The Horse Whisperer Read Online Free PDF Page A

Then she was lost. For the trailer surged over her, scooping the horse toward the cab like a butterfly in a book and crushing it there in a final thunderous slam of metal.
       “Hello? Gracie?”
    Robert Maclean paused in the passageway by the back door, holding two large bags of groceries. There was no reply and he went through into the kitchen and dumped the bags on the table.
    He always liked to get the weekend food in before Annie arrived. If he didn’t, they would have to go to the supermarket together and would end up spending an hour there while Annie pondered the fine distinctions between various brands. It never failed to astound him how someone who every moment of her working life made snap decisions, Committing thousands, even millions of dollars, could at weekends spend ten minutes wondering which kind of pesto sauce to buy. It also cost a lot more than if he shopped alone, because Annieusually failed to reach any final decision over which brand was best and they’d end up buying all three.
    The downside of doing it alone was of course the inevitable criticism he would face for buying the wrong things. But in the lawyerly manner which he applied to all areas of his life, Robert had weighed both sides of this issue and shopping without his wife emerged the clear winner.
    Grace’s note lay by the phone, where she had left it. Robert looked at his watch. It was only a little after ten and he could understand the two girls wanting to spend longer out on a morning like this. He pushed the playback button on the answering machine, took off his parka and started to put away the groceries. There were two messages. The first, from Annie, made him smile. She must have called right after he’d left for the supermarket. Time he was up, indeed. The second was from Mrs. Dyer up at the stables. All she said was would they please call her. But something in her voice made Robert go cold.
       The helicopter hung there for a while above the river, taking in the scene, then dipped its nose and lifted up over the woods, filling the valley with the deep, reverberating thud of its blades. The pilot looked down to one side as he circled again. There were ambulances, police cars and rescue squad vehicles down there, red lights flashing, all parked in fan formation in the field beside the massive jackknifed truck. They had marked out where they wanted the helicopter to land and a cop was making big, unnecessary arm signals.
    It had taken just ten minutes for them to fly down from Albany and the paramedics had worked all the way, going through routine checks of the equipment.Now they were ready and watched silently over the pilot’s shoulder as he circled and made his approach. The sun flashed briefly on the river as the helicopter followed its own shadow in over the police roadblock and over a red four-wheel-drive car also making its way toward the scene of the wreck.
    Through the window of the police car, Wayne Tanner watched the helicopter hover above the landing spot and gently lower itself, whipping up a blizzard around the head of the cop who was directing it in.
    Wayne was in the front passenger seat with a blanket over his shoulders, holding a cup of something hot he hadn’t yet tasted. He could make no more sense of all the activity going on outside than he could of the harsh, intermittent babble of the police radio beside him. His shoulder ached and there was a small cut on his hand that the ambulance woman had insisted on bandaging extravagantly. It hadn’t needed it. It was as if she didn’t want him, surrounded by such carnage, to feel left out.
    Wayne could see Koopman, the young deputy sheriff whose car he was sitting in, over by the truck talking to the rescue squad people. Nearby, leaning on the hood of a rusted pale blue pickup and listening in, was the little hunter guy in the fur hat who had raised the alarm. He’d been up in the woods, heard the crash and gone straight down to the mill where they called