Hour of the Hunter by J. A. Jance Read Free Book Online Page A

on Baboquivari, another peak many miles to the south. She had told him how, when the Anglo scientists had come to the tribe and asked for permission to build their star-gazing telescopes on the sacred top of Ioligam, the tribal council had insisted that a special clause go into the lease that declared that all caves on the mountain belonged to l'itoi. They were sacred, and not to be disturbed.
    Now, though, as Davy's words slipped into her heart, Rita Antone realized that he regarded the Anglo scientists as different somehow, as a people apart from his own kind. For the first time, she wondered if she had done the right thing.
    Nana Dahd loved her little Olhoni more than life itself, but had she gone too far? Did blond-haired Davy Ladd believe he was disconnected from "those white men" and their telescopes? Had she created an Anglo child who would always watch westerns on television and in the movies with an Indian child's inevitable dread of impending defeat?
    Rita Antone had wanted desperately to pass on her legacy of wisdom, knowledge gleaned from her own grandmother, a much-respected Ban Thak wise woman. She had expected that wisdom to flow through her own son, Gordon, to Gina, her granddaughter. But Gina had been stolen from her, and during the terrible troubles that followed Gina's death, Diana Ladd alone had been Rita's constant ally.
    That was a debt that demanded repayment, and she was paying it back in the only wealth she had at her disposal.
    When O’honi was born, Rita had looked at the fatherless child and had known instinctively that Diana's ability to mother the child had somehow been obliterated with the death of the child's father. So Rita had stepped into the breach, taking on the role of godmother and mentor to the little bald-headed baby. She had been happy to find willing ears into which she could pour all that she knew.
    The old woman had lavished on Davy the kind of love Diana Ladd couldn't wring from her own rock-hard heart.
    At sixty-five years of age, Nana Dahd usually knew her own mind. She lived with a Papago's stolid and abiding faith in life's inevitabilities. This sudden attack of uncertainty caused new beads of sweat to break out on her forehead.
    While Davy dozed contentedly in the sunlit rider's seat, Nana Dahd struggled with her conscience. Down by the shrine where Gina had died, Rita had crossed herself and prayed to the Anglo God, to Father John's God, her mother's God, asking for His blessing on Gina's eternal soul.
    But here, on Ioligam, on I'itoi's sacred mountain, the Anglo God seemed far away and deaf besides.
    "Ni-i wehmatathag I'itoi ahni'i," she whispered, her voice almost inaudible beneath the groaning engine of the laboring GMC. "Fitoi, help me."
    But she wasn't at all sure He would.

 
    Chapter Three
    AT ALMOST SEVEN thousand feet, a brisk breeze struck their faces as Rita and Davy stepped down from the GMC. After the heat of the desert floor far below, the cool mountain air felt almost chilly.
    In the sparsely occupied observatory parking lot, Rita left Davy to unload baskets while she limped toward the gift shop. A little blond-haired girl sitting on sun-soaked steps regarded the Indian woman curiously as she tapped lightly on the visitor center's side entrance.
    At this hour, visitors inside would be watching a movie. Rita disliked walking past them on her way to the craft shop.
    Edwina Galvan, manager of the shop, came to the door.
    Edwina, a Kiowa transplant to the Papago, had fallen in love with and married a young Papago fire fighter who now, as a middle-aged man, served as tribal-council representative from Ban Thak. Indian even in her forties, Edwina's classic Plain features and good looks met and exceeded all the visiting tourists' "real Indian" expectations.
    She augmented a stunning natural beauty with a varying wardrobe of antelope or squash-blossom necklaces that she wasn't shy about removing and selling on the spot if a likely purchaser showed sufficient