As close to Samuel as Demon was, he also took a shine to Big Joe. Joe became accustomed to seeing a wolf at the firepit. He was as likely to toss him meat as anyone.

Whatever was done to make the leap from wolf to dog, Demon did it in short order, once he realized how to get fed. Wolves figured out that if they hung around the campsite of two-legged animals, they ate the scraps left behind. It was a short distance from there to men tossing morsels at wolves who weren't snarling growling threats once they got the idea. From these encounters man's best friend came out of the woods.

Demon was little more than a wolf cub when we crossed paths, and we rode the trails together.

The next morning, I woke up with the young wolf licking my face. Had I known Demon was a wolf the night before, he might not have lived to tell the tale, and my life would have turned out far different than it did with Demon walking beside me, no matter where we went. It would have gone quite differently, but he was hungry when I thought he was a dog and as a brother creature on the journey I had begun. Demon became as much a part of my life as Dobbin. We could have traveled on alone, ignoring our meeting, but we didn't.

I did remember going into the Cathedral cave to get some samples of the rocks inside. Demon had gone with me, and while I dug out some ore to assay, I heard Demon in the back of the cave. When I went to see where he got off to, the opening there led me down to the pond below the cathedral. The pond was as far as I got until Joe took us down to show us what was below where the pond split open.

It still didn't interest me. I was satisfied I had seen all I wanted to see. Where those caves went didn't matter to me. I liked fresh air. I had seen as much as there was to see of the Cathedral cave. I noticed little or nothing about it, and once I reached the pond under the cathedral, I was sure I saw all there was.

The earthquake split the pond open, and like at the waterfall cave, there was a larger cave below where the pond stood before it split open and released the water. It hadn't excited me when he told us about it, and it excited me even less when Joe showed it to us.

The idea of going down in one of those caves without the benefit of light didn't thrill me, but if Joe could walk for an hour in the dark, having only Demon to guide him, there was no telling how far the cave went.

As was usually the case, Joe was a few steps ahead of me. He always let Running Horse call the shots, but he didn't this time, because he was a few steps ahead of us. Joe was in the caves every day now, and he knew what he saw, and he imagined where the caves might be taking him. Better him than me.

Running Horse's belief, "There is another Valley," was interesting and a little scary.

What if there was another valley below us? What it there wasn't? What if the spirits were no friend of ours?

What were we doing digging in the ground anyway? I remember hearing about digging to China. I remember that sounded silly. How could you dig a hole in the ground and think you could come out at China?

Who thought up ideas like that?

I didn't know where a hole in the ground might lead us, but it wasn't China.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

By the time the 1870s were coming to a close, the Indian problem was well on its way to being solved. Once Custer was killed, the cavalry was told to end the Indian problem and end it once and for all.

Chief Red Cloud, Chief Gall, and then, Chief Crazy Horse all went in by the year after Custer's death. About the time I returned to Running Horse, Chief Crazy Horse had been murdered. While his people were horrified that their great chief was dead, there was little they could do about it. Crazy Horse took them in, and they gave up their weapons. They had no way to fight back. What was done couldn't be undone.

Running Horse's clan ran for their lives, and somehow, we were still alive. Because I knew where a valley was that couldn't be easily found, I helped Running Horse's clan to escape death. After a couple of brushes with being run down by the cavalry, we were still alive. I doubted the cavalry had any idea where we were. They had been looking at the cliffs when an earthquake shook them off our trail.

Would they return to do what they had been doing when that earthquake hit, I couldn't say. They came to that section of trail twice, and both times Mother Nature stopped them. Was it some kind of fluke or was there more going on than meets the eye. I really couldn't say.

Running Horse seemed to be in touch with the spirit world after a long silence, and after the earthquake split open the ground and the cliffs at the western end of Paradise Valley. In that crack in the earth, there was a cave, and in that cave was a window. In that window was what appeared to be open sky and a wispy cloud.

It wasn't long before Joe was back. I could wait a little longer to hear what he had to say. John had started to talk about returning to his horse ranch, but he told me he wasn't ready to leave yet. He felt as though something was about to happen, and it would happen inside the caves where the warriors dug each day.

John didn't mind going into the caves with Joe, and he didn't mind talking about what Joe showed him, and there was something to see all along the walls of the Window cave, and as the cave went deeper, he was certain that they were close to whatever was down there, and he wanted to know what it was.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"Chief, you said to come and tell you once we reached whatever is down there. We is there."

I hadn't had my coffee yet, but even after I did, Joe stayed put, and his message hadn't changed.

"What's down there?"

"Don't plan to go down until you comes and tells me that's what you want me to do. What I see looks like a valley. What I see looks like solid ground. What I see is lighted from a source I ain't seen yet, but the cliff is high and if the light comes from above us, I don't sees it. If you get down on the ground, you'll sees it."

"You're on the ground?" Running Horse wanted to know.

"Twenty or twenty-five feet above what looks like solid ground. I could keep digging to get that extra distance, but there is a cave in to deal with, and it might takes a week to clear if out, and then it still might not get you on the ground. Figured you wouldn't want to wait if we can lower you on a rope. I need you to tell me what you want me to do. If you want me to go down, that's what I'll do, but it's your valley. It's your cave. You need to decide, Chief."

We went into the Window cave a bit after first light. Joe had torches all along the route down. I don't know how long it took for us to get to the newest opening in the Window cave. My mind was too full of worry to keep track, but we stood looking out of an opening they made in the wall of the cave.

There was what looked like a valley out of the opening. There was a rope coiled up at our feet. It wasn't connected to anything, but Joe put it around his upper body before handing Running Horse the end with a loop in it, and Running Horse started down. He didn't say I should follow, but once he released the rope, Joe pulled it back up and handed me the end with the loop.

He looked at me like he didn't know if I wanted to go down or not, but I took the loop and put it around me. I was reluctant to keep going into caves. I wanted to see what was down there.

"Feels like solid earth to me," I said, once I got out of the loop in the rope.

"Yes, we'll walk a bit. I'll have Joe put some water and food on the ground and tomorrow we'll go exploring. Let's walk. Not far. Just a quick look. Get some idea of where we are."

"Looks like a valley," I said, not believing it when I said it.

"There's another valley," Running Horse said the same way he said it a few days before.

Certainly, looked like another valley. We were in it, or on it, or something.

We dug deep into the earth, and we came up in a valley that didn't look a lot different from Paradise Valley, except it was bigger. It was so big, we could see no end to it when we looked out of the hole in the cave a few dozen feet above the ground. I wondered what it looked like from the window high up in the Window cave. Now that we knew what was here, we knew what to look for out of the window. I wanted that view.

I didn't know where we were, or what might be down here, but I expected we were going to find out. I didn't believe it was either heaven or hell. I figured we were somewhere in between.

It was a restless night. We each got out our food and water skins and prepared them to go with us in the morning. We didn't make love that night. I suspect Running Horse was as apprehensive as I was. He knew we knew nothing about what might be down there, but we were going to find out. If we were lucky, once we found out, we could come back home. To me that was more important than going exploring.

I did remember what Running Horse said the week before.

"There is another valley."

There was and I wish I knew what it meant.

I remember the other message he brought back from the spirit world.

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

Did the new spirits want us to find safety? Why did spirits, not from our ancestors, care if we were safe or not?

I suppose we were about to find out.

Once again Joe lowered us beside the bundle with dried meat and plenty of water to fill our skins with. If we intended to take a good look around, we would need food and water. Joe stood in the cave beside Riggs and Big Bear. They were the only ones that knew what was going on hundreds of feet below Paradise Valley.

If something happened, and we didn't return, Big Bear would be left to explain it to Running Horse's clan. I was hoping nothing would happen to us, and we would explain whatever it is we find.

Running Horse stood beside me as he surveyed his surroundings. It was open for a bit on the ground below the newest hole in the side of the cave. There was a forest directly ahead. There was a bit of open ground between the cliff and the forest.

We collected the dried meat and full water skins from the bundle Joe put on the ground for us. Since we had no idea what was down here, we needed to carry some provisions with us. I didn't expect us to stay too long, but we needed to know if people could live down here. The air was okay. Was there enough game and water?

Once we reached the forest, tall trees loomed over us. It looked like any forest, but the trees looked really tall. We turned to look back at the cliff. Joe waved, and we went into the forest. There was enough light to see, but we couldn't see where the light was coming from. It looked like early morning on the surface. The cliff was on the east, which meant we were walking west. On the surface the sun would rise behind us, or so I thought.

I thought of the Conquistador landing in South America. I thought of Lewis and Clark. Neither had any idea what they were going to find around the next bend, but I didn't feel fear. I felt excitement. I was with Running Horse, and whatever was ahead, we would experience it together. That made whatever we found okay.

We had bows and arrows Joe sent down in the bundle. We could protect ourselves if necessary. Maybe we could shoot something we found down here. Eat from game that was available, if there was game five hundred feet down in the earth. Maybe a ground hog.

We were in no hurry. We wanted to see what was here, and as the forest grew thicker, the less light didn't allow us to see if anything was moving around us. I did feel a breeze. It wasn't unpleasant, and we walked on.

We stopped frequently to look at the ground around us for signs of animals or footprints of other people. It didn't look much different from being in a forest on the surface.

It was a valley. I kept looking back to be sure I could still see the hole we came out of, until I could no longer find it. Then, I looked back twice before giving up on the idea of knowing for certain we could find our way back. If we got turned around, and I saw nothing to indicate this place had some defined borders to it, we could get lost and never find our way back. We were heading straight ahead away from the cliff, but even go off a few degrees in either direction, we might never find the cliff again.

"This way," Running Horse told me. "There's an opening in the trees in this direction."

I heard bird sounds. I couldn't see the birds, but the trees were tall and filled out with leaves. The cliff was a few minutes behind us, and if we encountered trouble here, we could run back in five minutes.

Once out of the forest, we walked slowly, being careful. We were out of the trees and facing grassland and a lake, a short walk from where we came out of the forest. I relaxed as things looked no different than the things on the surface. We walked toward the lake, and we stopped at a spot where we could dip our hands in the water to test it. I was getting thirsty, and if this water was poison, I was in trouble, because I started drinking before thinking it might not be good to drink.

It wasn't just good, it was great. It was fresh, cool, and tasted good to me. Running Horse drank too, and he turned to look around. There were groves of trees on both sides of the lake. It was enough to furnish shade, but not in the way. We could see the tree line of another forest off in the distance, and we walked that way.

We hadn't drank from our water skins yet, and it would be best to leave them full, in case we didn't find more water before we needed to drink. If we found more water, we would keep what he had in our skins for later.

We walked to the forest ahead of us. We weren't moving very fast, and once we entered the forest, it was darker and not as easy to see. Once again, we could see it getting light ahead of us five or ten minutes, and we came out on more pastureland. There was a mound in our path and Running Horse headed in that direction.

Running Horse climbed a mound of rocks and dirt that got him twenty feet above the level ground we were on. He turned to see what was around him. I climbed up beside him to see what he saw.

"Let's go to the north. I saw something that looked like a river to the north. We know where the lake is when we turned north, and we and leave signs that will bring us back to this lake. That way we will only be a few minutes from the cliff once we get back to this lake."

It sounded like a plan to me, and we turned right to walk away from the lake.

Looks like there might be plenty of water down here," he said, climbing back down and heading for the creek.

"Plenty of fresh water," Running Horse said, tasting the water in the creek. "We'll stop to rest here. Eat some meat before going any further. We want to drink when we can. Keep our energy up by eating regularly. No point in going too far today. Now that we see what is here, we can come back with a hunting party. We need to see if there is plenty of game. No reason why there won't be, but we need to be sure we can live down here. It looks good and hunting will offer us an even better look around."

There was some high ground next to the creek, and we sat on the grass there and ate rabbit. We had seen birds and we heard sounds you would expect to hear in the forest, and I could see something small moving around in the high grass nearby. I figured field mice or prairie dogs, but I didn't get a good look.

We were strangers. Animals weren't sure what we were. Our size would have them keeping their distance, while their curiosity would have them wanting a closer look. We had been walking for some time, and I was ready to sit for a while when we came to a lake fed by a stream that came from the north. We sat down, and soon we had our moccasins off and our feet in the cool water.

We sat there and observed what came and went. Animals came to drink without giving us a second look. It wasn't much different than Paradise Valley. It was a bit cooler. If our food pouches weren't full, we might be tempted to hunt here but why ruin a good watering hole for critters who lived here? We were just visiting.

We could hunt another time. Would there be another time? Where were we? Where was the big game?

It was a pleasant spot, and a flock of birds flew too high above us to identify them. Two squirrels chased each other in among a couple of trees nearby. A very dark colored rabbit hopped out from some high grass.

He didn't seem too concerned that something might regard him as a meal.

The trees all reached into the sky. I couldn't tell much about the squirrels, but the black rabbit looked larger than rabbits should be. Maybe there weren't as many rabbit hunting predators down here.

"How big do you think that rabbit is," I asked Running Horse.

He watched him hop across in front of the mound we sat upon. He didn't hesitate. If he saw us, he didn't let on. He kept hopping and I kept watching.

"Big," Running Horse said. "And I bet he would be delicious. Two or three of those would feed the village."

We drank from the creek before moving on. It was a little cooler down here, but that made walking more pleasant. I didn't break a sweat. There were no storm clouds to make us worry about being in bad weather.

I didn't know what was on his mind, but he had something working its way around in his brain. When he was this quiet, he was making sense of something he didn't understand. We had gotten as much information from Joe as he had to give us, but what did Joe know about a valley hundreds of feet below the surface of Paradise Valley. The idea of it confused me. I ran it through my mind over and over again. It seemed impossible.

I stopped thinking about how what was here got here. The idea we were down here amazed me. We were walking in a valley that couldn't possibly be where we found it, and yet, here it was, and here we were.

I didn't talk because Running Horse didn't talk. I could see that he was busy taking it all in. He stopped more than once to look up, up, up at one of the tall trees. Once, while approaching a tree, a loud flapping stopped us dead in our tracks, and an Eagle that looked huge, soared up, up, and up into the clear blue sky.

"Eagle," Running Horse said. "Rabbits, squirrels, and Eagles."

When the Eagle circled twice, he flew off in the direction we were walking. When he passed between the sun and the valley, his shadow flickered as he flew away.

That's when I looked behind us to see the sun for the first time. It was right where it should be if we were walking west. I gave up trying to make sense of any of it. As far as we had gone, the most dangerous thing we encountered was an occasional chuck hole that I found underfoot from time to time.

I suppose seeing familiar things was a comfort of sorts. It was still a strange land, and we took our time to see all we could see, but the pastureland put me in mind of the pasture across from the cabin in the valley where the river runs. It went on and on and it was greener than green.

We stopped, ate more meat, and drank from a stream that ran along beside us for a while.

We were underground. We were in the open air with miles of open land around us. When we looked out of the window, hundreds of feet in the air, the valley looked endless. Now that we were on the ground, the valley looked huge, and it was hard to say how big it was. We had no way to measure it, but no matter how far we walked, there was many times the distance directly ahead of us. Even when we encounter a forest, it went on and on like there was no end to it, before we came to more pastureland.

I wondered how far Running Horse wanted to go.

What seemed impossible, was very possible, and we had yet to find out much information about where we were. I knew how we got here, but how did here get here? This didn't merely seem extraordinary, if seemed fantastic.

Fantastic in my mind was impossible.

Running Horse walked on, and I followed him into the unknown land ahead of us.

How far did this valley go? How far should we go? What did we do if we encountered some creature who decided to make us dinner? No one would ever know where we went, because we don't know where we are.

We reached an out cropping of rocks that went up a few hundred feet. When we climbed to the top, we could see the forest we had come through, and we saw the cliffs which should have been right behind Paradise Valley, but I somehow thought those cliffs were a long way from Paradise Valley.

I couldn't tell if the cliffs we saw behind us were the cliffs we came out of. Running Horse was more interested in what was ahead of us than what was behind us. I kept making sure behind us was still there.

"More water," he said, pointing ahead of us.

"It's a river," I said, thinking it looked like a river.

"I saw it the day Joe first showed us the window in the Window cave. How far do you think it is?"

"Two or three miles," I guessed.

"Let's see if we can find a trail. We'll go to see what we can see. Once we see the river, if there's nothing beyond there that looks interesting, we'll start back. We can bring an organized group down to go as far as we can go down here. Let's get a look at the river first. We'll decide what to do once we get there."

We found what might have been a trail, but it was more likely the way the land folded together. We had a destination now, and we walked faster than we were walking up until then. We had been gone for three or four hours, and we set an easy pace. Heading back would go faster, going back always seemed to go faster.

The river was wider than it looked from a distance. We were there in maybe a half an hour after Running Horse indicated that would be as far as we would go.

We once again took meat and drank fresh water from the river. It was fresh and cool. I saw the sun glinting off of something in the water. I stood after drinking, looking for more glittering light I thought were fish. The sound the water made was nice. The river was moving along at a slow pace, and there were probably fish in it, but we didn't try to catch any fish or take anything back with us once we left to see if we could find the cliffs. Maybe it was just a natural pathway through the forest. We followed it and it took us right through the woods to another opening.

I couldn't be sure where we were, but Running Horse seemed to know the way, and I followed.

"This way. This should take us back to the big forest we were in."

I went back to my first reaction when we peered out of the opening in the wall of the cave two or three hundred feet from the surface of whatever we were looking at. I wondered if it was some kind of reflection of Paradise Valley. It resembled a very large Paradise Valley, and now that we were on the ground, hundreds of feet below the hole in the wall of the cave, it looked like Paradise Valley expanded by many times.

There were no obstructions along the trail we took. There was high ground that only took up a small amount of room. The land was fairly flat, but it felt like we were walking up hill a ways, and then I had the feeling we went down for a while. Nothing stood out as being out of place or unusual. We set an easy pace and kept it.

The forest was expansive and went as far as we could see to the south, and the river was on the west side of the forest, and there was pasture land and more trees on the far side of the river, but it was unclear how much further this valley might run. Once we started back from the river, it appeared a bit different from what I remembered on the way there.

I don't know how long we walked, but we walked and kept walking. When we made camp, Running Horse built a fire larger than we needed to heat the dried meat we had.

"Why such a big fire?"

"They will see it from the cave opening. They'll know we are fine and a few hours out from the cliff."

Of course, Joe and whatever warriors in the cave would be looking for some sign of us. I never gave it a thought. I wouldn't have built a fire to reassure them we were okay. They would have to wait until we showed up if it was up to me. I simply didn't think the way Running Horse thought, and it was lucky I was with him.

On to Chapter Thirteen
"Valley High, Valley Low"
Back to Chapter Eleven
"Attraction"
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