Dark Sky (Joe Pickett #21)(47)

He ducked behind a large sagging barn that blocked him from the main lodge and the cabins. The slats covering the barn were silver with age and there were gaps between the planks. Nate shadowed his eyes and peered through one of the gaps in the siding.

Inside the barn on a mat of old hay were small portable wire dog crates. He could smell the sharp presence of falcons from the spatters of white excrement beneath the cages.

“Bastard,” he whispered.

Nate found an open side door and slipped inside. Snow hung in the air like powdered sugar. He squatted down in front of the row of cages: a yearling peregrine, a red-tailed hawk, two prairie falcons, and, alone in the largest crate, a pure-white gyrfalcon. All were blinded with leather masks. Leather jesses had been attached to the talons of all of the birds and tied to the wire mesh of the cages so there was no way they could escape. To Nate’s eye, the gyr looked either sickly or injured. He confirmed that suspicion by leaning down close to the cage and noting horizontal stress lines on its tail feathers.

Gyrs were notoriously fragile and emotional, he knew. Especially after they’d been captured.

He could see by the tufts of brown hair and bone slivers on the hay beneath the crates that the birds had eaten recently. The falcons’ gullets bulged from the meal, except for the gyr.

Nate noted several boxes stacked near the horse stalls. He recognized the boxes as being similar to what Dusty Tuckness used to crate up his prairie dogs. Sheridan had returned to the van with one earlier.

Next to the falcons were six empty crates. Wagy was still in the act of gathering up more birds, Nate thought.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly in a cold rage. He wondered how many young birds had been injured or had died and had not been transported to the barn. He was looking at the entire generation from his bluff. All of them were caged and in the possession of the worst kind of outlaw.

The falcons and hawks were destined, no doubt, for buyers employed by Middle Eastern royalty.



* * *



—

On his way to the back door of the house, Nate snatched a pitchfork from where it leaned against the doorframe. The handle was cracked and weathered. The three thin prongs looked rusted but sharp.

He stepped onto the broken concrete porch and tried the doorknob. It turned and he eased it open. He was met with a wash of warm air and marijuana smoke from inside. Of course, he thought, they were from Colorado.

With his cocked revolver in his right hand and the pitchfork in the other, he paused and looked and listened. The kitchen was from the 1970s: linoleum floor, rounded white appliances, pink cabinets. The sink was stacked with dirty dishes and the counters littered with fast-food bags, empty beer bottles, and a nearly empty half gallon of Jim Beam. He wondered if the lodge was rented from the owner or simply occupied by a squatter. The latter, he guessed.

Nate padded through the kitchen into a narrow hallway. The walls were covered with faded and crooked sporting prints that looked like they’d been torn from hunting magazines and cheaply framed. So, he thought, it had been a hunting lodge at one time.

He could hear murmuring ahead and moved slowly with his gun at his side, ready to swing up and take aim.

The living room was separated from the hallway by a cheap beaded curtain. He hoped it wouldn’t rattle when he pushed his way through, so he did it in slow motion.

The murmuring was coming from the screen of an ancient television mounted in a console. There was a snowy picture on it and the audio was tinny. Cartoons were playing.

A man with shaggy hair sat with his back to Nate in an overstuffed sofa, watching the set. Sharp-smelling weed wafted up from where he sat. Next to a saucer filled with cigarette butts on the end table under the arm of the sofa was a semiautomatic handgun. The weapon was an arm’s length away from the man on the couch.

Nate stopped still just a few feet behind the sofa, listening. If there was anyone else inside, they were away in another room and completely quiet. Because there hadn’t been a vehicle outside, he guessed that the shaggy-haired man was the only person inside.

As he moved close to the back of the couch, the man apparently heard him and turned around and looked over his shoulder. His eyes got big.

“Don’t move,” Nate said.

The man ignored him and prepared to lurch for the handgun.

Nate raised the pitchfork like a spear and bent over and thrust it down hard in front of the man’s face. The middle tine drove through the man’s boot deep into the wood floor and he screamed. His joint flew out of his mouth and the sparks from the cherry cascaded down his shirt.

The wounded man lunged for the pistol, but the pitchfork held him in place. His fingers stopped six inches short of the handle of the weapon.

Nate wheeled around the sofa and kicked the end table with the weapon away. The pistol skittered across the floor and thumped into the baseboard on the opposite wall. Then he reached out and grasped the man’s ear with his left hand and fitted the hole of the huge muzzle of his .454 onto the tip of the man’s nose.

Tuckness had provided Sheridan with a good description. He wore rumpled black clothing and a black bandana around his neck. His cheeks were sunken and his eyes were glassy from smoking weed. His mouth twisted with pain and anger and he looked like he was trying hard to be defiant.

“Raylan Wagy?” Nate asked.

Wagy’s eyes got big and he tried to jerk his head away. It was held in place by a rough twist of the man’s ear.