I returned to my people and Running Horse the year before Riggs told us, "It will soon be your time to die."

As we neared the village by the lake in the valley where the river runs, the day I returned to my people, I knew how I wanted to return. After meeting with Running Horse the year before, I made up my mind that my life as Phillip Dubois would gradually come to an end. My fourth life, which was returning to my second life, was long overdue. I had been gone long enough.

There was no way to return to the life I had as a Pawnee boy growing swiftly toward manhood.

I was as innocent in my second life as innocent can be. I found my people and the life I loved, but you can't go back to innocence once you kill a man or two. The very act of killing robs a young man of innocence. There would be no going back, but by growing out of my life as Phillip Dubois, I could be seen as an older and wiser Tall Willow. It was my hope. It was how I saw it in my dreams.

I left Running Horse's clan to keep them from being destroyed by the cavalry. They wanted me, and if they followed my trail, they might not destroy my village. Being wanted kept me away for years for the same reason, but now that the Indian Wars were all but over, no Indian was safe on the plains. My people were marked for destruction whether or not I was with them, and so I went home.

There were over twelve years between the boy Tall Willow, and my life as Phillip Dubois. If I fell into my life as Pawnee, I rode into being Phillip Dubois. Each trail I went down and each path I crossed educated me in ways a boy in the cabin in the valley where the river runs was never educated. Being on the run made me cautious and more aware of the white world than I had been as a boy in Mrs. Taylor's class.

Tall Willow learned the lessons all Pawnee boys learn. I didn't know that everyone in the village knew I was son of Proud Eagle, a long ago lost member of Lone Wolf's clan. Not knowing they knew, I felt like some magic had taken place, and I was seen as Pawnee, while I was still very white, but I didn't stay white.

Only the innocent boy I was could have believed some spell was cast over Lone Wolf's clan, and they saw me as Pawnee. The truth was far less complicated. Lone Wolf's clan knew I was Pawnee from very early in my stay in the village. I didn't know they knew, because no one said they had known all along, I was the son of Proud Eagle, who was a son of this village.

It's complicated, because life always is.

The man I became rode down enough trails with white men, I knew them in a way I never knew the boys in Mrs. Taylor's class or from the men I saw in Lawrence's Store.

Living and working among white people was an education. I was able to see the bad along with the good. I was able to forget my hatred that had been a product of the men that kept an eye on Paw when we shopped in Lawrence's Store.

I saw no good once I needed to accompany Paw into town to go to Lawrence's Store for the goods Maw needed. I could read her list, Paw couldn't, and the men in Lawrence's Store kept an eye on Paw, because he was one of those savages. He also worked for grandpa's daughter, or so they thought. That stopped anyone from plugging Paw. Grandpa was good for something, even though the prophet told lies about his grandson.

I saw all men more clearly once I finished becoming a man. I finished growing up in Phillip Dubois' shoes. I learned to listen and not flap my jaws. I learned to keep my eyes open, but not to talk about what I saw. My best move was to be as invisible as possible, while acting like I had a perfect right to be where I was.

I brought a wisdom back to Running Horse's clan that I didn't have when I left. I was more experienced. While not always grasping the immensity of what was going on around me, I took a better understanding of the world we lived in back to Running Horse. I was better able to advise him. We had been as close as men get before I was forced to leave.

Running Horse often asked me what I would do. I didn't think that would change. Now that I lived out in the world, I had a lot more knowledge about its condition.

Tall Willow, Pawnee hunter and warrior, was still a wanted man, so Phillip Dubois came to trade and to visit old friends. This cover kept me out of the hands of the cavalry for many years, and by returning with that identity, I would be Phillip for long enough to settle back in with Running Horse's clan.

Tall Willow was a wanted man. Phillip Dubois was a respectable surveyor and wagon master, working for an eastern bank. I had been Phillip Dubois since I killed the cavalry's Major Meeks. That was the day I had to leave Running Horse and his clan.

Now, I was back.

There is a saying I heard once, the best laid plans of mice and men.

We rode several days to get from Paradise Valley, where we all lived, to the village. As we closed in on countryside I recognized, the day was cool, the sky clear, and the trail went straight toward the clearing where trappers camped when they came to visit and trade with the Pawnee.

I returned to Running Horse and the Pawnee people I finished growing up with over a year before the threat came. I had been away for over a decade. My friends John, Samuel, Big Joe, and Barnaby came too. These were the people I gathered around me while I was away, good friends all. Our lives had become intertwined, as lives often do.

It wasn't my plan to take a cluster of friends home with me, but life being what it is, these were the people around me, and I didn't want to leave them any more than they wanted me to leave. Taking them with me meant I didn't need to leave anyone behind.

I felt blessed to have made so many good friends.

I was Phillip Dubois, and these people weren't just friends, they were like family. Each played an important part in the life I had been living when I returned to Running Horse's clan. All but Barnaby had saved my life.

I didn't have friends as a boy. I was an outsider in an insider's world. When I decided I was a man, I intended to prove it by getting me a griz on the mountain. I fell off that mountain and into my second life. It was the life I dreamed of having as a boy. I finished growing up as Pawnee. There had been no half of this or drop of that. You either were or you weren't Pawnee.

I was Pawnee. I was always Pawnee, no matter the lies told on the subject by grandpa.

Lit'l Fox was known for bringing home injured animals, but for the first time, he brought home an injured boy. Lit'l Fox's job was to care for me with the help of Medicine Woman. While healing in the lodge of Medicine Woman and Dark Horse, I got my first lessons in being Pawnee. I was surprised by how easily I fit into Lone Wolf's clan. No one seemed to have any objection to me, and I was as white as white could be.

What did they know? How did they know it? Why accept a white boy as one of their own?

I couldn't know the answers, but Medicine Woman knew me when I told her, "I am from the cabin in the valley where the river runs."

She was told by a trapper years before, "There is a one armed Pawnee man who lives with his wife and son in the cabin in the valley where the river runs. I can't be sure. He has one arm, but he looks like Proud Eagle.

Lit'l Fox's best friend, Running Horse, took a shine to me, and we formed a special bond only those of two spirits have. Being drawn to each other, we were able to form a forever love that is alive and well to this day. Because of being raised white, and going to a white school, the first time Running Horse showed his true nature to me, I reacted badly, which nearly ended our friendship, but when I accepted my feelings, after Lit'l Fox explained two spirits to me, Running Horse and I established a bond that would go unbroken, even in the years I was far away. We were of two spirits, sharing a bond that would never be broken. It never was.

In spite of that bond, we were forced to spend the middle years of our lives separated by unexpected events that sent me back into the white world in my third life as trapper and adventurer Phillip Dubois. It wasn't an easy transition to make, but with Maw's and Paw's help, they sent me away from the cabin in the valley where the river runs as a white man, after I arrived as an Indian that just killed a cavalry major.

My father, being Pawnee, used Shiftless, my horse, to draw the cavalry off toward where Lone Wolf's wilderness village was. I rode away to the east on the farm horse, Dobbin, with no one any the wiser. My father rode my horse toward the mountains. After going as far as he intended to go, he made his trail so confusing that even Crow scouts couldn't follow him. My father was Pawnee. He knew how you tracked a man, and that meant he knew how to fool cavalry scouts.

Those scouts might figure out they had been decoyed away from my real trail, but they'd never admit it.

Major Meeks was responsible for the death of my father's first son and my brother, Lit'l Fox. Once the shock of the death of my father's first son wore off, Maw and Paw went about turning me into trapper and adventurer, Phillip Dubois, a man who once save my father's life. His name was known in the west, but not his face. A French trapper spent most of his life in the wilderness, except when he took his furs to market.

It was while Phillip Dubois was carrying his furs to St Louis to trade that he found my wounded father next to the trail where he had been shot by renegades. The man did his best to save my father's arm, but he couldn't fix it, and he did what had to be done to save Proud Eagle's life. He amputated it.

The prophet, my grandfather found my father unconscious near the trail, he took him home for his daughter to nurse back to health. He thought the Indian might make a good farm hand, if he lived.

My father lived and married his nurse, much to a disapproving prophet who married them rather than risking some other preacher marrying them and spreading that news around town. He married then and kept it quiet.

Everyone knew an Indian worked on the prophet's daughter's farm. No one knew he was my father, because I was white, and an Indian didn't have a white child, usually.

I didn't care much for the life I was living, when I got a Hawkin 50 for my fourteenth birthday, I decided to use it to prove to my father, I am a man. I went to get me a griz, and I fell off a mountain and into a life as Pawnee.

I left the life I loved to enter a white world I had no desire to go back to. If I could once more pass as white, I had a chance I might not be recognized. It was a long shot, but it's what I had to do to stay alive. My skin was brown from years of being half-naked in the sun. With Paw's cowboy hat pulled low, my skin would slowly lighten again. I was born with Maw's white skin. As I rode east, I was becoming a white man, while avoiding the people heading west as well as the cavalry.

After working on cattle ranches as a wrangler, I took a job that was going to take me to St Louis. I still thought the further from people I was, the safer I was, so when I got to St Louis, I would turn back around and return to the cattle ranches I had been working for several years. I was a reliable cowboy, and most cattle ranches were always short a cowboy or two, but life being what it is, I never did hire on as a cowboy again. Once I met Dan, I became a different kind of cowboy.

Once in St Louis, and after meeting Dan, I became a surveyor and wagon master. I would survey western lands the bank owned, and when I came east to report to the bankers, they made sure they had a wagon train full of their customers ready to go west with me.

I was a man of the west, and I liked my new job, because I didn't need to be near any smelly cows.

The white world had rules covering everything, and things went best when you stayed in line, and I did nothing to bring attention to myself. I had rules for the people on a wagon train 1st National Bank arranged for me to take west with me. My rules were uncomplicated, but like a captain of a ship, I was responsible to see that everyone arrived in St Louis safely,

Fall behind, and you might catch up with my train. Fall too far behind, and another train will come by in a year or two, and you can pick up with them. We must be in St Louis in four months. I will be there to meet the wagon master I will turn you over to. If he leaves without you, another train will be by in six months to a year, but don't expect that train to take you with them without money changing hands. Not all wagon masters are as easy going as I am. If you have a problem with your wagon, see me. If you have a problem with your teamster, see him, not me. You hire a teamster to do what you can do, that's your problem. I am a wagon master, I move wagon's west. If you stay in line and keep up, you'll do fine.

I must admit that there were people in the wagons behind my 1st National Bank wagon that I liked. Some were generous and shared food with me, always making sure I got a treat at the end of most days. It was easy to like nice people. There were also a goodly number of assholes who thought I owed them something, because they were on my train, and they paid 1st National Bank a lot of money to be on my train, because I knew the west, and my trains always arrived in St Louis safely and on time.

*****

I went to the mountain to prove I was a man. For the first time, I was able to be a boy. I played with other boys as we grew into the village's hunters and warriors. The village's warriors were few, after a massacre killed half of Chief Lone Wolf's clan. The warriors that lived through the massacre were now older men.

I never felt I belonged at the cabin in the valley where the river runs. I belonged in the village. I proved my worth to my people as I grew into a strong capable Pawnee. Medicine Woman named me, Tall Willow, and my transition to Pawnee became complete, which proved, dreams do come true, but nightmares often follow.

Lit'l Fox's death was my nightmare. I left the life I loved, because if I ran, the cavalry was going to come after me, and just maybe, they won't take the time to destroy Running Horse's clan. It was no sure thing, but it's all I knew to do. I had to run, and I ran.

My third life began. That life carried me down roads far from my Pawnee village. There was no plan but to get as far away from the trouble I was in as possible. To stay free, I needed to enter the white world I had fallen out of years before.

Once I became Pawnee, I never wanted to live in the white world again. You don't always get what you want, and I was lucky to get as much as I did out of being Pawnee. Becoming white again, because I could pass as white, meant being closer to white men than I liked. Luckily, the white people I guided west were far different from the white boys in Mrs. Taylor's class and the men at Lawrence's Store.

I learned a lot as a wagon master, but I became a cowboy three years before I met Dan. I rode into the first job I took, while crossing the Double D on Dobbin. I rode up on a man that watched my approach. I was aiming on telling him I was just passing through and meant no harm to his rangeland, but he thought I was there for an entirely different reason.

"See Cookie. Ought to be over there this time of day. He'll give you spurs, chaps, and a lariat. If you're hungry, tell him Lyndon said feed you. Then, find Rowdy, he's trail boss. Do what he does and says. Pay's twenty a month and you get your food and keep. Someone will show you the bunkhouse. You'll sleep there once or twice a month, on account of the weather, and there's always empty bunks. See Rowdy with any questions."

His horse moseyed off with him on board, and I became a cowboy.

Lyndon was foreman at the DD. I saw him payday each month. He did ride out to look over the herd when it was time to drive the herd to market in Abilene or some other town where cows were bought and sold.

His wranglers herded the cows and when he told us it was time to drive them to market, Rowdy, the range boss, knew where we were going, and as drovers, we kept two thousand cows in the herd from wandering off.

You get used to the smell, and the dust comes with any cattle trail. Each time we drove cattle to market, we were paid as quick as Lyndon was paid, and it was time for cowboys to spend their pay in the nearest town.

We had a question for the first hombre we saw.

"Where's the nearest saloon?"

By the time we drove cattle five hundred to a thousand miles, our throats were parched, and we had a thirst that's hard to imagine. Nothing like ten or twelve cowboys standing in a row at the bar in a local watering hole that was pointed out to us, once we closed in on the town.

There is nothing as good as a cold beer at the end of a cattle trail. We always stood at the bar alone, just cowboys standing side by side guzzling beer.

The smell was ferocious. We hadn't bathed in a month, and some cowboys never bathed or shaved. We smelled like the cows we drove and the horses we rode. People in the bar when we arrived, wasted no time getting gone.

We stood alone with only the bartender to deal with our smell. He made frequent visits to the swinging double doors at the front of the establishment to get some air without the smell of cowboy in it.

No one took a good look at cowboys just in off the range. I never worried someone might see me as the wanted Indian, Tall Willow. I had an inch of dirt and dust on me, and a month's growth on my face. I didn't look any different than any cowboy just in off the range.

Cowboys have a reputation for being tough, and after they drink a few, tough is the least of it. That's one of the reasons I drank one and sometimes two beers before walking out and getting on Dobbin before the trouble had a chance to get going good. I rode back toward where the cattle drive started.

I might return to the same ranch, or now that I was a cowboy, I might look up some other ranch I have heard good reports on. Cowboys are always on the move, even when the cowboy is an Indian who didn't want to get too familiar with anyone. Cowboys are often alone, and I was alone more than most. I made my camp in a grove of trees away from the bunkhouse. This was mostly because of Demon, my dog.

I could have taken a bunk in the bunkhouse, if I wanted to listen to ten or fifteen men snoring and playing poker to the wee hours, but I had nothing in common with cowboys , even one that was an Apache and one that was Crow. They gave me the kind of look when they saw me and told me they weren't fooled a bit. The good part of being a wrangler, there was no telling how many of us were wanted, or left lives they could no longer abide.

If I returned to the same cattle ranch I left, some of the cowboys didn't return. A few would be inhabiting the local calaboose for their drunkenness. Maybe they signed on somewhere else. A cowboy wasn't an easy man to figure out, because he did better with the fewer people he encountered. A cowboy was free and he liked to wander. Mostly he did his wandering alone.

It was surprisingly easy to be out in the world and there was no one who paid me any mind. No one paid much attention, if you didn't draw attention to yourself. I was a face in a crowd of cowboys, going where cowboys went, and when I wasn't on the trail, I was in my camp where Demon stayed on account of cowboys being trigger happy and wolves being a favorite target.

Demon knew to stay, when I said, "Stay."

He depended on me for food, and he was an obedient wolf. He knew I always came back after he got that command, and so he was more than happy to stay, when I said, "Stay."

After delivering the gold shipment to St Louis, and before Dan came to make me an offer I couldn't refuse, a man with a gun on his hip decided to walk between Dobbin and another horse to get to the sidewalk. When he went for his gun as soon as he saw Demon, I warned him, "Touch that gun and you're a dead man. I suggest you can up and go some other way."

I don't know I would have killed him if he drew his gun, but he wasn't taking any chances, and besides, Dan was about to buy Demon a beef sandwich, and I was glad he wasn't going to miss out on that treat."

Living in the trees behind the bunkhouse worked for me. No one thought me much stranger than the rest of the wranglers. We all danced to a different tune, but we did our job and took pay at the end of each month.

The longer I rode on cattle trails, the less I looked like the wanted Indian, Tall Willow. In one town, I stood looking into the wanted poster for a man called Tall Willow. People stopped to see what I was looking at, and none of them noticed I was Tall Willow. With my hat pulled low, and my short brown hair covered, I looked about the way all cowboys looked to people in the cattle towns we visited.

My blond hair had grown darker as I passed into my twenties. By the time I had been on the trail a couple of years, my hair was brown. The Indian in the wanted poster had long blond hair and he looked real young on the wanted poster.

I noticed that I was a full grown white man, who no one looked at twice. I eased back on worrying and kept my head down. I got a job as a cowboy by riding across some rangeland. I would get a job riding shotgun on a gold shipment. I wasn't looking for a job, but the pay was enough to convince me it was time I saw St Louis.

That's when my life as a cowboy was coming to an end. There was still no plan, but when I got the right offer, I took it. I wasn't really a cowboy. I was really an Indian, and more than anything, I wanted to be going west.

The gold shipment originated in a small mining town in Oklahoma. I only knew about it from a guy who told a guy who told me about making some easy money. I would ride shotgun on a wagon taking $25,000 worth of gold to St Louis. The thought of escaping the smell of cow shit for a spell had me signing on as the guard, not that anyone would know the wagon that looked like every other wagon heading west, was actually hauling gold, but they wanted a guard, and riding shotgun came with a shiny new sawed off shotgun. I keep it under the seat of the 1st National Bank wagon. I got that wagon by taking the job to ride shotgun guarding that gold.

All that glitters is not gold, but that gold shipment led me stumbling into a job that would send me west.

I knew Phillip Dubois sometimes took his furs to St Louis, but I would see to it the gold got where it was going, and then, I would ride back to where I came from. No one would notice me. I would be a face in the crowd.

No one looked twice at the wagon, and as I sat on Dobbin, watching bank employees moving the gold into the 1st National Bank of Wichita, a slender man dressed up in a suit kept looking at me.

I was sitting on Dobbin, sawed off shotgun cradled in my arms, supervising the business at hand. I hailed the man for my own reason, and he came over, looking up at me in the saddle with the scattergun.

"I need a meal. I would rather not do a lot of riding to get one. Can you recommend a place?"

He pointed at the Beef House, a half block away.

"Beef House. It's fast and they have a remarkable beef sandwich that would fill any empty stomach."

"Thanks, Partner," I said, and he went back inside his bank.

The unloading didn't take long, and Dusty gave me the rest of my pay for doing the guarding. No one looked at the wagon twice, and as work went, this was about as easy as work could get.

I moseyed on down the street, and I turned around to go in after typing Dobbin to the hitching post. I told Demon to stay. That's when the man started to come down Dobbin's side, and I suggested he back off.

I have no idea what Dan saw, but when I stepped up on the sidewalk, Dan was standing at the door of the Beef House.

I'm Dan, president of the bank where you just delivered the gold shipment. You do know your dog is a wolf, don't you?"

I put my finger up to my lips in my attempt at humor. Dan Looked puzzled, until I explained.

"Not so loud. He thinks he's my dog. Wouldn't want to upset him."

Dan laughed.

Then, he offered the back of his hand for Demon to smell. The reaction of most people had them going for their gun when they first saw Demon. Seeing Dan offering his hand to a wolf both surprised and gave me the feeling that this was a good man I liked. I had just delivered $25,000 worth of gold to his bank.

He noticed me.

Any man who offered the back of his hand for a wolf to smell was a man worth knowing in my book.

"I'm Dan, President of the 1st National Bank of Wichita, where you just delivered the gold. I would like to buy you lunch," he told me. "I'm looking for a man of the west. I think you might be him."

I was interested right off, because Dan seemed like an honest fellow. I had been herding cows for three years, and I guarded a shipment of gold one time. That was the extent of my working experience. I was a better than average hunter, because I was excellent with a bow, but I wasn't going to go into that with a bank president.

He not only bought me lunch, but he also ordered a beef sandwich to go with him, and he fed it to Demon while telling me about a job he wanted me to consider. Compared to punching cows, this sounded too good to be true. I could put off going back to Oklahoma for the right offer. I was rethinking going back to cowboying before Dan made me the offer. I didn't know what else I could do.

I liked this guy. I was a cowboy, and I had come along at exactly the right time.

That was where my life took a hard right turn. I would get as far east as the Atlantic Ocean, before my trails began to lead me back west. Dan liked my looks. He wanted to hire me. I didn't have any talents that went much beyond bow hunting and herding cows. He couldn't possibly want to hire me, but he did hire me.

"I need a man of the west. I need a man like you. You see, me and men I'm in partnership with are buying up land in the west, and we have a man, he is surveying in the western territories. Will's a little long in the tooth, and I need a younger energetic man to see to the surveying. It's not hard. Surveying can be learned in a couple of days, if the man teaching you knows what he's doing, and Will does."

Learning to survey was easy as Dan said it was, but if you didn't do it properly, your survey would be useless, but before we even got close to where we would be doing the surveying, the wagon master got sick and I knew the trail we were on, and I took over. The only thing this required was for Will to move our wagon out front, which cut way back on the dust we were eating each day.

Twice we were confronted with hostiles, and that isn't my word for it, but it was Will's take on the encounter, and he reported the entire matter back to Dan. I told Will stop the wagon. I think he was ready to make a run for it, having heard plenty about savages.

I waved at the ten or twelve Indians on horseback. They came to a stop twenty or thirty feet ahead of us, and I climbed down and we sat in a circle where we would figure out a way to communicate. I met all kinds of Indians at rendezvous a couple of times a year. I knew different chiefs and some languages that I could use along with signs to get my point across.

They wanted something for us to pass across their land. I knew that they didn't have much, and anything I gave them would be more than they had when we met up. I always carried plenty of coffee, and I gave them some coffee beans and sugar, and they went away happy Indians.

Will was at first horrified, and then he was fascinated. I walked right out to sit down with the Indians, and I didn't even get scalped. Will had seen plenty of Indians, but always at a distance, which is how he liked it.

Not only did I take the wagon train to Cheyenne, but I went right up to Indians and talked, and that was before we surveyed anything. Will taught me how to survey properly, and I learned in a couple of days like Dan said. The rest was bragging about me being able to do just about anything involving surveying and wagon trains.

I thought Will was exaggerating a bit, but he told the highlights and added his take on my ability. Dan now thought he had gotten far more than he bargained for. He gave me a raise before he explained what he wanted from me. He asked me to head his Western Land Division of 1st National Bank. They just bought a passel of land in Colorado Territory. It would take years to survey it.

"You think you could handle it? I'll need to take you east to meet my partners, but they'll love you. We've talked about hiring a man to be in charge out there. You fit the bill just fine," Dan said.

Dan took me east to New York City to introduce me to his partners in the plan to buy up land in the west. I was to head the 1st National Banks Western Land Division, for kickers, I would be wagon master on a wagon trained the 1st National Bank of New York would arrange for me when I made my annual trip to New York to report to Dan's partners.

When Dan took me to New York with him the first time, he dressed me like a cowboy complete with a white cowboy hat and a six shooter on my hip. He wanted them to see me as a cowboy to prove I was a man of the west. I had been a cowboy, and I wouldn't hire one to walk me across the street, but these were bankers who saw a certain image when the word cowboy came up. I wouldn't mention this cowboy was an Indian.

When I heard the word cowboy, it reminded me of cows, and that was always a place I would rather not go, but as a cowboy, I got some strange looks while being in New York City, but before I left the city the first time, I dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt for our last meeting before I went west again.

I would survey the latest sections 1st National Bank's land division bought, and report back to them with the paperwork for the survey, and after spending a few Days in the city, I went to the stock yards where a wagon train was waiting for me. By the time I was asked by George to take on a fellow named John Tanner, my employment allowed them to arrange a wagon train for their immigrant clients going west.

I tried to arrange for one trip east each year, but depending on the land I was surveying, sometimes they wanted me twice a year, but I think they just wanted to sell more spaces on the wagon trains I took across to St Louis, where I left the train, handing them over to another wagon master that would get them the rest of the way to where they were going.

I worked for the 1st National Bank, but Dan was the man I answered to. My identity as the trapper and adventurer Phillip Dubois was solidified in a way I couldn't have imagined. Having a bank behind me gave me a status most people associated with people who worked for banks.

The best part, as far east as I got, I was always heading further and further west to do the surveying. Each new property 1st National Bank bought, and they dropped the Wichita out of their name by then, was further west that the last section they bought. I had begun to get closer and closer to where I came from.

If any question came up about my identity, Dan was there to vouch for me. With bankers backing me, and with 1st National Bank written on the canvas covering my wagon, few people would look at me twice, and no one was going to wonder who I was.

As for cows, I stayed as far away from the cows and oxen that sometimes followed behind the wagons as possible. As the wagon master, my wagon went first, and cows and oxen walked behind the last wagon. They were out of sight and certainly didn't enter my nostrils. If I never smelled cow shit again, it suited me fine.

My life as a loner dissolved into a life as a surveyor, wagon master, and adventurer. I needed to change from being Phillip Dubois to being Phillip Dubois son. I didn't know if the real Phillip Dubois had a son, but whether he did or didn't, I was him.

This slight altering of my identity became necessary when I ran into a cowboy who met Phillip Dubois over twenty-five years ago, when he tried his hand at trapping and hunting. They had camped in the same spot for a week or more, and he reckoned Phillip was pushing sixty by this time.

I reckoned I must be his son then. He figured I was Phillip's son, and I went right along with his thinking. I had no idea how old the man was, but my father was with him before I was born. I was heading toward thirty. He was old enough to be my father, and so that's who I would say he was. I was a chip off the old block.

We weren't likely to run into each other, and if some man somewhere talked to the real Phillip Dubois and said, "I met your son," well it might get a strange reaction but not much more than that. Things moved slowly in the west, but they did move, and few people stayed in the same place for long. I was always moving.

They sold me as a great Indian fighter who would keep them safe. No one on my train cared much about who I was. As long as I could get them to St Louis, they were delighted. I was going west with or without the train. It could be a bit of a headache, but someone was going to take the wagon train west. May as well be me.

Actually, by that time, there was little trouble on the trail to St Louis. The land between New York and St Louis had been settled with towns along the rails that were now moving goods all over the eastern states. The railroad reached Abilene before I stopped being a cowboy. There were very few Indians visible in the east.

The plains west of St Louis were a different story. That was Indian territory, and if you weren't careful, you could get yourself into trouble, especially if you pulled out guns at the first sight of Indians.

I figured the men taken wagons west out of St Louis, knew their business, and if they didn't, and if they were trigger happy when it came to Indians, their days as wagon master would be numbered. Unfortunately, if the wagon master didn't know how to act, the wagons following him were in trouble too.

It was on one of my trips to New York City, when I met John Tanner. I was heading 1st National's western land division by then. The usual wagon train was being put together for me to take west, along with one special case George asked me to take. George had the same position in New York City that Dan had in St Louis.

The special case was John Tanner. He wasn't well enough to drive his own wagon, but if I made room in my wagon, I would be well paid. When I met John, he looked ill, but he wasn't much older than me. A man his age being so sick surprised me. He was quiet and didn't take up much space. I told George that I would take him.

He had what they called consumption. When I was in the lodge of Medicine Woman, she treated people with a drink she made when they had the coughing sickness. Since I carried the ingredients for the drink, which she made me drink while my broke leg healed, I knew it worked on the disease John had as well as a dozen other ailments that ran through the clan from time to time. .

I never told him that the drink I made him drink was a treatment for consumption, but I knew it was, and I figured he was too young to be dying. Every night he got the drink before I allowed him to go to sleep in the back of the wagon. He drank it. I gave him no choice, but among other things, the drink helped you sleep.

John slowly started to feel better. He even looked better.

John Tanner came home to see the doctor who helped him get born. He was told to go west for his health. I made room for him, and we left once my report to the bankers was finished. John was no trouble at all. If he didn't have coughing spells, I would have forgotten he was back there, but it wasn't too long when he was sitting on the seat beside me, and then, he started riding the horse I picked out for him.

Chestnut was as gentle as horses got, and John, who had been a land speculator in the south, was an excellent horseman. He took to Chestnut right off, and Chestnut seemed fine with John. A month or so into Pennsylvania, John perked up a bit. By the time we were in the middle of Ohio, his strength came back.

I finished growing up in Medicine Woman's lodge, and I learned to make the drink that cured most of what might ail you, and I gave John the drink every time we stopped. I think he might have poured it out if I didn't stand over him to take the cup from him after it was all gone, but I used my large and in charge voice on him, and he drank the drink down.

I remembered how nasty it was, and Medicine Woman stood over me to see to it I drank every drop. When she told me I could go out and start running after a few months, I didn't think so. I knew guys that broke their legs and they were lucky to be able to walk. Of course they got no doctoring at all, and I never told John he was being doctored. I just stood over him to make him drink the drink.

John was no trouble, and it was nice having someone in the wagon with me. We became friends. John got to feeling better, and he asked to stay on to help with the surveying, and that's how he ended up being with me. John was a free spirit who knew the east as well as a land speculator should, but once he was in the west for the first time, he was sold on the west. He didn't want to go east again. He asked to help when I needed him.

We soon took on Samuel, and John proved his value by shooting Nester as he was about to shoot me. I went unhurt, and when we left the town with a name I never knew, Samuel went with us, and we added another member to the surveying team. Actually, while John and I surveyed, Sammy Boy hunted for the evening meal.

We were a good team and we all got along. That's when we found Paradise Valley, and my search for the most beautiful valley in the world ended there. It was a fine spot but thinking there could be gold men might come after, I took some rocks out of caves I saw and took them into Denver to be assayed. That's when Joe entered the picture, shooting two polecats who were hell bent on getting their hands on my goods.

Joe was a Buffalo Soldier who just let his enlistment run out. A few miles from Denver, a horse he had been riding for years dropped dead. Joe had nowhere to go and no way to get there, so he took up with us, after saving our bacon. Joe joined us in Paradise Valley and began making discoveries right away.

Big Joe was probably as smart a man as I met along any trail. I knew Dan and George were smart businessmen, and they treated me with respect, but they lived in a white world and grew up becoming the men they became. I didn't hold it against them, because I liked them both, but the amount of work they did to get along was scary. They didn't hunt for their supper, and they couldn't get on their horse and just start riding until they felt like stopping and doing it all over again the next day. I don't know if they had horses.

My negative opinions of all white men underwent a change. All white men weren't like the ones in Lawrence's store, which is what I had to go on, if the kids I went to school with weren't proof enough. Smart men knew there were all kinds you needed to deal with. It was best when you treated a man fairly, and Dan and George treated me fair. They were men I trusted, and they trusted me.

I was learning as I went along. Each trail I took gave me a better look at the world and the people in it. People were all different. People were mostly the same. They came up different, but we all wanted a good life. I had a good life while being on the run, and I met good people of all kinds. I wasn't where I wanted to be, but I didn't mind being where I was.

I breathed fresh air. I ate fresh game, and I was moving west, and that's where I wanted to go. I wanted to go home to Running Horse's clan, but it was still too soon. I was wanted and I could bring the cavalry down on them. I wouldn't do that, but being in the same country with them did help. While in New York City, Running Horse's clan seemed millions of miles away, but when I left New York City, I was heading west. You couldn't get much further east. George took me to see the Atlantic Ocean the first time I was there. You don't get any further east than the Atlantic Ocean. He told me about the Pacific Ocean, but I've never been there.

Big Joe was owned for most of his life, up until we ran across him, or more accurately, he ran across us. He was as curious a man as I had known. He read books and learned how the world worked, and once he was freed, he went about discovering a world off the plantation where he lived since he was a boy.

As close as I was to John and Samuel, Big Joe fascinated me, because he was a man who knew no limitations. He wanted to know everything about a place where he was. When we lived in Paradise Valley before, Big Joe found out everything about it that he could. He often came to tell me about a new discovery he made. I wasn't all that keen on new discoveries, but his interest in them amazed me.

I gave Big Joe one of my team of horses that pulled the 1st National Bank wagon, and he tagged along, because he really didn't have any place to go. We were all men without roots, even If Samuel was a boy. Our loose confederation worked for us. None of us would overwhelm anyone. We each did what needed to be done. We'd tackle whatever obstacles stood in our way, and we didn't mind working.

Having men around me that I liked and trusted was different. I had mostly been alone since leaving my village and Running Horse. As I recall, I was always alone as a boy. As a man, I made friends, good friends. Men I trusted. Men who trusted me.

When a man saves my life, I'll make a place for him, but Big Joe made a place for himself by being as clever a man as I've known. Big Joe thought about things. When he spoke, I listened, because he made sense. He made sense about things I knew nothing about. I suppose that was the difference between us. I pretty much left things alone. I did what needed doing, stopping when the doing was done.

Joe never thought anything was enough. He poked and prodded until he figured a thing out.

When I went back to Running Horse, the plan all along, these were the people who went with me. I intended to continue being Phillip Dubois. I was content to live in the spot where trappers who came to trade stayed.

It was a plan that wouldn't work when I made It, but still being a wanted man, I thought it best to keep a little distance between me and my people. Everyone I brought home with me called me Phillip.

Living a mile from Running Horse, nothing would keep us apart for long. I told myself different, but I knew the truth. Once we saw each other, there would be no keeping us apart. I was home, and I planned to stay.

We had been separated for too long to pretend we weren't crazy about each other. I didn't want to bring the cavalry down on my people, but the cavalry was after any Indian not on a reservation by the time of my return. There was no way we weren't picking up where we left off.

Against my better judgement, I became Tall Willow again. After too many years away, I took up residence inside the lodge I left years before. I ached to have Running Horse's arms around me for all those years, and I was finally home. Having our arms around each other was about as good as it got.

Actually, even with my newest friends calling me Phillip, no one at the village was fooled. They knew who I was as soon as they saw me with Running Horse. The Pawnee didn't know where I had been, but they knew why I left, and the only reaction from most of them was, "Nice to see you've finally come home, Tall Willow."

I was home, even if a decade on the run made me look differently. My looks didn't change what was inside of me. I knew who I was, no matter what name they called me. The biggest, and most noticeable change, my long blond hair was now short and dark, like the dark hair of the Pawnee.

I was Pawnee. My hair would grow.

I had been away for over ten years, and while the cavalry still had wanted posters out for me, it no longer mattered, because all Indians were being hunted now. With most of them off the plains, it was the cavalry's job to get rid of the ones who weren't on Indian reservations. It didn't matter who I was, if I was riding with the Pawnee, it was open season if the cavalry caught up with us.

Now, I remembered Riggs, because he was the cavalry soldier who saved my life. He also showed some compassion when he brought Morning Star's body to me. He wasn't a happy soldier, and he let me know it. When I gave him his life, I told him to get Meeks for me. I was going to kill him, because I held him responsible for the death of my brother and his wife.

Riggs could have come back with a mess of soldiers, and they could have killed me with no trouble whatsoever, but that isn't what Riggs did. As I yelled for Meeks to come out and face me, Meeks did come out with Tall Elk, and Riggs came with them.

I can't say what my thinking was. I knew what I intended to do. I would kill Meeks, and I would kill the traitor, Tall Elk. It never occurred to me that I couldn't. I realized I might die in the attempt, and if I died avenging Lit'l Fox, so be it. Once it was done, and if I was still alive, I would need to run. I didn't know where I would run.

Riggs once again did what he needed to do. That was give me a chance to get away.

"Take your brother and go. I'll stall them until dark. They won't come after you after it's dark. You'll have until daylight tomorrow to get away. If someone killed my brother, I would do what you did, Tall Willow, but make no mistake, they will come after you."

If there wasn't the makings of a friendship in Riggs' actions, I don't know what was, but I got away and I went on the run, and after being gone for years, who rides into my village the year after my return, Sgt. Riggs. When he saw me walking with Running Horse, he knew who I was. He saved my life once, and this time he came to save Running Horse's clan. He couldn't tell us what day, but there was an impending attack on our village.

"I'm only in the cavalry because I ain't got nowhere else to go," he confessed to me after he warned us.

As a man who saved my life more than once, I made a place for him, and no one had to tell Running Horse that Riggs was a friend. He was simply tired of the killing, and if he could help save my people, he would at the risk of his own life. He wouldn't kill a soldier, but he would save Running Horse's clan if he could.

We were a motley crew, a rainbow of cultures and experiences. We found ourselves on the same trail. We fit together because we had no objection to each other. The people closest to me held no grudge against anyone. Each man was as good as any other man, which included woman, who had a way of approaching life with an open hand. Men approached life with a closed fist. They weren't looking for trouble, but when they found it, they stood their ground no matter what.

Joe and Riggs were both tired of the killing. They were from different worlds, but the treatment they received wasn't that different. Joe was a former slave, and Riggs was Irish. Both were looked down on among polite society. Slavery was ended and Joe became a Buffalo Soldier, a step above being a slave. Riggs with his blazing red hair was Irish. They were good as cops and soldiers. That kept them with many of their own kind, and a few steps apart from decent people who couldn't tolerate Irishmen.

They both proved their value to me. Both saved my life. They did it as men, not as soldiers. They both felt that what they were being asked to do was wrong, but they followed orders and did what they were told. Once you were convinced that the penalty would be greater than you were willing to pay if you didn't follow orders, you followed them without giving orders much thought.

Joe let his enlistment run out. He left the Buffalo Soldiers, and a short time later, he joined my surveying crew. Riggs did something totally out of character for a cavalry soldier. He deserted. That made us both wanted men. The penalty for both of us would be death, but they would take a dim view of Riggs joining the enemy.

Over a decade before, Riggs gave me a chance to get away. That linked us in a way few men find themselves linked. That told me Riggs had a good heart, and he had much sorrow over killing Indians for doing nothing more than being on the plains when the cavalry caught up with them.

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"Watchers"
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