Elijandro popped the diaphragm call into his mouth and began turning it over with his tongue to soften it, then settled into the silence, absorbing it and the grand expanse of the brightening sky. He took deep breaths of the crisp air, his mind clearing itself of the people he worked for, his responsibilities on the ranch and to his own little family. He loved to guide turkey hunts, not for the kill but in order to participate in the birth of a new day.

The horizon below glowed golden now and the smaller stars began to blink out. A breeze stirred and overhead the dark roiling clouds at the edge of the storm front crept toward the coming dawn as if racing the sun to its rise. Thunder rumbled. A song sparrow peeped nearby and fluttered past Elijandro's head, finding a high spot on the stalk of bramble to clear its throat and offer up the first song of the morning. After that, the other birds woke, too. First slowly, like an orchestra tuning its instruments, but growing in number and volume until they produced a crescendo of chirping and trilling and whistling that ignored the coming storm entirely.

The time had come. Elijandro cupped his hand to his mouth and uttered a sharp hen cluck, then a staccato of high-pitched clucks as he twisted his hip and slapped his hand in a flutter against his rump: the sound of the first hen flying down from the roost. He heard the answering cluck from a real hen awakening on the ridge, then he called to the tom, a raspy, longing sound that rose and fell. The gobble of the big bird was so immediate and so close that Elijandro started and grinned and couldn't help but glance back to see if his boss was ready. The birds weren't on the top of the ridge, but much closer, immediately inside the woods at the end of the field.

His boss had been on enough hunts to know what it all meant and he fumbled with his shotgun, raising it and resting it across his knees, ready to shoot.