I felt no pain as my thoughts danced around inside my brain. Can't be sure if I'm thinking or dreaming again. The drink seems to make everything better.

I kept thinking I forgot to feed the chickens and take the slop down to the pigs. I tried to get up and stopped as soon as the pain pierced my brain. I lay perfectly still. I wasn't going to try that again. Then I felt the motion. We were moving slowly now. I remembered I was hooked to a horse. I hear horses.

Paw is going to be mad I ain't fed them hogs. I can't get up. So hot.

"Fever has you. No hot. Home soon. Medicine Woman fix. No chickens. No pigs here. No paw here," Lit'l Fox informed me.

I'm moving again. I hear horses.

I looked for my knife, but I couldn't find it. It was somewhere among the hides and all the gear we all of a sudden had on the sled with me. There was the Hawkin that was always there. There were two bigger rifles than Hawkin. I didn't know where they came from.

Were we hunting? Why so many rifles. Paw never had a rifle that size. I'll hunt later.

Tired now. I'll just rest my eyes.

So hot here.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

"He's burning up," I heard in plain English. "Get him into lodge."

Maybe it wasn't English. It was Pawnee she spoke and I understood her. As if she was speaking English. Maw told me about learning Paw's lingo. She taught me what she knew. Would Paw like me better if I spoke Pawnee?

There was a great deal of fuss over me.

"We stopped an hour ago. I fix the drink," Lit'l Fox said.

"Put him in Lit'l Fox's buffalo robe. They're both small enough to sleep in there," the woman in charge told the carriers.

The woman, Medicine Woman, immediately started giving orders. She gave me the next brew, and my long sleep continued on the flat lands in a village next to a stream that lulled me into a pleasant stupor.

It was nice. Nothing like the rushing river at the cabin.

Being in one spot for more than a short period of time agreed with me as my situation became more predictable. Lit'l Fox and Medicine Woman took care to give me the drink and food. They both sat with me. Another boy sat with me.

If the lack of motion was pleasing to me, food that came out of a bowl, and not on a stick, was even better. While I had a taste for well roasted meat from fresh game, Medicine Woman fixed clear broth and soup that soothed my stomach and brain.

My hunger wasn't as deep as it was on the mountain, and the temperature in Medicine Woman's lodge was fine without it going from warm, to cold, to hot, and back again.

I was hot. I was sweating.

I heard water washing over rocks. It was a soft sound. Nothing like at the cabin in the valley where the river runs. It was a softer sound. It wasn't as big as a river. It was closer to the lodge than the river was to the cabin.

I hear bird songs. I hear horses moving and people talking. As I listen, my attention seems to float away with the talk and the noise inside the lodge.

I drank the drink several times a day, and I ate with Medicine Woman sitting beside me and speaking to me gently. She said I was going to be fine. I was in no condition to argue, and so I drank when she said drink, and I ate when she said eat. It was a lot easier than being dragged behind a horse as the world faded in and out of focus.

Now I got soup with meat in it. No sticks with meat on it, cooked over the open fire. Lit'l Fox was always close. He brought me home with him, and he was there when I decided to talk, I didn't have much to say, but he seemed to know where I was and what was going on. It was like having a brother care for me.

"You heal now. Sleep. You need to rest."

I didn't have much to say. The fever had me, and that was that. I drank the drink, ate the soup, and Lit'l Fox slept beside me. People came into the lodge and went back out again.

"Hi," they said.

"Hi," I said.

"You fine," Lit'l Fox said.

"Me fine," I said.

The sharp stabbing pain gave way to a dull throbbing that woke me at times. No matter when I woke, there was the bitter tea to drink. It helped me to forget the pain and remember to go back to sleep. It was a fine sleep.

"I fine," I said. "Sleep now. So tired."

I felt Lit'l Fox beside me at night, and he came and went while I was drinking and eating. There was a man in the lodge with us, but he didn't seem to move from a place on the far side of the lodge.

I only heard Medicine Woman and Lit'l Fox speak.

One day I watched Medicine Woman wrapping my leg in moss. She covered it with bark. She gave me another cup of brew, and in a few minutes, I was sleeping again. My leg had been hurting, but it stopped hurting.

I woke up for meals. I woke while she treated my broke leg. I woke when Lit'l Fox touched my arm. He said, "Me fine. How are you?"

"Me fine," I said without knowing how I was.

Each night I woke as he crawled under the buffalo robe with me. It was still cold at night, and Lit'l Fox was warm. I never had a brother.

I like Lit'l Fox. He seemed concerned about me, but I hear him talk with Medicine woman about my leg. They talked in Pawnee. I understood a little, especially when they put in English words that gave me the direction they were going in.

As I slept and listened, I learned more about Pawnee words.

I heard them when I was awake and I heard them while I slept.

This helped me to get a better grip on the Pawnee I learned from Maw, but the tricky part was, Medicine Woman talked to me in plain English. She didn't have much to say, but she talked to me in English.

It was amazing how much I understood. How was it I ended up in a village where I knew their language? Some of it anyway. I didn't try my Pawnee on them. I was a guest and speaking bad Pawnee wasn't what I wanted to do.

Maw knew many Pawnee words from Paw, but she didn't know how to fit them together. I heard Paw's lingo spoken in what I assumed were complete sentences or thoughts. By listening I understood more.

I was white. That's what Pawnee people saw, but I knew things about hunting, how to respect what was made available to us. I knew far more Pawnee than I let on, because they spoke freely, which allowed me to learn even more words. It was like a jigsaw puzzle. I put the piece together while I lingered between being awake and asleep.

I lingered a lot in Medicine Woman's lodge.

My fever broke one night when I heard a lot of yelling and thrashing about. It scared me. It scared Lit'l Fox. It didn't scare Medicine Woman, and she gave me more drink and I felt cold for the first time since leaving the mountain. Medicine Woman put cold cloth on my face and chest. I finally took to going back to sleep.

Time was passing as I became accustomed to my new surroundings. I got stronger and everyone in the village saw me and I saw them when they came to Medicine Woman's lodge to cure this ailment or that.

I thought about the valley where the river runs. Why I left, and how I came to be here. I knew Medicine Woman and Lit'l Fox who always seemed to be nearby. I always woke up in the cabin where the river runs before.

How did I get here? There was something else that was mysterious about the lodge. It was crazy in a way dreams and the real mingle inside my head.

A strange boy came to sit next to the buffalo robe where I slept. I gather his name is Running Horse. They call him Running Horse.

Besides the Indian sitting across the lodge from me, Running Horse is often here when I get my morning drink and broth Medicine Woman gives me.

I'm not saying he is sitting beside me. I dream a lot of crazy dreams. He could be in one of my dreams, but he is back today. He was here yesterday.

This was Running Horse. At first, I thought I dreamed him up. He was the most beautiful Indians I think I've ever seen. His skin was gold and his teeth were pearly white. I know this because he always came with a smile.

He talks to me in Pawnee. I can't keep up. I don't know what he said, but I miss a lot of things people say. There are English words that tip me off, as I fade in and out of the lodge.

I liked Running Horse. He speaks softly and he brings me gifts. One day it was a single beautiful flower. The next day it was a carved figure he made.

He sat close, which made me warm all over.

My fever has gone. I feel normal, except for the broke leg. I am getting the drink less and less. My leg doesn't throb. I get juicy pieces of meat in my broth.

Seeing Running Horse made me feel warm all over, once the fever broke.

I watch Medicine Woman wrapping my broke leg in moss and bark. She has gentle hands that do not hurt me. I've been here a while. I hear different bird songs, and frogs have been croaking this week. I'm sure it is spring. It feels like spring.

I left the cabin in the valley in the autumn. That has to be six months or more. My brain gave up on trying to figure out what time it is, but I can still tell winter from spring. I've been gone for a long time, but I feel fine.

Lit'l Fox went with me on my first walk today.

Medicine Woman said, "Take him out for some fresh air, Lit'l Fox."

The sun was very bright. People gathered around me. Running Horse smiled at me. The Indian in the corner of the lodge, Dark Horse, came out to watch.

I felt like a ship on its maiden voyage. Everyone wanted to see me walk.

It was Lit'l Fox doing the walking. I held his arm and walked with him.

Medicine Woman said, "You walk now."

I took a few more steps, pausing in between steps. I tried to smile. I tried to think about taking steps. Running Horse got on my other arm and I felt his strength though his deerskin shirt. His smile was big.

I smiled.

"That fine for today," Medicine Woman said. "He'll come out tomorrow."

I walked in after Dark Horse and Medicine Woman went inside the lodge. I held Running Horse's arm until Lit'l Fox reached for me and let me lean on him. I liked leaning on Running Horse, but Lit'l Fox was fine.

No one paid much attention to me at school or in town. Mostly I was on the farm, and no one noticed much of anything on the farm. I was just the kid who fed the chickens and slopped the hogs.

Even while being given the order to walk, I was weak, my brain only half functioned, and there was no way for me to put all the pieces together. I just went along with whatever went on.

I wanted to get better. I wanted to run again. I needed to walk first, even if it made my broke leg hurt some. It wasn't a sharp pain. It was a dull ache that said I ought to get off my feet now, and that's when I went back inside the lodge.

It was warmer, probably spring. I don't know how long I was on the mountain or how long I'd been in the lodge in the village. Spring was close and I leaned on Lit'l Fox while we walked. I took a single step and I stopped. I could do this without Lit'l Fox, but he stayed close to me. He was always close at hand.

What was it I was doing?

People came over to watch.

Each time I walked, I drank the drink, ate some delicious soup, and I was already sitting in the buffalo robe, and once I was done, I slept.

I stopped sleeping all the time a week or so before. That's when all the annoying pieces floating around in my brain started to connect, one to the other.

I started to remember things in a more logical order, but the drink made me so tired, I didn't have the energy to think for long.

It was about this time that I only drank the brew before going to bed and after I walked for the first week or two.

My brain didn't immediately make sense of everything, but I was more sure of where I was and what I was doing. How I got there was still a mystery. I was still having weird dreams, and when I had time, I was going to sit down and figure it all out. It wouldn't hurt if Lit'l Fox filled in the blanks for me.

Each time I walked, Medicine Woman wrapped my leg in moss and bark. It still throbbed after I walked. She said that my leg would be strong soon. She seemed to know what to do, and I went along with it. I was comfortable with her.

Soon I went on walks alone. I walked a lot. It was best when I walked with Lit'l Fox on one side of me and Running Horse on the other. Running Horse had a delightful smell. He was strong and he encouraged me when he walked with us.

I liked Running Horse. I liked Lit'l Fox fine, but Running Horse's smile warmed my innards. His touch excited something down inside of me. It wasn't like being hungry. Although, there was a certain hunger to it.

I was out beyond the lodge. People passed and stopped to watch me walk. They smiled at me. I smiled back. There were a lot of people close by. I was never around anyone but Maw or Paw. I didn't mind people. They were nice.

The walks came more often, and they lasted longer each day. Before long I was able to walk without leaning on someone. I became a lot less sleepy each day. I began feeling stronger.

I walked to Running Horse's lodge, and he came out to walk with us. Once we left Medicine Woman's lodge, we walked to get Running Horse, and then some serious walking went on.

We would stop to talk with people we encountered. I began learning the names of the people. No one seemed put off by a white boy in their midst.

If I were an Indian, and I knew about what people were up to, I might not be so nice to white folks. I might be downright angry with them.

Each day I walked a little longer. Lit'l Fox stayed close. If I looked like I might get in trouble, he was right there, backing off when my steps looked more certain. Running Horse always came out to walk with us.

Boys my age and older gathered around me. They encouraged me and walked with me. I walked more each day. I walked until I was worn out.

For a week there was no more brew to drink. My mind cleared. Thinking became easier, and everything came back into focus. Now when my leg hurt, Medicine Woman rubbed liquid into my leg. Sometimes it was hot and sometimes it wasn't. Every time it soothed the ache that came when I over did it. I over did it a lot, because I wanted to get stronger. I wanted to play with the other boys.

I supposed it was April when my steps became longer. I walked for an hour or more at one time. I walked two or three times a day. Medicine Woman stood outside the lodge watching me move. If I missed one step or limped once while walking, it was more rubs, hot and cold.

Would my mother do this for me? I wasn't sure. Her son brought me home, and she did all she could do for me, and I was at home in her lodge.

I felt alive. I felt strong, and when I got bored with walking, I started to run. Lidl Fox did not run with me. Running Horse ran with me some days. He wasn't big on running. He seemed to be big on being with me. I liked him fine.

"Lit'l Fox heart not strong. He not to run. He does run. Just not where Medicine Woman can see him run," Running Horse explained. "I am to watch to see he doesn't do too much. If he thinks I watch for him to weaken, he pushes even harder. He is stronger than me. It's his heart that's weak."

It gave me someone to worry about. I worried about the boy who saved my life. Nothing was said in the lodge about his weak heart. I worried about Running Horse once he returned to his lodge. When would I see him again?

We walked to nearby pastures to watch the boys play. It was always Running Horse who came up. He wanted to talk. I played dumb and spoke only English. He used English words mixed with Pawnee. I didn't understand his curiosity about me, but curiosity and fondness are not the same thing.

He was a cheerful boy. He watched me in a way that made me unsure if he liked me or not. He wanted to be close to me but not too close, and he strained to listen to my words to be sure he got the point. He was being careful with me.

I was a white boy, but I was already planning to change that condition.

Lit'l Fox and Running Horse were the best of friends. Since Lit'l Fox was as close to me as any boy had ever been, I thought I would try to trust him and see how it turned out. Most of the time I was with Lit'l Fox, I was with Running Horse, because they were best friends, and they spent a lot of time being together.

I was still listening to the talk in the lodge without letting on I could understand. I had plans but until I looked more Pawnee, I would not speak Pawnee, except in the way they spoke English. Mixing and matching words of the two languages wasn't unusual. I wasn't sure I answered Lit'l Fox in Pawnee, when I understood what he was saying. I didn't talk to anyone in Pawnee but Maw.

There were no Pawnee words for things that were said in English.

Dark Horse was the other presence in the wigwam. He did not speak often. When he did, he spoke Pawnee. He used no English words. He rarely spoke to me, but he would say something to Medicine Woman that she'd say to me.

I found Dark Horse interesting. I wanted to talk to him, but now, I only listened. I did speak English in the lodge to be sure of what I was saying.

I asked Lit'l Fox about Dark Horse.

"He great man. He father. Dark Horse knows much. Sits at the right hand of Chief Lone Wolf. He great man too. He chief of Pawnee. Sacred honor. Knows all."

My leg was well on its way to healing completely. I felt no pain and it felt stronger by the day. There were times I didn't remember how I broke it. When I did remember, I wondered how I was still alive.

Starting with that fall, everything that happened to me afterward seemed like it was part of a dream.

There were memories of shooting a griz, chasing a griz, being chased by a griz. When I woke up, I wasn't sure where I was. If I woke up with a start, Lit'l Fox woke up beside me.

Even when I didn't tell him about the dream, he said, "No griz here."

How did he know what I was dreaming? It wasn't like a dream. It felt real.

Once I dreamed it, I tried not to go back to sleep. It was a scary dream I didn't want to have again, but some nights I had the same dream over again.

Somehow, I ended up in a Pawnee village on the other side of the mountain. I'm sure it wasn't part of the plan, but I didn't mind being with Indians.

I liked being with Indians. I liked being with Lit'l Fox. I liked Running Horse.

Time lost all meaning by the time I began to walk. It was never time to do anything in the village. You did what you did, and you stopped when you were done. I don't know why that was so appealing, but among other things, not being told it was time felt good to me.

I had no idea how long I had been gone from the cabin in the valley where the river runs. Maw was surely fretting by this time. I was fine. My broke leg was about healed. I was sorry I couldn't tell Maw, "I'm fine, Maw."

I has always been restless. I was restless at the cabin, and I was really restless at school. I was content to be in the Indian village. I was eager to learn about these people. No one seemed put off about the new stranger Lit'l Fox brought home to get himself healed.

I had never been more content to be anywhere. I found the place and the people fascinating. I listened to the language, but some of them spoke English to me. Medicine Woman went to a Fort Riley school, while she was a girl. She spoke better English than I did, but she also spoke to me in Pawnee. I lived in a Pawnee village. It was a good idea to speak Pawnee.

At times, she spoke Pawnee shorthand, especially in a place where an English word was more to the point. In some conversations, there was no Pawnee word to fit what I wanted to say. If Medicine Woman couldn't come up with a Pawnee word that said it, she told me in English

This way I learned more Pawnee and even some English in her lodge. I did speak Pawnee to her, but we often started out in Pawnee and ended up talking in English. I knew the rules for English I didn't use them. I didn't know if there were rules to Pawnee, but we understood each other.

I made up my mind, if I was going to keep speaking English, I would do my best to remember the rules. When I first spoke Pawnee, I wanted it to be good Pawnee. I wouldn't insult these people by speaking bad Pawnee. I only spoke the best English I knew. With Lit'l Fox and Medicine Woman, I practiced my Pawnee.

When I try to remember what happened before I fell, my mind drops me onto hands and knees and has me crawling on the ground before I fell.

How did that make any sense?

I had the Hawkin. A griz knocked it from my hand, and I fell off the cliff.

No, that wasn't it. I chased the griz I shot, not wanting to risk a wounded bear to be wandering the mountain. When I took off after the first bear, the second griz showed up, knocking the Hawkin from my hand. I crawled through some bushes and stood up on the flat spot above my camp. There was a wall of rock ahead of me, a cliff behind me, and the bear came out of the bushes in front of me. He stood up and I stepped back and fell. That is how I fell.

That's how it happened. I landed on a shelf ten feet below the cliff. Lit'l Fox came to the rescue.

When the bear knocked the Hawkin out of my hands, I felt a sharp pain in my side. Sure enough, there were three deep marks where the bear hit me and dragged the Hawkin out of my arms.

Lit'l Fox showed me the shirt I'd been using as a pillow. Four claw marks shredded that side of my shirt. I still had a deerskin shirt to wear, but it wasn't my shirt. It was one of Lit'l Fox's shirts. I didn't know my shirt was ruined.

I never knew I had a wound there, but I slept through most of two to three months the way I figured. Not knowing I was clawed was more significant than not being sure what was real and what was a dream. I was in a stupor and as hard as I tried, I had trouble making sense of things I remembered or dreamed.

The griz was the easy part. When he stood up behind me and knocked the Hawkin out of my hands, he was bigger than I thought a bear should be. I dropped to my hands and knees to use the bushes to make my getaway.

I must have been knocked out. I woke up to Lit'l Fox staring down at me.

Nothing that happened after taking that step made much sense. The thought of that griz makes me dizzy. We are sleeping on the dead griz's hide. Medicine woman weaved the hides I collected into a blanket that we used under the buffalo robe we covered ourselves with at night.

She left the rabbit fur I held against my chest when I felt cold. I was comfortable in that buffalo robe. Some nights I dreamed about herds of buffalo roaming the plains side by side with my people.

It was Lit'l Fox's buffalo robe. He slept in it since he was a boy. The buffalo robe came from a buffalo Dark Horse kilt when the buffalo ruled the plains.

It was plenty warm. Some nights it was too warm. There was always a fire going in the lodge in the cold months, but the fire burned down to a small glow at the center of Medicine Woman's lodge once spring arrived.

Lit'l Fox knew when I was thinking about the bear. I would always close my eyes and cringe at remembering the sight of it. I thought I should be dead.

"You think about griz," he'd say, looking at my face.

I nodded. I didn't know how he knew it, but he did.

As a white boy, I knew what I was taught. I knew the things Paw told me. Maw was there to fill in any blank spaces in my brain.

Indians, Pawnee Indians, Medicine Woman and Lit'l Fox, knew things I didn't know. They knew things I couldn't even guess at. Lit'l Fox knew what was on my mind, and he knew when my leg bothered me, or I was having thoughts about being on that mountain.

Medicine Woman knew even more about my thoughts and my condition than I knew. When I wanted something or was thinking about something I didn't understand, especially about being Pawnee, she answered questions I didn't ask. I had the question on my mind. I never said the words, but she answered the question without me asking it.

I knew what a shaman was, but Lit'l Fox used that word to describe Medicine Woman before we arrived at the village. Mainly Medicine Woman treated my broken leg, but she knew more about me than she could have known.

Lit'l Fox could read me like a book. He knew when I hurt. He knew when I didn't understand something I saw. He knew when my thoughts were back on the mountain where he found me. There was one thing we didn't discuss. I never once mentioned the buffalo hunters, but we both knew they were there with us, and the buffalo hunters were still there.

"Better to leave on mountain what happen on mountain," Lit'l Fox said one afternoon as we walked.

I hadn't mentioned the mountain in some time, but I was thinking about it.

Easy for him to say. He wasn't chased by a griz. He didn't get no broke leg, and he didn't watch two men die at the hands of a boy who saved my life.

I went to the mountain to get me a griz. I got me my griz, and a whole lot more. Nothing took place the way I imagined it would, but it ended up with me living the dream I had as a boy. I was living with the Pawnee.

While I could have guessed more, it was too fantastic for me to believe. I was a boy who fell off a mountain and Lit'l Fox brought me home with him. That was enough to know for now.

I pushed more ambitious thoughts out of my head.

I intended to become Pawnee.

I was Pawnee, but no one in their right mind would believe that if I said it, so, I would become Pawnee, and then, I would tell everyone in the village, "I am Pawnee. My father is Pawnee."

How did Lit'l Fox know me so well? I hadn't been alert or aware of much for months. The only reason I was here was because Lit'l Fox saved my life, and he did it more than once.

Why did he help a white boy? Why didn't he think, the dumb white boy got himself down there. He could get himself out of the fix he's in.

Why would any Indian give a helping hand to someone who was white?

I was alive and well in a Pawnee village next to a stream I heard months before I ever saw it. While I lived in the cabin in the valley where the river runs, I laid in bed at night wondering about being Pawnee.

I knew all about being white. I was white. I got a pass on being Pawnee. I didn't want a pass. I wanted to know who I was, and now I was living in a village with the Pawnee. It was fantastic.

It made no sense. I wished for many things, this was the first time I got what I wished for. I could become Pawnee. I was Pawnee, but it wasn't like I could say, "Oh, by the way, I'm Pawnee."

I was Pawnee. I wasn't a fool.

They would think I was a tad touched, but I was Pawnee and that was my truth. I would wait until I earned a place of importance in the village. Then, I would come out as Pawnee.

Life is strange, and when you drink that drink, it gets a whole lot stranger.

One day while we were up stream and sitting next to the running waters, I asked Lit'l Fox, "Where did you learn English? You know a lot of English."

He and Medicine Woman often spoke English to one another, and to me.

"Trappers come. Hunters come. Speak French. Speak English. Most know some English. We learn speak words," he told me. "Medicine Woman went to school at fort near village. She speak good English. I learn from her."

"Dark Horse?"

"No speak English. Speak Pawnee."

"Why does he only speak Pawnee? Almost everyone speaks English to me."

"He Pawnee. Remember enemies. Many enemies speak the English. He no speak English. Enemies' language."

It made sense in a roundabout way. The older men had seen it all, and that's why they numbered so few. The warriors faced the overwhelming flood of Europeans, and few warriors were left in the village. There was a passel of boys who would grow into warriors, but most of their fathers were dead.

I saw myself differently than most whites, separated from them because I was Pawnee. What the Europeans considered me to be, was less than white. I wasn't white by virtue of my Pawnee blood. The Pawnee saw me as white by virtue of my white skin. It's how the men in Lawrence's store saw me.

I was white because I looked white.

Paw was Pawnee because he looked Pawnee. I looked like Maw, except I had Paw's black eyes.

Only Maw, Paw, and the Prophet knew I wasn't white, but I could pass as white, and I did that because it was the plan long before I knew the plan. I needed to go to school if I ever hoped to get any place in this world. Only white schools taught the lessons people needed to know in a white world.

Not only was my skin white, but the Prophet said I was a Kelly, and the Kellys was white. Can't do no better than having a preacher lie for you.

I had many questions. Most concerned where I would fit into the world I inhabited. I could blurt out, 'I'm Pawnee,' but who would have believed me? I needed to prove I was Pawnee. That's when I could talk about it. Even Lit'l Fox didn't know, because I hesitated to tell anyone, I am Pawnee.

If I told anyone that I was Pawnee, it would be Lit'l Fox. I did look white, and what if no one believes I am Pawnee?

This was the piece I was looking for most of my life. This is what was eating on my inside for so long. I couldn't explain it to myself yet. My mind had been at rest for so long, I wasn't sure I had begun to think straight again.

Once I was ready, I would tell Lit'l Fox that I was Pawnee.

I owed my life to Lit'l Fox twice over the way I figured. I didn't tell Lit'l Fox I needed to kill a griz to prove I was a man to Paw. It would be hard to believe. Sounded convenient for a boy who ended up in a Pawnee village. I got to think on it for a spell. Speaking of that, which might not be believed was tricky business.

I'm afraid he'll laugh at me when I explain why I was on the mountain. My father is Pawnee. I'm Pawnee, and I wanted to tell him that, but not yet. I need to get used to being with other Pawnee.

I understood more of what was said than I let on. My Pawnee wasn't that good, but hearing the Pawnee words was like being back in Mrs. Taylor's class. The one thing I could do while resting in the lodge was listen. It thrilled me to hear Pawnee words I recognized, and Medicine Woman spoke English to me.

I knew enough Pawnee words to make sense of what was said.

Maw tried to teach me Pawnee the way Paw taught her. I would take her words I heard Paw say. She'd use Pawnee with English to explain the words. She told me what many words meant. She didn't understand all the words I took her.

I learned by using my ears and keeping my mouth shut. I didn't want to speak bad Pawnee. When I spoke, I wanted every word to be understood. It would take a while to be comfortable enough to want to come out as Pawnee. My white skin was bound to cause doubts about my identity. It would take a while to switch from being white to being Pawnee, but I had a plan I put into motion.

I couldn't undo my white roots. I was brought up in a white world. I was looking for a way around that fact. Listening and not speaking seemed the best way to learn. I heard things I didn't understand or couldn't be certain if I heard it or dreamed it. The drink did funny things to my brain. Not being sure of when I was dreaming kept the jumble in my mind tumbling forward and backward again.

While inside the lodge, I slept most of the time. Just eating or drinking took all my energy out of me and ended with me going back to sleep. It might have been a few weeks, or possibly two or three months.

How do you measure time when you're unconscious?

You might think my condition wasn't all that good, but the elimination of the pain that was more like a spear being thrust into my brain never got that far as long as I drank the drink.

Then, there came the day when my brain finally caught up with me. The one thing I was sure of, the lodge came into better focus. The drink didn't come as often. The meat tasted juicy and it was fragrant. I no longer slept, woke up, drank the drink, and went back to sleep after I ate.

I had dreamed that the boy beside me was with me all the time, but wasn't with me all the time. He had been there at times when I woke up. I wasn't sure he was real either, but he was real. He was Running Horse, best friend of Lit'l Fox.

I lost track of time while I was on my way to the mountain. Once I was drinking the drink Lit'l Fox prepared for me, all idea of time disappeared. Even trying to make sense of what happened once we reached the lodge confused me.

When I woke up in the lodge, I was always warm. I remembered waking up, and I was very very cold.

One day, I began to look the lodge over. Where I slept was where Lit'l Fox slept. Medicine Woman sat close to where the fire burned. She was always there when I looked for her. An older man, Dark Horse, sat on the opposite side of the lodge from where I stayed.

The day I knew where everyone's position in the lodge was, we all ate at the same time. No one was talking, but we were all eating. The fire burned low near Medicine Woman, and it was warm. The meats juices penetrated my brain that had been lost in a fog for so long.

This was the day the fog rolled out of my brain.

I didn't sleep after I ate.

Medicine Woman didn't treat me much differently than she treated Lit'l Fox. She was a kind and gentle woman who healed a lot of people in the village. There was always someone coming to the lodge with this complaint or that. Before they left the lodge, Medicine Woman had fixed them up with some medicine or potion she gave them. Sometimes it required Medicine Woman to go out to pick the particular herb or root she needed to send a patient away with a smile.

I had a memory of something that had bothered me from the first week I was in the lodge of Medicine Woman and Dark Horse. I've tried to push it out of my mind, but I heard a name I recognized. This was while I recognized Lit'l Fox and little else, but the name I heard stuck in my brain through the fog. I knew the name like I knew my own name, Greogory Kelly.

I thought on it quite a spell. I can hear the name as clearly as I hear the stream. I can't make out the voice, but I clearly heard the name, Proud Eagle.

I knew that name. I knew who Proud Eagle was.

"I asked Maw what my Paw's Pawnee name was, she said, "Proud Eagle."

It wasn't a name I was likely to forget. Somehow it connected me with the Indian living inside of me. The Indian living inside of me in the lodge where I was.

Proud Eagle was my father. I heard his name said in the lodge. I'm not sure I heard my father's Pawnee name before I told Medicine Woman, "I am from the cabin in the valley where the river runs. That's where my father lives.