Running Horse left the buffalo robe sometime during the night. He was sitting in the corner of the lodge when I woke the next morning, and I left the lodge to make coffee at the firepit.

Later in the day, when Samuel was ready to go hunting, I grabbed my bow and went with him. Demon fell in behind us.

Samuel got two rabbits. I never saw rabbits. I didn't raise my bow. I was too agitated to hunt. The Window cave had given us a view of something that couldn't possibly be where it was, but it was there.

I loved rabbit, but I didn't have an appetite, because we found something that made no sense. I needed to clear my head. What we saw down in the ground wasn't possible. How could I make sense of it?

I watched Samuel cleaning the rabbits, and we made our way back to the firepit. Demon stayed behind to clean up after us, and I sat watching Samuel preparing the firepit for the evening meal.

"What's up, Pop. You look out of sorts?"

"Just thinking," I said, still working on the light we found in a hole in the wall of the Window cave.

Later on, I left Samuel getting the firepit ready to cook the evening meal.

I wanted to check on Running Horse. I needed to talk to someone, but only Running Horse saw what I saw. Running Horse and Joe, and Joe was too busy exploring to take time to wonder about what he was doing. Joe would keep digging in those caves until he tired of it, or he found something that made him stop digging.

While John and Barnaby joined Samuel at the firepit, I returned to sit next to Demon. I knew I could talk to John, but what would I say? He would think I had gone around the bend, and so I left well enough alone. Running Horse was waiting to find out the meaning, and I didn't feel like sitting there and watching him sitting there. I needed fresh air, and the firepit would be where the action was in another hour or so.

John liked going into the caves with Joe. Once Joe took him to see what he showed us, John and I could talk. He would have an opinion, and if he didn't believe his eyes, we would wait to see if Joe could get down to where, I didn't know. There was no 'there' in a cave. A cave was a cave. At least I thought it was.

Joe might or might not show up in time to eat, and he knew what I knew, but didn't seem any more comfortable with the knowledge than I was. Joe would keep digging. He had uncovered a mystery he could really get his teeth into this time, and he would tell us if he discovered anything new. Running Horse asked him to get to the bottom of that cave, and Joe wouldn't waste any time doing it. I expected he would hit a dead end and that would be that, except what was outside the window?

After I ate and took a plate of rabbit into the lodge, I sat it next to Running Horse, and I walked to the pond for a soak. Maybe Running Horse would be back, after I returned to the lodge. His spirits had a lot to answer for, and maybe they would give him the straight skinny on it this time around.

After I finished at the pond, I started my walk back, when Big Joe fell in beside me. I saw him come up from the depths and stop for a soak at the other end of the pond. We saw each other, but neither of us moved. When I began my walk back, Joe walked with me.

"How's it going down there, Joe?" I asked as we walked.

I had no appetite to hear about a new discovery no one understood or could explain. I saw the expression on Joe's face when he showed us what became known as the Window cave.

"We've begun to dig out the spot where the cave in stopped us. Those boys never seem to get tired. I think that they think we will find a way to the ground. I'm not sure we will. Not sure we won't. Not sure there is ground."

"What do you think, Joe?"

"I try not to think too much. Nothing turns out the way I think it will. If I get too far ahead of myself, I might miss something important. I don't want to miss anything, especially down there," Big Joe said. "I know caves cave in. I've been digging them out after they cave in. I wouldn't like being under one. That's what I think."

We walked on in silence.

What do you say after someone mentions being buried alive?

"Chief, in?" he asked, just before I went inside.

"Yes, but I don't think his mind is in, if you catch my drift."

"I think he wants to talk to me," Joe said.

"Come on in and give it a try. You might need to come back when he comes back."

I ducked to move inside the lodge. It took a minute for my eyes to adjust, but Running Horse hadn't moved since I left. I was hoping we could talk after I soaked a while.

"Chief, you available to talk?"

"How did you end up where you took us?" Running Horse asked. "Tell me. Try not to leave any of it out. Do you have any idea what we are dealing with here, or what we might find if we can get down to the bottom of what that opening in the cave showed us?"

"As for what we see and what it is, I don't know. I won't guess. It's not something we'll know the answer to, until we gets closer. We are too far up to see clearly, Chief. We are clearing rocks from the main cave we've been in all along. I went off and found the window, because I saw the light down there. I knew there couldn't be any light down in the ground. When I came to the window, I changed my mind."

"The earth shaking opened up the ground where you were digging? Did it open the window?"

"More or less. The earthquake definitely opened up the ground in several places. This place was the most promising, Chief," Joe said. "It's why I spend so much time there. Don't get me wrong, the Cathedral cave is larger and goes more directly downward now that the bottom busted out of the pond below the cathedral."

"You intend to spend time in the Cathedral cave?"

"I've looked around. Only been down to where the pond once stood. There is another split below where the pond was. I haven't gone into that split yet. The Window cave has all our attention. If there is a way to get down to what looks like ground, we'll find it. Might take a while. There is something about the Cathedral cave that makes me think it might come in handy. Now that I have plenty of pitch, I'll take a look see."

"Yes, stick with the cave with the window. See how far down it goes. See if there is some way to get us on the ground below the window. I would like it if we could get on the ground. Can you get us there?"

"It's what we are trying to do, Chief. I go to the Cathedral cave when we hit another rockfall. I leave your warriors to clear it out of the way, and I use the time to look at other places. Like that window, no telling what we might find, Chief. If there is ground down there, we do our best to get you on it."

"What are your thoughts, Joe."

"Someone spent a lot of time in that cave. The wall art is better developed. Someone had access and they either lived further up to avoid enemies or beasts, but there is no doubt people lived in this cave. How long ago is anyone's guess, but they were there. I've shown you when the wall art changes. Those caves were once open to where the creators of the wall art lived."

"If you find a way to get us closer to the ground outside the Window cave, let me know. If you discover something else of interest, stop what you are doing, and come and get me. We're getting close to where we want to be, Joe," Running Horse explained.

"Sure thing, Chief."

Joe went out and Running Horse picked up a piece of rabbit to chew. He put the piece of rabbit down, looking across the fire at me.

"What did we just see? In that cave Joe took us into. Tell me what you saw. Leave nothing out."

It had been over two days since we saw it, but he had been away.

A single thought popped into my brain. I should have made the connection before, but I didn't.

"Go into the dark. You'll see the light. Go there?"

"You've been speaking to my spirits?"

"No, but that's what they told you to do. Go into the dark. We went into that dark cave. You'll see the light. The light came in through that window opening. Go there is not so clear. We go out that window and we won't go nowhere else. It's five hundred feet down," I told him.

I didn't know how far down it was, but it was far enough down to make me dizzy when I tried to see it.

He was gone again. He wasn't gone, gone, but he was trying to fit the pieces together. He didn't simply need to know what the words meant. He needed to know what to do.

I had no trouble sleeping that night. My mind had been so overactive that I was exhausted. I woke as first light drifted into our lodge. I made a pot of coffee and sat down to have my first cup.

He got up when he smelled the coffee and I handed him a cup.

We sat across from each other with our coffee, and he remained silent for a while.

"What did you see?" Running Horse asked me after one more cup of coffee.

"A hole and more open space than I wanted to step out in," I said.

"It wasn't enough light to see anything, but I knew there was something there beyond my vision. Did you feel it too, Tall Willow?"

"I felt dizzy," I confessed. "I saw the light and what looked like ground below us. I couldn't prove that's what I saw, but that's what it looked like."

"Something is down there," he said. "I could feel a pull coming from down there."

"We were down there and I'm just as happy to be up here," I said.

"Up here is not safe. Oh, it's fine until the cavalry comes for us again. We can't keep depending on the Great Spirit to save us. We need to save ourselves. If there is some way to go to a place where the calvary will never find us, we need to go there."

"We don't know there is a there, Running Horse."

"Go into the dark. You'll see the light. Go there."

"You believe the spirits were telling you there was a place we could go to be safe?"

"You said it. What the spirits told me to look for, we found."

"How do we know there is a 'down there' down there?"

"They told me where to go. There must be a place down there."

"I'll take your word for it," I said.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Living in Paradise Valley before I went back to Running Horse gave me a fine feeling for what was a beautiful place to be. Yes, I knew there were caves. I had been in them, and I liked coming back out of one. My brain kept hitting a roadblock. Okay, caves went into the earth, and people, or something on their way to becoming people, lived down in those caves. They drew their history on the walls, which meant someone spent a lot of time there. Were they hiding from something dangerous? Did they live in the caves, or wait for danger to pass inside the caves? If they waited inside the caves, was there an outside of the caves? Did they live outside and hide inside?

I had been in the caves, thinking I should know if there was gold inside the caves, like there was gold in all the hills around Denver. There was gold, but not enough for men to want to be here mining a little gold, when they could go deeper in the hill and find a lot of gold. I never had the thought that there's something a lot more valuable than gold inside of Paradise Valley. What if there was a place to go where we would be safe from the cavalry and the men who wanted us dead?

What if we found a way to live in peace and harmony? Is that what the spirits are telling Running Horse?

That's what we all would love to find. A place where we could just live life as it was always lived by the Pawnee for thousands of years. What if we found a place where we could live free and safely? What if we found a place no one wanted to take away from us?

Once I came through the canyon after a day of surveying, I was home. I didn't feel it had much more to offer. I needed nothing else. No matter who I took there, it didn't change. It was a nice place to be. It was pleasant, and there was plenty of game, and I felt at home here.

If there was a down there, down there, did I really want to leave Paradise Valley to live under it? That prospect did not excite me. We had seen something through a window in the side of a cave. I don't know what we saw.

Even when I collected ore samples, thinking I needed to know if there was gold in the valley's cliffs, I didn't care what was at the end of each cave, and they were caves. There was a lot of darkness and rocks.

I took the core samples to town to be assayed. I met big Joe. After that, the ore was meaningless to me. Even if there was only a little gold in Paradise Valley, there were people who would kill for it, If you had it, and if they decided they wanted it, killing for it wasn't much of a reach for bad men. Gold brought out the evil in men.

Men were going to kill me for what was in the sack I carried. To most people it would look like a sack of rocks. It was a sack of rocks, but there was gold in the rocks, and that's what they would kill for. The idea I would have died beside the 1st National wagon, across from the assay office was bad enough, but they would have killed Samuel too, and that was so distasteful that no amount of gold was worth anything to me.

Not only did Joe save us from being shot and maybe killed, but Joe had nowhere to go, and he took up with us. Since he saved Sammy Boy and me from varmints, giving him a home was the least I could do. Joe was a gift that kept on giving. He fascinated me with things he came up with. He fit in like a good glove fits your hand.

Always curious, always in motion, Joe kept looking for something. I watched him with amusement. The only time Joe sat for long was at meals, but even then, he would finish his meals, get his latest book, and he would read to us, because he read to the slaves and to the Buffalo Soldiers. Joe was learning with us as he read.

Joe had educated himself with the help of his auntie. He educated us, and I knew I was learning things I wouldn't know if he didn't read out of the books he brought to the valley.

Joe's curiosity had taken a turn down in the earth hundreds of feet. What he was doing was no longer amusing to me. After the shake, Paradise Valley did change. I spent more time looking for cavalry. Joe spent more time digging in the earth. He found a window on a world I wasn't sure existed. Running Horse spoke to spirits he did not know. We were locked into Paradise Valley, because Joe thought it up.

We could get out on the ground. Joe thought that up too. No one could get at us, especially the cavalry, and we could send out any number of people who weren't Pawnee to pick up what we needed. Until it was done the first time, I didn't know it could be done. Joe proved he could do it.

Running Horse got a message from spirits he did not know. They spoke to him after he tried many times to reach them before the valley shook. After the shaking, the spirits wanted to talk. Like the window in the cave, the spirits in Running Horse's mind might not be there at all.

If they were there, why did they remain silent for so long? The spirits of our ancestors gave Running Horse guidance. The spirits in Paradise Valley offered him a riddle. I still wasn't sure about the new spirits.

Joe came to our lodge to take coffee before he went down in the caves a few days a week. Joe seemed to try to reassure us. I'm not sure if he wanted to reassure Running Horse, who seemed pleased Joe continued to dig in the earth, or me, because he sensed I was ill at ease after our visit to the window in the cave.

"You aren't in the Window cave?" Running Horse asked.

"The Cathedral cave. The warriors are still digging out the Window cave. I decided to take a look at what was under the pond that broke open during the shake. Once I went below the crack in the floor, I've found an amazing network of passageways, Chief. I've got torches ready all along a passageway that I can stand up in. It's more like a tunnel than a cave. It seems to be moving in the direction of the Window cave. I think I can hear the waterfall above where I have gotten down to. Almost no cave ins in these tunnels," Joe told us.

"Do you think it wise to be working in more than one place at a time?" Running Horse asked.

"Just doing what I planned to do all along. It takes a day or two to clear the cave ins, brace them so they don't trap us once we go deeper, and clear the next place where we are stopped again. The Cathedral cave is bigger. Easier to walk in. I need to make more torches to light the way, but it has possibilities."

"How deep is the Window cave?" Running Horse asked.

Joe sat for a minute before he spoke.

"What we see from the window, maybe halfway down to what looks like the ground. It is daylight in the Window cave when it is daylight on the surface. I can't tell why. I haven't seen a light source."

"How long ago did we go to see the window?"

Joe looked into his coffee cup before looking at Running Horse.

"Ten, maybe twelve days. Big Bear is as interested as I am about where the caves go. Most of the warriors go to dig when he goes. I've shown him how to brace places that have caved in. He knows what to do. I can't be in two caves at once, so Big Bear is a big help," Big Joe said.

"I hope you know what you're doing," I said.

It was my only contribution to the conversation.

Joe stood and left our lodge.

He didn't ask us to take a look in the Cathedral cave where he was working. I was happiest about that.

Joe was back later in the week.

"Your coffee has a genuine flavor to it, Phillip. All those years in the cavalry, and I didn't know it had a taste."

I laughed. As a wrangler, I had the same impression about the cook's coffee. Maw's coffee was loaded with flavor, and I began drinking it about the time I turned twelve. I like my coffee strong but flavorful.

"Joe, what do you expect to find by digging deeper into the earth?"

It was the first skepticism I heard in Running Horse's voice, when he spoke with Joe. I knew as well as he did, we had no idea where we would end up. Like Joe said, no matter what we think it is, it never turns out like we think it will.

Joe spoke after a minute or two.

"I'll find what's there, Chief."

"You have no expectations? You're digging to be digging?"

"I expect to see where the cave goes. If there is another valley on the other side, I'll find it. You can decide what to do about it. If there is another valley, wouldn't you like to know? I would."

"I would," Running Horse said.

Another valley? That goes a whole lot further than something at the bottom of a hole in the wall of a cave. A valley never came to mind in all the thinking I did about what I had seen in the window of the Window cave.

Had Running Horse talked with the spirits again? It's the first time he mentioned another valley.

From the window in the Window cave, you'd need wings to get to the ground, if there was any ground to get to.

"I would like to find a way down to it. Those pictures on the walls were drawn by someone. They didn't materialize in the cave, draw the wall art, and then disappear. I don't think these people lived in Paradise Valley. I want to find the place where they lived. They probably used the caves for safety. They went there when there was something to fear. While there, someone left a record of their lives on the walls of the caves," Running Horse said. "I want to see where they lived when they weren't living in the caves."

"What if you open the door to whatever is down in the earth?" I asked.

I remembered listening to the prophet preach when I was younger, and we still went to the prophet's church. He was sure we would all go to hell if we didn't repent and leave some money in the plate to be sure his God would bless us. If you didn't get yourself blessed, you were in a world of hurt, because of what he told us was down under the earth surrounded by pits of fires where we would live in pain and misery for all eternity.

I didn't think most folks swallowed it hook line and sinker, but if you could avoid all that pain and misery by dropping a few coins in the collection plate, why not cover that possibility if you could.

The prophet talked more about the next life than this one. Once you survived this life, if you were good, you went to a nice place with plenty of food and comfort coming to you in God's special place for the nice people.

I didn't take much stock in the prophet's message. Most folks weren't taking any chances they might end up in that scary place below. They went to his church and ponied up when the plate got passed. Somehow, I was pretty sure, whatever Joe found down there, it wouldn't be the pits of hell or some red guy with a tail.

Knowing the prophet as well as I did, I knew he didn't always speak the truth. So, how was anyone to know he was giving them the straight stuff when he told them about heaven and hell?

"Once we get closer to where I think the ground we see is, if there isn't an opening, I'll make one to see what is on the outside of the cave where we are digging."

"That's a fine plan. Once you think you are close to where the ground should be, make an opening, Joe."

He told us he was several hundred feet deeper than where he found the window. What we saw from the hole was unclear. It looked like there was land down below the hole. If it was there, how did it get there?

What if the people who made the pictures on the walls of the cave lived in what looked like a valley? What would be their reaction to us dropping in on them? What would be our reaction to them?

If history was a guide, they would resist us being on their land.

Would another never ending war begin if we went somewhere uninvited?

We wouldn't be safe if we went to someone else's home and tried to muscle our way in. We had never done that. I didn't think Running Horse wanted to do that now. If we were welcomed as friends, we could work together to make things better for all of us.

Down through history, that had never been the outcome when strangers came looking for a safe place to live.

Sitting around the morning fire in our lodge wasn't going to get us any closer to the answers. I didn't know how to react to what spirits we didn't know were telling Running Horse. He needed to be in contact with the spirits, but these weren't the ancestors of the Pawnee. These were some other tribe we didn't know.

Why did they want to help us?

When you see things that can't possibly be there, you wonder if you are seeing things. I wondered if what we saw out of the hole in the Window cave was what was really there, or did we see what we wanted to see?

Maybe spirits could create an illusion to entice you into their domain, and once there, there is no escaping.

Going at the current pace, we were going to know what was down there soon.

Chapter Eleven Coming Soon!
"Attraction"
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