We were lucky to be alive, and we wouldn't risk taking any unnecessary chances. The cavalry knew where we were last seen, and they weren't far behind us. They didn't know that behind the two towering boulders in front of the cliffs that ran along the trail was a hidden canyon, but they were going to come looking for us.

By the second and third day, the building of lodges was underway. Running Horse's clan was in the midst of making Paradise Valley their home. With Riggs and Big Joe lending a hand, they brought a bit of European ingenuity to the building. While building his own lodge at the village next to the lake where the river runs, he saw how he could fit certain pieces together, and by linking each piece to the other pieces, you could both put it together and take it apart without starting from scratch if a lodge got damage.

Big Joe gathered the building materials in one spot and built each piece to be carried to where the lodge was being built, putting them together there. By the end of the first week, Big Bear, Barking Dog, and Turtle were all involved in building the pieces and two or three lodges were put together each day. By the second week, each family had a lodge in the spot they picked. Now the builders took to building their lodges.

There was laughter and children playing, amidst the work being done, and it wasn't a bit unusual for a man to give chase to the children as they played nearby and ran screaming from whatever monster they imagined had given chase. There was the singing of Pawnee songs at the firepit, and dancing often came after a good meal was eaten. We were never more Pawnee, and never happier to be alive. Life was good.

The village had spread out to leave a good amount of distance between clusters of lodges that kept family and friends close. By the third week, Big Joe and Riggs had their lodge built, right after they brought the pieces for Running Horse's and my lodge a few feet from the stream and not far from the 1st National wagon.

The firepit was a few dozen feet from the wagon. We weren't all eating at the firepit after the second week began a frenzy of building. Once people had their own space, they mostly ate near their lodge. The need to stick close together slowly left us. We left more distance between us as we adapted to our new home.

We ended up building a new smoke house, and we made a point of putting some meat away in our cold cave if there was any left. Samuel hunted every day to be sure everyone got enough. The gardens had been started the day after the big storm passed our way. We still had beans, coffee, and flour for flat bread. It would be necessary to go into town for goods, but not right away.

Samuel and Young Antelope continued to do the hunting. Running Horse made sure that each lodge got their share of the game that was killed each day. Some days he cooked the meat and Samuel and Young Antelope went from lodge to lodge making sure everyone got their fill. At other times the smell of roasting meat drew a crowd. Folks brought side dishes that went with the meat of the day. It was good to eat together.

We didn't eat at the firepit every night, but a few nights a week most of the clan ate together, and on nights when Running Horse had something to say, he suggested we eat together. By the time all the building was done, and everyone had a place they liked, life wasn't much different than in the village by the lake in the valley where the river runs.

Each family had a life of its own, and the firepit was when we wanted to gather together as one.

I suppose after two or three weeks, Paradise Valley was about as good a place as Running Horse's clan had occupied. No one was heard complaining. Hearing the children laughing and seeing them play was nice. No one needed to tell me that Paradise Valley made a good home. It could be a bit confining for some. You couldn't call your horse over to take a ride. There was nowhere to ride, no room for serious riding.

After a few weeks, when we first woke in the morning, being chased by cavalry wasn't our first thought.

Warriors not involved with one chore or another stood watch. It was Big Joe and Riggs up top most often the first few weeks. They always had something to do as the village expanded, but keeping watch was essential. We couldn't afford to be surprised.

The smoke house grew to meet the needs of seventy-five people. We began storing meat in our cold cave and gardens began to grow. There was enough food growing wild from what we planted while doing surveying to supplement meals. The squash and potatoes grew best, and there was still bags of beans in the storage shed from when we lived there before, but 75 people could pack away a lot of food.

The people rarely asked about the cavalry any longer, but the cavalry was one of Running Horse's first concerns. We didn't bring it up in front of members of the clan, but Big Joe and Riggs were different, and they gave a daily report about who and what was moving along the trail out front.

The word was passed one day, "Give the daily report to Running Horse. He'll decide what he wants to do about it."

"They'll return to the location where they lost us, but I don't know when," Riggs said. "The longer they stay away, the more likely they moved on to follow other orders that have been issued."

Big Joe agreed, and the watches took on less importance. When there was nothing else to do, one or two of the regular watchers would go sit in the Eagle's nest. The cavalry might not return for a while, but no one wanted them sneaking up on us. The repeating rifles remained in the back of the wagon, and twice a week Running Horse sounded the alarm, and warriors walked behind the wagon, took a repeating rifle, and took up positions beside and above the exit to the canyon.

Riggs had a few tricks up his sleeve, and he taught warriors different ways to form up to be most effective.

"Since they didn't complete the mission, and weather turned them back. The cavalry could have been sent elsewhere to handle something more important than chasing Running Horse's clan who had made good on their getaway," Riggs supposed over coffee one morning.

No unwelcome visitor had ever come to Paradise Valley in the months it was our base for the survey we went out to do daily. The only indication that those solid cliff walls weren't solid all the way to the Pacific was the day we heard Samuel fire the 30/30, and for that reason, guns were kept in the wagon until a bigger storage shed was completed. We wanted them easy to get to, just in case. Because we would use the 1st National wagon for trips into Denver to get goods, keeping them in the wagon was a bad idea.

Joe wanted to see trouble coming, and when he wasn't involved with one task or another, he went up to sit in the Eagle's nest. I didn't want to think about trouble. I busied myself with things that helped turn the valley into a village where our people didn't mind living. Both Running Horse and I took turns in the Eagle's nest, but there were enough watchers to keep watch during daylight hours most days.

The trail was mostly empty, and there had been no sign of the cavalry.

The cliff where the Eagle's nest was had plenty of rocks to act as cover. When the cavalry came, one of the two men in the Eagle's nest would run across the top of the cliff to sound the alarm, and before they had any idea there was a canyon behind the two boulders out front, we would be waiting for them. The first soldiers to come out of the canyon into the valley would find themselves caught in a crossfire.

As plans went, that was the easy part. If the cavalry discovered the canyon, they would send scouts into it first. A Crow scout would go without hesitating, and when he came out in the valley, they'd see the village out in front of the canyon. They would immediately return to the trail to tell the commanding officer. They wouldn't know we were waiting for them, and Running Horse's clan were not going in.

We would catch them by surprise, but once they found us, they weren't leaving until we were all dead or captured. We could surprise and kill a lot of soldiers, but we would eventually run out of bullets, and the cavalry never ran out of men. They would keep coming until the valley was subdued, and the officers sat astride their horses in the exit of the canyon that led to Paradise Valley, admiring the prize.

A prize a lot of soldiers would die in the taking.

"We might want to stock up on shells for the rifles," Big Joe thought. "Bring back a few extra boxes each time we go into town. It's what we do with beans and coffee and such."

No one had to tell me that. No one had to tell me, the cavalry would find us sooner or later. They weren't going to stop hunting us because of a little rainstorm. The storm did stop them, but they would be back. I wished Paradise Valley was safer than it was. It wouldn't be easy to find. It wouldn't be easy to take even if it was found, but it would be found, and it would be taken, and Running Horse's clan would be no more.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ v

I remembered how much equipment Big Joe brought from town to build John's cabin, and to build the barn and stable. I remembered Joe designing a way to have water come from a tank he set high up next to the house, and you simply turned on the water and turned it off. I thought that was about the most clever thing I ever saw, but that's how they did it on the plantation, and Joe knew how to recreate things he had seen.

I remembered the wagon he made for John to carry supplies from town. If a piece on it broke, Joe could take the wagon apart and take out the broke piece, and put in a new piece, because he built the wagon in three pieces, and he didn't need to take the wagon to the smithy for repairs. He could repair it himself.

He couldn't make wheels, but there was little else he couldn't do, and given enough time, he would figure a way to make wheels, or some substitute for wheels if the need was serious enough.

I started thinking about taking my wagon to town to load up on supplies. We increased the size of the storage shed I built while surveying across the trail. It wasn't very big because there was never more than four of us living in the valley. Seventy-five people took a lot of supplies, and if I went out with Joe, and went to town, no one was going to pay much attention to us. We went to town plenty after Joe came to live with us.

I drove the wagon from here into town plenty, while we finished the survey for the bank. It was no different from the many wagons in Denver, except for 1st National Bank written on the canvas. I could stock up on things we ran out of most often, and it wouldn't attract any more attention than it did because I still had clothes that Phillip Dubois wore, and with those on, except for my hair I was letting grow, I would look like any other white man, and if Joe went along, he could be my hired man.

Samuel and Young Antelope went to hunt together each day, and Sammy Boy showed him the best places to hunt. Herb Woman had been saving seeds for some time, and with her help, each lodge made their own garden behind it. In this way, if one garden didn't fare well, someone else's garden would supply things they grew, and we already had a main patch where vegetables were still growing from when we left Paradise Valley nearly two years ago.

The women grabbed their favorite seasonings and a pot or pan they couldn't live without, and we were ready to prepare a variety of food we would all enjoy. It was like a game, trying to assemble the first meals to feed a village. No one complained that it wasn't just like the way things were in the village we just left. Working to make our lives better was no work at all. We seemed somehow closer than we had been before. Pitching in to lend a hand to someone who needed it was no trouble at all. We all pitched in.

If someone ran into a problem while making their lodge just right for them, a half dozen folks would come to their aid, until the problem was solved. There was a new spirit of friendship and brotherhood, after we got into Paradise Valley. We rarely ran into anything we couldn't get done if we put our minds to it.

We all favored rabbit. If the valley had a most plentiful animal, it was rabbit. We would need to make a half dozen rabbit runs, so they could reproduce in a way they did, but we also needed to let some rabbits roam free, because Samuel would not go into a confined area to kill "little furry rabbits." He didn't mind hunting them, but he wouldn't butcher a rabbit who had no chance of getting away.

Luckily the animals had plenty of room to roam. They knew to mostly stay out of the way of the two-legged animals that were all over the place now, but we didn't hunt enough of them to put a dent in the population. That didn't mean I didn't think about what would happen if we did deplete the animals we were eating.

Then, we would go out to hunt. We were fine for now. We would change when change became necessary.

Young Antelope had no such problem, and if we wanted rabbit, and didn't have enough time to let Samuel hunt them, we sent Young Antelope to get enough to feed everyone. We had to keep Sammy Boy busy. He was a hunter with some affection for the furry little bunny rabbits.

Some children found squash and potatoes growing next to the pasture near the stream. They brought them to the firepit. Children made a game of it, and the one who collected the most eatable wild things got their choice of meat at that day's evening meal. They would rather get some extra Indian sweet bread, but they were more than happy to be lending a hand.

The pond wasn't as big as the lake, but the water was warmer. Younger boys liked to stand beneath the showering waters of the waterfall. It gave boys who hated bathing a new way to rinse off the dirt and dust. There was often giggling and laughing coming from the pond and the waterfall. It was the valley's most popular spot. Folks sat around chatting after a soak.

The firepit I made shortly after first coming into the valley would serve to be the meeting place for our clan and it would be used when we feasted for one reason or another. The singing of songs and dancing our happiest dances made the gathering a thing a band of Pawnee could all enjoy. We hadn't sung and danced since my return to the village beside the lake in the valley where the river runs, but we sang and danced now.

Running Horse didn't need a special occasion for feasting. The fact we were all together, and working and playing together was plenty reason to feast together. There were meals cooked in the lodges too, but feasting with singing and dancing were more frequent these days.

Running Horse was always involved in cooking meals. Once we got to Paradise Valley, he circulated around the main firepit, reassuring everyone, and listening to what his people were saying. No one claimed to know how long we had. That meant we had plenty of time, and we'd use it to do what we had always done. There was no reason to change that.

Perhaps it was the cliff walls that had us feeling more snug. Maybe it was the variety of people who were in Running Horse's clan. We lived together in a most agreeable way, even if Joe and Riggs were often seen climbing the cliffs to go sit in the Eagle's nest. It reminded us that we needed to be watchful, but not so watchful we couldn't have a good time.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

While I didn't have as much time alone with Running Horse as I liked, it would change as time passed. Being together, feasting together, required moving about to chat with the people who lived around us. Always the question,

"Do you need anything? Is everything okay?"

Running Horse would sit and listen when someone had something to say.

In time the village settled into a pleasant routine. The idea you couldn't get on one of the horses and ride away for a day or two took time to accept. No one wanted to go out because of the risk, and while we couldn't ride away to get away, we could walk away, and so we walked and people looked over Paradise Valley.

Once there were warriors willing to sit in the Eagle's nest, it gave Joe time to do other things. Riggs was up to a lot. With Big Bear, Barking Dog, Young Antelope, and Samuel taking turns keeping watch, Joe took up exploring again. I can't be sure what he thought he might find, but it didn't take long for him to want to show Running Horse something.

When Joe took Running Horse to see one of the caves, it was what we called the waterfall cave, because it was off to one side of the waterfall. Joe had gone further than before, and I didn't know when he found the time. He had gone aways, and he had torches he carried. He was limited by the time one would burn. Running Horse wasn't that interested, but he usually paid attention to anything Joe wanted to show him.

Joe was handy in many ways. He read to us from the books he bought in Morton's Emporium from the used book box, where Mr. Morton put books he and his family read, once they were done with them. Joe told us of reading to the slaves at Auntie's request. He read to the Buffalo Soldiers with white officers often listening. He read to John, Samuel, and me, when there was only the four of us in Paradise Valley, and now he took to reading to Running Horse's clan.

I must admit that when he first read at the village by the lake in the valley where the river runs, he still had John, Samuel and me who wanted to listen. We added Barnaby to our group by then, and he liked to listen.

Few of Running Horse's clan were interested in the lives of Europeans, and they mostly went about their business after a meal, when Big Joe stood up to read.

I wasn't surprised my people found hearing about the lives of Europeans was distasteful, but a few were still eating, or simply weren't ready to move yet, and so they ended up hearing Joe read from the latest novel. The people who stayed kept staying to hear Joe read. Then, people who left began to drift back to hear Joe reading, and by the time we were in Paradise Valley, when Joe read, there were twenty to thirty listeners.

What I'm sure they found fascinating, because it fascinated me, was how complicated they could make their lives by so much wanting and jealousy. Europeans always wanted what other people had. They wanted, and they wanted, and then, they wanted some more. A little of something was never enough, and the things they would do to get what they wanted was amazing. A lot of them ruined their lives with so much wanting.

When Joe took Running Horse to the waterfall cave, I wasn't as impressed. Running Horse went, and I trailed along without enjoying it. Joe had made enough torches to show us what he wanted us to see and then get back out of the hole in the ground. That's all the caves were to me. Even when I took ore samples out of the caves I had been in, I breathed a lot easier once I stepped outside again.

Joe knew Paradise Valley better than I did by this time, but he was always busy. I didn't know when he went down in the caves, but he obviously did, because he took longer to get in and out of one each time. I didn't know what he was looking for, and I didn't ask, but there were those days when he came to our lodge for morning coffee, and by the time we left, we were heading toward the western cliffs.

"Phillip called this the cathedral cave. It's much like the size of a cathedral, but there are caves, and forty or fifty feet down, there's a pond that keeps us from going further. This is our biggest cave," Joe told him.

The cathedral cave was huge, and once you went across the cathedral size room inside the entrance to the cave, you came to a tunnel that took you down to where the pond stood directly under the cathedral. That's as far as it went, and it was as far as I wanted to go, but Joe needed Running Horse to see it..

I had gone off in one of the side caves just inside of the cathedral cave. It's where I collected ore samples to be assayed. I wanted to know if there was gold in the ore, until I didn't want to know. Gold did crazy things to men, and I wanted no part of it. We knew it was here, as it was all around Denver, but this gold would never be mined. There was some gold in the ore, but not enough to make mining a money-making proposition.

That made the caves irrelevant, and I paid no more attention to them, until Big Joe came to the valley.

I liked leaving a cave. I liked fresh air and blue sky above me. The caves were dirty and had a sour smell.

It was time for Running Horse to attend to the firepit. I saw Samuel and Young Antelope down by the open end of the valley, when I stepped out of the cathedral cave into the sunny day. It was time for them to hunt.

Running Horse saw them too. I don't think he liked the caves any more than I did. Heading for the firepit meant we had someplace to go and something to do once we got there. Big Joe didn't leave the entrance to the cave when we did. He watched us walking away, but he had something on his mind. That was easy to see.

Singing Pawnee songs went well with good food. Our elders told stories of our history as far back as our people went. Separating truth from myth was difficult. The stories were heroic. They spoke of another time in other places where our people thrived while doing their best to have a good life.

The stories were from a time before white people came. They were from a time before western migration. Our stories were simple stories of love lost, love found, of hunting big game, and of the nomadic lives indigenous people lived for thousands of years. They were the stories of the Pawnee.

We had a massacre in our not too long-ago history. I think we had an appreciation for each other after half our numbers were wiped out. We had withdrawn and purposely stayed out of everyone's way. It made us more dependent on each other, and it drew us closer. There were a few elders who remembered it, but our latest brush with death had our history and our songs being told and retold during the early days in Paradise Valley.

Mostly our history spoke of challenges facing the bravest among us, who battled wild animals in wilder places. It took all of us working together to overcome obstacles, and after a massacre that took place before I was born, Chief Lone Wolf took what was left of his clan to an out of the way wilderness sight where a new village was built by the survivors. Being out of the way would help them to heal and grow stronger.

Running Horse's village had never been as large as Lone Wolf's was before the massacre. I was sure this had something to do with how we escaped the cavalry for this long. We weren't big enough to bother with, and once the larger tribes were subdued, they turned their eyes toward Running Horse's clan.

Our friends, and none of them Pawnee, came to save us. Riggs came, and Joe was already with us, but had they not been with us, we would have died when the cavalry came to destroy our village and everyone in it.

We ran. We were still alive at a time when many Indians were dying. We escaped death for the time being, but we were living on borrowed time, and so we sang and danced, telling tales of being gloriously Pawnee.

I could have died many times, but I am very much alive. I had many more lives to be lived than most. I was born into the white world, became Pawnee, and then white again. I was back where I had always belonged, but perhaps a little smarter the second time around.

I knew the songs. I did not dance.

Mostly Young Antelope told tales about himself. These stories were often funny, and they made everyone laugh. Then, he would tell a story of some heroic figure from our past. He used his arms and hands to express the many facets of tales from long ago. Young Antelope heard all the stories his elders told, and he remembered those tales, pulling them out at times like these. If only one or two of us survive, Young Antelope would be one I picked. Our stories would never die as long as Young Antelope lived, but then I wondered, who would be alive to hear them.

By the time the stories were told and the singing was done, folks began to move toward their lodges. The children laughed and played, dashing about us, trying to delay going to sleep. It was pleasant in the valley, and life had returned to normal in a few weeks. Normal for Paradise Valley and the people who lived here.

Running Horse was in the habit of moving from family to family as meals progressed. He was concerned for everyone, and he gave attention to the elders who had moved too many times now. It was never easy to move, and elders wanted to find a place where they could finish living their lives without needing to run from the United States Cavalry, or whoever wanted us dead this time.

I didn't know there was such a place.

When Running Horse walked among his people, I often walked with him, staying out of the way of his conversations. I was once more a fixture in the village of Running Horse. I was at his side, because we were together, and walking in the evening, after eating was a good plan. It was a fine place for walking with the one I loved, and we were rarely alone on our evening walks.

The pleasantness in the valley made walking easy, and we often walked before settling into our lodge in the evening. Settling into the buffalo robe was more like a wrestling match. It was something I had been thinking about since getting up that day. Some of the best times of my life were had in that buffalo robe.

It wasn't appropriate for Running Horse to take me along with him on some of the visits he made. I understood that people had the right to privacy when they talked with their chief. We were together most of the time, but when he went on one of those private visits, I found things to keep me busy.

Being separated from the one I loved for so long made being with him even better than I remembered. Maybe growing older and not being able to get to the one I loved gave me more appreciation for him now. All I knew was, when I got hold of him, I never wanted to let go. I had never been happier, and Running Horse smiled at me a lot, like he was amused by how much I loved him after all these years.

He was still the most beautiful Indian I had ever seen.

We appreciated alone time, and the village was relatively respectful of their chief's privacy. We knew we were lucky to have as much time as we did to devote to each other. How many people find their one true love? How many people are able to be in love from the earliest time they can consider love to the end of time?

Early one morning, right after I got the coffee on the fire, I heard some kind of pounding coming from the cliff.

"What is that?" I asked, hearing rocks being pounded together.

"Can't really tell," Running Horse said. "Coming from the cliff. Joe or Riggs are up to something."

Something was followed by a visit from Big Joe.

"Come in, Joe. Have a cup of coffee," Running Horse said a few minutes later.

"Don't mind if I do," Joe said, and I handed him a cup and filled it right up.

Once we all had a full cup, I sat back down to see what Joe had to say.

"Did you hear?" Joe asked.

"Hear what?" I asked.

"Sound travels well from the cliffs across the valley. I pounded two rocks together three times. If we see trouble coming, I'll pound two rocks together three times. Wait a minute and pound the rocks together three more times. If there are two of us up there, one will come across the top to warn you," Joe said , "but we don't always have a second man up there with us."

"We wondered what the pounding was," I said. "We heard it clearly. Our lodge is closest to the cliff."

"We won't spread this around, because once you hear and come up top, you might want to handle it once you know why we signaled. We get a good view up there, and hopefully we'll see the cavalry on the trail long before they pass us," Joe said. "If we see anyone nosing around near the boulders, we'll signal."

"Joe, do you ever stop thinking?" I asked.

He hesitated for a minute, thinking it over.

"No, don't spect I do. Can people not think?"

I laughed. I wasn't going to answer that. I didn't mention all the times my mind went blank.

It took a while to go from the cliff side to the canyon side, and the rock idea was a good one. I thought if the trouble was serious enough, either Joe or Riggs would come running, but after a few weeks, the idea of cavalry coming back didn't worry me as much.

We didn't forget about them. We were sure they hadn't forgotten us, but as time passed, they weren't utmost on our minds. We settled in for however long we had.

Riggs spent most of his time up top, and Joe was in the Eagle's nest early in the mornings, before he was in the caves later in the day. Samuel and Young Antelope continued being our hunters, and Running Horse got the meat ready to go on the fire in the firepit later in the afternoon.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Running Horse talked to spirits, and they told him things a chief needed to know. While he hadn't established contact with them in Paradise Valley, no one needed to tell him that we had been saved by a more potent force than we could identify. We were thankful without knowing who to thank. The mysteries in the universe were great, and the Pawnee were but a small people who were doing the best they could.

I wasn't told about his trouble reaching the spirit world right off. Like Running Horse rarely spoke to me of what the spirits told him, not right away. If there was something he thought I needed to be aware of, he would give me a short version. My opinion of the spirits were mixed. In my earliest days that I remember, Paw used to hook Dobbin to the wagon and carry us to church on Sundays.

There were other days we went, but we always went on Sundays to the Church of the Holy Prophet. My grandpa being said prophet, told me he had a high opinion of himself. I had to go, because Maw took me. How do you get out of a thing like that?

Paw waited in the wagon out front to drive us home. Being an Indian, he wasn't welcome in the prophet's church. I must admit that put off some, but I knew the prophet lied, and his biggest lie involved who I was. When he spoke of being told by God, another word for spirits, I didn't necessarily believe him, because I knew he lied about me.

Running Horse may not have been able to talk to the spirits in our new home, but they spoke loudly to us, while getting us safely into our refuge. I might be all wet, but that was a wonderfully convenient storm to erupt at a time when there was no time to cover our trail. No rain and the cavalry would have come right to us. The storm drove them back, and we hadn't seen hide nor hair of them since.

I had doubts but something had a hand in saving Running Horse's clan. Call it what you may.

"Our ancestors know all that has been, and all that will ever be, Tall Willow. They are not speaking to me. Had I stayed to have the final battle, maybe they would have been happier, but destruction is not a good plan."

"If we stayed, we would be among the spirits now. We did the only thing we could do. We ran. Maybe they can't find us. Maybe it's beyond our ability to understand it."

"The spirits are not speaking to me," he lamented.

What was there for me to say?

It was after a week or two that the activity on the cliffs beside the Eagle's nest caught my attention. What Big Joe started doing alone after settling into Paradise Valley the first time I took him there, began anew. Joe carried rocks and put them in a pile I called the wall in the sky. He worked on it almost every day before, and now he employed Big Bear, Turtle, Barking Dog, and then Samuel and Young Antelope pitched in before going out to hunt each afternoon.

I climbed up one morning after having a cup of coffee with Running Horse. Warriors were there, putting rocks on the wall in the sky that was next to the canyon. The wall was growing before my eyes. After bringing Joe to Paradise Valley, I remember him asking me about building up there, and I told him to go ahead.

"Do you know what they are building up next to the canyon?" I asked Running Horse.

"Joe said he wanted to use some of the warriors, and they are mostly doing nothing . I told him to go ahead. They would like to have something to do. They sure get their exercise hauling rocks."

It's the kind of thing that was easy to forget about, and I forgot about it. The days went on and from time to time I saw warriors climbing up and down on the cliff. When I asked Joe about it, he said a most curious thing.

"It's a door I can close."

When is a wall a door?

A chief knows much, and his spirit advisors were part of how he knew what he knew, but when I asked him about the activity on the cliff above our lodge, he listened carefully before getting up for more coffee.

There were two things about Running Horse I did not question. His love for me, and the spirit world. He often expressed his love for me, and if he received messages that told him what was ahead of us, he asked me if he thought I had a need to know about what was said. That meant he was about to tell me.

If he knew what was going on up there, he wasn't talking, and I went about my business.

Both Running Horse and I went up top to take a look from time to time, but we rarely gave the rock carrying much thought. My back was too old to carry big rocks. The younger men had fine backs, and they seemed to have Joe's enthusiasm for rock carrying.

Riggs was somewhere around my age, but he still carried rocks. Riggs and Joe were close. They shared a history of riding with the cavalry. They both decided to leave that life. Lucky for us, the Pawnee village welcomed them, and even the warriors had no objection to former soldiers helping us. We were all just people, and my people knew, Big Joe and Riggs decoyed the cavalry away from us. We owed them much.

Riggs only had the one life that had him growing up as a soldier in the cavalry. He no longer liked being a soldier, but he had nowhere to go, until he realized he had a friend he helped escape death once, and that friend would give him another road to go down, and a home went with it, for as long as he wanted it.

Riggs was quieter than Joe. Knowing only one life, he eased into not being a soldier. He would follow Joe anywhere, and whatever Joe was up to, Riggs went along, and he carried rocks on the cliff, when he wasn't in the Eagle's nest keeping watch, or down in a cave doing Lord knows what.

We were a small Pawnee clan determined to stay free. For the first time in their lives, Big Joe and Riggs were truly free men. While Riggs did have the cavalry wanting him back, Big Joe was as free as the breeze. They were free to do as they pleased, and they both were good friends of our Pawnee clan.

I don't know why Joe did what he did. Once he was done, I often saw the wisdom in it. Joe thought things through. I was more a 'take it as it comes' kind of guy. I would deal with whatever happened, once it happened. Joe had a plan when he started. He followed it through to the end, having a good idea how it would turn out.

If what he did on the cliff was still a mystery, why did he spend so much time down in those caves?

On to Chapter Four
"Paradise"
Back to Chapter Two
"Watchers"
Complete Chapter Listing
We Are Still Here Main Page

Rick Beck Home Page

I'd love to hear what you think!  Leave me a comment on our contact us page.

We Are Still Here Copyright © 2026 OLYMPIA50. All rights reserved.
This work may not be duplicated in any form (physical, electronic, audio, or otherwise) without the
author's written permission. All applicable copyright laws apply. All individuals depicted
are fictional with any resemblance to real persons being purely coincidental.