13 Sam Takes Charge

"I thought he would know. The Feds must have told him they were coming." The kids looked at each other. Their eyes widened. "You see Leon Longbridge?" Jose asked Joe Cassini. "Not this morning," he said. "He'll sure be glad to know someone finally moved those birds," said Dan Martin. "Wanna bet?" said Jose as he started running for Leon Longbridge's office. The school bell rang. "Cree, cree, cree, kak, kak, kak." High above the Delhi Bridge, Frightful screamed and spiraled, her pointed wings cutting frantic patterns in the sky. IN WHICH Sam Takes Charge

Sam was at his lean-to, his elbows propped on his knees, his binocs pinned on the green pickup. He had watched the two U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service men rescue the peregrine eyases of the Delhi Bridge. He was grateful to them. The bridge painting was becoming intolerable. Sam studied them closely. The dark-haired man seemed familiar, but he didn't know any Fish and Wildlife Service people. He turned his glasses on Frightful. She zoomed out of nowhere and landed on the scrape. Why wasn't she following the Feds and her eyases? She was not even looking in their direction. And then he saw why. An eyas appeared and nestled into her warm breast feathers. "What the heck!" Sam said aloud. "She's feeding!"

He put down his glasses and whistled his "come here" notes to Frightful. Frightful turned her head but did not answer. She was mothering Oksi and calling a worried "kak, kak" to 426. He came down from a height where no human eye could see him, landed on the girder, and took off again. The man in the cherry picker had so terrified him, he could not force himself to sit on the bridge. He caught a wind and was sped up the mountain. He came to rest on a large maple near Sam's lean-to and flattened his feathers to his body. His eye pupils were pinpoints of fear. "Kak, kak, kak." 426 yelled the distress cry over and over. Sam lowered his glasses to the bridge span. The men on the paint crew were swinging the work platforms under the fifth web, getting ready to paint the seemingly empty aerie. Down on Elm Street, Molly, Jose, and Leon Longbridge came on the run. They joined Joe Cassini and Dan Martin at the cherry picker. "Good news," Joe said. "The Feds moved the little birds."

"No, they didn't," Leon said. "They stole them. Those men were not from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. I checked on them when Hughie called me. And they weren't from the state, either." "Who were they, then?" "Poachers—a special kind of poacher," said Leon. "They'll raise the eyases and sell them for tens of thousands of dollars." "Did you get their license plate number?" Molly asked Joe hopefully. "No," he answered. "Never occurred to me they weren't legit. But they should be easy to find. They were in an old green Chevy pickup with an official insignia on the door." "What'll we do?" Jose asked, tugging Leon Long- bridge's sleeve. "I've already called the police," he said. "Also Jon Wood. He suspects some poachers are hiding out in a cabin on White Man Mountain. Maybe we should begin there." "Can we come?" Molly asked, clapping her hands.

"No," Leon said forcefully. "Those guys are dangerous. Now, run along to school. You're late." When Leon went back to his office, Joe Cassini and Dan Martin looked up at the intricately webbed bridge that had been a home for the peregrines. Its crisscrossed grid was a huge silver tapestry in the gray spring light. "Well, Dan," Joe said, "the falcons are gone. We'll sandblast the aerie. Nothing to stop us from painting now." "Except that thunderstorm hanging over the mountain," Dan Martin answered. "I'm going to sit this one out. I don't want to be caught in a thunderstorm on an iron bridge." He closed his paint bucket and returned it to the supply truck. Joe Cassini was checking the sanding job on the bridge railing when the first peal of thunder rumbled. He called the men down from the work platforms and sent them to the safety of their cars. In his own car he took out a thermos of coffee, drank several gulps, then leaned back and closed his eyes. "How was I to know wildlife officials from poachers?" he asked himself. "Well, I hope they

get caught. I got real fond of those birds." Lightning flashed like fireworks. Oksi pressed up against Frightful and crawled deeper into her feathers. Both sat still and waited. The falling air pressure foretold a severe storm. Sam felt the warning, too, but he planned to take advantage of it. He walked down the mountainside to the road and sat under a large rhododendron bush. The clouds rolled over Delhi in blue-black boils, their bottoms illuminated by white flashes. A few large raindrops splattered down onto the rhododendron leaves, then many. A fork of lightning opened a cloud. It closed with a thunderous boom. Water spilled down in sheets. When he could no longer see Joe Cassini's car for the rain, Sam crawled out from under the bush and ran to the bowed arch. Barefoot, using his hands and feet, he went up it. The rain poured off his hair and down his face. Lightning danced over the bridge and town. The thunder became a continuous boom. When he got to where the bow met the fifth vertical web, Sam whistled three notes. There was no response.