I sat on my horse, watching Running Horse inspecting the parade of pack horses and two mules, that stretched from the village out on to the trail we would take.

Once we began moving, Running Horse rode back to make sure everyone was moving at the same speed. He was responsible to see that we didn't go too fast. The point was to stay together. When we camped, we'd camp together, eat together, and then drift off to bed, once the stock was unloaded and allowed to graze and drink and rest.

I rode back when I saw Medicine Woman moving back toward the stream with Lit'l Fox walking with her. The things she would take had been packed, and she was ready to bring up the rear of the formation, but there was one last duty grandmother needed to do.

I left my horse close to Medicine Woman's lodge, and I moved to catch up. I knew where they were going, and I needed to say goodbye to Dark Horse too. We'd make an effort to return for the remains of our ancestors before winter, set in, and after the new village was finished.

I'd watched as Medicine Woman wrapped Dark Horse in a clean cloth and we helped return him to his resting place beside Lone Wolf. We were leaving more than a village behind us, we were leaving our history as a people.

A new history would be created in the new village, but the stories of Lone Wolf and Dark Horse would be told and told again as we passed them down through the generations to come. We did not write history. We passed in on by word of mouth. One day there would be a single Pawnee left. Our history stopped there.

"I will go on this journey with you, my grandsons. I will not live in the new village with you," Medicine Woman told us in nearly the same words Running Horse used. Had she told him this and he repeated it, or were they both part of some mystic connection to the universe?

How could there be so much I don't know, when other people know it?

Once we were done, and Running Horse had ridden back to make sure we brought up the rear, I watched Medicine Woman lean on Lit'l Fox's arm. I'd never seen Medicine Woman lean on anyone. She was always the strongest and most able bodied. She was as strong as any man, but like Dark Horse, she'd seen much history while it was being made. She'd lived a long time. Her time was coming to an end.

I thought of her words once we were moving behind our band of Indians that moved toward the mountain. We'd camp on the bottom that night, and start to climb at first light tomorrow.

"Medicine Woman says she'll not live in the new village with us," I told Running Horse that night.

"A chief sees many things, Tall Willow. I've seen this thing too. We take difficult journey. Much more difficult for the old who have known no other village since the day so many of us die. Medicine Woman no longer young. No longer strong. Perhaps I mistaken. Perhaps not. I make sense to you. My English no good. Your lessons do not sink into this skull so well," Running Horse told me.

"Your English is fine. It's the words that trouble me. I feel like everything I've learned about being Pawnee is in jeopardy. We are only moving the village, why do I feel like I won't live in the new village long."

"This jeopardy not real. You fine. We start new. We young. We strong. A new start good. No?"

"My hold on being Pawnee is rooted in the people who took me in. I've depended on them. Medicine Woman old. Lit'l Fox not well. My life as I knew it, the only way I am Pawnee is fading."

"No fade. You right hand man of chief. I stand with Tall Willow. I be hold you have on Pawnee. I wish I talk better. I love Tall Willow. I want say right."

"You say fine," I said, kissing my man. "You fine."

His hold on me was a good thing.

Fires slowly died down the first night without much to keep the village from falling asleep.

I was with Running Horse. I would always be with Running Horse. My sadness hung heavy on me. I never said goodbye to Dark Horse, not while he lived. We were gone when our grandfather died.

I missed that old Pawnee warrior.

Lit'l Fox's horse pulled a litter with Medicine Woman on it. Morning Star rode on the horse. Lit'l Fox walked beside the litter once we were underway the next morning. I spent time walking behind the litter with Shiftless walking along behind me. We started to climb shortly after we started.

It wasn't easy on the horses or Medicine Woman. Lit'l Fox steadied the litter when he could. He held Medicine Woman's hand when he couldn't. We stopped a few times to let her rest before we started up again.

Running Horse came back to walk beside me as his horse walked beside my horse as the climbing became more arduous. The rest of the village stayed in sight, except when there was a turn to go around an obstacle in our path. It took five minutes for us to catch up with the rest when we made a stop around noon.

We were on the mountain. The day remained pleasant. There wouldn't be any cold until tonight. We'd camp low enough to avoid most of the cold. Tomorrow we'd be above the snow line, but it was too early for snow. On the third day we'd pass over the top and try to get low enough to avoid much cold. On the fifth day we would leave the mountain late in the day.

Once we left the mountain, it was three days to the river. We'd located a trail through the forest that put us on the flat lands the same day we entered the thick forest that slowed me down the first time I went to the mountain.

Medicine Woman handled the trip well. She wasn't going to complain no matter how difficult the travel was, but here color was better and she managed to eat a little each time we stopped.

I wasn't sure she'd make it to the river. I could ride ahead and bring Paw back, but I wouldn't leave her and have her die without me being with her. She knew her son was at the river. It was up to her to hold on and hold on she did.

I objected to life being short. It seemed like I just met my grandparents. They were both gone too soon. I worried most about Lit'l Fox. He would take it hardest. Medicine Woman was a mother to him. Now, faced with losing her, Lit'l Fox would not leave her side.

I remembered how delighted Dark Horse was about my marksmanship with a bow. I didn't tell him that I wasn't sure I could kill a man. I didn't even tell Running Horse that. I had no trouble killing game we needed to feed the people. I'd been killing animals for food for most of my life. I learned to thank them for their sacrifice from my father. A Man wasn't sacrificing himself to be food.

Lit'l Fox had seen my reaction to him killing two men. No matter that they needed killing for what they planned for us never reached my mind about who needed killing. He didn't speak of it to anyone. Which told me how dangerous what he did was. Lit'l Fox's heart might not be strong. His desire to live was plenty strong enough to do what he did.

As a white boy in school, I read of the glory and valor that was America. The men who saw what they wanted to be opposed to a king who was thousands of miles away. Washington knew better than to attack the British head on. Washington was the fox. The British were the hound. They wore themselves out chasing the fox.

The people who came after Washington pushed his sense of honor out of the picture. Washington's focus was on England and the threat that would come long after his death.

Andrew Jackson, also a general, turned America's attention west. Manifest Destiny came out of Jackson's defiance of the Supreme Court. They had ruled he could not remove the Cherokee from their ancestral home.

Jackson didn't need many words to express his feelings about it.

"Stop me."

He set the standard for all the white people to come.

Jackson somehow ended up with ownership of large pieces of Indian territory, once the Indians were run off. There was a lot of money to be made on the land taken from the Indians, and there were plenty of greedy people willing to take all they could take.

The flow of migrants moving west went from a trickle to a flood, once there was land to be had for the taking. People took as much as they could.

The people migrating westward were armed with the knowledge, if there were people in the way. You could move them out of the way. They were savages with no rights.

If you couldn't move them, the cavalry would, and the people kept coming.

The Indians had been pushed and pushed until Manifest Destiny was crushing indigenous people under the feet of a European invasion. The Indians kept moving. The people kept coming.

Washington's victory was temporary. Europeans kept coming. Washington warned of foreign entanglements. He had no idea he needed to tell the leaders; don't let Europeans take over the country.

Could that be what he meant by, "Beware of foreign entanglements?"

In the need for people to make Manifest Destiny a reality, they let the Europeans in with their culture, religion, and ideas. What was America was overrun by Europeans. They knew how to fight. They'd been fighting each other for a thousand years. Savages with bows and arrows didn't scare them off.

America's leaders, not as wise as an old fox, turned America over to the Europeans who kept coming. Europeans never considered indigenous people as human. They were savages. You could kill them.

You could take Europeans out of Europe. You couldn't take Europe out of the Europeans. At this late date, indigenous people knew their control of the land they lived on for thousands of years had passed out of their hands into the hands of the whites. One thing white people weren't going to put up with, savages living next door. They did have standards, you know.

With the death of all the old warriors, our memory was lost. The warriors that saw the beginning of westward migration were no longer there to remind us of the treachery that comes with migration.

If we hadn't moved out of their way, more of us would be dead.

Running Horse didn't have the benefit of the last generation who came before, and my knowledge came from the perspective of the people who didn't hesitate taking land people lived on. I could relate the stories I learned, but I didn't know history, except for what some white man wrote in a book for school who taught white children in white schools.

I sensed the story was written as a tribute to heroic migrants. They braved the elements, the backbreaking trail ahead, not to mention the savages who insisted on standing in the way of progress.

Once I lived with the Pawnee for a while, I heard white people described as locust who didn't stop coming. They were as many as the blades of grass. They knew the migration wasn't going to stop before the locust occupied all the land. Indigenous people knew it was inevitable, but like most desperate men who see their way of life dying, they would put up one hell of a fight, no matter how futile.

Having a foot in both worlds, I might have some value. As far as I was concerned, when the final battle came, I'd be there. Like any desperate man, I'd fight like hell.

If I wouldn't die for my people, how could I call myself Pawnee? Even while in the white man's school, I didn't see migrants as heroic. I may have had white skin. My heart was Pawnee.

The final miles of our journey to the river, we could see the entire band of Pawnee from where we walked behind them. It was a rather amazing site. We were moving an entire village.

Running Horse, me, and Lit'l Fox and Morning Star walked together bringing up the rear. Medicine Woman managed to smile as we talked, sang, joking with each other as the trip began to wear on us.

The weather remained pleasant for walking.

Medicine Woman seemed stronger as the day went on. When we stopped to take a break, Medicine Woman got up and walked leaning on Lit'l Fox's arm. They didn't go far, but she needed to get up.

Maybe she was getting better. Maybe my grandmother would see the new village. Maybe she'd see its beauty the way Running Horse and I did. The new village would be nicer with Medicine Woman in it.

I don't know what I felt. I could send Running Horse up to the cabin, but Paw might shoot him if I didn't go with him. Paw had to see Medicine Woman, and I needed to be with her. I had to see them, even if I didn't want to see them. I was not Gregory. I had never been Gregory. I was Tall Willow, and they wouldn't want to see me as a Pawnee warrior, and that is who I was. It's who they'd see. Gregory died, if he was ever alive.

I could see the entire group while walking behind Medicine Woman's litter now. The day was pleasant and we moved easily along on the soft flat grassland. Moving at walking speed, the horses and pack mules moved along together. We walked, sang, and stayed together. I knew where we were and we didn't have much further to go.

I lost sight of Running Horse, he'd ridden ahead, and in a few minutes he was back. He didn't stop to stay at the head of the march. He rode back to where I walked behind the litter.

"How feel?"

"She seems better today. Why not ask her?"

"How you feel," he said, concentrating on his English.

"We're there, aren't we?" Medicine Woman asked.

"We there. How feel?" Running Horse said.

I wouldn't look for the river, but it was right where I left it. I wasn't ready. It was too soon. Why didn't we keep moving? We had a long way to go.

The group stopped and began preparing to set up to make camp. I kept walking until I stood, looking across at the house where I was Gregory. My second life took me back to where my first life was lived.

I did not want to do this, and I couldn't avoid it. I had to be a man and face my past, no matter how much I hated it. Medicine Woman came to see her son. Lit'l Fox to see his father. Running Horse to see his father's brother. I wanted to run, but Pawnee warriors didn't run from what had to be done.

Why did I feel like a little boy again?

If Paw saw Indians in the field across the river, he'd come over. If Maw saw us, she'd have a heart attack. They'd need to walk down in front of the house to see us, and that wasn't a place they went to if they weren't coming to the river to do laundry or to wash up.

It was too late for laundry. Too early to be washing up.

"What think?"

"I'd rather be anywhere but here."

"Why so angry?"

"I'm not angry," I objected.

"You angry. Make fist. Grit teeth. You angry."

I opened both hands and my mouth.

"I'm not," I said.

Running Horse laughed.

"Medicine Woman put eagle feathers in hair. Both us. She say we dress as Pawnee warriors to see father. You come now."

"My father ain't Pawnee."

"He Pawnee. Come."

I sat on the edge of Medicine Woman's litter. She brushed my hair as she did when I was a boy. I'd put on my deerskin and I gave her the eagle feather to weave into my hair. My father would see them as giving me status. Medicine Woman always gave me status. She taught me what I knew about being Pawnee, while I was still a white boy healing from a broke leg.

I watched Medicine Woman's loving hands brush Running Horse's hair. She carefully weaved the three feathers into his hair. My man sat regally as his grandmother made him look like a chief. He was the most beautiful man I'd ever seen. That hadn't changed.


Send Rick an email at quillswritersrealm
@yahoo.com

On to Chapter Eleven
"Stepping Stone"

Back to Chapter Nine
"Going Home"

Chapter Index
Fleeting Fall Main Page

Rick Beck Home Page