Heart of the Hunter Read Online Free PDF Page A

thanks.”
    “Are you sure?” As soon as the words were out of her mouth,
she knew she’d made a mistake. A muscle worked in his jaw and she had the very
real impression that she’d somehow insulted him.
    “It’s just that…I mean, you must have worked up quite an
appetite. I just thought…” Kelly shrugged. “It’s just that I made too much and
I hate to see it go to waste.”
    Lee stared at her from across the table, remembering the
pitying looks he’d gotten from white women when he was a kid begging in the
streets for food, food to feed his invalid grandmother, his little sister, his
alcoholic mother.
    Kelly frowned. Roan Horse was still hungry. She knew it as
surely as she knew the color of her own hair. So she took a deep breath and
said, “It’s a long time ’til lunch, you know.”
    “I’m fine, thank you,” he said, stiffly polite, and then he
stood up and left the room, the rest of his food untouched.
    Kelly stared after him, wondering why he was so touchy,
wondering what she’d said to offend him.
    Outside, Lee ripped the broken rails from the fence,
attacking the corral as if it were every man or woman who had ever humiliated
him. He’d hated begging for food, for money to buy medicine for his
grandmother. He’d hated begging so badly he had turned to stealing instead.
    In the old days, stealing from the enemy had been considered
a great coup and that was how he had looked at it. He’d been full of hate in
his younger days, hate for the whites, hate for the poverty he lived in, for
the ugly little house he shared with his family, hate for the father he barely
remembered who had run off and left them all behind.
    He was breathing hard by the time he’d removed the rails
that needed to be replaced. He’d thought it was all behind him, the hatred, the
anger, the bitterness he’d grown up with. He’d thought he’d buried it when he
buried his mother.
    Bracing one hand on a post, he rested his forehead on his
arm and closed his eyes. They were all gone now. His grandmother had died
peacefully in her sleep. His little sister had died of pneumonia when she was
only eight years old. And his mother had finally drunk herself to death.
    He swore softly. All his life, he’d wanted a vision. He’d
gone alone to the mountains to fast and to pray; he’d offered tobacco to the
four winds, to the earth and the sky, but always a vision had been denied him.
And then, when he had given up all hope, his vision had come.
    Even now, it was clear in his mind. He’d been standing at
his mother’s grave, dry-eyed and alone, wondering what to do with his life,
when the day had turned dark and cold. A heavy gray mist had fallen over the
land and then a man had materialized out of the mist. A tall man with long
black hair and dark copper-colored skin. A warrior who wore a golden eagle on a
thong around his neck.
    You are not alone , the warrior had said. Only
believe and all you desire will be yours.
    Who are you ? Lee had asked. But the warrior hadn’t
answered and Lee had wondered if perhaps he had been seeing himself at some
future time, but that didn’t make sense. How could he foretell his own future?
    The warrior had gone on to tell Lee of a cache of Lakota
gold hidden in a cave in the mountains to the north.
    Find the woman and you will find the treasure , the
warrior had said, and then, like shadows running before a storm, he had
disappeared.
    Well, he had found the woman, Lee mused. His talk of buying
the ranch had been just that, talk. He didn’t have enough money to fill his gas
tank, let alone buy the Triple M, but he’d done what he set out to do. Now all
he had to do was find the gold.
    A wry grin curved his lips as he recalled a sign he’d seen
in an old grocery store in Virginia City.
    THE GOLDEN RULE:
    HE WHO HAS THE
GOLD
    MAKES THE RULES
    Well, he intended to have the gold, one way or another, he
thought grimly. He hadn’t spent a year in that damned jail for