The Dream Stalker Read Online Free Page A

trim as in his pitching days at Boston College. He could still hurl a ball dead center over home plate.
    Downstairs in the kitchen, he stared through the window over the sink as he washed down bites of buttered toast with gulps of stale coffee, his sense of failure and guilt as sharp as the pain coursing through his head.
    Out in the yard, Walks-on-Three-Legs, the golden retriever who had stumbled into his life—one of the unexpected gifts life sometimes offers—lay on his side in the buffalo grass, basking in the sunshine. The dog had been on his side that day last fall when Father John had caught a glimpse of something in the barrow pit along Seventeen-Mile Road and stopped to check, fearing it might be a child. He’d scooped up the animal and laid him on the front seat of the Toyota. Then he’d broken the speed limit all the way to Riverton. The vet had saved the dog’s life, but at the cost of his mangled back leg.
    Risen out of a ditch, Father John often thought, much as he himself had risen out of Grace House after his treatment for alcoholism and had come to an Indian reservation, the last place on earth he had ever thoughtto find himself. Had come here, like Walks-on, to begin a new life.
    A few feet from the dog, a cluster of cottonwoods marked the boundary of the back yard. Leonard perched halfway up a ladder, maneuvering a chain saw among the branches. The saw sputtered into life, a loud, intermittent growl. Beyond the trees was the baseball field, matted and soggy-looking in the morning air. No telling when the field would dry out enough for the Eagles to practice. This would be the eighth season he coached the Indian kids, the eighth season they would show the teams in Lander and Riverton what baseball was all about. But spring was slow in arriving: a few mornings of sunshine, followed by afternoons and nights of pelting rain. Dark clouds drifted over the mountains. The rain would come again today.
    Father John took another gulp of coffee. He forced his thoughts to the work awaiting his attention in the office. The minutiae of running a mission: Ladies’ Sodality and men’s meetings; religious education and adult literacy classes, Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, liturgy services—all to schedule and preside over. There were messages to answer, calls to return, bills to pay.
    Always the bills. At least this was one area in which his new assistant had some expertise. Along with a master’s degree in finance, Father Geoff Schneider had the propensity of his German ancestors for order and precision. He’d arrived two weeks ago, and Father John had handed him the books. Since then, the mission’s finances had moved to the back of his worries. There was always the chance his new assistant would hit upon some brilliant plan to keep St. Francis Mission solvent.
    He rinsed out the mug and started across the kitchen just as Elena stepped into the doorway, blocking his path. She wore a blue, flower-printed dress under a yellow apron that hung from her neck. Part Arapaho and part Cheyenne, she barely reached his shoulder. She wasin her sixties, though not even she knew exactly where in her sixties. He could see the pockets of pink scalp shining through her gray hair.
    “You sit yourself right down,” she ordered, turning her round face upward and fixing him with blue-black eyes. “You’ll have your oatmeal in no time.”
    “The office beckons.” He threw out both hands. The matter was beyond his control.
    “Office can wait.”
    “There are bills to pay. . . .”
    “You ain’t got no money.”
    “Didn’t you hear? We got a check for a million dollars.”
    “What I hear is the pastor’s havin’ some wild dreams.” The old woman gestured toward the round table in the center of the kitchen. “Sit yourself down. You need your oatmeal after bein’ out half the night.”
    He sensed the conversation lurch toward the real point of his sitting down and eating breakfast: The old woman could ply him with