The Tusk That Split the Storm
West of Pecos, the land remembers every hoofbeat, every bone buried shallow in caliche. It’s a place where things live longer than they should and where the wind doesn’t just blow—it warns.
That evening, the wind came in wrong.
A cold norther blew in sudden and hard, churning black clouds across the sky like boiling ink. The desert turned quiet—the kind of silence that sits on your chest. J.D. Harlan felt it before he saw it. He wasn’t green, wasn’t greenhorn by any stretch. He knew javelina, had hunted ’em since he could crawl, but this? This was different.
He’d been tracking a big bastard—old boar, blind in one eye, with a gait that was more swagger than limp. Locals called him Brujo. Claimed he chewed through traps, dodged bullets, and once killed a coyote pack leader in broad daylight.
“Witch pig,” they’d muttered at the café counter. J.D. chuckled when he heard it. Until today.
He picked up the trail at dusk, followed it through slot canyons and over slick redrock. Wind rising. Then, in a low arroyo filled with the trembling scent of creosote and coming rain, he found him.
The boar stared him down, motionless.
J.D. raised the rifle—click.
Misfire.
No time to think. The boar came, hooves pounding, jaws gnashing. J.D. dove, rolled, came up knife in hand. The talisman bounced against his chest—a silver javelina tusk, smooth and cold, etched with windrunes, strung on saddle tan leather cord. His father had gifted it to him years ago with only these words:
“When you need it, it’ll know.”
Now it knew.
The moment the boar charged again, the talisman flared. Light not from sun or fire but something older—hot and searing like silver poured fresh from the forge—lit up the canyon walls. The beast shrieked, blinded, staggering.
J.D. lunged, knife flashing—but the boar twisted, faster than it should’ve been, tusk slicing open his thigh. Blood ran fast and hot. Pain bloomed.
The fight became a dance—of snarls and breath, of steel and grit. They crashed through brush, slammed into rock, stumbled through ravines. The storm above cracked with lightning like gods were watching.
Twice the boar retreated—only to circle back.
Twice J.D. thought he’d won—only to find himself flat on his back, staring at thunderclouds and death.
The second canyon was deeper, darker. Wind howled down it like a banshee. J.D. could barely see, but the talisman glowed faint now, guiding his hand, urging him onward.
He limped forward, knife gripped tight. He saw Brujo silhouetted against a bolt of lightning, steam rising from its flanks. No longer an animal. A force.
They collided one last time—both bleeding, both raging. The silver talisman pulsed bright, brighter, until it let loose a blast of light like a star being born. For one breathless second, J.D. saw everything—each grain of dust, each jagged tooth, each beat of his own heart suspended in light.
He drove the blade deep.
The boar let out a sound no living thing should make and crumpled, the storm screaming as it died.
J.D. fell to his knees, coughing blood and laughter.
And then silence.
When the storm passed, dawn cracked pale on the canyon walls. Wind still whispered, but it no longer screamed.
J.D. dragged himself out of the chasm, talisman still warm against his skin. The boar’s body vanished by morning—just tracks and blood left behind.
They say J.D. doesn’t talk about that night, not even to the bartender who owes him six years of beers. But he wears the talisman still. Not as a charm. As a warning.
And far away, in a workshop carved into the ribs of the Colorado mountains, Cool Bob set down his tools and smiled. He turned to a wall lined with talismans—each silver, each humming with some quiet power—and said to no one in particular:
“Some pieces… don’t just protect. They wake the storm inside.”