Read Online Tainted Trail by Wen Spencer - Free Book Online Page A

see if she’s—”
    Something hit him on the right side of the chest, just over his heart. As it slammed him around in a half spin, he heard a loud crack echoing across the valley. Even as he realized that he had been hit by a bullet, and that he was falling over the outcrop’s edge, another struck him hard.

CHAPTER FOUR
    Umatilla National Park, Umatilla County, Oregon
Wednesday, August 25, 2004
    â€œUkiah! Ukiah!” Max scrambled over the rocks to him.
    So he was on the ground. Ukiah had hit an outcrop of rock coming down, his arm taking the brunt of the fall in an explosion of pain. He fell again, a second hard hit, this time in the stomach, and then tumbled a few more feet. He expected a third drop through free fall, but apparently he had run out of cliff. Ukiah slowly rolled over, moaning in pain as he did. “Somebody shot me, Max.”
    â€œI know.” Max unzipped Ukiah’s windbreaker.
    â€œDon’t let him shoot you!” Ukiah pushed at Max, trying to get him to take cover.
    â€œWe’re fairly well-screened by rocks here,” Max said. “I’ve got my vest on too. Now, lie still.”
    â€œOh, I’m not going anywhere.” Ukiah quit struggling and let Max undo his body armor.
    Sheriff Kicking Deer joined them, ducking down behind the rocks, talking fast and low on his radio. “Officer needs backup, shots fired. I’ve got a shooter with a high-powered rifle that just shot the damn tracker. I’m going to need an EMS crew at the foot of Slide Hill. I need backup. Get hold of the state police and tell them we have a sniper.”
    Kraynak crouched beside Max. “How bad is he?”
    â€œThe vest took the bullets,” Max muttered, eyeing Ukiah’s bared chest. “I think the fall damage is going to be the worse.” He leaned up to brush blood-soaked hair backfrom Ukiah’s forehead and scowled at the wound he located. “There’s where the blood is coming from.”
    â€œI think I broke my right arm.” Ukiah considered the rest of his body. “I wrenched my left leg somehow—maybe the hip is broken or maybe it’s the knee. The whole damn thing hurts. And my stomach is killing me.”
    Max pressed a linen handkerchief to Ukiah’s head and placed Ukiah’s left hand on it to keep up the pressure. “Damn it, when you waved at us, you made a perfect target.”
    Kraynak fingered the dents punched into Ukiah’s armor. “It had to have been a semi-automatic supersonic rifle. They couldn’t have hit him twice otherwise.”
    Sheriff Kicking Deer frowned at Ukiah between squawks of his radio, as if the sniper was all Ukiah’s doing. “How is he?”
    â€œDon’t know.” Max took out his pocketknife, sliced open Ukiah’s right shirtsleeve, and winced at what he found. “Yeah, you broke it, Ukiah. Your radius, it looks like, has punctured through your skin. The tibia’s probably broken too.”
    Ukiah closed his eyes to avoid seeing the wound. An odd mental glitch made it easier to endure the pain if he didn’t look at the injury causing it. Knowing exactly how bad he was hurt only made it worse.
    Kicking Deer’s radio crackled and reported that an ambulance had been dispatched. He added that it would take the EMS crew an hour to arrive.
    Max and Ukiah looked at the Sheriff in surprise and dismay. Since Hex, the leader of the Ontongard, shot Ukiah dead, and he came back to life, they had avoided hospitals. Unvoiced was the worry that, like so many science-fiction movies predicted, Ukiah would fall under government control if too many people saw his oddities. Besides, they had discovered, he almost never needed medical intervention.
    While Kicking Deer checked on his backup, Max whispered, “If you can walk, we can talk our way out of an ambulance ride.”
    Ukiah sat up only to have his consciousness slide sideways toward darkness.
    Max