The Wild Dog Hunter

A couple chapters down the road from Altamont, Max and one of his pals from the Speedway, Norm, are picked up by the Wild Dog Hunter:

... The further north we hitch-hiked the colder it got. Although the Bay area wasn’t exactly a tropical zone, I was no longer adapted to anything below forty degrees. The ride we got from Portland dropped us off in the middle of nowhere up the grade from the Umatilla Bridge over the Columbia River. There were a few inches of snow on the ground and we made camp among the sage finding only a stick here or there in the dark to light a campfire. Curled up in our bags we drifted off to sleep. An hour or so later the sound of dogs yapping woke me up. At first I wasn’t concerned but the sound of yapping seemed to be getting closer. Then Norm woke up.

            “What’s that?”

            “Coyotes, I guess.”

            “Shit, really?” Norm sat up looking around.

            “Nothing to be afraid of...” I tried to be reassuring. The sound of yapping seemed to be circling us. I envisioned being found in the spring… our bones scattered and sleeping bags torn up. Then I thought of the old western movies, where the “greenhorn” would get spooked by the howl of coyotes in the desert, and tried not to panic.

            “They’re getting closer.” Norm was nervous and I was getting edgy myself. I knew how sound can fool you in this semi-arid desert but the yapping did seem to be getting closer. I had never heard of anyone being harmed by coyotes but I had heard of packs of wild dogs in the desert pulling down mule deer and attacking children.

            “What do you want to do… break camp?”

            “Nothing is open in Umatilla… not even a gas station.” There was a gas station our last ride stopped at west of Umatilla on I-80.

            So Norm and I left our bags at the camp and headed down the road back towards Umatilla. A traveler spotted us and gave us a lift to Boardman hearing all about a vicious pack of wild dogs or whatever back there. We hung out at the gas station in Boardman keeping the attendant company until dawn. Making our way back in the morning and expecting to see our bags torn up within a circle of dog tracks we found no tracks besides our own. I walked out hundreds of yards from our camp finding nothing. Slightly embarrassed we stuck to the wild-dog story. “They were getting closer, eh?”

“Yeah, they sounded real close” Norm answered. “They probably gave up when we left.”

            The next ride from there was from a wild, long-haired and bearded man in an old green International pick-up truck that lived outside of Spokane before Cheney. And, as another coincidence, hunted wild dogs where the rolling wheat fields make way for pine trees and arid ground with little or no growth in between. He had us in for a dinner and a smoke or two. He told of how folks from Spokane drop off their unwanted pups in the woods around his place. “Of course, the pups grow into dogs that can do nothing less than follow their instincts, packing-up, and posing a very real danger to humans and animals alike.” He had a quad stereo hooked up to strobe lights playing, of all things, Steppenwolf. “Born to be Wi-i-i-l-lld!” blasting at us, he wanted to know what happened at Altamont.

            I explained the chaos, starting with the early dawn cue stick beatings of the folks in front of the stage, to the school buses plowing into the crowd; the rapes, the carnage on the stage and so on.

            The fellow sat there and listened, hardly saying a thing until I’d finished relating it all. Then he spoke; “So, there were three hundred thousand people at the concert?” He paused a moment as I nodded, “… and how many Hells Angels?”

            “Maybe fifty or sixty… I didn’t count.” I answered but I hadn’t anticipated what was to come next from the wild-dog hunter.

            “Why didn’t three hundred thousand people crush the mother fuckers?”

            I had no answer. I could have explained how impossible it would be to motivate that many people to do anything in synch.

            “So, all those musicians had the mikes and the amps and they calmed everybody down and let a handful of thugs run roughshod over three hundred thousand freaked out hippies!”

            “Yes.” I was beginning to get his point.

            “There was only one man with any courage out of three-hundred thousand people and he’s dead…”

            The implication was clear. Anyone still alive that didn’t try to crush those wearing Hells Angels colors after that man died on the stage was a coward. The Wild-dog Hunter didn’t have to say it. All this talk about smashing the state and revolution and three-hundred-thousand couldn't stand up to fifty or sixty... I just hung my head.

            Then I understood how the Nazis did it; how the Stalin did it and how every tyrant from before and after Genghis Khan did it.

            “Sacred off by a few wild dogs," he spat on the floor, "Give a little candy to the babies and they are jelly in your hands.” The Wild-Dog Hunter said.