Chapter 2

They were up and getting ready to leave just after sunup the next morning. The sleeping bags were drying in the sun. They had freeze dried scrambled eggs and bacon and hot chocolate for breakfast as well as several donuts. They packed the sleeping bags into the compression bags and collapsed them down as far as they could. Everything was loaded onto the bike and tied down. They policed the area and were about to get on the bike when one of the retired couples came by and commented on hearing a mountain lion last night. While Wendy was turning a bright red, Larry just laughed and agreed with the couple, that it had been too close to the camp.

Shortly after they had walked on, they climbed onto the bike and left the camp, waving goodbye to the couple. They went north and then turned onto Interstate 40 West. They talked occasionally but mostly they stayed in companionable silence, Wendy held onto Larry’s waist and occasionally rubbed him between his legs. Every two hours they would exit the highway and get gas, then walk around. Sometimes they would visit a relic of Americas Highway, Route 66. An old Motor Inn, or a restored Stuckey’s Restaurant complete with honey bees. Other times they would take an hour long nap. They had no destination and were in no hurry to get there.

That night they stayed at a campground in the Manzano Mountain State Park in New Mexico. They were both tired and after a quick supper climbed into the sleeping bag and fell asleep.

In the town of Holbrook they turned south and took Hwy 377 crossing the arid land to Heber, Arizona. They stocked up on food and essentials, including two gallons of ethanol free treated gas in quart cans that went into the saddlebags. They took Hwy 260 West along the Mogollon Rim for twenty miles then Larry felt compelled to take Hwy 288 South, it was mostly unimproved road. Why it was marked as a highway was beyond him. Why he was compelled to turn on it was an even greater mystery! The good news was that there was almost no traffic, a few logging trucks coming and going. He thought to himself, that he was like one of Zane Grey’s or Louis L’Amour’s characters coming down from the Mogollon Rim, a not so gradual drop of almost two thousand feet in elevation. The road wasn’t too bad, dusty but it had been graded recently, so there weren’t any ruts and just a few potholes. The dust was filtered out by the helmets and by keeping his speed down.

A little over half way through the 52 miles, Larry had another compulsion to turn off the “highway” onto a dry streambed, it led them into a canyon going to the west. The route was mostly on smooth rock with occasional sandbars that the bikes wide tires could easily handle. They had gone almost twenty miles when once again he felt compelled to take a turn and follow the base of a cliff face until they came to a hidden entrance into a canyon going north. Five miles later they arrived at a place where there was a shelf, a raised area on the east side of the canyon that was thirty feet off the canyon floor. Once again a feeling came over him to go up onto the shelf, almost half a mile later a large cave mouth opened in the wall of the canyon, another twelve or so feet up a ramp to get inside the cave. Once again he had felt a definite pull for him to enter the cave.

“Did you know this was here Larry? You drove right to it!”

“No, I had no idea where we were going, but I felt like something or someone was guiding me. Let’s explore and see if there was a reason we were brought here.”

Larry shut off the bike and the silence was almost overwhelming. They stretched their legs and started looking around. Larry retrieved his flashlight and the 1911 Colt from his pack and they moved deeper into the silence. For over a hundred yards they moved the height of the cave stayed about the same, averaging about twenty feet. The floor was level and mostly rock with a thin layer of sand covering portions of it every so often. There were no stalactites or stalagmites anywhere, no water was in evidence either. The temperature was, according to his zipper fob, right around seventy eight degrees, a lot cooler than the almost one hundred degrees it had been in the canyon. After another seventy five yards they started hearing water, not a drip, but running water. It became louder as they moved even deeper into the cave. At last the light from his flashlight was reflected back at them from the end of the cave. There, alongside the wall was a stream of clear water. A large tub-like structure that was big enough for two people to sit side by side was centered on the wall. They couldn’t tell how deep it was but at a guess it was probably around three feet, Larry thought it was man made. Looking around they found a smaller shelf along the cave wall on the left side. It was around three feet off of the cave floor. Fifteen feet wide and about twenty feet long. Firewood was stacked close to a fire ring of stones with a large amount of ash remaining inside it. A saddle and tack was close by with very old blankets laid out from it as if it had acted as a pillow. Looking up at the ceiling he noticed a rope, shining the light up the rope. It was tied to an outcropping of rock that jutted out from the wall near the ceiling thirty feet up. Over and down it went, it ended in a large bundle, and it looked like two human skeletons roped together! A pouch hung down from them, but even by jumping Larry couldn’t reach it. After removing some wood that had been a scaffold, he went back to the bike and rode it back and up onto the shelf under the pouch. Wendy helped steady the bike as Larry climbed onto the seat and stood up, he grabbed the pouch and was able to cut the leather string it was attached to.

Inside the leather pouch was a book, a diary, Wendy and Larry sat down and built a fire before settling in with her leaning back against his chest as he leaned back on the saddle. Using a headlamp that was in his backpack he began to read out loud;

Phil and Philly’s Story

I was born April 12, 1861, the day the Civil War started, I was named after my Father, Grandfather, and Great Grandfather, as the firstborn son, Philip Stephen Roberson IV in Westport, Connecticut. While not born into a wealthy family, we were farmers and had two full sections under plow. Many of those acres were farmed by sharecroppers, some by older brothers and by Uncles and cousins. Our Grandfather kept control of the ownership of the land, but all family members were treated equally and shared the bounty of the land equally as well. But the war changed all of that. Grandfather and his brothers, and all of their sons were abolitionists, to them the ownership of another person was contrary to the teachings of Jesus Christ and it didn’t matter what color or religion the enslaved people were.

As a result they joined the 1st Regiment Connecticut Volunteer Infantry for a three month enlistment. At the beginning of the war people thought it would be over in a matter of weeks. When their enlistment ended they joined the 2nd Regiment Connecticut Volunteer Infantry again for three months, then when that enlistment ended they joined the 3rd Regiment Connecticut Volunteer Infantry, once again for three months. Then again when their enlistment expired, they re-enlisted in the 4th Regiment Connecticut Volunteer Infantry. This time there was no enlistment period stated. And the name changed to the 1st Connecticut Heavy Artillery Regiment. One by one the fathers, brothers and cousins died. The terrible conflict that everyone had assumed would only last for a few weeks, continued for four long years, costing more American lives than any other in its long history combined!

In the end the cost to the family included the farm itself, no one was left to manage it, work it, and help it grow. When Philip Stephen Roberson IV was thirteen years old his mother remarried, to a man who wanted to go west. They loaded up a brand new Conestoga wagon with their belongings and joined hundreds of other people set on finding a new and better life in the west.

For many it was a dream that would remain only a dream, disease, the endless walking and deprivations of living out of a wagon, outlaws and Indians took their lives before they could fulfill that dream. For Phil that happened just after he turned fourteen. He had left the wagon train just before sunup, going out in search of buffalo or deer, knowing he would have to go farther away than he usually had to go due to the late start they had made. They had been advised that they should wait until the next season to leave Kansas City. They had been warned that the other trains before theirs would have hunted the game and that there was a very real danger of getting stuck in the mountains when the snow began to fall like the Donner party of 1846. But they had chosen to go on, they did so for various reasons, chief among them, was not being able to afford to wait several months before going.

So he accepted the additional time it took him to hunt. Ever wary of the threat of hostile Indians and no account white people who would rather take from others rather than do for themselves. Phil found a small herd of buffalo, numbering only thirty or so. He had also noticed some Indians who seemed to be intent on getting one for themselves. Using his almost new Sharps 52 caliber rifle he dropped two of the beasts and chose the smaller of the two to pull away from the other, over a hill before field dressing it. The Indians indicated their thanks by pumping their bows up and down, he did the same back to them. Using some saplings he cut from a stream bed he quickly and efficiently made a travoi to carry the meat and the skin. He set off for the approximate location the train should have reached in the hours he had been gone. When he arrived where they should have been, he found no sign of them having already passed by this location. So he moved to the east knowing that they were somewhere in front of him.

After three or four miles he began to worry that something had happened to the wagon train. Then he saw smoke directly ahead. Later in the afternoon it would not have caused concern, they might have stopped earlier than normal for one reason or another. But this early in the afternoon, the smoke did not bode well. He put his heels to the flanks of the horse and encouraged him to a trot. Coming over the crest of a hill he saw down in the valley on the other side was the wagon train. They were in their protective circle, the livestock gathered together in the center. Two wagons were burning, bodies of Indians and some people in the train were in evidence, but the attack was over. He rode down the hill, the urgency was over now that he knew he couldn’t affect the outcome one way or another.

As he got closer he noticed people looking at him with an apologetic or sympathetic look that made his heart skip a beat. He rode through the opening some men had made for him between two wagons. He looked for his parents’ wagon only to recognize that one of the two burning were theirs. He saw his mother’s lifeless body laid on the ground and next to her was his stepdad’s. Then he looked at the other wagon on fire. It belonged to the MacPherson family; the two adult MacPherson family members were also laid out lifeless on the ground, along with two of their six children. His intended, was not one of them. Quickly he began looking for her among the people standing inside the circle of wagons.

“Phil, she’s not here, the savages took her! She had left the train to gather some berries she saw in a draw, back a ways. They grabbed her and killed your parents and hers when they tried to rescue her. They went northwest with her.” Bert Johnson told him.

“Will you take care of everyone?”

“You know I will, the kids will go with the Smith family, they will be taken care of. The dead will be buried up there on the hill!” He said as he pointed at a hill with trees on the top.

Phil nodded and turned his horse to the northwest, “I’ll catch up with you, or I won’t, don’t wait for me either way!” He then rode off leaving the buffalo on the travoi at Bert’s feet.

Phil disappeared into the horizon and was never seen again.

Phil picked up the trail of three Indian braves transporting a fourth person who was not being cooperative. They were going in the direction that Bert had indicated. They were over an hour ahead of him. He knew he had only so long before it would be too late for him to rescue the love of his life, Philadelphia MacPherson. Who went by her nickname, Philly!

She would be killed, raped, or both. He kicked his heels into the horse and sped up to a lope that let him keep track of the unshod Indian ponies and watch out for other dangers. Thirty minutes later, Phil carefully approached the crest of a hill, looking over its crest and down the opposite side without sky lighting himself or the horse. At the bottom of the hill were the Indians and Philly.

Being careful, yet aware of exactly what the three savages were doing at the time, was one of the hardest things he had ever done in his fourteen years. But he knew if he hurried both she and he could perish and have no impact on the outcome at all. He did move cautiously fast, taking both his Sharps and his Winchester rifles with him. He crawled up to the crest of the hill and looked down on the scene. The savages were taking her clothes off as well as their own, they were yelling in triumph and arguing over who would have the girl first. Philly was spread eagle on the ground, her ankles tied to stakes, her hands were being held and her breasts were being assaulted as the third was lining up his cock to blunder the virgin white girl’s cunt beneath him. Phil took aim and made sure that wanting was all he would ever be able to do. He squeezed the trigger and knew exactly where the projectile was going to impact the Indian. He didn’t watch. He was already working the bolt to extract the spent shell casing and sliding the next into the breach. He took aim at the next savage, who had picked up his knife and was going to stab the girl. His squeeze of the trigger saved her life. The remaining savage jumped up and ran for his horse, he didn’t make it.

Phil mounted his horse and rode over the crest of the hill and down into the valley to the girl and his future bride. He got off his horse and stepped to the girl,

“Philly, it’s me, Phil! You have nothing to fear and you have nothing to hide from me! You are exactly as I had hoped and dreamed you would be, beautiful, your body is perfect and I love you!”

“Phil, you saved me from a fate worse than death and then saved me from death itself! I’m glad you like my body, it is yours to look upon and more! It is yours to touch and possess! But first untie me so our first time together is consummated with both of us participating! And I love you too!”

Phil untied her and pulled her up from the ground and into a full body hug? He lifted her and brought her mouth to his and gave her a kiss that would have knocked her socks off, had she been wearing any. He picked her up and put her on his saddle then he mounted the horse using the stirrup lifting her and placing her in front of him.