The cavalry had come to end us twice. We are still here. We don't know when the cavalry will return, but we're all certain that before too long, they will return to finish the job they started when they decided to end Running Horse's clan.

It remains to be seen how long it would take them to look behind the cliffs out front. Once scouts rode up between the two boulders, they would see the canyon entrance. They might not even mention the canyon being filled with rocks.

One day, after looking everywhere he could think to look, an officer would ride up between the two boulders to see for himself. He was going to wonder. How did all those rocks get into that canyon?

Why are there rocks in the canyon and who put them there?

More importantly, where does the canyon go?

Where indeed?

We slowly settled back into the life we had before Joe sealed us into the valley. It was difficult not thinking about the canyon being blocked. I already made up my mind not to go out again, but none of the Pawnee went out, except me, and the last trip into town, while Joe wandered around collecting what news he could, I had a conversation with a cavalry major who wandered in from the back of the store, catching me while I was paying for our goods.

The way he stood staring at me reminded me of the men in Lawrence's store who used to watch Paw. I immediately knew it was my hair he noticed. I let it grew out again without giving it much thought, but now I looked very much like a Pawnee Indian. The major wanted to know what I was doing in a white man's store?

I did my business, turning from the counter to face him, once I was done.

"Howdy, Major. How's the cavalry doing today," I asked, looking at the dusty gloves he held in his hands.

"Just fine. Might I inquire as to your identity? You have a certain look, you know?"

"Me. Phillip Dubois. My wagon out back. Collecting supplies. We're doing surveying up toward Fort Collins."

"Oh, that's your wagon? It's a bank wagon, isn't it?"

"I survey for 1st National Bank. That's my wagon. Don't get in for supplies too often," I said. "Surveying a section 1st National bought a year ago."

"I see," he said with no conviction in his voice. "Saw your hair. You could pass for an Indian, you know?"

"How long have I been coming in here, Mr. Morton?" I asked, in an effort to get myself off the major's hook.

"Not much lately. A year or two ago, you were in here every few months it seemed," the proprietor remembered. "You left a lot of 1st National's money in my cash drawer in those days. I miss your business."

I felt safe going out with the 1st National Bank wagon being my cover. This trip into Morton's Emporium, I realized how exposed I was. Several people, including one of Morton's clerks, took a long look at me. I didn't realize until then, I hadn't had a haircut in two years. I was letting my hair grow.

I may have had my mother's skin, but I had Paw's hair, and it almost got me killed.

It was funny how stupid it was for me not to consider my hair as a dead giveaway to my true identity. I got away with it this time, because Mr. Morton was there when the major saw me. That was a lucky break, and it would be my last time in town. I wouldn't cut my hair again. I wanted to look Pawnee, just not in town.

They were wondering about me when Morton greeted me like a long-lost friend. I had gone there with Joe many times, and Joe came into town with John many more times, as they built John's horse ranch. I had returned to my people. I wanted to be one of them again. Letting my hair grow was part of my readjustment.

I was no longer Phillip Dubois. I was once more Pawnee. I couldn't ride into town and not have someone look at me closer than I liked. I left Phillip Dubois behind at Morton's that day. I would never go back to Denver.

Luckily, John was more than willing to go to town to get supplies for us, and Joe would go with him, like they went to town to get supplies while building John's horse ranch.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I sat up in the Eagles nest the day after John and Joe left for town. The way John had been running the horses beside the mangled trail going south, he planned to be back the next afternoon. We were sealed into the valley now, but with hundred foot sections of rope Joe brought back from town, getting down from the cliff and back up on it was easy.

Getting the goods across the top of the cliff and down into the valley was a bit of a chore, but each sack was passed from one warrior to the next and then handed down to the valley floor. Once we handled the operation once, John and Joe were prepared to go into town any time there was a need. That did make being sealed into Paradise Valley more pleasant.

I suppose being closed into Paradise Valley was being confined in a spot way smaller than what the cavalry called reservations. There was a difference, however. Reservations were built on land no white man would live on. The ground wasn't fit to grow crops. The tools the government sent were useless on rocky sandy earth. The idea Indians would grow the food they ate was nonsense.

I didn't think this trip to town would take more than two days. I was sure if they maintained the pace John set while riding away, they would be on the way back tonight and be back by midday tomorrow. Receiving plenty of goods on a regular basis meant our confinement wasn't difficult. If it meant surviving, we could do that.

John was already talking about returning to the horse ranch to take care of business and get ready for winter. I had the distinct feeling, once John left, taking Barnaby with him, I wouldn't see either of them again. Samuel was another story. If he went with Barnaby, and there was a good chance he would, then I might not see him again either. Not seeing John again would make me sad. Not seeing Samuel again would be harder on me.

Going into town to get goods was an everyday event for most people, but not for Indians. If you were an Indian, and you were seen in town, chances are you won't be seen again.

After a week or so, things seemed like they were before the earthquake. Samuel and Young Antelope went out each day to hunt, and Running Horse put the final preparations for the evening meal. The ground only gave a quick shake once or twice, before it didn't shake again. When a little shake jarred us, we took notice. While we waited for more, there was no more and even the short jolts stopped after a week.

I spent a lot of time trying to put two and two together. I've always wondered about things that had no explanation. Like rocks falling into a canyon and the earth shaking like it didn't have good sense. I did my best to rap my mind around what was going on in Paradise Valley. We lived there for almost a year while doing the surveying of 1st National's land across the trail. There wasn't so much as a wiggle.

The cavalry shows up, Joe knocks the wall in the sky into the canyon, and then the earthquakes. Two of those things had some resemblance to one another, the other had nothing to do with the other two. The rocks went in the canyon because the cavalry showed up. How did that cause an earthquake?

What makes the ground under you shake?

What if the spirits Running Horse couldn't reach were talking to him. What if the storm that hid our tracks and saved us from the cavalry was a message the spirits had sent. The next time the cavalry comes, the shaking starts. Both times, about to catch up with us, the cavalry was turned back, and we survived certain death.

If I was a spirit and I wanted to talk, those were the kind of things I might want to say.

Maybe the spirit world was talking to Running Horse in a big way, and he didn't realize it.

"You think our ancestors have a hand in the storm and the earthquake? I must admit they both saved us from the cavalry. I will think about this. Perhaps they will speak to me now that they may have spoken for the second time since we came here."

"I have no understanding of the spirit world, Running Horse, but managing to escape once from destruction might be a coincidence, but twice, that is a bit of a stretch if you ask me."

"What's this coincidence?"

"In this case, a bit too convenient to be a second accidental event."

"In that case, why not open up the ground and make the cavalry disappear forever?

"I suppose even spirits have their limits."

I could hear my grandfather, "You're all a bunch of savages, and you're going to hell if you don't receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior."

There it was.

Indians had a way of life, a spirituality, and a sense of their place in the universe around them. My grandfather would immediately set them into the white world and put the idea of white men in their heads, giving not a thought to the ten thousand years they had been indigenous people on this land.

He would not give a thought to how the people on this land saw the invaders who came to take it all.

When I saw grandpa at his pulpit, I then saw all the great war chiefs seated in the first pew.

My mind was a tricky thing. I had images that made no sense, even if this image made perfect sense.

I remembered back to the first week I was inside Medicine Woman's lodge. I more slept than was awake, which was probably good. I was disoriented once we came off the mountain. I knew I was in an Indian village, because Indians gathered around while they moved me into the lodge. More than that, I couldn't say. I had no idea of where I was or why I was there. When I drank the drink Medicine Woman gave me, I knew even less.

I do remember waking up at some point and Running Horse was sitting next to me. I had seen Lit'l Fox and Medicine Woman, but I didn't know Dark Horse was in the lodge with us. I had this warm rush of feelings running through me as I realize the handsome Indian sitting next to me was holding my hand.

I remembered my first thought, 'This must be the most beautiful Indian in the world.'

He hadn't spoken to me. He hadn't brought me any gifts yet, and he always took my hand when he sat beside me, and a rush of feelings ran through me. I didn't understand those feelings then, and I'm not sure I understand them now. I know I love Running Horse, but how love sets in is as mysterious as it was once I figured out that Running Horse and I were meant to be together. In good times and bad, our hearts were linked in a way that meant as long as both of us were alive, we would yearn for each other.

I suppose I could have been mistaken. I suppose I didn't know my feelings, and I never felt anything as powerful as the feelings I had for Running Horse, but my feelings for him never changed. Perhaps they strengthened and became even more persistent, but I felt love for Running Horse before I had any ideas about love. I think from time to time, how different my life would be if I hadn't fallen off that mountain after nearly being eaten by a griz.

That crazy idea that a Hawkin rifle could make me appear more like a man to Paw was just foolishness a boy has in his mind. I knew what I wanted to do, even if I didn't know there were consequences for rushing into manhood, and I got a broke leg. Once mended, I went about being an Indian boy among Indian boys. I had never been a boy in my first life. I wasn't anything. I belonged to Maw and Paw, and they told me what to do, and I did it because I knew nothing else.

I sat in class with white boys, listening to lessons I had no desire to learn. I didn't belong there either. I wasn't white. I didn't belong in that school. I was there because of grandpa, and he was clear on the matter, "Don't you never tell no one you are an Indian, boy."

No one knew I was an Indian, because I was born with white skin. I could pass as white.

I yearned for Running Horse the first day I saw him, and I've yearned for him every day since. As a boy, I dreamed of being Pawnee, and with some dumb luck, I ended up in a Pawnee village. Not any Pawnee village, my Paw's village. He left it chasing renegades after massacring half of Lone Wolf's people. My father never returned to his village, but years later, his son turned up there.

I was dumb enough not to put all the pieces together, but no one in the village was in the dark. They knew I was the son of Proud Eagle, who left chasing marauders and didn't return. He was given up for dead until I showed up, and a mystery that lasted fifteen years was solved.

I only knew what I knew. I only knew that from living as a fugitive. I needed to learn not to make any mistakes. Each life taught me a thing or two, but I didn't have Joe's thirst for knowledge. Maybe I would have learned more if I had a plan, but I had a plan. Don't get caught.

I had white skin to begin with, and I spent much of a year turning my skin brown. By wearing a cowboy hat, and gloves with my long sleeve shirts. My skin turned white again. Without me doing a thing, my long blond hair turned brown as I grew older. I kept it short and I kept to myself. I probably wasn't the only wanted man who worked on a cattle ranch. Cowboys are invisible among thousands of cows. By the time I was done with herding cows, I was as white as most white men, and few took a second look at me.

I no longer looked like the man in the wanted posters for the Indian Tall Willow.

The point is that all my life I wanted to be Pawnee. I became Pawnee but couldn't stay Pawnee. I couldn't stay with Running Horse if my people were going to survive what I did. I thought of him every day. I longed for him every day. My heart ached for him at night, and things began to change, and not just my looks changed.

As I adapted to opportunities to do something but herd cows, I began moving west again. At first, I was always moving east, and then I moved north and south. By the time I became a surveyor, I was moving west.

I became a wagon master quite by accident. I had seen other wagon masters on the trail, and they were like captains on a ship. You don't need to do what a wagon master tells you to do. You were free to hook on with any wagon train you like, but if you don't follow my rules, you won't be on my train.

I only needed to explain that to some arrogant fellow once. The idea of being out on a trail in the middle of nowhere and you don't know anything, well few men are that arrogant. Once I made it clear they were free to go, their attitude changed. They calmed right down, and some turned out to be nice fellows.

I could have done without the headache, but those people were going west, and I was going west, and if I took them, they were going to get where they were going. None of them would die, and more importantly, no Indians would die either.

That's why I was a wagon master. I felt I could save the folks I took across a lot of heartache. You would be surprised how many people on a wagon train pull out their rifles as soon as they see an Indian. You want to make an Indian angry while you are crossing his land, pull out a gun and see what happens.

When I got the opportunity to go west to do surveying, it was where I wanted to be, and when I went west, I was on my way back to Running Horse. Not right away, but at least I was in the same territory with him. That's what kept me going, and I learned how to survey and when I moved west, I took a wagon train across to St Louis, and I put them in the hands of a wagon master who would get them to where they were going.

I had little knowledge that wasn't connected to my work and my travels. I learned from experience. I learned just enough to make it home to Running Horse. That's what I cared about, and it was a long trail home, but in the end, I knew where I was going, and I knew where I belonged.

Yes, I had to avenge my brother. I didn't blink twice when it came to killing a cavalry major and an Indian who was a traitor to Running Horse's clan. If someone asked me, which Indian do you think would be a traitor? I would have said, "Tall Elk," every time. He lured Morning Star into the clutches of Meeks, and that's what killed my brother.

After years of not knowing I had a brother, there was no one I was closer to than Lit'l Fox.

I paid the price for what I did, a price, not the price the cavalry would have exacted from me, had they caught me. I left the man I loved. I left my people. I left not knowing where I was going.

As a boy, I dreamed of being Pawnee. I became Pawnee. I gave up being Pawnee. It was all hard, but when I finally returned to Running Horse, that was easy.

Had I known the cost of my actions, would I have done differently?

I have no way of knowing. I did what I needed to do. That's what I knew.

My love for Lit'l Fox was different than the love I felt for Running Horse. In the end, I lost them both, and that was the hardest thing of all, not that life is ever easy.

Once we were back together, I hardly remember that we were separated for all those years. I knew what I went through for all those years. My memory of that time hasn't faded, but being with Running Horse is like not ever being separated. We belong together and we are together, and nothing else matters.

On to Chapter Eight
"Spirits"
Back to Chapter Six
"Shaking"
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