The Dogs of Winter Read Online Free PDF Page B

curse on them.”
    “I see,” she said.
    He watched as she shifted her weight on the couch. The sunlight sliced across the floor and fell upon her boots. They were simple black cowboy boots and he wondered if they had belonged to the dead girl as well.
    “So what about this hee-dee? You think he might want to look through her things?”
    Travis placed his hands on his desk top, palms flat on either side of his legs. “I’m sure he would. But then I happen to know that Marvus’s boys need a new engine for their boat.” He paused, looking for some reaction, though with her eyes hidden behind the ridiculous glasses, he felt himself to be addressing the grinning skull on her cap. “I would hate,” he said finally, “to see them throw their money away on false hopes.”
    “Does this mean that you know who they hired, but you won’t tell me?”
    He could see that she was quick to anger. Unhappily it did not serve to make her any less attractive.
    “Marvus is dead.”
    “I know that.”
    “They caught him in Neah Heads with blood on his caulk boots, and he hanged himself in the jail.”
    The girl was silent.
    “What good is it going to do his family to pay for a curse?”
    “What if Marvus Dove didn’t do it?” the girl asked. “Maybe this person could look at these things. Maybe they would know . . . Maybe they would see things . . .”
    The Hupa had a particular word. Oo-ma-ha. It was not easily translated. It meant something like “beware,” but carried with it a dimension of time. Beware now, here and now, of this place, of this thing. He had grown up with that word. It was considered applicable to the river which was shifting and treacherous, the claimant of many lives. It occurred to him quite suddenly that the presence of Kendra Harmon now called forth that word as well.
    “The Doves are poor,” Travis said finally. “They should spend their money on the engine.”
    “I see.” She returned the cigarettes to her pocket. The ashtray remained at her feet, unused. “You’re an unbeliever then.”
    Travis laughed. “Let me tell you something,” he said. “I believe this. I believe that if I were you, I wouldn’t go walking by the river at night.” He was finding that he did not want to talk anymore about Marvus Dove. Nor, he decided, much to his chagrin, did he want her to leave. The office would go empty without her.
    “Is there some reason why I shouldn’t?”
    “Some would say it isn’t safe.”
    “Someone says that about everything.”
    “You might meet your hee-dee. ”
    “Why should that bother me, if they’re all frauds?”
    “Let me put it this way,” Travis said. “The point is not so much that they are frauds or not frauds. I mean we’re talking about stuff that’s been around for hundreds of years. I think there are a few that are truly adept, practitioners of the old arts. Others . . .” He spread his hands as if to dismiss them. “The thing is this. The black art is not a healing art. To even be interested in it requires a certain kind of person.” He stopped once more, watching her. “Even if you could know for sure that the Doves had hired such a person. Even if you could find that person, which I doubt you could, you would not be welcomed as a friend.”
    She exhaled then and it seemed to him as if some spark had gone out of her. “Of course you’re right,” she said. “It was crazy, wasn’t it, a crazy idea . . .”
    He smiled. Her sudden vulnerability had taken him off guard. “I can tell you what to do if you ever meet a person like that,” he offered.
    “A hee-dee? ”
    “They would probably not identify themselves to you in that way.”
    “And what would I do?”
    “You would have to show that your magic is stronger than his.”
    She seemed to give this a moment’s thought.
    “Tell me,” she asked. “Is it always a him?”
    “If you believe the old stories. The hee-dees were usually men, although they could change their shapes into