Page 10 of Battle Mountain

The only sounds were the tinkling of the icy stream through the river rocks and the murmur of a slight wind that blew east to west across the opening mouth of the canyon four hundred feet above him. Those sounds, and the sudden loud grumble of his stomach.

He was hungry, and so were his birds. Interloper or not, they had to eat.

Nate checked the loads of his handgun and slid the weapon back into its holster. Then, with a quick scan along the trail to confirm that he hadn’t missed anything or anyone, he continued the hunt.

—

Nate Romanowski’s mouthwas obscured by months of an untrimmed mustache. He sported a beard bound by a leather string. A dirty-blond ponytail, streaked with silver, hung down from theback of his neck like a horse’s tail. Both his beard and his ponytail contained feathers knotted in place by strands of hair.

His clothing—a faded green canvas long-sleeved shirt and Carhartt carpenter jeans—had been ripped and repaired so many times that only a few stretches of fabric remained that didn’t show stitches. The soles of his boots had been worn paper-thin, so he’d replaced them with moccasins fashioned from elk hide that laced up to just below his knees.

Even his shoulder holster had been replaced because the old one had become waterlogged at one point and had stiffened into the texture of wood. The holster he’d thought out and constructed was of both mule deer and elk hide, and it was beaded and fringed. His .454 Casull fit snugly into the new version.

Nate had not had a conversation with another human being for months. In his mind and in the state he was in, that hadn’t been long enough to get to where he needed to be.

—

If he wasstalking game himself, Nate never would have taken the route along the right bank of Spring Creek. Instead of moving quietly from boulder to boulder and stopping often to listen for the footfalls or snorts of deer, bighorn sheep, pronghorn antelope, or elk, he deliberately stepped on dry twigs and loudly kicked his way through piles of loose rocks. His loud approach was intended to drive and then flush out game, even though he had yet to see any signs of life. Although his falcons appeared oblivious to his presence, he knew both were carefully observing him and were aware of his noisy progress down the canyon floor.

When he shouldered around the thick reddish-brown trunk of an ancient ponderosa pine, he could see the confluence of the creeks ahead of him. The two streams met in a crux of a V and flowed north, doubling the flow of Buffalo Creek. The grass was ankle-high and thick and studded with skull-like river rocks that protruded from it. As he neared the V, he could detect a shimmering in the grass ahead of him and he smiled.

“Get ready,” he said to his falcons as much as to himself.

The covey of chukars busted out of the grass at the point of the confluence because they couldn’t run ahead of him any longer and not go into the water. They lifted off in a percussive flurry of flapping wings. At least a dozen of them, he thought, shooting through the air like errant fireworks all launched at once in different directions.

The chukars—sometimes called “devil birds” due to their speed and the zigzagging ascent that made them extremely difficult to hit with a shotgun—never saw what was coming from the sky. The prairie falcon intercepted the highest-flying chukar and sent it tumbling to the ground in a puff of feathers. The peregrine descended like a missile between the canyon walls and hit two additional chukars in rapid succession and clipped a third. The two lifeless targets thumped to the surface next to the creek, and the third chukar spiraled down like a crippled fighter plane and smacked headfirst into the top of a boulder behind Nate before bouncing to the ground.

The peregrine continued its dive through the covey until it did a graceful U-turn several feet from the stream. Nate watched the prairie falcon pursue a chukar that was skimming along the creek. His raptor dipped down and grasped the target in its talons,driving it down to the ground in a death grip that killed the prey on contact.

Then it was over and Nate whispered his thanks to his falcons, to his luck, and to God for providing a meal for them all.

—

Nate collected thedowned chukars into a pouch he formed from the loose front tails of his shirt. The birds were still warm and he could feel them through the fabric on his skin. Chukars were beautiful birds, he thought. They were the size of a large partridge or small chickens, with small heads and plump bodies lined with creamy gray feathers. Their beaks were blood-red and a bold black stripe that looked like sloppy eyeliner extended across their faces and curled to their breasts.

While holding the bounty of birds in place with his left hand, he pulled on a thick leather glove with an extended cuff over his right hand and secured it by gripping the end of the cuff in his teeth. Then he whistled and extended his right arm. The peregrine landed on it gracefully with a flare of its wings.

“Here you go,” he said, lowering the bird and giving it one of the chukars. After eyeing him for a second, the falcon pinned the carcass to the ground and dipped its head and tore out the throat of the chukar and proceeded to eat it, feathers, bones, and all.

Although he would have preferred the prairie falcon come to him the way the peregrine had—through the air—he found the smaller falcon thirty yards down the stream consuming the bird it had chased and driven to the ground. Its beak was bloody red and covered with downy feathers.

“You get a pass this time,” he said to the less-experienced prairie falcon. “Good hunting.”

Nate noted the metallic smell of spilled blood that wafted through the canyon.

He loved it.

—

When his birdswere sated and lethargic and happy, he placed them on top of his shoulders for his hike back to his dwelling, which was a deep cave in the side of a sandstone canyon wall. The peregrine rode on his right shoulder and the prairie falcon rode on his left.

On the footpath that serpentined up from the floor through boulders and heavy brush, Nate stopped suddenly and didn’t move. He again sensed a presence in the area.

When it materialized, he’d be ready.

—

That evening, whiletwo chukars roasted on a stick over an open firepit at the mouth of his cave on the eastern wall of the canyon, Nate peered into the darkness beyond and waited. Drips of fat from the birds sizzled and flamed on the coals and the orange light from the fire danced on the walls of the cave and the caragana brush just outside the opening.

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