Tallchief: The Hunter by Cait London Read Free Book Online Page B

summons was his first, and he was set to enjoy it. Maybe the years of traveling had left him hungering for a home and the sound of women and children. Maybe there was more of Sam the Truck in Adam, reflecting the constant travel; but Adam lacked Sam the Truck’s friends. Perhaps that was why Adam enjoyed creating the stories and the products, a family all his own.
    He dialed Sam the Truck’s corporate offices and left a message for an overnight shipment of the toys. It would be a heartwarming scene he intended to remember, the Tallchief children happily playing with his creations.
     

    The next day, a drift of light snow swirled around Liam’s pickup truck as Adam drove to the Tallchief Cattle Ranch. The chill of the late afternoon foretold a cold night; the smoke rising from the sprawling rock and wood home was inviting. Soaring in the distance was rugged, snow-covered Tallchief Mountain and the nearby lake looked black and cold, whitecaps whipped by the late March winds.
    Adam parked beside other cars and pickups in front of the home where the five Tallchiefs—Duncan, Calum, Birk, Fiona and Elspeth—had fought to stay together after their parents were killed. “Stand and fight,” Elspeth had said, and Adam wondered if he were meant to stay in one place for long. He already knew how to fight—survival in New Pony after he’d testified against the teenage gang had been no easy affair.
    A quick survey of the various parked vehicles told him that Jillian hadn’t arrived. Just as well, Adam brooded silently; he wasn’t finished with her or certain of controlling the temper she could still rake from him. He didn’t want to make a bad impression on the family Liam treasured, as did he.
    In a last-minute fancy, and proud of Elspeth’s gift, Adamhad slung the Tallchief plaid around his shoulders. The wind tugged at it now. Collecting the big sack filled with a variety of Sam the Truck models—from the elaborate with a doll driver down to the plastic with rounded edges for toddlers—Adam stepped from the truck. He hunched his peacoat collar up against the wind that smelled fresh and clean, scented of pine and smoke. After a day of clearing up the rubble in front of the cabin, hauling the old linoleum away and burning the wooden rubble, Adam had given himself to the mind-clearing task of chopping wood. Sam’s brand new friend Nancy the Flatbed Hauler needed a spiffy ad campaign launch with a new storybook already brewing in Adam’s mind. He could almost see Nancy on the plastic highway with her other friends—Tracy the Pickup Truck and Eddie the Railroad Crossing Warning with his red light and his long, movable, black-and-white arm.
    In the distance, veiled by the light snow, cattle grazed upon several huge round bales of hay. To the other side and sheltered from the elements by a rock bluff, the thick coats of a small sheep herd almost blended with the snow. “Aye,” he whispered to the wind, lifting his face to it. Amen Flats was a place for belonging—if you weren’t the footloose kind.
    Elspeth opened the door before he knocked, a toddler balanced on her hip, this time not her own, but with eyes just as gray and hair as black. A long sleek braid coursed down her red sweater. “Aye. It is a good home to come to when the heart is weary. The house has been added to and changed a bit, but holds a treasure of memories of dark times and of good. Ah, you’re wearing the plaid. That’s good, wearing of the colors when you come home. I only wish I could talk my brothers into doing the same more often.”
    “Da?” the toddler ventured, holding out his chubby arms to Adam.
    The warmth of Elspeth’s knowing welcome, the life andscents inside the house, and the boy, unafraid of strangers, curled around Adam’s heart. He rummaged through the sack of toys and found a squeaking, rounded plastic truck, just right for a teething toddler, whose delighted squeal caught the attention of the other children.
    “You’ve