As we prepared to go out to John's horse ranch to work on his house, I watched Big Joe climb to the top of the cliff behind the wagon and disappear over the top. I was on my second cup of coffee and the meat I heated for a hot breakfast.

Big Joe drank a cup before doing his imitation of a mountain goat. The first thing in the morning, the last thing I wanted to do was go mountain climbing. Joe didn't say anything, but he had taken an interest in the top of the cliff along the canyon walls.

Big Joe hadn't said much, and he set his cup of coffee down and walked over behind the wagon to begin his climb. It's not the first time I'd watched him go up on top. I hadn't been up there, and I didn't know what was up there that interested him.

It took a while for him to come back this time, and it was completely daylight when he made his way back to the fire. John and Samuel remained in their bedrolls, after we came in at dark the night before.

"You ever go up there, Phillip? I mean examine the cliffs around the canyon? You do know you can see for miles to the north and the south. I mean, see what's on the trail, from the front of the cliffs where the entrance to the valley is. You can see someone coming. You can see anyone who is coming."

"Not much on climbing," I said. "No, I've only seen the front of the cliffs from the ground."

"You had to climb to get those rocks for the assayer? I want you to climb up to take a look at a way of protecting this place. You can defend it without any trouble. I mean it wouldn't take much to defend it with that narrow entrance. It's the only way in or out."

"It's the west front where I got the rocks. The eastern most cliffs are more formidable. No one could come up over those cliffs that didn't have wings. That canyon is too narrow for more than a few men to come in at a time."

"You are exposed the way things are now. Maybe no one will ever discover the canyon, but you are leaving that to chance. Maybe they won't find their way in here. Maybe they will find that hidden entrance the same way you found it."

The way he made the proposition had me thinking about Trag and the two polecats in Denver. I never expected trouble, but trouble found me. Maybe I ought to listen to Big Joe.

"You know there is gold on the western cliff? You took rocks from there to the assayer."

"What makes you say so?" I asked.

"Same kind of rocks you had for the assayer. I've seen it a few times. Gold that is."

"I'd rather no one knows there is gold here," I explained to him.

"The best way you keep that from getting out is be prepared to defend your home."

"Hard to figure on people finding it when it isn't easy to find," I said.

"You could defend this place so no one will ever get back here. You found it. Other people can stumble on to it the same way you did. I can keep them out if you let me."

"This is like military defense you're talking about? Something the buffalo soldiers did?"

"I suppose. Just thinking about defending it if someone wanted to get you out of here. There isn't enough dynamite to blast their way in here, but if they find that canyon, they can ride right into your living room. I can stop that from ever happening, and you don't need to do a thing, Phillip. I can fix it so no one gets back here but you."

"I haven't thought about it. What do you have in mind?"

"I can't explain it. I can do it. Fix it so no one can ever get back here. Don't mean you got to use it, but it would be there in case you need it. You'll see what I'm doing if you give me the go ahead to build it. Once I build it, this will truly become a fortress. No one will get back here."

"Go ahead, Big Joe. You know army stuff. I have no knowledge of defenses. I never figured on defending anything, but you go ahead and I'll take a look see when you're done."

I didn't think any more of it, but Big Joe spent a lot of time climbing up to the top of the cliff behind the wagon. I knew he was moving rocks around, and Samuel went up there to move rocks around with him.

A couple of times a week as the survey was coming to a close, we rode to John's horse farm to work on his cabin.

We'd been to town for Big Joe to pick out what we needed to build a sturdy cabin. A lot of it was logs and then there were places that could be separated with lumber sectioning off one part from another in the interior. I swung an ax and brought down trees Big Joe liked. Samuel helped split off boards after they were about sawed through.

We had a regular construction site going. We built new lodges when we moved the village one year, but that was nothing like what we did at John's. We built lodges from what was handy, and we could take one down as easy as we could put it up.

The way John's cabin was being built, it wouldn't come down in a hundred years.

Big John had clamps to hold a tree he cut, and he'd mark it to be sawed into lumber. He could make a board out of a tree in thirty minutes or so. Even with the day not much above freezing, Big John hung his shirt on a hook that was a short limb on a nearby tree. When he sawed he sweated, he had a pretty good pile of lumber going the next time I arrived.

Samuel replaced John as my right hand man for the rest of the survey, and John and Big Joe worked on getting the cabin most of the way built before the real winter weather hit.

As soon as we got to camp, and we cut our days short because daylight got short in December and January. As quick as we got back to the valley, Samuel had his bow with Demon right behind him, while I built the fire to cook the game he brought back for supper.

With five of us eating meat, Samuel took to hunting every evening after we came in.

John and Big Joe came in on Chestnut and Moses a bit before daylight left the sky. I had the coffee on and we would be eating an hour after they came home.

"How's it going, John? The cabin is coming along? I haven't been there this week. We're finishing up the last of the survey."

"Half built. He's got lumber to section off rooms. Never seen a man takes his work so seriously, Phillip. He was a find. He knows how to do things I didn't know you could do."

"Worried about leaving you here alone when we go east, but with Big Joe here, well, you'll have that cabin built by the time we come back with Barnaby."

"I suspect we will. Maybe some stables and a barn too. It's beautiful there. The air is fresh, and you can hear the river rolling along all day long. I could just sit and listen if there wasn't so much work to get done."

"I'll have the land secured along with Paradise Valley by the time we get back," I said.

That was the plan and with Big Joe there, it was an easier proposition to consider. I thought about asking Sammy Boy to stay with John, so he wasn't alone. Now, Big Joe was here, and they were building up a storm on the horse ranch. They'd be fine while we were gone.

Samuel seemed as determined to take the trip east with me as he was determined to help with whatever we asked him to do. Even then, with all the building and surveying we did each day, by the time supper was done and John was cleaning up after us, I could hear Big Joe and Samuel up on the cliff, piling up rocks.

They were building up some kind of wall. They kept piling one rock on top of another. For a couple of hours each evening, they moved rocks. I had been up there to take a look see. Big Joe showed me the view of the trail which went for some ways in both directions. They were stacking rocks up along the canyon, being careful to use lumber Big Joe cut to make sure none fell into the canyon.

I must admit, when I came into the valley, I looked up there and I wondered what would happen if all those rocks they were piling up took to moving and fell down on my head. I saw big Joe made sure that would not be happening, but I wasted no time in the canyon.

I thought of mentioning my fear to Big Joe, but he seemed to know what he was doing, and they kept piling up rocks on top of more rocks. One good thing about it, they would never run out of rocks on those cliffs. They were everywhere up there.

The monument grew taller as time went on, and the rock hauling continued.

One evening, as we sat around the fire drinking coffee, Samuel returned with two rabbits cleaned and ready to go on the fire. Demon wasn't far behind, when he came out of the shadows and into the light of the fire.

We were a regular family, but Demon still wasn't that popular with Big Joe. Some things are harder to get accustomed to, and seeing a wolf saunter into camp and lie next to the fire wasn't how things typically went where Big Joe was from.

I could see Big Joe's eyes on our wolfdog at times. Demon took to sitting a little closer to our newest arrival in camp each time he came to the fire and saw Big Joe already there.

We all tossed pieces of the meat we ate at Demon, and he was skilled at snatching anything tossed his way out of the air. Disposing of fat and bones was his specialty.

He knew Big Joe represented one more opportunity to make out at supper time, if he could wiggle his way into Big Joe's heart. Acting accordingly he sat closer to Big Joe than to me, but not much closer. He knew he got most of his meat from me, and that was on his mind as he picked where he'd plant is self as the metal plates were handed out.

He made sure Big Joe knew he was there, and always hungry, as a wolf should be.

It was obvious to everyone seated around, we all knew exactly where Demon was when we had a bit of bone or fat to dispose of. After about a while, Big Joe would come across a nice juicy piece of fat he wasn't going to eat, and once he moved it to the corner of his plate, and after looking at Demon, he flipped the greasy mass into the air. True to form, Demon didn't need to ask who it was for, and Big Joe smiled when he didn't let the morsel get near the ground.

If Big Joe was in camp when Sammy Boy went to hunt, he went with him. He was fascinated by bow hunting. He was amazed at how quick Samuel was when game came within range.

One afternoon, as I was grinding coffee for the pot and that night's supper, which would be the rest of an antelope Samuel killed two days before. Big Joe came from the back of the wagon carrying his saddlebags.

I went to the stream to get water for the pot I'd be cooking potatoes and carrots in when he started looking over books that were in front of him.

When John came back from depositing some garbage in the garbage patch, he stood near Big Joe, and was trying to make out the titles on Big Joe's pile of books. The man's saddlebags had books in them. I never knew anyone carried books around with him.

"You carry those with you Joe?" John asked.

"Collected them while soldiering. Auntie Esther said, 'You read your books so you know what's going on, you hear me Joseph? I heard her. Some of these were given to me by officers. They saw I read by the light of the fire at night, and when they was done with a book, they'd ask if I wanted it. I didn't ask what it was. Not many books around most posts."

"You listened to her?" John said. "She must have been a smart lady."

"Surely did, Mr. John. She was as smart a woman as anyone at the big house. When Missy Millie got a chance, she gave Auntie a book now and then. Some nights Auntie Esther would read from the books she collected. You could hear a pin drop. Every ear was on her, as she told us tales of Rome, Greece, and of ancient Egypt. That's where Moses took his people out of. They were enslaved and Moses set them free."

"Big house?" John asked.

"Plantation house. We lived in slave quarters. Just enough room for all of us to get laid out at night to sleep. The plantation house was a ways, but you couldn't miss it. It stood tall and white like Master Crawford stood. Except for him owning us, he weren't a bad sort."

"Master Crawford?"

"Owner. Everyone just called him Master, but you didn't want to be looking him in the eye when you said it."

John was looking down when he looked up

"Why is that, Joe? Why not look him in the eye?"

"No, you don't want to be looking no white man in the eye. Not a colored man don't."

"Never heard of such a thing? You aren't to look him in the eye. How do you talk to him?"

"Mr. John, a plantation owner don't talk to field Niggers. He gots men who he talks to. They is the field boss. He tells you what Master wants, and it goes best when you do it. Because I was raised by Auntie Esther, I see the Master in the house. I tries to go the other way, but if he sees me, he might say, "How are you doing Joseph?"

I say I'm fine and I gets out of there. He knew I played with Missy Millie, he would whip me something fierce. Auntie Esther told me, "You never let him see you anywhere near Missy Millie, you hear me?"

"I passed plantations. I had no urge to see one up close. I heard it was no place for a white man to be hanging around, but you can't look a man in the eye? That's crazy."

"No. White men don't like no colored man looking him in the eye. It's disrespectful."

"Uncle Tom's Cabin," John said. "That's not that old, is it?"

"1852 copyright on it. Don't know when she wrote it," Big Joe said, picking the book up. "You like to read it? I takes it out now and again. Remind myself where I comes from."

"I would, Joe. I've heard about the book for years. It's not read in the south where I was, or I would have bought a copy. Harriet Beacher Stow, I believe. Preacher's daughter, I think."

"Where was you?" Big Joe asked.

"I kept my goods in Atlanta. I got all over. Mostly Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia. We were dealing Andy Jackson's patch in Tennessee. I got there at the right time. Made a bundle on the property I got a hold of."

"He done put all them Indians off their land, didn't he?"

"Yes, Andy did that. Got himself right rich," I said. "I bought a big patch of his land. Nothing like the big companies got their hands on. I did okay, while the rich folks got a lot richer. Never heard one of them mention the Indians that once lived on that land."

"They got rich? What did you get?"

"I made a bundle. I made a lot for a poor white boy. I would never get as rich as the richest land speculators. They never leave home. Send men they hire to buy the best land. I got what they weren't interested in buying, and I did fairly well. I'm buying that horse ranch."

"I met some of those Indians in Oklahoma Territory," Big Joe said. "Smart people."

"What is Uncle Tom's Cabin about?" John asked, looking at the back of the book.

Samuel came in drying himself off after taking a soak. He sat down next to Big Joe.

"Well, it's a story about people who gots nothing. We is owned by our Master. Now, me, I was cleaved off my mama, and my mama was cleaved off my poppa."

"Cleaved as in cut off?" John asked.

"Sorry. I didn't know my mama. I have a vague memory of her when they sold her off. That's how Auntie Esther got me. She was Auntie to a lot of us. They is no regard for kids, husbands, wives. It ain't nothing to no owner. He gets an offer for one of his slaves and he takes it or he don't. Don't matter if she's married or has kids. They sell her, and she's gone the next day."

"They sold your mother?" Samuel asked, still drying his long locks.

"Want me to take the scissors to that mess, Sammy Boy?" I asked.

"No. I get my strength from my hair," Samuel said.

"Sampson," Big Joe said. "You like Sampson?"

"I reckon I am," Samuel said. "Who is he?"

"Man in the bible," Joe said. "He had the strength of a hundred men. They cut off his hair, he was an ordinary man, but in the end, even once they cut his hair, he pulled down their temple on the Philistines, after praying to God to return his strength."

"What happened to Sampson?" Samuel wanted to know.

"Died. He pulled the temple down on himself."

"No, don't be cutting my hair. I don't want to lose my strength," Samuel said.

"Uncle Tom's Cabin," John said.

"Uncle Tom's Cabin is about people gots nothing. They don't even gots themselves. In a minute you can be sold off from everything you know, and end up in a new place, where you knows no one. Uncle Tom be a house Nigger. That's what an Uncle Tom is. That, and he doesn't mind being owned as much as some mind it. He does his work. Keeps his mouth shut, and he gets treated right nice. In this case, Tom was sold off from his wife and kids. He gots it good, but he misses his wife and they is trying to buy his freedom so he can get back with her," Big Joe said.

Big Joe knew his stuff. Nothing he said about Uncle Tom's Cabin wasn't part of the book. At first I paid little attention.

"I ain't read much since Mrs. Taylor let me out of school. I never read a book that wasn't part of book learning. I read fine. I don't read at all."

I had a new appreciation for Big Joe. I had a new appreciation for John too. He sat reading that book next to the fire each night after that. He'd read a while, shaking his head at some of the words, and he might ask Joe, 'why aren't you suppose to read, Joe?'

"Well, it's like this, most plantation people aren't any smarter than their slaves. You let a slave get some book learning, he can get some big ideas in his head. I can go up the road to get a better deal, or there is more of us than there is of them. Dangerous ideas to plantation owners."

"You can buy your freedom?" Samuel asked.

"Sammy Boy, you can buys anything. People will sell you in a flash. Then, they owns you. You see, Uncle Tom wants to be with his wife. His wife wants to be with him. She is doing all with in her power to gets Tom back. Tom, he is a house Nigger. He don't mind it so much. He would like to be with his wife, but it's not like things isn't fine where he is. He's an Uncle Tom, you see?"

"How much would you cost, if you bought your freedom?" I asked.

"Me, not that much. As a child, I gots no value. They might sells me with my mama, or not. Now I'm grown, I got value, but Mr. Lincoln freed us, and my value belongs to me now."

"Never knew my mama either," Samuel said.

"Who done that to your back, Sam?" Big Joe asked, once Samuel got his hair dry.

"Nester. I was owned by Nester. He was angry. He liked beating me. He was a mean cuss."

"You show him to me, Sammy Boy. He won't beat no one else," Big Joe said, showing true anger for the first time. "Don't hold with no beatings. That makes me mad."

I wouldn't want him angry with me. I saw big Joe chop down trees and carry rocks. He was as powerful a man as I had known. I'm sure he could seriously hurt someone with his fists. The odd thing, he was as intelligent as any man I knew. He seemed gentle to me in spite of his size.

"How'd Nester get you?" I asked.

"He always owned me, Pop. No memory of anyone else. If I got a mama, I don't know her."

I was going to kill him the day we found Sammy Boy. I killed two men. They needed killing as much as anyone did. I put Nester in that category. If I had kilt him, I wouldn't have fretted in the least. Snakes needed killing in my opinion.

"Nester said he owned me. Who was I to argue the point," Samuel said.

"You ain't got no body and you was owned, Sammy Boy. You were a slave. You are the whitest man I ever knowed, and you was a slave with no mama to protect you. At least I had Auntie Esther. As good a woman as ever got herself born."

I found that as remarkable as the rest of what I knew about Big Joe. I remembered a story John told me about a slave he saw being beaten. He had a 30/30 by his leg, and he wanted to shoot the man doing the beating, but he drove away after doing nothing. He feared what might happen to him if he interfered.

I watched him in the valley where we lived together. He still didn't have a lot to say if he wasn't discussing literature with John. I didn't realize John read while he was land speculating. He was mostly alone and traveling in the South. He bought books and read them, leaving them behind once he finished one.

I climbed up on the cliff above where the wagon was parked late one morning. It was after Samuel climbed up on top and didn't come back. Once I was up there, I took a look around. It was most of a mile out to the front of the cliff that opened on Paradise Valley.

From the front, I could see up the trail and down the trail for as far as my eyes could take me. There was a cluster of rocks where you could sit and see everything, including across the main trail to 1st National Bank's land we were almost done surveying.

I was able to get a bird's eye view from up there.

I watched Big Joe carry a big rock from one side of the cliff to the other. He was building defense, or so he said. What he was doing was pling the rocks up. Did he intend to throw them at anyone who came nosing around? That would be a dead giveaway that he was up there. Someone had to throw them. Rocks couldn't jump off the cliff.

It wasn't something I spent a lot of time on, and it wasn't a place I went much, after that excursion up on the cliffs in front of our valley. As far as I could see, they both were carrying rocks from one side to the other. I didn't get it, but they seemed to be okay with it.

I shook my head and went back down. Big Joe had been in the cavalry, maybe he knew what he was doing. I didn't, but Sammy Boy was doing it too, but Samuel did things because he wanted to be helpful. Big Joe wanted to be helpful. He wanted to help to defend our valley. What do you figure they're doing up there, John?"

"Says, 'building defenses.' Looks like they're piling rocks up to me, but I was never in the cavalry. I figure he knows what he's doing. He's always working at something, Phillip."

That was the night John gave Uncle Tom's Cabin back to Big Joe.

"Quite interesting, Joe. Can't say it's a cheerful read. You did sum it up. It's a story of people who have nothing, and the people who treat them like they are nothing. How did you survive, Joe? I couldn't survive what the slaves did."

"Auntie Esther told me, 'Be putting one foot in front of the other, Joe. Don't worry about anyone else and what they is up to. You just put one foot in front of the other' and that's what I done. One day they said, 'We is free. Mr. Lincoln done freed all of us.' I had no where to go."

"Master Crawford said, "Pick my cotton, I'll feed you. It's the best I can do for you. War has made us all poor."

"One of those freed boys came back from town one day. "They is hiring buffalo soldiers in town. You get a horse, a gun, they feeds you, and you get paid." No one else had anything like that to offer us. That's how I ended up out here."

"Can I read it?" Samuel asked.

"Sure," Big Joe said, handing over the book to Samuel.

"You can read, Sammy Boy?" I asked.

"Of course I can. I ain't stupid, Pop."

I was amazed. I didn't know the boy could read. We'd been together through thick and thin, and I never knew he had some education. He talked okay but the subject hadn't come up until that minute. It made me feel foolish not knowing that about him.

"How is it you can read? Nester didn't strike me as an educated man," I said.

"He wasn't. He brought Auntie Patricia home one time from town. She sat me down and taught me my letters and I learned to read. She had books too. I never seen Uncle Tom's Cabin, but it seems like something I ought to read. I know there was slaves. Never gave no thought to being one."

For the next week, Sammy Boy sat next to the fire when he wasn't surveying with me, or piling rocks up with Big Joe, and after a week, he handed the book over to Big Joe.

"Can I read it?" I asked, after everyone there had already read it.

I had never read anything that I didn't read at school. I never took any books home. I never saw a book at the cabin, except the Holy Bible, which sat on a table next to Maw's bed.

Hearing a man that knew what he was talking about describe Uncle Tom's Cabin, was as close to hitting the mark as anyone was likely to come. It's hard to believe how badly slaves had it. I thought Indians were at the bottom of the totem pole, but I guess slaves were right there on the bottom with us

How did people get so they thought owning other folks is okay? How could people treat other people so mean?

It gave me a new respect for Big Joe, and for Sammy Boy. They'd lived through it. Didn't know I knew anyone who thought you could own someone. I didn't know anything about slaves or slavery, but Uncle Tom's Cabin was a chore to read.

It wasn't fancy writing, it was hard hearing the misery slaves endured. It was terrible how mean people could be to each other. People let them get away with being pure evil. Too many people had no reaction to evil they knew was evil. They were able to ignore it.

For more than fourteen years, I was a slave to what I was told to be. I had freedom to come and go as I pleased. So my life wasn't a life of being enslaved. It gave me no chance to say no, this is not what I am going to do. This is not who I want to be. I knew inside myself, this is not where I belonged, but I knew nothing else. I didn't know how to find my way until I decided to go hunt a grizzly bear, and that's when I began to live a life I wanted to live.

I wasn't treated badly. I wasn't allowed to discover who I was. I was told what I was, and I was told what to do. My mind and body were enslaved, without me being held against my will, but what was my will? I knew nothing and I put one step in front of another with the hope I would find my way.

By some quirk of fate, or by happenstance, I liberated myself from a life that wasn't mine. By fate or happenstance, my brother found me on the mountain with my broke leg. By fate or by happenstance, he took me to the village to live with him, my brother, and my grandmother and my grandfather all living in the same lodge.

I wasn't sure who I was. I didn't immediately feel like this is where I belonged and these were my people, but I had the freedom to consider who these people were, who I was, and what to do about it.

I did what I did, before my third life started. It wasn't a life I wanted, but in that life, I learned about the world around me. The world as it was and not the world I wanted it to be. The good thing about getting a third life, you had two lives to practice on.

Most of what I know came from living my third life. I wasn't so close to it that I couldn't breathe. I wasn't so in love I couldn't see. I stood a step away from Phillip Dubois, watching his every move. I learned from watching the steps he took. I learned to see through his eyes.

Nearly dying as Phillip Dubois, reuniting with Running Horse after so many years, Phillip Dubois had taken me about as far as he could. That's when I knew that I was going to go home. I never believed I could go home, but when the time arrived, I knew it.

Why I didn't go home before, when I was close to the Pawnee village, I don't know. How I arrived at the decision to go home, I don't know that either. I am going home. I do know that.

I watched the final bite of fire licking at the fresh air as embers glowed and the wood collapsed in on itself as the heat of it was only enough to keep a few feet near it warm. Each ember lived a few minutes on their own before blinking out. My mind blinked me in and out of a life I couldn't explain. It was the life that happened to me, and after years on the run, I would do one final job before going home to the village where I belonged.

Maybe I am going home because it is where I belong.

I was a killer of men. I had been wanted as Tall Willow, but no one gave a hang about Phillip Dubois, son of a man I only knew rumors about. I could bring destruction down on my village if the cavalry ever got wind of Tall Willow going home, but no one in the cavalry knew what Tall Willow looked like, and it was time to go home.

So, I would go home as Phillip Dubois.

The crackle from the fire reminded me I was still in the middle of Phillip Dubois' life. I could never be free of him because he was too much a part of me, and the identity was good for another lifetime or two if needed.

One lonely ember burst free, floating up in the night sky, going out as I watched it. I thought of the poem John asked Big Joe to read beside the supper fire. Big Joe's voice was soothing as it retold the grace and wonder of men long ago dead.

Poetry was never part of any of my lives, but life was poetry in a way. It didn't always rhyme.

I wondered what would have become of Big Joe had he been left alone in the country of his people, before they were brought across the ocean to live the life of a slave?

I wondered what African villages were like? Did they have firepits and feast where everyone gathered together to sing and celebrate a wonderful life?

Big Joe couldn't tell me, because he was born on a plantation in Georgia.

What would the world be like if we just left each other alone?

How extraordinary was Maw, marrying a Pawnee man, when all Indians were to be feared and hated.

My Maw and Paw found love, and while I have no clear idea of what they felt, after I came along, they were the only people I truly knew for fourteen years. I knew of people at school, and I knew of the people they went home to. I didn't know them.

They would have nothing to do with me if it came out that I was half Pawnee. I was a half-bred, a breed to white people.

I went to school. I learned my lessons, but I knew nothing until I became Pawnee. My real education started while I played with Pawnee boys. We were all brothers. No one was left out. We played at being hunters and warriors.

I could do anything I set my mind to doing. I was mostly invincible, until the last few years.

I nearly died at the cabin on the mountain we surveyed, when I crossed the wrong path. I nearly died when claim jumpers decided they had a need for something that belonged to me. They saw no reason why they shouldn't take it. Big Joe turned out to be the reason why.

Death had been close enough to blow a breath in my face, but he passed me by, and I would finish the survey, take one last trip into the white man's world, before I return to my village as Phillip Dubois.

I wouldn't know what that meant until I did it. Being with Running Horse was on my mind.

As soon as my people saw me with Running Horse, they would know Tall Willow had come home at last. I could not help but worry the wrong person could see me, but if someone did, I could deal with it. I belonged with my people, and I was going home.

There were fewer embers as the fire burned down. It's odd how much thinking is done at the edge of a fire pit. The cool fresh air is good for thinking as peacefulness takes over the night.

Sammy Boy took his leave to go to bed an hour ago. John had followed, and only Big Joe and I sat in the diminishing light. He hadn't spoken since putting the book of poetry down.

Even before he stopped reading, his eyes indicated to me that his brain wandered away on words that painted pictures for each of us. Big Joe often appeared to be in thought, and his being silent wasn't unusual. We could sit together, because you could do your best thinking after the talking stopped.

I still didn't know Big Joe. We were friends and we lived in the same place, but we didn't know much about each other. Maybe I knew Mrs. Taylor. She was a teacher, and she taught me what I knew and understood about a world I didn't know or understand. I knew what she taught was absent from the history of the place where she came to teach her lessons. According to the books, there was no history of this land until white men wrote it.

Nothing came before they arrived? I knew that wasn't true. I didn't know how I knew it.

Mrs. Taylor knew nothing about the land she stood upon.

Once more I was in school, learning lessons each day. Staying out of the way of the law and the cavalry, if I knew what was good for me, and I did. I put one foot in front of another, and I kept moving with the cattle, with the cowboys, with a gold shipment I guarded. I kept moving, one step at a time until arriving in St Louis for the first time all those years ago.

On the run, I stayed as far from people as I could get. I herded cows and took them to market with more than one cattle ranch. I was one of a dozen drovers when I went into towns. We were all dusty, dirty, and thirsty for a beer to quench our never ending thirst. I knew nothing about any of the drovers. They didn't know me. We nodded when we passed.

I did have two friends to care for as I was as invisible as a man could get. Dobbin was my horse I took from my father, leaving him Shiftless. Demon was my dog. He was hard to explain, especially to the men I worked with.

As so often happened to me, someone told me about a job as a guard for a wagon carrying gold to St Louis. It's where I met Dan, president of the 1st National Bank of Wichita, soon to become 1st National Bank.

I was white in appearance. No one knew my heart was Pawnee, and the meeting with Dan allowed me to get a close up of white people that I didn't have before. I had skills that suited me to the job Dan gave me, because of an accidental meeting over Demon, my dog that was a wolf.

Who knew other men had dogs that were wolves? Dan's brother did.

People are people if you meet them on turf they are familiar with. It wasn't an easy thing to learn, because I did not like white people or the things they did. Unfortunately, they decided to own the country.

I came along in the middle of what it took to do the owning. My knowledge was incomplete, because the lessons were absent the facts necessary to get the whole picture.

I found white people to be more annoying than dangerous, unless the were in the military, and they became very dangerous as skilled soldiers hunting down savages.

I learned what I learned. I did what I did. I was good at what I did. People began to follow my lead, and I got them where they were going. Some I liked, which wasn't what I intended to do. People being people, at the right place, in the right circumstances, white people aren't that bad, unless they're in the military, or angry and greedy, which only represented a few of them, but that few inflicted more damage and misery on everyone else as they could.

Why do they waste so much time worrying about what someone else has? They can neither conceive it or create it, but they are willing to take it, writing its history once it's theirs.

This is what I knew when I met Big Joe. He was in the military, but he wasn't bad. In fact, saving my life made him very good for me. A slave that became a buffalo soldier, he was a good man. He taught me that men in the military can be good.

I learned that lesson once before, but I had forgotten about Riggs by the time I met Big Joe.

When I saw Custer that one time, I knew I was looking at a man the likes I hadn't seen before. Like most great men, and I count Abe Lincoln in this description, have some aura around them. Custer did, and I felt it. When folks talked about Lincoln the way they did.

Even when he rode away, I could see that he wasn't at all like other men. Maybe Lincoln was the good man, and Custer could have been bad, but I suspect they were men molded by the lives they led. They were destined for greatness, and merely had to find their way to where destiny put them.

Custer killed Indians. I don't think he hated us. He was doing what he learned to do. He just did it better than anyone else. It was hard to think of the man in buckskin as being dead. Of the hundreds of men who died with Custer, his was the only body not mutilated by the Indians. That spoke to their admiration for the man.

That's not to say most white people don't have a superiority complex. I can't see a reason why they think that way, but who understands white people? The only thing I do see that separates them from everyone else, they go where they go with a lot of other white people, which allows them to take over a place they want to take over.

They also take a lot of guns with them, which makes them even more dangerous

I want to take over Paradise Valley. John wants to take over his horse ranch, and for that reason, Sammy Boy and I are going to St Louis. I have a reason to go east, or I wouldn't be going. I don't know why Samuel insists on going with me, but he does, and that's fine. I told him I would take care of him, and if he wants to go with me, I don't need to know more.

At first, the further we got away from Missouri, the better Samuel liked it, but we were going back, and he seemed ready to go with me after two years away from there. Can't see any harm in taking him, and as the survey is almost complete, as soon as spring looks like it has come, we'll go to St Louis and back.

Then I'll go home.

With Big Joe coming on board, John has some one to help him get his ranch house built, and he won't be alone. The more I know about Big Joe, the bigger mystery he becomes. He has knowledge I don't have. He suspects some thermal activity taking place under Paradise Valley that keeps it warmer than outside the cliffs protecting it.

He had to explain what that meant. I knew about heaven and hell. My grandfather was the prophet, after all. I took no store in either, except heaven was paradise and hell was, well, hell was hell, and hell was hot. Thermal heating was like that, only thermal heating was more warm than hot, and with the high cliffs holding the heat in, Paradise Valley was near perfect for living year around. The winter outside of Paradise Valley was far more harsh than what it was like once you went through the mile long canyon to the other side.

It was still unworldly, but once I reached Paradise Valley, a peacefulness settled over me.

Big Joe is exploring caves I haven't looked into. I wanted to get a read on how much gold could be here, but my interest in caves stops there.

Big Joe is quiet, but he has spent much time exploring the waterfall and the hidden passages there. He climbs up on the cliffs and walks them as far as they go. He climbs down and walks the permitter of Paradise Valley.

In the last few days, I've seen him at the open end of the valley that Is shale and gravel. He seems intent on learning what is in an environment that fascinates him.

No one could possibly get into the valley that way. For one thing the steep cliff that is covered in loose rocks, couldn't be climbed. Not only that, but cliffs as every bit as steep as the cliffs in front of Paradise Valley stand as a blockade. No one could climb them.

Only birds could get into Paradise Valley except using the canyon entrance.

We do have a variety of birds in the valley, but until men learn to fly, we're safe in this place, but Big Joe's thoughts of defense are on his mind. Since he was in the military, I listen carefully to what he has to say. Paradise Valley was a safe place to be, but Big Joe wanted to make it safer, and the idea of defense had him moving rocks once he comes in from working with John on his horse ranch. Samuel joins him up top, and he moves rocks too.

In his spare time, Big Joe explores the valley where he now lives.

There are signs that the weather around Paradise Valley is warming. Both John and Big Joe have remarked on spring being in the air. We have finished with the survey, and I have another weeks worth of paperwork to have everything ready to take with me to St Louis. I'll hand the completed survey to Dan.

Dan expected Robby to send his completed survey in the fall. When Robby was called home on an emergency, Dan asked me to pick up where Robby left off, but I got myself shot and healing over the winter and into the spring kept me at my father's farm.

Since I was fairly close to Denver, and I assured Dan I would get back to work as soon as I was able, he now expected me to send him the results of the survey in the spring. With the mail in the west being less than reliable, Dan would worry about the paperwork until it was in his hands. What I had it in mind to do was hand it to him to make him smile.

He knew my plan and the survey was already over a year late. He would probably be happy to have it, no matter how I got it to him, but he also knew I had land ownership on my mind.

It's been over a year with no word from Robby. He asked Juan to show me Paradise Valley. He wanted me to know about it. Since he has made no claim on it, or sent word that he gave it any thought at all, I felt free to purchase the property as soon as possible. If Robby made a claim on the land later on, I would do what was necessary to satisfy him, but I would keep the land, once I got title to it.

Can't say I'm totally healed. I'm neither as strong or with the stamina I once had. Being shot, growing older, means limitations I haven't experienced before. I am hoping to recover completely, but thankfully, Samuel being as young as he is, he seems to be back to the Samuel we found several years ago in a small Missouri town where we stopped for repairs.

He's been a big help in completing the survey, and that leaves John free to work on a cabin that is mostly built. I will wire Dan when we leave for St Louis, and Dan will wire George to put Barnaby on a train. If Barnaby is coming, he should be in St Louis by the time we get there, or shortly thereafter, depending on how the trains run. A stagecoach would work too, but I was on a stagecoach once, I never took a stage again.

We will stay in St Louis for as long as it takes to get ownership of Paradise Valley and John's horse ranch. I have no idea of how long that might take, but John knows, I won't come back without him having ownership of the land he wants. Paradise Valley will be more tricky, because I don't know anyone knows it is where it is, but Dan spends most of his waking hours wheeling and dealing land. I trust he can wheel and deal for what I want.

As I sit with my paperwork next to the fire, Samuel has gone back to carrying rocks with Big Joe up on top. I shake my head in wonder each time they climb up there. I have no idea what they are up to, but the work has made Sammy Boy's slender body more stout. Not an ounce of fat on the boy, but he hardly was bigger than a minute when we took him in. Needless to say, he is growing up, and Big Joe keeps him busy. They work well together.

Somewhere between slavery and abuse, these two met on equal footing. Big Joe was something different to all of us. For John he was a builder. For me he was a voice of reason. For Demon, he was another source for food. He was protective of Samuel. We all had that reaction to Samuel. We all wanted to keep him safe from harm.

If I had been smart, I wouldn't have taken Samuel to St Louis with me. The thought came to me that of course Nester came to St Louis. He didn't live that far away. I brushed it away as something that was unlikely. It was unlikely I had any thoughts about Nester.

I wanted Samuel to go with me. I liked taking him with me. He liked going with me and there was no reason not to take him. So much for my reasoning on the subject.

Maybe there was one good reason.

I shouldn't have taken those rocks into Denver to be assayed. I shouldn't have gone to Goodland, where I ran into Trag. I shouldn't have gone after Lit'l Fox, who went after Morning Star, but I did do all those things, and I was lucky to still be alive.

Death was close enough to me to blow his hot breath into my face each of those times.

I should go to St Louis alone.

I'd met a lot of men along the trails I had gone down. Some were good men, doing what they thought they should be doing. Some were bad men, who ought to not be doing what they were doing, and some men were there to give us pause to think about what we were doing.

Few men hung on long enough for me to get to know, but in Paradise Valley John, Samuel, and Big Joe, I thought I had collected the best of men, and the best man had to offer an Indian too long on the run.

I would like to keep these men with me, but they had trails of their own to go down. I was going down a road that kept me beside Running Horse from now on.

Running Horse represented the only thing in life worth keeping. Running Horse represented love. It seemed like I had loved him forever. It seemed like I had been without his love for at least that long. It wouldn't be for much longer if the road I was on stayed clear and true.

All great chiefs knew the ending to the drama they'd lived since the white people started coming. They fought and wanted to believe that as it had been, it always shall be, but if there is one truth they knew, change will come, and it was coming too fast to stop now.

Running Horse and I were destined to die together. We would ride to the Happy Hunting Ground side by side, where our ancestors would be waiting for us, and we would have a grand feast to celebrate the reunion. This was my hope.

Samuel brings back supper for me to get busy cooking. He climbs the cliff to join Big John up there a carrying them rocks. I couldn't do it for an hour if I needed to, but whatever they are doing, I'm not sure need figures into it. A man's worth is often measured by his work.

Big Joe has something on his mind I can't see or understand, so I let them do what they do. Questioning them on why they do what they do is fruitless. I watch while remaining silent. There is a purpose for the monument they are building. I don't see it.

"Putting the roof on this week, Phillip," John told me.

"Weather's warming," I said, and he knew what I meant.

He drank from the hot cup of coffee I handed to him after he sat down.

"Why don't you mail all the papers to Dan. Don't go to St Louis, Phillip. Why take such a long uncertain trip if you can mail the paperwork and let Dan do what Dan does."

I turned the rabbit on the fire and reached for my cup.

"What are they doing up there, John?"

"Defense is all Joe told me. He has something in mind he can see and we can't."

"You want to go tell them supper is on?"

"I keep my feet close to the ground. When they get hungry, they'll come down. That rabbit ain't going nowhere. Stay here, Phillip. Mail the papers."

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"St Louis"

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"Home Fires Burn"

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