Rant of Ravens (4 page)

The LeConte’s sparrow hissed
at dusk. At least, Rachel hoped it was the sparrow. They’d been looking for it the past three days, scouring The Thicket, fanning out in all directions. She had begged off on Tuesday and Wednesday, claiming work as an excuse, but today Aunt Miriam’s request held more insistence and Rachel had acquiesced. She was, after all, a guest.

The bird hissed again, and she peered in the direction of the sound, surprised by how quickly the sky had dimmed once the sun started dropping behind Long’s Peak. Similar to the way the lights dimmed in a fancy restaurant when the menu prices went up after dark.

And, the temperature was dropping. Rachel pulled her hands inside the cuffs of her long-sleeved shirt, chastising herself for not bringing a jacket. Earlier in the day, the temperature had reached a balmy seventy-two. Why did Elk Park nights always offer an opportunity for hypothermia?

A rustle in the bushes behind her caused her to stop and glance back. The Thicket was tangled and dense. Comprised mostly of willows, alder, and ankle- to knee-high grasses, it stretched a quarter-mile or more along the river-bank, blocking the view of Black Canyon Creek. A second rustle set Rachel’s heart pounding.

Stay calm, Stanhope
, she ordered herself.
It’s just a bird. Maybe
the
bird
.

Rachel focused her attention on the book Aunt Miriam had shoved into her hands as they left the house. The book described the LeConte’s sparrow as “smaller than a House Sparrow, bright buff-ochre eyebrow stripe, buffy breast and sides, white belly, gray nape with purple streaks, black crown with whitish crown stripe, orange face surrounding gray cheek, and dark and light streaking on back,” whatever that meant. It would be Rachel’s first official sighting.

According to Aunt Miriam and Lark, the American Birding Association’s life list consisted of nine hundred and six wild bird species, of which Rachel could positively identify two—the American robin and the bald eagle. She’d already mistaken the common raven for a crow.

A twig snapped, and Rachel whipped her head around. Since when could a bird break off tree branches?

Two weeks ago, Aunt Miriam had said, she’d spotted a mountain lion in the area. The cat had come down to the water to drink. They’d eyed each other, then gone their separate ways.

Sightings weren’t all that uncommon. Lions ranged as far east as the suburbs of Denver. With man’s encroachment on their territory, the number of sightings had jumped, along with an increase in the number of attacks. Last year, one in Rocky Mountain National Park had resulted in the death of a nine-year-old.

The thought caused Rachel’s heart to bang against her ribs. What if it wasn’t the sparrow she’d been hearing?

A pamphlet she’d picked up yesterday at the park’s ranger station stated that mountain lions were active day and night, feeding on mule deer and large rodents. It had noted four major things to remember if you came upon a lion in the wild: stay calm, look big, talk loud, and back away slowly.

Calm was impossible. Control? Maybe. Rachel drew a deep breath.

Looking big was easy. At five-foot-seven and 130 pounds, Rachel dwarfed the average porcupine.

Loud she could also handle. In fact, she planned to yell her head off at the first sign of a tawny, catlike creature.

But backing away slowly presented a real problem. Her ingrained response to fear was flight, which was what had brought her to Elk Park in the first place.

Rachel drew a second deep breath and straightened her shoulders. Chances were it was just someone from the group ahead of her who had doubled back.

“Hello?” she called.

No answer.

“Hello? Anyone there?”

Another crackling from The Thicket sent her scrambling up the deer path. Seven people, including Aunt Miriam, were ahead of her. As Miriam would say, it’s the dead duck that flies at the end of the line. If it was a mountain lion in The Thicket, Rachel wanted to be in the middle of the pack. If it was the sparrow, there ought to be someone around who could identify the darned thing.

The first person Rachel overtook was Lark. “I heard something back there,” she whispered.

Lark held a finger to her lips. “Where?”

“In the bushes,” Rachel said, wondering why they were whispering. “It hissed, but then I heard some branches crack and—”

“It hissed?” Lark looped her binoculars around her neck. “How far back were you?”

Rachel pointed toward Black Canyon Creek.

“Come on.” Lark moved along the deer path, and Rachel hesitated, unsure she wanted to backtrack in that direction.

“It was making a lot of noise. What if it wasn’t a bird?”

Lark stopped and turned, her long braid flipping from one shoulder to the other. “Cut to the chase. What are you really scared of?”

“What if it was something else, like that mountain lion Aunt Miriam saw?”

Lark emitted a hoot. “Mountain lions don’t hiss at people.”

“I know that,” Rachel said in a stage whisper. “But I also can’t believe a secretive little sparrow that likes weeds and grass would make that much noise in the bushes.”

“Okay, so the bush-cracker was probably a squirrel or a rabbit, but the hissing sounds like the sparrow. So can we go?” Lark started back down the path toward Black Canyon Creek, arms swinging. “I can see I’m going to have to teach you a thing or two.”

Rachel hung back. How much she needed to learn from Lark hinged directly on how much time she intended to spend birdwatching. Likely very little. Once Aunt Miriam left for the Middle East, Rachel planned to enjoy the mountains from the back deck. Another rare bird alert, and even going home to Roger might start looking good.

When Lark disappeared around a bend in the path, Rachel considered her options. Seek out Aunt Miriam and the others, stick with Lark, or stand around like mountain lion bait.

Uphill, the path wound through a pine forest before rejoining The Thicket on the other side of the knoll. The trees pressed close together, their branches blocking out light on even a sunny day. Behind her, the meadow still captured the last of the day’s rays. The choice was a no-brainer.

The rocky trail toward Black Canyon Creek narrowed in places, and was slick with mud in others. Rachel picked her way down more slowly than she’d climbed. It took her a few minutes to catch up to Lark.

“Where were you when you heard the hissing?” whispered Lark.

Rachel pointed to a spot farther down the path. “Somewhere in there.”

Lark placed a finger to her lips, and waved Rachel closer. “Lesson number one: be quiet. The bird’ll hide if you’re too noisy. Or it’ll fly away. In the case of the LeConte’s, it runs, using the grass for cover.”

Did Lark actually believe she wanted to become a world-class birdwatcher?
Think again
.

A weak song erupted from the brush, and Lark cocked her head. “I think it
is
the LeConte’s sparrow. Man, if it’s back there in the grasses, it’ll be bird number 497.”

“Great,” Rachel said, trying to muster some enthusiasm. She didn’t understand the excitement. After all, a bird was a bird, right? These people acted like the sparrow was a rare treasure.

“LeContes skulk in the grass. They stay close to the ground,” explained Lark, peering through her binoculars. She crouched low, trying to see around the bushes, performing gyrations befitting an acrobat. “I can’t see anything. We’re going to have to pish it out.”

“
Pish
? That’s a Yiddish word for pee! You’re not planning to do anything weird, are you?”

“Of course not.” Lark squinted up at the crown of light over Long’s Peak. “In birder talk, it means we’re going to make
pishing
noises in order to draw the bird out of The Thicket. And we need to hurry, before we run out of sunlight.”

“Why not just shake the bushes, stomp our feet, and scare the thing out?”

“Because that goes against birdwatching etiquette! The American Birding Association’s Code of Birding Ethics clearly states that a birder should never deliberately disturb a bird’s habitat.”

Rachel raised her hands in mock surrender. “I was only asking.”

“This isn’t a joke. It’s considered bad form. We either have to lure it out, or wait.” Lark lifted her binoculars and scanned the brush again. “Tell me again what it sounded like.”

“It hissed.”

Lark hung her binoculars around her neck by their strap, and placed her hands on her hips. “Get with the program, Rae. Can you imitate its call or not?”

She could whistle for a cab, so why not hiss?

A sharp squeak erupted on her first attempt. She pressed a knuckle to her lips, quelling a laugh. This was absurd!

Lark shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

“Okay, just give me a second.” Rachel wrinkled her nose, replayed the call in her head, and tried again.
Kshshsh
.

Lark tried. “Like that?”

“Close. Drawl it out a little more. Like
Kshshshshshs
.”

Lark practiced a couple of times, then steered Rachel toward the willow thicket and the creek. “You go around this way. I’ll double back on the other side. Hiss as you walk, and keep your eyes open. What we’re hoping for is that the bird’ll get curious and pop its head up to see what all the racket’s about.”

“Lark, I don’t—”

“Just go.” Lark pushed her off the trail.

Rachel skirted the edge of The Thicket, afraid to consider what other kinds of wildlife might be lurking about.

The ground was boggy in places, and the closer she came to the creek, the deeper her feet sank into mud. She heard Lark hissing and, in spite of feeling ridiculous, issued an occasional hiss in reply. No answering calls issued from The Thicket.

Water seeped through the stitching of her shoes. Her socks grew damp. Her feet grew cold. A light winked on in the window of the Raptor House, perched high on the rise. Dusk settled deep into the valley. In another ten minutes they’d be forced to call off the search for lack of light, which suited Rachel fine.

She stepped carefully over a fallen log as she rounded the back of the jumble of willows, white alder, and tufted hairgrass, catching her sock on a twig. She bent to loosen it, and her fingertips brushed something squishy and cool. She yanked her hand back and stared hard into the tangle of branches and grasses. In the dwindling light, she made out a body, facedown.

Blood rushed to her head. Her ears roared.

Don’t scream, Stanhope. Don’t scream
. The first thing to do was see if the person was breathing. She bent closer.

By the size of the figure she knew it was the body of a man, his fingers curled against a mossy rock. She tried to roll him over, but he stayed wedged among the branches of The Thicket. Rachel checked his wrist for a pulse, repelled by the clamminess and mottled texture of the man’s skin.

He was dead, definitely dead.

“Lark,” she yelled, thrashing her way toward the river. “Lark.”

Kshshsh
.

“Lark!”

“Quit yelling, Rae!” Lark ordered in a stage whisper from the other side of the bushes.
Kshshsh
.

Rachel pushed through The Thicket in the direction of Lark’s voice. Branches snapped. In a rush of feathers, two birds rose from the brush. A large raven flapped away toward Lumpy Ridge, a final ray of sunlight dancing off its legs and the catch in its beak. A smaller, multicolored bird lit momentarily on an exposed branch, cocked its head, then settled back into The Thicket grasses.

“Did you see that?” Lark pointed with vigor at the bush. “It was the LeConte’s sparrow! I got bird number 497.”

Rachel reached her in two bounding steps and gripped her shoulders tightly. “Listen to me.”

“Did you see it?” Lark pumped her arms up and down like a hyperactive child. “Did you see it?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Rachel dragged Lark forward. “You have to follow me.”

“What do you mean it doesn’t matter?
Of course
it matters.”

“Lark, please!”

“What’s going on down there?” Aunt Miriam’s voice wafted from higher ground, somewhere near the deer path. “Did you spot the sparrow?”

Rachel clamped her hand across Lark’s mouth, allowing only a muffled response and sticking her face nose-to-nose with the startled woman. “Lark, I found a body.”

“Well, will someone answer? Have you seen it?” The second voice belonged to Charles Pendergast.

Rachel pulled her hand away from Lark’s mouth. “Did you hear me?”

Lark nodded, her blond braid seesawing across her shoulder, her mouth gaping.

“Is it still there?” Gertie called out, her voice rising above the others, her words tumbling over one another in excitement. “Which side of the tangle is it on?

So much for being quiet. Rachel ignored the volley of questions from the gathering birdwatchers and dragged Lark around the edge of The Thicket. “It’s over here.”

“What did you say, dear?” Miriam’s voice sounded closer.

“Stay back, Aunt Miriam,” Rachel ordered. “All of you, stay back. I found a body down here. Someone needs to go and call the police.”

“Did she say’a body’?”

“Yes, Gertie, a body. A
dead
person.”

“Oh, heavens,” Dorothy and Cecilia said in unison.

With a clamor that defied birding etiquette, the bird-watchers stormed the bush. Rachel fervently hoped they wouldn’t trample the corpse.

“Everyone, stop where you are!”

Rachel didn’t recognize the stern, male voice. A tremor of fear shot through her. She grabbed Lark’s sleeve. The man was between them and the others. Did he have some connection to the body in the bush?

Rachel slipped around a twisting willow to get a closer look. Wrestling with a branch, she stepped forward and bumped smack into a tall, muscular man. His jeans and navy blue fleece jacket blended so well with the twilight that he faded into The Thicket.

“Excuse me.” He extended his arm, blocking Rachel’s forward progress. “I said,’Stop.’”

Rachel stood her ground, shivering from shock and cold. She groped for Lark’s arm, then realized her friend was no longer behind her. Where had she gone?

The bushes parted, and Miriam and Charles stepped into the small clearing.