Medicine Wheel Read Online Free PDF

thought.
    “Pilar, can you come with me? I think you may be needed at the C Bar C. Kirsten Cavelle may be in a bad way. Myles, get dressed and saddle up and make a beeline for your Uncle Thad’s. Tell him I said to get his ass over to the Cavelle place and that it’s for a human patient not a critter. Apparently, the lady’s been badly beaten.”
    The black-haired boy’s eyes were instantly alert and he wheeled to head back upstairs to get dressed, Pilar not far behind. “I’ll be out of the house in five minutes, Dad.”
    “And, Myles?
    “Yeah, Dad?”
    “Tell your Uncle Thad to bring his photography gear. Tell him I said it’s very important. And you stay with him to help carry whatever he needs.”
    “I’ll help him however he wants.”
    He turned back to Chet. “Chet, I need you to ride on in to Manhattan. Find the sheriff and let him know what’s happened. No hurry. Don’t run your horse into the ground. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
    The grizzled cowhand cocked his head and looked at Cam with a glint in his eyes. “If there’s one thing I’m damned good at, Mr. Locke, it’s movin’ slow. Manhattan’s a good eight mile ride, and I’ll probably have to rest my mount. Might even get lost with the dark and all.”
    “Thanks for everything, Chet. Now I’d better get dressed and head over to Kirsten’s.”

8

    C AM AND P ILAR rode side by side, their Appaloosas, his gelding and her mare, forced to pick their way in the darkness up the rocky slopes that rose eventually to the C Bar C ranch buildings. Cam took comfort in having Pilar nearby. Her quiet competence was always calming, and he marveled sometimes how, after sixteen years of marriage to this woman born and raised in a great hacienda on the Texas side of the Mexican border, she was as exciting and beautiful and beguiling to him as when he first met her on his way home from the war.
    Pilar had been only fifteen then, and he had been a young cavalry captain, reeling yet from bitter defeat, when he stopped at the Sanchez ranch to see the fine Appaloosa stock bred and raised by Pilar’s father, Guillermo Sanchez, the only herd Cam was aware of outside the northwestern United States. Sanchez had invited him to stay over a few days, and the tired soldier took him up on it. During the stay, he had encountered the dark-eyed beauty whose visage haunted him all the way home to Kansas.
    “Ben and Sarah were sleeping soundly when I left the house,” Cam said. Ben was their seven-year-old and Sarah was eleven.
    “Yes. I stopped by the bunkhouse and told Cookie we were riding out. He said he’d get up to the house and be there when they awaken.”
    Cookie was an old scraggly-bearded trail cook who cooked for the seasonal wranglers and year-round hands, as well as the Locke family. Everybody on the ranch at any given time took their meals in the dining room of the big ranch house, so Cookie more or less ran the domestic side of the household with Pilar’s occasional assistance.
    Pilar, of course, had saddled both of their horses by the time Cam got to the barn, and they had ridden hard and fast until they neared the C Bar C and the terrain turned rough. They finally reached the more level ground of the ranch site and galloped into the yard and dismounted.
    Cam knocked softly on the door before opening it and entering the house. He immediately saw Kirsten slumped in the rocking chair, either unconscious or sleeping. He rushed to her side. “Kirsten. Kirsten.”
    She did not reply.
    Pilar pushed him aside and, pointing to the bucket next to the rocker, ordered, “Get some fresh water from the well.”
    When Cam returned and set the bucket down, Pilar took one of the cloths Chet had left behind, dipped it in the water, and began to bathe Kirsten’s battered face. Then she started to open the robe and examine the chest wound, which was the obvious source of so much of the blood. “Go away,” she told Cam.
    Cam began surveying what he thought