Canyons by Gary Paulsen Read Free Book Online Page A

men in the heavy blue clothes—he would be free.
    Again they fired. Again the small whistles, the little chu-chu-chu of death.
    Ahead of him Magpie suddenly jerked erect on his horse and a red spray went out from his chest. He threw up his arms almost as if he were waving both hands. He began to fall forward, then fell back and to the side and was dragged by the rope around his waist. His horse tried to keep running without stepping on him but could not and veered off into a circle fighting away from the body.
    The body.
    Magpie.
    Magpie was a body.
    He must untie the rope holding him to the straw-colored horse. He fumbled with the knot, jerked, finally pulled it free. Only twenty good leaps to the canyon mouth, to the trail, to safety, to life.
    Magpie was a body.
    He slammed his heels into the horse, asking for more, still more speed. Behind him there was more gunfire. The bluebellies reloaded as they rode, shot again and again and still the bullets missed.
    Ten leaps.
    Now five.
    Coyote Runs felt a slap on his leg and the horsegrunted beneath him and began to go down. They had hit the straw-colored horse. But when he looked down to the side he saw his foot hanging loosely, blood coming from just above the ankle.
    They had hit him and the bullet had gone on into the horse. His medicine had failed—how could that be? He was so sure of it.…
    No thinking now, too late for anything.
    The horse collapsed, its legs getting softer and softer as it caved in and just as it hit the ground Coyote Runs fell off to the right and rolled on his shoulder. His bow, all his arrows were gone. He had no way to fight but it didn’t matter now.
    He was in the canyon.
    The mouth of the canyon.
    His medicine place—he had to reach it. It was all he could think of now, pulling himself along, and he scrabbled on his one good leg and his hands up a narrow trail, kept going though the pain came now in waves, covered him in red waves, kept pulling and fighting until he was in a grassy area.
    They would not come, he thought. The soldiers would not come after him up in the canyon. He would keep going but they would not come for him. They would turn away.
    He was wrong.
    He heard them yelling in back of him, yelling to each other as they started up the trail after him. Theirvoices echoed from the canyon walls. They did not sound like men, the voices, but like devil voices, death voices, ghost voices.
    He shook his head. The craziness from the wound was coming into his head and he shook it to clear it, to stop the weakness.
    He needed everything now. Had to have everything in him to get away.
    He fought forward on his good leg and hands, crawling and hobbling across the grassy area, the dry grass crumbling beneath him, the morning sun warm on his back.
    Everything bright, everything very clear and bright and hot and fresh. The air smelled good, even through the pain; smelled sweet and good.
    I will do this thing, he thought, his head momentarily clear. I will get away from the bluebellies and to the place of the sacred ones and back to my mother and ask the question of medicine, ask what I do not know.
    The soldiers voices grew fainter.
    I am doing this—I am making it away from them. O spirits, dust spirits and wind spirits and ghost spirits help me, come now to help me.
    They were in the streambed of the canyon, down and to his right, between him and the place of the ancient ones. They blocked him. He would have to hide. He would have to find a place and hide from them andlet them search until he could get around them and while thinking of it, while wondering where he could hide, his eyes caught the dark place beneath an overhanging boulder looking down on the spring.
    All at the same time he saw the spring and the boulder and the dark place and knew what he had to do. His body, his whole being wanted to get to the water at the spring. He had never been so thirsty. But that was where the soldiers would look. They would seek him there.
    Instead he