We came upon one of the oil well disposal pits, about ten feet deep and fifty feet wide, with field wastes, a side effect of the oil drilling. The pit was fenced and covered with bird netting. There were probably a dozen of these in the East Douglas area. I continued to glass our surroundings, searching the high points as well, maybe because that was where I had found Joseph. I imagined the hunter crouched somewhere, holding her knees to her chest, as Joseph had done. But my search for Joseph hadn’t lasted more than twenty minutes. And he’d only been missing for about as long before I’d gone looking for him. This woman had been out there all night, even longer. Death wasn’t out of the question. I’d spotted a few magpies, one of Colorado’s many garbage disposals, and hoped they weren’t a sign. Ravens, crows, and turkey vultures would also stay around in the colder months, as long as they could find carrion food. Or the woman could be lying injured somewhere. Could have lost her footing and fallen into one of the many clefts, one of my first fears when looking for Joseph.
Kona and I continued along the base of the bluffs and slightly west toward Rocky Point Draw. I yelled the woman’s name. I waited. From the ridge above us, rocks loosened, and a couple of larger rocks tumbled halfway down the incline. I yelled the woman’s name again, searched the area with my binoculars. I saw movement, something brown. Kona and I climbed the ridge about sixty feet before it got too steep. To our left, I spotted a deer standing still beneath a juniper, watching us. We walked back down the ridge and followed one of the arroyos as it curved westward. The sun’s descent sent glaring rays over the rocks and lighted up patches of snow like flakes of sapphire. Once more I glassed the area with my binoculars. It was then that I spotted the winter hawk, his feathers the color of smoldering ash, his eyes watching Kona and me from the branches of a dead juniper about forty yards to our north.
A whine started up in the back of Kona’s throat. He’d spotted the hawk, too. The bird didn’t wait for us to close in on him. He expanded his wings, slowly raised himself higher, as if stretching, and took off in flight. His talons bunched in fists and his beak widened with a screech as he soared over our heads. I had never seen a hawk that color before. I’d heard of them, knew that sometimes a young hawk’s feathers could first come in as a downy gray, but this hawk wasn’t young. He was a couple of feet in height and strong. The hawk disappeared over the ridge behind us. For a second, I wondered if we should follow him, if in some strange way he would point us in the direction of the missing hunter. But I didn’t follow him. Instead I brushed off such thoughts and led Kona in yet another direction.
Kona and I were just cresting the upper ridge that opened up to where the black pickup was parked when static broke over the radio. “Command, Alpha One,” came Colm’s voice.
Alpha One had long been my radio call on search-and-rescue missions, as Kona and I were usually part of the first team out on a search.
I stopped hiking and pulled the radio off my belt clip. “Alpha One, go ahead, Command.”
“Alpha One, where the hell are you?”
“I’m about fifty yards due east of the subject’s vehicle.”
“This is a team operation,” Colm said.
“I hear you.”
“I swear, Pru, I’ll take you off the search.”
“You can’t do that. You need Kona.”
“Goddamn it, Pru, I need you, too.” Colm expelled a long breath, the air crackling over the radio. “We’re setting up headquarters at the opening to the draw. There’s an empty compressor station where you and Dean turned off to head up to the bluffs.”
“I saw it,” I said.
“Meet us there. We already got three other teams ready to head out. I’m assigning you with Jeff Livingston.”
“What about the helicopter?” I asked.
“I’ve got my guys clearing a helipad now.”
“It’ll take me some time to get down,” I said.
“Did you find any leads?”
“Kona picked up her scent a couple of times near the truck, but the snow’s making it tricky.”
“How long will it take you to get down to the station?” Colm asked.
“Maybe a half hour.”
“Jeff should be here by then. He’s on his way.”
I had worked search and rescue with Jeff once before. We’d been looking for a missing backcountry skier on the outskirts of Powderhorn, just east of Grand Junction. After a full day of search operation, the twenty-one-year-old man turned up with a group of friends in Cedaredge, never having known he’d been reported missing. He’d lost his cell phone somewhere on the mountain.