Once Samuel took care of Chestnut, he headed off with the 30/30 to look for a place to hunt. Demon stayed with us and the wagon, and I used the same firepit I used the first time I was there. It took no time at all to have a fire going. Now, if Samuel got some game, we'd be ready to cook it, once he was back.

I told John where the water was, and after we unhitched the team, he took them to where they could drink and there was grass all around us, and that would keep the horses happy.

There was a shot and Demon took off, knowing that meant Samuel had gotten some game. He came back carrying a woodchuck that was at least ten pounds. Demon knew what that meant, he'd be getting plenty of meat tonight. We'd all get our fill tonight.

Sammy Boy and I made our beds under the wagon, and John slept in the bed in the wagon. I'd set the coffee pot up to put on the fire as quick as we got up. We didn't need to hurry into town to get to the assay office, because we were told to meet Juan there at noon. He'd be there at noon each day, until we arrived. I'd wired Dan when I thought we might be in Denver, and we were fairly close to that timetable.

Once we were up and had our coffee, I cooked some of the meat with potatoes in a pot my mother gave us for that purpose. It did create a nice mix with some seasonings thrown in. We managed to get it all eaten and I cleaned up the firepit for the next campers. We left a little bit of wood we gathered but didn't use.

Samuel and I hitched up the horses and John saddled Chestnut. Samuel tied Dobbin to the back of the wagon, and we headed back into Denver to go to the assay office.

By where the sun was in the sky, I judged it was getting on toward noon, and we went back to the main street, turning west. We saw a man walking on the left side of the street, coming from the opposite direction, and Phillip stopped the wagon.

"Hey, Captain, can you direct me to the assay office?"

The man stopped, looking the wagon over before he stepped into the street.

"You a miner?" the man wanted to know.

"Surveyor," Phillip replied.

"Oh," the man said. "What's a surveyor?"

"He does surveys. Assay office?"

"Oh, yes, two blocks, no three blocks if you count this one. It's on the left side. It's next to the harness and saddle shop. They call it the leather shop these days. It's across from the sewing shop. Can't miss it. Has a huge yellow sign over the door. Written on it in big red letters, Assay Office."

"Thanks, I think I can find it."

I jiggled the reins and we saw the yellow sign two blocks away

"Why didn't he just say, look for the yellow sign. Can't miss that?" John said. "It's huge."

It was later in the morning. Can't say what time we stopped the wagon across from the huge yellow sign that said, Assay Office. None of the shops showed any sign of coming to life. No one else was on the wooden walkway before we reached the assay office.

A young man stepped out on to the street and came over to the wagon.

"Juan Garcia. You are Phillip?"

"I am," Phillip said, jumping down to shake Juan's hand. "You know where we will survey?"

"I do. I was hired by Robby to assist him. He was called home on an emergency."

"What was the emergency, Juan."

"Wife have baby soon. She is not doing so well, and they wired him to come home. That was many months ago."

"Sounds serious. You can take us to where I am to survey, Juan?"

"Yes, your new equipment is inside, but I have some of Robby's equipment he left. We need to go to talk to the assayer. He has maps, and I'll show you where we were assaying."

"You won't be riding there with us?" I asked, worried about how hard it would be to find.

"Yes, Juan will go with you. I'll show you what has been surveyed, and what needs to be surveyed. I see you have your own crew, and once I take you there, Juan will return home to Laredo. I've been too long away from home. I am to meet you. Help if you need me and go home once you are satisfied. Juan has been paid well to do this. You will not pay me."

"Yes, I have plenty of help. If you'll take me to where you were surveying, that will be a big help. I'll need to know what has been surveyed and what is left to survey."

"Robby left the papers with the assayer. He's keeping them in the safe. Robby said they're valuable and need to go to you when you come. There is another matter Robby trusted me to advise you about. This is secret and not to be told to anyone but Phillip. He made this clear, "Tell no one but Phillip, Juan."

"What's it related to?" Phillip asked.

"It will be easier to show you. I can't describe it. It's more land. Not the bank's land. Robby found this by accident, and he wants you to know about it."

"Sounds mysterious," I said.

I didn't like mysteries, but there will be plenty of time for discussing that.

"Secret," Juan said. "Robby didn't want anyone else to know about it."

"Is it near where we're doing our surveying?"

"Yes, next to where we were surveying. He stumbled on to it by accident."

Juan began walking toward the assay office, and I followed. I had questions, but since he would take us to where we would survey, there would be time to talk later in the day.

"Come, I'll take you to meet Jack. He is assayer."

I followed Juan, John followed me, and Samuel brought up the rear.

"You are Phillip Dubois?" the proprietor asked.

"I'm Phillip Dubois. You can see by the logo on the wagon; I'm 1st National's man in charge of their western land holdings. I also do the surveys. I hire men to assist in the surveys."

The proprietor walked around the counter, and he opened the door to look at the wagon.

"I am Jack Armstrong. I'm the city assayer. I have your equipment under the counter. I'll help you take it out to the wagon.

It didn't really take five of us to carry the little bit of equipment out to the wagon, but we all made the trip. As Jack put down the piece he was carrying, he looked up at Samuel's gunslinger's rig right over his head.

"That's a serious six shooter. Yours?" he asked me.

"No, that's Sammy Boy's waist gun."

"Colt. Can't do better than a Colt," he said. "I've got Robby's assay paperwork in the safe. Come on in and I'll get it for you. He stood at my counter for an hour making sure it was all up to date. Hard worker. I would say he has that section more than half surveyed. I'll show you my map of the region up that way. 1st National's section is as far as my map goes. Won't be any trouble finding it. It's right on the main trail. Maybe fifteen miles to Fort Collins."

"I'll go with him to show him the parts we've surveyed. Then Juan is going to Laredo."

I took the paperwork and put it in the wagon before we pulled out. Samuel and Juan rode horses and John and I were in the wagon.

I calculate, we would camp one night. We would reach the area we were to survey in the morning light. I was in no rush, and since Juan would leave us tomorrow, I needed to see the section to be surveyed, and have him show me what was already surveyed. We camped early so I would have the benefit of the morning light, once we reached our destination.

The trail was so wide and smooth, we could have easily gotten to where we were going in a single day, but there was no rush and I wanted to see it in broad daylight.

Juan was helpful. He pointed out the furthest sections that were surveyed. Robby had done it the way I taught him, and the sections furthest away from where we'd make camp were already completed. We would be surveying closer to a spot I picked for camp.

Juan said they camped in the mysterious place he was going to show me. I knew I would pick my own place, but Juan was anxious to show me what Robby told him to show me. He was a pleasant enough fellow, and I would humor him, before sending him on his way.

I had already seen two places that would be easy to set up a camp. The trail was so wide and flat, I could drive rested horses to town in one day. We took our time going out, but on horseback, we could be in Denver in three hours or a little less. That made Denver convenient if we found we needed something we ran out of, but going to Denver wasn't on my mind as we finished riding 1st National Bank's section.

We were up before dawn, and I fixed coffee and we ate some warmed over meat and potatoes from the game Samuel brought us. We finished the pot of coffee left from the night before and got underway.

An hour after first light, Juan showed us where they started the survey as Robby worked his way toward the place where they made their base camp. I taught Robby to get the furthest point out of the way first and work back toward where you kept your camp.

Once we saw what they had surveyed, Juan took us across country to the furthest point of the bank's property, and then returned to the trail. Juan was already talking about the secret place Robby wanted me to see, and he'd been so helpful, I let him take us in that direction.

I wasn't that interested in Juan's secret or the mystery he wouldn't elaborate on. I wasn't big on mysteries, but if Robby thought it was important, I'd take a look. What I really wanted was to get the survey over and then, return to my village and Running Horse. My certainty about life wasn't so certain these days, but my certainty about Running Horse was certain.

The map in the assayer's office showed me on the map where 1st National Bank's land holdings were. It was all on the east side of the trail we traveled. The western section, everything west of the trail out to the Rocky Mountains had not been mapped according to what the assayer had. There were maps of where gold had been found west of Denver. That land was mostly in the Rocky Mountains.

We stopped at where Robby stopped the survey, once he was called home. His notes were neat and precise, leaving no doubt about where he left off and where I'd pick up. It was going to be far easier than I imagined it might be.

Once Juan showed me everything I asked to see, we rode north two miles, which was where 1st National Bank's holding came to an end. The southern sections were all surveyed and I checked the paperwork to make sure it agreed with what I'd seen, and it did.

Juan told me to follow him off to the west, away from the trail a few hundred yards. I could immediately see why this did not appear on the assay office's maps. Our way was blocked by cliffs with a sheer drop at the face of over one hundred feet. It was stunning and apparently impregnable for everything but birds.

Those are some serious cliffs, I thought to myself as I looked straight up as we rode close to the face.

It was unlike any rock formation I had seen. I was impressed, but I hadn't seen anything yet.

"This is what you wanted to show me?" I asked Juan from the wagon seat.

"Si," Juan said. "Follow me. This Is where it starts. The rest is the secret," he told me."

"Juan, this is a wagon. Follow you where? There's nothing but cliffs along here."

I was speaking to myself. Juan disappeared in between two boulders that were as high as some of the structures in New York City. They obviously rolled off those cliffs at some point.

Juan reappeared while I looked to see where he had gone to. What was he up to?

"Follow me," Juan said, reappearing from between the two boulders. I wondered what he was doing. That wasn't a very wide place to take the wagon into.

We had this conversation.

"Juan, this wagon won't fit between those rocks."

"Robby bring wagon here. It's what he wants me to show you."

He disappeared again and I climbed down to look the piece of ground over. Juan had ridden directly toward a cliff that towered straight up. There was no way to climb it, and moving my wagon back there didn't appeal to me.

I would humor him a few more minutes, and then we would go to the place I thought would make a nice camp a mile or two back toward Denver.

The big boulders weren't as close together as they looked from a distance. Juan sat on his horse about fifty feet further on. He sat in front of an opening in what appeared to be a canyon. Juan waved me on, and he rode into a split in the rock I didn't notice until he disappeared into the cliff. He seemed to know what he was doing. I went and brought the wagon back. There was no room to turn the wagon around. I had to keep going now. Once I got to the spot where Juan waited, there was a split large enough to get the wagon into it. The way the cliff jutted out on the nearside, you couldn't see the cliff on the far side break away and leave an opening about five or six feet wide. Until you went around the section of cliff that hid the canyon, it was invisible until you were at the opening. I was intrigued.

"You aren't going to bring the wagon back here," John said, walking with me as Juan showed me the canyon between the cliffs.

"Yeah, I am. He seems to know what he's doing," I said.

"I wish I knew what he was doing. You wedge that wagon in here, you'll never get it out."

"I want to see where he went," I said, as we went back to the wagon.

I went ahead since I didn't want to have to unhitch the horses and turn the wagon by hand.

I could neither see the sky nor the top of the cliffs on either side as I moved the wagon into the split and Juan walked his horse in front of me. I knew what it meant to be closed in on. There wasn't much more than a foot on either side of the wagon. Both walls of the canyon went straight up and the floor of the canyon was dark.

I could see Juan and little else. He seemed to know where he was going.

I wish I knew where he was going.

"Do you know where we're heading to?" John asked, as he tried to see the sky, once he gave up on trying to see the ground under us.

There wasn't enough light to see much.

I took it on good faith that Juan wasn't leading us off a cliff.

What happens if we can't get the wagon out of here, Phillip?"

"I hope we aren't going to find out. We can't turn it around and how could we see to back the wagon up what's already been a half mile. I don't know if there's enough room to get down beside the wagon. The horses seem okay. Let's see where it goes."

As the wagon rolled slowly forward, light began to penetrate the darkness, and then the canyon walls began to pull further away from the wagon, and as the horses came to a halt, we were looking straight out into space, but I could see the valley in front of and below us.

The horses stopped because there was no trail ahead of us. I couldn't see a way to get the fifty feet or more down to the valley floor. There was a little room to get off the wagon now, and I got down to take a look see.

After what I estimate was a little less than a mile, both cliffs broke away and revealed a plush green valley in front of us. Both John and I got down to stand in front of the horses. Samuel rode Chestnut up beside us and he dismounted to see what we were looking at.

"What is this place?" Samuel asked. "It's like another world. I've never seen so much green. Kind of beautiful back here. Is this where we are going?"

"I have never seen anything like it," I said, unable to believe my eyes.

"It's paradise," John said. "We've found the Garden at Eden. It's beautiful."

I felt the ground shifting under me as I gazed at a landscape that's difficult to describe. I now knew why Juan said we had to see it. He couldn't describe it and neither could I, but it was beautiful.

"You see why Robby wished this to be kept secret? It's a place settlers would spoil."

"It's beautiful," John said,

"A waterfall. Look over there. It's a waterfall," Samuel said, looking for a way that would take him down to the floor of an expansive valley.

It was a waterfall in the right-hand corner of the valley two or three miles ahead of us.

"Robby left the wagon down at the bottom under the opening to the canyon. If you take the wagon off to the left, he smoothed a trail that will take you down to the valley floor.

"Can we go see the waterfall, Pop. I've never seen a waterfall close up," Samuel said.

"Let me catch my breath," I said, trying to take it all in. "Robby took the wagon down there?"

"Walk it first," Juan said. "He walked it and he cleared obstructions, and then he took the wagon down. You can see where we camped. He left the wagon next to the canyon wall."

Juan and Samuel took their horses down first. John and I followed them on foot. I cleared larger rocks that could break a wheel or stop the wagon. I could see the marks Robby's wagon left in the softer dirt nearer the bottom where the trail went at less of a slant.

I walked back to the canyon entrance, or in this case, the exit. John named it the instant he laid eyes on it. This was Paradise Valley, and it lived up to its name.

Being shot made me realize how vulnerable I was. Since I left home to get me a griz, my life had run too fast for me to catch up with it. I went because I could, and I stayed still when I could. My life changed, changed back, and when I was shot, I knew I had no say in the hour of my death.

What was more apparent to me, I could not save Samuel. When I made up my mind, I would see to it that no one hurt him again. It didn't take me long to find out that I couldn't even protect myself. We had been lucky. We both survived.

How could I protect Sammy Boy or John when the chips were down?

Here, separated from the rest of the world by a canyon nearly a mile long, no one could threaten us, and I liked that idea. Paradise Valley was the perfect place to keep violence on the far side of the cliffs, while the valley remained peaceful.

Samuel had been shot and nearly killed because he wanted to rescue me from danger.

Nothing changed my life like being shot. Nothing leaves an impression on you like being shot. It doesn't simply alter your body. Your mind is altered by death passing a hair's breadth from where you are standing. You don't need to do anything. Be in the wrong place at the wrong time is the only requirement for death to be waiting for you.

I faced white men and Indians. I was always in control, until I lost control.

Then, I could do nothing but become a target for bad men to shoot at, and Samuel followed me into an abyss we might not have returned from if John hadn't risked his life to save us. All we were doing was taking care of business, when we crossed the wrong cowboy's path.

I'd lived on a farm, in a village, and I lived while being on the run, but I never once felt that in an instant, it could all be taken away, and I might or might not survive the next trail I went down, but this trail led me to Paradise Valley. This too was a bolt from the blue in its beauty.

How did I end up here?

You never knew where you would end up, but I knew this was a good place to be.

The valley below us was longer than it was wide. In the furthest corner was a waterfall cascading down from cliffs as tall as those towering over us as I brought the wagon through the opening. Inside the valley the far cliffs were graduated in a way that would allow us to climb to the top with only the final few feet being as rugged as the cliffs we passed between as we made our way into this remarkable valley.

I felt like this was a safe place to be. I hadn't felt safe since the night of the shootout at the cabin. A peacefulness came over me as I looked over Paradise Valley. I wouldn't mind living here. I wouldn't mind staying here.

The starkness of the trail leading us here gave me the feeling I had been transported to a place that had no right to be where we found it. The cliffs, the sheer face of those cliffs appeared impregnable, and then I was looking at paradise. A hidden paradise. A secret world no one had found to develop or mine yet. It was a secret worth keeping.

There were places that should remain unchanged. This was such a place. The only thing man could do to Paradise Valley was diminish its beauty. I would do my best to see that we didn't change it. I wanted to protect it. I wanted to own it to preserve it.

The valley was twice as long as it was wide, and the forests, pastures and a flow of water from the waterfall cut the valley in half. It wasn't a wide stream, but it furnished all the water anyone would need, and at the far end of the valley, it formed another waterfall that carried the water down into a desolate valley surrounded by cliffs that made access from the other end impossible. It was open on the inside. It didn't open to the outside world.

Paradise Valley was paradise. It was also a fortress with one way in and out, and it was just wide enough for the 1st National Bank's wagon to get through it. It wasn't wide enough for Samuel and Juan to ride side by side. They had to go one at a time.

If you were inside the valley, and men made an assault on it, they'd need to come out of the canyon one or two men at a time. Two men with repeating rifles could stop an army from gaining access if they were positioned to shoot them as they came out of the canyon exit.

There were places where the horses could get water and graze, and it wouldn't interfere with a campsite or campsites built above the pastures. The horses would drink from a small pond that sat beside the stream across the valley from the waterfall. Once they drank, they could graze in one of several meadows with lush green grass.

Birds flew in and out of the forests and they sang as they went, paying us no attention. The cliffs in the valley weren't as formidable as the cliffs on the outside. It was an amazing place.

How did it get here?

"Juan, what did Robby plan to do with this valley?"

I needed to know. Robby found it. He had the right to it. I couldn't be sure someone could own paradise, but I wanted to own it.

"Keep it secret. Show you. That's all he say to Juan," Juan said. "We camp here. Leave the wagon over there," Juan said, pointing near the firepit. "Each morning, we ride horses to do survey. Come back to safety of this valley."

Demon found the firepit and had lay claim to a bone he'd discovered there.

Juan had no interest in the valley. He did what he told Robby he'd do, waiting months longer than he anticipated. He only wanted to return to Mexico. If Robby had a plan for the valley, he didn't tell Juan. He left no word about it, except for Juan to show it to me.

After Juan left us, I moved the wagon over to where Robby set up his camp. There was no point in making another fire pit and there was easy access to water and with two fairly large looking sections of forest, I saw all the indications that the valley had a variety of game.

Unhitching the horses, they immediately discovered the pond beside the stream and there was a meadow just beyond the pond that had acres of lush grass growing up to the pond. The pastureland disappeared into a forest that took up much of the far side of the valley as far as I could see. There were small groves of trees scattered around the meadows.

I watched as Demon followed Samuel as he made his way toward the waterfall. There was a smaller forest he'd need to go through to come out on the far side. The waterfall was set back in the cliffs a bit, but it was easy to get to.

I got things ready to provide a campsite that allowed us to have comfort and convenience. The wagon would serve as our storage shed, until I built a suitable shed.

I moved some logs to allow us to sit next to the firepit. Samuel didn't take the rifle with him, but I had a suspicion he'd be back in an hour or so to get the 30/30 and try his luck. I saw no reason there wasn't plenty of game in the valley, and I could see goats on the hills in back of the waterfall. I counted eight goats on outcroppings of rocks.

I had a feeling hunting would be good. Everything was good In paradise.

It was warm in the valley, but it had been warm on the trail out of Denver. It was summer, and there would be plenty of time to do the surveying we needed to do before the worst of winter was upon us. We could camp in the valley, get up at dawn, and by the time we got coffee and something to eat, we'd be ready to ride Chestnut and Dobbin to the spot where we were surveying.

The equipment wasn't heavy or so awkward we couldn't carry it on horseback. If the weather took a turn for the worse, we could buy slickers in Denver to store the equipment on the site where the survey was being done and avoid carrying it back and forth.


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"Trail's End"

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