We settled into our new home, and life fell into a flow that was similar to the way things went in our last valley. The days were comfortable, the nights were cool enough to allow for a good night's sleep.

Speaking of sleep, Running Horse and I did get some sleep. Maybe it wasn't a lot of sleep, but when you have an Indian that looks like Running Horse in your buffalo robe with you, you'll spend a lot of time looking at him.

I couldn't keep my hands off of him. There was sleeping, and some talking after the loving was done. I often couldn't find the words to explain my feelings for him. I knew how lucky I was to have Running Horse to love.

"Have I told you how much I love you today, Tall Willow?"

"No, but if you love me half as much as I love you, that's enough when you don't say the words."

"I try to say the words every day, but some days it doesn't happen. We have been down many trails. Never one more important than the trail leading us here."

"This time I had a place for us to go. Next time…," I said, leaving the thought where it landed.

"Herb Woman says Young Antelopes oldest, Big Foot, is ill. She needs to go out to find a flowering blue plant she says grows wild in fields in this region.

"The fields across the trail are open for a couple of miles. Does she think it will be there?" I asked.

"Yes. I want to send her out with Riggs. No one is going to pay them any mind, and being white means, no one will see them as needing investigating."

"Riggs did not leave the cavalry in the right way," I said, knowing he deserted.

"He's the one she requested. Herb Woman tells me Angel fancies Riggs. I won't send two women out alone. As white as they are, it doesn't set well with me. Riggs knows how to make sure they stay out of trouble. The way he dresses, he doesn't look like a soldier. The fact he was a soldier makes him suited for the job."

"Will love bloom, once Riggs is drawn out of his self-confinement. He doesn't circulate among villagers. He has a great deal of sorrow over being part of hunting down Indians. It's difficult for him to look Indians in the eyes. It's why he keeps watch each day. He is still looking for his place with our clan."

"Joe gets the credit for saving us, because we have known Joe. Riggs actually came to tell us about the attack. That was before he joined us to help us escape the attack. The warriors know it, and the word is going to get around. If I make an issue of it, no telling how it will be received. I'll let this work its way out on its own."

"That makes sense," I said.

Running Horse listened. It wasn't the first time we spoke of Riggs. It wouldn't be the last.

Both Herb Woman and Angel were white. If Riggs was asked to go out with them to protect them, Riggs was going to go. He would see it as duty he was well qualified to do. He might not give thought to what would happen if the cavalry picked this time to come back down the trail. We had been here for over a month now, and they either lost interest, or they had other Indians to chase. They took their shot and lost us in a storm.

Herb Woman and Angel didn't circulate much. One was a capable healer, and the other grew things to furnish a nice variety of food. Angel grew some of the medicine for Herb Woman. They made a place among Running Horse's clan, and they kept busy doing useful things. They shared a sorrow over the treatment of indigenous people on the plains. They didn't know what they could do about it.

"You wanted to see me, Chief?" Riggs asked from the front of our lodge later in the morning.

"I need a man to accompany Herb Woman and Angel outside. You can see to it that they stay safe and don't do anything risky. They'll go alone, but I would like you to go with them. They won't be any trouble."

"Sure, Chief. Should I carry a weapon?"

"No. You aren't going far. Herb Woman needs some medicine that grows wild. She thinks the fields across the trail will be where she finds it," Running Horse said. "If they don't find it. Don't let them wander around."

I watched Riggs, Herb Woman and Angel climb out of the valley and into the canyon. I was cleaning up the firepit for the evening meal when they returned with a basket filled with plants and flowers. Herb Woman led the way, Riggs walked beside Angel, and he helped her over some rocks on their way down from the canyon.

I smiled with the thought that Running Horse might have started something nice between Riggs and the two white woman who refused to go back to their lives in the white world. Once they lived with the Northern Cheyenne for a while, they didn't mind being free to do as they pleased, and there were many skills they brought with them to be a help to others.

People were people if you let them be.

Riggs was a boy people, and Angel was a girl people, and when two of those got together, anything might happen. I calculated that Herb Woman asked Running Horse to send Riggs with them, because she had the idea that something would happen, and it was something she wanted to happen. Angel wouldn't mind if it did happen, and so that's how Riggs and Angel found each other.

I smiled as I watched them return from their search of the 1st National Bank's property. I remembered seeing the flowers that Herb Woman said she needed during our survey. I told her where she might find what she was looking for before they went out.

I watched Riggs extending his hand to help Angel over higher rocks as Herb Woman went ahead. I had seen Angel go up and down that cliff like a mountain goat. She did it as well as the men, but here she was, putting her dainty little hand in Rigg's strong hand, needing his help.

Herb Woman smiled and nodded when she passed. She saw me taking an interest in Riggs and Angel. I'm sure she blushed. Did she think I caught her in the act of match making? It was a nice thing she did.

Angel and Riggs didn't know we were alive, and I'm not sure that wasn't how it was meant to turn out, once they came back from the search for herbs and such. They came back together, and that's how they stayed. Riggs and Angel had found each other, and for the first time, I saw Riggs smile.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

With no sighting of the cavalry in a month, having someone in the Eagle's nest all the time wasn't necessary.

After a month and a half, running low on some of the essentials, I decided to take the 1st National Bank wagon into town to get supplies. It would be no different from when I went into town for supplies during the survey. I was always extra cautious when I came and went from the valley. Big Joe wanted to go with me. When we left the canyon, he hopped down to job toward the trail, and I watched from between the two boulders for him to wave me forward if it was clear. It wasn't much different from the times we went to town together before.

It was Big Joe who wanted to go with me. He had run out of pitch for his torches that allowed him to see where he was going down in the caves. I didn't like the caves. I didn't like the things he found down there, but Joe seemed to know what he was doing, and he could buy all the pitch he wanted. No one was going down in those caves in the dark.

Taking Joe with me had another advantage, besides his strong back. Joe had a knack of getting the most important information from men working in places where we went for supplies. In half an hour, Joe came back with all the news from the last few months.

The storm that hit north of Denver had no impact on the city. It did reach as far as Fort Collins.

We were even more careful before turning off the trail and going into Paradise Valley. It took about five minutes to unload the wagon, when the warriors coming off the cliff pitched in to help. Big Joe carried his small barrel of pitch past the firepit, heading for his lodge.

He would have Samuel and Riggs busy making torches tonight. Tomorrow he will be back in the caves.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Both Running Horse and I took tours of the waterfall cave, which was plagued with frequent cave ins that blocked the way forward, and the huge cathedral cave that narrowed down to a well-shaped tunnel that took us fifty feet into the ground. You couldn't go any further in the cathedral cave, because a pond of water formed fifty feet from the big chamber above it.

It didn't take long after our trip into town for Joe to come to have morning coffee with us.

Actually, he had something he wanted to show us, and for him to come to get the chief, he had to think it was important enough for Running Horse to see.

An hour into one of the easier caves to follow, Joe came to a stop. He held the torch up as high as he could.

I was immediately surprised by the wall art. I knew there were crude drawings on cave wall. The stick figures looked as though they were drawn by children, but this was recognizable wall art. You could see men with spears, poking the spears into a huge animal in front of them.

The drawings were in color. It was a scene from something the artist had seen. Was he one of the hunters?

He left it on the cave wall to tell us a story about his life?

What was the thing they were trying to kill?

Joe had no answers for us. The art was left in the cave by someone wanting to leave a record of being here. Who was it? How long ago was the wall art put here?

"Chief, men had to come here thousands of years ago. We didn't just pop out of the earth a few years back. These men might not even be men, but they were smart enough to draw pictures of things they saw. No one just put four spearmen around that big creature out of his imagination. He saw four men bringing down that beast. They probably ate it," Joe said.

"What is it?" Running Horse asked.

"Gots me, chief. Whatever it is, they was killing it because it threatened them, or they were hunting supper. Take your pick. No one was hunting something that big for fun."

And that was the truth.

"Take a powerful lot of eating," I said. "I've seen something like it. Can't say where. The animal they are trying to kill. I'm sure I've seen a picture or something that looks like it. You really can't see most of it. It's just big, and you can't see what the men with the spears look like. Only their backs. Is that on purpose?"

"What does this make you think about these people, Joe?" Running Horse asked.

"Can't imagine it not being people doing this. Art goes back about as far as man goes. It's how they tells their history to folks like us."

"What else is there but man?" I asked him.

"Can't say what here was before man. People becoming like we are now, but before. Big beasts roamed the earth. They died out, and we showed up, according to my Auntie."

I could see Joe's face as he turned with the torch and bright light over his head. The wall art covered both sides of the cave we were in. I saw a beast they were trying to kill. Men sere surrounding it in one picture. When Joe turned to show us more wall art, I wanted the light back on what I was seeing, but we moved on.

"We don't know, does we? People would be most likely, but this art is deeper in caves than most men are going to want to be. They didn't have pitch or torches, but maybe there are things we don't know about. Maybe the art came from people who could see in the dark? Maybe they couldn't see at all. We can see the art, but we can't see them," Joe said.

It was all reasonable, but what did we really know? Someone or something drew the wall art. We would never know who, but the hunters in the pictures looked similar to men.

"How much further does this cave go? Could it open to the outside?" Running Horse asked. "Could they have a way of getting in here from the outside?"

"You mean are they around? Waiting to come draw some more? No, they're gone. Why they was in here, can't say. I doubt they lived down here. Used the caves for what they needed them for. Maybe they lived here, maybe not. Maybe it was their safe place. Came down here until it was safe to go back out?"

"Maybe there were a lot of those big beasts. The people came into the cave to wait for them to leave," I said.

"Who can say? When I sees a new thing , I want you to see it, Chief. Even if I don't understand a thing don't mean you won't understand it. You are the chief, Chief."

"You plan to go further?" Running Horse asked. "I want to see outside. Do you think there is an outside? Where the people lived? They came in here for safety. It would be easy to defend."

"Don't know if this cave goes further. There's a cave in just ahead. I piles the rocks in branches of the cave don't go nowhere. Got to be careful clearing the way. Don't want it to cave in on me," Joe explained. Now that warriors are pitching in, they are clearing rocks out of the way, while I explore what is around us."

"I want to know where these caves go," Running Horse said. "Keep me up to date, especially if you find a way to the outside. Check each branch you cross to make sure it isn't a way to the outside, Other than that, keep doing what you are doing."

"Always do, Chief. I go slow. I keeps my eyes open."

I didn't know what to tell Running Horse when he asked. I knew nothing about caves. I knew I didn't like being deep in the ground, and that's where the caves went. If they led somewhere, I didn't know where, and I didn't like the idea of it. Caves caved in and I had no desire to be in one when it did. Running Horse wanting Joe to look for a way outside caught me by surprise. What outside? We were hundreds of feet underground.

I was ready to go back to the surface. I wasn't losing sight of Joe. He had the torches. Joe lit the way and we followed. There was no more conversation. Running Horse seemed to be deep in thought, and Joe's only idea was to get us to the surface. All there was to say had been said. There were questions and no answers.

"Look for an opening to the outside. Let me know what else you find, Joe," was the last words spoken.

We awoke to the sounds of rocks being pounded together the following week. We knew the signal and Running Horse only got outside a few seconds before me. We were on top of the cliff behind the 1st National wagon and heading for the Eagle's nest in no time. We met Joe coming toward us.

"Calvary," Joe said. "On the trail. Coming this way."

Both Riggs and Samuel stood in the Eagle's nest. They watched a small detachment of soldiers riding away from us by the time we got there.

"They rode right past. Never even looked this way," Riggs said. "1st Cav out of Fort Collins, I think. They move around, but the 1st was at Fort Collins last I heard.

We watched them riding out of sight. They were riding toward Denver, but no telling where they were going.

We kept two men in the Eagle's nest for the next few days. If the cavalry was becoming more active in this area, we wanted to know.

There were no more cavalry sightings that week.

Big Joe mostly stayed in the latest cave he showed us, and Young Antelope, Riggs, and Barking Dog were often in the caves with him. Other warriors helped from time to time, but whatever Joe was looking for, he was getting more help than before.

The Eagle's nest took on less importance, but I went up to check on it some days. If no one was there, I sat a while, keeping an eye on the trail. It was peaceful up there, and it gave me an opportunity to look at the wall in the sky. Joe had fashioned support beams every ten feet or so, and there were boards you could walk to reach the top of the wall and toss your rock on it.

When is a wall a door, I wondered?

Samuel and Young Antelope still hunted each afternoon for the evening meal. Our menu increased as gardens planted when we came began to yield different items to go along with the meat we often ate. There were now meals that were cooked in large pots we brought back from town while we surveyed. It reminded me of the big pot Maw used to throw all the leftovers in and poured water on it for good measure. After a few days of tossing leftover meals in the pot, the pot had the evening meal we would eat. It's hard to believe that leftovers could turn into something as tasty as Maw's stew.

The gardens in Paradise Valley began to produce fine food that went well with any meal. It was hard to believe that seeds were planted right after we arrived in the valley, and they were already yielding up food to go with our meals. It was amazing to see the things that grew. The garden we planted while surveying was still giving us healthy food to eat. They didn't require much attention once you got them in the ground.

One day long after I was out and about, I came back to find Joe sitting in the lodge. He had poured himself a cup of coffee, and Running Horse wasn't in. That's to say he was there, but he was seated in the back of the lodge, legs folded under him, and he wasn't moving.

"Joe, what a surprise. You run out of rocks to move?"

"Found something, Phillip, Tall Willow."

"He is trying to reach the spirit world. He might be gone a while. Tell me and I'll tell him."

"An entirely new section of wall art. These are as different as the stick figures was from the better wall art. The scenes are different. No huge beast at the center of hunters. This is more like everyday scenes that any painter might paint," Joe said. `

"How far from the other art?" Running Horse asked.

"Didn't mean to disturb you, Chief. You wanted to see anything new. This is new."

"The spirits aren't talking to me these days. It's okay. How far from the art you showed us last time?"

"No wall art for a week or ten days. As soon as we opened a new section, there it is. This is different. There are horses, bowman, and woman are now visible. Wall art on the ceiling. Someone spent a lot of time in there."

"Let me walk a few minutes. You can show me," Running Horse said, standing up. "Tall Willow, while we're gone, go up to the Eagle's nest. I'll want to know what you see for a couple of hours."

I told Running Horse how uncomfortable I was in the caves, and now he didn't want me going with him. I didn't like the caves, but I didn't like missing anything either. I did not like this turn we had taken.

I went up top and Running Horse followed Joe to the waterfall cave. I stood right above the 1st National wagon and watched them walking to the waterfall cave.

It was after the evening meal that I sat down with Running Horse in the lodge. He was gone a couple of hours, and he was back in time to cook the meat for the evening meal. I stayed up top and watched nothing pass on the trail. Feeling ridiculous, I finally came down to work on the firepit.

Opening my big mouth got me shut out of whatever goings on were going on. I didn't mind looking at the wall art. It's where the wall art was that annoyed me.

"And what did you see?" Running Horse asked, as if he really wanted a report on the empty trail out front.

He returned to the firepit alone, as usual, once Joe didn't come out of the cave.

"What did you see?" I asked, not giving him a report on how little there was to see on the trail out front.

I didn't know if he expected me to be angry with him, but he paid me no mind. Running Horse didn't do angry, even if I sounded angry, he wouldn't play along. He found me being angry somewhat amusing. Probably remembering how we went at each other the night before.

"It was new. Not the same man drawing. The scenes had trees and brush. It appeared rocky. These animals I knew. Animals are more varied with coyotes, elk, and bears plainly visible. I saw what they were, and the use of color is brighter. These pictures might not be from as far back as they others."

Joe kept going deeper in the caves. There might be someone closer to human that drew further down. I didn't particular relish going down in the caves, but I liked being left behind even less. I suppose Running Horse was teaching me a lesson. He knew I didn't think much of those caves. I did think a lot of him. He wouldn't go without me again.

"There was one more thing I noticed. I hadn't seen it before in any of the wall art," he said.

"What is that?" I asked.

"In the final piece of wall art Joe showed me, there was a buffalo. It stood all alone as a single image that was separate and disconnected from the rest of the wall art. All the other art blended together, making it look like one long continuous scene."

"What do you think it means?" I asked.

"It means there were buffalo living with them, and that means they hunted buffalo. Why it stood alone is a mystery, because the rest of the art connected, except for one lonely buffalo."

Who would be down that deep in caves with so much time on his hands? The last picture in a cave full of pictures was a buffalo. If they didn't live on the surface, and they used the caves to seek safety, then wherever they came from, there were buffalo for the hunting. It was hard to say how long ago the art was put there, and did someone come along a thousand years later and draw the buffalo?

"Why wouldn't it be the same artist?"

"This was too well drawn. If it is the same artist, he has come a long way," Running Horse observed with a greater distance in his voice. "The buffalo was different. More detail. Different artist. He drew the buffalo by itself, so no one confused it with the rest of the art that was down there."

"Someone smart enough to want what he drew to stand alone or stand out?" I said.

"Perhaps."

"Maybe this far down in the cave, it isn't down there to him," I proposed, not knowing why.

Running Horse didn't speak for a while.

"Do you think if they keep digging in this cave, they find an opening to the outside?" he asked me. "Do you think there could be an opening to the outside?"

"Anything is possible. Don't leave me and go into the caves with Joe. I don't like the caves. I like you going down in the caves without me even less."

"You don't like the caves. I went without you. You don't like that. How is it I am to please you?"

Running Horse laughed, having made his point, and I jumped on him.

We rolled and giggled and kissed. I may not have liked the caves, but the idea of Running Horse going into them without me was worse.

My anger was gone, because he ignored it, and went about things in his usual way. If I fussed with him, he laughed at me. I didn't like him laughing at me.

It did little good when I got angry with Running Horse.

It was my own doing when I did get angry with him. I had a way of not getting directly to the point, when I had something to say. Like when I said, "I feel like I can't breathe down in those caves."

Life in Paradise Valley became more settled the longer we were there. We were able to do most of what we once did in the village next to the lake in the valley where the river runs.

The digging in the waterfall cave came to a stop. I suppose you can only dig a hole for so long, and then it is so much wasted energy. All you get is a deeper hole, and nothing was down there, except for that wall art.

"One cave in takes us to another cave-in, chief. I'm afraid there is no opening outside. I'll keep digging if you say, 'keep digging,' but we aren't getting nowhere."

"No, Joe, you know what you're doing. If you want to quit digging, go ahead. I wondered if there might be a down there, down there. That's all. What did you expect to find down there?"

Joe needed to give this some thought. He didn't always come with a ready answer. He didn't expect to stop digging until he found something. He hadn't found anything but more pictures.

"I expected to find whatever was down there," Joe said carefully. "Maybe a guy drawing pictures on the wall."

That got a laugh out of Running Horse.

Joe meant it to be humorous, because he knew that was about the last thing he might find.

No, we weren't likely to catch a wall artist in the act. We would no doubt need to go back to another era to catch the men who drew the wall art on the walls of the caves. I did think we might find how they got into the caves, but when the digging stopped, any idea of finding something important stopped.

Joe expected to find what was down there.

I didn't expect much either.

Running Horse didn't say what he expected, if he expected anything, but he hadn't stopped trying to reach the spirit world, and from that world, he might get some answers to what we might find in those caves. According to Running Horse, they knew everything that had ever been, and everything that would ever be.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I didn't appreciate all the lives that I had, but as I grew older, I began seeing value in things I hadn't valued before. It's funny how your view of things changes as you get older. No longer in such a rush to get where you are going, you enjoy the journey more than the destination.

Joe and I made a trip into town, and we came back with the news, that the most feared Sioux chiefs had gone in. This left us stunned and depressed. If Sitting Bull went into the reservation, only the Apache stayed out in great numbers. There were warriors who would never go in, but their families had to eat, and the Lakota war chief could no longer keep his people fed.

"Most Indians have gone in," Running Horse said over morning coffee the next morning.

"Not us. Never us. Isn't that what you told me?"

"I did, but how do you suppose it is so different for us. Even when the cavalry knew where we were, they didn't come after us until a few months ago."

"They keep busy running down our brothers," I told him. "We were no threat. We are a small clan."

"Yeah, but they've been doing that for years. Why haven't they come for us before? They built their fort a day's ride away. They came to make sure we knew they knew where we were. Yet they left us be for years."

"The massacre, which is the only reason why I'm here. No massacre, no Tall Willow."

"How do you figure?"

After the massacre, my father, your father, brother to my father, went after the renegades. Your father died, and you were raised by your uncle, Chief Lone Wolf, because you would be chief. My father wasn't killed. My grandfather found him unconscious beside the trail, and he took him home for his daughter, my Maw, to nurse. Lots more went on than nursing, and here I am. No massacre, no me."

"Did you figure that out by yourself?" Running Horse had to know.

"I guess. I do think about things," I said.

"You worry about things," Running Horse said. "The great chiefs have all gone in. Soon they will come for us."

"You don't have anything to worry about?"

"I worry about the spirit world. How can I be a good chief if the spirits don't speak to me? How will I see the cavalry coming, if the spirits do not speak to me?"

"You've never let me in on what you and the spirits talk about," I said. "If they don't warn you when danger is ahead, what good are they?"

"Do you know when we sit and talk after I visited the spirit world? Never right away, but soon after I return, we talk before making love."

I giggled.

"I am not so interested in the talk as in love making. That's when you make the most delicious love."

"Don't say I don't talk to you about my visits to the spirit world. Say you don't pay attention to what I say after a visit to the spirit world."

I laughed.

"You don't play fair. How am I to remember anything but the love we make, after we make love?"

"You may not remember the talk, but we talk about the things I've learned from the spirits. "I may have angered them. We ran and left our ancestors behind. Some of the soldiers would ruin their resting place. Take their belongings. How can our spirits rest under the trampling feet of our murderers?"

"You saved your people. They would be dead if you hadn't done what you did," I told him. "Wouldn't getting all your people killed be a bit of a black mark? You would be dead too. I would be dead. Don't you get a point or two for staying alive?"

"I don't know, Tall Willow. Chief Lone Wolf walked among our ancestors when he was troubled. That's when he would sit and wait for the spirits to speak. I can't walk among our ancestors, and they've gone silent."

"We'll take my wagon and go get them if that's all that is wrong."

Running Horse shook his head.

"Anyone sees us going to get our ancestors, we won't be alive for long. The Indians have all gone in. There are few of us left to hunt. You don't think someone might tell them they saw Indians in a wagon?"

"I suppose. I could go. Take Joe with me. He would help with a thing like that."

"No. You won't go. I won't go. What's done is done. The cavalry will be back soon enough," he said.

"You're right of course. You always are, you know? There has to be some way to reach the spirits. There has to be something we can do."

"There is," Running Horse said.

"What?" I asked.

"All I can do is wait. If they don't come to me, all is lost."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Running Horse and I were well acquainted with each other. We constructed our lodge near the 1st National wagon. It was below the cliffs and among a grove of trees, near enough to the stream that we could hear it trickle. I always liked the sounds water made. There had been a stream behind Medicine Woman's lodge.

We slept out on good nights. There was grass between the firepit and our lodge.

A Chief must be available to his people. A chief needs space to ponder the moves he needs to make. It is said, before the battle of the Greasy Grass, Custer had Major Reno's force attack to the north of the Sioux encampment. He was to cross the Little Big Horn and open fire on the village. Custer would come in from the east. It is said that several of Chief Gaul's wives and children were killed and wounded before the battle that killed Custer.

Chief Running Horse didn't have any wives or children. He had me, and if he took any wives, or had any children while I was gone, no one spoke of it. Running Horse told me that he had but one love. I was it. I didn't know how other clans did it, and I'm sure great chiefs did what they pleased. Running Horse was a good chief, and no matter who he loved, his clan came first.

I was sure there had been no love in Running Horse's life while I was gone. We had a forever love, and that forever love was for each other. I fell in love with Running Horse at about the time I was able to love. Running Horse was my first love. He would be my last love. There would be no other love for me.

There was nothing to compare it to. There had been no temptation to get my mind off of Running Horse. He was perfect for me. We were perfect together, and that's all there was to it.

Love may be extremely complicated, but once you find that perfect love, there is no other love. Once we leave this life, we will be shooting stars that light the night sky with our love.

On to Chapter Five
"Visitation"
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"Settling In"
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