The Master Falconer by C. J. Box Page B

combination of grace and savagery of falconry, and saw the same elements in him. He took it as a compliment. They went back to her house that night. That was three months ago. Now he spent at least two nights a week there.
    Nate was tying his hair back into a ponytail with a rubber band when Bad Bob Whiteplume entered the kitchen from outside without knocking. Bad Bob was halfway across the kitchen before he saw Nate in the doorway.
    “I smelled coffee,” Bad Bob said, squinting at Nate and looking him up and down. “You’re here again, huh?”
    “Yes.”
    “Boinking my sister?”
    “Say that again and we’ll have to fight.”
    Bad Bob was shaped like a barrel and had a face as round as a hubcap. His hair was black and it glistened from the gel he used to slick the sides down and spike the top. He was wearing buckskins with a beaded front and Nike high-tops. Bob owned Bad Bob’s Native American Outlet convenience store at the junction that sold gasoline, food, and inauthentic Indian trinkets to tourists. He also rented DVDs and computer games to boys on the reservation. The back room was where the men without jobs gathered to talk and loiter and where Bob held court.
    Smiling and holding his hands palms up, Bob said, “Okay, I won’t say it again. But your scalp would look good hanging from my lance.”
    “Why are you talking like an Indian?”
    “I am an Indian, Kemo Sabe.”
    “Nah,” Nate said. “Not really.”
    Bob poured himself a cup of coffee and sipped it, looking over the rim at Nate. “You haven’t commented on my garb.”
    “I was waiting for you to bring it up.”
    “Ten of us are in a television commercial,” Bob said. “They’re shooting it up on the rim. The new Jeep Cherokee, I think.”
    Nate took a moment to say, “I guess they don’t build a Northern Arapaho.”
    “No,” Bob said, grinning, thrusting out his jaw. He was missing every other bottom tooth, so his smile reminded Nate of a jack-o’-lantern. “I’ll suggest that to them, though. You should see the director. He’s from L.A. He’s scared of us.”
    “Must be the Nikes.”
    Bob laughed, the sound filling the room. “We told him we wouldn’t do it unless they increased our talent fee from five hundred a day to seven-fifty. We scowled. He caved.”
    “Congratulations.”
    From the bathroom, Alisha called out, “Is that Bobby?”
    “Good coffee!” Bob yelled back.
    “Bobby, I need my television back! You’ve had it for a week!”
    Nate looked at Bob.
    “Mine went out,” Bob explained. “We needed to watch the poker tournament.”
    Bob drained his cup and refilled it. While doing so, he saw the digital clock on the microwave. “Shit, I need to get going. They wanted to shoot with the sun at a certain angle. The director loves dawn light.”
    Nate said, “Who doesn’t?”
    “If we miss the dawn light, we just sit around until dusk and smoke cigarettes and shoot then,” Bob said. “It’s a good job.”
    “That’s what counts,” Nate said.
    “Hey, did you hear that plane last night?” Bob asked, backing out the door so he wouldn’t spill his coffee. He was taking the mug with him.
    “No.”
    “I heard there’s a big-assed jet sitting at the airport,” Bob said. “Some kind of foreign writing on the fuselage.”
    With that, Bob left.
    To himself, Nate said, Damn.
     
     
    NATE ROMANOWSKI lived in a small stone house on the banks of the Twelve Sleep River, in the shadows of hundred-year-old cottonwoods and a high steep bluff across the water. As he crested the long rise from the east, his place was laid out in front of him—house, round pen, sagging mews where he kept his birds. He could tell instinctively that someone had been there.
    Pulling off the two-track, he climbed out of his Jeep and walked back over to the road. Three sets of fresh tire imprints cut the night crust of the dirt where a vehicle had gone in and out and back again to his home. The tracks were wide—an SUV or pickup. The