Ellen Datlow - Tails of Wonder and Imagination

“Peyote Skies wants its residents happy with everything.” Mr. Phelps is donning a genial face and moving over the thick grass toward the woman. “Jimmy Ray Ruggles didn’t develop this concept from the ground up to let a broken water line turn a band of your Bermuda brown.”

“Plus, a broken line could be wasting water,” she reminds him.

“Right.” I hear his smirk though his broad polyester-blend back is turned to me. “No water wasted here,” he says, standing on an ocean of emerald-green grass. “Peyote Skies is a Jimmy Ray Ruggles baby, down to the last leaf of landscaping. It’s gotta be perfect.”

They smile at each other and amble toward the pale yellow house together. I do not wait to see them enter. I have turned and streaked into the desert.

Not far away I find the orange handkerchief. A stone the size of a catnip mouse lies near it, but it is not really a handkerchief. I take one look and go bounding into the deeper desert at a coyote pace, thinking furiously. I do not like the idea of a new victim dying while I am on the job.

It is easiest to find Sings-with-Soul’s den, next to the big stand of coyote cactus, whose gourds are catnip to the clan. With the kits yipping serially in the background, I tell her my problem. Her yellow eyes show their whites.

“I can call, but then what?” she asks me.

“Just get him here. I will think of something.”

She assumes a position that uncannily mimics the image on the homeowner’s sweater, lifts her head until her yellow throat aims at high noon, and lets loose an ungodly series of yowls.

Sings-with-Soul has Janis Joplin beat by a Clark County mile. My own ears flatten as much as hers, in self-defense. Even the kits quit yipping and join in with falsetto mini-howls. Ouch!

Daylight howls seem out of place but I figure they will attract attention. Sure enough, soon coyotes spring out of the drab desert floor as if they were made of animated dust. Frankly, they all look alike to me, so I do not recognize any I met the night before.

One comes slowly. My gut tightens as I recognize my quarry, Happy Hocks. The old dude who commissioned me is nowhere to be seen, and I am not unhappy. I do not have good news.

Once I am the center of a circle of quizzical coyotes (it is a good thing I am not the nervous type), I explain.

“I have discovered who is killing your kin—and how. Unfortunately, Happy Hocks ate some poisoned food.”

Heads snap toward Happy, whose own head is hanging a trifle low. His big ears are not as erect as before, and I notice his eye whites are turning yellow.

“I was feeling… tired, Mr. Midnight,” he whimpers. “What can I do?”

“Is there anything you do not eat around here?” I ask the others.

“There is little coyote clan will not eat, if they have to,” a gray-muzzle answers.

“There must be something that you would not touch on a bet, some cactus, some plant, that makes you sick.”

Sings-with-Soul’s head lifts. “Of course. We were too shocked to think. An antidote.”

“No sure bet,” I warn, eyeing the listless Happy Hocks. “I have already thought of oleander, but that is so poisonous the cure could kill as well. Whatever this unknown poison, if we act quickly enough—”

“Alyssum leaves,” says the unnamed grizzle-muzzle, “taste hot and harsh.”

“Prince’s Plume,” another coyote offers. “Worse taste!”

“Desert Tobacco,” the oldster suggests again. “Paiutes smoked it. Such stinkweed should make this youngster plenty sick.”

“I know!” Sings-with-Soul edges away from the big-eyed, big-eared kits watching our powwow. “Brushtail was sick only a week ago after I nipped her home from that plant, there.”

We turn as one to regard a modest, foot-high growth covered with tiny dull-green leaves. Small leafless stalks are crowned with seed-beads.

Happy Hocks is nosed over to the plant and watched until he bites off several tiny pods. Meanwhile, grizzle-muzzle trots off, returning with a fragrant bouquet of desert alyssum.

Happy Hocks’s muzzle develops a perpetual wrinkle as he downs these desert delights, but his eye-whites gleam with fear.

“Sharp,” he comments with a short bark. “Hot. Burning.”

I say nothing. The hot burning, I fear, could be the poison working. I have no love for vegetables, but in the interests of science, I nibble a pod. I am not an expert, either, but I have nicked the occasional burger-fragment and I recognize this plant’s terrible taste. Ironically, Happy Hocks is having lots of fresh mustard on his death-o-burger.

We watch the poor pup gum down these tough little taste-bombs. Finally his skinny sides begin to heave. I am surprised to see the gathered coyotes politely turn their heads from this unpleasant sight.

When it is over, the dirty work is left to Midnight Louie.

I amble over to examine the remains. In a pile of regurgitated greens lies the fatal lump of meat. It looks fairly undigested. With one sharp nail I paw the meat. After a few prods it falls open along the fault line. Inside lies a metallic powder.

“Bury it,” I growl at the assembled coyote clan.

Happy Hocks’s hang-dog look lifts. “I think I feel better, Mr. Midnight.”

“Keep it that way and, ah, drink lots of liquids and get plenty of rest.” What can it hurt?

Amid a chorus of coyote thanks, I flatten my ears and head back to the dangerous turf of Peyote Skies.

I now know the means (if not the brand of poison) and I know the motive. I even know the perpetrator. What I don’t know is how to stop him.

So I shadow him.

This is no big deal. For one thing, my coloration makes me a born shadow, and I have always been good at tailing. For another, Mr. Phelps is all over this development.

Apparently, he is a trouble-shooter for this Jimmy Ray Ruggles. Mr. Phelps inspects deck planking that gapes too much for an owner’s aesthetic sense. He orders shriveling bushes replaced. He keeps everybody happy.

And he obligingly confesses to the crime. So to speak.

“My kids are real upset about having to keep Rocky inside,” a harried householder in a thousand-dollar suit complains when he buttonholes a passing Mr. Phelps in his aggregate driveway. “We never thought about coyotes running off with our pets. What about stockade fences—?”

“Jimmy Ray wants the development open to the desert; that’s the whole point. We’re working on the coyote problem. Maybe electric fences.”

“What about those dead coyotes on the perimeter? That’s not healthy, dead animals so close to the houses.”

“We clean up the area as soon as they’re found.”

“What’s killing them? They’re not rabid?”

“No, no,” Mr. Phelps says quickly. You can see the word “rabid” conjuring visions of damage suits and buyer panic. “Just varmints. Pests. Coyotes die all the time. Old age. Gunshot wounds. Don’t worry, sir. As soon as the coyotes catch on that this area is populated now, they’ll keep their distance.”

The busy man in the suit hops into a red BMW convertible and takes off, looking unconvinced.

Mr. Phelps heads on to the biggest house in the completed section, a white stucco job with a high, red tile roof the size of a circus tent.

I follow, the only free-roaming critter in the complex. The feeling is spooky. At the back of the big house is a circular sun room with floor-to-ceiling windows surrounded by a bleached redwood deck.