a good look."

"Goddammit, George," Alice said, letting go of her anger now that Deehalter had cooled enough not to shoot her dead in a fury, "why won't you let me get help?"

"Because we're in the milk business," the big man said, sagging against the ladder in mental exhaustion. Kernes wasn't really listening; Alice's face was blank. "Because if we go tell people there's an eight-foot lizard on our farm-"

Kernes swore. Deehalter shouted, "All right, I saw it, what the hell's the difference? Something killed the cow, didn't it?" He glared at the others, then went on, "First they'll think we're crazy. And then when they learn it's true, they'll say, 'Strontium 90,' or 'What're they spraying their fields with to do that?' or 'There's something in their water.' And we'll never sell another pint of milk from here as long as we live. Youknow what the dairy business is like!"

Alice nodded sharply."Then we'll just raise hogs," she said, "or corn-or we'll sell the farm and all get jobs with Purina, for God's sake. Spring Hill Dairies isn't the whole-"

"Alice!"

Kernes' eyes were flicking from one sibling to the other, a spectator rather than a referee. Alice glared at him, then said to her brother, "All right, George. But I'm taking the kids into town to stay with Iris until you come to your senses." Then, to her husband, she added, "Tom, are you coming too?"

"If you leave here, Kernes," said Deehalter quietly, "you'll never come back. I don't give a shit what the law says."