White Wolf

He didn’t like dusk. It bothered him. Hell, night bothered him. He felt the calves of his legs beginning to knot and protest with fatigue. Five miles was a damned long way in his condition, but there was something goading, prodding him to move forward in the autumn chill of that high desert plateau.

Somewhere off in the distance of the embracing night, Dain heard a coyote howl—a lonely, forlorn sound. That was how he felt—alone. Abandoned. He compressed his lips, bowed his head and tried to ignore the burning pain in his feet and calves. At least the fever was gone, and for that he was grateful. All he had to contend with was a body that wasn’t any longer totally under his control. Because of the tumor, his left leg had a tendency to become tired. His left foot would drag, as it was doing now, and if he didn’t remember to deliberately lift it higher with each step, he would trip and fall.

Asking for help is natural. Even animals, when they are sick, will go to a healthy animal to be licked, protected and cared for. Humans are no different.

Drawing in a deep, painful breath of chilled air, Dain saw his breath crystalizing into a white wisp as it escaped his lips. He had to walk up a slight incline, which for a healthy person would have been easy. But for him it was pure, unadulterated torture. His legs were getting rubbery. Soon, if he didn’t rest, he would fall on his butt. A smile slashed across his deeply shadowed face. Wouldn’t his associates laugh at that? He’d been very careful not to let anyone know of his medical condition. When he convened daily strategy meetings, he appeared strong, incorrigible and indestructible to his people.

With a little laugh, Dain halted, threw back his head and gazed upward again. The stars were magnificent here. They shined and twinkled like expensive, multifaceted diamonds he’d seen at DeBeers’s operation in Africa, where the stones were mined. The darkness wasn’t threatening to him, for some reason. As he stood just below the crest of the hill, he smiled inwardly. His fingers felt warm inside the pockets of his leather jacket. The temperature had dipped drastically when the sun went down, yet he felt amazingly warm under the circumstances. Probably because he’d walked so far.

What does it cost you to ask for help?

His dark brows drew together and he looked down at his mud-encrusted boots. He’d been avoiding the answer every time his mind—or perhaps more accurately, his conscience—asked him that question.

Asking for help is natural. Even animals, when they are sick, will go to a healthy animal to be licked, protected and cared for. Humans are no different.

Grimly, Dain stood there, feeling the soft, black velvet of the night embrace him like a lover. He turned back toward the eastern horizon to see if he could still see Rainbow Butte, but couldn’t. Another coyote howled and the land seemed to vibrate, carrying the animal’s lonely cry straight to him, straight to his heart. Yes, all right, he was lonely in a way that ate at him like acid. And no amount of money, no number of corporate raids, no high-stakes international chess games played to increase his empire, had ever filled that gnawing emptiness deep inside his chest.

The coyote’s howl only emphasized how alone Dain felt. Looking around, he chuckled with wry amusement. Well, he sure as hell was alone. Wouldn’t his office staff howl with laughter if they could see him standing on a high, godforsaken desert plateau out in the middle of nowhere? And they’d roll on the floor with mirth if they ever found out that a woman had made him bend his own inflexible rules.

Well, he hadn’t exactly asked for help. She had said to come to her hogan. He would do that—provided he could find it. Perhaps she’d been wrong about the distance. Maybe five miles was really ten. Women were never any good with distance anyway, he’d found out long ago. Still, as he stood there in the darkness, Dain enjoyed looking at the coverlet of the sky filled with incredible diamondlike stars dancing, twinkling as if giving a private show of their beauty to the appreciative visitor who looked up at them from below.

Where he lived, he could barely see stars—just the brightest ones. Here he saw thousands more. The Milky Way wound across the sky like a silent, radiant river of tumbling stars, a magical path. Where did it lead? Dain laughed harshly at himself for his fanciful meanderings. Only a child would see that swath of stars as a path. Only a child would wonder where that path led. Well, his childhood was long gone and he was glad of it.

The burning, cramping pain in his legs had abated enough for him to continue his journey—his adventure, he corrected himself. The temperature had nose-dived, probably hovering in the low forties. As he walked, the song he’d heard Erin sing wound gently through him. Without realizing it, he began to hum the tune under his breath. Amazingly, as he crested the incline, it made his legs feel less cramped.

Halting, he looked around the endless, dark landscape that now seamlessly melded with the unseen horizon and the dark blanket of the night. The only way Dain knew where sky ended and land began was to look where the twinkling stars dropped off. He was pleased that he had enough of his own rational logic left to figure that much out. Frowning, he looked around. The vehicle tracks led down—nearly straight down. He was standing on a mesa. Vaguely, he recalled Erin saying she lived at the bottom of one.

Still, where was he? Where was her hogan? He’d seen hogans as he’d driven toward Chinle, one of the major towns on the Navajo Reservation. They were octagonal, made with long, rough pieces of timber, with mud packed between the logs. The roof of the hogan, from what he could observe, was nothing more than dried red clay. Who would live in such a primitive structure? And yet, he’d seen hogans everywhere. They melted into the surrounding soft pastels of the high desert, the reddish clay the same color as the mesas and bluffs so prominent in this part of the reservation.

Squinting, he swept his eyes from left to right. Was there a hogan down there somewhere? Dain thought he saw a glimmer of light as he viewed the darkness below him. Were his eyes playing tricks upon him? And then he remembered that he’d seen no electric poles out here. So if Erin’s hogan was nearby, how could he see it if she had no electricity? No light outside her home to guide him?