On Kingdom Mountain Read Online Free PDF

storm.
    Miss Jane was running beside the oxen. In order to breathe, she had to turn her head away from the snow-laden wind, which blew with a force she had never before felt. It drove snow under her earlappers, between her scarf and lumber jacket, up under her mittens at the wrists, down her felt boots.
    The oxen were indistinct shadows in the snow, and the big togue on the sledge looked like a fish Miss Jane might have sculpted from a block of ice. Then, as suddenly as the storm had struck, the wind and snow let up. The sky lightened and the mountaintop came back into view. It wasn’t a blizzard after all, just a squall. Not far away, standing on the rocky tip of the peninsula jutting out into the frozen bay, holding his limp left arm with his right hand but otherwise appearing unharmed, was the pilot. Nearby, wedged between two table-size plates of shore ice, battered but intact except for its wheels, was the yellow biplane. As she hurried toward it across the ice, a phrase ran through Miss Jane’s mind: “Recalled to life.” Like Dr. Manette in
A Tale of Two Cities
, the aviator had been recalled to life.
    The stranger lifted his left arm with his right hand and repeated his odd, hatchetlike salute, though the movement must have caused him pain, because he winced and immediately lowered his injured arm again to a sling position. A slender man with a dark complexion, dark eyes, and dark wavy hair, he appeared to be about forty. Under his open, fleece-lined leather aviator’s jacket, he wore a white suitcoat, a white shirt with a black four-in-hand necktie, and a crimson vest. His white
slacks were still perfectly creased, and he wore the first pair of white shoes Miss Jane had ever seen on a man’s feet. A thin, dark mustache added to his devil-may-care appearance.
    Showing gleaming white teeth, he said in a mild drawl, “Henry Satterfield at your service, ma’am. With thanks for your navigational assistance. I do believe you saved my machine out there. Not to mention my life.”
    He pointed up the lake with the index finger of his left hand, this time without attempting to lift his arm. Miss Jane looked back over her shoulder and was horrified to see a broad corridor of water stretching from Indian Island nearly all the way back to the peninsula. It occurred to her that
she
might be the one recalled to life. If she had delayed her return by just five minutes, she and the oxen would surely have gone to the bottom of the lake in the breakup.
    â€œAnd this place would be?” Henry Satterfield said, looking around himself with evident interest.
    â€œThis is Kingdom County, Mr. Satterfield,” Jane said. She pointed at the mountain rising above them in the dusk. “That’s Kingdom Mountain, and I’m Jane Hubbell Kinneson.”
    â€œWhy, this is just the place I’ve been looking for,” Henry Satterfield said. He paused and shook his head. “Kingdom Mountain is the very place I’ve been looking for nearly all my life. Do you like riddles, Miss Kinneson?”
    â€œI do,” she said. “And Jane will do nicely, thank you.”
    Henry Satterfield bowed slightly. “Very well, then, Miss Jane. I have a riddle for you. Only I must tell you at the outset that I don’t have an idea in the world what it might mean. It’s called the Riddle of Kingdom Mountain. My grandfather, Captain Cantrell Satterfield, told it to me. It goes like this.”
    At that instant Henry Satterfield’s left arm dropped limply to his side. His right hand moved slowly to his temple, which, Miss Jane now noticed, appeared to be bruised. Then, before
he could recite his grandfather’s riddle, and before Miss Jane could reach out and break his fall, he collapsed onto the ice-strewn shore.

6
    I T WAS LATE APRIL in Kingdom County. All of the ice had gone out of the lake, and mud season had come and gone. Miss Jane had turned Ethan and General Ira Allen out of