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Marik laid an arm across her forehead, shading her eyes from a brilliant sunrise. Her gaze traveled down the slope and across the wide fields near the river.
She saw three choices. She could turn the bird over to a county official or wildlife ranger and meet the consequences head-on. Or she could haul the eagle to the river, let it be found in its usual habitat—but on the opposite bank that was part of the state wildlife preserve. Not on her ranch.
Or she could bury the creature where it lay and keep quiet.
All three options stunk. But when she thought of the impending brouhaha over the eagle’s death, it was damn tempting to go home and get her shovel.
Her battle of conscience dissolved with the growl of tires on gravel. Somebody was coming. The sound drifted to her across the ridge before she spotted the vehicle winding through the switchbacks and up the rise.
Double damn.
Marik straightened her spine and stood beneath the giant turbines, facing into the wind. Waiting for trouble.
A white pickup tacked toward her at a leisurely pace. She had not closed the gate at the main road and, despite the No Trespassing signs, the driver apparently took the open gate as an invitation. The men who tended the windmills drove white pickups, but she could already see this one was a stretch cab and the power company’s gold logo wasn’t painted on the door. None of the neighboring ranchers drove a truck like that, either.
She lost sight of the vehicle behind a rise and then it emerged again on the high ridge. The truck stopped beside Red Ryder and a tall, lean man got out. He wore jeans and low-heeled boots with a quilted vest over his long-sleeved shirt. She didn’t know him. He clamped a wide-brimmed hat on his head and started down the slope toward her with a rolling stride.
His face looked friendly enough until he saw the mound of feathers at her feet. When his eyes fixed on the eagle, all hints of a smile faded away. He didn’t speak as he approached but knelt immediately and put his hands on the bird, turning it over, spreading out the feathers on the underside of the tail.
“Bad news,” he said. “It’s a bald eagle.”
He looked up at her with gold-ochre eyes. She frowned. “There’s no white head.”
“It’s a young one. They don’t get the distinctive white feathers on the head and tip of the tail until they’re at least four years old.”
“How do you know it’s not a golden?” she said, still hoping.
“The feet, for one thing. Golden eagles have feathers all the way to the claws. This one doesn’t. And see that grayish color of the feathers on the underside of the tail? That’s distinctive to a young bald eagle. A golden would have white on the tail, up next to the body.”
“It’s sure big to be immature.”
“Probably a female. They get larger than males. I’d guess it’s two or three years old.”
Perfect. Not just an eagle; it’s the freaking national symbol.
The stranger looked younger than she was, early twenties maybe, except for those case-hardened eyes. “You talk like a biologist,” she said.
“Not exactly. But I majored in it, along with land management. I’m Jace Rainwater, your nine o’clock appointment.”
He brushed his hands off on his jeans and stood. Six-four, she guessed, even without the big hat. He paused as if waiting for her to introduce herself or offer a handshake. She did neither. She was supposed to interview him about the foreman’s job—two hours from now. Nowadays people called it ranch manager, but she figured if foreman was a good enough title for Monte, her dad’s old friend, it was good enough for whomever she hired.
“Sorry to be so early,” he said. “I drove from Amarillo and made better time than I expected.”
“You must have left in the dead of night to get here by sunrise.”
He offered no explanation. Maybe he awoke hours before daylight the way she did, worming over the things she could change and the ones she couldn’t.
“There was nobody around down there,” he said, gesturing toward the cluster of ranch buildings at the foot of the ridge, “so when I saw the truck up here I figured it must be you.”
She glanced at the eagle again. “Early would be a good trait for a ranch hand, any morning but this one.”
“At least the eagle’s a young one, probably not half of a breeding pair,” he offered.
She blew out a breath, looking across the fields to the west where the Gurdmans’ farm abutted her land. “My neighbors won’t care how old the bird is when they try to block construction on the other windmills.”
“Your neighbors object to the wind farm?”
“Those do.”
He followed her gaze toward a distant clump of trees where the glint of a white farmhouse reflected the early sun. “What for? It’s pollution-free energy and it’s quiet. Cattle can graze right under the turbines.”
“Exactly. But the windmills might emit harmful rays that cause cancer and birth defects.”
“Good grief.”
“Not to mention that the Gurdmans missed out on the lease money from Great Plains Power & Light. The company wanted only this high ground that’s not sheltered from the wind.”
“Ah,” he said. “So it’s about money.”
“That’s what I think, but they won’t admit it. All the farms and ranches out here are struggling financially. The wind farm bailed me out, and the Gurdmans resent me for it. And now, of course, they can say the windmills kill eagles.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” His attention was on the eagle again. “You need to take the carcass to the state wildlife office in Pacheeta. I’ll load it in the truck for you.”
“Thanks,” she said without enthusiasm. Pacheeta was the county seat and fifty miles away. “But I thought I’d just call the local law to come pick it up.”
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t. No telling what might happen to it before a wildlife ranger got to see it.”
For a man who’d just arrived on the scene, he had plenty of opinions. She wondered if Rainwater was an Indian name. He didn’t look any more Indian than she did, with her light brown hair and blue eyes. But half the folks in Oklahoma had some Indian heritage if you traced their lineage back far enough.
He pulled a pair of gloves from his pocket and lifted the eagle by its feet, staying clear of the talons. And then he leaned in to smell the bird.
“What are you, the animal CSI? Don’t tell me you can tell how long it’s been dead by sniffing.”
“No. But I think this bird’s come in contact with Diazinon. That might have something to do with why it died.”
“Diazinon—the stuff you spray to kill ticks and fleas?”
“Right. It was outlawed a few years ago, like DDT before it, but lots of people still have some sitting in their storage sheds.”
“How would an eagle get hold of that?”
“Good question. Maybe by accident, but it would take an awful lot of it to be lethal for a bird that size. Even DDT usage didn’t kill the adult birds, just weakened their eggshells so the babies didn’t hatch.”
A crawly feeling rose up her back. “You think somebody poisoned it on purpose?”
“Look, the smell might be something else,” he said. “I’m just guessing. You need to have a wildlife official examine it.”
She followed him up the rise to where they’d parked, and he laid the eagle carefully on the stained bed of her truck. “You don’t happen to have a garbage bag, I guess.”
“The whole truck’s pretty much a garbage bag.”
He didn’t dispute it. “Wait a minute. I might have something.” He rummaged in a storage box mounted behind the cab of his truck and came out with a lightweight tarp. He opened it in her truck bed, laid the bird in the center and wrapped it up.
“Good idea,” she said. “I don’t need everybody in town to see my illegal cargo.”
“Not just that. We want to keep it in the same shape you found it, without damage in transit.”
“We?”
“I’ll ride with you if you want,” he said. “I know some guys in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Maybe I can help smooth any ruffled feathers.”
She made a face but he didn’t seem to notice the pun.
“It couldn’t hurt,” she said. “We can talk about the foreman’s job on the drive. Follow me down to the house and you can park your truck there.”
He touched two fingers to the brim of his hat, like John Wayne in an old cowboy movie, and walked back to his vehicle.
For the space of time it took to open Red Ryder’s mulish door, she watched him go. She’d read the résumé he’d e-mailed. He had good credentials and a background in conservation that was a plus in her view. But a résumé didn’t tell much about a man’s temperament or his character. Could she trust this guy to live within a stone’s throw of her house, with no one else around for miles?
Then she thought of the eagle again. If Rainwater was right about the Diazinon and the bird was intentionally poisoned and dumped beneath the windmills, there was no doubt in her mind who’d done it.
Chapter Two
Red Ryder burped smoke and lurched into gear. With Rainwater following, Marik zigzagged down the ridge toward the two-lane blacktop road that people around here called a highway. This time she closed the gate behind them.
The ranch buildings—her house, the foreman’s cottage and two barns—sat at the base of Killdeer Ridge half a mile from the windmills as the crow flew, a mile and a half by road. From the paved road she turned beneath a cedar-log archway with Killdeer Ridge Ranch branded into the wood. The gravel on the quarter-mile driveway was nearly worn away, the one-lane road in need of grading.
They passed the foreman’s quarters first, where Jace Rainwater would live if she hired him. The two-bedroom cottage sat vacant, its windows dark and lonesome. For months she’d resisted hiring anybody to replace Monte. After J.B.’s accident, Monte had deflated like a wrinkled balloon, his seventy years coming upon him all at once. He’d decided to retire but agreed to stay on a few months to help her get a handle on running the ranch. The few months turned into a year. Monte was her surrogate grandfather when she was growing up, a fixture at the ranch since before she was born. Without him the place didn’t feel right. Marik still held a mean little resentment toward his daughter, who’d finally come down from Oklahoma City with a U-Haul and taken Monte and his things back with her.
She parked Red Ryder in the graveled space in front of the cobblestone ranch house originally built by Stone Youngblood, a grandfather she never knew. The original structure was two-storeys and square as a shoe box. Marik’s mother had supervised several additions, including a southern-style front porch, a carport and a master-bedroom suite on the ground floor at the back. If it wasn’t architecturally harmonious, the big house was comfortable inside and definitely unique. It might have grown even larger if Julianna Youngblood hadn’t taken her plans with her to the grave when Marik was six years old.
Marik wondered if Jace Rainwater could sense the history that lived among these cobblestone buildings, or if he saw only the shabby remains of a once-prosperous enterprise.
His truck pulled in beside her and rolled to a stop. She shouldered her door open and started up the rock sidewalk to the house. “Want some coffee for the drive?” she called. On a ranch, coffee was one of the basic food groups. She’d been addicted since high school.
“No, thanks. I drank about a gallon on the drive out here,” he said.
“Then you’d better come in and use the facility before we go.”
She directed him to the bathroom, then clumped up the split-log staircase to her bedroom and pulled on cleaner boots for the trip to Pacheeta. If Rainwater had waited until nine o’clock to show up for their appointment, she might have fixed her face a bit before then. Or she might not. At any rate, she didn’t see much point in it now.
When she came back down he had gone outdoors. She refilled her thermal mug and turned off the coffeepot but didn’t bother locking the house. Her dad believed that locks kept out only honest men; a thief would break down the door or smash a window. She found Jace checking the cargo still wrapped securely in the bed of her truck.
Red Ryder’s springs squawked as he settled onto the seat, his shoulders filling up his side of the cab. Marik coaxed the truck into reverse and they wheezed down the driveway toward the highway, leaving his nice airtight truck parked by her house. She hoped the old red pickup was up to the trip.
They rattled over the blacktop, watching shadows recede across the landscape as the sun ascended. She saw him try the window handle once, but when it didn’t respond he said nothing and zipped up his vest. He didn’t talk much, which was okay with her. Her social skills had regressed since she’d moved back to the ranch; after Monte left, she often went several days without talking to anyone.
A coyote trotted along a fence, heading toward a grove of leafless trees. Far to their right, above the line of trees that concealed the Silk Mountain River, a dark swosh etched the blue of the sky. The wingspan was too large for a hawk. It was another eagle, probably scanning a pool where the water was deep enough to hunt for fish. The sight of it sent a new pang of dread through her middle.
Rainwater saw it, too. “The river is the south boundary of your ranch?”
“Correct.”
“Does it border your neighbors’ land, too? The ones opposing the wind farm?”
She nodded. “The wildlife preserve butts up to me on the south, across the river,” she said. “The Searcy ranch is to the east, and the Gurdmans’ farm on the west. The land to the north is owned by somebody who lives in Oklahoma City and never comes out here. The elk from the refuge have sort of taken over the pastureland there.”
“Cool.”
“Yeah, they’re beautiful. In the fall you can hear them bugling.” Her mouth twisted. “Burt Gurdman runs ’em off his land with a shotgun.”
Rainwater said nothing, just shook his head.
Marik pulled a folded paper from above the visor and handed it to Rainwater. It had come in yesterday’s mail from the office of Earl Searcy, mayor of Silk. The notice invited local residents to attend a community meeting for the purpose of discussing the rural water system, a proposal to hire a full-time police chief and a possible moratorium on construction of twenty-five additional wind turbines on Killdeer Ridge. GPP&L had already paid half the lease money for phase two of the wind turbines. Marik had used the money to retire some of her debt and to buy a lustful young bull and a new bunch of heifers. If construction was blocked, the company might want that money returned.
The mere sight of the flyer made her angry all over again. The least Earl Searcy could have done was phone her about it in person. Silk didn’t have a mayor when she was a kid, and she liked it better that way.
Except for the Gurdmans, the Searcys were her closest neighbors and good people. Earl had been a friend to her dad. His sons, Jackson and Cade, often helped out on the Youngblood ranch. None of them had ever said anything about opposing the wind farm.
“I don’t know where they get off discussing construction on private property,” she said. “My ranch isn’t inside city limits. There’s no question of zoning or public access or any other damn thing that should concern city government, such as it is. The construction is phase two of a project that was thoroughly discussed, state permits obtained, all the legalese dotted and crossed months ago.”
He handed the flyer back to her and she stuffed it behind the visor again. “But if this eagle was killed by the windmills and some federal agency gets involved,” she said, “that’s a whole new ball game.”
“You need a necropsy on the bird before that meeting.”
She glanced at him. “What’s that? An autopsy for animals?”
“Exactly. That’s why you want to turn it over to the wildlife department instead of a county sheriff.”
Maybe it was a good thing Jace Rainwater showed up early after all.
“During the first phase of construction, somebody put sugar in the gas tanks of the big dirt-moving machines,” she told him. “Shut them down for several weeks. The site boss said they had trouble like that sometimes, but not usually in such an isolated spot. He thought it was probably teenagers, but I had my doubts even then.”
Rainwater nodded but made no comment. She dropped the subject, regretting that she’d aired her grievances to a stranger.
After a minute he pointed through the windshield toward a rocky mound in the distance. “Is that Silk Mountain?”
“Yup. That’s it. The town was named for the mountain, but people dropped the mountain part years ago and just call the town Silk.” A neat irony, she thought, for a village of maybe two thousand that was anything but silky.
The mountain wasn’t much of a mountain, either, just a geographical anomaly that had thrust a tall, red mesa far above the surrounding level terrain. Flat shale boulders stacked up like a deli sandwich that narrowed to a square, treeless summit. Between the mountain and the road they were driving lay a wide, flat plain veined by creeks that drained into the river. In the heat of summer, the creek beds dried up and stranded the resident crawdads.
“I read how Silk Mountain got its name,” Rainwater said.
She nodded. “Did the guidebook tell you about the ghost that lives up there?”
He glanced sideways, his face skeptical. “No. I guess it left out the good parts.”
“They say a young pioneer wife who lived out here before there was a town or a road, or anything, went crazy from loneliness and the unrelenting wind. One day while her husband was gone, she scrubbed the floor of her cabin, fed the milk cow and hung her only two dresses wrong side out on the clothesline. She was wearing a camisole and petticoats and farmer’s boots when she climbed to the top of Silk Mountain and jumped to her death.” Marik didn’t mention her near relation to the young wife. “Sometimes on a moonlit night, people see her ghost standing on the edge of Silk Rock.”
