A really big secret can keep you warm on cold nights, stifle hunger, drive shadows back. The best secrets make you feel safe. You could use this, you think, but not using it is what keeps you strong.

Deirdre Eberhard changed the water in the last cat kennel in the row, petted the cat and spoke softly to it. It had to stay at the clinic until its wound healed, but it was lonesome for its owner. "Not much longer," Deirdre told it. She closed the cage door and straightened, pressed a hand into the small of her back and worked her knuckles against her spine.

Her vet technician, Angie, had gone home for the day; the kennel aides, high-school kids named Bob and Nikki, had left hours earlier, and her partner, Doug Rosenfeld, hadn't even stopped at the clinic today. He did all the large-animal doctoring in their practice, caring for cattle, llamas, horses, reindeer, and the occasional ostrich, and he mostly worked out of his van at the ranches that spread out around the tiny Oregon desert town of Artemisia. He only came into the office on Wednesdays and Thursdays or when there was an emergency.

Even the most forlorn dog on the premises had stopped howling and lay with its nose on its paws, its shining eyes watching Deirdre. All the animals had fresh food and water and clean litter or paper. The exam tables had been cleaned and had fresh mats and towels on them for tomorrow's patients. The autoclave had finished its last run of the day, and the washer and drier their last loads. Everything in the surgery was sterile and ready for the procedures she'd do tomorrow.

All done. Just one final mugful of coffee in the coffeemaker, and a piece of sunset to watch. She rinsed out her mug, refilled it, cleaned the coffeepot and set the coffeemaker to start again tomorrow morning, then headed out the back door to the desert.

Her clinic was a cinder-block building on the edge of town. She had a green resin Adirondack chair by the back door, under the shade of an overhang, where she sat between patients and wrote up her charts. After work, she sat and watched the quiet. She set her mug on the cement apron that wrapped around the building and leaned back in the chair, which was still warm from the day's heat.

The sun slipped behind the Cascade Mountains. The sky's clear, distant blue had faded to white near the horizon, with bands of tangerine stain above where the sun dropped. At the zenith, the sky darkened.

Warped and twisty juniper trees poked up here and there from an expanse of scrubby sage-and rabbitbrush that stretched, deceptively flat, from Deirdre's feet toward the forested mountains. She knew unseen undulations hid things: only half a mile away, a gorge cut through the desert like a sword strike through sand.

The desert rustled, anticipating night.

Birds flew down to the seep pond she had piped out when she first took over the veterinary practice here, at the edge of a universe. Deirdre practiced stillness and watched.

This was her night: a place that looked desolate, arid, yet cupped life unseen. Her night, her place, her secret hope, that under a desolate surface, rustling, uttering things still lurked.

She let out a slow breath, the frustrations of the day, and reached down for her coffee.

Something wet touched the back of her hand.

"Whoa!" she cried, and jerked back. She looked down into the face of a coyote.

It stared at her with yellow-brown eyes.

She gathered her breath, settled into the chair, and stared back. It showed no signs of rabies, aggression, or fear. It just stared.

She had never been so close to a coyote before. She had seen them loping across distance, and heard their voices raised in the night, usually far enough away that they might be part of dreams. She had seen some caged down at the High Desert Museum in Bend, where injured wild animals were cared for and then released when they were well.

There was a musky sagebrush-and-carrion scent, a strange heat that prickled the hairs on her forearms. She exchanged glances with the coyote for a long while, then wondered what next.

It backed up a step and sat down.

It lifted its left paw. For the first time she noticed the laceration. She sucked in breath.

A fight with another animal? How would it get a cut like that?

"Looks pretty bad," she said. "You want some help with that?"

It cocked its head.

Should she call animal control? She could deal with approach-with-caution cats and badly trained dogs, but she was out of her element with a wild animal. Well, that wasn't totally true; occasionally people brought her wild animals that had been hit by cars, but she dealt with them during office hours, when she had her vet tech with her, and they were never alert the way this coyote was. She could call someone and have the coyote shipped somewhere like the museum, where they had experience with undomesticated creatures.

She sighed and got to her feet. If it spooked, so be it; that would make her decision for her. What if it only wanted to get into her building, where several small animals were helpless and edible? Getting into the kennels wouldn't be easy, and it would have to go through her first.

The coyote backed off the concrete, but stopped on the earth beyond. It watched her and waited for what she would do next.

Deirdre opened the back door of the building, dropped a doorstop under it. The coyote's access to outside had to be clear. She went into the treatment room and waited.

The animal edged in, its nose lifted as it tasted air. After a period of examination, it limped forward.

Had it been trained somehow? She had heard of half-coyote dogs, but she had never heard of a trained coyote. How was she going to deal with this?

She opened the door into surgery, propped it, too, with a doorstop, patted the stainless-steel-topped operating table. "Up here."

It gathered itself and jumped onto the table, then sat, its gaze fixed on her face.

"Okay," said Deirdre. She took a deep breath. She had to be crazy. What if it bit her? A bad bite could cripple her. She should sedate it. If it were asleep, she could operate without worrying whether it was going to bite her. But anesthesia was difficult to handle without her vet tech; an operation was really a two-person job. First the shot to sedate the animal, then a short wait for it to fall asleep; not hard. Monitoring the tracheal tube that kept gas flowing to anesthetize the animal while she operated, positioning the animal, help with equipment during surgery, and keeping the patient warm during anesthesia by surrounding it with hot water bottles and covering it with towels, those were things her tech usually did.

Maybe she should call Angie. But Angie would be home having supper with her husband and three-year-old daughter.

Maybe there was another answer.

Copyright © 2002 by Nina Kiriki Hoffman