The Prairie Chicken Kill

by Bill Crider

  "Isn't it obvious?" he asked.

  "Not to me," I said.

  "You said that you listened to him last night. Did you hear his commercial for Spotted Owl in a Can?"

  I said that I had.

  York shrugged. "There you have it, then."

  "Have what? The commercial was just a joke."

  "If you think that, you haven't heard his spiel on the new laws regarding the government's right to protect endangered species by requiring landowners to do certain things with their property. Or to refrain from doing certain things."

  "No, I haven't heard that."

  "Well, of course he's opposed to the government's being able to do anything to protect any species. He believes a landowner should be able to do whatever he wants with his property. If he wants to kill all the dodos on it, he should just do it. And Evans has had a few things to say about Lance's good work with the Prairie Chickens, believe me. It's a wonder the town hasn't marched out here with torches and burned the fields."

  "He's attacked his employer?" I asked.

  "He attacks everyone he doesn't agree with," Anne said. "Verbally, of course. Lance doesn't mind; that's what Evans' show is all about. Freedom of speech, remember?"

  "Freedom of speech doesn't have anything to do with killing birds," I said.

  "No, and Evans knows that speech can go only so far," York said. "He saw that talking about Garrison's ranch wasn't going to do any good, so he decided on more direct action and killed that bird. Or he had one of his bodyguards do it. Or some of the others in their group. Either way, he's behind it."

  "Do you have any evidence of that?"

  York just looked smug and stubborn. "I know what I know."

  There's nothing harder to penetrate than a closed mind, so I gave up on York and turned to Lindeman. "You agree with York?"

  "Yeah, I guess I do. I think Evans was makin' a statement or something. He got plenty of publicity out of it, too. There was a big article about the bird in the paper, and it mentioned Evans' radio show. People wrote letters to the editor for a week."

  "What kind of letters?"

  "Mostly about how it was a dumb idea to put birds ahead of people. Ever'body around here figures the gover'ment should be doin' something for the rice farmers instead of some bird."

  "Did anybody come out on the bird's side?"

  "You saw how people acted this mornin' at the cafe," Lindeman said. "They know what I think, and they don't like it. They don't want to mess with Evans or his gang, and they don't want to have anything to do with somebody who does. Besides, they like what he has to say, and the fact is, nobody cares much about Prairie Chickens."

  "I care," York told him. "Anne cares, and so do Laurel and Bob."

  "Laurel and Bob?" I said.

  "The Greers," Anne said. "They're birders, like Martin."

  If they were like Martin, I wasn't sure I'd care to meet them.

  "What's this about a gang?" I asked. "And a group? Is there someone I should know about besides Evans and the two bodyguards?"

  Lindeman said, "There's a bunch around here, calls itself the Picketville Minute Men. It's a sort of militia group, but it's not all that well organized. Evans heads it up, along with Gar and Bert. They like to go off on the weekends and do survival stuff out in the country, shoot their guns and all that kind of thing. They march in the Fourth of July parade."

  "Do they hunt, or just shoot?"

  "They aren't hunters," York said. "Killers is what they are."

  "They never killed anybody as far as I know," Lindeman said.

  York said, "They killed that bird."

  York had a one-track mind. It was time to get on another track, if I could.

  "How are things at the radio station?" I asked Anne. "What does your husband think about the dead Prairie Chicken?"

  "Things are pretty tense. Paul and Evans didn't get along well from the first, and now they don't get along at all. Evans knows that Paul tried to keep him off the station, and he's always been resentful. After the Prairie Chicken was killed, Paul tried to get Lance to pull the show. He and Evans had quite a confrontation about it at the station."

  "Define confrontation," I said.

  "There was a loud argument and some pushing and shoving."

  "Where were the bodyguards?"

  "They got into it, too. Paul got away from them just before things got completely out of hand and locked himself in his office."

  It sounded as if Evans and his associates were a little on the unruly side.

  "But Evans is still working at the station," I said.

  Anne nodded. "Lance doesn't want him off. He's bringing in too much advertising."

  Good old Lance. "But it's his bird that's dead. He must not think Evans killed it, or he wouldn't have hired me."

  "Hard to say what he thinks," Lindeman said. "He told me that if you could prove Evans did it, he'd pull the show. But not unless you had rock solid proof. Could be he's scared of Evans, too."

  I wondered if Anne had noticed the implications of the too, but when I looked at her, she gave no indication.

  "About this dead bird," I said. "I guess it's time to have a look at it."

  "I've already seen it, thank you," York said.

  "So has Anne," Lindeman told me. "You come on with me out to the back room and we'll look in the deep freeze."

  I got up and followed him to a small room behind the kitchen. The room held a large built-in cupboard and an upright freezer.

  Lindeman opened the freezer and a thin white fog rolled out into the room and drifted toward the floor. Lindeman reached inside the freezer and brought out something in a large plastic bag.

  "You ever hear the joke about the parrot in the deep freeze?" he asked me.

  "No. Do I want to?"

  "Maybe not, but ever' time I get out this bird, I think about it. Guy named Womack told it to me. Seems there was this woman who buys a parrot to keep her company, but when she gets it home she finds out that all it does is cuss. So she calls the pet store and threatens to bring it back, but the owner says there's a way to take care of the cussin'. Tells her to put the parrot in the deep freeze for five minutes, not long enough to kill him or anything, but just to give him a shock. Tells her that'll cure the cussin'. Well, she tries it, just takes him and pops him in. And when she opens the deep freeze five minutes later, the parrot has frost all over him. He's shakin', and his wings are wrapped all around him, and his beak is chatterin'. "Why'd you do that to me?" he asks her, so she tells him. He points with his wing over to a corner of the freezer and says, "If you did that to me for cussin', then what did that goddamn chicken do?"

  I laughed. It wasn't all that funny, but how often do you hear a parrot joke?

  "Let's go in the kitchen," Lindeman said. "Light's better in there."

  We went into the other room where he opened the bag and brought out the frozen bird. He put it on the kitchen table and said, "What do you think?"

  "I think it doesn't look much like a chicken," I said, and it didn't. It was sort of a dull brown with darker bars. It had a small crest of feathers and longer feathers that seemed to fall down its neck.

  "It's not a chicken," Lindeman said. "It's --

  " -- a grouse. Yeah. I know that."

  There were dark flecks of blood on the bird and I could see where some of the feathers had been torn away.

  "Twelve gauge shotgun," Lindeman said. He picked up the plastic bag and shook it. Something rattled in the bottom. "I picked the shot out."

  The shot wouldn't do us any good. It wasn't like a bullet. There was no way to identify the gun it had been fired from.

  I poked the bird with my finger. It was stiff and hard. "And you and York think that Evans killed it."

  "Him or his pals, Thornton and Ware. Yeah. They did it. Just their way of lettin' us know what they think of savin' an endangered species."

  It was possible, I supposed, but I still didn't see the point of it. Evans might not like the idea of a gover
nment-protected bird, but Lance was still the man with the money and the radio station. It didn't make sense to me that Evans would want to make an enemy of someone in Lance's position.

  "Has anyone talked to Evans about the bird?" I asked.

  "I did," Lindeman said. "So did Lance. Evans said he didn't have a thing to do with it."

  "But you didn't believe him."

  "You wouldn't either if you talked to him. Smiled that little smile of his, and those two apes stood right by him and grinned like shit-eatin' dogs."

  "I guess I'll have to have my own little talk with him," I said. I didn't relish the idea. I didn't know about Bert Ware, but I was sure Gar Thornton was bad news. Just thinking about him reminded me of the stingray.

  "Good luck to you," Lindeman said. "And watch out for Gar and Bert. They don't like anybody to get too close to him."

  "I'll bet."

  Gar could keep people away, all right. He could probably crush my head like a cardboard box.

  Lindeman put the bird back in the bag and returned it to the freezer. Then we went back to where Anne and York were sitting.

  "Aren't you going to show Tru the birds?" Anne asked when we came into the room. "He needs to see them to get an idea of what the ranch is like and why it's so important."

  "I'll take him right now," Lindeman said. "Do you two want to go along?"

  York did, but Anne said that she had to get back to town. Since she was riding with York, he would have to drive her. He was disappointed at missing the opportunity to show off his knowledge of birds, but he managed to keep a stiff upper lip. No wonder. He'd be alone in the car with Anne. I would have traded places with him in a nanosecond if it had been possible.

  Before they left, Anne said, "Why don't you show him the barns first, Red, and tell him a little about the Prairie Chicken's feeding and mating habits. You never know what might prove useful."

  Lindeman said he would. York put on his hat, picked up his binoculars, and hung them around his neck.

  "All right," he said. "I'm ready."

  Lindeman and I followed him and Anne outside and watched them drive away.

  "That York's not all bad," Lindeman said. "He's just a little snooty."

  I thought about York being in the car alone with Anne. I wondered if she thought he was snooty.

  "I guess that's one word for it," I said.

  "You got a better one?"

  "Not right on the tip of my tongue," I told him. "Let's go see those barns."

  The barns were just barns, made mostly of metal, with high, airy roofs. One held a couple of Italian-made tractors and a truck even older and more battered than Lindeman's Dodge. Lindeman explained that the tractors were used for mowing and plowing.

  "We plant a little maize," he said. "But we buy most of what we feed. The chickens like grasshoppers, too, and there are plenty of those."

  "What's in the other barn?"

  "Grain. That's about it, that and the rats the cats don't catch."

  "You keep cats?"

  "They don't get out after the birds, if that's what's botherin' you. Let's go have a look."

  The cats were lying in the shade under an overhanging roof. One was a calico female, and the other was a gray tabby, a neutered tom. They lay without moving, watching us through slitted eyes.

  "Elvis and Priscilla," Lindeman said.

  "I thought they split up a long time ago."

  "Not these two. Best little ratters around. Keep this place clean as a whistle.

  He unlocked the door to the storeroom and we went inside. The cats watched but didn't follow. Lindeman switched on a light, and dust motes drifted through its beams and filled my nose. I resisted the urge to sneeze as I looked around at the neatly stacked sacks of grain. As far as I could tell, there weren't any rats.

  "See what I mean?" Lindeman said.

  I saw that the barn was clean and rat-free. But I was more interested in seeing a Prairie Chicken. I said, "What about that tour of the ranch."

  Lindeman switched off the light. "Comin' right up," he said.

  Ten

  The ranch road was nothing but hard-packed ruts, and we bounced along in the Dodge with Lindeman pointing out the sights, not that there was much to see. Mostly there was just prairie, and grass, and wild flowers, though I glimpsed some trees off in the distance.

  "We'll be comin' up on the marsh in a minute or so," Lindeman said. "I'll stop a good way off so we can get out and have a look. Don't want to scare off any of the birds."

  "I didn't know that Prairie Chickens were water birds," I said.

  "They aren't. We're not goin' to see any Prairie Chickens yet, they're shy and hard as hell to find. But there's all kinds of birds out here. Give old Ralph a chance, and he'd shotgun ever' last one of 'em."

  We drove very slowly up a slight rise, and I could see the trunk and branches of a rotten tree sticking up. There was a bird of some kind on one of the bare limbs.

  "That's an Anhinga crane," Lindeman said when I touched his arm.

  We topped the rise, and the broad marsh was spread out in front of us. I was taken completely by surprise at what I saw. Hundreds of birds skittered along its edges or waded in its shallow water. It was almost like a scene from an old Tarzan movie, one of the Technicolor ones.

  "Kinda gets you, don't it?" Lindeman said. "People don't ever expect to see something like that right out here in the middle of what looks like a wasteland."

  "How many different kinds of birds are out there?" I asked.

  I couldn't identify a single one of them. York would have held me in utter contempt.

  "Let's get out and have a look," Lindeman said, stopping the truck.

  We got out, closing the doors as softly as we could, and just stood there for a second. The sun was warm on my face, and I could hear grasshoppers jumping in the dry grass nearby and the faint buzz of an airplane so far away that it was just a dark speck against the single white cloud in the bright blue sky. The birds made no noise at all.

  "All right, now," Lindeman said. "Look through your binoculars and focus on those pink birds way over by the far side."

  Before we left the ranch house, Lindeman had gone back inside and brought out two pairs of 7X35 binoculars, one for me and one for him. They weren't the most expensive you could buy, but they would do. I put the binoculars to my eyes and followed orders.

  "Those are spoonbills," Lindeman said. "I bet you recognize 'em now."

  I didn't recognize them, not really, but I saw the spoon-shaped bills that gave them their name.

  "There's some blue herons out there," Lindeman said. "And some snowy egrets and cormorants. Those things scootin' around on the mud are called stilts. Of course there's a couple of kinds of ducks, too, and there's some white ibis. Let's walk on down the road and see what else I can pick out for you."

  I didn't bother to tell him that he'd been going much too fast for me. He probably knew it already. I let the binoculars dangle from the strap and followed him down the right-hand rut.

  "You don't look much like an expert on birds," I said.

  "You mean I don't look like Martin York? Hell, you don't have to wear a get-up like his to look at birds. Course that vest is pretty nice when you're gonna be out in the field for a while. You can carry you a granola bar or a package of cheese crackers in those pockets, along with your knife and your snake-bite kit."

  "Snake-bite kit? There are snakes around here?"

  "Yep. Cottonmouths, mostly. And alligators, too."

  Suddenly I wanted to get back in the truck. Alligators I can deal with. They're big enough for me to see if they're anywhere around. But snakes were a different story. I really don't like snakes.

  "Don't worry," Lindeman said. Maybe he could see that I'd broken out in a mild sweat. "The snakes stick pretty close to the water. We won't be gettin' that close to it."

  "That's fine with me," I said, feeling a little better about things. But not much.

  As we walked along the road, which w
as built up like a dam that ran around the edge of the marsh like a semicircle, I could hear the sound of the airplane getting closer. I looked up, shading my eyes with my hand.

  "Looks like Billy Younger's little crop duster," Lindeman said. "The white crop dusters are all owned by private individuals. The yellow ones are corporate-owned."

  I watched as the little white plane flew closer, wondering what it was doing up there. I wasn't the only one.

  "I wonder what he's doing up there?' Lindeman said. "Not supposed to be flyin' around here. That's one of the things about this place the gover'ment made sure of before Lance worked his deal with 'em. There's not supposed to be any dustin' within twenty miles of here, and even that's too damn close. If there was to be any overspray, it'd wipe out the ever' bird here. Polecats and possums, too."

  "Maybe he's just up for a ride. It's a nice day."

  "Billy don't go up for rides. That aviation gas costs too much for that kinda stuff. He's gonna scare the birds if he don't veer off."

  He didn't exactly veer off. Instead he made a long, looping turn that pointed the nose of the plane in the same direction we were headed. If he kept coming, he would soon be directly over our heads.

  I looked back down, not because I heard anything but more because of something I seemed to feel, like a sudden vibration in the ground. And I saw something that I didn't quite understand. The rut behind Lindeman's Dodge was exploding upward as clods of dirt jumped into the air and the ground ripped itself apart.

  I threw myself into Lindeman, dragging him off his feet and pulling him toward me as I rolled down the side of the road. The ground crushed the binoculars against my chest.

  The plane buzzed past above us and bits of dirt stung my face as the rut erupted where we had been standing. After a couple of turns we flopped into the mud below the road, and Lindeman shoved himself away from me.

  "What the hell are you doin'?" he said. "Have you gone nuts?"

  "Somebody's shooting at us," I said. "From the plane."

  He looked at me. "Huh?"

  "Shooting at us." I looked up at the plane, which had made another turn and was coming back in our direction. "Here he comes again."