There were eight of us in all. I rode next to Running Horse, Samuel rode next to me and Joe rode on the outside. On the other side, Young Antelope rode next to Running Horse, Big Bear rode next to him, and Barking Dog and Turtle were at the other end of our line. We searched the landscape and the distance for evidence of what we might find down here.

The day was pleasant. The sun was behind and above us, and we had pastureland in front of us for miles, but we could see a forest dead ahead. It was difficult to tell how far ahead, but it took a while to get there.

We rode for the next few hours with only a little hesitation to take a closer look at a rise, or the space between rolling hills when they rolled high enough to hide what was on the other side. At a creek where we let the horses drink, there were frogs and snails. One frog hopped up to Dobbin's nose, and we all got a laugh as Dobbin nudged the frog, and when it jumped, Dobbin stepped backward a few steps.

Later, we sat spread across the top of one of the hills. We saw meadows and more pastureland. There were groves of trees on both sides, and a forest still straight ahead, but we hadn't reached it yet.

When we came to the forest, Running Horse went first, I followed him, and Samuel followed me. After that each rider fell in line as the dense forest furnished just enough light so we didn't ride into a tree, but horses were not likely to walk into a tree.

The smells changed with the change of scenery. There was a musky smell and a distinct odor of decaying leaves and bark. The dried leaves crunched under the hooves of our horses as we made our way around trees that didn't grow very far apart. It was slow going but not being in the sunshine was fine. The forest stayed cool.

It seemed silent at first. There was the sound of our horses walking, and there was the snuffling, occasional cough or sneeze, and different noises a group of humans make as they move. The crickets and night sounds you hear when you aren't in a city became apparent. For the most part it was quiet, as we moved along.

The forest was dense, which meant we saw from one tree to the next, and we kept an eye out for movement or animals that might be lurking about. I was happy to see the daylight ahead of us, when we were about to leave the forest. We might have been in for an hour or two. Horses moved right along even when they walked. I was sure that a horse walked much faster than a man walked, and horses could walk forever. When I walked, I definitely had a limit in mind that I didn't want to go past. On a horse, I could keep on going.

It was hard to say how far we went by the second afternoon. As a wagon master, I wanted to make ten miles a day. If I could do that, I could get a wagon train across from New York City to St Louis in three months. A lot depended on weather and the conditions on the trails by the late 1860s. There was so much traffic going west by the 1870s, the trails were usually straight and mostly smooth, because so many wagons went that way.

The Continental Railroad, being completed in 1869, meant that trains were starting to go everywhere in the east. Once they had one railroad going west, the desire to get trains to go everywhere went at a fever pitch.

Wagon trains were still taking most people west, but in ten years or so, wagon trains would stop rolling. No one would ever take a three thousand mile trip in a Conestoga Wagon again. They would take the train, and a trip that took from half a year to a year, depending on how far west they were going, would take a week or less. I couldn't imagine it. Progress was a strange mix of good and evil.

I saw trains in the east. I hadn't been on one. I led wagon trains across, and it was a long arduous journey. Cutting as much time as possible off of it seemed like a fine idea to me.

There was game we saw in the distance. Eight men on horses weren't going to sneak up on game, but with Samuel riding with us, we expected to have a fine supper, no matter where we decided to stop for the night.

Once we were back in the open, we spread our horses apart from each other as they walked us to wherever it was we were walking too. There was nothing unusual we needed to take a closer look at. We walked our horses and saw high peaks off in the distance. There were many miles between us and the mountains ahead.

"Look," Young Antelope said.

He and his horse were turned somewhat to the left, and a mile or so away, deer, and one with an impressive rack, walked in the direction we came from. They weren't far from the tree line of the forest that had been on our right for hours. We sat and watched them move out of sight.

"We hunt to eat for now," Running Horse said. "Nothing too big so we don't waste meat. We need to respect this land as we respected the land of our fathers. If this will be our home, we need to treat it kindly."

"Did those deer look big to you, Samuel?" Young Antelope asked. "They aren't regular size deer."

"Yes, we are in a land of big animals. Everything looks bigger. Even the prairie dogs look to be the size of groundhogs or weasels ," Samuel said. "Don't you remember the buffalo? Now that was big."

I noticed the prairie dogs larger heads, as they peeked over the edge of their prairie dog holes. One of the most curious of creatures, they don't seem to know what to make of men on horseback. They did't immediately disappear, watching as we approach them.

Small game was everywhere on the plains with no cover for game to hide. We saw rabbits from time to time, and two woodchucks stopped to watch us ride past. They showed no fear, but they weren't going to let a horse and rider get too close to them. Animals might be curious, but they are also cautious. It indicated to me that they weren't hunted and maybe hadn't been hunted in a while.

The grassland rolled out in front of us, on high ground we could see for miles and miles. In the folds we got a good look at vegetation and different kinds of trees. The sky changed from a baby blue in the morning to royal blue late in the day with pink and orange fingers crossing the sky as the sun set.

While in New York City, sunsets came amidst the smoke and haze. In Wyoming, where I took more than one wagon train, in the late afternoon crystal clear sky was a feast of color. I envisioned an artist's brush at work, crossing the sky with a flair for outrageous color. The wide-open beauty of the west had no equal in the east.

In the east, you were landlocked and restrained. Once you reached the west, it was wide open spaces, where you feel like you are seeing forever. I felt that way on the surface. I'm not sure how I feel about Underworld. It was riding off into the unknown each morning, but its beauty can't be denied. It's unlike anything I have seen, and yet it is a lot like every place I've been, changing as we go, and always some new sight to see.

By the third day, riding became drudgery, because we rode and kept on riding. We went at a horse's walking speed. The horses were delighted to be doing something besides chasing each other across a meadow, and I rather enjoyed riding after two walking trips down below. Going on horseback created a problem in an entirely different place, and for the first few days, I was limping by days end, my backside insisted I stand to eat.

Riding all day, after not riding for nearly a year, meant breaking back in the muscles I sat on. While walking, my feet ached at days end, each day. I couldn't wait to get my moccasins off and hopefully soak my feet before we ate our evening meal. Riding created different difficulties which were harder to soak, and so we all limped about once it was time to dismount.

As we rode, we saw different game. We got off our horses to look at prints the game left behind. In some places the ground was soft and moist under our horse's hooves. In other places it became sandy and the footing was not as solid. We read what signs we found as we moved west, always at a walking pace.

There was no sign anyone built a fire or camped along the route we took. There was no trail to show anyone traveled this way before us. Wherever we found animal prints, we looked for the distinctive print of a man. There was no evidence men had come this way. There were no firepits or items men might have discarded.

Each time we stopped at a creek or a stream, Joe got off of Moses to walk a ways up the bank of the moving water, and then he walked down. If he found anything of interest, he didn't say so, and once the horses drank, we got underway again most of the time.

I didn't do much walking around, but Samuel and Young Antelope went out to hunt each time our food pouches were being emptied. We might send them hunting every second or third day. Neither noticed anything threatening as the terrain changed from hilly, to forested, to wide open spaces. We ate woodchuck, and Young Antelope bagged a wolverine like animal, and best of all, our old friend, the rabbit.

There was no shortage of game, and I thought that was what we were there to find out, only we kept moving west at the same pace. If we needed the horses to take us away from trouble, they certainly should have plenty of energy stored up as we strolled lightly across the Underworld landscape.

On the fifth day, I wondered why we kept riding west. Why not go north for a day, or south?

Always west. Always at the same pace except when Horse decided to stretch his legs a bit, and then we all trotted at a good clip for a mile or two, and then it was back to the walking speed, always moving to the west.

As the sun was getting lower in the sky in front of us, Barking Dog rode off into a clump of trees he was nearest to. Joe wasn't far behind him and Samuel followed Young Antelope in that direction. We stopped our horses to see what got Barking Dog's attention.

Running Horse and I were last on the scene, and Barking Dog and Joe were busy pulling on some large white object that was half buried and half exposed next to a few logs that were trees before they fell. It was white and substantial, but with three of them pulling on the half-buried item, it was difficult to tell what it was.

Young Antelope leaned on his horse's neck as he watched them wiggling the thing back and forth to free it from the grip of whatever was holding on to it.

"It's an elk antler," Young Antelope told us. "Isn't it, Joe?"

Samuel jumped off Tomahawk to get a closer look at what they unearthed, blocking our view of it.

Joe had it standing up beside him to show us how big one elk antler could get.

Joe was over six foot, and a full rack on an elk head might be six or seven feet across the beast's head. One antler in this case was at least that tall, and there was the head and the other antler that went with it when the elk was carrying the rack around with him. The word big was handed around, because we all saw the same thing. It was bigger than just bit.

I looked off to the west, across a never-ending meadow. I saw the buffalo, the wolves came close enough to offer us a fine view, and each animal killed told us that this was a land of large animals, and I recalled the one image on a cave wall that came to me at times like this. Four men were poking spears at the biggest animal I had ever seen, and I wondered if we were going to find such an animal down here, or like the people, had they all disappeared, leaving no trace, except for one extra-large elk antler.

"How big would it have to be to haul two of these things around?" Samuel asked. "Really big!"

"Anything else down there?" Running Horse asked.

"You mean is the elk down there? I don't think so," Joe said. "Mud and such holding the antler in place. It has been here for some time. Took one hell of a beast to hold two of these up. He knocked this one off on the logs. That would be my guess. No telling where he left the other one. No telling how long it's been here."

It didn't tell us much we didn't already know.

Joe held one half of the elk's antlers for another minute, giving it a good look before dropping it.

"The elk knock it off, or did something take the elk down in this place?" Young Antelope asked.

It was an interesting question. If the elk died here, there would be more evidence of it, but we didn't know how long the antler was separated from the elk. One half of that elk's two antlers were six foot across. Considering the elk carried two around with him, that took one hell of an elk. Not one I would want to ride up on by mistake. If something took the elk down here, how big did that animal have to be to bring down that elk?

"If something took him down, that's definitely not an animal I want to meet along the way," Joe said.

He watched the antler fall away once he let go of it. It was the first real evidence of the life that once might have lived down here. I remembered the dinosaurs and how they dug their bones out of the ground. There were no dinosaurs today, but there was no doubt they lived and left bones behind to prove it. A rather large elk left behind evidence he was here, but no telling how long ago he left the antler where we found it.

It was further proof that animals down here were bigger than on the surface. It could be further proof that there were no predators challenging the largest game animals. We had seen good size wolves, and we heard but hadn't seen the coyotes. Was there some beast that could have brought down an elk the size of this one. There was no sign such a beast existed or would represent a threat to men.

"Leave it," Running Horse said, turning his horse to keep moving west as the other horses fell in behind him. We would need to find a place to make camp for the night, and it would be our habit to stop while there was plenty of daylight left. We were in no hurry, and we already covered more ground than in the first two trips we took into Underworld. There was no sign we were reaching the end of the road, and there were the mountain peaks we could see above the furthest visible territory. Those mountains had started to loom over the western landscape.

We were riding in the wide open again. The next water we came upon was where we made camp that day. It was still daylight and Running Horse sent Samuel and Young Antelope out to hunt. We still had meat in our food pouches, but it wouldn't last a day if we didn't hunt today, and we didn't want to let the food to get too low. Then we would need to hunt until we got game, which hadn't been a problem up until now.

Running Horse was looking for something. He knew how far we were going, and we weren't stopping until we reached that place. We headed west and kept heading west. We would keep going until we got where we were going when we started riding. I said nothing as we kept moving west.

We came to a river on the seventh or eighth day, and it was running low. The water was clear, and there was no difficulty finding a place to cross. Once we guided our horses off of one bank to let them walk across water that was four feet deep, Big Joe rode Moses up the river to the north. I didn't see anything that got his attention, but fifty or sixty feet away he got off his horse and began pulling on something white. It could have been a branch or the kind of debris that flowed along with a river's waters, but it wasn't, and when I rode to see what he was up to, I couldn't believe my eyes. I asked Joe what he thought.

It was a bone of some sort.

I could see the design when I rode up. Joe dug and pulled, dug and pulled some more. The bone wasn't going anywhere, as Running Horse brought Horse to a stop next to us.

"It's a bone, Chief," Joe said. "You ever seen such a sight?"

"Leave it. If we want a closer look, we'll stop here on the way back," Running Horse told him.

Other horses had ridden up to see what we were up to and still more sat on the western bank of the river watching what we were doing.

The bone stuck out of the river bank four feet. I could see the knob where the bone fit into a joint and that probably connected to another bone. Joe, with all his muscle, couldn't loosen it from the river bank.

"Chief, you don't want to see the entire bone? I mean see how big it is?" Joe asked, still pulling away.

"No. Leave it," Running Horse said, guiding Horse up on to the western bank of the river.

There was four feet of bone stuck in the mud, which meant there was plenty more to it that we couldn't see. At our current pace, taking a little time to examine the most mysterious find yet didn't seem like much to ask, but I didn't ask, and we continued onward, always to the west.

It was another good size pond fed by a stream that trickled in on one side and out the other. The water was fresh and cool, and the mountains stood higher the further west we went. It began to look like the mountains were our destination. They stood as a barrier across the entire horizon. No one was crossing them, especially not men on horseback. They had begun to loom over everything.

We rode on for several more hours before finding a stream that ran across the meadow we were in. The stream offered no opportunity for hunting. There might be a random animal that happened along, but we were in the open, and while the food in our food pouches was getting a bit lower than I liked, there was no order to hunt. Running Horse did build a firepit and we collected wood scattered on both sides of the stream.

We would eat hot dried meat with berries Turtle found along the bank a ways off to the south. Blue berries were a treat, and I thought we were lucky if there were plenty of blueberries down here with us. It was further proof the land was hospitable as we continued moving westward with the mountains dead ahead and seeming closer each day.

I had the memory of sitting on the front porch of the cabin in the valley where the river runs, looking at the mountains that seemed close enough for me to reach out and touch them. When I went to get my griz, it took me weeks of walking to reach those mountains. The view from our front porch was deceptive. As close as the mountains out in front of us look, I wondered how many days it would take us to reach them.

Each time we stopped, I looked at them and thought we could be there tomorrow, or maybe next week. They were higher every time I looked at them.

Running Horse said little. He knows where he is going. The spirits have told him, and I'm along for the ride.

No one is talking. No one wants to question Running Horse about how far we intend to go. No way we'll be crossing those mountains. We can't be going further than where there was a wall to stop anyone heading west.

We get up at dawn each day, and we mount up and ride west. The mountains seem so close now. We've been gone a week, maybe longer, time is less of a factor when you ride from dawn to near dusk. One day seems much like the last day and the next. We continue to ride. The mountains are a foreboding blockade.

They can't be much further. They dominate the scenery, going across the horizon as far as we can see in both directions. It's all we can see now. The mountains and the prairie that will take us to them.

After days on a grassy prairie, we came to another dense forest. It was almost pleasing to be riding out of the sun and have the cool shade of tall trees all around. There were no trails to follow, and we went according to how the trees stood in front of us. This forest didn't require any fancy riding, as the trees were just far enough apart to allow us to keep going in a straight line most of the way.

Each forest had its own smell. This forest smelled sweet. I was sure I had the smell in my nose before, but I couldn't place it. It was a fragrance that was easy on the nose.

It took Young Antelope to identify what it was. Using his bow, he brought a branch to within easy reach. He plucked a fat apple from the branch, and then he picked a few more, because apples are easy to eat while on the move, and how many apples is too many apples?

The sound of crunching into apples was soon a preoccupation. We all forgot ourselves while we picked a few apples, stuffing some in empty pouches we carried for such a find. I marveled at the flavor as I held the apple out to look it over. It looked exactly like what an apple looked like on the surface. The taste burst through my mouth and clouded my brain with the thought of apples.

We were in an apple orchard. I gave thought to Johnny Appleseed. Had Johnny come this way?

"Apple's," Big Bear said, using his bow in a similar fashion.

"How do we know they aren't poisoned?" Samuel wondered aloud.

"Hawkeye, if you bite into bitter fruit, spit it out. Sweet is almost always an indication of the good things to eat," Running Horse told him. "It's good to see food growing wild on the land. That is a good sign."

We had so many apples that the evening meal required no fire and only a little hunger for the dried meat we had been eating. Except for a few blueberries, the apples were the first flavor treat we had eaten.

We needed to hunt soon. We all ate too many apples and the idea of eating dried meat didn't appeal to anyone that evening, after we stopped. We ate a little cold dried meat, and were well satisfied, but the food in our pouches was dwindling. We were going to run out of meat if we didn't hunt tomorrow.

We continued riding west.

What we wanted to know about Underworld, we knew after almost a week of riding. The land was easy to travel on, and there was water in a pond, creek, or lake. Sources of water weren't far enough apart to be much of a problem, and the game was there when we took the time to hunt.

We made camp shortly after leaving the apple orchard.

If we rode hard from dawn to dusk, we could be back in little more than two days. We rarely went faster than a walk, although the horses sometimes picked up speed to change the pace they were going. Such an independent attitude didn't bother anyone. Horses were people too. They needed a change of pace, even when men went along at whatever pace was set.

We were snoring away after dark set in, and if we kept the same pace, we would be up at dawn, and perhaps early on we might shoot something that would be breakfast. I figured we were forty or fifty miles straight out from the cliff. That was ten times as far as we could ride in Paradise Valley. Moving around, getting out in the country felt good. We were no longer a prisoner inside of the walls of Paradise Valley.

I didn't know how far down in the earth we went to come out in Underworld. Except for the size, it wasn't that different from what was on the surface. We had come all this way without getting into any trouble. Perhaps there wasn't anything down here to cause us trouble, but no matter where I had gone during my travels, there was always plenty of trouble to go around. Even when just riding a wagon across country, there would be trouble sooner or later. Men couldn't stand leaving well enough alone for too long. They had to make waves, because men had to do something.

Maybe this was a perfectly nice place to live.

The mountains loomed larger in front of us, and we kept riding toward them.

One thing was for sure, we would stop once we reached them. They stretched into the sky, and they looked higher and higher each day. When we got up to ride, all we could see was those mountains.

The apples were a special treat, and one thing I learned about apples, if you eat enough of them the sweetness seems to go away as the knot in your stomach grows larger. Two days later, I could feel the apples.

That was the night we heard wolves along with coyotes. The night sounds you expect to hear were heard. We always tried to camp near a water source, and crickets and frogs furnished the night songs we slept to. We still remained trouble free. The horses were all moving along easily and we crossed paths with nothing dangerous, unless you didn't know when to stop eating apples. I still had two in one of my pouches I would save for later.

On to Chapter Twenty-One
"Westward Ho"
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"Down Below"
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