The hikers agreed to form a human shield to the side of the eagle and draw her attention (and vitriol) while Joe swooped in from behind her. It worked, except for the part where she slashed down with her hooked beak and ripped a gash the length of his forearm. Spurting blood and holding her wings tight to her body, he managed to slide the arrow out of her wing, slip the sweatshirt over her head, tie the sleeves together around her like a straitjacket, and finish the job with duct tape. Her screech seemed to reach down inside him and tug at primeval fears he didn’t even know he had, but he fought through them out of pure terror and eventually gained control of her thrashing body and sharp talons, wrapping the sweatshirt around her with a continuous strip of tape. Finally, as the hikers stepped away, he had her under control except for her screeching, and he picked her up and carried her to his truck. She was surprisingly light with her wings taped tightly to her side, and it reminded him of carrying one of his daughters as babies. It seemed a shame, he thought, to reduce this beautiful and regal creature to a shiny silver papoose. She seemed cowed and harmless—except for the talons, of course.
He used bungee cords to lash her upright to the inside sidewall of his pickup bed. She looked like an insurgent caught in the act and awaiting interrogation, he thought. He avoided looking into her murderous eyes, which pierced him through the curtain of his peripheral vision.
The hikers thanked him and left in time to make their dinner reservation. He watched their taillights recede down the gravel road through the dust kicked up from their tires that hung in clouds and slowly sifted back down to earth. Their problem was now his problem, and they could tell their friends they’d helped saved a bald eagle.
Joe stood in the campground bloodied and breathing hard, unable to raise dispatch or get a cell signal because of the height of the canyon walls.
While he bound his bleeding forearm with a compress and medical tape from the oft-used first-aid kit in his pickup, he looked at the eagle and asked, “What am I going to do with you?”
JOE THOUGHT THERE might be enough room on the canyon-wall side of the pickup to get around the driverless pickup with the Oklahoma plates in the middle of the road, but he knew it would be close. The side mirrors of both trucks would likely hit each other if he tried to squeeze through.
Sighing, he put his vehicle into park, got out, and bent both of his mirrors in on their hinges.
“Hey!” he called. “Would you mind moving your truck?”
His words echoed back over the tinkling of the river. Clouds of caddis flies smoked up the river. An aggressive trout smacked the surface of a pocket-water pool to get one.
To be safe, he decided to bend the mirrors of the Dodge in as well so he could pass. It was never a good idea to touch another man’s vehicle, but he was sure the missing driver would understand.
As he pushed the driver’s side mirror in, he glanced inside the cab and saw a half-empty twelve-pack of beer, binoculars, a pint of tequila, torn empty packages for AA batteries, and a quiver of Beman arrows between the bench seats.
Joe backed away and instinctively rested his right hand on the butt of his .40 Glock semiauto. His senses sharpened, and he felt his heart beat faster. The rush of blood hurt the gash on his forearm, and dark red blood beaded on the side of the compress. He looked back inside the cab. No keys. He placed his palm on the hood of the truck. It was warm, as if the engine had been running just a moment before. Squatting, he looked underneath the pickup. Two drops of transmission fluid in the dirt and a pink bead of it poised to fall from a black rubber hose. A glance at the tires didn’t conclusively confirm the tread was the same as his plaster cast, but it was similar enough. And near the rear tires on both sides, in the loose grit of the road, were two sets of footprints headed down the road in the direction the Dodge had been coming.
He stood.
Flicking his eyes from the river to the canyon wall to the two-track behind the Dodge where the missing driver might walk up, he stepped backward until he was adjacent to the open driver’s window of his pickup. He reached in and plucked the mike from its cradle.
“Dispatch, this is GF-fifty-four.”
Static.
“Dispatch, this is GF-fifty-four.”
Nothing.
“Can anyone hear me?”
No. Still too deep in the canyon for a signal.
Joe withdrew his cell phone from the breast pocket of his red uniform shirt. No bars.
He guessed the scenario: The Mad Archer and his accomplice were coming up the two-track when they either saw or heard Joe’s pickup coming down the same road from the campground. Maybe the eagle screech alerted them. Since there was nowhere to turn around and driving the Dodge in reverse around the blind corners was impractical, they’d simply bailed out and run. Since it was approaching dusk, no doubt they hoped Joe would simply pass by their vehicle en route to town. When he passed, they’d come out from where they were hiding.
He ran through his options. None were very good.
Joe thought about the empty packages of AA batteries. And he smiled to himself.
HE GAVE THEM fifteen minutes to show up. They didn’t, which didn’t surprise him. The shadows within the canyon grew long and dark and the breeze stilled and the temperature dropped twenty degrees. The wounded eagle grew impatient and screamed. Every time she screeched, he flinched and the hair on the back of his neck bristled.
He had the feeling he was being watched, but he couldn’t see who was watching him, or from where.
He made a show of checking his wristwatch. Then, with the slumped shoulders of a man who’d just given up waiting, he climbed into his pickup with the pronghorn antelope decals on the door, gunned the engine, and drove slowly forward.
He made it past the Dodge with six inches of clearance to spare, although heavy brush clawed the passenger door and scratched at the window. Back on the road, he turned his headlights on and drove slowly, looking carefully—but not too obviously—from side to side for a flash of color or the dark form of a hidden man. The two- track rose to a crest, and once he dropped over the top, he could no longer see the Dodge in his rearview mirror. The river was less languid on the bottom of the hill, and rallied from its late-summer doldrums into a stretch of fast water that picked up in volume until, spent, it spilled over a small falls into a deep pool. When the rush of water overcame the sound of his motor, he let the pickup coast to a stop and he turned the lights out. There was a
