I do believe my parents were embarrassed by their reaction to Running Horse and me, when we showed up at their door. My mother reached a long way across the divide that separated us. I had to admire her for being willing to tend to the savages in her front yard. I doubt that story would ever be told to her father. She'd risk a serious rebuke from the stern preacher. Savages were savages and there was no way one could make it to the old man's heaven. I had no interest in going there if they'd let him in.

Paw was easier to watch and figure out what was on his mind. He reunited with the Pawnee. He saw his family for the first time since he was a young warrior.

When we returned for Medicine Woman, my father didn't stay in the house. He stayed in the front of the house where we made camp. When we began going back to bring our ancestors to the new village, my father went across the mountain with us.

My father was an interesting man. We camped beside where the Pawnee honored dead lay. My father walked the ground. He stopped at Dark Horse's bier and stood for a long while talking to his Paw. He stood next to Lone Wolf. He didn't have as much to say to his uncle. When he stopped at Running Horse's father's bier, my father leaned hard on it. This was my father's brother. He'd seen him die, and he was seeing it all over again.

He spent the most time talking to his brother. That was a conversation I would like to have heard.

As I had two separate and distinct lives, my father did too. His were not as separate, or as distinctive as mine, but he lived in a Pawnee world before he lived in the white world. My father and I had a lot in common.

They'd brought back the three warriors who rode with Paw that day. Paw didn't know that his mother and father, along with other survivors of the massacre, escaped into the forest. He was busy fighting to stay alive. His thirst for revenge sent him on an odd unexpectedly complicated journey. He was lucky to be alive.

When my father woke in the wagon of a French trapper, he was weak and sick from his wound. He didn't remember having much to say, although Phillip talked to him in a mixture of French English, and Lakota Sioux. Once Phillip cut off his arm, he rode east for a while from what was then the Dakota territory.

Paw said goodbye to Phillip and began a trek back to his village, but his now missing arm was infected and he fell along the road. When Maw's father stopped for him, Paw's second life began.

A preacher happened by and took Paw home to be nursed by his daughter. I was the proof of what happened as a result, much to the horror of the preacher. How could his daughter love a savage?

Paw told us the entire story the night we camped next to our ancestors, and the next day we began taking them to the new village. This transfer included Running Horse, Lit'l Fox, and me. We all knew we'd stop for the night at my Parent's home. The point was to keep this contact with my family open.

We made three trips that year to bring our ancestors to the new village. Paw asked he be allowed to come with us. It gave us a reason to stop at the cabin in the valley where the river runs at least once a year. It didn't take long for all the ancestors I knew to be at the new village. It was on a later trip that Paw asked to be allowed to find the village where the massacre took place.

Paw hadn't lived at the village Lit'l Fox took me to after I broke my leg. I'd heard stories about the previous village, but I had no idea where it was and neither did Running Horse or Lit'l Fox. Paw thought he could find it, but it became plain to see that he couldn't be sure. My father could track anything, but finding his way back to the village where he grew into a man wasn't easy.

My father was the only warrior left from his generation. He told the stories he'd heard from his elders. Some we knew and some were new to us. What we didn't know and couldn't guess was where my father's village stood.

He couldn't take us right to it. After a few wrong turns, we rode into an open space, and I felt the openness closing in on me. The air grew heavy and I immediately knew something very bad happened here. The lodges were on both sides in clusters. Each was burned almost to the ground. Trees and brush had grown where walls once stood. Trees grew in and around the lodges. No one lived here in my lifetime.

This was where my father's wife died. It was the place where four warriors rode out to seek revenge on the men who did this. None of the four returned, not until today. My father was the only one alive who say what happened here. He had never spoken of it to me. Maw told me the story of how she met Paw. Since I knew so little about my Paw's Pawnee past, I ate up every word.

Seeing this place gave my mother's words a new life.

We stayed on our horses rather than tread on holy ground. We guided them to a field with green grass and a pond where they could drink. It also gave us a view of what was once Paw's village. I watched him dismount and stand in the midst of the place where he lived his first life. I watched him move from lodge to lodge, as if he thought one of the people who once lived here might step outside to chat.

There were spots where he knelt, felt the earth, remembering what were now shadows in his mind. As my father spoke to his mother, father, and Dark Horse, he spoke to the people who once lived here. As we watched him return to the village as he once knew it. This was a journey for one. We did not belong here.

This place belonged to the spirit world now, and my father entered it as a witness who once occupied this place before it perished. Spirits stepped aside to allow him to enter. The three of us, no matter how closely related to Paw, had no right to be here. We did not belong here, and so we could only watch my father as he spoke to the dead. I wondered if he spoke to Proud Eagle, who would be the one who needed to be forgiven.

Whatever it was my father came here to find, I hope he found it. I hope he found peace. Proud Eagle no longer existed as Gregory no longer lived inside of me. He'd been pushed to one side by Tall Willow, and as Tall Willow would need to step aside to allow my new life to begin.

How many lives did one man get? How many lives did I have left to live?

This was the only life I chose to have. This was the wonderful life I wanted, but like Paw, I had no choice in the events that would unfold in front of me. These were the things that haunted me as I stood in a place that no longer existed because some renegades stumbled on to a peaceful village they could destroy.

Every life in this village was forever changed by a force from outside it. No one saw it coming.

I didn't know who the renegades were. I didn't know the color of their skin or the purpose of their raid. I knew men were as cold and uncaring as men get. Men who thought they could take life from other living, breathing human beings were evil. Life and living shouldn't be about the worse thing men could do to each other. Life should be about loving, caring, while giving what we could.

Life at the new village was a peaceful affair, especially when Tall Elk was gone. We lived in peace with the beauty and the bounty around us. It was a picturesque setting with good people living good lives. Only when Meeks rode his cavalry platoon into the village to remind us that eventually he'd come to make this village look like the village where my father now sought absolution.

When I finished my third life, would I find myself looking back at my life, seeking forgiveness for my sins. That day, as I watched my father, I had no sins to speak of. I'd been there when Lit'l Fox took the lives of those buffalo hunters, and I still rode the horse that belonged to one of the dead men. Shiftless didn't mind.

My sins were all in my future the day my father wrestled with his past. His life came full circle. He left this spot years before I was born, and he'd come back. He needed to be here. He needed to see this place again.

We'd entered a place that belonged to the dead, and they watched us. My father stood at the final lodge for a long time. I could hear him speaking. To whom he talked to, I can't say. These were conversations I didn't wish to hear. Only Paw knew what was here the day of the massacre. Only he remembered the living that was done here.

As the sun sunk behind the treetops to the west, my father walked back to us.

"We go," Paw said.

One at a time we followed him out of a place that was part of the spirit world.

*****

When Claude learned that I both spoke and understood English, it opened a new door of communication. After that, he began bringing books with him. They were books he read, finished, and he passed on to me. I hadn't been white for a long time. I enjoy reading.

I read.

Running Horse held my hand. He didn't get reading.

"You quiet. You think of things have no meaning."

"Can't help it," I said. "You don't think about how you got the way you are? I was white the first half of my life. I'm Pawnee since. What does that mean?"

"No sense. It is. Why you need know that? Lone Wolf say, you white, good. You Pawnee, better."

"Which means?"

Running Horse shook his head. He leaned to put his lips on mine.

"Mean Running Horse love Tall Willow. Time make love. Put down book."

I liked how he thought.

Claude told us of Sand Creek and of the treaty at Fort Laramie that gave the Lakota and Ogalala possession of the Black Hills. He heard little else about the treaty. It did say the usual.

"For as long as the grass grows and the river flows."

I didn't know how long that was. I was sure I'd find out.

Would the big chief in Washington finally keep his word?

Rifles and bullets continued to come with Claude. He brought a huge sack of coffee the last few times he came. By this time, we'd invited Claude to stay in our lodge if he wanted to. He did. After that, Claude came to our lodge, no longer keeping his distance. He was a good friend.

Claude was European, just like many of the people who kept coming and coming. He loved the beauty and abundance of this continent. He treated it with respect, taking just enough to allow him to have a good life, and when it came to helping friends, he was without equal since I came to live with the Pawnee.

In this time, as the country was filling, Claude could be shot for taking weapons to the savages. He did not bring us weapons to defy the people who ran the country. He brought us the repeating rifles so we had a chance against a larger more violent enemy.

Claude knew that we couldn't win a battle with the cavalry, but he wanted his friends to have chance. He wanted us to be able to put up a fight. We wouldn't surrender, and that meant death.

Time no longer had a meaning. We stop to rest when we tired. Eat when hungry. Go to sleep after dark. There was no hurry. You do what you do until you are done. At the cabin in the valley where the river runs, you needed to know what time it was to know what you should be doing. Now that there was no time, I forgot there was time.

I knew the seasons. I knew it rained in the rainy season. It was very dry when it was very hot. If you got caught out in the rain, you dried off after the rain stopped.

Life was simple in a Pawnee village.

The new village had come alive with green things growing and wild animals still walked in between the lodges. It was new and they hadn't learned to fear us. At time a fox or coyote sat watching the children at play. They weren't likely to want to take on a critter larger than they were, but that was the way it was in nature. The wild animals were here before we came, and they were still here.

When a child decided to chase a wild creature, the animal took off. They knew it wasn't a serious threat. No one likes being chased, and the wild thing might keep his distance for a while.

There weren't many children. The village was nothing like town. People in town had one child after another, but one or two children were fine for the couples who lived in the village. Each child had to be fed and raised. You could deal with one or two children with relative ease, but any more meant more and more work.

When Lit'l Fox took me home to Medicine Woman, there were 48 Pawnee in the village. We moved fifty-one people, counting Medicine Woman who didn't get to the new village until long after the move. There were fifty-two Pawnee in the new village, and I was one.

Tall Elk was one, even after he was gone.

"Tall Elk gone," I said. "No one see."

"Be back," Running Horse said.

As a warrior, I had not seen war. None of the warriors in our village had fought in a battle. We'd been practicing the skills we'd need if we ever did get into a fight. We each knew what to do. With Major Meeks in the vicinity, the likelihood we'd need to fight increased.

Before Claude began to act as our go between with the civilized world, we'd have been slaughtered in a fight. It would have been like Sand Creek. Attack us now and you'd pay a high price. None of us like the repeating rifles, but if you fired it enough, you'd hit something and make hell of a racket.

The late fall hunt was later than usual. Running Horse and I went on our early hunt, once the snow appeared on the mountain. We had to ride a ways to get a view of the mountain. We knew when it was time to hunt. We'd brought back over two hundred pounds of venison. We got to feast early and before the regular hunt, we feasted again in expectation of the biggest hunt of the year.

Five of us went. Besides Running Horse, Lit'l Fox and me, we took Young Antelope, a deadly warrior with a bow, and Big Bear, who was just old enough to start life as one of our warriors. We took horses, because of the distance we had to travel to reach the mountains that were south of Nebraska territory and southwest of the Dakota territory, east of what was now the Colorado Territory.

Each time we went to the mountain, we built a new camp. We wanted more than one location in case there was no game where we hunted, we moved to another camp. It didn't hurt that our camps went where we got the biggest bucks. This didn't mean there would always be bucks on hand when we hunted, but if we got a buck there once, there was a good chance we'd get more.

As was our style, no matter who we hunted with, Running Horse and I went off together after gathering our bow and arrows, along with an ample supply of meat that we always had after a day on the mountain, and we made our way to a spot that looked promising. We sat close and we waited.

One afternoon, as our brother the buck walked unsuspecting into the clearing we'd been seated next to all day. I did not stand and shoot my arrow when Running Horse stood and fired his.

We often sat so close that one of us could not stand without the other needing to move. I'd just returned from peeing a few dozen feet away, and so we weren't touching when the buck appeared.

There was one buck. We usually fired our arrows so close to the same time, it was difficult to tell which of us let go first, if I didn't wait to feel Running Horse let go of his arrow before I let mine go.

I sat with a perfect view of my love and the buck. I watched Running Horse stand, aim, and fire in the same instant. He stood straight and tall and his arrow ran true, and the buck staggered, took a step, wobbled and fell. Watching him do that was a marvel. Our people had been doing this for as long as there was time. This was how we lived. This was how we fed our village.

He didn't rush to the buck to make sure he did not suffer more than his sacrifice required of him. He stood looking at me. I could see the question on his face.

"You not shoot?"

"I watch Running Horse."

"No watch buck?"

"No watch buck. Do you know how beautiful you are? I think you are the most beautiful Indian in all the world, Running Horse. Perhaps you are the most beautiful Indian who ever lived."

"Love Running Horse?"

I laughed.

"Do I love you?"

I stood to kiss him.

He was tickled by this.

"Do I love you?"

I kissed him again to be sure.

"I think I might."

We held hands while walking to the buck.

"I beautiful? I Pawnee."

"Big Bear Pawnee. He no beautiful," I teased.

"His beauty here," he said, touching his chest near his heart.

Running Horse had a way of going right to the heart of things. There was a simplicity in the way he thought. His biggest complaint with me, 'Use many words. Say little."

He wanted to learn English, because it's the language I was comfortable with, and my Pawnee, not good. We didn't have a problem communicating. We talked in a language that had little to do with speech.

We knew each other as well as we knew ourselves. That happens after spending years together.

That day we talked with our lips without saying a single word.

I got my buck later in the day. We'd already gotten the first buck ready to carry to camp. When we got to camp, the other three hunters were there. They went with us to help carry the meat back.

Young Antelope got a buck. Lit'l Fox got an antelope. Big Bear didn't make a kill. He was still on the awkward side. His body grew too big, too fast. It's why Running Horse picked him to go with us this time. Hunting for your supper inspired a hunter a better sense of equilibrium.

When I first hunted with a bow, I rarely hit anything. Now, I rarely wasted an arrow. Big Bear was big. He was bigger than anyone else, but he was still mostly a boy, anxious to be of value to his people and especially to his chief.

The mountain was further north than at the old village. Our hunting trips had been more successful in this new section of the same mountains where we hunted further north and east. Because no one had hunted there before, the game was plentiful and we didn't need as many hunters, even if we were gone the same length of time.

The feasting didn't change, although our caution had us wasting no time on the mountain. If we could get all the meat we needed in two or three days, we were happy when we were heading home. On some trips, the first sled went back one day, and the second sled and the rest of the hunters started back the next day.

The meat might not freeze completely, but it was still plenty cold on the bottom. The meat would stay fresh on the trip home.

Our village had everything we needed, and things we'd rather do without. The officer sat with the sun behind his head as his cavalry stretched out behind him.

"Need water," an Indian with the sun behind his head said.

"Who are you?" I asked in plain English.

"Me Long Night, Pawnee?"

I didn't dare ask why he was with the cavalry, but I didn't like it.

"Our chief is on the far side of the lake. You want water?"

"Water horse," the Pawnee brave said.

"He's always let water horses. Go ahead."

"You speak English well the officer who wasn't Major Meeks said. "I'm Lt. George. Extend our appreciation to your chief."

He turned his horse to go to the spot where the horses drank. I hadn't seen his face. I might know his voice if I heard it again.

I did not like the cavalry riding into our village. One day they'd ride in, and when they rode out, we'd all be dead. It wasn't a reality I liked. It wasn't a reality I could do anything about.

"I don't like them riding into our village," I complained.

"Say no. Drink anyway. Keep peace until no keep peace."

"I know," I said, knowing.

Running Horse was right not to anger the cavalry, but each time they came, they knew more about us when they left. Knowing white men the way I did, letting them see inside the village was dangerous.

As long as the peace was kept, there was no problem.

Tall Elk had not returned from wherever he got off to. Even those who knew him best did not know where he went.

This troubled Running Horse. I was happy the loud Indian was gone. I didn't like Tall Elk. He was an arrogant abrupt Indian. He seemed to think he knew more than anyone else. He knew little.

"Why would a Pawnee warrior ride with the cavalry?"

"Why sun shine? Why rain fall?"

It was a stupid question. It wasn't the only question I had. It was what I didn't know that bothered me.

"Why didn't you come to the lodge. You didn't see them?"

"No, fifty horse. Fifty rider, Running Horse no see. Me watch. Try see what cavalry see. Not see much. Pawnee have soldier gun. Not see before. They expect war soon?"

"They at war with us since the first white man came," I said.

"Take little bite. Take little bit. Soon take all."

"Do you see what is coming, Running Horse?" I asked, knowing what his answer was going to be.

"Chief see many things."

"You aren't going to tell me what you see?"

"No tell what no know."

He wouldn't say what he saw, but he saw something coming. If he wouldn't tell me, it had to be bad.

Things moved along slowly. The village was at peace. We were left to do what we did each day. One season came and went, the moons rose each night. One full moon followed the next. The pace did not change.

When change came, it was like a whirlwind turning us all upside down. It came in pieces, but when the pieces were put together, it left what I knew in tatters. My second life was swiftly coming to a conclusion.

Running Horse did not share my fear of the cavalry. Maybe fear is the wrong word. I feared their capability and their history of treachery. When it came to dealing with non-whites, there could be no limitations if they intended to do what they came to do. When you were as powerful as the cavalry, there were no limitations.

When others had a line they wouldn't cross, Europeans had no lines. They decided what they wanted and took it. Who could stop them? It was best to keep out of their way. They were well armed and prone to violence if you got in their way.

Civilized people didn't see such ruthless behavior coming from other civilized people. This shortsightedness was the death of many civilizations discovered by Europeans who came with a smile and guns in their hand.

Had it been the indigenous peoples of the world going to discover other civilizations, it might be a far more peaceful world. Indigenous people did not carry war machines with them when they went visiting. Europeans didn't go anywhere without them. Indians may wage war on each other, but not the kind of war that destroyed everyone and everything.

We were at peace, until a soldier had seen something he wanted. One soldier couldn't start a war, but his army could. A single soldier represented no threat. His army could and would destroy anything in its path.


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"Brother's Love"

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