White Wolf. Lindsay McKenna

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Sarah said, “I don’t know.”

      “What about this old Navajo medicine man?”

      “He died shortly after the conference.”

      Angrily, Dain glared at her. “All right, I’ll go to Chinle, Arizona, and ask around about her. Someone has got to know about her.”

      Smiling tentatively, Sarah ran her fingertips along the edge of her desk. “Yes, I’m sure someone has heard of Tashunka Mani Tu.” She paused, studying him intently. “One word of warning, Dain.”

      His hand was already on the doorknob. “Yes?”

      “Take your hard-edged, impatient, angry mannerisms and get rid of them once you step foot on the reservation, will you?”

      His brows dropped.

      “The Navajo are a very gentle people who believe in living in harmony with nature and with others. If you aggressively attack them, as if they’re a corporation to be raided, you aren’t going to get anywhere. You’ve got to cultivate some, er, diplomacy and patience.” She leaned down and picked up a piece of paper.

      “You need to see this woman—her name is Luanne Yazzie. She’s a medicine woman in training. She lives out at Rough Rock, Arizona, about forty-five minutes from Chinle. Take some gifts with you—that might help.”

      He jerked open the door. “What kind, good doctor?”

      “Always bring groceries. Lots of them. Luanne is a councilwoman from Rough Rock and a lot of people from her community are very poor, almost starving. They come to her house and routinely ask for food or money. If you show up with food, it signals to Luanne that you’re a man of compassion.” The doctor’s smile broadened a little. “She’s got a master’s degree in education, and she’s smart as a whip. If you can make her your ally instead of an enemy, I’d bet she could tell you the whereabouts of this mysterious heyoka medicine woman.” With a shake of her head, Sarah added, “She certainly is a mystery. Tashunka Mani Tu could practice on her own reservation, in Cherokee, North Carolina, but she doesn’t. I hope you find her. I’d love to hear about your adventure, Dain. I wish you the best of luck on this. My hunch is if you can find her, she can help you.”

      Dain saw the sincerity in the doctor’s eyes. In that moment all his mean-spirited and paranoid worry about her wanting him for his money dissolved. His mouth softened a bit. “Instinct and hunches. Doctor, you scare me to death. The only thing I believe in is what I can see with my eyes, hear with my ears, taste or touch.”

      Sarah chortled. “So tell me, why are you chasing down this wild lead? It’s about as illogical and nonlinear as you can get.”

      He shrugged and became pensive. “Did you tell me what her name means? Tashunka Mani Tu?”

      Her grin broadened and she leaned her hips against the desk and folded her arms against her breasts. “The old medicine man said it means Walks With Wolves.”

      Dain stood riveted to the spot, feeling a bolt of lightning strike him in the crown of his head, rip through his body and exit out his feet. A sudden wave of heat followed by icy cold washed through him like a tidal wave. His hand tightened on the brass doorknob until his knuckles whitened.

      “What?” he rasped.

      “You heard me,” Sarah said crisply. “Her name, when translated into English from Lakota Sioux, means Walks With Wolves.” Her eyes sparkled. “Who knows?” she whispered, emotion suddenly choking her voice, “maybe she’s been the one all along sending you a dream of the white wolf.”

      His Adam’s apple bobbed. Fear rippled through him, then disbelief. And finally hope. “What,” he rasped, “are you talking about?”

      With a shrug, Sarah eased away from the desk. She dropped her arms to her sides. “I spent six months at the Chinle hospital working with Navajo medicine people. I saw a lot of things that traditional medicine can’t explain, Dain. One thing I heard about again and again was dreaming. Many patients had powerful dreams and the native healers would interpret them. It was commonly accepted that medicine people send dreams to those who are sick, to help them fight off whatever is attacking them. Maybe this medicine woman is already in touch with you, and has been from the start. Maybe she sent the white wolf to you.”

      His nostrils flared and he gave a sharp, bitter laugh. “Oh, yeah? Then why the hell does that white devil rip my heart out of my chest every night?”

      Gazing at him, Sarah whispered, “Go find her and ask her, Dain…”

      Chapter Two

      She felt his presence. Erin lifted her chin, surveyed her flock of forty sheep, which foraged restlessly across the red sand desert, then narrowed her eyes on the horizon. The megalith known by the Navajo people as Rainbow Butte stood like a magnificent tower rising up out of the surrounding landscape of the high plateau. He is coming. Her heart pounded briefly to underscore that knowing.

      She smiled a little as she felt Maiisoh rub against her dark red cotton skirt, brushing the heavy material against her knee-high buffalo-skin boots. Looking down, she petted the white wolf’s massive head. He, too, was looking toward Rainbow Butte.

      “So you sense his coming, my friend?”

      Maiisoh whined and sat down, leaning his weight against her right leg.

      Erin continued to pat his head. “Is this someone you have been visiting at night, Maiisoh?”

      The wolf lifted his muzzle, his huge yellow eyes staring up at her thoughtfully.

      Laughter rolling from her lips, Erin said, “You sly old wolf. If you didn’t enter people’s dreams they wouldn’t keep coming here.” Her smile turned slowly into a line of sadness as she continued to watch her flock. “The Great Spirit knows what is best,” she added with a sigh.

      Maiisoh began to thump his big, brushy tail, dirty with red clay and tangled with sagebrush brambles. He had been chasing a jackrabbit, and the old, wise one had led him on a merry chase with no meal at the end of it. Instead, Maiisoh had found himself in huge clumps of sagebrush, muzzle buried in a hole where the old jackrabbit lived. It was an early morning ceremony performed every day by Maiisoh and that old rabbit.

      “Oh,” Erin said wryly, “and of course, you know best, too. I can see by the pleased look on your face, Maiisoh.” Yet a stirring of great sadness overwhelmed her and her fingers tightened briefly on the herder’s staff that she always carried. Father Sun was just brimming the horizon and she silently offered prayers of welcome to him and to all her relations, thanking the Great Spirit for the beauty of yet another day being offered to her.

      Maiisoh suddenly rose off his haunches and leaped away from her. Being a good guard, he didn’t run through the herd, but around it, loping easily toward the east and following a desert track that many vehicles had followed. The rain two days ago had turned the red clay of the desert into slick, slimy goo that no car or truck could traverse—at least, not out here to the middle of the Navajo Reservation. Until it dried, foot and horse traffic were the only kind that could make it to where she lived.

      Bothered, but not knowing why, Erin continued to lead her sheep in the direction her white wolf had gone. She watched him work his way around a small hill that wore a crown of dark green Navajo tea СКАЧАТЬ