One in Every Crowd by Ivan E. Coyote Read Free Book Online

trained to follow her horse. Hers would plod along at tourist speed in front of me, and I would try to make my legs copy the way hers moved, the seamless satin groove her hips fell into with every swing of the horse’s step.
    Sometimes we would ride alone and she would whistle and kick the insides of her boots in and race ahead of me. Little Chief would pick up the pace a bit like the foot soldier he was, and my heart would begin to pound. Cathy would ride for a while and then whirl her horse around, her long braid swinging, then hanging down her front as she rode back towards me.
    One day we were lazily loping alongside the little road that led back to the hot springs when one of Cathy’s admirers came up from behind in a pick-up. He honked hello as he and his road-dust drove by, which spooked Little Chief and he bucked me off.
    On impact, tears and snot and all the air in my lungs were expelled. I lay on the hard-packed dirt and dry grass for a minute, bawling when I could catch little pieces of my breath.
    “Get on,” Cathy said, hard-lipped as she rode up beside me. “Get back up on that horse right now. Do it now or you’ll be too afraid later.”
    She was tough like that.
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    One Christmas Eve shortly after she and John had finished drywalling, our family all had turkey dinner out at their place. We were each allowed to open one present, and my mom had suggested I bring the one shaped just like a brand new toboggan from under our tree at home.
    The coolest thing about Cathy was how she would gear up in a snowsuit in thirty below in the blue-black sky of a Yukon night (which begins at about two in the afternoon around solstice) and go play outside with the rest of the kids. Not in a grown-up, sit-on-the-porch-and-smoke-cigarettes-and-watch kind of way, but in a dirty-kneed, get-roadrash-kid kind of a way. Right after I ripped the last of the wrapping paper off my gleaming red sled, she was searching through the sea of snowboots by the door for her black Sorels and pulling her jacket off the hook behind the door.
    “Let’s go up the hill behind the house and give it a try. Not much of a trail in winter, but we’ll make one.”
    I suited up right behind her, followed by my sister and a stream of cousins with mittens on strings.
    It was so cold outside that the air burned arrows into the backs of our throats and frost collected on our eyelashes above where our scarves ended, which would melt if you closed your eyes for too long and freeze on your cheeks.
    We packed as many of us onto the sled as we could so everyone could have a go. We rode and climbed, rode and climbed until our toes began to burn. “Once more, everybody goes one more time, then we should go in,” Cathy breathed through her scarf. She pushed her butt to the very back of the sled, and motioned for my little sister to shove in front of her, between her legs. I jumped in the front, and my little sister’s snowsuit whistled up against mine as she wrapped her legs around me. The toboggan’s most alluring feature was the two metal emergency brakes on either side, with the black plastic handles molded to fit the shape of your hand. I tried to grab both and steer, but my sister also wanted to hold onto one, and started to whine. “You can each have one,” Cathy ordered. “You steer one way and you can steer on the other side, okay. you guys. Don’t fight about it, everyone else is waiting for their turn. Let’s go.”
    About halfway down we flew off a bump. My little sister hauled on her brake and we screeched off the path and smashed into a tree. Cathy’s leg hit first and I heard a snap.
    By the time we rolled her onto the sled and pulled her back to the house, her face was glowing blue white and her teeth were chattering. John came running out with a flashlight. He gingerly pulled up the leg of her snow pant, and dropped it again, his face changing from Christmas rum red to moonlight white.
    “Jesus Christ. Get the kids in the house