The Malpai Silence

by D. Christopher Bader

Original artwork by Lauren Felvus

The fire crackled, more ember than flame. Heat barely licked the skillet as desert chill pressed in. Crash Calloway crouched beside it, rolling a coffee tin between his calloused hands. Broad-shouldered and weathered by desert miles, he carried the years in a bad knee and a ball cap curled by habit. He did not have to live like this. A chunk of an NFL signing bonus sat in a Wyoming credit union, enough to stretch a decade if he kept his gear light and his vices in check. Which he mostly did.

The Malpai Borderlands suited his mood: canyoned, cruel, indifferent. Since topping off his jerry cans in Hachita, he’d spoken to no one except Desert Dan, a wiry local hermit who rambled over a cold beer. Leather-skinned and missing a tooth, Desert Dan had spun a tale about a spring west of Cloverdale. “There are sheep out there,” he said, “but something else, too. Saw a big shadow one night. Like a lion, but moving on two legs with red eyes.”

Crash let the talk slide. He wanted a lead on aoudad, not folklore, but the hermit’s parting shot followed him down the road. Bar talk came cheap, but the tremor in Dan’s hand looked earned.

Nearby, Beans, a black-and-white Boston Terrier, watched the fire. Three years old, ears perked and alert, she held a coiled patience honed by the certainty of bacon. She was the only creature Crash trusted enough to camp beside.

“You are not subtle,” he said, flipping bacon in the pan. “But I respect the consistency.”

The canyon below stayed black, but the sky stained violet. Sunrise caught on mesquite, juniper, and pockets of purple sage. Coyotes had stayed silent all night, which was never a good sign. He poured coffee into an enamel mug for himself and splashed a bit into another for the dog. Beans didn’t drink it, but she enjoyed the smell, and that was reason enough.

Out past the canyon rim, a figure moved. The fire hissed as Crash straightened. Beans pawed at the dirt as she locked on the ridge. Whatever it was vanished behind a rock outcropping: no sound, no dust trail. Just gone. The hairs along Crash’s forearms lifted. He trusted that more than any forecast.

Finally, he exhaled and took a long sip. “Tell me that was a sheep.”

Beans stayed motionless, staring.

The bacon disappeared and the coffee cooled in his gut. He rinsed the pan, banked the fire, and broke camp without a word.

At his truck, he opened the door and unhooked his Winchester from the rack. The rifle settled into his hands like a tool that never asked questions. A Colt 1911 sat snug in its shoulder rig, the grip close. Beans had already fixed on the basalt ledge, ready to hit the trail.

They hiked west for over an hour through a cottonwood grove along a faint, uneven aoudad track scratched into the stone. Crash’s boots rasped on sun-baked rock and loose dust while Beans trotted ahead with her tongue lolling and paws soft. He scanned the ridges for tracks or droppings but found nothing. The path bent down a slope. The cottonwoods thinned to a brittle clearing where the trail widened. A sour note of rot hit his nose.

Then he saw it.

Down the decline, tucked behind brittle mesquite and cottonwoods, sat a half-collapsed ranch. A sagging bunkhouse slouched nearby, its roof caved in on one side. Fence posts leaned, and a crooked windmill loomed over a dust-choked well. A cracked trough lay half-buried beside it. The only sign of life was the buckskin horse tied to a fence rail, unmoving, ribs showing, coat streaked with dust and old blood. He stopped and watched the horse. Beans spotted it too and dropped low, ears flat. She did not bark.

The horse was big, maybe seventeen hands, long-legged and heavy-chested, but worn thin. Rope burns scored the muzzle. Flanks were fly-bitten. One eye crusted nearly shut. The other stayed clear and bright, locked on him. Crash approached, letting the rifle hang loose and nonthreatening. The buckskin tracked him but did not shy or lunge. Only watched.

Up close the neglect looked worse. Hooves split and flared. An infected scrape ran down one leg. The neck trembled with effort.

Kneeling by his pack, he pulled out an apple he had saved and a half-sleeve of old-fashioned oats wrapped in waxed paper. He laid them on a flat stone inside the fence line, a plain offering. Turning to the windmill, he grabbed the handle and pumped until the well groaned to life, spitting rust and sludge before water finally ran slow and cool. The horse studied him as he filled the trough.

He stepped forward and pulled his knife. In one smooth motion he cut the rope from the fence post. The big gelding staggered slightly but did not bolt. It shifted its weight, ears twitching. It never looked away.

Beans crept closer, stopped a few feet out, then huffed—curious, not hostile. The horse lowered its muzzle and exhaled a warm breath. The dog did not flinch.

Stepping back, Crash slid the knife home on his belt and gave a small nod. “Suit yourself.”

Something in its stare eased. A moment later it stepped forward, hooves scuffing the dirt, choosing him over the post it had been tied to.

Turning, Crash moved toward the bunkhouse. He slung the Winchester over his shoulder and eased the 1911 from its holster, holding it low and loose at his side. When the breeze shifted, he scanned the sagging remnants of the homestead. The place carried that left-in-a-hurry feel, and not the clean kind.

Stepping through the bunkhouse with the Colt raised, he met air heavy with mildew and the faint rot of old paper. A splintered table held a coverless Bible open to Revelation. Pencil marks scarred the text in circles and underlines, and in the margin the words read, The beast rises, and the earth trembles. On top sat a child’s rag doll, its burlap face stained deep. Not mud. Something darker. A broken shackle lay half-buried beneath the table.

Beans froze in the doorway, fur up as she fixed on the doll. The horse stayed at the trough, lips working the oats, watching the newcomers.

Crash followed Beans as she slipped along the barn wall. The pair circled past a heap of collapsed timbers and weather-warped tack. Surveying the dirt, he found no hoofprints, no boot tracks, no tire ruts. Scrubbed clean.

They pushed on. Only when they reached the edge of the yard did Crash realize the buckskin had fallen in behind them. Skirting sun-bleached boulders and cholla, they followed a game trail south into broken canyon country. He looked to Beans, then to the horse, then to the wide, empty sky. “Well,” he said, “was not planning on company.”

The gelding gave no reply. It just followed.

Adjusting the pack, he glanced at the lead rope and did not bother picking it up. “All right, keep up if you want.”

The mismatched trio followed the mesa edge south. The land fell away into canyons. He swept the high ledges and glassed the shaded cuts where aoudad might bed during the heat, but signs stayed scarce: a few tracks in the dust and some old scat near a game trail cut into a shale slope. “Not fresh,” he said aloud.

They moved deeper. The sun climbed overhead in a merciless arc. Sweat beaded, then vanished in seconds. Around midafternoon, they reached a bluff overlooking a narrow cut, a shallow box canyon with green at the center. Cottonwoods leaned against the wind, their roots laced through black volcanic stone. A spring bubbled from the base of a cracked basalt shelf, trickling into a muddy pool lined with cattails and obsidian chips.

“Looks like old Desert Dan wasn’t lying after all,” Crash said.

They picked down the grade in silence. Crash set his weight carefully while Beans wove the switchbacks with easy balance. The gelding faltered once on scree, then kept moving.

At the bottom, Crash stepped to the water and dipped a hand. “Not bad,” he said. “Could be a decent place to hold over till morning.”

He took stock. There were signs: bootprints, maybe two days old; a fire ring hastily kicked apart; the remains of a protein bar wrapper shoved under a flat stone. Someone had been here and left in a hurry.

Beans nosed around the edge of the pool, her head tilted toward the cottonwoods. She fixed on something tangled under the roots of a tree. She padded forward, stubby tail tucked, teeth bared, but silent.

Spotting what she found, Crash dropped to a knee and pulled free a denim jacket. Torn and bloodstained at the sleeve, it looked familiar.

He flipped it over: black stenciling, half-torn.

Borderland Wildlife Co-Op, Hachita.

It was the same jacket Desert Dan had worn three days ago.

Crash rose slowly and examined the brush. Desert Dan’s jacket, torn and bloodied, told a story. The empty fire ring and bootprints told another.

Most men would have turned around right there, but Crash had never been especially talented at leaving bad enough alone. The twitchy horse and that morning movement at the canyon rim reeled him in.

A few feet farther down the stream sat a beat-up Glock with the slide locked back. Empty. The grip was fresh-scarred, like it had skittered across rock in a hurry.

“Hell,” he said. “We might not be the only ones out here hunting.”

A breeze rolled through the canyon, cooler than it should’ve been, damp as wet stone. The horse stood at the edge of the clearing, muzzle angled toward the ridgeline.

Crash slid the Glock into his pack and stared up at the rock shelf a long moment. Whatever waited up there could stay there for now. He made camp while light remained.

Night fell and he sat with his back to a bluff, rifle across his knees. Beans curled in the fire’s glow. The horse stood beyond the spring.

Crash chewed a ration bar, staring into the flames. No sheep. Only Dan’s jacket, an empty Glock, and the way Beans whined every time the wind picked up. He turned the scrap of torn nylon over in his hands, thumb tracing the ragged edges. What could make a man leave his gun behind in a place like this?

The fire popped. In the silence that followed, the stories drifted in uninvited. Chupacabra, the old-timers called it. A made-up name for a real problem. He’d heard the talk before. Goats found bled dry. Not torn up. Drained.

He’d always laughed at it—until tonight.

He combed the area again before dusk, followed the bootprints, circled the fire ring, and checked the brush. Best guess: someone had been here three days back. No signs of struggle. No blood trails. No bodies. Whatever happened here was not ancient history.

“This is a bad call,” he said.

Beans gave a soft huff but held her ground. The buckskin shifted as Crash stood and walked over to it. The horse held steady and looked at him, ears flicking.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s see what we are working with.” Stooping beside the flank, he checked the wounds again. They were ugly but stable. He dabbed a crude yarrow-and-spring-water salve from his kit. “Good thing I’ve patched worse than you,” he said as the horse watched him.

He paused, studying the buckskin’s scarred flank. The welts ran deep, like claw marks from something that did not belong in this world. “If you’re going to stick around, you’ll need a name. What about Dusty? No? Damn sure not Lucky.”

The horse blinked.

“We’ll workshop it.” Leaning toward the horse, he added, “You know what’s out there, don’t you? You’ve seen it up close.”

A coyote howled in the distance. Then another, farther off.

He didn’t flinch, but he checked the .45 at his side, thumb brushing the grip out of habit.

From the far side of the pool, a rustle rose. A scrape of something heavy through loose stone, followed by a muted bone-dry rasp. It was not wind.

Beans raised her head, fur bristling along her spine. The horse froze, ears pinned, staring into the twilight. Crash waited five minutes. Then ten.

Eventually he sat. Sleep wasn’t coming, though he hadn’t planned on it.

A thin, silver morning rose across the Malpai. The spring glinted beneath its veil of mist.

Beans paced near the bluff, sniffing tracks Crash already checked twice. She hadn’t settled all night, same as him. Packing up quickly, he skipped breakfast, took another bite of a ration bar, and rubbed the last of the salve into the horse’s flank.

“All right, you,” he said, patting its neck. “You made it through one night.”

He ran through a few more name options—Ace, Ghost, Dodge. None fit.

They hugged the western rim. Crash led while Beans ran the trail. The wind shifted, carrying creosote, purple sage, and faint woodsmoke. Someone had passed through not long ago.

Cresting the ridge, Crash traced faint bootprints along the ascent. Beans sniffed the air, ears stiff, her attention pinned on the shaded draw ahead. The horse plodded behind, surveying the horizon.

The prints were fresh enough to stir Crash’s gut, same tread as those near the spring, maybe two days old. “That old hermit must have come this way,” he said to himself.

His mind drifted to three nights ago, to the gas station in Hachita, where Desert Dan spun desert stories over a beer. “Heard a trucker call it a wendigo,” Dan said. “But he’s wrong. No wendigos here. Something else claimed this place.”

Now, standing on the ridge, Crash glanced at the horse. Its scarred flank gleamed in the sun, welts too deep for a whip, too deliberate for chance. A name settled, heavy with this country and whatever hunted it.

“Wendigo,” he muttered, testing it. “Not the right country,” he added under his breath, “but it suits you.”

Crash, Beans, and Wendigo moved into country that did not want them.

By late morning, the sun turned from cold gold to white-hot. Crash pulled his ball cap lower and followed a path cut through crushed lava rock and thorn-choked arroyos. He hadn’t seen signs of aoudad in hours, but he wasn’t tracking sheep anymore. The boot prints drew him on, and he didn’t like what that said about him.

Beans paused near a mesquite grove, nose to the ground, then up again.

There, on the smooth bark of the largest mesquite, were three deep gouges—uneven and running nearly vertical.

He stepped closer. The sap still wept.

Below the slashes, carved deep into the wood: a spiral inside a triangle, and beneath that, the crude, fanged head of a cat-like creature. The bark around it was blackened. Not flame-scorched, but withered from within.

Crash took a step back and searched the horizon. No movement, but that pressure returned.

Behind him, Wendigo snorted and turned his good eye to the mark as if he recognized it from his own scars.

They pressed on, descending into a shadowed cleft between two ridgelines. Wind funneled through the rocks. Beans trotted slower now, ears flat.

Then: movement.

Not much. Just a flicker at the edge of his vision. A ripple of heat where it shouldn’t have been. Crash eased the rifle from his shoulder and clicked off the safety. The scrub to his left shifted and he turned. Nothing. But Wendigo gave a huff and stomped, muscles taut, nostrils wide.

Then, a shadow flickered across the scrub, low and fast, skimming just out of sight. Crash spun to his right. His pulse spiked as the shape crouched. Not quite man but not quite animal. Sloped shoulders. Long limbs. Eyes that caught the light with a color he couldn’t name.

It vanished, leaving only grit settling in its wake.

Beans barked, short and savage. The thing was already moving, up the ridge and into shadow, too fast for anything with weight. He took aim, but the rifle remained silent.

He dropped to a knee and pulled Beans in close. Wendigo shifted closer, hoof scraping stone. Whatever it was slipped from sight, leaving a stillness Crash didn’t trust.

They held the high perch a little longer, studying the opposing rim, then eased back toward the spring.

He smeared the cold ash with his boot and checked the rise one last time. “Let’s pull out,” he said. “No sense burning bait for nothing.”

A slow sweep of the hillside turned up nothing. They angled along a half-buried track on the canyon’s flank. It tightened to a shoulder-wide slot. Under a twisted basalt ledge, the air went cold and the rock showed black, scaled plates. Beans stopped, scratched at the dirt, then crept forward, ears flat, nose to the ground, worrying a shallow depression near the roots of a stunted mesquite. Crash squatted beside her.

At first it looked like another scrap of canvas. Then, the wind shifted and a pale shard caught the sun, a glint of bone between the roots followed by a whiff of decay. He brushed dirt aside, revealing fingers bleached pale.

Desert Dan lay curled into himself, dry as parchment, his face’s skin drawn tight over bone. Lips split and cracked. The whole body had collapsed inward. Not rotted, just emptied.

He leaned closer. No blood on the ground. No live stink of rot. Only the dry, leathery husk of a man. No claw marks or broken bones. Just two deep, ragged punctures: one at the base of the neck, the other lower on the chest. They tore inward, as if a predator had fed, then left him to desiccate.

Crash stared at the wounds for a moment.

The rest came into focus: an empty rucksack split at the seams, a weather-creased map torn down the center and stuck with a bloody thumbprint. Beside the body lay a length of cord strung with a single carved totem—antler or horn, whittled into a long-muzzled, fanged creature with ridges etched down its spine.

Just like the mark on the mesquite tree.

Crash picked up the carving and held it in his palm. “You should’ve stuck to beer and ghost stories, old man.” He slipped the charm into his pocket and stood. “I’m not leaving you out here.”

Beans was fixed on the ravine, tense and unmoving. Crash traced her line of sight. Whatever had drained Desert Dan was not done. He clutched the Winchester and led Beans and Wendigo out of the ravine, keeping low along the canyon wall.

Then it came.

Something exhaled behind him, wet and guttural, thick as rocks rolling in a throat.

The rifle came up as he spun.

From the opposite slope, it lurched forward, flesh stretched over bone and sinew. Leaner than a starved bear, ashen gray, hunched upright on two legs, spines ratcheting along its back. The creature’s head turned and pins of red light burned in its sunken sockets. Then it crouched, one claw dragging through the dirt in a slow, deliberate arc. A rattling scrape spilled from its maw; the air curdled with wet iron and rot.

Crash held his breath. So did Beans. Wendigo gave a single sudden snort. The big horse stepped forward, his neck arched as his front hoof pawed at the dirt.

Crash brought the Winchester higher. “You want a second helping, come get it.”

It dragged its claw again, a second arc intersecting the first, then snapped into motion and vanished upslope. Beans did not chase. She pressed tight to Crash’s leg, teeth bared, a growl thrumming through her.

Raking the escarpment, Crash waited for another move but none came. His breath stayed shallow but steady. He lowered the rifle. “Not today,” he said. “Not like this.”

A glance to Wendigo, then to Beans. The horse’s good eye fixed on the bluff. The trio carefully eased away. Crash burned the route into memory.

Backtracking, they skirted the game trail with Beans scouting ahead. Wendigo stayed close, moving smoother than he should’ve on this kind of ground. They crossed a dry wash, then pushed uphill toward the truck. Wendigo’s breath rasped behind him.

Pausing, Crash combed the rise once more.

By the time the truck came into view, the sun was already dropping. Crash let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, then stopped cold. A single raw gouge marked the driver’s-side door, a curved slash like those on the mesquite post.

He ran his thumb along the groove, measuring the depth.

Wendigo stepped up beside him and looked at the truck.

“All right, big guy. Either you levitate, or I build a ramp.”

Unamused, the gelding snorted. Crash looked around, then grinned without humor. The desert had given him a loading dock if he wasn’t picky. He backed his GMC to a cut bank where the wash had eaten the shoulder down to a hard dirt ledge. Close enough.

The K2500 Sierra Grande wore a bolt-on stock rack and scarred side rails. Right now, Crash was grateful for every rattling weld. He bridged the gap with two boards and a fence plank, then ran a ratchet strap from the rack like a safety line. Not to haul Wendigo up, but to keep him from launching backward if panic hit.

“Easy,” he said, more to himself than Wendigo. Beans sat off to the side, ears forward, judging him like an old coach. “Don’t look at me that way,” he told her, wedging the last plank into place. “You’re not the one hauling half a Clydesdale out of nightmare country.”

He patted the makeshift ramp, then gave Wendigo a light slap on the flank. “Come on. Up you go.”

The horse stared him down, then stepped onto the boards. Two tries: one slip back with a frustrated grunt, then a committed lurch forward, his hooves thudding as the truck shuddered. Crash kept the strap snug, talking low the whole time, until Wendigo was in and standing. Only then did it hit him how absurd it looked: a horse that big in a truck bed, framed by stock rack and rails. “Well, ain’t that something.”

Crash slammed the tailgate and climbed behind the wheel. Beans jumped in beside him, flopping down with a huff. The engine rumbled to life. He stared at the road ahead and watched the last of the twilight bleed out behind them.

Halfway down the rutted road a distant thrum echoed from the mesa. His hands clenched the wheel, his eyes flicking to the rearview. Nothing but dust and stars. Beans shifted closer, watching the dark beyond the glass. The radio crackled through static, then found Lord Huron’s “The Night We Met.”

Crash snorted. Even the radio was in on it.

A couple of hours later, headlights caught a dusty sign in Animas: GADSDEN FEED & SUPPLY. One flickering overhead bulb, a sagging awning, and a handful of pickups in the gravel lot.

Parking crooked, Crash climbed out as the engine ticked itself cool. Dirt and grit ground beneath his boots, but his eyes drifted to the horizon, where the canyon’s black silhouette swallowed the starlight.

A grizzled man in a feed cap leaned against the doorframe, sipping a grape soda. “You the one hauling livestock in a Chevy?” he asked, not bothering to hide his smirk.

“GMC,” Crash said. “Wouldn’t happen to have a trailer for sale?”

The man stepped down, squinting toward the truck bed. “Well, hell…that’s not just livestock. That’s a damn sofa with legs.” He walked a slow circle around the buckskin, whistling under his breath. “That’s a Percheron mix, no doubt. But he’s got some Quarter Horse in the shoulders. Maybe the knees too. Color’s off for a full draft. Where’d you find him?”

“Out past Cloverdale,” Crash said, his attention still cutting to the dark beyond the lot.

The man gave him a look like he had follow-up questions but let them rot. “Wounds aren’t fresh, but they need dressing. Hooves could use a trim too.”

Crash nodded. “I can pay, and I’ll help with the feed bags, but I am out of beer.”

The man chuckled. “Hell, that’s more than most offer. I’ve got a trailer out back that’ll fit him just fine. Let’s get him settled before he punches a hole in that truck bed.”

Fifteen minutes later Wendigo stood in a small paddock behind the store. The man—Bill according to his stitched-on patch—clipped a hoof and said, “Stubborn son of a bitch, but solid. You plan to keep him?”

Crash leaned on the rail. “Don’t think I have a choice.”

Feeding Wendigo a carrot from the bin, he watched the buckskin take it slow. Beans sat at his boots, ears finally relaxed.

Crash exhaled and looked past the lot, toward the canyon’s edge. “Didn’t find the sheep,” he said quietly. “Found something else.”

Wendigo flicked an ear, as if in agreement.

“You’re a big ugly thing, ain’t you?” said Crash. “But you stuck with me. That’s got to count for something.”

The sky stretched wide and empty, stars needling through the last of the twilight. Out in the desert a hiss rode the wind—there, then gone. His hand lingered on the .45, then fell away. Whatever stalked them wasn’t finished, but neither were they. At first light, they would go back for Dan’s body, and if the creature didn’t like that, it could file a complaint in hell.

About the Author

D. Christopher Bader is the author of the novel This Ain’t Roswell and the short story collection The Ridge County Almanac (Revised & Dangerous Edition). His fiction explores the grit, ambition, and moral weight of the American West, from the post-Civil War frontier to the present-day badlands of Wyoming. He is currently working on The Ridge County Almanac Vol. 2 and the sequel to his debut novel. He lives in Greenwood, Arkansas.