“What does it say?” one of them asked.
“In Memory of Balthazar”
The paint was still drying on the little cross when they drove it into the earth with a rock as a hammer. They’d said the rites already. Still, everyone waited. It seemed unreal for him to be gone.
“Alright,” Sam sighed, “say any more goodbyes y’all have to say. Let’s head out in five.”
After a moment’s pause, the cowboys filtered away, spurs tinkling on the hard ground. They saddled up and rode out from out behind Sam’s lead, herding the cattle along.
For hours they rode in silence. None of the usual cattle driving songs. No banter. As it reached late afternoon, they stopped by a little creek flowing with water from the snowmelt up in the Big Horns. It felt good to get water. It felt good for the silence to be broken by the clatter of the water on the rocks. Sam gave some sparse directions for the rest of the afternoons’ push. Not much else was said. Fixing to head out again, Eli spoke quietly to Wes as they untethered their horses.
“There’s no part of you that thinks maybe Zar was right, is there?”
Wes didn’t turn to answer at first. He looked back down the trail over his shoulder. “I’ve never been one for superstitions before I came out here,” Wes answered, “but then again, I did always think somehow Zar knew things you just couldn’t explain.”
Eli nodded. “Saw things no one else sees,” he added.
They shook their heads in agreement. The team started up again. The talk ended there. But the words lingered.
They had been right about Balthazar, of course. He was an unusual man. Raised out East, he hadn’t been poor like the rest of them when he decided to come out to join in the cattle drives. Not dirt poor at least. He was one of those types who was motivated by a need to fulfill some deeper purpose. The money didn’t matter to him much. He was well read, knew the Bible better than most. Fitting, too, because he had the sort of essence of an Old Testament prophet, in the mind of Sam’s men anyhow. Balthazar rarely spoke. When he did, it was almost always a soft-spoken parable, and it was always some sort of warning. He knew how to read omens in the skies about the bad weather and other such things. Thus he kept his fellow riders safe, and they knew to listen when he spoke up. Otherwise though, if the trail ahead was without danger, he kept to his own thoughts, though he radiated a presence that seemed as if he spoke more in his gentle silence than anyone else could with an essay. Eli and Wes were right about him. He could see the unseen. And even the most skeptical in the bunch would typically heed his warnings. Typically. But that last warning of his had not been heeded. And now, after the shock of Balthazar’s death, everyone feared what was yet to come. After all, it had been his own death he’d said would come first. That theirs would follow.
The sun retired. When the moon rose and the day’s cattle drive was over, they chose a spot to make camp. Sully set up around the chuck wagon and soon the crew gathered, drawn in by the scent of the warming beans and biscuits rising in the Dutch oven buried in coals. They sat down on the earth, knees bent up, hands clasped loosely over them. It was wordless, but not silent. There was the rattling of the pot lid on the beans as the earthy steam filtered out. The crackle of the secondary fire, made for light, beside Sully’s cooking coals. The dove in the juniper trees behind them. The few yaps of a coyote realizing that she was alone in those hills. So it was not silent, yet it was wordless. Each man sat brooding and thinking, turning words over and over in their thoughts. Just preparing. Preparing to speak if anyone else were to speak. Holding their tongue to not be the first.
Sam, leader among them, broke the silence. “Tomorrow we’ll make it up to Ten Sleep if we stick to the plan. Montana’s not far now.”
“Hope Zar wasn’t onto something…” someone muttered.
“What you mean?” Sam questioned the voice.
Joey shifted his weight a bit. “We all heard what Zar said. Said if we don’t get off this trail, we’ll be dead before we get to Billings. Lucky if we ever see Montana at all, he said.”
Looks passed between the group, then their gazes settled back upon the fire’s embers floating up to join the stars.
“You really think all that is going to happen?” Sam asked honestly. He didn’t believe that which Balthazar had warned about was anything more than a bad dream.
“We’ll, I mean…” Joey trailed off.
Eli chimed in. “Zar saw things none of us could see. Aren’t you at least a little worried about it, Sam?”
Sam nodded slowly, thoughtfully. He scratched at a patchy area of his beaded jaw. “It’s true, Zar had a hell of an intuition. Got us out of a lot of tight spots.” He paused. They could hear his reluctance in the pause. “But just because Zar knew when a storm was going to blow in, I mean… that doesn’t make him Moses.”
The other cowboys were convinced, however, that Zar had in fact seen a legitimate warning in his dream. They tried to debate respectfully with Sam, pointing out that Balthazar’s death was proof in it of itself of the prophecy.
Sam always had an answer. “Rattlesnakes are always a risk. Could easily have happened to any of us. If there’s any miracle at all in this, it’s that we haven’t had any trouble with them before.”
“But the timing!” They insisted.
Back and forth they went, but in the end it was clear Sam wouldn’t budge.
Balthazar had warned the day he died that they needed to turn back and take the cattle on a different route up to Montana. He’d had a strange dream the night before that left him struck with a deep foreboding. In the dream, he had walked out into the sagebrush by himself. The Bighorn Mountains on the horizon seemed oddly alive, moving subtly like a reflection of themselves on water kissed by an imperceptible breeze. The mountains began to whisper, but he couldn’t make it out. They spoke louder and louder until it was like a thunderclap, and the creatures of the high desert scurried and hid under the sage and dust. The mountains boomed, their voice instructing him to take off his boots and set them aside. Balthazar did. He waited. Then the mountains spoke again. They told him the trail they were taking up on the cattle drive was a sacred path. It was a place that had been set aside for no man to walk in pursuit of worldly aims. Only the penitent heart could pass. And the mountains said they knew that their work was not the work of pilgrims. The cattle drive was corrupt in its intention, not fit for this place. The cattle would trample the earth, devour the grasses, poison the waters. And so, out of mercy, a warning. But to continue onward is to perish. Balthazar started to wake up in an icy sweat. A final message swirled in his waking state as he began to smell Sully’s coffee cooking nearby. Symbols of the old book shall be our proofs. He turned on the ground, almost awake. You tread into the garden that you were commanded to leave. Balthazar rose out of his bedroll. The words he remembered clearest were the last. And the serpent still guards the garden.
Breakfast was ready soon after. The crew circled up around the coals, excited for the day ahead. Their months-long job was drawing near to a close by now, just a few days from Montana. Waiting for them there was their pay and whatever else they’d planned - or not - for when the cattle drive was done. On the whole, they looked bright and excited. But Balthazar looked distant. He knew that his own ability to intuit the future was fairly sharp. Not infallible, he felt, but sharp enough to catch his attention. The idea that this dream could actually be an authentic premonition disturbed him. He sat grimly and anxiously. Sam saw it.
“What’s eating you?”
And Balthazar recalled the dialogue from the dream. The men grew solemn, for they trusted Balthazar’s gifts far more than he did himself. When Balthazar finished speaking, Sam asked earnestly what the voice in the dream wanted of them.
“To turn back and take the Bozeman trail up instead.”
Sam laughed and reached for the banged up percolator resting on the coals, refilling his tin mug with the bitter coffee. “Well, shit. Can’t do that, would put us two weeks behind. At least.”
Balthazar shrugged, and they all knew Sam was correct. If they turned back now they’d get to their end point so late they’d hardly have any profit left to divide up. It was easier to just agree that Balthazar had had a nightmare. No one was particularly thrilled about starting back up on the trail that day after hearing all this, but eventually they talked themselves into it - after all, to turn back because of a bad feeling just couldn’t really be justified.
As they rode on, their nerves settled. It was a gorgeous day, the cattle were in good spirits. The men sang their songs as they rode. Balthazar had calmed a bit, too. Then it happened. As they rode upon the crest of a steep, rocky slope tracing the river below, a rattlesnake sunning itself on a slab of limestone wound up and shook with furry near Balthazar’s palomino horse. She reared into the sky, rising on her back hooves in surprise. Fear filled her dilating eyes instantly. Sounds of shaking rage erupted again from the snake below. Enough. The rattler darted forward and struck at one of the back legs. The palomino recoiled. Screams of the animal bounced violently off the rock faces. Hooves slipped and skidded on the scattered rock of the outcropping, desperate to regain balance. Couldn’t. Together, the horse, the snake, and the rider tumbled down the slope. Balthazar’s temple crushed against a boulder under the weight of his horse. Into the water they crashed. It was only a fifteen foot slide into the river, but the rock was fatal. “Zar!” His fellow riders jumped off their horses and skidded down the talus into the water to grab him. Then they saw.
“Jesus,” they stammered. Balthazar had been right. A serpent, in a way, had killed him. Just like his dream warned. The sound of the river was deafening. In the wash of creeping dissociation, almost confusing. It was unbelievable – and yet very much believable - to them that he could be dead. They buried him, set a little cross into the earth there, and reluctantly rode one. But they could not truly accept it had really happened. Their fear and faith in his prophecy was cemented then. Yet that night, as the crew and Sam debated the matter, Sam would not be convinced. Of course, the majority of the shares on the line for this venture were his. It was his money on the line.
No one got good sleep that night. A few had bad dreams, others just couldn’t get much rest altogether. Then dawn came. Sully got the breakfast going again. A few thick slabs of bacon hissed in one of the cast iron pots. In the other, the scent of buttermilk from the biscuits hovered. The coffee started to boil. Everyone started to stretch and yawn, rising slowly. In one corner of the camp, Santos and Joaquin got each other’s attention. They were the two Basque brothers who’d worked harder on the drive than anyone, fiercely dedicated to their labor and each other. They were unquestionably brave. But they also had learned bravery could only get one so far. As they stirred they spoke in a hushed mixture of whispers in their dialects of Spanish and Basque, and the sign language they’d invented in their boyhood.
“Not you either, huh?” Neither one had gotten much rest. When they had, it was fitful. Santos said he thought he’d heard their grandmothers voice in one of his restless dreams. “Vaya,” she said. Go.
They were in agreement. The brothers would turn back. They’d cut their losses. Being from mountainous country with strange legends, they did not consider Balthazar’s death a coincidence. It sounded familiar to them. The circumstances echoed tales they’d heard back in the Pyrenees from old shepherds. These legends carried truths, and they were raised not to let cynicism lead them away from truth. Balthazar’s prediction came true. This was all the information they needed, and the vision of their grandmother was the seal. They folded up their woolen blankets, set their metal cups down near Sully’s percolator for a minute to claim their spot, then walked over to Sam. Sam sat apart from the others scanning over his maps of the mountain passes that lie ahead.
“Mr. Sam,” they said, hats in their hands and eyes toward their boots, “we’re sorry.”
Sam read what they meant. It was hard for him to contain his agitation. “I won’t be able to pay y’all then,” he said bitterly. Then, almost softening to a plea, “why don’t y’all just ride up and finish this out? We’re so close now.”
Santos and Joaquin shook their heads politely with an apologetic look. “Sorry Mr. Sam, no.” They really were sorry. It was hard, even shameful, for them to leave before the drive was over. Not for the wages they’d forgo - though they surely needed the money - but for the guilt of abandoning their comrades, for not seeing a job through. They knew their leaving would make the final push up to Montana much more challenging for the crew with two men gone, not to mention Balthazar. And Sam felt the loss in particular as he knew the brothers were his toughest rustlers. Perhaps for this reason, although he couldn’t admit it to himself consciously, Santos and Joaquin leaving chipped away at him in a way all the other arguments from his team had not; if his best riders weren’t willing to do this final push, that was a worrisome sign.
The brothers told Sam they didn’t care about their wages, and that baffled him, too, because he knew that could not possibly be true.
But Joaquin said without a hint of reservation, “Split our wages among you all.”
Santos nodded, “It is not our money any longer.”
Sam thought about that for a moment. With Balthazar gone, and Santos and Joaquin leaving, his shares - and the others’ - would grow. As long as they didn’t lose anyone else, they could probably still make it to Montana without major issue. This could all have its silver lining. Whatever doubt Sam had started to feel with the brothers leaving was displaced in that moment by a desire for the shares. He rose up from the ground, standing taller and restored, smiled, and clapped the shoulders of the brothers warmly. “Well, I obviously hate to see y’all go. Wish you wouldn’t. But I understand it”.
They shook hands with Sam and went back to the fire to throw back a few quick cups of coffee. With the others now gathered around, they scarfed a few biscuits that Sully had dribbled the bacon fat onto and licked their fingers of the grease. Then they jogged over to their horses, untethered them from the trunks of the juniper, and walked them back over to the gathering of the men. They gave a brief, polite goodbye to the crew, catching everyone off guard.
“What?!” They exclaimed.
“We’re sorry. But we can’t go. Told Mr. Sam already.”
The rest of the cowboys sat there confused and shocked.
“Bad feeling,” Santos added, “We’re sorry.”
They stepped up into their stirrups and swung their legs over. Up on their horses, and with a hurried expression, they lifted their hats in a gesture of fraternal farewell, turned, and rode back off to the South.
Sam walked towards the camp and waived to them from a distance as they trotted away. Wes, Joey, and Eli started to lose what calm they had left. They spoke urgently about how Montana was starting to look impossible now. Morale had nearly entirely disintegrated by the time Sam reached the circle. Sully silently added new coffee grounds and water to the percolator. He avoided eye contact with the others out of his awkwardness. Sam stood against the circle of his men and listened, hearing them out before interjecting. When Eli and Joey had said their piece, and Wes seethed without much to add, Sam called on Sully. But Sully shook his head no shyly as he cleaned up the chuck. He didn’t have anything to say, and his consistent quietude was respected. The cook was free to have his own opinions.
“What about you Justin?” Sam asked. “You haven’t said much of anything lately.”
Justin shifted forward from his reclining position. “I’m not scared, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Wes snickered in disbelief. None of the others believed him either.
“Honest, I’m not. Not of some doomsday prophecy anyways,” he continued, “Yeah, it’ll be tough getting these steers up there. But scared? Of what, all us dying out here?”
It was clear he wasn’t too worried about the rest of the drive in terms of mortality, just clear minded about the immense amount of work left ahead. Sam nodded in approval. Need more of that in this bunch, he thought. Sam took a long breath, exhaled deeply, and crouched down towards the ground to be closer to the others.
“Look, I get it,” he looked at Wes first, then the others, “finishing this out with three of our boys gone now ain't going to be easy”. He scratched his beard. “But it’s still humanly possible. It can be done. And if no one else leaves we’ll make it up there no problem. Bigger shares than we’d all planned, too.” Sam reminded them of how with three men gone, all their wages would increase as a piece of the pie. Justin seemed to have realized this first. He saw his shares essentially double. His will to get to Montana became resolved in that moment. Calcified and unshakable. He hadn’t taken on much of the fears that afflicted the others, anyhow. The only fear he had was the fear of coming all this way and getting nothing in return. He needed the money badly. The wages were everything to him, to his future out in the West. And now his promised wages had doubled overnight. But so, too, did his greed. It was a dark seed planted in his heart that day.
The other men had been successfully convinced. They saddled up, though admittedly weary of the next several days to come; Santos and Joaquin leaving made the risks of accident greatly increase. But still, as Sam and Justin pointed out, it wasn’t impossible. They should reasonably expect to lose some of the steers along the way, but overall they’d make it out with most of the herd if all went well. They’d still come out on top. Coming to grips with things, Eli, Wes, and Joey all made private, silent promises to themselves to give it their best shot. But if any other dark omens crossed their path - things that echoed Balthazar’s warnings - they swore to themselves that they’d just turn away once and for all, as Joaquin and Santos had done. So it was that they were all relieved when nothing happened that day that could be considered even remotely ominous. Sure, some of the cattle strayed from the herd in a few of the coulees they crossed through, but that was nothing in these circumstances. What they cared about were more mystical and mortal concerns, and thankfully there were none. No strange and sudden deaths. No “signs from the old book” like Balthazar had said that morning on the day he passed. Yes, the day had been smooth indeed. The attitude at supper that night around the fire was palpably different than the nights before. Lighter. Nerves settled. There were a few stories told, even a few laughs. The return of banter was refreshing. Everyone felt pretty good about what was ahead with just two days left between them and the end of this job. They’d make it through now. Finally the first day that something went well. They got good rest that night and woke up with the sunrise ready to ride.
That morning the air carried with it a pleasant, faintly warm breeze and an even fainter humidity. The type of thing Balthazar would have known as the portends of a change in barometric pressure. A storm would come. But of course Balthazar was not there. Sam and his men enjoyed the pleasantness of the dawn under the clear sky. They set out with an eagerness. Today’ll be the day we get to the border, they thought. If all went well, they’d roll into Billings the next day, get their pay, and finally be done. So they rode out hollering to each other with good, high spirits. It felt like another beautiful day ahead. It was not. A storm started to roll in around noon out of the Northwestern horizon. At first there was only a distant rumble of thunder. For a while, it just seemed to just hang on the periphery of their world. The sky remained clear for the most part and the men remained mostly unbothered by the weather. It appeared to them it would pass them by based on the direction of the wind. But Joey was less sure. Balthazar came to his mind. He did his best to shove him away, out of his head, but Joey’s anxiety was circling him much like the clouds above were starting to do. The sky groaned more audibly now. The wide open plains darkened as the brooding slate colored clouds came in. This one looked like it could be bad after all.
Sam galloped around the periphery of the herd to Wes and Justin, the riders closest to him.
“Let’s try to get to that depression over there to the right! Worried about that lightning.” He called out to them. Wes and Justin then in turn whirled their horses around and ran to tell Eli and Joey. They started off towards the East, urging the herd into the lower topography. Joey rode out in front as his flank shifted to become the fore, guiding the cattle for the turn into the sagging land. The thunder rumbled close now, shaking the earth a bit. Then, out at a distance, a lightning bolt writhed down to strike the ground. It was still several miles off, but the dynamics of fear swept through the herd. A loud smack of thunder made the ground quiver like a stampede. Another bolt struck, closer this time. Too close. The ground quivered under a real stampede. The cattle’s eyes bulged with terror. They bolted forward in a long wall of charging bodies and horns.
“Christ!” Joey yelled in the chaos. He kicked his spurs into the sides of his horse faster and faster, so hard that the spurs dug into the horse’s sides and drew blood. Metal stabbed dully into flesh. It was life or death for them both, and they galloped as fast as they could trying to escape the closing gap between the stampede and the butte that they were now riding parallel from. The gap was closing in on them, like the pincer of a crab squeezing shut. They tried to outrun it. They couldn’t. When the rain began to pelt the parched prairie earth, kicking up dust as if shot down by bullets, Sam and the others had only just realized that something was wrong. Joey didn’t seem to be anywhere. It was when the downpour stopped that they finally found his mangled body lying in the mud, amongst the frantic constellations of hoofprints. He had probably died early on into the charge. His horse on the other hand had somehow survived, barely, but so severely had it been trampled that its life held on only by a thread. Eli winced. He was a man who couldn’t bear seeing an animal suffer, such was his love for creatures. He dismounted, jumping into the matted grasses and wet earth, slipping a little. He caught himself. But he could not catch himself in his anger at the cruelty of these plains. He was sick to his stomach at the death of his friend and the pain of his horse. He was nauseous and sick. Then he said a blessing for the horse. His pistol popped loudly on the plain, a mercy to the creature. And his throat closed up with anger to try in vain swallow tears.
“Damn this place. Damn this place.”
They buried Joey’s body on the top of a small hill near to the butte. The cross was fashioned and driven into the still damp earth. But no scripted epitaph was written this time for, as was grimly pointed out by Eli, there was no one left who could read or write well enough to produce it. Now there was a true crisis of confidence. It seemed utterly unfeasible to get the herd up to Billings. Losing Joey reduced their outfit to a team of four riders. It just couldn’t be done anymore. The critical threshold was crossed. And so after some discussion, Sam agreed that the best idea would simply be to cut the size of the herd – temporarily at least. They’d have to leave a portion behind to roam, gambling that they wouldn’t go too far. Then they could come back. It wasn’t a terrible proposition. After all, they were just a day’s ride away from here and where the drive would end. They could drive up the bulk of the herd, get their pay, and return by the following nightfall to round up the rest. They’d lose even more cattle in that time no doubt, either to their wandering or the wolves that sometimes stalked about. Still, it was better than nothing. And better than the chaos of driving up the whole herd with only four men, which if they attempted would probably result in similar losses of cattle anyways but with much more risk to the riders. So they agreed that was the plan. They drove up north.
They did end up making it to Billings. They rolled into town dusty and haggard, with that larger subset of the herd marching wearily in between them. Balthazar hadn’t been quite right after all. After so many trials in the journey, though, even Sam and Justin had worried by the end that he could have been, that they’d never make it out. They did though and were able to get good share in their wages after all. They divided up what would have been Balthazar’s, Santos’ and Joaquin’s, and Joey’s. The stockyard buyers offered to hold their first round of wages for them until they returned back up in a couple of days with the rest of the herd. But all the men agreed: better to go ahead and take the money now. If their odyssey had taught them anything at all, it was that the trail in that last bit of Wyoming range was unpredictable at best, cursed at worst.
“You just never know,” cautioned Justin, “I’ll go ahead and get mine now,” he told the stockyard accountants. “Might be better to just have it in hand in case things get crazy again. If we didn’t make it back up here, I’d be mighty sore about my pay not being where I am.”
The others saw the logic in that and did the same. It made no difference to the stockyard anyhow. So they grabbed their bills and spent the night at the Silver Dollar Bar there in town, and woke up the next morning groggy and even more worn out from a night at the Dollar than they were before.
They prepared to ride out back down south for the Wyoming border. Sully, though, would be staying behind. And fair enough; his contract was up, he’d been the chuck up through Billings and that was done now. He helped them provision up for their short recovery mission, loading up saddle bags with enough food for the one-night, two-day journey ahead. Then he bid them a safe ride, shook their hands respectfully, and trudged back to the sun-bleached steps of the Dollar. He gave a quick nervous wave, walked through the swinging doors, and was gone. The ride into Wyoming was smooth. The men didn’t chat much, but not out of fear or anguish as it had been before. Just out of pure exhaustion. They were ready to be done with this job, get back up to Billings for their extra shares, and get on with their lives. In the early evening, they reached the hills where they’d left the smaller fraction of the herd behind. Most of it was still there.
“Better than nothing,” Sam shouted out, glad.
They were all glad. This would soon be over. They built the fire for the night, ate what Sully had prepared for them, and then decided who’d be on night patrol. The wolves had been bad in this area the first time around.
“I’ll do it,” Justin said reluctantly, “seems like y’all got pretty liquored up at the Dollar last night.”
They laughed and agreed, and were relieved it wouldn’t be them tonight. So as the coals of the fire died, and the stars blossomed overhead like a great big garden in Spring, the others fell asleep and rested well for the first time in a long while. Late into the night, underneath the blooming stars, another seed that had been planted sprouted. A dark seed. It pierced through the surface of Justin’s heart. It was his greed.
He got off his horse slowly, taking off his spurs with care and setting them gently on the ground, making no sound. He reached to his hip. The revolver was cold, heavy. He paused in the moonlight, shocked at himself, puzzled at the darkness that swept over him. But he thought of all he could have, and how easy. He stared at the pistol and its silver glinting reflection on his chest from the moon above. How easy. He pulled the hammer of the pistol back with his thumb and walked softly over to the sleeping bodies of Eli, Wes, and Sam. It was very quick. The prairie lit up with a flash of light. Wes was gone. Another flash. Eli. Sam woke in time to grab his own pistol, but Justin’s bullet found him quickly. Sam raised a shaking arm burning with pain and managed to fire a round into Justin’s left leg, but it was too late. Sam faded, too, and the parched prairie grasses drank from his draining life. Justin grabbed the wads of bank notes from inside their vest pockets, hobbling from one to the next. The sharp pain in his leg was almost unbearable, but adrenaline and mania gave him power enough to keep going. His sense of reason was completely lost. He was certain if he got back into the Big Horns he could hide out and heal his wound. But he needed to get there quick. There was a hurrying voice inside himself urging him on. Quick. Quick. He folded up the bills, stuffed them in the breast pockets of his flannel, stumbled over to his horse, and hoisted himself up, teeth gritting in pain. Justin whirled his horse around to the South and whipped it forward for lack of the spurs he’d forgotten on the ground and wouldn’t get back down off the horse for.
He rode all night, closer and closer to the mountains as they appeared to rise up out of the earth on the horizon as the hours went by. Something was calling him there, almost magnetic. It seemed like a voice, a whisper. A certain part of his consciousness knew that this was only the hallucination of the fever coming on, but in time even this lucidity left him. Only his wild, crescendo of obsession with getting to the mountains. By dawn, Justin’s horse had brought him into the craggy foothills, to a creek that whipped in between boulders. Water. But it was for naught; Justin collapsed in delusion upon the bank, sliding off the saddle into the reeds. The feverish state of the onset infection growing in his leg polluted his last moments of awareness and then stole it from him altogether. Justin fell into a deep dream. A dream where he thought he’d heard Balthazar’s voice calling out to him, along with Wes and Eli, Joey and Sam. But it could have just been the sounds of the doves in the junipers warning the creatures of the glade of the approach of wolves circling nearby.