Winter Moon

head was above the roof of the Rover, and the wind not only numbed his face but seemed to be scouring off his skin layer by layer.
        He leaned back against the vehicle, bent his knees, and slouched, mimicking the vet. Rather than look at each other, they stared out across the descending land to the south as they talked.
        Jack said, "You think, like Paul does, it was something Eduardo saw that caused his heart attack, related to the raccoons?"."And made him load a shotgun, you mean. I don't know. Maybe.
        Wouldn't rule it out. More'n two weeks before he died, I talked to him on the phone. Interesting conversation. Called him to give him the test results on the coons. Wasn't any known disease involved-"
        "The brain swelling."
        "Right. But no apparent cause. He wanted to know did I just take samples of brain tissue for the tests or do a full dissection."
        "Dissection of the brain?"
        "Yeah. He asked did I open their brains all the way up. He seemed to expect, if I did that, I'd find something besides swelling. But I didn't find anything. So then he asks me about their spines, if there was something attached to their spines."
        "Attached?"
        "Odder still, huh? He asks if I examined the entire length of their spines to see if anything was attached. When I ask him what he means, he says it might've looked like a tumor."
        "Looked like." The vet turned his head to the right, to look directly at Jack, but Jack stared ahead at the Montana panorama. "You heard it the same way I did. Funny way to word it, huh? Not a tumor. Might've looked like one but not a real tumor." Travis gazed out at the fields again.
        "I asked him if he was holding out on me, but he swore he wasn't. I told him to call me right away if he saw any animals behaving like those coons-squirrels, rabbits, whatever-but he never did. Less than three weeks later, he was dead."
        "You found him."
        "Couldn't get him to answer his phone. Came out here to check on him.
        There he was, lying in the open doorway, holding on to that shotgun for dear life."
        "He hadn't fired it."
        "No. It was just a heart attack got him."
        Tnafr the influence of the wind, the long meadow grass rippled in brown waves.
        The fields ref rolling, dirty sea. Jack debated whether to tell Travis about what had - happened in the graveyard a short while ago. However, describing the experience was difficult. He could outline the bare events, recount the bizarre exchanges between himself and the Toby-thing. But he didn't have the words-maybe there were no.words-to adequately describe what he had felt, and feelings were the core of it. He couldn't convey a fraction of the essential supernatural nature of the encounter.
        To buy time, he said, "Any theories?"
        "I suspect maybe a toxic substance was involved. Yeah, I know, there aren't exactly piles of industrial sludge scattered all around these parts. But there are natural toxins, too, can cause dementia in wildlife, make animals act damn near as peculiar as people. How about you? See anything weird since you've been here?"
        "In fact, yes." Jack was relieved that the postures they had chosen relative to each other made it possible to avoid meeting the veterinarian's eyes without causing suspicion. He told Travis about the crow at the window that morning-and how, later, it had flown tight circles over him and Toby while they played with the Frisbee.
        "Curious," Travis said. "It might be related, I guess. On the other hand, there's nothing that bizarre about its behavior, not even pecking the glass. Crows can be damned bold. It still around here?" They both pushed away from the Rover and stood scanning the sky. The crow was gone.
        "In this wind," Travis said, "birds are sheltering." He turned to Jack.
        "Anything besides the crow?" That business about toxic substances had convinced Jack to hold off telling Travis Potter anything about the graveyard. They were discussing two utterly different kinds of mystery: poison versus the supernatural, toxic substances as opposed to ghosts and demons and things that go bump in the night. The incident on the cemetery knoll was evidence of a strictly subjective nature, even more so than the behavior of the crow, it didn't provide any support to the contention that something unspeakably strange was going on at Quartermass Ranch. Jack had