The Story Teller Read Online Free PDF Page B

pen out of her bag and handed them to the young woman. “Give me Todd’s address and telephone number,” she instructed. “I’ll try to talk to him while I’m in Denver. And give me his grandparents’ number.”
    “Oh, Vicky, thank you.” Relief and gratitude mingled in the young woman’s expression as she scribbled on the pad. “Call me as soon as you find him,” she said, handing back the pen and notepad. The girl had also written down her own phone number.
    Vicky pulled the door shut, pushed the gear into forward, and wheeled onto the street. In the rearview mirror she caught a glimpse of Annemarie walking toward a brown pickup, head bowed, arms tucked at her sides. A right turn at the corner, and the girl was gone. Vickyfelt a small shiver run along her spine, like some unbidden and inexplicable premonition.
    She pressed hard on the accelerator. A quick look at her watch confirmed what she feared. She would have to race the clock all the way to the Riverton airport.

4
    V icky couldn’t get Annemarie’s story out of her mind. Settling back into her seat as the plane rose above Riverton, she went over what the girl had said: Todd suddenly appearing, unannounced, agitated about something, wanting to talk to Father John. Why would he make the long drive to the reservation unless he was in some sort of trouble? That’s when people always turned to Father John—when they were in trouble.
    And then Todd had disappeared into Denver. Disappeared? Annemarie hadn’t been able to reach him for three days. That hardly constituted a disappearance. There had to be an explanation. Another girlfriend, most likely. In any case, after the meeting at the museum, she would find the young man, make sure he was okay, and explain how worried Annemarie was. Whatever was bothering Todd Harris, it wasn’t fair to keep his fiancée in the dark.
    Feeling more relaxed, Vicky set her forehead against the rounded frame of the window and watched the great expanse of earth below, streaked in sunshine and shadow, melting into the rim of the sky. Wild grasses were the faintest of green now, but she knew they would soon turn brown in the summer’s heat. There was the occasional farm, the clump of reddish-brown buildings, the emerald circles of cultivated fields, but most of theland was open, the way it had been when her people lived here in the Old Time.
    She imagined another June, the time to move the village from the lee of the mountains onto the plains, where the great herds of buffalo could be found. The chiefs riding in the lead, women behind, with infants in cradle boards strapped to their backs, dogs in the rear, pulling travois piled high with clothing and household items, the warriors galloping back and forth, guarding the line. Somewhere below, among the cottonwood trees along the banks of the shimmering streams, the long line halted. The men tethered the ponies, the women scurried about setting up the tipis. They would think the shadow passing overhead was an eagle.
    The squawk of static, the pilot’s voice droning through the cabin called her back to the present. Ten more minutes, and they would land in Denver. In the distance now, Vicky could see the skyscrapers gleaming silver in the sun, the tentacles of the city reaching onto the plains, the miniature cars and trucks rolling along ribbons of highways. To the west rose the massive white peaks of the Rocky Mountains. Then the airport came into view, its white Teflon roof peaked like the mountains, like the tipis in the villages of her people.
    Forty minutes later Vicky gripped the steering wheel of the rented Taurus, heading west on I-70, a highway she had driven often in the years she had spent in Denver. It seemed different now. More automobiles, new exit and entrance-ramps, or had she just forgotten the rush of a city, the steady
brrr
of traffic, the smell of exhaust fumes? She banked through a series of turns that locals called the “mousetrap” and joined the stream