Winter Moon

By the time he was ready to drive into Eagle's Roost, the long twilight

had surrendered to night. He didn't relish returning to a dark house,

though he had never been skittish about that before. He turned on

lights in the kitchen and the downstairs hall. After further thought,

he switched on lamps in the living room and study.

He locked up, backed the Cherokee out of the garage--and thought too

much of the house remained dark. He went back inside to turn on a

couple of upstairs lights. By the time he returned to the Cherokee and

headed down the half-mile driveway toward the county road to the south,

every window on both floors of the house glowed.

The Montana vastness appeared to be emptier than ever before. Mile

after mile, up into the black hills on one hand and across the timeless

plains on the other, the few tiny clusters of lights that he saw were

always in the distance. They seemed adrift on a sea, as if they were

the lights of ships moving inexorably away toward one horizon or

another.

Though the moon had not yet risen, he didn't think its glimmer would

have made the night seem any less enormous or more welcoming. The

sense of isolation that troubled him had more to do with his interior

landscape than with the Montana countryside.

He was a widower, childless, and most likely in the last decade of his

life, separated from so many of his fellow men and women by age, fate,

and inclination. He had never needed anyone but Margaret and Tommy.

After losing them, he had been resigned to living out his years in an

almost monkish existence--and had been confident that he could do so

without succumbing to boredom or despair. Until recently he'd gotten

along well enough. Now, however, he wished that he had reached out to

make friends, at least one, and had not so single-mindedly obeyed his

hermit heart.

Mile by lonely mile, he waited for the distinctive rustle of plastic in

the cargo space behind the back seat.

He was certain the raccoons were dead. He didn't understand why he

should expect them to revive and tear their way out of the bags, but he

did.

Worse, he knew that if he heard them ripping at the plastic, sharp

little claws busily slicing, they would not be the raccoons he had

shoveled into the bags, not exactly, maybe not much like them at all,

but changed.

"Foolish old coot," he said, trying to shame himself out of such morbid

and peculiar contemplations.

Eight miles after leaving his driveway, he finally encountered other

traffic on the county route. Thereafter, the closer he drew to Eagle's

Roost, the busier the two-lane blacktop became, though no one would

ever have mistaken it for the approach road to New York City--or even

Missoula.

He had to drive through town to the far side, where Dr. Lester Yeats

maintained his professional offices and his home on the same five-acre

property where Eagle's Roost again met rural fields. Yeats was a

veterinarian who, for years, had cared for Stanley Quartermass'

horses--a white-haired, white-bearded, jolly man who would have made a

good Santa Claus if he'd been heavy instead of whip-thin.

The house was a rambling gray clapboard structure with blue shutters

and a slate roof. Because there were also lights on in the one-story

barn-like building that housed Yeats's offices and in the adjacent

stables where four-legged patients were kept, he drove a few hundred

feet past the house to the end of the graveled lane.

As Eduardo was getting out of the Cherokee, the front door of the

office barn opened, and a man came out in a wash of fluorescent light,

leaving the door ajar behind him. He was tall, in his early thirties,

rugged-looking, with thick brown hair. He had a broad and easy

smile.

"Howdy. What can I do for you?"

"Looking' for Lester Yeats," Eduardo said.

"Dr. Yeats?" The smile faded. "You an old friend or something?"

"Business," Eduardo said. "Got some animals I'd like him to take a

look at."

Clearly puzzled, the stranger said, "Well, sir, I'm afraid Les Yeats

isn't doing business any more."

"Oh? He retire?"

"Died," the young man said.

"He did? Yeats?"

"More than six years ago."

That startled Eduardo. "Sorry to hear it." He hadn't quite realized

so much time had passed since he'd last seen Yeats.

A warm breeze sprang up, stirring the larches that were grouped at

various points around the buildings.

The stranger said, "My name's Travis Potter. I bought the house and

practice from Mrs. Yeats. She moved to a smaller place in town."

They shook hands, and instead of identifying himself, Eduardo said,

"Dr. Yeats took care of our horses out at the ranch."

"What ranch would that be?"

"Quartermass Ranch."

"Ah," Travis Potter said, "then you must be the . . . Mr. Fernandez,

is it?"

"Oh, sorry, yeah, Ed Fernandez," he replied, and had the uneasy feeling

that the vet had been about to say "the one they talk about" or

something of the sort, as if he was a local eccentric.

He supposed that might, in fact, be the case. Inheriting his spread

from his rich employer, living alone, a recluse with seldom a word for