White Wolf. Lindsay McKenna

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СКАЧАТЬ not very good with Indian names,” he began, “so bear with me as I refer to you as Erin Wolf.”

      Her eyes sparkled with silent laughter. “It will take three days before the wash dries enough for you to drive your car out of there.” She gazed up at the clear, light blue sky. “The Navajo rain yei have been kind to you. It’s not going to rain for at least another week, so you’ll be able to retrieve your car.”

      “What’s a yei?”

      “Navajo for god.”

      “I don’t believe in such things.”

      She smiled.

      Dain glared at her. “Well, what do I do?”

      “I’d suggest that you walk back to the road and hitchhike back into Many Farms. Go home, Dain Phillips. What you seek I do not have.” Never had she meant her words more than now.

      He stared at her as panic set in, eating away at his anger, his strength. “But…” He floundered, opening his hands. “But Alfred and Luanne Yazzie said you’ve healed many Navajo of all kinds of disease. Why are you sending me away if you can cure me?”

      In that moment, Erin saw not a man standing before her, but a scared child. The image of a tousle-haired, freckle-faced little boy in a pair of coveralls and a red-and-white-striped T-shirt crying his heart out flashed before her eyes. The boy stood in the highly polished hallway of some huge, old home and her intuition told her that what he felt was utter abandonment.

      Gently, she whispered, “I am not abandoning you, Dain Phillips. You are abandoning yourself.” Shaken by what she’d seen and felt, Erin suddenly felt guilty. Her past experience with one white man was coloring her perception of this man. Her parents had taught her that skin color meant nothing—but she knew differently. Inwardly, she wrestled with her own dark prejudice.

      Dain was shaken by her words. How the hell did she know that what he was feeling so sharply was abandonment? Flattening his lips, he yelled, “I’m here, damn it! I came in good faith! I bought the stupid groceries I’ll give to those two old women! Now, you owe me, damn it! You can’t send me away. I won’t go!”

      Erin raised her brows as her heart wrenched in despair. “You won’t go?”

      “No.”

      Prejudice stared her fully in the face. The wounded part of herself screamed, No, go away! Clenching her hands at her sides, Erin realized the Great Spirit was testing her. She had been tested before and nearly died. This was a test of faith, a trial by fire of the worst sort. Taking in a deep, halting breath, she said, “Then I guess you had better go back to your car, get whatever luggage you have and come with me.”

      Nonplussed, Dain just stared at her for a moment. “Where are we going?”

      “To my hogan.” She pointed toward a set of low, rounded red hills in the distance. “We are about five miles from my home. If you are determined to stay, then you need to have enough clothes—and food.”

      He was feeling weak again, and hot. The fever was beginning to boil up from his toes, calves, and into his thighs. Soon Dain would begin to feel light-headed and he’d have to lie down until the fever passed. He saw Erin watching him expectantly. There was no way he could carry anything five miles in his present condition. Anger boiled through him. He’d be damned before he’d tell her he couldn’t make the trek by himself, or that he needed help.

      “Just tell me where you live. I’ll get there,” he snapped.

      Erin whispered, “What does it cost you to ask for help?”

      Her soft, compassion-filled words caught him off guard. Still, he snapped his mouth shut and glared. “I said I’d get there. Even if I have to crawl, I’ll get there.”

      “You stopped asking for help when you were eight years old.”

      Shock bolted through him and his eyes widened at her words. For a moment, he hated her for knowing the truth deep inside him. And then he realized there was no way she could have such intimate knowledge of him. His mind raced for answers, but logical solutions eluded him. Dropping his chin, he stared at his muddy, soaked hiking boots.

      “Asking for help is natural,” Erin continued, her voice wary. “Even animals, when they are sick, will go to a healthy animal to be licked, protected and cared for. Humans are no different.” She forced a gentle smile for his benefit. “Perhaps that was beaten out of you long ago, but if you want to heal yourself, you must learn to ask for help.”

      Pride wouldn’t allow him to speak. He drew himself up to his full height, his hands resting tensely on his hips. “I see your game. Your arrogance precedes you, Ms. Wolf—or whoever the hell you want me to think you are. I see through your games. You’re no different than a businessman or a board of directors at a corporation. You’re manipulating me. Trying to take my power away from me. Well, it’s not going to happen. It’ll be a cold day in hell when I ask you or anyone for help, believe me.”

      Shrugging, Erin said, “Fine, believe what you want to believe, Dain.” She gestured to the road, mostly washed away by the recent rain. “Your life has been in your hands at all times. I do not wish to take anything from you, but rather, invest it back into you. But you don’t see that yet. Follow these tracks. You will go past a series of hills, and then, down below the mesa, is my hogan. I must continue to walk with my sheep so they may find enough to eat today. I will be back at the hogan near sunset.” She hoped he would never show up.

      Dain watched in disbelief as she turned and spoke in a foreign language to the white wolf. Instantly, the wolf was up on his feet, herding the sheep along the wash, where there were new sprigs of grass to eat. At first Dain hated Erin Wolf. And then, as he felt the fever and weakness begin to eat away at his anger, he almost shouted out for help. But he didn’t. To hell with her!

      He stood his ground on locked knees as he watched her disappear from sight down a draw that led into the huge gulch about half a mile away. So what should he do? Turning, he looked at the truck. Should he walk back to the highway and hitch a ride back to Many Farms and leave? Go back to the East Coast? And do what? Die?

      Shoving his fingers through his short black hair, he glared in the direction Erin and her sheep had disappeared. What an enigma she was! She’d said she couldn’t heal him—that he could heal himself. Snorting violently, Dain turned around and began to clump back to his vehicle. Hell of a thing! Well, no doctor had ever told him that. Just the opposite. They all said they couldn’t help him with their drugs, radiation or fancy, million-dollar pieces of equipment. And though some may have inferred they could help eradicate his tumor, they all eventually found out they couldn’t.

      As he slipped and slid down the wall of the wash, Dain cursed out loud. The words echoed off the walls.

      As he trudged drunkenly back to the vehicle and jerked open the door, he felt the fever draining him, as it always did. Out of breath due to his weakness and the six-thousand-foot altitude, he climbed into the truck and laid his head back on the seat, closed his eyes and literally trembled. Exhaustion claimed him, all his anger destroyed in the wake of the fever. He hated the fact that the tumor was controlling him. All his life he’d worked to make sure nothing ever controlled him again, and yet this damn tumor was doing exactly that.

      Erin’s oval face with its high cheekbones danced gently behind his closed eyes. Her light brown eyes danced with such life in their СКАЧАТЬ