Mercy Thompson 06 - River Marked

both signals that I was okay, and he needed to ease up the protection deal, as much as I appreciated it.
    “Ayah,” said Gordon. “Killed by a car wreck and finished off by vampires. I told him he drove that thing too fast, but he seldom listened to good advice. Do you know who your father was?”
    “Just hit me on the head and put me in your basket with the rest of the dead trout,” I told him. “Get to the point.”
    He smiled at me.
    “Some people like fishing,” said Adam dryly. “Necessary or not.”
    Gordon laughed. He had a good laugh. “I do. That I do. Still, sometimes in the struggle much is gained that would not be otherwise.” Then the amusement faded out of his face. “Sometimes the fish gets hurt. I will tell you a story while you get ready to feed the people who are coming. There will be just three more in addition to those of us who are here.” He smiled at my frown. “I am an old man. And old men get to act mysterious. I talked to Jim about ten minutes ago. He and the Owens brothers are coming. Calvin has been set to watch at the hospital, where Benny is showing signs of not being as well as they previously thought. He keeps trying to get out of bed, and they have had to restrain him.”
    I thought of the way Janice Morrison, whom I would never meet, had walked willingly into the river with her struggling children.
    “What do you know of how those who are like you came to be, Mercy?” Gordon asked.
    “I don’t, much.”
    Adam encompassed us both with a single sharp look, then went to the campsite grill and stuffed newspaper and charcoal into the charcoal chimney. He granted us the illusion of privacy because Gordon obviously wanted to talk to me—but he would listen.
    It made me itch, that protective streak of his. But one of the things the past few months had taught me was that it ran both ways. Anyone who tried to hurt my wolf had me to deal with. I might be a thirty-five-pound coyote, but I played dirty.
    Gordon grunted in approval. “One time before this, Coyote came upon a village where the chief had a beautiful daughter. Coyote disguised himself as a handsome young hunter. He killed a deer, slung it over his shoulders, and took it to the chief as a gift. ‘Chief,’ he said, ‘let me court your daughter for my wife.’ ”
    “Is this the polite version?” I asked dryly.
    Gordon displayed his missing front tooth but didn’t slow down his retelling. “The chief didn’t know it was Coyote who looked at his daughter. ‘Hunter,’ said the chief, ‘you can court her, but my daughter chooses her own husband.’
    “So Coyote began to court the chief’s daughter. He brought her fresh meat, tanned hides, and beautiful flowers. She thanked him for each of his gifts. Finally, Coyote went to her father, and said, ‘What gift can I bring her that would impress her enough to take me as her husband?’
    “‘Ask my daughter,’ said the chief.
    “So Coyote the Hunter went to the daughter and asked her what gift she wanted most of all.
    “‘I would most like a pool of quiet water where I could bathe in private,’ she told him.
    “So Coyote, he went out to a quiet place in the woods, and he built her a pool at the base of a waterfall. He diverted a stream so that it flowed down the fall and into the pool. When the chief’s daughter saw the pool, she agreed to marry Coyote—still in his guise as a hunter. She welcomed him to her pool, and they laughed and played in it until the woods rang with their happiness.” The old man paused. “I think that is enough of the story. It ends tragically, as it usually does when two such different people love each other.” There was a sharpness to his tone as he said the last sentence that made it obvious he wasn’t just talking about Coyote and the chief’s daughter.
    I frowned at him. “Lots of people who have more influence over both of us than you do have made that observation. We didn’t listen to them, either.”
    “Is it the werewolf or the Anglo that bothers you?” asked Adam, bringing a bag of premade hamburger patties out of the trailer. Other than his question, he didn’t pay any attention to us as he passed by on the way to the grill.
    “Wolves eat coyotes,” Gordon said, but from his body language, I could tell that our marriage really didn’t bother him one way or the other; he just enjoyed stirring the pot.
    If he weren’t an old man, I had some rude things I could have said to that.
    “Yes,” observed Adam