The Snow Falcon (15 page)

MICHAEL CAME UPON on a hollow where rocks had collected at the bottom of a snow-covered slope. At first he couldn’t see anything; then a movement in the shadow of a boulder the size of a doghouse caught his eye. The falcon stood on the ground, camouflaged against the white snow and the mottled browns and grays of rocks, her dark bright eyes fixed on him. Cautiously he went closer, surprised to find her alive. As he drew nearer, 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 her eyes from him, watching every movement warily but without fear. Her coloring, as he’d thought earlier, was pale across the back and wings, though it was a dusky cream rather than white, and toward the tips of the primaries and second-

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aries it darkened to a slate gray. Her breast and thighs were flecked with markings of chocolate, and the talons of each toe were of the same glistening black as her eyes. Up close, she 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 he could do. The idea of getting within range of what looked like razor-sharp talons and beak made him nervous, and her manner as she held his gaze steadily was unbowed. On the other hand, the alternative of simply leaving her to her fate was inconceivable, and so he took off his coat and shuffled forward on his knees. Sensing his intention, the falcon backed against the rock behind her and flicked open her one good wing, which startled him. He moved close and she lunged for his hand as he cast his coat like a net. It covered her so that he was able to gather her up and hold her contained within, like some precious and dangerous prize. Then he turned and made his way back down toward the river.

ELLIS HAD HEARD the falcon before he saw it, craning his head all around, and then there it was, flying high, turning with wings outstretched. He’d raised the rifle slowly and took aim with his finger on the trigger. This time he knew he’d won. He’d outsmarted it, and this was the end of the road. The falcon presented a clean shot, and in a way he was almost sorry, but there were always winners and losers. He could have given up before then, but he hadn’t, he’d kept going, he’d shown he was a man of determination. Tusker, start counting out that money, he’d thought, and squeezed the trigger.

It was unclear at first if he’d hit it. As he fired, the falcon started to dive, and he thought again that all the forces of the world were lined up against him; then he lowered the rifle and saw the falcon spiraling down in the wind. He’d grinned, taken out a cigarette and lit it with his Zippo, and calmly began to pack up the thermos and groundsheet he’d brought with him.

Ellis had marked the area where the falcon had fallen and reached it quickly. He came on the hollow from above, and the first thing he saw were tracks in the snow going both ways. Beneath him there was an area of scuffed snow, spotted with blood. It took him several full seconds to absorb what must have happened.

He stumbled down into the hollow, and by the time he reached

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the bottom, his mood had turned grim. He wondered if it could be Red or maybe Hanson, or maybe they were in it together. It was 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. Possibly he’d let something slip and they’d been tailing him ever since, all the jokes and stuff in Clancys at his expense just a double bluff. He got madder just thinking about it. It made perfect sense. He’d never trusted either of those sons of bitches in the first place. As he went at a trot into the woods, he was vaguely concerned that something wasn’t right with his theory. It had to do with the guy he’d seen the other day who he knew hadn’t been either Red or Hanson. But then he lost the tracks where there was no snow, and he stopped thinking about that. It occurred to him that those bastards must have parked somewhere close to where he’d left his own truck and that’s where he ought be heading. He changed direction, running along as fast as he could go, cursing under his breath.

ToM WATERS WAS EXAMINING KATIE MULLINS’S dog, which she had just led in on a leash from the waiting room. 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 gene lines, so it was hard to tell, but it was a nice enough looking animal, rough-haired and friendly with a patch of dark fur around one eye that gave it a kind of roguish look. Right then, however, the dog was looking pretty sorry for itself.

“What’s his name, Katie?” Tom said 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,” Tom murmured. “What was it he ate, do you know?”

Katie held up a hand and started counting on her fingers as she reeled off a list. “There was a tin of shortbread that my aunt sent over from Toronto, and a packet of raisins, I think, but it was hard to tell just how many of those he ate because they were just 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 with his teeth until he makes a hole in them, then he licks up all the beer

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that leaks out. Dad gets pretty upset about it sometimes,” she added thoughtfully.

“Well, I guess that’s understandable,” Tom said, suppressing a grin. “And some dried fruit, you said?”

“It was apricots and dates, I think.”

Very little about animals surprised Tom anymore. He’d been the vet in Little River for thirty years, running a mixed practice, 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. Around here, though, 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?”

He walked her to the door and signaled for Rose, his nurse, to take her back to the waiting room. “He’ll be fine, I think. You just go on and sit in there a bit while I fix him up. He’s just a little bloated, that’s all, and it’s making him uncomfortable.”

He gave Katie’s mother a smile, to which the exasperated woman shook her head.

“It’s one thing after another with that dog,” she complained.

“Well, he’s a character, I guess,” Tom agreed.

The process of pumping out Roy’s stomach was unpleasant and pitiful for man and beast. The dried fruit had been reconstituted in the dog’s gut by the beer, swelling up and bloating the animal. With Rose helping, Tom filled a bucket from the pipe he’d fed down Roy’s throat. He let nature take over the job of expelling what hadn’t been digested. 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.

After forty minutes, Roy was back to his old self and was led out to the waiting room, where Katie threw her arms around his neck.

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“Just keep him away from beer and fruit,” Tom cautioned.

“I will,” she promised, and knelt down and began lecturing Roy about eating things he wasn’t supposed to.

While Rose sorted out payment with Katie’s mother, Tom finished cleaning up. He opened all the windows to let the smell dissipate a little and sprayed the room with pine air freshener.

“Anybody else coming in that you know of?” he asked when he went back out front.

“No one’s called,” Rose replied.

“Okay. Well, I have to go up and see Dave Thomas’s mare sometime today, so I may as well do that now.”

Even as he spoke, a car pulled up outside. He rolled his eyes. “Spoke too soon, I guess.”

THE INJURED FALCON was helpless, her good wing and both feet secured with a piece of elastic that Tom had slipped around her body. With practiced hands he stretched out the injured wing and felt along the bones. The falcon watched with bright eyes, trying to twist her head and bite him.

He felt a slight movement in the bone around the wound. “This is one lucky bird,” he murmured. “The bullet just grazed the bone and passed 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 just fractured. Did you see who it was that shot at 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?” Michael asked.

Tom gestured to a bookcase in the corner. “Well, she’s 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?”

Michael found the book and leafed 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 with the bird on the table. The coloring matched. He started to read out loud from the text.

“It says here she’s a gyr falcon, pronounced jer. Native to the arctic

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regions, normally. ‘The largest falcon on earth, ranging in color from pure white to almost black…. Preys on lemmings, large birds, et cetera…. Sometimes known as the snow falcon…. Females weigh up to three and a half pounds, with a wingspan of more than three feet.’” He left the book open on the desk. “So how did an arctic species come to be here, do you think?”

“She might have drifted south. Maybe an immature bird caught up in winter storms. It happens sometimes.”

Michael watched while the vet continued probing the wing. If the falcon was in pain, she gave no indication of it. She suffered the intrusive examination with dignity, despite the ungainly way she’d been trussed. The sharp eyes and the way her head sloped toward her powerful-looking beak gave her a noble, almost defiant appearance. He recalled her flight above the woods, scything through crisp mountain air, in complete mastery of her element. From childhood he’d always admired birds of prey; it had to do with the fact that they were predators, but it was also because they possessed an innate grace. In a way, he envied them their existence, attuned to each breath of air, each rising thermal and current that they could exploit with such ease to carry them across great swaths of land spread out below.

“Why would anybody want to shoot a bird like that?” he said softly, speaking to himself.

Tom looked up and really noticed Michael for the first time. He didn’t recognize him but was struck by his eyes, which were a deep shade of blue, hinting at things kept hidden deep inside. Tom had long ago formed the opinion that anybody who had empathy with animals had something still pure in his soul that too many people had lost touch with. He peeled off his gloves.

“Money’s usually the reason. That, or just plain stupidity.”

“Money?” Michael said.

“When something is rare, you can be sure it has a value to somebody.”

“Even dead?”

“The taxidermy trade caters to a certain kind of person, I guess. I never saw the appeal of having some poor animal stuffed and mounted in my house the way some people do. Takes all kinds.” Tom shook his head, studying the falcon. She was beautiful, there just wasn’t any other word for it. Why somebody would want to see a

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bird like this shoved 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?” Michael said, absorbed with similar thoughts.

“We’ll get her fixed up, and when the wing’s healed, we’ll try and give her another chance.” There was a fatalistic note in the vet’s tone that sounded off-key. His brow was furrowed in lines of doubt.

“You don’t sound convinced,” Michael said. “Don’t you think the injury will heal?”

“It’s hard to say,” Torn admitted. “A bird like that, the way she hunts, she can’t afford to have a wing damaged. You ever see the way they hunt?” He demonstrated with his hand. “They fold back their wings and just go straight down, like this. Remarkable sight, and they get up to more than a hundred miles an hour, I read somewhere. That kind of speed 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 me, but that doesn’t mean the person is ever going to compete again.”

Tom saw that Michael wasn’t following what he was getting at, and he gestured toward the falcon. “The problem here is that in a few weeks her wing might look as good as new, but there’ll be no real way of knowing. I’ll have to keep her in a cage and make sure that wing is held in place so she can’t move the joint. By the time I release her, she’ll be out of condition, but she’ll still need to catch her food. She may not be up to it.”

Michael absorbed what the vet was saying, reflecting that it was unfair that having survived the hunter’s bullet, the falcon might still succumb in the end, suffering a slow death by starvation. It seemed like maybe he hadn’t done her any favors after all.