The Dogs of Winter Read Online Free PDF Page A

river.
    It had been an odd evening, with Drew very much the mountain man in possession of his child bride. Travis had taken another man with him, a Yurok who owned land near the Harmons’ and whom, Travis had concluded, it would be good for Drew to meet. What he remembered most about the evening now was Drew’s complete disinterest in affairs relating to the reservation, together with what Travis had taken as a profound unhappiness on the part of his wife.
    Kendra had been pregnant at the time. She had fixed a dinner of fish and vegetables. Travis had thought her pale and exotic and maybe just a little neurotic. Or, perhaps, he had decided, she was simply lonely in a new place without sunshine. She seemed pleased to have visitors, but soon after supper, Travis and the Yurok had been whisked by Drew to his workroom for a detailed rundown of his interests and inventions. The foremost of these were surfboards and old woods and he had spoken at great length of the Hawaiian Islands where he had been allowed to prowl among the archives ofthe Bishop Museum, making template drawings of ancient boards found in the caves of Hawaiian kings and which he seemed to believe were possessed of a kind of magic.
    Eventually Travis had given up trying to turn the conversation toward matters pertaining to the neighbors with which Drew had surrounded himself. In the end he had gone home wasted on beer and Hawaiian buds, with a headful of Hawaiian magic and the distinct impression that the arrival of Drew and Kendra Harmon would not lead to happiness. Within a week, the girl had miscarried and Drew had been bitten by a shark.
    The last he had heard of Kendra was that she had been seen walking deep in the woods at the side of the river in the dead of night. It was a matter of some talk on the reservation. The kidongwe roamed at night, his face painted black, armed with a weapon of human bone and sinew. Not something one would want to meet by the river in the hour of his strength—not, at any rate, if one believed in the old tales. But then the old tales were still taken seriously on the reservations. The black magic, in particular, was taken seriously, and it was a matter of some curiosity to Travis that this was so. For once, there had been a healing magic as well, and it puzzled him the black magic was what held sway in the minds of his people.
    He watched now as the young woman continued to look into the glass. “I guess I should see what she wants,” he said. He stood as he said it.
    “You want some free advice?” the old man asked, for he had been watching the girl, and watching his son as well.
    Travis just looked at him.
    “Stay single. You can’t afford another mistake.”
    Travis thought of responding, then thought better of it. He left the old man seated upon the planter and crossed the mall to his office.
    •  •  •
    The woman had her back to him but turned abruptly at his approach. She was still pale, he thought, and exotic in some way he found difficult to pin down—the product of a climate other than what the coast of Northern California had to offer. What he had forgotten, or somehow failed to notice, was exactly how attractive she was. Thecap and glasses could not hide it. The whiteness of her skin was set in contrast to the black radiance of her hair. He watched as she raised a hand to touch the hollow of her throat with the tips of her fingers. The gesture recalled the impression left by their first meeting. It suggested a degree of excitability, an undercurrent of complications Travis found difficult to resist, though, in fact, he had followed such paths before and always to calamitous endings.
    “You’re Travis,” she told him. “Kendra Harmon.”
    “I remember.”
    As if to further accentuate her coloring, she was dressed entirely in black—boots, jeans, and a blouse. Over these she wore a leather jacket several sizes too large. It was an outfit in which she might have passed for some long-legged teenager,