It was easier going and I was making good time, once I had a trail to follow. I made sure the sun was where I needed it to be, and my pace was steady and far easier than it had been for the last few days.

There was another aspect to turning west, I could feel myself going uphill. It wasn't a big difference, but I was climbing higher the further I walked. It was hard to see anything with the density of the forest, but I thought I might be at the very bottom of the mountain. I thought that before. I wouldn't get my hopes up, but I felt better once the trees got further apart.

I couldn't see any trees from the front porch of the cabin, but we mostly saw the mountain peak. It was hard to tell what was below the peaks or how far it might extend. I was going in the right direction. I felt like I was getting close to where I wanted to go without knowing it was so.

I am expecting to see the end of the forest soon. Paw and I go through a similar forest on the way east when we go to hunt deer. There's a good trail to follow and we are through that forest after a day, except this trail is becoming darker as I go. The thickness of the trees is blocking out my view of the sky.

I wasn't moving all that fast. The darkness made it harder to see, and I didn't want to risk taking a fall. Being careful seemed better than rushing along and taking risks. It's difficult to see what is ahead of me, but the trail continues in the direction I want to go, although I can't see the sun today. It's cloudy.

Wouldn't matter what direction the trail is going in. Getting off of it would be a bad idea. The trees are so thickly growing in this part of the forest, I might never find the trail again if I go away from it. I might never find my way out of here. I will follow the trail.

Did I miss the mountain? Where is it?

When I camp, I won't go far away. I've got turkey and I don't know if I want to build a fire. If it got out of control, this forest could burn for weeks on end. No, I'll risk being a little cold tonight. I ain't risking burning myself up. I don't mind cold turkey. Now, if I only had a couple of pieces of Maw's bread.

The trail seemed to be going directly west for the first day and a half after I found it, but it's beginning to wander in one direction and then another. I can't tell if I'm heading west. I can't find the sun. I should be at the mountain by now.

I can't believe I lost a mountain. It was right straight ahead, and I should have been there by now. Maybe it was further away than I thought?

I wonder how long these trees have been growing. They reach all the way to the sky. It's like what I imagine a jungle would be like at the middle of it. I can't turn back. I've got to keep going. No point in going back. I'm bound to get out of the forest by tomorrow.

It sounds like the middle of the night. These are sounds I hear at the cabin at night. Sounds like crickets and frogs with some birds adding to the sounds. I will look for a place to camp. I won't hunt. I need to get off my feet. I don't know how much further I can walk. Seems like I been walking forever.

As I followed the path in and out of the biggest trees, off to my right was an empty space. I hadn't seen water all day and I'd run out. Hearing the noise from some moving water, I followed the sound.

I knew to keep sight of the trail, because if I got turned around again, I might wander forever. I knew where it was from landmarks I noticed nearby.

I took off my gear, laid down my bedroll, propping my rifle against it. I knelt beside the stream. I drank from my hands. I drank for a long time. I could hear the birds more plainly by the stream. Something was moving in the brush, and I looked to see what it was. It was gone faster than I could look. I sat down and leaned my head on my bedroll. I banged my head on my rifle and sat back up to move it out of my way.

I was tired. I'd just close my eyes for a minute.

I wish I knew where I was. I wish I never left the cabin. I didn't know if I could find the cabin from where I was.

When I woke up it was black. I couldn't see my hand. I felt for my food pouch, and I ate turkey and I found a piece of rabbit. Was that rabbit good. The turkey was dry, but the rabbit was juicy. I moved just far enough to drink from the stream. I remembered to fill my skin. I felt my way back to my gear. I was cold for two nights running, but it wasn't cold here. I could hear things I couldn't see. I heard noises I didn't recognize. I hoped not to be someone's dinner but wasn't much I could do but wait for daylight. The best way to wait for daylight was by sleeping, and I curled up with my head on my bedroll and my hand on my Hawking, which was foolish, I couldn't see anything. How could I shoot something?

I felt like I'd been stumbling around this forest for weeks. I wanted to get out of here. I wondered if I could be stuck in a place like this forever. What would I do once I ran out of shot? How would I eat? This had to end soon.

One time when Paw and I went hunting, Paw cut a branch from a tree. He worked on it for two days. By the time I realized he had made a bow, a buck dropped by and he shot it. As he was cutting it into pieces once he cleaned it, he took a long strip of tendon out of the flesh of the deer. It must have been four feet long. It was longer than the bow, until he put loops at each end. Then, Paw tried to hook the loops over both ends of the bow I watched him make.

Paw could do most anything with one arm that most men do with two. What he couldn't do was stretch that bow string so he could attach the second end.

He handed me the bow and told me to see if I could string it. He showed me what I needed to do. He said it took two hands to string it. He couldn't do it with one hand.

I tried and tried. I was sweating and using all my strength, but I couldn't string the bow. I was ten and I was too small. I wasn't strong enough. I would have given anything to string that bow. If I could have done it, Paw would changed his mind about me. I would be the son he wanted. I was Pawnee.

Paw was going to give the bow to me along with arrows he made from sticks and flint stones he collected while we traveled. He left them in the forest. What good was a bow that we couldn't string?

I always managed to disappoint Paw.

I could string that bow now. I wouldn't starve if I ran out of shot, but I would be home eating Maw's cooking long before I ran out of shot.

I didn't waste shot. I made six kills. I fired the Hawkin six times.

Why would I remember that all these years later? It wasn't the only time I'd disappointed Paw. He had tried to get me to do things he showed me. No matter what it was, I disappointed him. He looked at me like he wondered if I was really his son, and if I was, why was I so dense.

It was still black when I woke up. I lay there for a while, and I watched the light coming to the floor of the forest. I could see a tiny little blue piece of sky. That was a victory. The sky was still up there, and the end of this forest had to be out there somewhere. I couldn't wait to find it.

I needed to hunt today. I wanted to find some water I could take a soak in. It wasn't as cold where I got up this morning. I went straight to the trail and began going west. I knew the mountains were ahead of me and that meant the forest had to end. That's all there was to it.

I'd never seen taller trees than these and I had to spit the bugs out of my mouth when I breathed them in. I hadn't seen any game in the last day, and my food pouch was emptied some time yesterday. It's always dark and the crickets and frogs are the loudest sounds.

Where am I? Where is the mountain?

The trail has narrowed but it seems to be wandering. Turning back would mean admitting defeat. I've done nothing I have in mind to do. Can't wander into the cabin and not have a whopper of a story to tell to explain where I been.

At midday I came to a clearing. It looks like I imagine the Garden of Eden looked. There was places with thick grass growing and a brook that fed into a pool of water big enough for me to soak in. I can't make up my mind whether to hunt first, soak first, or just get off my aching feet. I've already seen game upstream. I put everything down on a nice comfortable looking stretch of grass. It's off to one side and slightly elevated from where the stream runs nearby.

I opened everything up to let it air out and I got out of my clothes and hung those to air out. I loved the feel of the soft grass on my bottom. The bugs were at a minimum, but getting into the water was so nice. It came first because I wanted to rinse off the dirt and sweat from the trail. There's already a fire pit from someone else who used the spot for hunting and camping.

The water was very cold, which made me think I'm closer to the mountain than it looks like I am. It had gotten cool and it got warm again. Maybe the days got cool before they warmed up again, because it was autumn.

I cut my soak short, pulled on my leggings, and I went to a small rise overlooking the stream. I didn't wait long to have a shot. I took a fair size groundhog. It might last me a day, but I would take the time to hunt for enough meat to get me to the mountain before I left the Garden of Eden.

With all my gear freshened up, my belly full, my body clean, and enough meat to last me for three days, I left the garden spot to continue heading west. The trees opened up so that I wasn't in the dark any longer. As I walked that day, I began passing rock formations and grassland. It wasn't flat but if I was climbing, the ground seemed to go up and down and up again. I imagined it was a sign that, if I wasn't on the mountain, I was getting close.

It was cooler and after a couple of hours I was out of the trees all together. There were fewer bugs. Being able to see where I was going helped. It was easy going compared to the last few days. My meat was holding out. I made good progress. The mountain couldn't be much further.

I saw three deer and an elk later in the day. I was still reluctant to kill anything that would waste a lot of meat. I didn't like being hungry, but killing a deer for a few pounds of meat I could eat wasn't a good idea. At least there was game moving around some of the rock formations and off in the pastures.

I remember the first time Paw showed me the buffalo. He'd been off exploring the surrounding area where we made camp on an autumn hunting trip. He waved for me to follow him and when we got to this hill and we crawled up the last four or five feet to the top. When I looked over the top of that hill, there were thousands of buffalo standing around a wide-open pasture. They was huge.

"Why don't we shoot a buffalo, Paw? That meat would last us a year."

"Too big. Both of us couldn't carry half the meat from a buffalo."

I'd seen a buffalo or two since, but never another herd of them.

I picked an outcropping of rocks to camp that evening. I could see the sun straight ahead of me. It wasn't as bright the way it hung low in the western sky. It wasn't cold but it wasn't warm even with the sun shining on me. I'd need to get in my bedroll tonight, once I ate. A fire would keep the cold off for a while.

There were patches of grass among the rocks, and I had a nice view of the territory I'd need to cover tomorrow.

As we took the wagon to town a few months before, Paw did his best to keep Dobbin moving in a forward motion. One time when he stopped to munch a while, Paw made that sound by clicking his tongue. Dobbin pretended not to hear.

"One day that horse is going to bend down to munch grass and he'll drop dead of exhaustion. Leave us in a hell of a fix," Paw said, no humor in his voice.

Why this struck me as funny, I can't say, but I commenced laughing and I couldn't stop. Paw looked at me like I was a tad touched, and I laughed even harder. I held my sides and I laughed until I rolled off the seat onto the ground.

Paw leaned to look down at me. I swear he was smiling. Paw didn't smile. He seemed to carry a heavy weight on his shoulders, but that day came off, and he seemed tickled by something he said got such a reaction out of me.

Haven't seen a live critter, except for birds, since I left the forest behind. The piles of big boulders dot the pastureland I'm on. I know I'm walking onto higher ground. I can feel I'm moving up hill. I reached the mountain at last.

Out of meat again. Second day out of the forest. I can tell I'm going uphill by the extra effort required by walking. Rock formations aren't just random places rocks fell. The further I walk, the more rocks there are. If this is the mountain, where are the peaks? Except for the feeling of walking up hill, it looks almost flat.

It has become cooler since I left the forest. I put the rabbit fur next to my chest to keep warm. As long as the front of me is warm, the back of me is fine.

I don't see no living things but birds. I can't believe I come all this way, and I ate fine most of the time, and now all there is is birds?

I recall Paw making me a sling one time. He showed me how to hit birds. Do griz eat birds? I tried to imagine a griz with a sling. I had no trouble imagining me with one. I paid attention when Paw showed me something.

Paw was always disappointed by me. I could hunt. I looked after the farm critters, but nothing else I did suited Paw. Most of what Paw taught me; he taught me on the deer hunting trips each autumn. This was when he seemed relaxed. Was hunting as close as he could get to the life he once had, the son who died?

Did he see me as his Indian son when we hunted? My white skin said no. When Paw made me that sling, I was eight or nine, I watched him stand on the edge of the field and knock two good size birds out of the sky.

I couldn't hit nothing flying by. Let a bird land, I knocked that bird silly.

When Paw began finding dead birds all over the farm, he came running up. I'd just spotted an unsuspecting bird on the pig pen fence. I knew what to do, and as I was ready to fire, the sling was snatched out of my hand.

I couldn't be sure it weren't the hand of God interrupting my fun.

Weren't God. Just his right-hand man. It was Paw.

"When you can be less wasteful, maybe I'll make you another one of these, but until then, don't let me find no more dead birds laying around here."

I seen Paw make that sling. I could make me one. I didn't dare do it back then, but if birds was all there was, I could get me some birds OK. I'd learned not to kill critters for fun. For Paw, wasting a thing was the worst thing you could do. I worked at disappointing Paw. I didn't intend to, but I did.

It was cooler still after another day passed. I was still walking. It felt like I been walking forever. I saw a big hairy goat up on some rocks. He disappeared as soon as I caught sight of him. I more saw his motion than I saw him. I knew it was a goat. We had goats.

After investigating, I calculated the goat was smart enough to get gone, I realized how convenient the rocks were for critters who didn't want to be supper. Animals adapted to their surroundings. I could adapt. I would find rocks that gave me view of a source of water. I would climb on top of the rocks and wait for some critter to show up for a drink.

It was late afternoon. I found a really nice pile of rocks. Grass and moss grew in patches between huge boulders. It would be out of the wind while I cooked me supper. I climbed to the top of the rocks to get a great view of a stream that crossed the patch of ground I had been walking on. I got me a woodchuck in about an hour. I cleaned him and was ready to leave when a rabbit went to drink. He was bigger than the average rabbit, and well, it was cold enough to keep meat fresh for days. I already had a woodchuck.

Should I kill me a rabbit to be sure I wasn't going to go hungry for a while? I don't know how many nights I went to sleep hungry. I wouldn't go hungry again if I had something to say about it. If it hadn't turned so cold, I might not have taken the rabbit, but I figured the meat would keep a spell.

I always reloaded the Hawkin once I fired a shot. You never knew when a rabbit might come along. Putting down the cleaned woodchuck, I grabbed the rifle from next to the tree where I put it down. I shot the rabbit and had him cleaned in another few minutes.

I took the meat to the fire pit and in ten minutes I had both of them cooking. I preferred rabbit, but woodchuck was fine. When I was this hungry, anything was fine.

I had to be on the mountain. As the fire burned and the meat cooked, I warmed my hands. I could sleep well tonight knowing that I had more meat than I had at any time since leaving the cabin in the valley where the river runs.

I put the rabbit fur close enough to the fire to dry it out. It was even bigger than the rabbit fur I had inside my buckskin shirt next to my chest.

I built my fire up to smoke the meat I wouldn't eat tonight. It would fill my food pouch. I ate rabbit. Smoked woodchuck was tasty when it was cold. I was on the mountain. I had plenty of meat. My legs were rested enough to be ready to climb at first light the next morning.

For the first time I felt like things were going well and in no time at all I would be on top of the mountain and ready to get me my griz.

I want to walk all day today. I won't need to hunt until after I'm up near the snowline. Climbing will no doubt take longer, but I've come a long way. The mountain can only be so high, and if I keep at it, I'll be where the griz live in a day or two, and once I get my griz, I'll be on the way home.

It was surprising how much meat I could put away while I walked all day. I was always hungry.

I am having difficulty understanding how I can feel like I am climbing and yet it looked like I was still on seemingly flat ground. I must be going uphill. I kept walking once the trees became fewer and further in between. I tired more easily. I often stop walking to catch my breath. There are more and more rocks and fewer trees. If this ain't the mountain, there ain't no mountain.

At midafternoon I needed to stop and rest. I'm tired. It's too early to make camp. I'll sit a few minutes and walk more today. Luckily there's plenty of water here. I stop and drink when I find water. I didn't drink from the skin with my water in it all day. My skin is still full, and I don't get as thirsty. It is cooler.

Where is the mountain? Why do I wear out so quickly? I must keep going if I ever hope to get where I'm going. Maybe if I took a day off, rested my legs.

When I stopped to take a break later on, I looked back. I couldn't see the forest I been in for so many days. There were trees growing among the rocks but almost no trees in the pasture I was in. I couldn't see the snow that I could see from the cabin. I could feel the cold.

Why can't I see something that looks like a mountain? How far is it? Would I be able to find my way home? I couldn't see either the mountain or the cabin, which was confusing me. I didn't think so much about home, while I was at home. The cabin in the valley where the river runs was on my mind a lot. I can't say why. When I go to sleep hungry at night, I dream Maw's cooking supper. I can smell whatever it is. It's not like I could go sit down at the table because I'm so hungry. Why would I dream that?

I'm alive and I ain't starved yet. I been gone a while. I didn't figure on it taking this long. I was fine and I was going to keep going until I was in the snow on top of that mountain. I want to know if that snow is really up there.

Climbing for the second day. Going has become a challenge. It's raining. The rain is freezing. I need to be careful on the rocks. Don't know what I'd do if I take a fall. I'm being careful and will look for a spot where I can camp and wait out the freezing rain. I'm soaked. My gear is soaked. Need to build a shelter.

No meat. No chance to get any meat. Freezing here. I can't see past the next rock. I've made camp and will stay put until the weather changes. I'll be dreaming about the cabin tonight, if I can go to sleep. If I'm not on the mountain, this will do. I no longer care about seeing more snow. It's snowing again. Third day of snow. I'm snug, fairly warm with my skins helping me stay warm.

Woke this morning to brilliant sunlight. Snow has made climbing difficult. Two of my smaller skins work well over my moccasins. My feet don't freeze with the hides on my feet. It makes me more sure footed. It's slow going.

I think I found a trail. Seems to weave in and around the rocks. The snow settled into the places people have walked. I couldn't see it before it snowed. Still mostly on slippery rocks. I won't push it. I'll make camp early. I need to hunt.

There's plenty of water. The sun is melting it, and it runs off from higher up on the mountain. I've never tasted better water. It's cold and refreshing. I'll make camp near a water source. Maybe something will come to drink. Third day without eating. I hope I don't freeze up here. It gets colder each day.

I heard a sound I recognized last night. Wolves sounded a distance away. I put my fire in the opening of my shelter. I can move it inside if weather gets too bad. For now, I stay warm. I don't think a wolf would come into my shelter, but I keep the rifle loaded and next to me. No wolf prints in or around camp. Third night in a row I heard wolves. They sound some distance away. How far do wolves travel each day? Until they find something to eat is the logical answer.

Do wolves get as hungry as I am? I would eat a wolf if he sat still for it.

I would turn back if it wasn't so far.

I've come this far, can't turn back now. I might find what I'm looking for as I climb. Going back doesn't accomplish anything.

Didn't imagine proving I was a man would be this hard.