Winter Moon

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