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47 W i l l i a m N o t t e r The Ranch Woman’s Secret Arlan thinks I’m here to watch the sunset the days he finds me still outside on the deck. It would likely be grounds for divorce if he knew, but I’m here listening for coyotes who cry in the hills when the sun is gone and twilight purples the east. I do the books, and I know he’s wasted more on traps and shells and bait than we’ve ever lost to coyotes. We haven’t had a single head killed by anything but cold and blizzards or the scours in years. I know it’s the bank note and the markets he mumbles about while he sleeps, but it’s coyotes in the morning. He can’t sit still thinking of all the space they’ve got to hide in. And the harder he fights to run them out, the more I hear wailing in the hills at night. We saw one crossing the road one evening, her coat like ruffled wheat, looking back at us as if we were out of place. Arlan stopped the truck and shot her with his coyote rifle. She spun once, biting the wound, then dropped, and he hung her carcass on the barbed wire fence. I fell asleep on the couch every night that week, but he never knew why. He’ll start to wonder where he put his seven-millimeter shells and how his traps get sprung while he’s in town or hauling a load of hay from Nebraska. The coyotes won’t let him win, and I’ll keep staying out past dark to listen, to hear the anxious cries that make these nights, this stubborn life, seem real. ...

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