The Spirit Woman
Chapter One
Father John O'Malley pulled up the collar of his jacket
and dipped the brim of his cowboy hat against the hard
wind whirling little pellets of snow into the air. Thick
gray clouds scuttled overhead and rolled through the cottonwoods
like a dense fog, nearly obscuring the snow-covered
path that ran between the trees and the Little Wind
River, He could see his breath ahead of him. The rhythmic
crunch of his boots on the snow punctuated the sound of
water gurgling over ice. It was November, the twelfth
month in the Arapaho Way, the Moon When the Rivers
Start to Freeze.
Walks-On-Three-Legs bounded toward him out of the
trees, and Father John coaxed the red disk from the golden
retriever's mouth and gave it another toss. It sailed down
the path into the fog, a streak of red in the grayness. The
dog loped after it and, pivoting on his only hind leg,
snatched the disk out of the air and darted back. Another
toss, another snatch. Was it really three years ago that he'd
found the dog in the barrow ditch? It seemed like yesterday.
He'd rushed him to Riverton, ... read full excerpt from Spirit Woman, The ebook