The Healer of Harrow Point by Peter Walpole Read Free Book Online Page A

was seldom seriously injured; he simply assumed a lower, submissive role in the family, or went to look for mates and supremacy elsewhere. When the deer battled in earnest, she told me, against wild dogs for instance, they lashed out with their front hooves, which are deadly sharp.
    Emma said that the young fawns matured in a year or so, and might stay with the family or wander off to join another. Sometimes a young deer would rejoin its family after months, or even years, apart.
    She said most bucks only lived to be two or three years old, they were hunted so. Her face tightenedonly a little as she told me this. She shook her head, seemed to force herself to cheer up.
    “Do you know that deer can run as fast as forty miles an hour?” she said, her voice bright again with enthusiasm.
    Well, no, I didn't know, but I was learning.
    She nodded, emphatic and proud and happy. “They can. Did you know that they can leap between the wires of a barbed wire fence, say a foot apart,” she showed with her hands, “at a full run, and not even brush the wires? I've seen it.”
    She spoke quickly and eagerly. I remember she seemed increasingly on edge, her cheerfulness forced, her teaching more mechanical, almost so that it began to seem eerie, unsettling.
    We walked on, mile after mile. The cold, crisp air made for good walking weather. I felt happy and strong, but it seemed to me that Emma's moods were shifting quickly—cheerful for a few moments, and then tense, and sometimes just tired.
    “I didn't know you had to walk so far to meet me,” I said at one point. Emma's changeable mood was starting to make me edgy.
    “These are all my woods, Thomas,” she said. “I walk all through here, every day. It doesn't seem that far.”
    She gave me a brief, warm smile. It made me feel that I could ask a question I had been wondering about.
    “What did you mean when you said that you couldn't leave here?”
    “Hmm?” She seemed distracted.
    “You said you were tied to the land, that you couldn't move away.”
    She stopped, took a deep breath. We had been walking at a brisk pace.
    “Come here, Thomas,” she said, and she knelt down.
    I stepped over and knelt down too.
    “Put your hand on the earth,” she said. She had placed her hand firmly, palm down on the ground, so I did likewise. “What do you feel?”
    “It's cold,” I said, without really thinking. I looked into her eyes, a blue so bright it almost hurt. She was looking at me with such intensity that it frightened me.
    “No, Thomas, it isn't,” she said at last, with sorrow in her voice, and pitched herself awkwardly to her feet.
    I got up and scrambled after her. There was something going on in her mind, and I didn't have a clue what it was.
    “Emma,” I said.
    “Perhaps you are too young,” she said quietly.
    “I can't help how old I am,” I said, rather curtly.
    “Oh, Thomas, it's all right,” she said, and she even gave a quick, rough laugh, at her own expense it seemed. “There are so many things I want to tell you about, and have you see, but you can't take everything in all at once and on the first try, now can you?”
    “I don't know,” I said.
    Still smiling, she said, “Don't pay any attention to me.”
    We were nearing a roadway. For a little while I had been able to hear the occasional car go by. I was sulkinga little. I didn't know what it was I was supposed to have felt or said back there, with my hand flat on the ground. It had felt cold to me.
    All at once we were there. Just by the edge of the road was an old motor court, a winding crescent of small cottages tucked back in the trees. Emma took me firmly by the hand as we crossed the roadway. I remember that because it annoyed me. I was perfectly capable of crossing a road by myself, but I was too interested to see where she lived to be annoyed for long. The place gave the impression of age, but the cabins and grounds seemed well maintained. There was a gravel parking lot on the side of a big