The Maze (5 page)

“I didn't mention that he made some kind of crack about you working for the government.”

“Shows what they know. I work for the Condor Project, which is supported by private donations from individuals all over the country, foundations, corporations…. Yeah, the federal government kicks in too. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service selected us to do the work. Is there anything else they might've said? Carlile talked about cameras. Anything else to indicate what he was looking for?”

“That was it,” Rick said, but in the moment he said it there was a twinge of doubt. There might have been another detail, but if so, it had slipped his mind.

Suddenly the biologist stood up. “I'm gonna make a call,” he said, “and then I'm gonna hit the rack. Look, you can stay here a few days. We'll see how it goes and we'll take it from there. Sleep in the middle tent. There's a sleeping bag and a pillow, candles on the nightstand. Help yourself to anything in the bookcase if you feel like it. Thanks for telling me all this.”

“Were they right about you not having a gun?”

“Yeah, they were right. Say, one thing I have to warn
you about, Rick, if you're going to be around: I live out like this for a reason. I work alone by preference whenever I get the chance. I do a lot better with birds than I do with people. Sometimes I'm not that easy to be around—I work on my head a lot. So don't expect too much.”

With that the biologist went to his truck, got in, and shut the door behind him. He raised the mike to his mouth. Rick wasn't going to be able to hear a thing he said.

Was Lon going to say where he got his information?

Somehow he didn't think so.

Lon had promised at least a couple of days. He had a few days to hide and rest, heal up the hammering cut in his face. Lon might let him pack some food and water, maybe even let him use the bicycle to get back to the highway.

Then what?

The next morning the biologist wandered off by himself to sip his coffee. Rick wanted to ask about the eagle, the one he'd discovered tethered behind the camp, but wasn't sure how to bring it up. He waited until Lon made his way back toward the kitchen, settled into his favorite lawn chair, and started adjusting his spotting scope.

“Are you studying eagles too?” Rick asked.

“Nope, just condors,” Lon grunted.

Try again, Rick told himself. “I saw that big eagle tied to the branch behind camp. Are you going to release it?”

“Oh, so you discovered Sky. I wish I could release her, but she's missing most of her left wing,” Lon replied grimly.

Rick felt like a fool for being a poor observer. “I didn't notice that.”

“Hard to notice at a glance. I helped with the amputation. She'd been shot. Zoos didn't want her. She was going to be destroyed, so I kept her.”

“How come somebody shot her?”

“Somebody was an idiot.”

Rick appreciated the directness of the answer. “I read in your bird book last night that condors got shot a lot, and poisoned too. Why do people shoot 'em? Because they're vultures?”

“Because large, moving targets are tempting to idiots.”

“Why do they poison 'em?”

“They don't. People poison ground squirrels and so on, the condor eats the ground squirrel….”

It was probably the pothunters, Rick thought, that accounted for Lon's bad mood. Plus he had someone in his camp that he had to relate to, and he'd already said he liked to be alone.

“Just one more question. The book called it the California condor. Yesterday you called it the North American condor.”

Lon looked up from his scope and said sharply, “Yeah, well, if I ever write the book, it'll get renamed. They used to live even in what's now New York and Florida. Just because their range shrank to California in the last hundred years, that's not a good reason to call it the California condor. What if bald eagles go extinct
in the lower forty-eight, and they're only left in Alaska? Should we start calling it the Alaska eagle?”

“I guess not. Sorry I asked so many questions.”

Lon wasn't listening. He was pointing his little antenna toward different spots in the cliffs. “I've got a visual on everyone but M4.”

Suddenly Lon's radio started beeping, four quick beats. The pattern kept repeating. “So
there
you are, M4. He's out of sight, all right. Looks like he roosted in the cove north of where the cliff turns the corner.”

“You got transmitters on the birds?”

“So we can track 'em with radiotelemetry. There's one transmitter on the wing, along with the tag, and one on the tail. M4's tail transmitter went out on me and I had to replace it. He's awful happy to be out of that pen.”

“What pen?”

Lon pointed high above. Rick was surprised to see a structure up there, thirty or forty feet back on the slope from the edge of the cliff, that he'd completely overlooked. It was a large pen, very well camouflaged, with a chain-link fence around it and a roof of camouflage netting. At the back of the pen sat a squat makeshift shelter of plywood painted rusty red like the cliffs.

“The birds were in there for six weeks before we released them,” Lon commented. “To get 'em used to their new environment. They'd get so excited seeing the ravens and eagles flying by….”

“So how'd you recapture that M4?”

“With a big net. I released him again last evening right before I drove back down. I hope he behaves himself. I'm not too happy about him roosting last night away from the others.”

“How come?”

“They're supposed to be forming a flock. It's crucial for their survival. Funny about M4. The biologists at the L.A. Zoo, where he was hatched, told me he's been a maverick right along—never socialized much with the other juveniles. They thought I might get some unpredictable behavior out of him.”

“You oughta call him Maverick instead of M4.”

“We don't give 'em those kinds of names.”

Rick was surprised at the bite in the man's reaction. He'd said it only in jest. “How come?” he ventured.

“What's going on in that bird's brain isn't vaguely human. That's one of my pet peeves—people assigning human personality characteristics to wild animals.”

After a long, silent moment the biologist suddenly changed his tone, apparently working on his head, as he'd put it. “Hey, let's eat some breakfast, and then I can show 'em to you up close. They're due for some more bird feed.”

Bird feed, Rick mused. This must be where the dead calves come in.

Over cereal Lon said, “The Humvee went out during the middle of the night.”

“Guess I slept through it. They must've retrieved
their stash of pottery, right? That must've been what you radioed about last night. Do you think they got busted when they got back to Hanksville?”

“I hope so, but I doubt it. I left a message for a ranger I know at the park. I asked if somebody from the park could initiate a casual stop. I figure chances are fair to good that those guys would have left a glimpse of pottery showing somewhere in that Humvee.”

“Couldn't the Park Service get a search warrant?”

“I just told them I had a hunch—not enough to get a warrant.”

He didn't tell them about me
, Rick realized.

“Probably I shouldn't have done what I did,” Lon continued. “If Carlile and Gunderson suspect that somebody's on to them, they might get so cautious they'll never get caught. I was thinking this was the perfect opportunity to catch them by surprise. I just wish I could've reached the Maze ranger personally, instead of relaying a message through someone else.”

“Don't you have a cell phone?”

“They don't work out here. Anyway, I'm just happy those two are gone. I need to get back to work.”

Lon went to the commissary tent and emerged a minute later with a frozen calf over his shoulder. “Where do you get those things?” Rick asked.

“They're stillborn dairy cattle donated from a farm in Arizona. Hey, you drive.”

“Drive? Drive where?”

“Up the dugway, for starters—the switchbacks up to the plateau.”

“You're kidding.”

“If I remember correctly, that's what you were in the process of doing yesterday morning. You might be helpful around here if you could drive.” Lon laid the carcass gently down in the bed of the pickup.

The man was serious. “Show me how,” Rick said. “I mean, show me the gears, which one I should really be in. I warn you, though, you're putting your life in shaky hands.”

“Life's an adventure. Don't kill me, though.”

Shortly past the bend where Lon had stopped him the morning before, the dugway got rough, and steepened. Rick concentrated with all his might as he lurched slowly through potholes and up and over little ledges. He was holding his breath; the consequences of failure were unthinkable. Halfway up, he was about to glance out of the driver's window over the side. “Don't look down,” Lon warned him. “That's the trick at first. Your vision will swim and your stomach will go into free fall.”

“Gotcha.” The truck was creeping up the grade in the lowest of the low-range four-wheel-drive gears. “I could walk up here faster than this,” Rick commented.

“Naturally, but our dead friend in the back can't. Unless you wanted to carry him. Hey, you're starting
to relax—that's good. It's not as scary as it looks. It's just the exposure that makes it feel that way.”

Finally they crested the top of the grade onto the plateau. He'd done it. “How much did we just climb?”

“Eight hundred feet.”

Across the flats Lon pointed him onto a dirt track that wound through thickets of pinyon and juniper. After a few minutes they reached a terrace of solid rock. “Park here. We'll leave the bird feed to thaw out for the time being. Grab the binoculars; I'll get the scope. Walk as quiet as you can across this slickrock.”

“It doesn't look slick.”

“Means smooth. All these smooth sandstone surfaces in this country are called slickrock.”

They sneaked among the bushy trees until they came to a plywood blind that had been erected beside a single juniper. Lon tiptoed the last twenty feet through the chalky red dirt with Rick in his footsteps. When Rick brought his eye to one of the holes in the blind he saw three birds out on the slickrock that sloped down toward the edge of the cliffs. One was standing on a carcass and pulling off stringy pieces of meat, while the other two stood off to the side and watched.

Rick could tell immediately that the two waiting their turn were condors. They were very large black birds, easily three feet tall, with long and leathery tapering gray-skinned heads. Their bills were white and convincingly designed for tearing flesh. Like thick stalks, their
necks emerged from a spiked ruff of feathers that looked ornamental, like a collar.

When they pulled in their necks, as one of them was doing now, the head rested against the ruff and it appeared that the bird had no neck at all, only a head and shoulders.

The bird on the carcass—it had to be an eagle—was sleek, streamlined, and regal. Its head was covered with golden blond feathers. Watching the smaller bird feed, the condors seemed unsure of themselves. Their circular metal tags attached barely back from the leading edge of each wing identified the birds as M1 and M3.

“Golden eagle on the carcass,” Lon whispered. “Two female condors waiting. Odd-numbered condors are females.”

M1 was edging closer to the carcass, a little short on the virtue Lon had said was the strong suit of condors. Encouraged, perhaps thinking there was strength in numbers, M3 walked a little closer too. They slouched as they walked, Rick noticed, but that seemed fitting for vultures.

The golden eagle reacted by hissing, then leaping at them with talons outstretched, like a kick boxer. With their immense wings beating in reverse, the condors stepped back just in time. After retreating a little farther, they hissed. The eagle, ripping off another piece of meat, stared at them fiercely.

“Mr. Nice Guy,” Rick whispered.

A pair of jet-black ravens landed close by, then hopped and walked to the edge of an invisible circle that the eagle's presence seemed to have drawn around the carcass. After a minute the ravens darted in from different directions. One tried to distract the eagle while the second attempted to rip free some meat. The eagle was too fast for them.

“Are eagles always this ferocious?”

“Depends on the eagle. Usually they tolerate the ravens pretty well.”

“Do eagles ever let the condors on the carcass with them?”

“Usually the condors have to wait their turn. These guys seem to know that by instinct. I'm proud of 'em. Their parents never taught 'em that.”

Suddenly the eagle flew off. The condors fed for half an hour, then lumbered along the slickrock flapping their wings and made short flights along the edge of the cliff. “Let's plant the new carcass,” Lon said.

They placed the new carcass farther to the north, where a pair of junipers served as a natural blind.

“We can watch awhile,” the biologist said.

After fifteen minutes a raven showed up. The first thing it did was tear out the calf's eyes. In an hour's time there were six ravens. “They've already opened it up,” Lon said. “This is good. Ravens find carcass, condors see ravens, condors find food.”

Rick was tiring of the wait. He didn't have a fraction of the patience the biologist had.

Suddenly Lon was pointing. “Look high,” he whispered.

A condor was soaring high above the rim.

“Gotta be M4,” Lon said. He raised his binoculars. “Definitely is. Come on down, M4, come on down!”

Rick located the bird through the spotting scope. He could see every feather. The condor was holding his position against the wind, broad wings perfectly flat, tail ruddering slightly as it angled its head to look below like a pilot looking out of the cockpit window. “I see what you mean about the magnificent flying machine. That's a spectacular bird.”

“Yes, sir, that he is. Come on down, M4. You gotta be hungry. He hasn't eaten since I released him.”

“He'll die if he doesn't eat soon?”

“It's not that drastic. A condor can go ten or twelve days.”

“How do you know for sure he hasn't eaten? There must have been times you weren't watching.”

Lon put his finger to his throat. “They got a pouch in their esophagus that we call the crop in the bird biz…. Holds food until they're ready to digest it, or afterward if they're feeding their young. The crop pooches out when it's full.”

M4 was turning a circle. Rick lost him in the scope
and watched without it. Suddenly there were three more large birds in the air above the rim. “Not eagles, I hope.”

“All condors. Look, M4's coming down.”

Within a few minutes they were watching four condors at once feeding on the calf. “This is a first!” Lon said, beside himself. “And no eagles in sight. Eat your fill, guys. Car-ry-on.”

“I got it. Carry-on, carrion…”

“You pounce on a pun like a coyote on a field mouse.”

Afterward Lon wanted him to drive back down the grade to camp. “Get some more practice.”

This time Rick couldn't help looking down, and he was terrified. “Easy does it,” Lon kept saying. “You're concentrating too hard. Enjoy yourself. Everything's fine. That gear's so strong you'll never need to use the brake.”

Out Rick's window, it was hundreds and hundreds of feet down. His vision swam, he felt sick. “If you say so.”

“Talk to me.”

“You're kidding.”

“I'm serious. You'll squeeze that steering wheel to death.”

“Okay…. Will the condors ever be able to find dead cows on their own…without them appearing as if by magic?”