Eventually he found a spot out of the breeze and hunkered down in the lee of some rocks. It was damn cold and he was freezing his ass off, even with the coffee. He could have stayed in bed, with Rachel curled up warm beside him. Maybe they could have made up in the best way there was, her soft breasts against his chest as he lay over her though it had been a hell of a long time since they’d done anything like that. It made him uncomfortable just thinking about it and he had to shift position and think about something else. If things worked out, he promised himself they’d have a real night out. It would be a new start for them. She’d see how hard he’d tried to do this right just for her. Mostly for her anyway. Things would get better.
***
Michael had also risen early. He crossed the river and climbed to a high rocky promontory, where he paused to look back at the way he’d come. He was sweating from the climb and his chest ached from the cold air. It had taken him an hour and a half and now he was hungry, and was wondering how long it would take him to get back. The return journey would be quicker, downhill all the way to the river which he could see far below, snaking its course westward.
Chimney smoke rose from his neighbor’s house. A vehicle was parked outside the house and as he watched a figure emerged, though it was too far away for him to distinguish even if it was a man or woman. Whoever it was went back to the house, but paused on the porch and seemed to look toward the mountains. He thought it was the woman and though it was unlikely, he wondered if she could see him.
When he gave her son a ride home the previous day it was their second encounter within an hour. Earlier he’d been heading to his car when he saw the boy sitting on a fence by the bus stop, swinging his legs. He knew it was his neighbor’s kid. Jamie, she called him. Two other kids of around the same age went by, one on a bike the other on skates being towed behind. They stopped by the boy who acted like they weren’t there.
‘Hey, stupid,’ the bigger one said. ‘How come you’re still here? It’s time to go home, stupid, don’t you know that?’
Michael paused but told himself they were just kids and it was none of his business anyway. The kid wearing skates piped up.
‘He’s just dumb, Jerry, you’re wasting your time talking to a dumb kid.’
Their laughter was high-pitched, cruel and mocking. Jamie didn’t react, just stared at his feet.
‘Hey, why don’t you say something? Come on, just say one little thing. Say, I’m a dummy,’ the big kid taunted. ‘What’s the matter, haven’t you got a tongue, dummy?’
The smaller kid suddenly darted forward and grabbed Jamie’s bag and tried to yank it out of his hand. ‘Give me that thing!’
There was a quick tussle and the bigger kid joined in, but Jamie wouldn’t let go. Michael saw what was going to happen. The combined strength of the other two yanked Jamie from the fence and he went sprawling face down, landing hard on the frozen ground. Michael yelled at the kids and went to help. A woman came out of a nearby house as he helped Jamie up and then the boy pulled free and took off along the street as fast as he could.
When Michael saw Jamie again he was halfway home, trudging along the side of the road. After the way he reacted earlier Michael almost drove by but it was cold and the boy was still miles from home. When he offered him a ride the boy simply stared at him silently.
‘It’s okay,’ Michael said. ‘I live in the house next to you, remember? I brought your dog home.’
When he didn’t get a response he began to wonder if there was something wrong with the boy. His silence didn’t seem quite right. The other kids had been calling him dumb, dummy. It struck a chord. Michael flashed back to himself at that age, tossing pebbles down the slope to the river, quiet and habitually alone.
‘Come on,’ he said and this time the boy got in. On the drive back he didn’t utter a word, just kept himself squashed up against the door and stared out the window.
Thinking about it now, Michael accepted that he should have called the boy’s parents. He was actually thinking about it, wondering if Jamie would give him a number to call when Jamie’s mother arrived. She looked at him the same way she had the other day, like she was afraid of him.
Far below, the figure disappeared into the house. Michael breathed deeply, his eyes grainy from lack of sleep. During the night he’d kept waking from fragmented dreams where he saw himself that day years ago, waving a gun around while he poured out a stream of wild accusations as Louise and Holly huddled against the wall in terror.
‘Michael, you’re frightening me,” Louise pleaded. ‘Put the gun down. Please don’t hurt us, don’t hurt Holly.’
He experienced a hot flush of shame, pushing the memory back. How could he have threatened the people he loved most? How could he make them afraid of him?
A biting wind swirled around the rocks, cold entering his bones. He could feel his blood grow sluggish, his thoughts slowing down as his body temperature dropped. His fingers were becoming numb and he knew he was experiencing the first signs of hypothermia. The sweat on his body had dried and cooled and now he was starting to shiver. If he didn’t move he knew lethargy would take over. They said people who succumbed experienced a kind of euphoria before they slipped into unconsciousness. It would be so easy.
A sound roused him. A sharp high-pitched call. He saw a bird circling over the slope on outstretched wings. The coloring and the shape of the wings made him certain it was the falcon he’d saved from being shot. A movement on the slope caught his eye as a brown shape rose from scrub and flew toward the trees with a whirr of wings. The falcon stooped earthwards, and in that instant a shot rang out, startlingly loud from somewhere close by. The falcon began to corkscrew out of control then began to drop, her wings flapping uselessly and she vanished behind some trees while her quarry fled safely in the opposite direction.
***
Michael found the falcon in a hollow sheltered by rocks. It stood on the snow, plumage merging with the landscape, dark, bright eyes fixed on him. As he got closer he saw clearly that one wing hung limp at the shoulder and trailed against the snow, spots of blood staining red against white. When he was ten feet away he crouched on one knee and considered what he should do.
The falcon never took its eyes from him, watching every movement warily but without fear. Up close it was pale across the back and wings, though it was a dusky cream rather than white and toward the tips of the primaries the color darkened to a slate grey. The falcon’s breast and thighs were flecked with brown. The talons were the same glistening black as her eyes. Up close the falcon was bigger than he’d thought, perhaps a few inches over two feet from head to tail.
It was clear that the falcon was incapable of flight, but less clear was what Michael could do. He was wary of getting within range of the sharp, hooked beak and what looked like razor-sharp talons. The bird’s manner was unbowed, its gaze unflinching. He knew he couldn’t simply leave it, so in the end he took off his coat and shuffled forward on his knees. Sensing his intention, the falcon backed up against the rock, and flicked open its one good wing. He moved closer and cast his coat like a net, so that he was able to gather the falcon up, like some precious and dangerous prize, then he turned and made his way back towards the river.
***
When Ellis pulled the trigger he knew he’d won. In a way he was almost sorry, but there were always winners and losers. Then at the precise moment he fired the shot, the falcon began to dive, and for an instant he thought his luck was cursed. As it turned out though, his shot was good. Good enough anyway. As he lowered the rifle the falcon spiraled down in the wind, clearly wounded. He took out a cigarette and lit up as he marked the area where the falcon went down. It didn’t take him long to find the hollow. He came on it from above. The first thing he saw were boot tracks in the snow going both ways. A patch of scuffed snow, spotted with blood, told him what must have happened.
He stumbled down the rocks, his mood turning grim. He wondered if it could be Red or maybe Hanson. Was it
possible that somehow they’d known all along what he was doing, and he thought back to that first night when he’d gotten drunk and shot his mouth off. He wasn’t entirely clear about what he might have said. He could have let something slip and they’d been tailing him ever since. It made perfect sense. He’d never trusted either of those sonsofbitches in the first place. But as he started following the tracks he was vaguely concerned that something wasn’t right with his theory. The guy he saw the other day wasn’t either Red or Hanson. He lost the tracks in the woods, but they were heading down towards the river. Smoke rose from a house in the woods and he wondered who lived there.
CHAPTER 11
Tom Waters was examining Katie Mullins’s dog. Katie was twelve years old and the dog was a crossbreed. There was a little Labrador in there and perhaps some collie and German shepherd. All in all the dog didn’t particularly resemble any of its various genetic lines so it was hard to tell, but it was a nice enough looking animal. Right then however, the dog was looking pretty sorry for itself.
‘What’s his name, Katie?’ Tom asked as he felt the animal’s abdomen.
‘It’s Roy.’ She looked worried. ‘He’s going to be okay isn’t he?’
‘Well, let’s see here,’ he murmured. ‘What was it he ate, do you know?’
Katie held up her hand and started counting off her fingers as she reeled off a list of things. ‘There was a tin of shortbread that my aunt made, and a packet of raisins I think, but it was hard to tell just how many of those he ate because they were scattered everywhere. Then there was a bar of dark chocolate that Mom uses for baking and some dried fruit and some cans of beer. That’s all I think.’
Tom looked up. ‘Some beer did you say?’
Katie nodded. ‘He likes beer. He crunches up the cans until he makes a hole in them, then he licks up all the beer that leaks out. Dad gets pretty upset about it sometimes.’
Tom grinned. ‘Well, I guess that’s understandable. And some dried fruit you said?’
‘It was apricots and dates I think.’
Very little about animals surprised Tom any more. He’d run a mixed veterinary practice in Little River for thirty years, and there was almost nothing he hadn’t seen. About two-thirds of his time was spent looking after domestic pets like Katie’s dog, the rest taking care of horses and farm animals. In a place like Little River the term domestic pets could cover just about anything, from the usual hamsters, cats and dogs, to beavers and owls and even the occasional orphaned bear cub. A plain old mongrel that had drunk a little too much beer on top of some dried fruit was no big deal.
He gently squeezed the sides of the dog’s stomach and in response it looked back at him with a trusting but sorry expression.
‘How did he get to eat all that stuff, Katie?’
‘He got in the cupboard when we were out,’ she said in a scolding tone. The dog turned mournful eyes on her. ‘You’re sure he’s going to be okay aren’t you?’
Tom took her to the door and signaled for Rose, his nurse. ‘He’ll be fine. You just go on and wait while I fix him up.’
Katie’s mother gave an exasperated look. ‘It’s one thing after another with that dog.’
‘He’s a character, I guess,’ Tom agreed.
The process of pumping out Roy’s stomach was unpleasant for man and beast. With Rose’s help Tom filled a bucket from the pipe he fed down the dog’s throat and then let nature take over. While they did their best to control the mess, the dog farted and shat its way around the surgery floor.
‘Jesus,’ Tom muttered, hit by a particularly foul odor.
He was glad to hand the dog back to his owner.
He was thinking about closing for the day when a car pulled up outside and a man came in carrying something wrapped in a coat.
***
The injured falcon was helpless, its good wing and both feet secured with a piece of elastic which Tom slipped around its body while he carefully extended the injured wing and felt along the bones. The falcon watched with bright eyes, trying to twist around and skewer him with her ferocious looking beak.
He felt a slight movement in the bone around the wound. ‘She’s lucky, ‘ he murmured. ‘Feels like the bullet just grazed the bone and passed right through the flesh. I can feel a grating here in one of the ulnas. I’ll need to do an X-ray but I think it’s only a fracture. Did you see who shot her?’
Michael shook his head. ‘Not exactly. You said her?’
‘I’d say she’s a female by the size of her. They’re usually bigger than the males by about a third.’
‘You know what she is then?’
‘Some kind of falcon, I know that much, but she’s not any type we get around here. There’s a volume over there on birds of prey, get it out could you?’ He gestured to a bookcase.
Michael fetched the book and started looking through the pages until about a third of the way through he stopped at a picture of a falcon perched on a rock high above a winter landscape. He compared it to the bird on the table. The coloring matched. Both had the same distinctive pale plumage.
‘It says here she’s a gyr falcon, pronounced jer,’ Michael read. ‘Native to the arctic regions, normally. The largest falcon on earth, ranging in color from pure white to almost black. Preys on lemmings, large birds, etcetera. Sometimes known as the snow falcon. Females weigh up to three and a half pounds with a wingspan of more than three feet.’
‘That’s her alright,’ Tom agreed, glancing at the picture.
‘So how did an arctic species get here, do you think?’
‘She might have drifted south. Maybe an immature bird caught up in winter storms.’
Tom continued his examination. If the falcon was in pain she gave no indication of it. She endured the ordeal with a kind of wild dignity. The sharp eyes and the slope of the head toward her powerful beak lent her a noble, almost defiant appearance.
‘Why would anybody want to shoot a bird like that?’ Michael wondered aloud.
‘Money’s usually the reason. Either that or just plain stupidity,’ Tom answered, peeling off his latex gloves. He glanced at Michael, thinking he looked vaguely familiar but couldn’t place him.
‘Money?’
‘Gyr’s are rare. That means she’ll be valuable to somebody.’
‘Even dead?’
‘A collector would probably pay a lot of money for a good specimen stuffed and mounted.’ Tom shook his head. Why somebody would want to put a bird like this in a glass case instead of flying free where she belonged was beyond him. There were times when he was ashamed to be a part of the human race.
‘What’ll happen to her now?’ Michael asked.
‘We’ll get her fixed up and when the wing’s healed we’ll try and give her another chance.’
‘You don’t sound convinced,’ Michael said, picking up a pessimistic note. ‘Don’t you think the injury will heal?’
‘It’s hard to say. You ever see a falcon hunt?’ He demonstrated with his hand, parting his fingers into a v shape. ‘They fold back their wings, and dive onto their prey from above. It’s a remarkable sight. They can reach speeds of more than a hundred miles an hour, and that puts a hell of a lot of pressure on the wing. It’s like an athlete, a sprinter, say. The wrong kind of injury can spell the end of a career, even after it’s healed. It might look okay to you and I, but that doesn’t mean that person is ever going to compete again.
‘It’s the same principle here. I’ll have to immobilize the wing for a few weeks. It might look as good as new but there’ll be no real way of knowing if it’ll stand up to the strain of hunting. Plus by the time I release her she’ll be out of condition, but she’ll still need to eat. She may not be up to it.’
It was unfair that having survived the hunter’s bullet the falcon still might succumb in the end, Tom thought. He imagined her suffering a slow death by starvation and wondered if rescuing her had been the right thing to do.
‘What would you have done, if you’d found her?’ Mich
ael asked as if he had read Tom’s thoughts.
‘I’m not sure. I’ve been taking care of animals all my life, but you can’t do this kind of work without having some respect for nature. People like to root for the underdog. Show us some animal that’s helpless and injured and we want to take care of it, but the fact is it’s the strongest and smartest of a species that survive. This falcon was just unlucky. It might have been kinder to let nature take its course.’
‘Except this had nothing to do with nature,’ Michael pointed out. ‘Somebody shot her. Are you saying she ought to be euthanized?’
‘No, I’m not. I don’t see it can hurt to give her another chance. There’s a guy I might call over near Williams Lake if I can find his number. He came in here once a couple of years ago with an injured hawk that he’d trained, he might be able to help. Maybe he could take her and train her so she can rebuild the strength in that wing when it heals.’
‘He could do that?’
‘I think so.’
Michael reached out as if to stroke the falcon’s breast but when she saw the movement she fixed him with a wild gleam in her eyes, her body tensing as if she would launch herself at him if she could. He allowed his hand to drop.
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