From Ambling Broad Clouds

Ron Koppelberger

From Ambling Broad Clouds

Misty Smoke and dreams of a better tomorrow filled her mind with the promise, the promise of western futures and wild coyote jamborees. She tilted the Stetson against her sweating brow and adjusted the leather chaps that had gotten her as far as New Mexico. The horse wore old war paint and the froth that covered it’s flanks told her to slow down.
The coyotes were following Careful Spell with loyal abandon, tracing her hoof prints across the desert plains. There were hundreds of them and they were loyal only to Careful and her mystery. She lifted the kerchief she had tied across her mouth and called to them with a long lonesome whoop. “Yaaaaaiioooooowwwwww!” she called in a fervent gasp. The coyotes called back by the hundreds filling the desert air with the wild song in the shadow of a twilight moon. Careful gathered the little kindling that was available and built a camp fire for her and the old horse. The evening was fast approaching and it would be cold, they’d need the warmth of the fire. She sat next to the flame she had built and prayed to the old spirits and the silhouette of an approaching night, the coyotes howled and sang to her with fierce loyalty. She paused for a moment to remember, the wagon train, the party and the end of something important. It had been the end of the day, the end of the trail for her and thirty others. The desert had been merciless to them and they were suffering the fate of inexperienced travelers.
Pool Johns had told her that the road would be hard, he hadn’t intended it to be impossible. They were out of water and most of the horses had died leaving them with horse meat to eat and little else. When the meat ran out so did their hope and eventually they had succumbed.
Careful had awoke to the sound of coyotes howling the next morning and she had felt refreshed, rejuvenated by the sound. The old horse had appeared from the dust and she had saddled him and donned her dead husbands chaps and Stetson. She didn’t know where she was headed if she was really headed anywhere, west and the promise of a new beginning. Perhaps she had perished with the others, a ghost, maybe I’m a ghost she thought as she waved to the distant horizon and the army of coyotes. The night wore away the veil of sleep and she continued on to the next day moving closer to another town, her and the coyotes in silent command of the desert and the world perhaps, the world as it stood between the living and the dead, the old and the ancient, the world in sure whispers of life beyond life and living beyond the realm of the living. Careful prayed again as she rode high in the saddle, she prayed to the approaching destiny that would carry her across the great gulf and the wont of a breathing thing. All in all the coyotes knew their song and they knew the passions of a desert that could take and give the essence of a dream, from ambling broad clouds to the eyes of a legend.