The Bird Saviors (9 page)

    She huddles there, grinding her teeth, trembling uncontrollably. In time she warms up, the blankets wrapped around her like a heated cocoon. She creeps far enough from the blankets to get a handful of Kleenex and blow her nose. When she can breathe again she lies back on the pillows and closes her eyes.

    She wakes to noise in the room. Her mother carries a bowl of soup and crackers on a TV tray. Her face is drawn and careworn but she lights up when her daughter awakens. She smiles and strokes Ruby's cheek.

    How's my girl?

    Ruby blinks and tries to speak and can make no sound. She tries again, her voice breaking as she says, You're back.

    Yes, I am. For now at least. I'll come every day to check on you and—

    What about Papa?

    John stays out of my way. He wants me to move back but I won't. He wouldn't hurt Lila for the world. He's a good man.

    But he wants me to —

    Hush. I know. That won't last, believe me. I won't let it. Okay?

    Okay.

    And now it's time to eat. You want to get strong again, don't you? You need to eat.

    Papa said you didn't care.

    Don't listen to him. I know he says a lot of hooey. I'm taking care of you and I say you need some soup.

    Ruby leans forward and lets her mother spoon the soup into her mouth, the hot metal touching her cracked, dried lips. The soup is salty and the chicken and noodles taste delicious. She feels the heat of the liquid as she swallows, filling her throat and passing like the warmth of sunlight into her belly.

    That's good, she says. That tastes good.

    The next day her mother brings a bacon sandwich. The smell of it dizzies Ruby. When she chews a mouthful of bacon and cheddar cheese, the flavor almost makes her swoon. She smiles then, as her mother watches her, urging her to slow down.

    Don't chew too fast or you'll choke yourself to death. You don't want that, do you? You don't want little Pinky to grow up without a mother, do you?

    Ruby smiles and shakes her head. She blinks away tears, her mother's image fuzzy through her damp lashes.

The bleached light of a dust- sky day. In the stretch of dried ranchland visible through her bedroom window, Ruby watches a shaggy steer rub its haunches against a crooked fence post, swing its tail. A Grief Bird perches atop the telephone pole beside the woodshed, croaking, its ruffled feathers shaggy and unkempt. Navajo Sparrows peck at a scattering of breadcrumbs in the grass. A ranch cat creeps in the grass beside the water trough, eyes on a rabbit near the fence.

    Somewhere in the house Lila squeaks and babbles. Her voice sounds pure and clear and healthy. The bedroom door is still locked. Ruby's mother has already come and gone, has left a plate of bacon and eggs and a glass of orange juice.

    Ruby raises the window and leans out. The sparrows scatter. The cat turns her head, her tail twitching as she watches the house. Ruby makes clucking sounds with her mouth and says, Donk? You leave that rabbit alone. I don't want to see another dead bunny.

    Dressed in jeans and a pullover sweatshirt, she climbs out the window backward, dropping to the ground, her feet touching the outside world for the first time in many days. She feels the grit beneath her socks. Wind gusts wobble the woodshed door, its hinges squeaking.

    She creeps along the house, its white paint peeling, scabbing off against the pressure of her fingers. At the back door she peers through the screen. Lord God holds Lila, sitting in a rocking chair in the kitchen, feeding her a bottle of formula. One pudgy hand stretches to grab his beard, its white tangle beyond her reach. He talks to her as he rocks. Ruby crouches beneath the window frame and closes her eyes. She listens to the faint sound of Lord God's voice.

    You can tell the true worth of a man in war, he tells Lila. I heard that somewhere and it's true. You decide on which side you stand. The cowards turn tail and run. Some of them stay, only they close their eyes when they shoot. They don't hit anything but it looks like they're brave. Me, I aimed. I'm not proud of what I've done. Pride is one of the seven deadly sins. Neither am I ashamed.

    It's a choice now between them or us and I'm on the side of the righteousness of the Lord. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming. There will come a time when we shall stand up and be counted. When we shall be taken away and dwell in the house of the Lord. Until then we need to be on our toes. What do you think of that, little girl? He smiles. You don't need to be on your toes yet. You can barely walk. He shakes his head. There's so much you have to learn. In so little time.

    Lila says, Mama. Ruby hears it clearly, crouching beneath the window. Mama, her daughter says. Mama.

    Mama's asleep, says Lord God. You'll see her soon enough. After a moment his voice continues: First you need a daddy is what you need. And don't you worry. Your mama, she'll come around. I'll see to it she does. And you won't have to worry about a thing. Like where your next dinner is coming from.

    Ruby hears the shuffle and thump of his peg leg as he moves about the kitchen. Her lower back burns from crouching beneath the window. After a moment she hears Lord God say, Woe to the women who sew magic charms on their sleeves and make veils for the heads of people of every height to hunt souls! Behold, I am against your magic charms by which you hunt souls there like birds. I will tear them from your arms, and let the souls go, the souls you hunt like birds. But look at you. You're young yet and know nothing of the world. All that will come with time. You don't even know what a bird is, much less magic charms! You will learn, though. You will learn.

    Ruby listens and squeezes her eyes shut tight, holding on to the house in a rush of dizziness. She feels the world turning, as if pinned by the weight of its centrifugal force. She looks across the prairie fields at the mountains in the distance like a castle wall over which she can never climb, and above them the brooding, cloudy sky. There's nowhere to run. The porcupine grass sharp as nails beneath her socks as she hobbles back to her window.

I s r a e l  J a m e s  s i t s slumped and half frozen in an old bulb- fendered pickup, rusted and broken- windowed, wheelless and a home for deer mice and packrats. On stakeout duty, he's glassing a rancher's back pastures. After guests at the Buffalo Head complained about a woman being abducted and other officers answered the call, he had to explain his role in adjudicating the domestic dustup between Rebecca Cisneros and "William Smith." He ended up looking the fool and having to pay for it. Worse yet, the crime was shelved as a "domestic disturbance," not a kidnapping at all, and the law washed its hands of the whole sordid affair.

    He wears long johns beneath his jeans and a sheepskin- lined hat but still he's cold. Loose hay fills the cab and he can hear the mice scrabbling and burrowing. Elray crouches low to where he can see out the broken windshield for any signs of vehicles on the ranch road. Stakeout for cattle rustling is grunt work. Elray takes this demotion with quiet and vengeful anger.

    He keeps a pair of night- vision 'nocs to his eyes. Three coyotes trot like ghost dogs out of the moonscape darkness of the prairie. The cattle herd grunts and shuffles. A cow nudges her yearling calf and maneuvers her body between the calf and the coyotes. One of the coyotes places its front paws on the water trough and laps quickly, drops back down, sniffs the dirt, hikes a leg.

When Elray sees headlights flash over the prairie, disappear

in a swale and moments later rise up again, he gets out his wireless to call the dispatcher. He pulls off his gloves and trains the 'nocs on the small herd of cattle clustered around the water trough and feed tank. Half of the cattle stand and the others sit knees buckled and heads up. At the sound of the approaching trucks all start to move. The kneeling stand and the standing bump each other, yearlings cantering on the edge of the herd.

    Four trucks come down the ranch road like they own the place until slamming brakes and skidding to a stop at the fence. Two of them haul cattle trailers, the other two have ATVs in their cargo beds. They stop and idle. A cloud of road dust follows the trucks, catches up and engulfs them, muffling the headlights in road fog.

    A man in a cowboy hat emerges from the passenger- side door of the first truck and hurries to the gate, carrying bolt cutters. He wears a bandanna over his face. A big man, something familiar about him. A big man has a way of moving that marks his identity.

    He works the bolt cutters into position, snaps the padlock, and yanks the chain free, dragging the swinging gate open wide for the trucks to pass through. The corrugated metal of the gate scrapes dirt, stirring up a cloud that grows thicker as the trucks move forward. The big man stands off to the side. He raises his hat and wipes his forehead, puts the hat back in place. He wears his thick black hair in a ponytail.

    The cattle trailers head in first. Dust rises as they rumble over the cattle guards. As the trucks maneuver into place, strobes of the headlight beams splash the old pickup cab in which Elray sits crouched and watching through the night- vision binoculars. When the gig is in full swing, Elray calls the dispatcher again, suggesting they'd best bring backup, wait at the highway, expect nothing less than trouble, big time.

    This looks like the Hole in the Wall gang with cell phones, he says.

    The rustlers move both trailers into position and haul out the ramps. Soon the cattle thunder inside, balking and sidestepping, swatted and bullied. The hatted figures carry high- powered flashlights and cattle prods. A few hold automatic weapons and stand guard, watching the highway in the distance.

    For a brief moment Elray catches a glimpse of a sentry looking his way through his own pair of night- vision 'nocs. Elray freezes. The herders slap the flanks of the cattle and send them running free, lift the ramps, and hurry them into place. Then they shut and bolt the back gates of the cattle trailers. The ATVs ride up the ramps into the pickup beds and the cowboys hop off and into the cabs. One vehicle is already moving before the cowboy has even shut the passenger- side door.

    The first pickup rumbles over the cattle guard and out the gate, clouds of dust rising from the tires. The second truck is still loading when a stubborn steer bashes one of the rustlers into the side of the trailer. The two
vaqueros
at the rear of the trailer let the steer go, haul in the ramp, and bolt the door closed. The wounded man writhes in pain on the ground a few feet away, by the back passenger- side wheel of the trailer. The truck and trailer lurch away.

    A second truck passes through the gate and flees down the ranch road, a line of ruts in the prairie faint as the Oregon Trail. The wounded rustler still squirms in pain on the ground— left behind like a sinner after the rapture. Elray watches as the rustler tries to stand, falls again. He begins to crawl toward the fence, dragging his left leg.

    Elray opens the old pickup's driver- side door as quietly as possible, steps out, his legs burning from being in a cramped position, the right one numb. He stretches and shuffles toward the rustler, keeping his eyes on him. The wounded man has no sidearm that Elray can see, but he might have a surprise wedged in his boot or the back of his jeans. The night air is cold as glass vapor, the Milky Way a river of stars in the blackness above.

    When he nears the rustler Elray realizes why the big man opening the gate looked familiar. He recognizes George Armstrong Crowfoot, a full- blood Native, an ex- illicits dealer who stands scary tall and has a bad attitude to boot— abused as a child, distrusted as an adult, the usual. Elray likes him, has gotten stinking drunk in his company more than once.

    Crowfoot is one tough hombre, half good at least. He's been known to bust a head now and then, but whenever he does, the victim deserves it. Crowfoot's anger carries its own homegrown justice. He never hurt a woman, and he never hit a man who didn't deserve it. If he commits a crime, Elray does his best to look the other way.

    Crowfoot recognizes Elray as he nears, and stops crawling. He sits in the dirt, doing his best to keep a straight face. His leg's twisted funny, looks like it hurt.

    What brings you here? he calls out.

    Elray grins and shakes his head. George, George. Cattle rustling?

    Crowfoot shrugs. I think the phrase was
easy money.
Next time a body tells me that, I'll jab a pig sticker in his knee.

    Who's the genius here?

    This between us?

    Only.

    Some hard- on Saint. Never heard a name, but it's somebody with funds.

    Friend of a friend?

    Crowfoot shakes his head. I don't know him. All I know is he's one of those Saints loves to have a harem of country- fried women, lives in that village of kooks out in Little Pueblo.

    Listen, says Elray, I don't give a shit about all this. He waves a hand toward the herd of cattle, still standing and milling about near the water trough. This was punishment for me. Plus I called it in and where's the cavalry?

    I wondered.

    You help me crucify these Saints, I'll ignore this tampering- with- livestock infraction.

    Crowfoot shifts his body, his arms propping him up. He grimaces and says, My pleasure. They do you wrong?

    I met a woman who got stole right after she promised to fix me dinner. Made me look bad.

    Stole?

    Kidnapped you might say. Whatever you call it, I went hungry. I heard they had something to do with it.