Black Hills Read Online Free PDF

tattletale.” What an insult. “But you can’t go off by yourself like that. Holy shit, Lil.”
    “I know how to track. Not as good as Dad, but I’m pretty good at it. And I know the trails. We hike a lot, and we camp out and everything. I had my compass, and my kit.”
    “What if the cougar had been out there?”
    “I’d have seen it again. It looked right at me that day, right at me. Like it knew me, and it felt like . . . It sort of felt like it did.”
    “Come on.”
    “Seriously. My mother’s grandfather was Sioux.”
    “Like an Indian?”
    “Yeah. Native American,” she corrected. “Lakota Sioux. His name was John Swiftwater, and his tribe—his, like, people—lived here for generations and stuff. They had animal spirits. Maybe the cougar was mine.”
    “It wasn’t anybody’s spirit.”
    She just continued to train her gaze on the hills. “I heard it that night. Late the night we saw it. I heard it scream.”
    “Scream?”
    “That’s the sound they make because they can’t roar. Only the big cats—like lions—can roar. Something in their throat. I forget. I’ll have to look it up again. Anyway, I just wanted to try to find it.”
    He couldn’t help but admire what she’d done, even if it was crazy. No girl he knew would sneak out to track down a mountain lion. Except Lil. “If it’d found you, maybe you’d be breakfast.”
    “You can’t tell.”
    “I said I wouldn’t, but you can’t sneak out and go looking for it again either.”
    “I think it would’ve come back by now if it was going to. I wonder where it went.” She looked off again, into the hills. “We could go camping. Dad really likes to. We take like a nature hike and camp overnight. Your grandparents would let you.”
    “Like in a tent? In the mountains?” The idea was both terrifying and compelling.
    “Yeah. We’d catch fish for supper and see the falls, and buffalo and all kinds of wildlife. Maybe even the cougar. When you get all the way to the peak, you can see clear to Montana.” She shifted to look back as the dinner bell rang. “Time to eat. We’ll go camping. I’ll ask my dad. It’ll be fun.”
     
     
     
    HE WENT CAMPING and learned how to bait a hook. He knew the rush-up-the-spine thrill of sitting by a campfire and listening to the echoing howl of a wolf, and the shock of watching a fish he’d caught more through luck than design flash silver in the sunlight at the end of his rod.
    His body toughened; his hands hardened. He knew an elk from a mule deer and how to care for tack.
    He could ride at a gallop, and that was the biggest thrill of his life.
    He earned a guest spot on Lil’s baseball team, and brought in a run with a strong double.
    Years later, he’d look back and realize his life had turned that summer, and would never be the same again. But all Coop knew at the age of eleven was he was happy.
    His grandfather taught him to carve and whittle, and to Coop’s utter joy, presented him with a pocketknife—to keep. His grandmother showed him how to groom a horse, top to bottom, how to check for injury or illness.
    But his grandfather taught him how to talk to them.
    “It’s in the eyes,” Sam told him. “In the body, the ears, the tail, but first it’s in the eyes. What he sees in yours, what you see in his.” He held a lead line on a fractious yearling colt who reared and pawed the air. “Doesn’t matter what you say so much, because they’ll see what you’re thinking in your eyes. This one wants to show he’s tough, but what he is is a little spooked. What do we want from him, what’re we going to do? Is he going to like it? Will it hurt?”
    Even as he spoke to Coop, Sam looked into the colt’s eyes, kept his voice soft and soothing. “What we’re going to do is shorten up on the line here. A firm hand doesn’t have to be a hard one.”
    Sam eased in, got that firm hand on the bridle. The colt quivered and danced. “Needs a name.” Sam stroked a hand over the colt’s