He called out: “For my hunting partner.”
The duck came alive with a burst of energy, and started to climb. It flew horizontal and fast, skirting the top of the brush in a mad dash toward the far river.
Hundreds of feet above, in a move made silent by its distance, the peregrine deftly shrugged out of the thermal, tucked its wings tight against its body, balled its talons so they resembled twin hammers, and began to drop headfirst through the sky.
Nate could hear it coming as it shot earthward like a missile. The sound was a kind of high-pitched whistle that increased in volume as it built up velocity.
He glanced over toward the retreating duck. The hen had cleared the willows and was aiming for the river valley, its wings beating so fast they were blurs. It didn’t fly in a straight line but seemed to know its only chance was to feint and zigzag through the air.
Somehow, while dropping through the sky at incredible speed, the peregrine homed in on the flying duck and was able to make microscopic flight adjustments in its stoop attack so that when the two objects intersected — with an audible whap sound and an explosion of feathers that seemed to fill the sky — Nate took a sharp intake of breath and almost fell back into the water from the sheer bloody beauty of it all.
As he made his way down the slope toward the river with the sack of wriggling mallards, he paused next to the peregrine. The falcon was eating the remains of the dead duck. Flesh, guts, bones, and feathers filled its gullet to the size of a billiard ball, and its hooked beak was shiny with bright red blood. The bird paused and looked up, their eyes locked, something was exchanged, then the falcon resumed eating.
Nate untied the sack and reached in and grasped a drake by its neck and pulled it out. He cinched the top to contain the others and stashed the sack of live ducks beneath a mountain ash tree and weighted it with a rock. He would have the duck for dinner. This completed the circle — hunt, kill, eat — and always reminded him he was of the natural world and not simply striding atop it.
Knee-deep in the cold water, Nate wrung the neck of the duck with a sharp swing of his arm and held it out away from him as its wings beat in death throes. A full gust of wind roared up the river, roiling the surface of the water and shaking the trees. Golden spade-shaped cottonwood leaves fell into the water like upturned palms and bobbed and floated in the current.
He pushed both thumbs through the taut belly skin of the duck and worked them under its breastbone. The blood inside was hot, and the smell was metallic and pungent. With his left hand, he grasped the body of the duck and with his right he broke the entire breast away until it came free. After tossing the carcass toward the bank, he bent and dipped the breast into the water to clean and cool it. Spirals of dark blood snaked between his knees.
The gust of wind played out and silence returned and he thought he heard a sound. Nate looked up at his falcon to see she had stopped eating and was focusing on something upriver. He followed her gaze as the pointed snout of a drift boat emerged from around a grassy bank.
The wind had overridden the distinctive noises of an approaching boat — the slight lapping of the current on the sides of the fiberglass hull, the squeak of oars being dipped through oarlocks, the shuffle of boots on the boat deck, the scrape of a shallow river rock against the flat bottom.
He was caught, he thought. There was no way he could turn and splash toward the shore and find cover before he was seen. Warning jolts fired through his nerves.
His vest was open, and he reached up and slipped the thong loose that secured his .50 caliber weapon in its shoulder holster. Instinctively, he flexed his fingers in and out and stood up tall as the boat made the turn and came into full view. It was a low-profile open McKenzie-style Hyde drift boat, off-white in color, with a green-and-brown horizontal stripe on the side. There were three men in the boat — one standing behind the casting platform in front, one at the oars, and the third seated in the back. The man in back was slumped over and looked to be injured — or sleeping.
“There’s somebody,” the man standing in front said over his shoulder to his companions. Then: “Hey, mister. We’ve got a hurt man here. Can we pull over and call for some help?”
Nate didn’t answer. They certainly weren’t making any effort to sneak up on him. He made several quick determinations. First, the assassins sent for him in the past had been professionals and had come from out of state. These men looked like locals. Second, it was hunting season, and therefore not unusual to see hunters about. Third, he’d been spotted and would have to deal with them one way or the other.
“Hey,” the man in the front of the boat called out, standing and straining forward over the casting platform. “Did you hear me, mister? We need help. We’ve got a hurt man here. …”
Nate could see the boat and the occupants clearly now. The big man in the bow was thick and tall, with a full black beard and hair curling out from beneath an orange cap. Red hands grasped the top of the casting platform so he could lean over it. Dark eyes pierced out from beneath a flat, wide forehead. He wore a camo jacket and black jeans. The orange cap and the tip of the compound bow that jutted above the hull indicated he was a hunter, not a fisherman. Nate thought he’d seen him before and tried to place him.
Seated low in the center of the boat was a hunched younger man with a knob for a head and tiny hands that wrapped around the grips of the oars. He had a couple of fingers missing. Nate guessed the oarsman to be in his mid-twenties, but there was something shrunken and repellent about him. He had a wide nose that had been smashed flat against his face, high cheekbones, and large ears that ended in points: a gargoyle of sorts.
The slumped man in the back wore a thick jacket and a slouch hat, and his head was dropped forward so Nate couldn’t see his face.
“Man, you’re a sight for sore eyes,” the dark man in the front said to Nate, knowing his voice would carry through the quiet valley as if he were standing next to him. “We’ve been looking for someone — anyone — for a while now. We haven’t even seen a house anywhere.”
“There aren’t any,” Nate said.
“No shit,” the gargoyle spat, spinning the boat so the front of it faced the other bank. He began to pull the oars to propel the drift boat toward Nate.
Nate assumed the three men had put their boat in at a public access six miles upriver and had planned to float to another access closer to town. The route was used often in the summer fishing months but rarely in the fall or winter, when the level of the river dropped and the locals turned their attention from fishing to hunting. All of the river miles between the put-in and Nate’s stone house were through private ranch land owned by an out-of-state mogul. The mogul’s house was miles away from the river, tucked in a valley, and it wasn’t likely he would have been home, anyway, even if the men in the boat had gone there. Wyoming law allowed the public to float any river, but it was considered trespassing if the boaters got out or even anchored. The landowners were notorious for prosecuting anyone who pulled ashore, even if the reason was an emergency, so most fishermen chose to float much farther downriver toward Saddlestring, where there was more public land and the fishing was better.
“Do you have a phone we can use?” the man in front asked.
Nate had a satellite phone but ignored the question. He asked, “What’s the problem, anyway?”
“Old Paul,” the dark man said, pointing at the slumping man. “He’s got a bad heart and some kind of nerve condition. He just seized up about an hour ago and started jerking. Shit, he was even foaming at the mouth. He needs to see a doctor fast.”