To Catch a Wolf Read Online Free PDF

entrance.

    Sunset lent the camp a certain softness that almost disguised the atmosphere of
    shabbiness and adversity. Tents and colorfully painted wagons, marked with hard use
    and frequent repair, lay scattered at the edge of a wide valley filled with sagebrush and
    saltbush. A herd of sway-backed horses clumped together in a makeshift corral.

    Everywhere there was a certain frantic activity, as if the members of Harry French's
    Family Circus did not dare to stop moving. People hurried to and fro, wrapped in much-
    mended coats and blankets. A man juggled several bright red balls without seeming to
    touch them. An impossibly slender woman balanced on a wire almost too fine to be
    visible to normal eyes. Dogs ran about yapping and jumping through hoops.

    The one quiet place was centered at a fire beside an open tent furnished with rows of
    rickety wooden tables and benches. There a fat man cooked a dismally small section of
    meat on a spit, attended by a mob of barefoot children who watched with the grim
    concentration of hunger.

    Morgan knew poverty when he saw it. He had suffered hunger many times in his life,
    and had traveled with no more possessions than the clothing on his back. His great
    advantage had been the wolf, which had allowed him to hunt and to survive under
    conditions that would have killed an ordinary man.

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    These folk were not so fortunate. It did not take much imagination to see that they had
    suffered the "bad luck" Harry French had mentioned, though Morgan knew little of
    circuses and what made them prosper or fail.

    He did understand that no man helped another without expecting something in return.
    Harry French's "children" hoped for something from him, something he could not give
    them. He might outrun guilt, as he'd outrun so much else. If he left, now, without facing
    those who had saved him

    "You're not going so soon?”

    He looked down at the familiar voice and met a pair of blue eyes in a pixie's face,
    topped by a blaze of wildly curling red hair. Here was the second of his rescuers—his
    captors—the one who had claimed some undisclosed purpose for him. She seemed
    hardly more than a child, flat-chested and narrow-hipped. The tights, knee-length skirt,
    and snug bodice she wore only emphasized her boyish shape.

    She was the first woman he had seen in a decade, and he felt nothing. Neither his heart
    nor his body stirred. He realized with a shock that this girl reminded him of his sister
    Cassidy, so dimly remembered. Only Cassidy's hair had been black, like his.

    The girl whistled through her teeth. "You heal quickly, don't you?" She clasped her
    hands behind her back and circled him, clucking under her breath. "Do you always walk
    around stark naked? I liked you better as a wolf.”

    "Then get out of my way, and you won't see me again.”

    She placed her hands on her hips. "Well, at least you can speak.”

    Morgan bared his teeth. Too late, his mind wailed. Too late. "Who are you?”

    "I'm Caitlin—Caitlin Hughes. Do you have a name?”
    To Catch a Wolf – 19th Century Werewolf 04
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    "Morgan. Holt.”

    "Well, Holt, do you know where you are?”

    "The old man told me.”

    "That old man is Harry, who agreed to take you in, and don't you say anything bad
    about him, or you'll answer to the rest of us." She glared at him. "I doubt that it occurred
    to him that you would just up and leave without a word, after we saved your life.”

    The hairs rose on the back of Morgan's neck. "I did not ask you to help me.”

    "You came to us, didn't you?" She gestured about her eloquently. "We haven't much to
    spare, nothing at all for outsiders, but we accepted you. Who else would have done
    that? You owe us more than running away like a whipped cur.”

    Obligation. Morgan stared across the grounds and at the freedom beyond, so rapidly
    slipping from his grasp. "You think
    there is a reason that I came," he said,