The coyotes are coming. Nothing new. Always have. Always will.

  These coyotes. Something different. Something new. Bigger, meaner, faster. A gleam in their eyes gives it all away. They have been testing him. Sniffing around the property in twos and threes. Something special about the way they growl to each other in the night. Like a whole different animal. Or something more than an animal.

  Big Rick knows it. He can puzzle it out and connect the dots, draw lines, and solve the puzzle. If he wanted to, he can. But Big Rick doesn’t need to. The system.

  Big Rick knows it’s not just the world. How the neat lines of almond trees in the orchards that surround his five acres in Oakdale, California have transformed. Become something like a jungle. He is changing. Getting stronger. Getting faster. Each battle a gamble, a trade, a gift. Life put up in exchange for a chance at taking the flesh of his cattle.

  But some things don’t change. Yair Medera, Big Red the Cattleman, is one of them.

  “They got teeth while I got bullets,” he says under his breath as he hunkers low in the back pasture behind the house. His cattle are around, a dozen heifers. Old as him. His twelve ladies, as Nance used to call them.

  Crouched down in the pasture, dark night and cloudy sky, the rustle of the herd is light, and the song of crickets, toads, and night birds is high.

  Big Rick’s jeans at his knees are soaking up the moisture from the saturated earth. His old boots keep socks and feet dry. He holds the 30-30 rifle firm and steady in his hands.

  He knows they are coming when the bird’s get quiet, and bugs stop their humming.

  They are hiding now, he knows it. They linger in the dense dark beneath the canopy of what was once almond trees.

  The changing. The system. Transforming neat lines of little trees into a tangle of tall aggressive greenery reaching towards the sky. And now it sends beasts for his cows, his land.

  “Not my cattle. Not my ranch.”

  50 years down at the plant. Closed now. Closed long ago. But he had done it. Big Rick had worked till the ach turned permanent. Listened to the talk, about shit pay, shit boss, shit union, shit country, and let it all pass by him. He had set his mind to it, and he had done it. Got his pension, got his savings, his investments. Got his five acres. Got his ranch. Got his twelve ladies. Got Nance.

  It lasted six years before the heavens took her. Took Nance.

  Now this changing. This System. The heavens, dead or empty or made up, as far as Big Rick could tell in his 72 years. Now, suddenly awake and teaming with an energy and vitality.

  “Fuck you. Fuck the heavens. My land. My cows. Fuck you.” Big Rick says. “You wont take my ladies from me.” He says it loud. He rises from the ground, standing tall in his pasture. No need for stealth. They seem him, these new coyotes, changed by this system. And he sees them.

  “If you are gone come then do it! I got lead and I got chores. Come get your death.”

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  At once they burst out from the dense shadows of deep forest, one hundred yards of open pasture between them and Big Rick. There are dozens of them. As fast as a car, with thick black coats. Teeth as long as daggers.

  The coyotes leap over the barbed wire fencing wrapping around the pasture leaving clumps of black hair caught in the barbs. In the strong light of the moon, the hair shimmers with an almost purple light.

  Behind Big Rick, the herd reacts. Old mothers with no calf bellowing to the sky in fear, calling to the heavens a warning, a prayer. A dozen head of lean beef grouping up as they dance and shake their heads.

  Big Rick ignores them. He raises the rifle to his shoulder, focuses. Aims with his mind and shoots with his heart. Slinging death as quick as they can come.

  Seven shots and seven coyotes die. Some having leapt into the air, mouths open, hunger and energy in their eyes, hit the ground and tumble lifeless as close as the spent shells around his feet.

  Big Rick drops the rifle, lets the leather strap over his shoulder catch it as it falls. His old hands, brown and wrinkled except for the tired gleam of gold on one finger, move to his waist. His right hand finds the holster slung at hip and the other hangs ready by the spare bullets gleaming along the gun belt.

  In one motion he pulls the old heavy revolver from hip to heaven. Clicks back the hammer and fires. Again and again and again his eyes find prey and his fingers send death out across the night air to find hearts.

  Coyotes come and coyotes fall.

  As quickly as the ambush came, it ends with hot shells scattered like stars in the long grass around boots. Not a one made it pass. Not a one so much as tasted one of his ladies.

  In one smooth motion, Big Rick flips out the cylinder and shakes out casings. Old fingers, still quick, pluck 6 bullets from the belt and slide them into the cylinder. With a click, the cylinder closes, and the rover is dropped back into the holster.

  The rifle is taken up, and bullets are pulled from the worn pocket of jeans, and pressed into the rifle until 8 shots are loaded.

  Big Rick’s eyes never leave the land. They take in the dozens dead before him, crumpled and bleeding out into the tall grazing grass of his pasture. The spent shells around his feet. The places in the fencing that will need repair, where the weight of the enemy has done damage.

  From the safety of the dark shadows of the forest surrounding the pasture, eyes gleam. Dozens, hundreds of yellow eyes filled with hunger, hatred, intelligence. From the shadows, one begins to howl. A long, keening and mournful call. Something ancient in its note. A story of a long hunt, brothers and sister lost, a failure to claim sustenance for the pack.

  Big Rick hears that call and in his heart something resonates. The gamble was made. The trade finished. They’d offered their bodies and he’d taken them. Life for life.

  But his hands do not waver. His feet are steady, his eyes sharp. He says not a word, takes not a step. He lets them howl, lets them eye his cows, his land, himself. He watches, waiting until a new set of eyes shine from the shadows. Larger, a deep red that shimmer, casting a light of their own rather than reflecting the light of the moon like the others.

  Big Mama as he’d named her. The pack leader. He meets her eyes and knows they are talking. Knows she understands his words just as she understands the guns in his hands, and her kin lying dead and bleeding before his feet.

  He doesn’t shout. But when he speaks something resonates that is just as ancient as the call of a failed hunt. The new energy of this world, the system, or the heavens, or what else, fuses with his words and they hum and crackle and spark as he speaks to them into the night air.

  “This is Big Rick’s land. These are Big Rick’s steer. You come for what’s mine and you die. Don’t matter if its hunters, man or beast. Don’t matter if it’s mortal or the heavens. God come here I’ll kill him. You come, you die. Fuck you.”

  He sees a decision being made in her eyes. An understanding reached. The eyes turn and disappear into the forests. Hundreds of yellow eyes still watch him, his cows, the dead before him. Dozens still howl their sorrow, their anger. It doesn’t matter. Big Mama has come. Big Mama has seen. And Big Mama has made her decision: to hunt here in these pastures is to die.

  Big Rick nods at the retreating beast. He turns to look over the cattle behind him. Just 12. His little heard. Some called it hobby ranching back before the system had come and the long wait had begun.

  Big Rick doesn’t care. Doesn’t take truck with that bullshit. He’d earned. He’d worked. This is his land. His cows. As he stands under the moon, it seems a haze of murky energy leaks from the dead beasts, freed from bodies and hanging in the air of the pasture in clumps drawn towards him. His pores open and suck in the energy greedily. His lean muscles do not grow but are somehow more sturdy, more real. His age, 70 damn years, does not fade from his eyes, his face, his posture. But it changes. 70 years is not the domain of the end. 70 years is the domain of a beginning.

  This system comes and what should be the end has turned into a beginning. A beginning without Nance.

  The pang of loss strikes him and his chin wavers. He thinks of joining the call. Letting out a howl of his own. Not of a failed hunt. But of loss. Or mourning. Of a mate gone.

  “Don’t worry, Nance. I won’t let them take it. Fuck the heavens. Fuck the system. This is our ranch. Our little place. I won’t let them take it from us. Not the coyotes, not the system, not the heavens.”