Harpy

The vast area known as the great plains of the United States is a belt about six hundred miles wide between the Mississippi River and the mountains of Wyoming and Colorado. An ocean of land, mostly flat, sometimes with waves of hills, it rises in swells to the west, a dozen feet to the mile, league after league of earth becoming gradually more arid, until it is a mile above the sea. And then suddenly, west of Denver, it gives up its gradual climb. The escarpments of the Rocky Mountains burst from the plain and leap into the air, tier upon tier as far as the eye can reach, to snow and glacier.

The first row of these tremendous hills is known as the Rampart Range. Over the crest of this range, in the trough between it and the higher one beyond, lived a man who had got rid of his woman who was bad for him, had manned an eagle, and had found himself.

• • •

He was on the side lawn, by the hawk house, the peregrine on his glove and tearing the pigeon from his fingers, when he saw the convertible speeding up the valley toward the house, a plume of dust behind it. He knew immediately who was driving the convertible and that this was the difficult hour he had been expecting for almost a year. He eased the bird to the perch, where, with the food under her foot, she continued to pluck and rend. He limped down the slope to the driveway. As the car pulled around the circle he saw that she was wearing the green Alpine hat with the rakish white feather, his gift to her in Innsbruck. What had he said to her then, those three thousand years ago? To Marian, maid, in everlasting; from Robin. Well, it was typical of her to wear it now.

He was at the car when it stopped.

"Good afternoon, Marian," he said, without smiling. "Are you planning on a little visit? I see you have two bags in the back seat."

A little frown crossed her face and he knew he had disrupted the opening lines she had been rehearsing all the way from Denver.

He continued: "You would come back, you said, when I asked you to come back, and not before. But I have not asked you to come back. Why are you here?"

She got slowly from the car, with the ancient grace and easy command that now no longer commanded him; and when she was standing even with him on the lawn her huge eyes searched his face, trying to pierce him, and then dropped to his leg.

"You sent for me," she said, and raised her hand a little from her side, to point where she was looking. "That happened to you day-before-yesterday, about three. Oh Robin, it came to me that you'd been hurt, as clearly as if you'd sent me a wire. I thought at first a car had hit you, but then I knew it wasn't that. But something dark and heavy and dangerous hitting you in the leg."

What she said was true, to the very hour. A sort of terror struck him, that he would never be free of this incredible woman whose intuition could reach out from a distance and fiercely take possession of him.

It must have shown in his face. "That's why I'm here," she said. "I had to come. If we still have this thing – Robin, no other two people have this thing. We can't just throw it away after a stupid quarrel. Or anyway, it isn't so bad that we shouldn't talk about it a little, is it?"

"You put me in a difficult position, Marian," he answered. "There's nothing to talk about. We had a good thing for a while, and it blew up, and there's nothing left of it except a lot of memories, some very good, some not so good. And," he added, "apparently this crazy radar of yours."

"'A good thing for a while,' " she quoted, letting her eyes go damp and tender. "Robin, how can you put it like that? For three years we were one person. One person in two bodies."

"Yes," he said. "You were the person, I was one of the bodies."

"You say there's nothing to talk about. But you see, we are talking already, and on a very essential level. Robin, let me stay for a few days."

He knew he had nothing to lose, and it was easier than being cruel. He turned and called,"John!"

John appeared at the door of the hawk house. He was a young man of twenty and a full-blooded Cheyenne. His grandfather, when a boy of sixteen, had helped cut down Custer on the Little Big Horn, and John's father, on the reservation in South Dakota, still had a pair of cavalry boots and some ancient dollar bills to prove it. John had gone to a white grammar school; later he had worked in a gas station outside Denver, where Robin had found him and made him his foreman. "John," Robin said, "come get Miss Marian's bags, please, and ask Mrs. Emlen to take her to her old room. And tell Mrs. Emlen we'll have cocktails in about half an hour."

John came slowly down the slope, wiping his hands on a rag that he then put in his hip pocket. His eyes said nothing as he hoisted the bags from the back seat.

"Hello, John," Marian said. "How have you been?"

"The Cooper's is still bating," John said to Robin. "Been throwing itself off the perch all day. Nothing I can do will stop it."

"Don't worry about it," Robin said. "They get these spells."

Marian had started up the lawn toward the house.

"That woman's no good for you, boss," John said.

"She won't be here long," Robin said. "Now take those bags in while I finish feeding the peregrine, and we'll have a look at the Cooper's hawk. Maybe there's a scrap of meat in the mews that is setting her off."

• • •

In the living room with the two picture windows, one giving on the shadowed valley, one showing now the stark outline of the mountains against the sunset, she had taken up her old position on the couch, legs stretched out on it, back pillowed against the arm; and she was balancing her drink on her knee.

"Robin," she asked, "what was it that hurt your leg?"

He was at the bar stirring a martini. "An eagle," he said, without turning. "I have manned an eagle." Now he limped over and took the armchair. "Vicious creature – maybe you'll see her tomorrow. I was training her to the lure – a rabbit. She hit it fine. I let her take a few bites and then made in to her, to get her back on the glove. I guess she was feeling ornery. Anyway, one lunge and she had her talons in my thigh. Touch and go there for a minute. Lucky thing I had my leather apron on. But it'll be all right in a couple of days."

She was staring at him in amazement. "You?" she said. "You are training an eagle? But that's impossible!"

"Not at all," he replied. "Quite a few eagles have been manned for hunting. To be sure, very few of this particular brand of eagle."

"I don't mean that," she said. "I mean, you. You were always so shocked by violence and cruelty... so afraid of it,"she stated.

"Yes," he said calmly. "Well, yes. Afraid is the word for a lot of things I was of. It feels very good to be out of that dismal swamp at last."

"Afraid of me, Robin?" she whispered.

"Of course I was afraid of you," he said strenuously. "Afraid of you most of all. You embodied everything that was wrong with my life. It was so easy to go along with the way you wanted things – so easy and so pleasant. The trouble was that it made me hate myself. Well, I've got away from that."

"I have never meant you any harm, Robin," she said. "You know that." She was looking not at him but at the drink balanced on her knee. Now she twitched her kneecap and caught the glass as it slid into her waiting hand. "We had something very wonderful. If I've come back, it's not to truss you up and carry you off. It's to find out, I guess, how tough a fight it will be to get that thing back. And maybe we'll never get it back – I've faced that, too."

She turned her head and stared at him and said strongly, "It wasn't easy for me to come back, Robin. Even when I got the message about your hurt my first reaction was, let him come to me. But I couldn't live with that. That was small, that was pride. So I came to you."

"Wearing that Tyrolean hat," he interjected, "with all its cargo of nostalgia and tender memory. Was that necessary? Wasn't that a bit phony?"

"No!" she cried. "That was to remind you of what we were in danger of losing!"

"Well, it reminded me," he said. "Marian, do you remember when my firm was invited to bid on that housing project in Colombo, Ceylon? And you talked me out of it – such a long way to go, such a small chance of getting the contract? So we went skiing in Austria. Do you remember the million-dollar shopping center in Atlanta we might have got? But it was such a filthy climate in August, you said. So we stayed in bed and had champagne for breakfast. And how many other times when you tempted me to make the less responsible choice. Well, that's what I'm in danger of losing. I've got the architect business back on a sound footing now. I give it my time and it gives me money and spiritual satisfaction. No green hat is going to change my mind about whether I am losing something or gaining something."

"Goodness, Robin," she said in a tiny voice. "You do sound determined. Will you call the constable and have me put out?"

"No," he said. "I'm not afraid of you any more."

• • •

She visited him that night.

He was lying awake, letting his mind stray up and down their last furious quarrel and parting, hearing again the final things he had said – weighing them in his emotions, to make sure that they still rang sound, and finding no regret, no wish to turn back. She opened his door softly, uninvited by any word or nuance, and came to his bed. She was naked.

"For auld lang syne, Robin, it would be sweet to lie with you again."

She took her place beside him; she simply took it. And – was it reflex? was it something stronger? – he put his arms around her.

"Ah, Robin!" she said. "I know you must have been thinking about us. Baby, let it simmer awhile on the back of the stove. It will smooth out and the answers will come."

"The answers have already come," he said.

She began to search his face with her mouth: his forehead, the verge of his hair, his eye, his nostril, his lips. "Yes," she whispered. "Maybe. Oh, Robin!"

And she did her best to put sand under all his foundations in that hour.

• • •

She was gay at breakfast. Apparently she felt that she had gained command. "What are we going to do today, darling?" she asked.

"I don't know what you may choose to do," he said, "but I have a day's hard work at the drawing board with two clients and shan't be back till dinner."

"Clients? In Denver?"

"Oh, I forgot, that happened after you left. I've moved the firm up here into the woods. We have quite a plant half a mile up the road – office building, guest house, and quarters for the staff. Very fine advertisement for the sort of buildings we can design. We still have a small liaison office in Denver, but now the customers come to us."

"I see," she said. She laughed nervously. "I guess it was stupid of me to think everything would be the same. After all, it's been nearly three years. I mean, you taking it easy in your eyrie up here, while the business went on by its own momentum. Somehow I got the idea from what you said yesterday that training this eagle was your life."

"It's my hobby, not my life," he said. "What ever gave you that crazy idea? Since you left I've become a working man."

He took the car up the road to the office. By noon he had sewed up the contract for the restaurant in Colorado Springs. The other client telephoned to say he would have to postpone his visit for a week. Robin had lunch with Alison in her apartment, one of the compound of units for the staff. She was a lean, blonde type, smart, hired as a draftsman but obviously destined for higher status. They had been to bed a few times – nothing serious, but she had attained the right to ask questions.

"The grapevine has it that your old flame is back," she said. This was a question.

"Just for a day or two," he answered. "Just a visit."

"Uh-huh," she said. "Sort of nostalgia for the scene of ancient conquest? Like Legionnaires going back in middle age Happy(continued from page 54) to Château-Thierry to see all the crosses?"

"That's about it," he said. "Nothing to get excited about."

"I'll scratch her goddamn eyes out if I get close enough to," Alison said.

"Tut tut," he said. "Play it cool."

He took a look around after lunch: everything was moving smoothly and there was nothing urgent on his desk. He found his afternoon free. He drove back and found Marian sitting in a chaise longue in front of the house. She jumped up when she saw him. "You're early," she said.

"Yes. A client failed to show. That gives me time today to get some food for my birds with John. You don't have to come."

"But I'd love to come," she said. "On horse?"

"On horse," he said. "You won't like it."

"I'll get ready," she said.

Half an hour later they were walking toward the hawk house. She was again wearing the magic green hat. John had already saddled two of the three horses and was standing with them in the drive. The third horse had only bit and reins.

"Does he still show off with that bare-back routine?" she asked. "I wish you'd get rid of that savage."

"He says a Plains Indian doesn't need a saddle and he's right. Call it showing off if you wish."

"Why are we going to the potting shed?" she asked.

"It's where I keep my birds now," he replied. "The magnificent peregrine you saw yesterday, a merlin, a Cooper's hawk, a prairie falcon, a little burrowing owl I threw a net over before he could get back into his hole; and my eagle."

He pushed open the door and they entered. The birds sat in a row on a long two-by-four with burlap wrapped around it and hanging to the floor. As they went in, the birds stirred; all but the burrowing owl, which stared at them stupidly, the way an owl should. The merlin, as they approached, moved his head in quick small swings, bright-eyed, and opened his beak wide to emit one thin weak cry, almost a squeak. The prairie falcon moved his feet about as if trying to find a comfortable stance, stepping on his swivel and the leash that tied it to the screen perch.

"Hello, girls and boys," Robin said, his face lighting up. He went to the prairie falcon and extended his forefinger. The falcon reached out and took the tip of his finger gently in his beak, and immediately let go. He smiled. "That's their greeting in the wild, beak to beak."

Marian was looking about with distaste. On the workbench and hanging on the walls were dozens of leather articles, strips of rawhide, hoods with gaudy pompons, leashes, cans of disinfectant, insecticide; the floor was littered with bits of pigeon feathers. In her nose was a smell of leather, blood, and something peppery. "What's that nasty odor?" she asked.

"Dried excrement, mainly."

Suddenly the Cooper's hawk bated, banging her wings against the perch. She lunged into the air to the full length of her jesses again and again, recoiling each time to the same balanced stance. As suddenly as she had begun she stopped; flicked a wing to compose a feather; sat quietly. Clouds of dust rose from the floor; the peppery smell got stronger.

"Exercise," he said. "John thought there was something wrong, but it's only that she hasn't been flown for a week."

"Is that why you keep it behind a wall from the others? Because of this insane flapping? God, what a madhouse!"

A piece of plywood astride the perch separated the Cooper's from the others.

"She's an Accipiter," he said. "The Accipiters are killers, all the time. If she could look down the perch and see four potential victims, and not be able to get to them when she got the urge, she would go crazy and kill herself in a frenzy."

"That would be perfectly OK by me," Marian said. "Filthy blood-thirsty creatures."

"You don't care for my birds?" he said. "Well, come have a look at the eagle." He led her into the back part of the shed, which was partitioned off. The eagle sat on a perch of her own like an enormous croquet wicket. She had been resting almost vertical; now she leaned forward, watching. She shifted on her perch with a faint plucking of talons on burlap and a larger sound of pinions rustling as she raised her wings and shook herself like a dog and seemed to settle herself more comfortably in her harsh feathers. The fearless blank keen soulless eyes observed each move they made. Marian looked at her with loathing.

"Robin!" she said. "You are training this monster? Have you lost your senses completely?"

He went up to the bird and knocked its beak with his knuckle. The eagle dodged and lifted one tremendous horned foot from the hoop. "Ah, none of that," he said. "You put those hooks into me last week and that's enough for a while." The eagle settled back on her perch, never for one instant letting her gaze leave his eyes.

"The harpy eagle of South America," he said proudly. "Larger than the golden, and more dangerous. It fears nothing, has never had to learn the value of fear. And I've trained the beast to obey my will and to come to my glove and to hunt for me. We took five coyotes in the week before my accident."

"And to rip your leg open," she said, "and maybe your eyes or your throat next time." Her face was white. "Something has gone wrong inside you, Robin, to have dealings with this ugly creature. This is not you at all. This is insane!"

She looked at the harpy eagle with abhorrence. Its great hooked beak, with the nostril slits, pointed toward her; the cruel eyes watched her slightest move. A double crest of feathers crowned the head. Worst of all were the feet: monstrous, impossible killers, as big in themselves as the owl she had just seen, hooked and deadly, six inches across. This was what had caused her that terrible fright, that afternoon, when she knew Robin had been hurt. She looked at him now with horrid surmise.

"You have changed, Robin," she whispered, "since you let me go."

"Oh yes," he said. "I have changed, all right. Now let's get the peregrine and go out for the food."

Back in the main part of the shed he took the peregrine's hood from its hook. The bird dodged once or twice but made no serious effort to avoid having it placed on her head. He got his gauntlet from the workbench and put it on. He untied the leash from where it was tied under the beam, through a hole in the burlap screen, and nudged the falcon onto his glove, gripping the swivel between thumb and forefinger and wrapping the leash around his other three fingers. They left the hawk house and went to the horses. The bird balanced on the glove with ease, dipping and bowing, her enameled feet set wide apart.

"You have the bag and the tape, John?" he asked.

"You know I have, boss," the Indian answered. He looked without expression at the woman, and there was hostility in the very absence of expression and in the omission of any greeting.

They mounted – Robin from the wrong side because of the bird on his left arm, John in one leap to the bare back of his animal, only Marian in the orthodox way. They set off up the trail behind the house.

"Let's go up on the ridge and look around," Robin said, after they had passed the complex of office and dwellings. "See what activity we find near that patch of alders at the brook, maybe."

"Better we keep to the bushes," John said. "Otherwise the birds all hide in the trees and I gotta climb."

They trotted up the path until it got too steep; then the horses walked. Robin made conversation. "This bird is without much question the most perfect creature ever fashioned. Falco Peregrinus, which no one below the rank of earl could own in olden times. When this bird is aloft, all other life falls still. They've clocked it at two hundred and seventy miles per hour. Nothing in the air can escape it."

"Not even that damnable eagle?" Marian asked.

Robin laughed. "We're going to find that out tomorrow. Oh, what a battle that will be." He dropped his reins and stroked the falcon's back. "Wanderer," he said gently, "shall you kill my eagle, or will my eagle kill you? One of you will die."

"It's a shame, boss," John said. "You shouldn't do it. They're both fine birds."

"I have to know about the eagle," Robin said. "I have to know how much she has in her."

"She's not built to fight falcons," the Indian said, "and no natural falcon would ever go after her. It's a waste and a shame."

"I have to know what that eagle has in her," Robin repeated with great vigor. "Don't you understand? If she wins against the falcon she is the mightiest creature in the world."

"And you are its master," Marian said. "Is that it?"

"Yes," he said. "I guess that's it."

"How wrong!" she exclaimed. "Oh, how wrong!"

They came up over the crest of the Rampart Range and reined in. The slope dropped off steeply before them, a scraggy talus of runty trees and sagebrush, down to the plain that spread itself in a great semicircle to the horizon. Far off, a patch of haze announced the existence of Denver. A highway strung itself through the middle distance. At their backs the hills rose, leap on leap, becoming mountains, lean and formidable.

John urged his horse past the others until he had the lead, and took them to the left. They rode for another half a mile, hardly speaking. "This is a good place," he said.

They dismounted in a loose thicket of scrub maple, where birds were seen flitting and passing by. Robin detached the swivel and the leash from the jesses, and lifted off the hood. The peregrine seemed to frown and stared sharply in all directions. Then, with great strokes of her wings, she lifted herself to the top of the air and circled, studying what was below her with head movements to the left and right. Now suddenly she stooped, sculling with her wings in a dive of unbelievable speed at a jay. The jay fled headlong into a bush – simply crashed into it at full throttle and disappeared. The falcon veered away at the last possible moment and rang up to pitch again.

"OK, John, let's get that one," Robin said.

"How do you know he can get that one?" Marian demanded angrily. "That bird isn't hurt."

"Watch," Robin said. John went to the bush. The bird was crouching under a branch. He reached in and picked it up: it made no effort to escape. He stripped off a length of masking tape and passed it once around the jay, trussing its wings, and dropped it into the sack.

"No bird will fly or even move," Robin said, "when a peregrine is on the hunt. These trees and bushes are full of frozen birds. And John here is the best frozen-bird-thawer west of the Denver supermarkets."

"And you feed these helpless creatures later to your predators?" she said. "You just take their lives away, like that? For shame! And your name is a bird's name, too."

"Oh, come off it, Marian," he said.

While she stayed with the horses the two men made their way back and forth through the underbrush, with the falcon wheeling overhead. Now and again they reached into the leaves and took out warm frightened life. Once a song sparrow made a dash for it and rose above the bushes. The peregrine stooped on it instantly and struck it in flight. There was a small explosion in the air: feathers burst from the stricken sparrow and it dropped dead to the ground. The falcon dropped also and stood on her quarry. While she was plucking, John made in to her with a scrap of red meat, got his hand between her and the sparrow, and palmed the sparrow when the falcon raised her head to swallow the meat. Then, seeing no more to eat, she went aloft again. After that no bird moved except one magpie that, seeing the falcon darting close, ran up John's pants leg. John took it out and taped it and put it in the bag.

When the area was clean of birds they went back to the horses and Robin tied the dead sparrow to a length of string. Giving a strong call, he swung it in circles about his head. The peregrine dived at once and hit it as it fell to the ground. After a leisurely proud gaze in all directions she bent her head between her hunched shoulders and began to feed.

"Lucky no bird took off down the slope," John said. "We'd be looking for the hawk the rest of the day."

"How many did we get?"

"Fifteen, twenty."

"That's a day's work," Robin said. He went to the falcon and got his gloved hand under the prey, and the bird on his fist. While she fed he attached the swivel and leash to the jesses. After a moment, when she lifted her head to gulp the meat, he removed what was left of the food and replaced the hood.

"I told you you wouldn't like it," he said as they rode back down the trail.

"You," she said. "You, taking pleasure in this. That's what sticks in the craw."

"We'll be having chicken for dinner," he said. "How do you like it? Fried? Broiled? Delicious either way. You killed that chicken, you know. You're a carnivore, a predator. What's so different about what you saw this morning? Some butcher feeds you; I feed my birds. What's so different?"

"Being the butcher is what is so different," she said. She reined her horse to a stop. "Robin, let those birds go."

He reined in also; and the Indian, who was leading, rode on a dozen paces and then drew up. He swung about and sat on his horse backwards, watching with a sort of impassive insolence for what the scene would unfold. He had the bag of birds over his shoulder.

"Let them go?" Robin said. "You are sentimental about birds? My hawks are birds too. Creatures of instinct. They can't help it if they need other birds to eat. You'll be eating a bird pretty soon."

"Robin," she cried, bursting into tears, "don't torment me! Let those poor creatures go!"

He saw her cringing in her saddle, hiding her weeping eyes, and he asked himself: is this the woman it cost me such pains to cast off?

"Oh, hell," he said. "John, turn them loose."

John, who could convey contempt without moving a muscle of his face, opened the sack and poured the birds to the ground. Trussed, they tumbled plop plop. She let out a small scream as they fell. Scattered on the ground they cocked their heads this way and that with desperate beady eyes.

"I let them loose, boss," John said.

"Wise guy. Take the tapes off."

John slid off his horse and knelt to the birds. He took the tape from a robin, not carelessly. The tape was covered with feathers and the bird was unable to fly. It fluttered to a bush, and to another: getting away from that hawk. John looked up, not at Robin but at the girl.

"You want the weasels to get these birds, is that it?" he asked.

With a sob she spurred her horse down the hill and out of sight. John began to put the birds back into the sack. "That woman is a damned fool, boss," he said.

"I know it," Robin said. "She'll go away pretty soon."

• • •

Marian stayed in her room the rest of the afternoon; but it was clearly no part of her plan to go away pretty soon: Robin saw her peering from an upstairs Harpy (continued from page 106) window while he gave the eagle a workout on the lawn. It was an exercise in training the harpy to come to the glove on the call, and to correct her habit of coming in low, with talons aimed at his belly. For working the eagle he had a special gauntlet, a lacrosse glove with two layers of horsehide up to the elbow and steel chain mail between them; and even so, when the eagle came in by the book and grasped his arm in those giant feet that completely circled it, it was always as if he were the prey. When the eagle shifted her stance, picked a foot up and set it down, even in this casual shuffling there was a shearing action that could snap his arm, he knew, if the eagle were the least bit careless about letting go with her foot before she picked it up. And the damned bird had tried to kill him less than a week ago. So it was a pretty tense operation, scooping the eagle up when she came in too low, as she mostly did, and knowing he could get a broken arm or a perforated gut on the next try. And it didn't help any to see Marian up at the window, hating him for whatever proficiency he had and hoping the worst, so that she would have an excuse to take over. What the hell was she doing here, anyway? Whatever tenderness she may have elicited from him last night, she must know she wasn't wanted. She had her intuition to tell her that. Well, one thing he was sure of: there would be no midnight visit tonight.

But in this he was wrong. She came again, as before, and dropped to her knees at the bedside; and this time she had assumed her penitent guise, the little-girl routine he knew so well.

"Robin," she said in her little voice. "I was wrong. I don't understand what you are doing, but I was wrong to take the attitude I did and I am sorry. And I will try to understand. May I come into your bed?" With astonishment he became aware that she thought that this morning's events were part of the old familiar fabric: she had "won" when he had told John to set the birds loose.

"And take the warm part again?" he asked. "No. Go around to the cold side."

This was precisely in the style she had chosen, and she rose and crept around the foot of the bed, the moonlight catching a glimpse of her breasts and flank; and crawled in on the cold side with a calculated shiver, and lay with her back toward him. She waited for his hand to slip over her side and up over the ridge of her ribs to her breast, but he had decided to let her carry the ball she had put into play, and did nothing whatsoever. After a moment she flipped over to face him and, as had always been her way, took over. Her technique was excellent. Later she lit two cigarettes at once, passed one to him, and made her play to nail him to her cross.

"Darling," she said, "do you remember? That used to be always the thing we did after our loving. One of us would light them both and give one to the other. Oh, I remember all the times! Once, on Lake Como, the moon was just coming up behind the hills across the water and we went out on the balcony to enjoy it. Do you remember?"

"I remember," he said. "It was very pretty."

"Robin," she said, "couldn't we go back to Como and Venice and Salzburg and Ravello and Villefranche and Toledo?"

"Toledo, Ohio?" he asked. "No springs?"

"Idiot," she said. She leaned over to kiss him and it was no accident that her breast grazed, and was then squashed down on, the hand he had laid on his chest. "Visit those places again; give ourselves a chance to discover each other again?"

"No," he said, "we couldn't do that."

He could feel a little stiffening in all her muscles.

"How can I leave here?" he went on. "Don't you realize that I have a profession to attend to? It's a big operation now, with eight full-time employees."

"You had the same profession three years ago," she said. "It didn't keep you from enjoying life."

"I'm enjoying life right here and now," he replied. "I like my job and the people I have around me and my surroundings and my hobby. I haven't got anything to run away from."

She got off his chest. "What you like most, I think, is feeding songbirds to your birds of prey."

"You are wrong," he said. "I do not enjoy that part of it at all. But I will say that it gives me satisfaction to have manned a harpy eagle." He paused a moment. "In the entire history of man not a dozen people have taught a harpy to obey them. It has been a tremendous experience to pull off that accomplishment. It has illuminated qualities I didn't even know I had in me."

"It is you who are wrong," she said. "Oh Robin, I know you so much better than you know yourself!"

"I think not," he said.

• • •

But the experiences of that night must have left her with the belief that she held the upper hand, because early the next morning she took it upon herself to fire the Indian, and even to call a cab from Denver to take him away. When the car arrived there was considerable confusion, with John contemptuous of the whole idea and the cabby wanting to know who was going to pay him for his trip. Robin came down from his bedroom into the midst of it and learned with surprise and anger what had happened.

"After his gross insolence yesterday," Marian tried to explain, "it seemed perfectly obvious that there was nothing else to do."

Robin paid the driver and sent him back down the valley. Then he turned on her with fury. "What in the name of God do you think you're doing?" he cried. "Do you suppose you can simply move in here and make dispositions over my household? I should have held that cab for you" – and he waved and shouted at the retreating vehicle, quite forgetting that her own car was in the garage. She had turned very pale and was watching him with great smouldering eyes. He said to John, "Come on, let's get the birds ready," and strode off toward the mews, barely limping now, and left her seething in the ruin of her enterprise. Inside the shed he looked at the Indian for the first time. "Forget it. Put it out of your mind. I'll handle that end of things. I'm sorry. OK?"

"OK, boss," John said. His eyes flickered with some Indian emotion.

Robin said, "I haven't had breakfast yet. Saddle my horse and tie the telescope on behind. Let the peregrine take a good look at the eagle; then put the hood on and take her down the hill. By the time you have her down on the plain, where I showed you, at the point of the spur, I'll have the eagle on the bluff. When I give the arm signal, strike the hood. Have you got your binoculars?"

The Indian pointed to the bench where they lay.

"Good," Robin said. "I'm going to mount the telescope on the bluff. It's up to you to follow them underneath if they move across country. If they move into the mountains, I'll ride up to some bald spot where the winner can see the lure when I swing it. What do you think?"

"I think you are wasting a good bird either way," the Indian said. "Maybe both. I give it to the falcon. Nothing can get out of the way of that falcon."

"I'll bet you your horse," Robin said, "against two months' wages, that the eagle wins."

The Indian's eyes flickered again. "You mean it would be my horse? My own horse?"

"And I'll keep on feeding it as long as you're here."

"You got a bet," John said. He almost smiled.

Robin went back to the house. Marian was on the terrace, where his breakfast was laid out. He expected to make the arrangements for her departure immediately but, as he might have known, she took the initiative.

"Robin!" she said, with no preliminary. "How could you do that to me? Oh Robin, how could you? I can't take that sort of treatment, you know. From you! I was doing what had to be done and you humiliated me in front of that – that negligible person."

"We will not even discuss it," he said; and his tone must have conveyed an authority that was new to her, for she seemed almost to shrink back. "You were as wrong as it is possible to be wrong. You do not understand the terms under which you are here, and I am sorry to be so inhospitable as to suggest that you make plans to return to Denver this afternoon or tomorrow morning."

"Robin!" she whispered.

"I'm sorry," he repeated, "but that's the way it's going to be."

He left his breakfast untouched and went to the kitchen, where he found a chunk of cheddar in the refrigerator and ignored Mrs. Emlen's plaintive cries. Chewing on it he went out the back door to the mews, gathered up his gear, and hooded the eagle. Every time he handled the great bird the excitement was like the first time, and now it was enhanced by his knowledge of what was to come.

"Old girl," he said, "mighty creature, will you leave the sky alive today, or dead?" The harpy shrugged her wings and turned her horrid beak this way and that in her blindness. Robin detached the leash from the perch, got the eagle on his arm, and went outside to his horse, which rolled its eyes toward the bird and trembled but had been trained also and did not bolt.

The saddle was rigged with a bar projecting upward and outward from near the stirrup and topped with a semicircular arm rest. After Robin had mounted he placed this bar in position and laid his arm across it. In this way he was able to sustain the eagle's twenty pounds while holding her at a distance. The alternative would have been to brace his elbow against his side, and no one who has had any dealings with eagles would wish to have those talons so close to his body.

He set off slowly up the trail, keeping a sharp eyes on the eagle as she teetered with the motion of the horse. Their progress was slow; John would already be at the foot of the range, waiting with the falcon.

He heard a horse coming up behind; turning, he saw Marian trotting toward him. Incredible woman, she had put her magic green hat on her head again and was going to pretend that nothing had happened. She came up beside him and reined in to a walk.

"What a magnificent spectacle you make," she said, "riding with the eagle on your glove. Are you going to the battle of the giants?"

He could not recall another time when her behavior had been so transparent, and he felt shame for her.

"Of course you want the eagle to win," she went on. "That's why you're giving it the advantage of height. To dive down on the little bird."

It was not going to be possible to ignore her; he decided to make the best of it. "You will see. This mighty eagle, queen of the sky, when she sees that 'little bird' climbing toward her, will give up any thought of attack and will herself climb as fast as she is able. The head start is only to make the contest even. Up there in the thin air it will be the falcon that is above."

They came to the ridge; there was John, on his horse, far below, the bird on his wrist.

"The falcon has been trained to stoop on any bird in flight," Robin said, his voice thin with excitement. He dismounted carefully, undid the leash from the swivel, removed the hood, and cast the eagle to the air. She rose in two close spirals and rested, searching for prey. Robin signaled with his left arm; John loosed the peregrine and she rose powerfully up the slope. The eagle, which had tilted down to dive, seemed to recoil: she braked with her great wings, veered off to the right, and climbed steeply, circling in a wide sweep over the plain. The falcon too was spiraling upward, at an incredible rate, seemingly unaware of the eagle.

Robin unstrapped the telescope and mounted it on its tripod. It was a powerful Japanese instrument, binocular, giving an erect image at 120 diameters, with independent vertical and horizontal controls. He had also a pair of binoculars, with which he now followed the Right first of the eagle, then of the peregrine.

"Sometimes they pass quite close to each other," he reported. "They're ringing up over the plain, thank God. The eagle is a jungle bird and wouldn't naturally seek mountains. They're about a mile up and the falcon is gaining."

"This isn't what I expected at all," Marian said. "This seems a very tidy battle, with lots of fresh air between the combatants."

"Stop playing the fool," he said shortly. "One or both of these birds is about to die."

The birds were wheeling upward in wide circles, perhaps half a mile in diameter. Soon the range was too great for the seven-power binoculars and he ungallantly handed them to the girl. The telescope brought them close again. When they had risen about three miles, the falcon finally got on top.

"It must be a shocking experience for the eagle to be the prey," Robin said. "But that's what she is, and she knows it."

When her circle brought her back above the eagle, the falcon suddenly stooped, aiming herself like a bullet at the eagle's broad back. The eagle knew better than to try to evade the attack. Her beak parted in a scream as she rolled over and presented her talons to the diving peregrine and flew upside-down. The falcon veered aside at the last moment and began to ring up again in tight spirals. The eagle righted herself and climbed also.

The wind off the mountains carried them eastward as the falcon dived, and rang up, and stooped again and again. Each time the eagle turned upside-down; each time the falcon found no way to hit and tried again. They were losing altitude inexorably, and it was only a matter of time before the peregrine would force the eagle to the ground and be able to strike. But, while they were still a mile above the earth, the eagle seemed to lose its panic and start using its intelligence; and, when the birds had drifted almost too far to be closely observed and John had galloped several miles across the arid land under them, the eagle grabbed sideways at the peregrine as she shot by, and the peregrine did not zoom upward to renew the attack but dropped straight down, slowly turning, one wing outstretched above it like a rudder.

There were tears in Robin's eyes as he packed up the telescope and he could not tell what had caused them, sorrow for his dear falcon that was dead or pride for his eagle that had survived the deadliest creature of the air.

"The eagle probably has a broken leg and can't ride home," he said, trying to control his voice. "I'll have to go down with the station wagon right away."

"Robin," she said; and this was a real part of her, that the truth broke through, no matter how grievously it might hurt her cause: "you are a different person from the person I knew and loved. I do not know you and I do not want to know you.'"

"I may expect, then." he said coldly, "that you will be gone by the time I come back?"

She had mounted. "You can expect nothing from me," she cried, "but what I choose to do." And she took off down the hill.

He followed; found her horse, still saddled, in the yard, but no sign of her; took the station wagon down the valley and met John on the plain coming back with the eagle on his arm: the leg was not broken after all and the eagle was quiet, wearing the alternate hood. John did not need any help.

"She was on the falcon when I came up," he said, "and when I made in to her she didn't drag or carry. I got the glove under her easy. That's a well-trained eagle, boss. I guess I lost myself two months' pay."

"I guess so," Robin said. "Too bad."

"That was some fight," the Indian said. For him this was loquacious enthusiasm.

"Yes. Some fight."

"I should have bet on the eagle," the Cheyenne said. "I don't know what got into me. Our tribe has always put its money on the eagle."

"Well, you were bedazzled by the peregrine," Robin said. "Damn, I hate to lose that beauty. Take the eagle back to the house and feed them all. I want to stay out of sight for a while, till that woman leaves."

"She won't leave," the Indian said. "Not till you call the police."

• • •

The Indian was right. She was still there, hidden in her room, when he returned several hours later. He had his supper with John in the room over the garage and they talked about the fight. That night he locked his bedroom door.

It was about three A.M. when he was awakened by the screams from the hawk house. All his birds were shrieking. He ran down the stairs in his pajamas and out the back door. The light in the hawk house were on and through the open door he could see Marian methodically working her way along the perch, knocking down the birds with a knout she had made from several leashes. Even as he shouted she disappeared behind the partition and when he reached her she was flailing at the eagle with all her strength. The bird was on the floor by her bow perch, sitting back on her rump, screaming. She supported herself on her wings and held her feet open toward the girl. There was blood on Marian's wrists and breast.

Robin seized Marian from behind and threw her to the floor. She sat up at once and her eyes were blazing with a sort of possession. "I have freed you, Robin!" she shouted. "I have killed them all!" Now you can return to yourself!"

John appeared. Robin dragged Marian to her feet, hauled her to the door, and literally threw her out, locking it behind her. Then he ran back to the eagle, which, after a moment, resumed a normal stance and hopped back to her perch.

"Hood her," Robin said. "See if any feathers are broken and if she's hurt. I'll see about the others." With the sick feeling one must have if one's child has been run down, he went to the other room. All the birds were hanging by their leashes. The Cooper's and the merlin, which had borne the brunt of her assault, were dead; so was the tiny burowing owl, whose worst crime was the destruction of crickets and mice. The prairie falcon was beating its wings feebly and dripping blood. Robin got his gloves and the glue from the bench, lifted the bird to its perch, hooded it, and gently stopped its wounds with the glue. Then he removed the hood. One eye was swollen and closed, perhaps blind. So he had one hawk left, maybe, and the eagle. He went behind the partition, his heart raging with sorrow and anger, and saw that John had claimed the eagle and was examining her for broken feathers. Incredibly there were none.

"All dead but the prairie," he said. "That crazy, obsessed woman. We'll have to start all over."

"The eagle's all right," John said. "She's had quite a day. Shall I take off the hood?"

"Yes. Let's see how she feels now."

The eagle, when the hood was off, roused but did not bate. Her eyes were as unafraid and expressionless as ever; it was as if nothing had happened. Robin turned and went back to the main house.

He found Marian in the living room. She had poured herself a tumbler of straight bourbon and was in a state of exaltation, pacing up and down with long strides. She was disheveled and covered with dirt.

"How glad, how glad I am that it is done!" she exclaimed as soon as she saw him. "It was not easy for me, oh no. I hated it. Killing the eagle was the worst because you loved it most. But it was the only way to save you."

He stood speechless, his chest heaving.

"I could never understand why you were rejecting me until this afternoon when you made the two birds fight each other. Then I saw how you were making two parts of yourself, the big cruel part and the little tender part – of course, the falcon isn't tender, really, but only by comparison with the eagle – making these two parts of you fight each other and hoping for the cruel part to win. Oh, it was so clear! How could there be room in you for me while you were dominated by these violent forces? So I had to do away with them, Robin, to open up your path to me again."

He realized there was no hope of getting through to her.

"Oh, I know there will be a period of resentment," she went on, "when you will hate me and want me to be rid of me. But that will pass, and I will see you coming back again to your old self, and to me. And I will be by your side to help you over the rough places."

"You will be here?" he asked. "In this house?"

"But of course I must be here. What good is it, however well I read your heart, if I am far away?"

"Good night, Marian," he said. "I am going back to bed now. We'll have more to say to each other in the morning."

Before he went to sleep, for the next hour, he heard her pacing.

• • •

Overnight his determination hardened and became rigid; with deliberate effort he held it over his rage like a lid. Hearing her voice downstairs before breakfast, he called the housekeeper up and had her pack Marian's things in her bag. He carried them down and put them in her car. Then he went around the house to where she was standing on the terrace.

"Marian," he said, "I have put your bags in your car. I want you to get in it now, and drive it away, and never come back. Last night you committed a crime for which I will have you arrested unless you get out of here in the next five minutes."

"But Robin," she said calmly, "call the sheriff and have me dragged out of here. Prefer your charges, put me in jail. I know you feel this way now – that's inevitable. I'll write you post cards from my cell every time you stub your toe or cut yourself shaving. And when I'm out of jail I'll come back to where I belong. You can't law me out of your life. There's no way you can get me out of your life."

He seized her arm and dragged her with deliberate roughness to the garage; opened the car door and shoved her in. She did not resist. "Now go!" he cried. She got out the other door and stood facing him, the car between them.

"Robin, you can force me to leave by calling the police, but that is the only way. I am prepared to withstand whatever you choose to do to me until you come back to your senses."

"Goddamn it!" he shouted, beside himself. "Have you completely lost your mind and your sensitivity? Can't you understand the impossible situation you're creating? Can't you get out of here like a civilized person?"

"No," She said. "You'll have to use force."

"The sheriff will be here as soon as I can get him here," Robin said, and went off toward the phone.

But he did not phone the sheriff, because he recognized the futility of doing so. He put the receiver back on its cradle and went out of the house, along the path to the office. Be calm, he thought, as he walked through the aspens; subdue your emotions for a time; look at this problem with your mind.

He knew this woman – ah, how well he knew her! She was like Beethoven's Fur Elise, a spiderweb of steel. So gently she seemed to entangle; so relentlessly she held on. It was no use to call the police; she would come back, and back again. Her mind was made up and nothing could conceivably change it.

He was the first one in the building. He drew a cup of coffee from the coffee-break machine and took it to his office. The roughs for a subdivision in Florida were on his desk. All morning he worked on them with total absorption, divorcing his mind completely from the problem that Marian presented. And yet, though he had not given it a moment of conscious thought, it had been curing in his subconscious. By noon he knew its solution.

Back at his house he found Marian in the living room, quite at home, reading Baudelaire.

"I suppose you've unpacked again," he said.

"Yes," she said, "thank you."

"Well, I'm not going to call the cops just yet. We'll leave a little time for the dust to settle and see if we can't work something out."

"Splendid," she said. "I'm sure we can."

"You didn't kill the eagle, you know," he said. "Or the prairie falcon."

"I will," she said.

"Don't try it," he said, "or by God I'll disfigure you."

He went upstairs and rooted around in his closet until he found the other hat, the identical one she had given him in Austria, green felt and white plume. He found John in the stable. "Get a half dozen rabbits from the hutch and cut them up into pieces. We have an afternoon's work ahead of us with the eagle." He went to the mews and hooded the eagle and got her on his glove, the terrible incalculable creature, and wondered with fear whether her experience of the night before had turned her against humankind and whether she would really try to get him this time. But he hardly thought now that what he was doing took nerve and courage, and this was a measure of the great distance he had come since he had set off on his own.

The eagle behaved well and was carried with the jesses pulled tight to the small meadow above the house, while John followed with the bag of rabbit meat. Robin tied the hat to a long string and sent John thirty yards away with it; and when John was swinging the lure in slow circles around his head he unleashed the eagle and struck the hood, and John gave the shout that the bird associated with flying to the lure, and the eagle dived straight for the bait with mighty sweeps of her six-foot wings and hit it like an express train almost before John had let it drop to the ground, and clutched it under one great foot, looking imperiously about. Before she could find that the lure was not food, John tossed a chunk of rabbit to her and retrieved the lure undamaged. Then Robin got the feeding eagle up on his glove and grabbed the jesses and let her finish off the morsel. That was the most dangerous part, approaching the bird while she was feeding and had both feet free to strike with. But nothing had happened.

They repeated the exercise through-out the afternoon, gradually increasing the distance; rewarding the eagle each time for her recognition of the lure. At about three P.M. they stopped giving the shout signal and merely swung the hat on the string; at about four they stopped swinging the lure and simply hung it on a bush or stump at any point of the compass from the eagle, so that she had to ring up and search. She found it every time and attacked it; was not even distracted by a real live rabbit that blundered onto the scene and immediately fled. At about five Robin decided they were ready for a final test. He sent John to fetch a couple of horses and when he came back with them, on one and leading the other, he sent him a mile across the slope with the hat.

"Wear it on your head. Don't move. Throw it to the ground when the eagle approaches, and feed her a good big piece of rabbit. I'll be right behind."

John made his way across the slope, in and out among the pines, until he was in clear sight on the barren patch they had chosen; waiting; an almost invisible speck among the rocks and fireweed where a burn had been. But the eagle, once she saw him, would be able to count every eyelash. Robin prepared her and threw her to the air. She rang up and looked to where the lure had last been shown. Not finding it she rang up higher and stared all about. Suddenly all her forces gathered and she hurled herself aslant the slope, straight toward the tiny spot a mile away. Marveling, Robin set his horse after; some minutes later he reined up beside John and watched the bird as it plucked the food.

"I was scared," John said. "I saw that sonofabitch coming at me and I tossed the hat when she was still a quarter mile away. I dismounted and hid behind the horse. But she went straight for the hat."

"I guess we have her trained to the hat," Robin said.

The Indian put on his very special inscrutable Indian face. "You going through with this, boss?" he asked.

"I think I'll have to," Robin said.

The India looked across the mountains loping off to the south, his face immobile. "You'll need help," he said.

Robin understood what he was really saying: that he would do whatever was required of him, for this white man who had treated him as a human being and had allowed him to feel dignity, for the first time in his life. Obviously there was no way to express this. And there was no way for him, Robin, to show his gratitude. Anything he might do would not be enough. But he had to do something.

"That's your horse you're sitting on," he said. "You own it. I've been wanting to give it to you for a long while." He saw a flush spread over the Indian's features and he said strongly, "Damnit, John, stop being the Last of the Cheyennes for once, will you, for Christ's sake? You just gave me a great deal-can't I give you something without you getting insulted? Don't make things hard for me. Now let's get that eagle back to where she belongs."

"OK, boss," the Indian said; and, a most unusual thing, he smiled.

When Robin came down next morning he found Marian already at the breakfast table telling Mr. Emlen that, yes, she would like a second poached egg but the toast a little darker this time, please. His heart was thudding so violently, and his spirit was in such agitation, that he was certain her intuition would warn her of her danger. But she perceived nothing.

"Good morning, darling," she said. "Did you sleep well?"

"No," he answered, "I did not. I had too much on my mind."

"Us?" she asked.

He sat down and poured himself some coffee. "Wasn't your radar working? Isn't it working right now?"

She laughed. "But you know it only works when something happens to you. I'm not a mind reader. When you're hurt, it's like an electric shock that goes through me and I get a sort of flash. It's what makes me so sure about us."

"We are so many miles apart," he said miserably. He ate his food in near silence after that, until she finally said, affectionately, "Old Grumblehead."

He summoned his strength and put on a casual voice. "Marian, this is a very difficult situation, as you must know. We have some serious talking to do. I think better in the open. Let's saddle a couple of horses and take a ride down to the plain. We can talk on the way, and there's something I want to show you."

"What a fine idea," she said. "I'll go get ready." And she flew up the stairs. He walked with heavy heart to the yard. I don't, I don't, he thought, I don't want to go through with this.

He found John and he picked up from what he had been thinking. "This may be just a dry run-God, I hope it is. I'll give her every chance to get out. But if it has to be-John, we're taking the horses down to the plain. As soon as we leave, you take the eagle up to the bluff, where you can see us. If I see any other way, you'll have the pleasure of watching us ride horseback. If not--"

For a while he could not bring himself to say it. "If not, I'll give a signal like this." He extended his arm to the side, raised it, lowered it. "Strike the hood and throw the eagle."

The Indian was, if possible, even more inscrutable than usual.

"John," Robin said intensely, "I hate to put you in this position. If any questions are asked, you are just a dumb Indian helping me to train a bird. The bird was supposed to fly down to me and something went wrong. There's no danger to you. I wouldn't expose you to any danger."

"I know, Robin," the Cheyenne said. "Don't worry."

Robin went to the stable and saddled the horses. He led them out and, holding them by the reins, waited for Marian to appear. Maybe she won't be wearing the hat, he said to himself. Maybe her intuition has told her after all. I could not conceivably send her back for the hat. He heard her voice in the house and then she appeared on the lawn, walking toward him in her jobhpurs with her stock under her arm, very chic. Instead of the proper derby she was wearing the green hat with the white plume.

They mounted and trotted down the road a few hundred yards to where the path down the slope took off through the woods. He slowed to a walk as they began the steep descent.

"Marian," he said carefully, "have you given any more thought to what you said yesterday? About yielding only to the police?"

"Why no," she answered. "That's the way I feel."

"I mean, you haven't, in a calmer moment, come to realize that if you want to stay here and I don't want you to stay here there can be nothing but friction and bad times for both of us?"

"No," she said. "I think there will be one or two bad times at first, but then I think we can get back to what we used to have and what we both really want."

He was ahead of her on the path and he turned in his saddle to look at her, to reinforce with the eye communication what he was about to say. "Marian, believe me, what I want is not at all what you want. I have said it already, and I will say it again: the life I intend to lead has no place in it for you, and I most earnestly implore you to get out of it."

"I will not get out of it, Robin," she said firmly.

He turned his eyes ahead again and with a surge of confused emotions spurred his horse to a canter down the hundred yards to the bottom. He drew up and waited for her to catch up; and from then on they rode side by side toward the place where they would come into view past the end of the spur.

"Marian," he said fiercely, "I implore you to accept this fact! I simply do not need or want you in my life. You have to realize this or the consequences will be horrible."

"I do not realize this," she said clearly. "On the contrary, I realize that you are a person different from your real person. Ah, Robin, I have known you so well and so long, how can I be wrong?"

They had passed the spur and were in open country.

"You are wrong!" he almost whispered. "Marian, for God's sake and your own sake and my sake, admit it! Get us out of this deadly thing!"

She rode calmly on. "I am stronger than you, Robin," she said, "where it really matters. I will wait you out. I will stay."

In anger, in anguish, in despair, he put his arm straight out to his side, raised it high, and lowered it. She did not see his gesture but something suddenly, at last, seized her attention: at last, too late, her intuition was working for her instead of for him.

"Robin!" she said sharply. "Something is really wrong, isn't it? Really wrong."

"Yes!" he said. "Oh God, yes!" For he knew, without looking, that John had struck the hood and had hurled the harpy from his arm, and the great bird had wheeled once, casting her eyes over all she could see, and had aimed herself like a projectile at Marian's neck and was thundering down the slope behind them, a hundred feet a second toward the prey.

"Over there!" he said in a strangled voice, pointing across the plain. "What I wanted to show you. Over there!"

So that the eagle, when she hit with all her weight and speed and dreadful talons thrust forward and opening at the last moment, would not mar the beautiful, once beloved face.