Page 55 of Dark Sky

Nate whistled and shook his head. The investigative skills of Sheridan, Liv, and Marybeth continued to amaze him.

They were nearly back to his compound when a text chimed on Sheridan’s phone. She read it and said, “It’s a temporary address, but it’s an address: Raylan Wagy, 114 County Road 189.”

“Spring Creek Road,” Nate said. “There are a bunch of old ranches out there with plenty of empty buildings.”

—

While Nate checked the oil on the Power Wagon in preparation for taking it out, both Sheridan and Liv had asked him not to go out there alone. He’d assured them it was strictly a reconnaissance run, which might or might not turn out to be true.

The snow continued to fall harder as he drove. The ancient heater beneath the dashboard howled as if injured and it filled the cab with an acrid burned-dust smell. The wipers smeared the windshield but kept up.

As he’d mentioned to Sheridan, there were a series of old ranches and homesteads on Spring Creek Road. In an area where cattle companies comprised thousands of acres each, these properties seemed tightly spaced. They’d been founded by some of the first settlers in the valley, who’d been drawn by the water, which was sparse everywhere else. Some of the ranches were still in operation with cattle grazing in meadows or penned in corrals, but most of the properties had been abandoned and bought up by bigger operations.

Fourteen miles up Spring Creek Road, he passed a battered wooden sign mounted on a leaning T-post with114hand-lettered on it. The exit was a deeply rutted two-track that plunged off the roadbed. Beyond it on the bank of the creek was a smattering of structures that were dark but ill-defined in the snowfall. It was also hard to tell where the buildings ended and the tall willow brush that lined both banks of the creek began.

Rather than make the turn into the property and announce his arrival, Nate continued over a rise a half mile beyond it. On the other side, he pulled over out of view from the old ranch and slipped his arms through his shoulder holster and got out.

—

Nate kept to the heavy willows of the creek as he approached the buildings from upstream. The snowfall hushed all sound and muffled his footsteps. He followed a cow path that conformed to the S-curves of the stream and led him under low overhanging branches that were starting to droop with accumulation.

He froze in place about two hundred yards from the ranch when the hairs on the back of his neck and on his forearms pricked up. He knew instinctively he was being observed. Nate slipped his weapon out of the holster and smoothly thumbed the hammer back.

Then the cow moose stepped out from her shelter of brush, snorted, and pushed her way into the heavier willows ahead of her. He gave it a full minute to see if there was a calf with her. If so, he didn’t want to get between them. When there wasn’t, he lowered the gun alongside his thigh and continued on.

The buildings of the ranch appeared in the snow as he got closer. There was a two-story house that might have served as a residence at one time and it was flanked on both sides by two rows of small cabins, three to a side. By the look of the identical construction of the cabins, Nate guessed the facility had once been a rustic dude ranch or a hunting lodge. There were gapingholes in some of the cabin roofs, as well as collapsed porches and broken windows. None looked occupied, and he could see no parked vehicles anywhere.

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. Herecognized 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 fromColorado.

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 thelodge 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, ithadbeen 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.

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