The Third Book of the Dun Cow: Peace at the Last Read Online Free PDF Page A

flight, crying down the corridors of the universe, “If you are God, and if you are good, prove it! Prove that what your hand has made is good and faithful altogether. Release me. Let me test your Creatures’ spirits and see which one of us they will obey.”
    God released the Serpent, and then wept.
    For the Serpent soared among the planets. He wrapped himself around the summits of the mountains. He traveled the forests, the swamps, the wilderness, the prairies and the plains, singing a most beautiful, enticing song.
    “Curse God,” he sang, “and he will have no power over you, but you yourselves shall become gods.”
    The Serpent’s intent was to turn the earth into a howling desolation, to destroy the sun and the moon and time itself, so that the Lord would have nothing left to love.
    The Serpent’s power and his temptations terrified everything in which there was life. But no one disobeyed except one Midge who came and made her home as a bloodworm in the Serpent’s eye.
    In that day the Creator created the thing that grieved him to tears: Retribution.
    He caused caverns to yawn in the crust of the earth, caves whose throats ran down into the deepest dungeons of the globe, for the Lord was Lord indeed. He felt what he had not felt since the beginning of time. He felt wrath, and his wrath drove the wingéd Serpent into the dungeons he had made.
    But ever thereafter the Lord’s heart was bound by sorrow, for his Creatures—the children into whom he had blown the breath of life—had learned uncertainty and fear.

[Four] In Which a Thunderstorm Terrifies a Wolf
[Four] In Which a Thunderstorm Terrifies a Wolf
    The Cream-Colored Wolf’s tongue hangs out of the side of her mouth like a dry towel. The prairie grass has withered. It has been blown so flat and sere that the Wolf’s tread makes a crushing sound. For the last five days every streambed where she went to look for water has been baked and cracked like broken potsherds. Last week there was a mud wherein she could press small cups of water with her paws. Now her moisture was the morning dew.
    Until this morning dust devils had whirled, confusing her. The arid wind turned her eyelids into sandpaper. But today the air is dead-still, hanging fire, as it were, and waiting.
    Thirst has driven her, not good sense. The search for water took her miles away from the path of the Ancients. She’s been running without direction, footsore—until just now when one paw sinks into a Prairie-Dog hole. The Cream-Colored Wolf somersaults, and lands on her back, and lies inert, but running still, still running in her dreams.
    The finger of a cool wind touches the Wolf’s snout. She wakes but doesn’t open her eyes. She is grateful for the new sensation. Some day she will repay the kindness. Her soul smiles. She wants to go back to sleep.
    Suddenly a ripping Crack! of lightning shakes the firmament.
    And the wind picks up. It trills the Wolf’s whiskers and causes the hair in her ears to crackle with static.
    The Wolf whimpers. She squeezes her eyes tight. If she doesn’t see it, it can’t be real.
    Boom!
    The Cream-Wolf is up and running—blind-speeding with the wind, though the wind is faster and passes her, blowing her ruff forward.
    A bank of black clouds has massed in the west behind her. In front of her the sky is an eerie, lucent yellow. Her jowls bowl in the wind. Foam flecks her cheeks. Her fur snaps like a tiny fireworks. A bright bolt of lightning issues from the dark cloud down.
    Boom!
    The Wolf springs fifteen feet at a leap.
    As if on spiders’ legs the lightning chases her, strutting and stuttering over the landscape.
    Shelter! But there is no shelter on the infinite prairie. No hill that she can hide behind.
    All at once rain begins to strafe her, bulleting her backside.
    The Cream Wolf’s coat grows sodden and heavy. She is sick with the cold. The rain becomes hail, firing pellets the size of dried peas. These beat her into a dreary submission. She drops