The Snow Falcon (9 page)

What he should have done, he saw clearly now, was he should have kept his big mouth shut. Since that night in Clancys when he’d been shooting off about how he was going to make himself some easy money, people had been laughing among themselves when they saw him coming. Only the night before, Ted Hanson and Red Parker had been shooting pool when Ellis walked through the door and ordered himself a beer.

Red had straightened up from taking his shot and called out, “Hey, Ellis, I see you ain’t gone and bought yourself a new truck yet with all that money you was coming into.”

Hanson had snorted into his beer, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “What happened, Ellis?” he’d said, adding his own piece to the general amusement. “You go and lose your winning ticket?”

Fuck, he’d had to just grin and take it, laughing along with them as if he didn’t mind being the butt of their crummy jokes. He didn’t know where Hanson had got the thing about the lottery; he couldn’t remember having said anything to give them that idea. What he’d said was that he was coming into some money, if he remembered rightly, but he was sure that was all. He hadn’t even said how much

he was talking about. Maybe he had dropped some hints about it being more than those dumb assholes would ever see at one time, and he might concede he’d allowed things to become exaggerated, maybe even encouraged it by being so secretive, but he was absolutely positive he’d said nothing about winning any lottery.

The thing was, a week had gone past and he was no closer to getting that falcon now than he had been when he’d started. Every time he showed up in Clancys, he was going to hear the same old jokes until either he proved them wrong or they just forgot about it. It was all getting out of hand, like a big old snowball gathering size as it rolled along out of his control. He hadn’t been able to resist telling them what he was going to do with the money when he got it. It had seemed harmless enough at the time. Jesus, times hadn’t been easy these last few years, and it had felt good to be on the right side of a little luck for a change. The trouble was, he’d sounded like he was rubbing their noses in it, and now they were just paying him back. They didn’t even believe him anymore.

What was funny was that he’d called some other dealers and found out that he’d been right about Tusker planning on cheating him, so he’d called Tusker back and told him the price for the gyr flacon was now two thousand, which seemed about right. Tusker had played it like he thought it was too much and had offered him fifteen hundred and made a big fucking deal of it, like he was cutting off his right arm or something. In the end, though, he’d agreed that he could probably stretch to the two thousand. This had made Ellis feel pretty good, since the most he’d been offered elsewhere was eighteen hundred. So he was on the right side of the money.

“When do I get this bird?” Tusker had said, his voice irritable.

“Soon,” Ellis had replied. “A couple of days.”

“I already contacted somebody I know, and he’s waiting,” Tusker said.

So what did Tusker think, that he could just go out and whistle the damn thing to come and get itself shot?

“I don’t know how long I can guarantee that price,” Tusker had added. “And it had better be in good condition. I can’t use anything that’s been all blown to hell.”

Ellis had hung up, his good mood banished in a second. Nobody ever wanted to give a guy a break.

He stopped for a moment, aware that he’d been so engrossed in

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his mood that he’d forgotten what he was looking for. He’d seen the falcon a half dozen times over the past few days—which was good, because it meant it was staying in the area—but never close enough for a decent shot. He took a cigarette from a pack in his pocket and flipped his Zippo, cupping his hands around the flame. Sucking smoke into his lungs made him cough, but he hardly noticed.

Some crows were making a fuss around the tops of some trees, flapping around and squawking, and he raised his glasses to get a better look. The falcon flew among them, casually ignoring the halfhearted feints the crows were making. It was something that always puzzled Ellis about crows. They were like a gang of street kids, full of bullshit and bravado when the big man sauntered past, maybe making up in numbers what they lacked individually. He’d seen them do the same thing with hawks and even eagles. The falcon could have killed any one of them at any time. It was bigger and faster, like a luxury car compared to some old wreck that had seen better days, but the falcon just ignored their taunts, disdaining them with a kind of haughty disregard. Ellis had to admit to feeling a kind of grudging admiration.

He watched the falcon rise and guessed it had been somewhere on the other side of the woods. As it always did, it flew away from him, too far away to risk a shot. He had the feeling it knew he was there. He watched it grow smaller, rising toward a rock face in the distance, and he followed it with his glasses until he saw it land; then he marked the spot.

A hundred yards to his left, the woods ran off the same way, and Ellis thought if he could make a path through the trees, he might get close enough undetected to finally have a clear shot. The odds were about even at best. He might get there and find the damn thing had flown, but it was going to be his last chance that day, he was sure of that. The light was beginning to fade already. He dropped his cigarette and started down toward the trees.

MICHAEL WATCHED ELLIS from the rocks high up on the right, and followed the way he’d been looking with his glasses. He saw the mob of crows and another bird that had flown leisurely from their midst, leaving them calling insults in its wake. He didn’t know what kind of bird it was, and without glasses all he could tell was that it was

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large and pale in color. He thought it must be some kind of bird of prey, maybe a falcon. He knew it wasn’t a hawk, which were quite common in the mountains. He’d seen several that day, soaring high up on thermals of rising air, riding effortlessly on their broad rounded wings. Their calls echoed among the valleys, a kind of high-pitched plaintive mewing.

He watched Ellis vanish into the trees. The falcon had flown into the distance, lost against a distant rock face, and the crows settled so that the landscape was empty again. He was cold and he thought he should be heading back to the house before it got dark, but instead he turned and headed the way the falcon had flown. It seemed the right thing to do, or else he had guessed what was happening and was curious. But whatever his motive, he didn’t question it.

THE FALCON STOOD perched on a narrow ledge high in the rocks. She had chosen a spot where she was sheltered from the prevailing winds and where she had roosted for the night several times before. She wasn’t hungry, having killed a squirrel earlier in the day, and she was fully recovered from the battering she had taken in the storms that had swept her south. During the days she had flown this territory, she had seen peregrines, which she recognized as being cousins, and hawks circling high in the air, but no other falcons of her own race. An instinct was beginning to call her north again, like something whispered on the wind. She turned her eye to the peaks rising blue gray as far as the eye could see and shifted restlessly. She was in her first year, having fledged from the nest the previous summer. Later in the year she would need to find a mate, and it was partly this need that was calling her.

She looked back across the snow. The figure she’d seen from the edge of the woods had gone, though his tracks were clearly visible leading down to the tree line. She knew it was the same figure she’d seen almost daily, and she felt a familiar unease. She always saw him first, and sometimes he never knew she was there, watching him from a far vantage point. On this occasion there was something different in the situation. Another figure was coming her way across the snow, keeping high on the slope and making no attempt at concealment. She watched him approaching steadily. Her uneasiness increased, but the reason for it was unclear. She felt it had something

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to do with the figure who’d vanished into the woods. The one she could see she remained wary of and wouldn’t allow to get too close, but she didn’t sense danger. The signals were confusing, and as the light faded, she was reluctant to leave her roost without good cause. She flicked open her wings, feeling the breeze give her lift, but she settled again uncertainly and watched.

ELLIS WAS TEMPTED to make his way to the edge of the woods so that he could use his glasses to see if the falcon was still there or if he was wasting his time. It was dark in the trees, the light fading fast, and he was beginning to regret his decision to try for a shot today. Whichever way he looked at it, by the time he walked back to his truck, the sun was going to have gone down, and he was already cold and tired. He resisted the temptation to take a look, sure that if he did, the falcon would be there but that it would see him and he’d lose it again. He labored on, thinking that another twenty minutes would do it.

He started to think about what he was going to do when he finally got the money. First thing, he thought, was that he was going to go into Clancys and put a hundred bucks on the bar and tell everyone the beers were on him. It wasn’t that he wanted to make a big deal of it, or make anyone feel stupid for making fun of him, but he wanted to see their faces. Especially Red and Hanson. He just wanted that one minute when he could show them a wad of notes so thick it would make their eyes bulge; then, just to show there were no hard feelings, he’d give them a hundred each. Or maybe fifty. He’d tell them how he’d got it then, just so they wouldn’t think he’d really won the lottery or something, and so they wouldn’t come around asking him for a loan to buy a new truck or something stupid like that, which he wouldn’t put past them.

He was also going to buy Rachel something, maybe a new dress or whatever women liked. And he was going to take her somewhere for dinner, maybe the Red Rooster out on the highway, which despite the name was actually a pretty classy place. She deserved it. She’d had to put up with a lot over the last few years, and he guessed if he was going to be honest about it, he hadn’t made things any easier.

It bewildered him sometimes the way things turned out in life. He remembered Rachel at school, a good-looking girl he’d hardly

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ever spoken to back then. He’d known she was out of his league. Not only was she pretty, she was smart, too. Not that he was dumb, it was just that around his house there hadn’t been a lot of emphasis on school and learning. His old man had made all the kids, his brother and sister and him, feel like losers right from the word go. He’d made damn sure of that, molding them in his own drunken image. Ellis remembered hearing his father slapping his mother around when he came home with a skinful. At least that was something Ellis had never done.

The army had straightened him out. Enlisting was probably the best thing he’d done in his life, apart from marrying Rachel, which even now he sometimes couldn’t believe he’d had the good fortune to do. The army had made him see things clearly, see the way he was going to turn out, which was just like his old man if he didn’t do something about it. It had given him self-respect—enough to ask Rachel for a date when he’d got back. Jesus, but he still remembered how knocked out he’d been when she accepted. She’d said later that she didn’t even recognize him as the same Pete Ellis she’d known at school. She was the best thing that ever happened to him. He wondered where the fuck it all went wrong, but he knew the answer. It always came down to money and getting an even break, and the way the business had gone downhill the last few years, he guessed he really was a goddamn loser like his old man, after all.

Ellis stopped and peered through the trees. He guessed this was about it, though he was going to be lucky if the light was good enough now to give him much of a chance. He reached for the rifle slung over his shoulder and started back toward the open ground. When he was close, he moved from tree to tree until he could get a view of the rock face about two hundred yards away. He found the fissure he’d sighted earlier where the falcon had landed and moved his glasses over the rock. At first there was nothing, and then a movement made him stop. There it was, standing there as clear as day. The sun was going down but he had a few minutes. He raised the rifle and found the falcon through the sight. Not so smart after all, he thought. Just for a second he felt something like regret, but he pushed it from his mind. He started thinking about walking into Clancys with all the money he was going to get. He shifted his position and leaned against the tree to steady his aim.

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IF ELLIS HAD looked, he would have seen Michael across the slope. Michael had stopped and was looking up at the rock face, thinking the falcon was up there somewhere. He still didn’t know what he was going to do. High up, he caught a movement and saw a pale shape. He looked toward the woods, and down there at the edge of the trees he saw Ellis kneel on the ground and raise a rifle.

There was no time to think, just the knowledge he didn’t want this to happen. He raised his arms and shouted, and almost at the same time a shot shattered the quiet air, echoing through the valley.

THE FALCON WATCHED the figure below. When it stopped, she shifted position. Her unease had grown, but she was confused. She scanned the terrain spread out below her, sensing danger but unsure where it would come from. Conflicting impulses to remain where she was, high up in the safety of the rocks, or to take to the air made her flex her wings. She was reluctant to leave this ledge where she could spend the night. The figure below made a sudden movement, and even as his voice carried on the air, she flew into the gray light, banking and rising on silent wings, another sound, like the sharp crack of a bough breaking in the woods, shattering the stillness.