Shots Fired: Stories From Joe Pickett Country

The Master Falconer

In the midnight forests of the Bighorn Mountains, below timberline, all movement and sound ceased with the approaching roar. Elk quit grazing and raised their heads. Squirrels stopped chattering. The increasing roar caused the ground to tremble. And suddenly the stars blacked out as the huge aircraft skirted over the mountaintops, landing lights blazing, landing gear descending, the howl of jet engines pounding downward through the branches into the earth itself. The tiny town of Saddlestring, Wyoming, was laid out before the nose of the plane like a dropped jewelry box, lights winking in the night against black felt, the lighted runway just long enough for a plane this size to land on, but just barely.

The next morning, Nate Romanowski slipped out of Alisha Whiteplume’s quilt-covered bed on the Wind River Indian Reservation, pulled on a loose pair of shorts, and searched through the cupboards of her small kitchen for coffee. He tried not to wake her. There were cans of refried beans and jars of picante sauce, home-canned trout in Mason jars, but no coffee except instant.

As two mugs of water heated in the microwave, he opened the kitchen blinds. Dawn. Early fall. Dew and fallen leaves on the grass, dried into fists. A skinned-out antelope buck hung to cool from the basketball hoop over the garage.

Nate was tall, rangy, with sharp features and a deliberate, liquid way of moving. His expression was impassive, but his pale blue eyes flicked about from the hollows of his sockets like the tongue of a snake. Sometimes they fixed on an object and forgot to blink. Alisha said he had the eyes of a hunter.

“What are you doing out there?” she said from the dark of the bedroom.

“Heating water for coffee. Want anything in it?”

“Not instant. There’s a can of coffee under the sink in the bathroom.”

Nate started to ask why she kept coffee in the bathroom, but didn’t.

“Bobby has been coming over in the morning and stealing it,” she said in explanation. Bobby was Alisha’s brother, known to Nate as Bad Bob. “I hid it so he has to go steal it from someone else.”

Nate found a five-pound can of Folgers under the sink, and set about making a pot.

While it dripped and the aroma filled the kitchen, she came out of the bedroom wrapped in a blanket so long it brushed the floor. He glimpsed her thin brown feet and painted nails, and looked up to see her naked shoulder, a valentine-shaped face, bed-mussed black hair. Her eyes were obsidian pebbles perched over her cheekbones. He had yet to tire of simply looking at her.

“Did you hear that big plane last night?” she asked.

“I heard a roar. I thought it was me.”

She smiled. “You did roar, but earlier. You were sleeping when the plane came over us. It seemed really low. I felt you tense up when it came over, like you were going to jump out of bed and grab a gun.”

Nate didn’t respond. She padded over and put her hand on his shoulder.

“Do you know who is in the plane?”

He shrugged and said, “I’ve got an idea.”

“Are you going to say?”

“No, not yet.”

“You drive me crazy,” she said.

“You drive me wild,” he said, putting his own hand over hers.

“I’ve got to take a shower,” she said, slipping from his touch and reaching out to hook a strand of his long hair over his ear. He liked the intimate familiarity of the gesture. “I’ve got to get to school by seven-thirty. Playground duty.”

“I’ll bring you a cup of coffee when it’s done.”

“That would be nice,” she said, and left.

Alisha taught third grade and coached in the high school. She had a master’s degree in electrical engineering and a minor in American history and had married a white golf pro she met in college. After working in Denver for six years and watching her marriage fade away as the golf pro toured and strayed, she divorced him and returned to the reservation to teach, saying she felt an obligation to give something back. Nate met her while he was scouting for a lek of sage chickens for his birds to hunt. When he first saw her she was on a long walk by herself through the knee-high sagebrush in the breaklands. She walked with purpose, talking to herself and gesticulating in the air with her hands. She had no idea he was there. When he drove up she looked directly at him with surprise. Realizing how far she had come from the res, she asked him for a ride back to her house. He invited her to climb into his Jeep, and while he drove her home, she told him she liked the idea of being back but was having trouble with reentry.

“How can you find balance in a place where the same boys who participate in a sun dance in which they seek a vision and pierce themselves are also obsessed with Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty: Black Ops?” she asked. Nate had no answer to that.

She said her struggle was made worse when her brother Bob intimated that he always knew she would come back, since everybody did when they found out they couldn’t hack it on the outside. She told Nate that during the walk she had been arguing with herself about returning, weighing the frustration of day-to-day life on the reservation and dealing with Bobby against her desire to teach the children of her friends, relatives, and tribal members. Later, Nate showed her his birds and invited her on a hunt. She went along and said she appreciated the combination of grace and savagery of falconry, and saw the same elements in him. He took it as a compliment. They went back to her house that night. That was three months ago. Now he spent at least two nights a week there.

Nate was tying his hair back into a ponytail with a rubber band when Bad Bob Whiteplume entered the kitchen from outside without knocking. Bad Bob was halfway across the kitchen before he saw Nate in the doorway.

“I smelled coffee,” Bad Bob said, squinting at Nate and looking him up and down. “You’re here again, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Boinking my sister?”

“Say that again and we’ll have to fight.”

Bad Bob was shaped like a barrel and had a face as round as a hubcap. His hair was black and it glistened from the gel he used to slick the sides down and spike the top. He was wearing buckskins with a beaded front and Nike high-tops. Bob owned Bad Bob’s Native American Outlet convenience store at the junction, which sold gasoline, food, and inauthentic Indian trinkets to tourists. He also rented DVDs and computer games to boys on the reservation. The back room was where the men without jobs gathered to talk and loiter and Bob held court.

Smiling and holding his hands palms up, Bob said, “Okay, I won’t say it again. But your scalp would look good hanging from my lance.”

“Why are you talking like an Indian?”

“I am an Indian, Kemo Sabe.”

“Nah,” Nate said. “Not really.”

Bob poured himself a cup of coffee and sipped it, looking over the rim at Nate. “You haven’t commented on my garb.”

“I was waiting for you to bring it up.”

“Ten of us are in a television commercial,” Bob said. “They’re shooting it up on the rim. The new Jeep Cherokee, I think.”

Nate took a moment to say, “I guess they don’t build a Northern Arapaho.”

“No,” Bob said, grinning, thrusting out his jaw. He was missing every other bottom tooth, so his smile reminded Nate of a jack-o’-lantern. “I’ll suggest that to them, though. You should see the director. He’s from L.A. He’s scared of us.”

“Must be the Nikes.”

Bob laughed, the sound filling the room. “We told him we wouldn’t do it unless they increased our talent fee from five hundred a day to seven-fifty. We scowled. He caved.”

“Congratulations.”

From the bathroom, Alisha called out, “Is that Bobby?”

“Good coffee!” Bob yelled back.

“Bobby, I need my television back! You’ve had it for a week!”

Nate looked at Bob.

“Mine went out,” Bob explained. “We needed to watch the poker tournament.”

Bob drained his cup and refilled it. While doing so, he saw the digital clock on the microwave. “Shit, I need to get going. They wanted to shoot with the sun at a certain angle. The director loves dawn light.”

Nate said, “Who doesn’t?”

“If we miss the dawn light, we just sit around until dusk and smoke cigarettes and shoot then,” Bob said. “It’s a good job.”

“That’s what counts,” Nate said.

“Hey, did you hear that plane last night?” Bob asked, backing out the door so he wouldn’t spill his coffee. He was taking the mug with him.

“No.”

“I heard there’s a big-assed jet sitting at the airport,” Bob said. “Some kind of foreign writing on the fuselage.”

With that, Bob left.

To himself, Nate said, Damn.

Nate Romanowski lived in a small stone house on the bank of the Twelve Sleep River, in the shadows of hundred-year-old cottonwoods and a high, steep bluff across the water. As he crested the long rise from the east, his place was laid out in front of him — house, round pen, sagging mews where he kept his birds — and he could tell instinctively that someone had been there.

Pulling off the two-track, he climbed out of his Jeep and walked back over to the road. Three sets of fresh tire imprints cut the night crust of the dirt where a vehicle had gone in and out and back again to his home. The tracks were wide — an SUV or a pickup. The tread was sharp, indicating new tires or a brand-new vehicle. Then he saw what had triggered his suspicion in the first place: the mews door was slightly open. Meaning his falcons had been disturbed or were gone. Which meant somebody was going to get hurt.

He stood and squinted, determining whoever had come onto his place had parked their vehicle on the side away from his house so it couldn’t be seen from the road. And that they were waiting for him.

Slipping his .454 Casull handgun from its holster under his seat onto his lap, Nate drove down the rise. As he approached his house, the front door opened and a man walked out. Nate recognized the man as Ben “Shorty” LaDuke, a sometime ranch hand who resided mainly on stool number four at the Stockman’s Bar in Saddlestring. Shorty had been to his house before when he was briefly employed by Bud Longbrake. Looking for strays, Shorty had said. Shorty was diminutive with a hunched, gnome-like posture that made him look even smaller. He wore torn Wranglers and boots and a hooded Wyoming Cowboys sweatshirt.

Nate parked under the cottonwoods with his open driver’s-side window framing Shorty, who ambled over. The .454 was gripped in Nate’s hand, the muzzle an inch below the window.

“Nate, how are you?” Shorty asked.

“Not pleased that you’re trespassing,” Nate said.

“I’m sorry, but I wasn’t sure where to find you. There’s a feller inside who—”

“Raise your hands and turn around. Put your hands on top of your head.”

Shorty grimaced. “Ah, Nate, buddy, I don’t mean no trouble here.”

“Then don’t walk into a man’s house or fuck with a falconer’s birds. Do what I said.”

Shorty sighed theatrically, turned, and laced his hands on top of his King Ropes cap.

Nate got slowly out of the Jeep, reached around Shorty, and patted him down. No weapons. He shoved the barrel of the .454 into Shorty’s back to urge him toward the house.

“I had nothing to do with taking your birds,” Shorty said. “The gentlemen inside said you owed them and they were just retrieving their property. I just said I’d make the introductions, is all.”

“Don’t talk,” Nate said, pushing the gun into Shorty’s spine.

“Be careful that don’t go off,” Shorty said. “It’d likely cut me in half.”

Nate said, “Then you’d be really short.”

He pushed him through the door, keeping the ranch hand in front of him. Over Shorty’s shoulder, Nate saw two men sitting at his table with cups of coffee in front of them. They were Saudis.

“Greetings from my father,” the younger of the two men said. He was olive-skinned, well-groomed, and well-dressed in a crisp white shirt, charcoal slacks, and tasseled black loafers. He had a thin, perfect mustache over perfect white teeth. The lens of a pair of wire-framed sunglasses poked up from his shirt pocket.

The other man was older, thicker, darker, wearing an open-collared yellow shirt and a black blazer. He didn’t smile. His eyes were locked onto Nate’s face. He had a thicker black mustache and his hands were under the table. Nate turned Shorty slightly so the older man would have to shoot through Shorty to get to Nate.

The younger man noticed what Nate had done and shook his head from side to side as if trying to alleviate a terrible misunderstanding. “No, no, none of this is necessary. Please put the gun away and let Mr. Shorty go home. We can all be good friends here.”

Nate didn’t move.

“I’m Lamya Abd al Saud,” the man said. “Everybody I graduated with at Stanford calls me Rocky. You know my father. He says you’re a talented, amazing man, but he’s disappointed in you. He asked me to come here to invite you to see him to explain your recent insult.”

“You know them?” Shorty said to Nate. “Jesus.”

Nate ignored Shorty, keeping his eyes on the older man, watching the man’s shoulders for even the smallest bit of motion from his hands hidden under the table.

“This is Khalid,” Rocky said, gesturing to the dark man. “He’s with me because my father asked that he come along. Khalid, please greet Mr. Romanowski.”

Khalid nodded his head, but never broke his stare.

“Let me see your hands,” Nate said to him.

Khalid shot a glance to Rocky. Rocky nodded back. The older man withdrew his hands from beneath the table and put them flat on the surface.

“There,” Rocky said. “Are you happy now?”

“Nope. Where are my birds?”

“They’re safe. My father is admiring them.”

Nate said, “Admiring them?”

Rocky nodded.

“Shorty, hit the trail,” Nate said, pushing the man aside.

“I don’t have a vehicle,” Shorty protested. “I came out here with Rocky and—”

“Hit the trail, Shorty,” Nate said. “And as you walk away from this place, forget you were ever here. If anybody ever asks you to bring them out here again, your answer will be that you don’t know where it is.”

“They said—”

“Hit the fucking trail, Shorty,” Nate said through clenched teeth.

Khalid drove and Rocky was in the passenger seat of the rented white Cadillac Escalade. Nate sat in the backseat. Khalid had asked Nate to leave the .454 at home before he would drive them.

“I’ve never seen a handgun like that,” Rocky said. “Five cylinders. I wish to fire it.”

“Wish denied,” Nate said.

Khalid shot a glance at Nate in the rearview mirror.

“My father is looking forward to seeing you,” Rocky said affably, turning in his seat.

Nate nodded. “Did he come here in his 727?”

Rocky shook his head. “That was his old plane. The new one is a 737. It is very luxurious, very well appointed. He prefers staying on the plane because it’s more comfortable than the hotel accommodations you have here. You’ll like it.”

“I just want my birds back.”

Rocky laughed. “I’ll never understand the fascination you and my father have with falcons. It’s a mystery to me. I prefer fast cars and fast women. Blond women with big lips. And movies. I’m a great fan of American movies. Especially the gangster movies and the Westerns. I love the Westerns. I don’t see why your people don’t make them anymore.”

Nate didn’t care what Rocky liked.

Rocky gestured out the window at the sagebrush plains, the foothills, the slumping shoulders of the Bighorn Mountains. “This looks like a place for a Western movie. I expect to see a cowboy ride up any minute.”

As they passed Shorty walking on the road, Nate looked out the back window. Shorty was chasing the car, his arms outstretched. Thinking that somehow they hadn’t seen him.

Rocky said, “Poor Shorty.”

Nate wondered if his birds were worth this.

The outsized private jet sat brilliant white and gleaming in the morning sun on the concrete apron of the Saddlestring Regional Airport. Two-foot-high Arabic writing was scrawled the length of the fuselage along with green Saudi Arabian flags. Small private planes had been moved to accommodate the craft and were parked under the wings of the 737, looking like small white offspring.

Khalid had a key to the lock on the gate and he drove the Escalade to the base of the aircraft.

“Please,” Rocky said, gesturing to Nate to get out and ascend the stairs into the jet.

Al-Nura Abd al Saud, Rocky’s father, sat in an overstuffed leather armchair in a book-lined private office paneled with dark rich woods and gold fixtures. A monitor and DVD player was mounted into the wall next to stacks of movies. Nate glanced at the titles, noted pornography and dozens of old Westerns: Fort Apache, Red River, Shane, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Searchers. Al-Nura was grossly fat and soft. His robes were cream-colored cotton and they shimmered and draped when he stood up. He wore the distinctive red-and-white-checked kaffiyeh head covering held in place with a common agal band, as befit a descendant of the Royal House of Saud. Al-Nura beamed and struggled to his feet when Nate was shown into the room by Rocky.

Al-Nura took both of Nate’s hands in his and shook and caressed them, saying, “It is so good to see you again, Mr. Romanowski. I was afraid something had happened to you. Please, let’s sit and talk. It’s time to catch up.”

Rocky stood to the side, his false grin pasted on. Khalid slipped in through the doorway and closed the door behind him, taking the corner of the room where he could watch Nate and Al-Nura without moving his head.

Nate sat on a plush ottoman across from Al-Nura. The fat man settled back into his chair before the cushions had fully recovered in his absence.

“Would you like a coffee?” Al-Nura asked. “A brandy? A water? We have the whiskey you like.”

“I’m fine.”

Al-Nura shot a glance at Khalid. “Coffee.”

Khalid crossed the room, opened another door, ordered. In a moment, a woman appeared with a silver tray with a samovar and two tiny cups. She was slim, blond, stunningly beautiful, with a full red mouth and a short black dress. She looked made-to-order for Rocky. Nate glanced over, saw the predatory look on Rocky’s face, and guessed she served more than coffee.

“Thank you,” Nate said as she poured him a cup.

“You’re welcome,” she said in a whisper. East European, Nate guessed by her accent.

“That will be all,” Al-Nura said, not looking at her.

She swished out, leaving her scent in the cabin.

“I have five of those on board,” Al-Nura said.

“‘Those’ being women,” Nate said.

Al-Nura raised his eyebrows, assessing Nate. “Yes,” he said, after a beat. “All blondes. Bosnians, Albanians. They have nice women there who need jobs. There is no struggle with them. They know why they’re here.”

Nate shook his head, said, “We can get right to it.”

Al-Nura looked at Rocky and Khalid, said, “See what I told you about him? He is like this.”

“No respect,” Rocky said, nodding. Khalid didn’t respond, but stood there dark and smoldering, his black eyes never leaving Nate.

Al-Nura laughed, a sound from deep in his chest. “All business, no sense of fun. That is Nate Romanowski, the Master Falconer.”

“You have my birds,” Nate said.

“Yes. But only for a while.”

“I want them back.”

“I can see why,” Al-Nura said. “I was admiring them. Especially the peregrine. She is a cold-blooded little bitch, isn’t she? I see why you prize her. If she were a woman, I would take her to my bed.”

Rocky laughed at that.

Nate said, “If she were a woman, she’d turn you into a eunuch.”

Rocky’s laugh ended abruptly and he stepped forward. Only when Al-Nura smiled did Rocky uncoil.

“You are right,” Al-Nura said. “What do you call her?”

“I call her a peregrine falcon.”

“What? You don’t give her a name?”

“No.”

Al-Nura shook his head. “That is interesting. I’ve never known a falconer not to name his birds.”

“I don’t own them,” Nate said. “We have a common interest. So I don’t name them. They name themselves.”

Al-Nura studied Nate, looking for something. His black eyes scoured Nate’s face, his neck, his hands.

“I want a bird like that,” Al-Nura said.

“I know.”

“I sent you sixty thousand dollars for six young wild peregrine falcons, and the money came back without a note.”

Nate nodded.

“That’s not the way we do business.”

“It is now.”

Al-Nura sat back, his brow furrowed. “It was not enough? You’ve raised your prices?”

Nate reached out for the tiny cup of coffee. As he did so, he noted how Khalid tensed up and leaned forward on the balls of his feet, ready to lunge forward if necessary. Nate sipped the bitter coffee.

“Peregrines aren’t rare anymore,” Nate said. “They’re off the endangered list. You can get them through captive breeders. You don’t need to get them through me.”

Al-Nura dismissed that with a quick wave of his hand. “No. I want wild birds. No captives.”

“They’re good birds from those programs,” Nate said. “There’s nothing wrong with them.”

“No!” Al-Nura barked, his face flushing red. “Wild birds only. Like yours. I am a master, I won’t own domestic-raised birds.”

Al-Nura started to stand but decided it wasn’t worth the effort. He waved his arms as he spoke. “My people have hunted with falcons for thousands of years, it is the sport of kings. It is our tradition, my birthright. We were falconers before you even had a country. I have hunted with golden eagles from Afghanistan. I’ve killed deer with them. I can no longer get the eagles because of your war there. So I want the deadliest of falcons, the Rocky Mountain peregrine. The king of falcons for the sport of kings. You must help me.”

Nate said nothing.

“I know that you can capture some young ones,” Al-Nura said, his voice lowering from his outburst. “You know of nests here. You know where to find some.”

Nate sipped the coffee.

“Here,” Al-Nura said, reaching into his robes and pulling out a brick of cash. “One hundred and twenty thousand dollars. Twice what the birds should cost. I give you half of it now, the other half when you bring me the birds. And you get your falcons back. It’s a good deal. You can have the Bosnian for your pleasure as well.”

“I’ve got a woman,” he said, wishing immediately he hadn’t revealed that.

“I didn’t fly all the way here for nothing.”

Nate said, “I’m afraid you did.”

His words hung there in silence. Al-Nura didn’t erupt, but sat still as if he hadn’t heard them. Khalid’s only reaction was to shift his eyes from Nate to Al-Nura, waiting for a signal. Rocky was stunned.

“No one denies my father,” Rocky whispered. “What’s wrong with you?”

Nate stood up slowly so that Khalid would have no reason to react.

“Thank you for the coffee,” Nate said. “I want my birds back now.”

“I don’t understand,” Al-Nura said softly. “We’ve done business before. We were friends, professionals. We belong to a very small group of master falconers.”

“I’m beyond that,” Nate said.

“Why won’t you assist me?”

Nate considered the question for a moment, said, “Because I don’t like you anymore.”

Al-Nura said, “Khalid.”

His movement was lightning swift, too fast for Nate to ward off. Khalid was suddenly behind him, a hand on the top of his head jerking his face skyward, the bite of a razor-sharp blade like a wasp sting a quarter of an inch above his Adam’s apple. Khalid pressed in with the knife. It was so sharp Nate couldn’t feel the cut itself, only the thin hot stream of blood that crawled down his neck into his collar.

“Give him half of this,” Al-Nura said, breaking the brick of cash and handing $60,000 to Rocky, who stuffed it into Nate’s pants beneath his belt.

“You get the other half when you bring me the wild peregrines.”

The next morning, an hour after dawn, Nate launched himself down the cliff face. The northern wind had picked up and was starting to buffet the tops of the cottonwood trees two hundred feet below on the banks of the stream, making a liquid sound. He was protected from the wind by the rock wall, but he could hear it howling above him as well.

He rappelled down, feeding rope through the carabiners of his harness, bouncing away from the sheer rock with the balls of his feet. Tightly coiled netting hung from his belt.

Fifty feet down was the nest. It was a huge cross-hatching of branches and twigs and dried brush, cemented together by mud, sun, and years. It was well hidden and virtually inaccessible from below, but he’d located it the year before by the whitewash of excrement that extended down the granite from the nest, looking like the results of an overturned paint bucket.

As he approached it from above, he noted the layers of building material, from the white and brittle branches on the bottom to the still-green fronds on the top. The nest had been built over generations, and had hosted falcons for forty years. Nate couldn’t determine if all the inhabitants had been peregrines, but he doubted it. The original nest, he thought, had been built by eagles.

The nest came into view and Nate prepared for anything. Once, he had surprised a female raptor in the act of tearing a rabbit apart for her fledglings and the bird launched herself into his face, shredding his cheeks with her talons. But there were no mature adults in the nest. Only four downy and awkward fledglings. When they saw him, they screeched and opened their mouths wide, expecting him to give them food.

He guessed by their size that they were two months old, and would be considered eyas, too young to fly. If taken now, they would need to be immediately hooded and hand-fed until their feathers fully developed, and kept sightless in the dark so they didn’t know from whom their food came. If the birds saw their owner, the falconer would be imprinted for life as the food provider and the bird would never hunt properly or maintain its wild edge. Nate didn’t like taking birds this young, not only because of the work involved, but because of the moral question. He no longer wanted to own his birds, preferring instead to partner with them.

But here they were. So where was the mom? He almost wished she would show up and drive him away.

He spun himself around and the landscape opened up as far as he could see. The sun was emerging from a bank of clouds on the eastern horizon and lighting the trees and brush with burnt orange while darkening the S curves of the river. There were no birds in the sky.

Without extracting the net from his web belt, Nate sighed, kicked himself free of the cliff face, and descended to the creek bottom.

That night, Nate sat at the back booth of the Stockman’s Bar, illuminated in shadows cast by the light over the vacant pool table. The Stockman’s was a long dark wooden tube of a place decorated with ancient deer and elk heads and knotty pine. There were six men at the bar sitting on stools. Shorty sat on stool number four. Shorty refused to look at Nate, who nursed a beer and waited for his friend, Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett.

At eight, the game warden entered and squinted against the gloom. Nate nodded, and Joe walked back to join him, sliding into the seat across from Nate.

“Long day,” Joe said, putting his hat crown-down on the table. Joe wore his red uniform shirt with the pronghorn antelope patch on the sleeve.

“Thanks for meeting me,” Nate said, signaling the barmaid for two beers.

“I can’t stay long,” Joe said. “I haven’t been home yet. I was in the timber all day checking elk hunters.”

“Find any?”

“Plenty. But you don’t care about that.”

“No,” Nate said.

“You said something about a permit.”

Nate nodded. “I need to capture a few birds.”

Joe thanked the barmaid for the beer, sipped it, and studied Nate’s face. “When did you decide to follow the regulations?”

“I always have.”

“Like hell, Nate.”

They sipped their beers.

“I stopped by your place on the way here,” Joe said. “I noticed your birds were gone. I thought that was unusual.”

Nate nodded.

“I don’t suppose they flew off?”

“Nope.”

“Does this have to do with that big jet at the airport?” Joe asked.

“Possibly.”

“I always wondered what you did to make money,” Joe said. “Since there’s never been any visible means of support.”

Nate shrugged.

Joe rolled the bottle of beer between his palms, thinking. “I don’t know if I can issue a permit when I think the purpose of capturing the falcons is to sell them.”

Nate said, “That’s what I thought you would say.”

“Who is the potential buyer?”

“His son just entered the bar,” Nate said, stealing a look over the top of the booth. Rocky and Khalid were with two of the blond women. Every eye in the place was on the women, who wore black skintight bodysuits. No women in Saddlestring had ever entered the Stockman’s Bar in a bodysuit.

“Might as well look,” Nate said. “Everyone else is.”

Joe turned and looked, maybe a few beats longer than necessary. When he faced Nate, he said, “They don’t exactly go incognito, do they?”

“They don’t think they need to.”

“Is that your buyer?”

“His son, Rocky. And his bodyguard.”

“Who are the women?”

“Rocky’s toys.”

Joe paused for a while before looking up at Nate and asking, “What’s really going on here?”

Nate said, “I met him years ago. He was a friend of ours in Special Forces. Not because he liked us or we liked him, but we had common interests. I never talked politics with him once. Instead, we talked falconry. He’s paid me before to get him birds.”

Joe said, “Hmmm.”

“Al-Nura is Wahhabi. He’s got billions from the royal family, and he’s one of the biggest funding sources for foundations and mosques all over the world. If you’re looking for one of the main guys establishing a violent religion that exists to wipe us out, you’re looking at Al-Nura. Yet here he is, flying all around our country, doing as he pleases. No one even challenges him.”

Nate sighed. “A guy like that can have anything in the world. If he wants peregrines, he can get them from any number of good breeding programs. Hell, he could buy the breeding program.”

He jabbed a finger at Joe and lowered his voice. “But what’s important to Al-Nura isn’t just that he gets the falcons but that he gets them from me. It’s important to him to know I can be bought. He needs to know that like all the other westerners he’s ever dealt with, I have my price. It confirms his worldview.”

Two more beers arrived at the booth. When Nate looked up, the barmaid said, “The man with the dollies bought the house a round.”

“I don’t want it,” Nate said, pushing the bottle away.

“You tell him,” the barmaid said, going back to the front.

“You’re in a situation, aren’t you?” Joe asked.

“Yes.”

“You really don’t care about a permit, do you?”

“Not really. And it gets worse,” Nate said. “Alisha told me she noticed a white new-model SUV following her to school this morning. Khalid drives a rented Escalade. The description of the driver matched up. The car drove on when she pulled into the school parking lot, but they’re letting me know they’re ramping up the pressure.”

The barmaid came back. “The gentleman who bought you the beer said to tell you he doesn’t appreciate the insult.”

“Tell him I still don’t care what he thinks and I never will.”

“Nate…” Joe cautioned.

“You’re right,” Nate said, standing. “I’ll tell him myself.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Joe said from the booth.

As Nate walked to the bar, he saw Shorty stand up and approach Rocky. Shorty was drunk.

“I don’t appreciate being left out there to walk to town,” Shorty said, his face red, his finger wagging in Rocky’s face. “I don’t care who in the hell you think you are. Out here, you don’t treat a man like that, especially when he helped you out.”

Rocky leaned back so Shorty’s finger wouldn’t touch his face. As he did so, Khalid reached through the air, grabbed Shorty’s finger in his fist, and snapped it back with a sound like a dry branch breaking underfoot.

Shorty gasped, then howled. Khalid kept a grip on the finger and pulled it, and Shorty, toward the door. With his free hand, Khalid opened the door and pulled Shorty through. It happened very quickly, and no one at the bar moved or said a word.

Nate nodded at Rocky as he walked by and followed Shorty and Khalid outside. Khalid had Shorty bent over the hood of a car, facedown, while he rifled through his pockets and pulled them inside out. A wallet, loose change, and a pocketknife clattered to the pavement.

“A knife,” Khalid said.

Shorty moaned, “It’s just…”

Khalid stepped back and crouched. Nate could see what would happen next. Khalid intended to leap into the air and come down with his elbow extended to break Shorty’s spine.

“You do it and it’s murder,” Nate said.

Khalid paused, looked over, his eyes black and glistening.

“He has a knife,” Khalid said.

“Everybody carries a pocketknife,” Nate said. “He never pulled it out of his pocket. You did.”

“This is justifiable.”

“No,” Nate said, “it isn’t.”

A hint of a smile ghosted across Khalid’s face. Nate heard the door behind him open and smelled Rocky’s cologne. Rocky must have signaled Khalid, who lunged forward with all of his weight to drive Shorty’s face into the hood of the car with enough power to dent the sheet metal. Shorty crumpled back into a bloody pile, pink bubbles indicating where his nose and mouth were.

“You all saw that,” Rocky said to the blondes and Khalid. “The little man had a knife.”

The bartender and Joe Pickett came out of the bar and stared at Shorty. Joe ran up to make sure he was breathing.

“Call an ambulance,” Joe said to the bartender.

Nate saw the smile return on Khalid. That did it. His .454 was under the driver’s seat of his Jeep half a block away, but Nate wanted to take on Khalid with his hands and stepped toward him. Khalid set his feet, getting ready.

“That’ll be enough of that,” Sheriff McLanahan shouted.

Nate looked up to see McLanahan sticking his face through the window of a sedan that had stopped on the street.

“Mr. Romanowski, I’d suggest you call it a night and go home.”

Nate squinted at the sheriff in confusion. The man wasn’t in his county pickup, and wasn’t in uniform. His wife sat next to him, staring straight ahead through the windshield as if she hadn’t seen or heard what just transpired.

“Yes, go home,” Khalid said in heavily accented English.

Joe Pickett stood up. “Sheriff, we have an injured man here.”

“I heard it on the scanner,” McLanahan said. “The ambulance is on its way. And stay out of this, Joe.”

“I saw what happened. Nate wasn’t at fault.”

“He never is,” McLanahan said, moving his eyes from Joe to Nate. “It just seems like wherever he shows up, people get hurt or killed.”

“Go home,” Khalid taunted, now smiling widely.

Nate looked over McLanahan’s new car. It had dealer plates and the sticker was still in the window.

“Nice ride,” Nate said. “I hope it was worth it.”

McLanahan’s wife continued to stare stonily ahead, but Nate thought he saw her wince a little. McLanahan’s face got red, which looked dark in the glow of the streetlight.

“This is what they do,” Nate said. “They buy us with our own money. Your price was pretty damned cheap.”

“Move on,” McLanahan said through gritted teeth.

Nate felt a tug on his arm. Joe. “The odds aren’t good right now,” he whispered. Nate loved Joe at that moment. Joe wasn’t telling him to back off, or give up, or go home. Instead, he was advising Nate to regroup and fight later, when he held the high ground. The thought calmed him.

Rocky walked between Nate and Khalid. “No more trouble,” Rocky said. “Let’s all go back in and enjoy another drink. I’m buying, my friends. This is over.”

Nate said, “I don’t think so.”

Nate walked away and Joe stayed with Shorty. As Nate climbed into his Jeep, he looked down the street toward the Stockman’s. Rocky was patting backs and shaking hands, offering loudly to buy the house another round, not even looking over his shoulder as the ambulance appeared from around the block. McLanahan had parked his new car and was joining them.

“He’s out there,” Alisha said. “I can feel it.”

Nate threw off the quilts and his bare feet slapped the floor of her bedroom. A trough of moonlight split the floor. He approached the window, but didn’t open the curtains farther.

Nate said, “I can see the grille of the car shining in the moon. It’s parked behind the willows out front.”

She said, “Are you sure it’s him?”

“Who else would drive a white Cadillac onto the res?” he said.

She reached for the bed lamp but Nate stopped her, whispered, “Keep it dark in here.”

Nate smelled the smoke of strong cigarettes long before he saw the car. He had gone out the back door of Alisha’s house, forded the creek, and looped far around her lot so he could approach the Escalade from behind. He kept inside the brush, breathing evenly, stepping slowly and quietly, his gun hanging loosely at his side.

The interior of the SUV was dark, but as Nate stood and looked, letting his eyes adjust, he could see the familiar blocky head at three-quarter-rear profile behind the wheel. Khalid turned his head slightly and Nate could see the orange glow of his cigarette ash.

Nate looked around. The powwow grounds near Alisha’s home were empty except for the naked pole frames of tipis and the tall sun dance pole that shone blue in the moonlight. Dried leather ropes hung down from the sun dance pole and waved gently like kelp in the night breeze. The structures should have been dismantled weeks ago, after the powwow, but in the Indian way, they weren’t.

Nate thought of his birds. He thought of Shorty’s face bubbling blood. He thought of that white Escalade following Alisha to school. And he thought of mosques and madrassas all over the world teaching the young to hate.

Khalid was genuinely surprised when Nate reached in through his window and snatched the cigarette out of his mouth, and he started to say something but his open mouth filled with the huge muzzle of a .454.

“Do you know what a sun dance is?” Nate asked. “It’s a way for a boy to become a man.”

The curtain parted on a cabin window of the 737 and Rocky looked out. Even at that height and distance, Rocky’s face looked pale and his eyes bleary from alcohol and lack of sleep. It was minutes before dawn and the western sky was washed with a deep pink about to dissolve into the first blast of morning sun.

Nate stood up in his Jeep and gestured to the heavy wooden crate that filled his backseat. There were holes in the crate.

Rocky’s face vanished from the window.

Nate stood in the cold of dawn, feeling the last rush of icy pre-morning breeze flow across the tarmac as if looking for a place to hide until it was dark again. A meadowlark warbled somewhere behind him.

Nate turned to the crate. He could hear the rustle of feathers, and one of the birds answered the meadowlark with a sharp chirp.

The door of the airplane opened. Rocky stood in a bathrobe, one hand shielding his eyes from the light and the other waving Nate in. Nate climbed the stairs carrying the crate, and he could smell fetid alcohol and strong garlicky sweat through Rocky’s skin. “Late night, huh?”

“Come in, come in, so I can close the door.”

Nate stepped inside the dark cabin.

“You brought the birds?” Rocky asked.

“What does it look like?” Nate asked.

Rocky nodded, uncomprehending. “You are here much too early. Let me wake my father.”

Nate sat while Rocky walked gingerly through the cabin, as if the sound of his footsteps hurt his head. The darkness of the plane seemed to have calmed the birds in the crate, although he could still hear them rustling inside. In a few minutes, Nate heard the low rumble of Arabic through the door.

While he waited, Nate perused the movie library and selected Fort Apache with John Wayne. John Ford directing. A classic. He got it running and the dark cabin flickered with screaming Indians and frightened soldiers.

Al-Nura entered fitting his headscarf on. Nate appreciated the formality, in a way.

“You are early,” Al-Nura said, settling down in his big chair. Rocky followed. Al-Nura’s eyes lit up when he noticed the crate. “Six of them?”

“Seven, actually,” Nate said.

“You flatter me.”

Nate said nothing. He listened for the sound of a vehicle outside on the tarmac.

Rocky lit a cigarette with trembling fingers. “We kept the bar open until very early this morning,” he said. “The owner wanted to close at two, but we sweetened the pot for him. The whole town had a wonderful time.”

“It wasn’t the whole town,” Nate said. “Just some drunks and derelicts. Your friend Khalid wasn’t with you, though.”

Rocky looked up, the match still burning in his fingers. His ever-present smile was missing.

Nate said, “He was with me.”

Al-Nura used his hands on the arms of the chair to turn himself so he could see Rocky behind him. Father and son exchanged glances.

“Where is he now?” Rocky asked, almost in a whisper.

“Outside.”

“Let me see the birds,” Al-Nura said, turning back to Nate. His eyes were hard.

“Where are my falcons?” Nate asked.

Al-Nura gestured outside with his chin. “They are safe in the hangar we rented. It’s the second one from the left out there. They’ve been watered and well fed.”

Nate nodded, backed up, and pried the lid off the crate. The birds began to chirp furiously when exposed to light.

Al-Nura asked quickly, “Are they hooded?”

“Nope.”

“They’ll see us!” he said angrily. “They’ll be imprinted for life!”

“You said—”

“Close the box!”

Nate put the lid back on. While he fastened the clips, a horn honked outside. Rocky looked at the curtained window, then back to Nate.

“You asked about Khalid,” Nate said, gesturing toward the window.

Rocky inhaled deeply on the cigarette and crossed the cabin to the window and brushed the curtain aside. Nate watched Rocky’s eyes widen and the cigarette dropped from his fingers, then Rocky stumbled backward, flailing his arms.

“What?” Al-Nura asked his son. “What has happened?”

“Khalid…” was all Rocky could say.

The sound of war cries erupted from the monitor as the Apaches attacked the fort.

Al-Nura reached up and opened the curtain. Nate could tell from Al-Nura’s lack of alarm that he had seen worse in his life, and it had probably been on his orders. Bastard, Nate thought.

It had taken two hours to mount the sun dance pole onto the back of the flatbed truck, spearing it through a missing fifth-wheel mount on the truck bed. But it had taken only twenty minutes to hang Khalid from the leather ropes from sharpened bones pierced deeply through his pectorals. Now the bodyguard was suspended in the air, his hands limp at his sides, his face tilted to the sky.

“He comes to every once in a while,” Nate said. “He screams a bunch of crap in Arabic, then he passes out again.”

“How could you do that to a man?” Rocky said, his face contorted.

“It’s not so bad,” Nate said. “I did it once myself. But when he gets cut down, he’ll be a warrior.”

Al-Nura swiveled slowly to Nate, his face a mask. But Nate could see his lower lip tremble involuntarily.

“It’s time for you to go,” Nate said. “You’ve got five minutes to order your pilot to fire up the jets.”

Al-Nura was frozen with rage. He looked like he wanted to leap out of the chair and attack Nate with his hands.

“You don’t threaten my father,” Rocky said.

Nate nodded toward the windows on the other side of the plane. “Check that out,” he said.

Nate didn’t even need to look because he knew what Rocky would see: a dozen Northern Arapaho warriors in full dress on horseback on the edge of the tarmac, feathers from lances and rifles riffling in the breeze.

“Just like Fort Apache,” Nate said.

Al-Nura slowly shook his head back and forth. “You’ll never get the rest of the money,” he said.

“Don’t need it,” Nate said. “And don’t ever contact me again or you and your little boy will end up on the sun dance pole, too.”

“But don’t you want the money?” Al-Nura asked.

“I’ll be the first: no.”

With that, Nate opened the hatch and clambered down the steps. He helped Bad Bobby Whiteplume cut Khalid down. The man stumbled toward the plane as the jet engines started up. Nate watched Khalid climb up the stairs on his hands and knees and wondered for a moment if Rocky would shut the door on him before he got in. Khalid made it, barely, without ever looking back. Twin spoors of blood snaked up the aluminum steps from Khalid’s wounds.

The door closed behind him and the stairs scissored back into place and Nate and Bob drove their vehicles to the side of the airport, where they met the warriors. The roar of the plane shook the ground itself and split the sky in two.

While the 737 rose into the air, Nate checked the birds in the hangar. The peregrine screamed at him when he opened the door. He rejoined Bob and Bob’s crew with the hooded falcon on his fist.

It was minutes before the jet was far enough away that they could hear themselves speak.

Bad Bob yawned. “Too damned early for this kind of stuff.”

Several men agreed. They had all dismounted and held their horses by the reins.

“Any of you ever see Fort Apache?” Nate asked.

“You mean Fort Apache, the Bronx?” one of them asked. “With Paul Newman and Ed Asner?”

“Pam Grier was in that, too,” Bob said.

“No,” Nate said. “The original. With John Wayne.”

No one had.

“Here,” Nate said to Bob. “Our deal.”

He gave Bob half of the brick of Al-Nura’s cash. Bob started to count it as the others gathered around him. Bob lost count, looked up at Nate, said, “I trust you. Besides, I know where to find you at my sister’s place.”

A couple of the men laughed.

“Not a bad gig,” one of them said, nodding at the 737, which was a dot against the belly of a cumulus cloud.

“You can still make the shoot,” Nate said, looking up. “The light is still good.”

“Fuck the Cherokee thing,” Bob said. “This is much better. Call on us anytime you need Indians.”

“I hope I don’t need you again,” Nate said.

“You don’t think he’ll come back?”

“No. We screwed up his worldview.”

Bob said, “Whatever that means.”

As Nate climbed into his jeep, Bob broke off from his friends and approached him. Bob had a threatening expression on his face, the one he had no doubt used on the film location to get more money from the director.

“What?”

“I’ve got a question,” Bob said in a gravel voice.

“Ask away.”

“Does this cover the seven chickens you took from my coop?” Then Bad Bob broke into a grin.

Nate smiled back and peeled off two more bills. “This should cover the chickens,” he said, “with change left over to buy some coffee and your own television set.”