Tisha Read Online Free PDF Page A

able to blubber out the whole story.
    “It is something you must get used to in this country,” he said. “We will find some dry ground and after you change clothes you will feel better. Can you ride now?”
    “I guess so.”
    “Madam, where is your hat?” “Back there somewhere. I don’t care about it anymore.”
    He rode back a ways before he found it. When he returned with it and I saw the shape it was in I told him to throw it away. He said he’d prefer not to.
    “It is very becoming on you. Perhaps we can wash the mud off at the next creek.”
    The revolver lay heavy against my thigh. I hadn’t even thought to use it, I realized. I mentioned it to Mr. Strong.
    “It was fortunate you didn’t. That grizzly would have torn you to pieces.”
    As soon as we reached some dry ground he unpacked the horse that had my things on it, then turned around so I could change. Luckily, I’d bought an extra pair of knickers back in Eagle, but having to put on a pair of practically new pumps, I wished now that I’d bought some boots. Mr. Strong had advised me to, but I wanted to save the money.
    “After this,” he said before we mounted up again, “I want you to keep up with the pack train.”
    “I’d like to, but I just can’t get Blossom to mind me.”
    That made him mad. Without saying a word he walked over to a tree and broke a branch from it. Heswished it around a couple of times, then grabbed Blossom’s rein. First he jerked Blossom’s head from side to side, punishing his mouth with the bit, then pushed him backwards until he almost fell. Blossom was scared and so was I. He tried to rear, but Mr. Strong held onto the rein. Then he lashed out at Blossom’s neck with the switch while he held the rein tight Blossom snorted and whinnied in panic, but Mr. Strong wouldn’t stop. Dirt and stones were flying all over the place. How he held onto that big animal I didn’t know, but he must have hit Blossom on the neck and face about twenty times. When he was done Blossom was quivering so badly I felt sorry for him. Mr. Strong’s hat had fallen off. I gave it to him when he handed me the switch. He was sweating, and with his hat off, the top of his head bald, he didn’t look so forbidding.
    “If he gives you any trouble after this, whack him on the neck. He’ll mind.”
    I didn’t have to. All I had to do from then on was tap him and he did what he was supposed to do.
    After that Mr. Strong became more friendly. Up to then I didn’t think he liked me, but after a while he even asked me where I’d come from and how I happened to come to Alaska.
    I told him about how I’d been teaching in Forest Grove Elementary in Oregon when the territorial commissioner of education visited there last year. “He gave a lecture in the auditorium about teaching here, and he made it sound so exciting and adventurous that I made out an application. And here I am.”
    “Where were you brought up?”
    “In Colorado. My father was in the mining business,” I said. Somehow it sounded better than saying he’d just been a coal miner.
    “You seem a little young to be out on your own.”
    “I’m almost twenty,” I said.
    “You don’t look it.”
    I knew he was going to say that Just before I’d left Forest Grove I’d gone into a barbershop and had my hair bobbed. I’d figured that since I was going to be teaching somewhere in the wilds, it would be easier to take care of if it was short Up to then people alwaystook me for being older than I was, but from then on they kept telling me I looked like a kid.
    “I meant no offense by that, madam,” he said. “I was twelve when I left home myself and the experience hasn’t hurt me yet.”
    “I was an old woman compared to you. I was sixteen when I left Colorado and started teaching in Forest Grove.”
    As we rode he told me a little about himself, of an unhappy childhood in North Carolina, then running away to go to California. He was in his late twenties when he came to Alaska