Page 26 of Battle Mountain

Part Three

“Terror seeks out the odd, and the sick, and the lost.”

—J. A. Baker, ThePeregrine

Chapter Seven

Nate Romanowski satin the passenger seat of Geronimo Jones’s matte-black 2015 Chevy Suburban 2500 as they sped along the almost empty roads of Yellowstone National Park en route to Gardiner, Montana. Most of the park’s accommodations had already been closed for the season. They’d entered the park via the East Entrance and were working their way up the right side of the figure-eight road system hugging the contours of the Yellowstone River. Geronimo drove much faster than the park-imposed forty-five miles per hour, and as he did so, he cursed at occasional recreational vehicles poking along and a herd of bison, who lazily crossed the blacktop and created a one-car traffic jam.

Geronimo had explained to Nate that he’d purchased the massive vehicle the month before at a Denver Police Department impound auction. It had previously belonged to a gangbanger who had installed smoked bulletproof glass in the windows and steel plates in the front passenger and driver’s doors. The gangbanger had also replaced the inflatable tires with pure rubber ones that could absorb bullets and power over road spikes without goingflat. There were secret compartments in the doors, floorboard, and cargo area for weapons, gear, and, most likely, drugs.

Geronimo said, “It ain’t subtle.” Nate agreed.

—

Geronimo had removedthe second row of seats in the Suburban and replaced them with a latticework topped by a thick horizontal dowel rod. Balanced on the rod were Nate’s peregrine and red-tailed hawk. Both were hooded and they learned quickly to lean into turns and brace themselves when Geronimo slowed down or sped up. Next to Nate’s falcons was Geronimo’s huge white and black mottled white gyrfalcon, which was also hooded. Geronimo had spread a bedsheet over the floor to catch splashes of excrement that made the inside of the vehicle smell like a combination of musk and ammonia.

They stopped the vehicle periodically to retrieve fresh roadkill on the side of the road, including, in one instance, a mule deer fawn. While Geronimo drove, Nate fed the falcons in the back and then climbed into the passenger seat.

—

At Canyon Village,Geronimo took a left and gunned it on the road that cut across the middle of the figure eight to Norris Junction. The road existed simply to connect the loops and featured no special attractions—no geysers, mud pots, fumaroles, or waterfalls. The most interesting thing on the drive to Nate was the ability to judge how tall the pine trees had grown since the devastating fires of 1988, which had collectively formed the largest wildfire in the history of the massive park and scorched nearly eighthundred thousand acres. The once-burned landscape was covered with young pine trees again.

“You could slow down a little,” Nate said as they topped a steep rise going seventy-five.

“We’re in a hurry,” Geronimo replied.

—

“Remember when Itold you I couldn’t invite you to stay with us in Colorado?” Geronimo asked.

“Yes,” Nate said. His eyes stayed on the road ahead in case a wandering buffalo or elk suddenly appeared.

“I didn’t tell you why.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“It’s because my house was burned to the ground.”

Nate looked over. He recalled the million-dollar home set on ten acres on a mountainside with a magnificent view of the Denver city lights. He’d stayed in a guest bedroom and had breakfast the next morning with a then-pregnant Jacinda and Geronimo. Pearl wasn’t in the picture yet.

“If it wasn’t for a child’s broken necklace,” Geronimo said, “I’d have burned up with it, along with my wife and child.”

“Explain.”

“It happened a month ago, in September,” Geronimo said. “Pearl was playing with a cheap bead necklace some friend of hers had given her as a party favor. Can you believe two-year-old girls get invited to organized birthday parties these days? Anyway, my Pearl-girl loves her jewelry, which doesn’t bode well for me in the future.

“So, like with all of Pearl’s toys, she broke it. The beads wenteverywhere, and Jacinda told her to pick them up. I helped her, which meant crawling around on my hands and knees and fishing them out from under the couch and such. Somehow, one of those beads went straight up into Pearl’s nose.”

“That sounds like something Kestrel would do,” Nate said. He recalled his daughter inserting a Barbie shoe into her ear once, and the wailing she did as Liv removed it.

“I don’t mean perched in a nostril,” Geronimo said. “I mean straight up her nose so far we couldn’t see it. She really shoved it up there. Don’t ask me why. I guess to see how far it would go.

“So, Jacinda called our clinic and they said to pinch her other nostril and hold her mouth open and blow in it. They thought the bead would come shooting out like a bullet.”

“But it didn’t work,” Nate said.

“It didn’t work. So even though it was dark out and time to eat dinner, we had to bundle up Pearl and take her to the nearest emergency room. I guess we left the lights on when we left because we were shaken up by the whole ordeal.”

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