Coyote: The Outlander (with FREE second screen experience) Read Online Free Page B

earth. Underneath the tangle of shrubs, remains of a slowly rotting picket fence could be spotted. Old Man Roberts purposely made the path to his home unwelcoming. He cared little for company. The wooden house was a sorry sight. Once, it had been painted white and the picket fence had surrounded a pretty garden filled with rosebushes and violets. Coyote had loved the garden when she was a child, but when the old man’s wife died, the house perished with her, as if the wooden structure had a soul that wasted away without its favorite owner.
    The porch was as overgrown as the garden. Rotting wood filled the air with the taint of mildew. Coyote maneuvered her way around the black holes that spread across the veranda, testing the floor with each step she took.
    The door hung loosely on its hinges, too broken to close. A gust of wind ran through the leaves of the trees and bushes, sounding like a thousand whispering voices. The noise reminded her of her father telling ghost stories around the campfire when she was a young girl. Her skin broke out in goose pimples at the memory.
    She knocked on the open door, the wood rattling with each rap of her fist.
    “Old Man Roberts?” She was a young girl again, standing there waiting for his response, and she cursed herself for falling into old habits. From inside the house, someone coughed, deep and raw. Moments later, a man appeared in the doorway. His grey hair hung in thin strands down to his shoulders, yet he was almost bald on top. His face hid within a mass of sagging wrinkles, from which watery grey eyes stared out. When she was younger, he had been a giant of a man, muscular and tall, but Coyote had grown, and his advancing age had bent Old Man Roberts into a permanent stoop. She towered over him now, but there was still something intimidating about the way he stood, the way his eyes glanced over her, and the way his voice sounded like he ate iron for breakfast.
    “You took your sweet time, Girly.” He spat a large greenish dollop of mucus on the porch. Coyote suppressed a shudder. “Thought the Outlander had gotten ya.” He wiped his nose with the back of his hand and made a hacking sound. “Come in.”
    “We’re only returning your weapon.” Coyote took a deep breath, but remained still.
    “Come in.” It was more commanding this time, and he walked into the house, beckoning her to follow. Coyote exchanged a glance with Caesar, who shrugged, but his face was tense.
    They followed the old man into a house that appeared as disheveled inside as out. Dirty furniture, worn with age, stood around in random, and somewhat nonsensical, order. The dusty interior smelled of cheese and body odor. It took all of Coyote’s willpower not to hold her nose. She grimaced at Caesar, but she knew the scent didn’t affect him in the same way. He’d been born and raised in slave quarters at an infamous plantation where he’d suffered in the squalor of too many people in close quarters. There was little in the known universe that could offend Caesar’s dulled senses.
    “Sit down.” Old Man Roberts pointed at a table with four wooden chairs. “I’ll make some coffee.”
    “That’s okay. We really need to be going soon.” Coyote forced a smile.
    “Nonsense. I don’t see you often enough, Girly. So when you are here, you will sit down and drink coffee with me. Just like your pa would have done if he were alive.” He narrowed his watery eyes at her, and one of the corners of his mouth pulled up. His half smile revealed brown teeth. “So sit down, and your coon friend too.”
    Coyote flinched, taking the word coon as a personal affront, but she knew the old man had no more problems with Caesar than he had with white people. He despised black and white alike and had colorful names for everyone. Were he any other man, she would have called him out on his hateful words, but Old Man Roberts was one of the rare people she didn’t feel comfortable standing up to. In a way, the old man