Necessary Evil Read Online Free PDF Page B

Maybe it was the way Jessie said the word, the shrug of her shoulders, or her tone when she had asked him to stay. Or maybe what was unconscious had just become conscious. He felt as though he had just kicked a helpless creature.
    Claudie was coming back through the doorway to check on her horse. Or her sister. Kier wasn't sure which.
    "Hi, how you doing?" Jessie said to Claudie, taking her arm. Jessie seemed confident, soothing, and strong. Perhaps he was imagining things. Never in a single day had he had so many catastrophes.
    Things would get better, they always did. Perhaps things were actually not so bad. The foal would survive, and the mare would recover. He doubted Winona would be doing any more surrogate mothering. She could work in his vet clinic.
    Kier was bidding Jessie and Claudie farewell, still thinking about Jessie, when it happened.
    It started as a barely audible roar, but turned into shrieking thunder. The air seemed to compress; even the storm seemed to still. Incredibly bright light flashed overhead, streaming through the falling snow.
    Concussive shock waves sent a rolling vibration through the barn, and a series of muffled booms shook the air again. Kier allowed his awareness to expand as his body absorbed the reverberations. He looked everywhere and nowhere, marveling at the intensity of the light. On the wind he smelled kerosene, pungent and foreign.
    Then the cold silence of a winter pasture reclaimed the Donahue ranch. Turtleneck had disappeared behind a haystack.
    "What in the name of heaven—" Claudie began.
    Kier's heart picked a slightly faster rhythm, but his calm remained. Separating things in his mind, like untangling a snarled line, he knew that the explosions, the light, the roar, and the odors had been man-made. No natural phenomenon could account for what he had just experienced.
    "That sounded like a jet crashing," said Jessie.
    "Like jet engines near full throttle," Kier agreed. "Before the impact."
    "Oh my God," Claudie breathed.
    Kier squinted into the blizzard, which showed no sign of letting up.
    "I'm going," he told them.
    "I'm coming too," said Jessie just as quickly.
    Kier knew it would only waste time to argue with her.
    "Suit yourself," he said and ran into the storm.
     
     
     
     
     

Chapter 2
     
     
     
    A man who ignores the bear in the night will be the feast by morning.
     
    —Tilok proverb
     
     
     
    S talking Bear sat on Iron Mountain under the outstretched branches of a giant Douglas fir. There were two faces to this tree: the windward (the angrier face) and the lee. On the lee side, a large boulder created a wall. Between the rock and the tree, the mountain made a shelter as peaceful as the place for a babe between its mother's breasts. Despite the storm, the snow had scarcely dusted the old man's blankets.
    A host of men had descended upon Iron Mountain over the past twenty-four hours. They had guns and walked about with maps and gadgets, trampling the forest underfoot, and defecating like sick dogs. They talked on and on, with a separate complaint for every twig that pressed into their oversized haunches. Only one among them could listen to the forest, and this man was driven by something unnatural. The other men seemed no more than careless accidents.
    With eyes closed and the blankets over his head, Stalking Bear slept. The pestilence that had drawn so close fanned his dreams into giant flames.
    A distant roaring opened his eyes. It grew and tore across the landscape. He heard it making junk of the trees and covered his ears.
    It stopped as quickly as it had come.
    Stalking Bear rose and stood motionless, watching. He felt the cool in his lungs and the sweat soaking his shirt in the chill of the howling wind. All around, granite cliffs stood in silent witness to this sudden intrusion into the mountain valley.
    Above Stalking Bear, kier, the fish hawk, unfurled its wings and slid through the blowing snow to disappear against the evergreens. In the sudden