The excitement over our return figured little into the celebration of our brother the buffalo. We were but the hunters returning from the hunt, after doing what hunters do. It was a remarkable sight, all the fires burning, and the smell of bison meat filling Paradise Valley from the cliffs to the open end and back again.

The dancing, singing, and excitement collided with people from one firepit, joining people at another, to see what they could see, and eat from dishes being passed around. We were a small clan, and there wasn't that much to celebrate since the cavalry came to kill us the year before.

Running Horse thought he should say something, but once we reached the surface, he didn't need to say a thing. The bison spoke for him. No one would have heard him with the commotion passing from lodge to lodge as Pawnee had a fine time of it. There was nothing to say beyond, "Did you enjoy the buffalo?"

The questions would be asked tomorrow, once the taste of the buffalo meat wasn't the first thought in everyone's mind. The questions would be asked, and Running Horse already knew the answer. We didn't need to say anything, and he didn't need to do anything. His people were way out ahead of him.

When the cavalry chased us into Paradise Valley, we escaped with little more than a scare. They had come close, but the Great Spirit was with us, and we made our way to Paradise Valley. It was a fine place to live, and few people would enjoy it, as long as they were trapped there, and we didn't dare go out. We managed.

We made Paradise Valley our home, and while we knew the cavalry might stumble on to us, we went about living without thoughts of how long we had, or how we might end up. If you are in the process of living, it takes a lot of time and energy to do it in a fashion that pleased everyone. Little did we know that right under our feet was the answer to the question, "Where do we go from here?"

We were trapped, or maybe we weren't trapped, and Big Joe decided to see what he could see, and it pleased us no end that what he saw was the answer to the question that had been asked many times, once we made Paradise Valley the home of Running Horse's clan.

Coming out of the Window cave into Paradise Valley, we found a different world than the one we left. We were overjoyed to reach Paradise Valley, after being forced to run. It was a quiet relief to find ourselves alive. We went about creating a village within a peaceful valley. After running, it was a relief to be working on our future.

It takes time to create a home in an unfamiliar place, no matter how beautiful. When the hounds chase you into a place, you don't forget the hounds are out there. We didn't forget, but we had work to do making the valley into a suitable home for Running Horse's clan, but among the lodges lie a secret no one knew.

Big Joe turned our attention toward the caves in Paradise Valley. Joe wasn't happy unless he was prodding, poking, examining a place. Joe wanted to know where he was and what was around him, and the caves led him down in the earth, under Paradise Valley. Caves were caves to me. We used them for storage and to keep food from spoiling. Other than that, they were holes in the ground.

Joe saw something I didn't see, felt something I didn't feel, and it drove him to look for the future below our feet. We both shared one thing in common. We both grew up a captive of where and when we were born. Both of us longed to be elsewhere. For me there was no elsewhere, only my parents and the family farm. Joe didn't even have that. Joe was owned and decided nothing for himself. He knew not to reach for anything beyond his surroundings, if he knew what was good for him and if he intended to live a long life.

One day, the world opened up to him. It was a small opening that changed little, but Joe being Joe, he grabbed hold and held on while being told what to do and when to do it. He was no longer a slave, not in the slavery sense, but he had to do what he was told or suffer the consequences.

One day he gathered his courage and went on his own for the first time. Lucky for me he did. It's how Joe joined the surveyors working out of Paradise Valley, after he saved Sammy Boy and me from highwaymen. That is when we crossed paths, and Joe used every opportunity to expand the considerable knowledge he gathered along the way.

He had a need to know things. I had a need to leave things alone.

Now, Joe went down in the ground every day. He didn't know what he was going to find. What he did know, he was going to find something. He was going to find out what was down there, if there was a down there.

I didn't believe there was anything down there, but I learned something too. If you dig hard enough and far enough, you sometimes find yourself, and that's a discovery some people never make. There was a design for living, according to people who had lived, but each lifetime is unique from all other lifetimes. You might obey and follow the rules, when need be, but there were times when you could burst free of all restraints. That's when people found themselves. That's when people left the circumstances they were born into.

That's when they spread their wings to fly.

I never intended to fly far when I went to get me a griz, but taking flight from Maw's and Paw's world changed everything. I had a plan, but believe me when I say, when you're fourteen and think a Hawkin rifle is the key to manhood, you're going to go through some changes. I can tell you that much.

Joe was a big bird who flew above the things that held him to the circumstances of his birth for too long. People told him what to do all his life, and now he did what he wanted to do. He didn't make a lot of waves, and he kept his curiosity to himself until the time came to show what he found.

When he came to speak to Running Horse, I cringed because I knew a world that was too big for me to understand was about to grow some more. I thought Running Horse was apprehensive when Joe came with his latest find. Running Horse, being chief, needed to see when Joe claimed to find something new.

First, it was the caves, and then the wall art, and then far more advanced wall art. Each cave went further than any cave should go, and Joe kept going forward a step at a time. He found windows in the Window cave, tunnels in the Cathedral cave, and he took us down in the ground more often than I wanted to be there.

Joe knew there would be something down there. He just didn't know what. Why didn't he just leave things be?

Everyone knew there were caves. A handful of warriors, Joe, Riggs, and the men in the hunting party all knew there was an Underworld. Running Horse guided us into Underworld. When we came out of the cave, the evening was lit by fires all over the area where the lodges had been built. This was more than a feast, as our people celebrated the buffalo in a way that spoke of how well the buffalo was regarded by Running Horse's clan.

Everyone was in close proximity to a fire, and more importantly, to the roasting buffalo meat. Paradise Valley had come alive in a way it hadn't been before. Singing, dancing and celebrating ran late into the night.

I fell asleep with my third hunk of buffalo meat in my hand. I slept the sleep of angels.

For Running Horse's clan, it was about the buffalo, the feasting and the celebration. They did not see the holes in the ground we went in to. They had no knowledge of Underworld. They knew we went somewhere. They didn't know where, and we came back with buffalo meat, and that's all they needed to know that first night.

No one knew what it was like feasting on buffalo for days on end, or celebrating the hunt of our brother, the buffalo. People rushed to thank the hunters for the feast that no one expected would come back with us. How the bison meat got to each lodge was a mystery, but Running Horse wouldn't have done it that way. His reverence for the buffalo would have had him moving far more cautiously in exposing his people to hundreds of pounds of buffalo meat, after having none for so long, and having thought they would never eat buffalo meat again.

It was the amount of the meat that had the people at each lodge taking a portion they could eat. Running Horse would have put tighter control on the meat, and he would have introduced it at a feast at the firepit, but we had been away. We came back far faster than we would have liked. We needed sleep, and that's when things got out of control, but in a good way … in a way that had the people singing and dancing and eating.

This wasn't the plan, but the excitement and the fact his people were dancing and singing again made the distribution of buffalo meat a better plan. It came as a complete surprise, and the reaction to it surprised us, once we made our way to the surface. This was a happy village. These were happy people. It had been a long time since Running Horse saw his people in the mood to dance. The Pawnee knew how to sing and dance.

We weren't exactly well rested, but the joy in the air couldn't help but lift us higher than we should have been. We had done two days' work in the last day, and seeing how it was received made it all worthwhile. There was no plan once we got to the surface. There were smiles and laughter. The only plan was to sing and dance while we could. It was a good thing, and a surge of energy allowed us to take it all in for a while anyway.

We were treated like returning heroes, once we appeared, halfway through the feasting. People stopped eating to thank us as we passed. When we got to the main firepit, we found Joe, Riggs, and the warriors from the cave that had carried the meat to the surface. They were all singing and eating buffalo.

"Chief," Joe said. "The word spread about the meat. It gots a little out of hand. Never seen no happier folks."

"Joe, this celebration is for you. Had you not kept digging, there would be no buffalo meat, no celebration," I told him.

It was true, even if only a few of us knew it. I didn't like it. I still needed to make up my mind about Underworld, but what I saw when returning to the surface made me forget all my doubts about who and what we were dealing with. Joe dug into the ground and he found Underworld. I wasn't sure about what he found.

It didn't mean I wasn't eating all the buffalo meat I could hold, but I ate with some trepidation about where we had been and just what we had found. I wasn't convinced this was as good as it seemed.

I hadn't seen any happier folks, and as the dancing and singing went on into the night, Running Horse and his hunters retreated into lodges that were out of the way of a celebration that went on and on. Running Horse planned to speak to his clan, but not tonight. He would do nothing to interrupt the euphoria. We all could go to sleep feeling good about what we did.

We weren't sure how to bring up the buffalo we found below, but it could wait. Actually, it was good we didn't need to explain it. The buffalo meat told the tale. The people were happy. We went to sleep smiling.

For the first time since we left to go to hunt in the valley below, we slept in each other's arms. There was noise about in the valley, but it was too little to keep us from our sleep. No noise would wake us tonight.

A conversation about the valley below could wait. Everything that needed saying that night had been said.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"There is another valley," Running Horse began his speech. "You tasted a little bit of what we found in the valley two hours beyond this valley. We went a bit more than two days on foot to find a bison herd. The bison you've been eating for two days is the evidence of what was found in the valley below. You can thank our two best hunters for bringing down the buffalo we now eat. As usual, their eye was true and their aim good. We can give thanks to Joe for refusing to stop exploring the caves. He found the valley below."

A war cry went up from the hunters and the warriors.

Joe blushed. Being singled out wasn't his thing.

Running Horse sat down. He left it hanging there, which surprised me, but what did we really know? There were buffalo down below. What else is down there?

I was expecting more but Running Horse was wise enough not to make promises he couldn't keep. We would be going back, but not right away. The next time we would find out more about what was in Underworld.

I once had the misfortune to be listening to a politician in St Louis as I went about my business. The man droned on about what a fine representative they would be electing. His toothy grin and smooth as velvet delivery told me he was too smooth in delivering news of what he would do for the people.

I was not educated in politics, because I was a wagon master and a surveyor. I worked for a living, and Politicians didn't show me much, but I recognized a snake oil salesman when I heard one. This man would feather his own long before he gave thought to the people who elected him. Politicians knew where the money was, and most of them planned on getting as much as they could for themselves and their friends. The people could wait to get theirs, if they got any at all.

Running Horse knew when to stop talking. If he said it, his clan believed it. He hadn't said much, because we didn't know much. We walked out into Underworld for a few hours and came back, the first time we were on the ground. The second time on the ground, I think the first thing Running Horse had it in mind to do was see what caused the dust we saw boiling up in the air from the window in the Window cave.

We were going to explore. We would hunt to see if Underworld could support seventy-five Pawnee and a wolf. We didn't explore. We went out the same way we went out the first time, and when we found the buffalo, well, that was all Running Horse needed to do on the second trip. We came right back to share the news of the buffalo. That turned out to be a good plan, even if it wasn't Running Horse's plan.

I think Running Horse had a prepared speech, like that politician I heard, but the buffalo meat had given his clan all the news they needed, once we came back from Underworld. The table was delighted with us.

"There are buffalo down below. There is another valley."

There it was. What else was there to say? What else did we know?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

We were together in our lodge the next evening, and we were better rested, and able to give each other what for, and after we did it, we repeated it, so we didn't forget how it was done. Each time we were together in the buffalo robe, we discovered something new. This was new because all the tension left Running Horse after our trip into Underworld. There was no misstep. We saw no warning signs. Nothing to worry about.

Running Horse was always the most beautiful Indian I ever knew. It hadn't changed since I was fourteen. I came and went from his life, and when I returned, we picked up where we left off.

I no longer worried about bringing death down on Running Horse's clan. They were marked for death without me having anything to do with it, and when I settled back in with Running Horse, that's where I would stay. My days of hiding and pretending were over.

I was Pawnee, and these were my people. I belonged with them. I belonged with Running Horse.

"One morning I went to my grandparents for my morning meal, and there you were, Tall Willow. I knew when I saw you, we had a future. You were young, and I would go slow, but I couldn't turn away from you. I didn't go to their lodge to eat every morning. I sometimes went to fish, or I ate what was left from last evening's meal. Once I saw you living in my grandparent's lodge, I ate there every morning after that. Looking at you made me warm all over, and holding your hand gave me chills. You and I were going to have a friendship for the ages."

"Medicine Woman and Dark Horse were my grandparents. They were Lit'l Fox's grandparents. Lone Wolf knew you were there, but he hadn't told me that they were your grandparents too. Your father was my father's brother. My father would have been chief after Lone Wolf, when he died, the job of chief passed to me. None of it mattered, if you weren't part of it, Tall Willow. You were going to be part of it even if you didn't know it."

"I was so white," I said. "You must have noticed that I was more white than anything else. I lived with whites who thought I was white. It would have been hard for me if they found out that I was Pawnee."

"I noticed. I think it fascinated me in a way nothing had before. I knew you were the son of my father's brother. Lone Wolf told me a few days after you arrived. We were blood relatives and I was drawn to you like the clouds are drawn across the sky. I was hooked before I knew we were cousins. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered but us being together."

"It didn't matter you would be chief?"

"No. That was already built into my life. No, my entire life was fashioned around my feelings for you."

"Did everyone know that I was son of Proud Eagle?" I asked, not knowing when who knew what.

"It wasn't known all at once, but a little at a time the news spread that you were the son of Proud Eagle," he told me.

"I made a point of always being where you would be going. I wanted to help make you Pawnee, but you were more Pawnee than white. Once your leg healed, we went about doing what future Pawnee warriors would do. We learned to hunt and to fire our bows. One day soon, we would protect the village and do the hunting. By that time, you were as good as anyone with the bow."

"Except for you, Running Horse. You were always the best shot. I never thought I was."

"That's true. Hearing you say it makes it better. The other boys knew how good you were."

The kiss lingered and we were in each other's arms again. He was the most beautiful Indian I had ever seen, and that hadn't changed over the years. He got more beautiful and he still looked twenty-five, even when he passed his fortieth summer. Years had no impact on Running Horse.

I always looked up to him. There was one dust up that nearly ended us. It was a misunderstanding that came from my upbringing in the white world that tried to keep people from having feelings. Feelings were dangerous, and the best feelings could lead you into temptation.

What was wrong with temptation?

I was tempted to have my way with Running Horse, and when I did, it was glorious. It had to be the most glorious feeling of all. I was tempted to do that a lot. Luckily, Running Horse didn't mind.

One day Running Horse reached out to touch my pisser. I recoiled like I didn't go for that, and he drew back, feeling rejected. It hurt him. Pawnee did not feel as Europeans felt about touching. If you were of two spirits, which meant you touched boys, because you liked them, it was a gift that made you even more special.

That wasn't what I learned being around white boys in Mrs. Taylor's class. The boys were more likely to clinch a fist than extend a hand. Boys could touch each other if it was during a fight. There was a lot of fighting among the white boys in Mrs. Taylor's class. The Hortons feuded with the Fountains and there were five in all. The Henrys feuded with the Kents. This history came out of a time long before any of those boys were born, and some feuds went back before their fathers were born. One man offended another man, and a feud was born.

I wasn't close to any of the white boys, because half of them were always settling one score or another. There was a secret those boys kept that had little to do with feuding with other boys. Noah was of two spirits before Lit'l Fox explained two spirits to me. While the boys ignored Noah and left him to play with the girls who loved him, Noah went off with other boys after school.

Noah swallowed their pissers and sent them into ecstasy. I knew because I kept an eye on what the white boys were up to, and half the boys went with Noah at one time or another, and some did it regular, because girls didn't think much of crude smelly boys, except for Noah, who always smelled like a bar of soap.

Noah didn't mention the meetings in the woods after school, and one time I watched him with Tommy Tucker and his best friend Carl Hemming. They both stood with their pissers out and Noah gave them what for.

No one wanted to be seen with Noah, because he was more like a girl than a boy. The boys were too tough to let anyone see them doing what they were doing with another boy. If asked about Noah, no one really knew him, but most of them went off with him from time to time.

No one got in a fight with Noah. It was more fun to fight a boy who fought back, but you couldn't touch a boy with an open hand, unless something called for a handshake. Like when a fight ended in a draw. The boys in Mrs. Taylor's class weren't much different than the men I came across back then.

Boys were raised being taught to be tough. No smiling or laughing while you are around the father. Fathers are tough and in charge, and if anyone doubts it, they can fight it out. No one dares push a man too far. Because right after their fists become weapons, their Frontier model .44 follows. Some men won't be pushed. Boys see how their fathers act, and they act the same way, and their sons see how they act.

When you add a woman to the mix, boys are annoying because they are too rough. While girls have a desire to know boys, it's really hard in Mrs. Taylor's class, because there are five girls and a dozen boys, counting Noah. If a boy fought for a girl he liked, she better like him. That's all there was to it in Mrs. Taylor's class.

I never knew any of the boys in Mrs. Taylor's class. We knew each other's name, but it didn't go much deeper than that. I wasn't white. I didn't belong there. Pretending I did wasn't what I wanted to be doing. I came in off my Maw's farm three times a week if it wasn't time for planting or time for harvest.

I was a silent farm boy. I walked to school. Most boys rode their horses. They came from ranches and they tended to cows and considered themselves cowboys, before the frontier opened and cowboy took on a different meaning when it came to settling the west. Most cowboys in frontier towns never herded cows, but they were right at home in the wild west.

When I went to get me a griz, I left school in the spring. Mrs. Taylor told me she taught me all she could, and school was out. That was just before my birthday and when I turned fourteen, I got a Hawkin 50.

That rifle took me on a journey that I'm still on. It took me to Medicine Woman's lodge, and that's when a different kind of boy came to hold my hand. For me, this was a better way for boys to be. That was before I fell in love, but from the first day Running Horse came to Medicine Woman's lodge, we were on our way to a forever love.

I didn't belong there, and while some lessons I learned stuck with me, much of it didn't interest me. I was glad I could read and write, once I ended up working in the white world, but so much of it was about dates, wars, and disasters. It was bad when bad things happened to people, but I couldn't do anything about it.

When I became Pawnee, I felt good about it. There was no one in my way. No one told me how to be Pawnee. I watched other boys being Pawnee, and I became Pawnee. I was a hunter. I was a warrior. No one objected to me even when my skin was white. I was free to be what I became. I was free to be me.

We managed to get the touching thing straight. We recovered what we lost, and our friendship became even stronger as time went on. What I found in Running Horse was acceptance and a love I hadn't known before. I would never be closer to anyone. I never wanted to be closer to anyone. This I knew in my mind and my heart.

Forever love is the greatest love of all, and Running Horse and I had a forever love that lasted twenty-five years now, and I had no doubt, it would last until the day we died, and once in the happy hunting ground, it would last for eternity, if not longer. Running Horse and I would soar across the sky, filling it with our love.

I had no friends growing up, and Running Horse and I were inseparable after I discovered touching him was the most incredible thing I had ever done. He touched me right back, and it made me feel wonderful. The intensity of what he made me feel had no equal. We were as one when we were together. I knew it had nothing to do with me being Pawnee, but, at the same time, it had everything to do with me being Pawnee.

"You are deep in thought this morning, Tall Willow," he said as his arms held me close.

"Lit'l Fox. You didn't know he would die and I would be forced to run for my life? You sent Lit'l Fox back with the first sled, and then, you sent me after him. Did you know what I would find? Did you know what was coming when you sent me away? Did you know about Morning Star?" I asked him.

This had been a question in my mind since the day we rode to the river together. The day I left him and my people. He claimed he did not know events that were taking place as he ordered me to go after my brother.

I didn't believe him. I still didn't believe it, but I never had the courage to confront him with it, until now.

"I know that you told me you only saw what the spirits told you to do, but that's not right. I've watched you go to the spirit world, and when you come back, when you were successful at talking to our ancestors, you knew exactly what you would do and what will happen once you do it. Did you know what was going to happen to me when you sent me after Lit'l Fox? This has haunted me since you sent me away. I think you knew all of it."

I didn't like his silence. I was sure he was going to evade the inquiry. I was almost certain he was lying to me the day I left him to become Phillip Dubois and wander in the wilderness for the next twelve years.

We were inseparable when he sent me off the mountain to go check on my brother. It hurt me to be sent away from him. He never did it before, and once he made me go, it would be years before we would come together again. Did he know I would finally come home? Did he keep that from me too? How much did he know?

I was in his arms. I hoped he couldn't ignore me, because of our proximity. I hoped he couldn't ignore me because our love was too great not to always speak the truth to one another.

I could understand the lie, but he no longer needed to lie. I was home and we were together, but I still wanted him to tell me the truth. I never saw my brother alive again, and when I avenged his death, it sent me on the run for years to come. Running Horse always seemed to know what was coming, except for this. He denied knowing how the worst day in my life would turn out, after I killed Major Meeks and the traitor, Tall Elk.

I knew by the way he hesitated; I wasn't going to like what he told me.

"Running Horse, are you asleep?"

"No. I do not sleep. It's a hard time to remember. There is no joy in that memory."

"Did you know? Don't lie to me, Running Horse. Did you know what was coming?"

"I knew. I was ashamed to be sending you to do what I should have done. The spirits reminded me that I was chief, and to do what I sent you to do, would have brought destruction down on our village. As chief, my people come first, even when it means I must send the man I love away. I knew you would go. I knew you would come back. I knew it the day we parted at the river in the valley where the river runs."

"Why not tell me the truth? You never lied to me before."

"You were leaving me. I was in more pain than you can imagine. I lost my best friend and the man I loved."

"I lost my brother and the man I loved," I told him, but I understood his thinking.

"I knew your pain was greater than mine, but you had to go, you needed to join the white people and grow wise, so when you came back, you were much more able to advise your chief. That's the short version."

I turned in his arms until we were facing each other.

"I advise you to kiss me. No, I insist you kiss me."

"You aren't mad at your chief?"

"A little mad maybe, but when you are in these buffalo robes with me, you aren't chief. You are the man I love, and I expect you to do something about that, Buster."

He did, and I did, and we did, and we left on a cool breeze and flew into the early morning sky. We passed the moon and the sun and all the stars, and we kept flying high, until we fell into a most delicious sleep. When we woke, we were back in the buffalo robe, still holding tight to each other, after leaving the night behind.

I needed to know the truth. Oh, I knew he knew, but I needed him to tell me he knew, and he did that. It would have been easier on me to know what he knew the day I left him, but that isn't what happened. I had many trails to go down. Had I known it would all work out. I might have let my guard down, and Nester or Trag might have killed me, and if that happened, I would never have made it back to where I belong.

More took place on the day my brother died than losing him and Running Horse. That was the day I realized I could kill a man. I doubted I could, but I killed two men the day Lit'l Fox died. I didn't so much as blink twice when I set my arrows loose. I didn't know I could, until the day it became time for me to kill.

Each step of the way, from my parents turning me into Phillip Dubois at the family farm, to Lyndon giving me my interview for a job as a wrangler, to my meeting Dan over a discussion about Demon, led me to meeting George, who introduced me to John, and while going about my business, we saved Samuel, met Joe, and after spending time in Paradise Valley, I finally went back to Running Horse.

It was a long hard trail. It was always leading me back to Running Horse. Forever love is like that, isn't it?

I should think It is.

On to Chapter Seventeen
"Explorers"
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"Hunts"
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