It was one of those really fine afternoons where you can sit on the front porch and no matter which way you looked there wasn't much in the way of cloud or haze to stop your eye. Off to the west the line of the mountain was held in place by the sky at the top and the ground at the bottom.
To the east and north all you could see was flat prairie stretching away into the distance, the only interruption the occasional scrub brush or the dips in the ground where a sinkhole had formed some time in the past. They'd filled in long ago, leaving just a slight crater scraped out of the surface. If He was in a good mood He'd call them acne scars. Catch Him in a bad mood and He'd start muttering about pox-infested blankets that left scars even on Her face.
The good thing about living out here and being able to see as far as the mountains in one direction, or as far as your eyes let you in the two other directions He could come from, (there's no way you'd ever be catching Him coming along the south road), is that you get plenty of warning as to what His mood is going to be like.
If He was just trotting along with his tongue lolling out the way that it can, then you know things will go as well as can be hoped. But if there's any deviation from that then you can be sure there could be some trouble. If you weren't able to distract Him quickly enough you could wind up with anything from a bad trick being played on someone to war on your front porch.
So this afternoon when I spotted Old Coyote approaching out of the north, He was still some five miles away. But oh boy, could you see that He was more then a little pissed about something. Forewarned is forearmed they say, so by the time Old Coyote arrived at my porch that looks out over the prairie in three directions, I had pulled up His favourite chair, made a pot of tea, and had His favourite cup filled with sweet tea (four lumps, no milk).
"Hey," I said to that one, "sit and have some tea, sit and have some tea before it gets cold. Have some fry bread, I just made it, or one of those microwave pizzas – you want one of those – those microwave pizzas?"
But Coyote just continued to pace in front of my porch with His tail dragging in the dust behind Him. Boy, He was one steamed Coyote. I'm wondering what I'm going to do about that, because there's nothing worse than steamed Coyote (although I've heard that Coyote pot roast is pretty bad, too) and if He keeps pacing like that I'm going to have me a trench dug in my front yard.
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