Free Third-Time Lucky by Jenny Oldfield Page A

seemed like a good idea when Lisa framed it had lost its focus. “What do we know about him?”
    “Zak Stone?” Matt shrugged.
    “Or about this medicine stuff he does?”
    “It’s Native American; we know that.” Matt gathered together what little information they had. “OK, so that’s gotta be about spirits and visions, stuff like that. Maybe herbs to help healing.”
    Spirits? Visions? Kirstie gazed up at the dancing red sparks. Her eyes were stinging from the smoke and from the tears that would keep on springing up. “Do you mean this is about ghosts?”
    “Well, it sure ain’t about antibiotics and endoscopes!” Matt told her. He stood up suddenly. “If you change your mind, we can turn the trailer around and head for home first thing tomorrow.”
    “I didn’t change my mind!” Jolted by his quick turnaround, she, too, stood up. “Did you?”
    They were face to face, doubt written over their features: Matt’s dark and angular, Kirstie’s fair and softer.
    “We don’t know enough to make a good decision,” Matt pointed out. “We don’t know what kind of healing is involved, except we can be pretty sure it’s like nothing I ever learned in vet school. But, hey, we don’t even know if this guy is gonna be there!”
    Slowly she nodded. “We tried everything you and Glen knew before we set off, didn’t we?”
    “Everything.”
    “So it’s more to do with how we feel.” Like she’d said to him before, when they’d both taken this Zak Stone stuff on board: “What’s logic got to do with it?”
    “I guess.”
    “So, how do you feel?”
    Matt’s doubts intensified. He shook his head hard. “I think …”
    “Not think, feel?”
    “I feel scared,” he admitted. “Like everything I learned about being a good vet might turn out to be garbage. How about you?”
    “Scared, too,” she whispered. “That Zak Stone will take one look at Lucky and say there’s nothing he can do.”
    There was a million miles of space out there, planets so many light years away you couldn’t begin to understand. A sprinkling of ancient light.
    “So?” Kirstie asked Matt.
    He looked up at the sky, then turned back to her. “We go onto Rainbow Mountain,” he said.
    On Wednesday morning they crossed the Great Divide, the jagged backbone of mountains that split the United States from north to south. West of the Rockies into Wyoming, the map gave Kirstie gentler names for the endless expanses of high, flat land: Sweetwater, Sandy River, and Pinedale.
    “Keep going on Interstate 80 through Cheyenne and Laramie,” Bill Englemann had instructed them. “Take a right at Rock Springs for Jackson and Teton National Park. You can’t miss it.”
    “We’re aiming for Montana,” Matt had told the kind and courteous forest guard. “Rainbow Mountain, Wentworth County. Do you know it?”
    “Sure.” Bill had stabbed Kirstie’s map with a stumpy forefinger. “Through Yellowstone, across the state border, still on the 80. You’re pretty close to Bighorn Canyon where Custer made his Last Stand. There are a couple of reservations up that way, too: Cheyenne and Crow Indians.”
    “How long is the drive?” Matt had checked his watch at 7 a.m.
    “Three hundred and fifty, four hundred miles, straight through the Cowboy State into the Big Sky!”
    “Sounds good to me!” Kirstie had said as they set off.
    By midmorning, they’d traveled a hundred and fifty of the four hundred miles and stopped twice to water Lucky. They’d seen road signs warning them of the presence in the area of elk, moose, and grizzlies and others inviting them to stop off and soak in half a dozen natural hot springs.
    “Happy now?” Matt asked Kirstie. The flat plains stretched on forever, the white road straight as a die.
    “I will be when we cross into Montana.” Dipping her hand into the bag of provisions made up by their mom, she drew out a couple of apples and threw one to him. The radio played a cheerful, jog-along tune about cowboys