Unpopular Science

Remo wasn’t alarmed. “Hiya, Sunny Joe. I was on my way to visit and spotted Freya from the road.”

Sunny Joe Roam chuckled. “Girl’s tryin’ to reform ’em.”

“Reform who?” Remo couldn’t tear his eyes away from her.

“The coyotes. Ever hear of such a thing?”

“Uh-uh.”

“The heck of it is, she’s doing it. Watch.”

The young woman knelt by the burrow and her arm shot inside. She came out with a desert hare, a scrawny gray creature with ridiculous ears. It gave a few hopeless kicks. She put the rabbit on the ground and stepped on it, pinning it to the earth without crushing it, but she wasn’t so gentle with the coyote. She flattened it next to the rabbit and, despite its struggles to get free, it made a greedy snap at the rabbit. The young woman pinched the thickest part of its upper leg.

The coyote went rigid and a tiny sound leaked out of it like the pitiful howl of the damned in hell.

The woman stopped pinching and the coyote snapped at the rabbit again. The nerve pinch was reapplied, harder this time. The coyote was rigid with agony.

When the pinch was removed, the coyote wanted nothing to do with the rabbit, but the young woman wished to make her point and make it stick. Holding the canine by the scruff of the neck, she dragged it to the rabbit, forced it to smell the little rodent and then pinched it again.

It must have been a very effective pinch, because the whimpers that came out of the coyote were almost words. Then the coyote was free.

As it stood shakily, the young woman gently lifted the rabbit and offered it to the coyote. With a yipe it ran off so fast it almost left a coyote-shaped dust cloud.

“Thanks, Bugs,” the young woman told the rabbit as she set it down at the entrance to its burrow. “Let me know if those beasts come bothering you again.” Sunny Joe Roam chuckled in his old, dry throat. “Want to bet that coyote just swore off hare for all time?”

Remo Williams beamed with pride. “She’s a miracle.”

“Best tracker the Sun On Jo have seen since my grandfather’s days,” Sunny Joe agreed. “You should see her track rattlers with her bare hands.”

“He did, last time he visited,” Freya said as she approached the cliff bottom. “I thought he was going to have a heart attack.”

“You should see her hunt prairie dogs,” Sunny Joe said, not without pride himself. “Rattlers are easy compared to prairie dogs.”

“You should see me hunt wolves,” Freya said. Remo Williams, who was still smiling all this time, stopped.

His name was Winston, but what kind of a loser name was Winston? When you thought of “Winston” you thought of cigarettes or a gray old man in a suit and tie who lived his entire life in an office. Winston had once adopted a nickname, a true warrior’s name, but hadn’t quite lived up to it Now they just called him Winner. You could do a lot worse than Winner.

Winner Smith had lived through his share of troubles. He’d grown up too fast, but didn’t necessarily feel grown up even now.

The way he saw it, his life started for real on the day he came here, to the Sun On Jo reservation near Yuma, Arizona. The mess that came before, much of it of his own making, faded like a dream. Here, with the people who were his people, he somehow fit in. He learned to be at peace with the world without giving in to it.

Not long after arriving, his new life became more complete with the appearance of the sister he never knew he had. Freya was, then and now, a pain-in-the-ass brat. He couldn’t have loved her more.

Lately she’d been stirring up more trouble, and when Winner Smith saw what was coming into the village about midmorning he assumed the trouble was just beginning.

“Would you just please tell me what’s wrong?” Freya demanded.

“I want to see it first,” said Remo Williams, who had a strange look in his eyes. Winner had seen the look before, before he’d come to the rez. It was the look of— he didn’t want to even go there.

They were walking fast across the village, straight to the pit, drawing the attention of the meager population of Sun On Jos from their homes and hogans.

“First tell me why!” Freya insisted.

“First I see.”

“No!” She grabbed him by the arm and made herself a boulder. It should have brought Remo to a halt. She’d pulled that move on Winner and it felt like having your arm in a vise of iron spikes.

It didn’t work on the man who was their father. Remo did something with his arm, something speedy but gentle, and all at once Freya was off the ground, spun around and held against him with one strong arm around her waist. Kind of like she does to the coyotes, Winner thought happily.

“Let go!” She dug her fingers into Remo’s arm. Remo stopped at the entrance to the pit where a loosely woven mat covered the hole in the earth. “Freya,” he said, “that hurts.”