Chapter 12

With a smile, Ed handed over the carton of cigarettes and shook hands with Chief Daniels to seal the deal. The Chief said, “We keep one of every three samples and you travel with two of our people.”

Nodding, Ed said, “We appreciate being able to go on your lands.”

The Chief had a long history of dealing with Ed, going back to when Ed was a bigot and a bully. Despite his reputation, Ed had always treated him fairly. He smiled and said, “The last time you were here, we made several thousand dollars off the rocks you brought back.”

Ed said, “I make no promises about what we’ll find.”

A young man dressed in a white shirt and blue jeans came over to the Chief. He looked at Ed and then glanced down at Tiger. He said, “I hear that John Carter is going to take a walk after you return home.”

Looking at the man, Ed was surprised by his knowledge about what was going on. John’s trip to visit William Redman was associated with a separate tribe. Ed said, “Yes.”

“The animal spirits are active of late. Medicine men from many tribes are waiting to see what comes from this walk of his.” The young man looked out at the horizon as though seeing something beyond the sight of normal men. He added, “It takes power to attract spirits such as the Bobcat that is with you.”

Ed answered, “He serves the Gods and Goddesses. The cats are a gift from them.”

The young man said, “You carry with you a talisman of great power.”

“I serve the Gods and Goddesses,” replied Ed.

“May I see it?”

Ed brought the medallion out from his shirt and showed it to the man. The man read the words ‘To Find A Truth’ on one side and on the other side, ‘A Lie To Find.’ Surprised, he looked at Ed and said, “You serve truth.”

Nodding, Ed answered, “Yes, I do.”

The young man turned to the Chief and said, “You do not need to have him watched. He will be honest with you.”

At the look on the Chief’s face, Ed interrupted, “Sometimes, there is more than one reason for doing something. I might suggest that the Grandmothers of the tribe selected a couple to go with us for reasons that have nothing to do with our visit.”

Surprised at the insight, Chief Daniels said, “You see more than you let on.”

Watching as Tiger started stalking a jackrabbit, Ed said, “It comes of serving truth.”

When Tiger burst forth to catch the rabbit, the younger man said, “This John Carter. Is he a good man?”

A disgruntled Tiger returned having missed the rabbit. Looking down at the cat, Ed replied, “He is a better man than me, but he is still a man.”

“You are modest.”

“I’m honest,” replied Ed. The cat wandered around bored and ready to be moving.

The Chief, after observing the cat, said, “They will meet you at the base of the Butte tomorrow morning. They left this morning. You can drive most of the way, but will have to ride your horses or hike the rest of the way.”

After the appropriate farewells, Ed, Kim, and the cat returned to the two trucks. On the way, Kim asked, “I don’t understand what went on there. Could you explain?”

Sighing, Ed said, “I’ll explain when we have a little more privacy.”

Looking around, Kim realized that Ed was probably correct. A number of people were looking at them with interests that ranged from curiosity to outright dislike. She got into her truck and waited for him to reach his.

They drove off, with her following him toward the area that Ed wanted to search. He had been to many sites within this reservation, but never this particular area. This particular tribe tended to have much more control over the reservation and it was rare that they let people wander around looking for rocks. Ed had come here several times in the past and always shared his finds with the tribe. It was one of the reasons why they allowed him on their land.

They reached the end of a dirt road, forced to a stop by a large gully that cut across it. Pulling off the road, they parked their trucks side by side. Both of them went to the trailers they were towing and led the horses out. It took some time to saddle them and load the pack horses. Kim’s movements were natural, as though she had years of experience doing this. He asked, “It looks like you have a bit of experience with horses.”

“I was a barrel rider in high school,” replied Kim. It was a common enough activity for teenage girls growing up in the country. Almost all of them had a horse growing up. She had actually gone on to compete, but had never really succeeded. The fact was, she was happy riding the horse, but not going around the barrels.

They mounted up and headed towards the butte. Kim rode along beside Ed with Tiger leading the way. When the horses had settled to a nice pace and the ride had become easier, Kim asked, “So what was all of that with the Chief and the other guy?”

Ed replied, “The Chief doesn’t like whites roaming around the reservation on their own. They’ve had too much trouble in the past. I agreed that we would give a third of our finds to the tribe. Since we are white, he wants someone to accompany us. I agreed to allow a couple to come with us.”

Kim asked, “Why a couple?”

Laughing, Ed said, “Occasionally you have a couple that is having problems and the old women of the tribe will find something like this for them to do. It forces them to confront each other in the openness of the desert where nothing can hide.”

As understanding washed over her, Kim said, “Ah, so that is why you talked about the Grandmothers to the young Indian. So who was the young Indian?”

Smiling, Ed said, “He is the tribe’s Medicine Man and is very important. He has a different kind of power within the tribe.”

They rode on as Tiger disappeared within the scrub grass. From atop the horses, they could tell that he was stalking something, but could not see what had interested the cat. Rather than disturb the hunt, they rode on. Kim asked, “What was all of that talk about animal spirits and you serving truth?”

“John and I are Druids. We are in the service of the Gods and Goddesses. John serves the God and the Goddess. I serve the Two- Sided One. His service is to help people that are in danger and to fight the strong that prey upon the weak. My service is to the truth,” replied Ed. He paused to look for Tiger and saw that cat bounding through the scrub. He continued, “The Medicine Man is involved with the animal spirits. To him, Tiger, Rover, and Shadow are signs of great power. When John goes on his walk, he is expected to meet with Robert White Feather’s grandfather. He is a Medicine Man of a different tribe. It would appear that this meeting involves much more than I knew about since the Medicine Men of many different tribes are awaiting the outcome.”

Kim asked, “So what about the medallion?”

Amused at her curiosity, Ed replied, “It was a gift from the Two- Sided One that I serve. It was put around my neck by him and can be removed only by a God or a Goddess. It’s a medallion of great power. The Medicine Man recognized it for what it was.”

“Wow, that’s amazing,” replied Kim. She looked at Ed and thought about all that she knew about him. She asked, “Does your service have anything to do with the raid against the criminal organizations?”

Nodding, Ed answered, “Everything to do with it. Our service demanded that we do something, but the scale and scope wasn’t fixed. After the attempts on John’s life, a Druid was dispatched to warn them away from accepting any contracts against any Druid. They tortured and killed the Druid. At that point, we decided that they all had to go. It took us a year to put it all together.”

“A year?” asked Kim. She couldn’t imagine planning anything out that long in advance.

Laughing, Ed replied, “Yes, a year. This is my first vacation since that effort started and I’m going to enjoy it.”

As they rode, Kim asked all kinds of questions about the family and the type of relations that they had with each other. She had been shocked at how easily his wives had accepted that he might have a girlfriend on the side. It was a matter of curiosity that drove her to ask everything she could about Kelly and Beth. As surprising as Ed’s willingness to answer the questions, the answers confused her more.

After a while, they settled down to a nice relaxing ride. Tiger returned with quail feathers around his mouth. Smiling at the cat, Ed was amazed at how easily the cats took care of themselves in the field. He knew that the cat would probably want to nap and digest his food. He said, “Kim, let’s rest the horses here for about thirty minutes. The cat has just eaten and will want to rest for a bit.”

They stopped and climbed off their horses. Watching Kim get off her horse, he appreciated the sight of her heart shaped ass packaged in tight fitting blue jeans. She caught him watching and shook her head while wearing a crooked smile. Dismounting, Ed tied the horse to a scrub brush and walked around the horses stretching his back.

Looking around, he said, “It’s grand out here, isn’t it?”

She looked up at the sky and said, “The desert is the only place I ever see a sky of that particular blue.”

“I know what you mean. It’s so large out here that it makes you feel insignificant. Yet the sky seems to shrink in town, blocked out by the buildings,” replied Ed. Frowning, he said, “Maybe that is why I dislike towns so much, it tends to distort our sense of our place in the universe.”

“You’ve got the soul of a poet,” remarked Kim.

“I don’t know about that. I do know that I love it out here, and that seeing it from horseback seems to open up the land around me that just doesn’t happen when I walk,” replied Ed.

It bothered her that Kelly and Beth were correct about Ed. His charm and manner were hard to resist. She could understand how it was that they expected something to happen on this trip. She also knew that Ed loved his wives with his whole heart and wondered if there was room in it for her as well. Perhaps she hoped for more from this trip than was reasonable.

When Tiger started pacing around, they mounted up and headed towards the Butte. The Butte would be a good site to look at for a day or two, but there were other, more interesting, geological structures in the area. The ride was pleasant as the two companions joked back and forth.

It was a couple of hours before sunset when they reached the Butte. Ed stood up in his stirrups and looked around for a good camping spot. A little way around the Butte was a small hill. Pointing to it, he said, “We’ll camp there tonight. Our fire should be visible for quite a distance and the couple will know where to meet us in the morning.”

Looking at where Ed had pointed, she replied, “Good idea.”

They rode over to the spot that Ed had pointed out. Reaching it, they noticed signs of an earlier fire. Frowning, Ed said, “They should have buried that.”

The first business at hand was taking care of the horses. Unsaddling them, watering and feeding them took thirty minutes. When it came time to set up camp, Ed was pleased to see that she camped without a tent in the same way that he did. It was then time to collect material to burn for a fire. Out here, that meant lots of branches from scrub brush and dried cactus. When he judged that he had enough for the night, he sat down and took a big drink of water. He noticed Kim doing the same thing.

They sat there for a while and then Ed said, “I’ll start dinner if you want to relax a bit.”

Laughing, Kim replied, “How about I start dinner and you start to work on the toilet?”

“Pardon?” asked Ed. He had never really worried about setting up a camp toilet, usually going a little way out of camp to piss and squatting over a hole when he needed to shit.

Shaking her head, she led him to her pack and removed a number of posts, a toilet seat, and a square of canvas. He looked at them and asked, “What am I supposed to do with this stuff?”

Amazed that he had never seen anything like this, she decided to show him. She inserted four of the posts into holes in the bottom of the toilet seat. It sat there like a simple chair. She set two of the posts in the pockets of the canvas. Walking a slight distance from the camp, she pushed the ends of the post into the ground. Realizing that she had just erected a simple privacy curtain, Ed carried the chair over to the site. She said, “You can dig the pit while I start the fire.”

Ed returned to his pack and removed a folding shovel from it. Going back to the toilet, he dug a shallow trench. When someone used the chair, they could move the chair a little ways down the trench and cover the waste with dirt. It would be sanitary and easy to use. He left the shovel stuck in the ground next to the chair.

In camp, Kim had just finished lighting the fire. Walking over to it, Ed stopped at his pack and removed the grill along with some food and cooking equipment. Kim looked at his supplies and said, “I usually travel with aluminum pots and pans. They’re lighter.”

Laughing Ed said, “Never could cook with that stuff. I like the taste of food cooked in cast iron.”

“You and most men,” replied Kim. She remembered back to the evening that she had spent on the stairs listening to the men talk. Kelly and Beth had been right that their conversations tended to be very boring. At least he could hold a conversation with her out here.

Kneeling down by the fire, he said, “I brought a two steaks to cook over the fire. We have a can of fruit and some corn on the cob. For desert, I have some biscuit mix and pie filling for a field cobbler.”

She laughed and said, “I can tell who is going to be doing the cooking out here. I brought mostly canned food so that I wouldn’t have to cook much.”

“I like to eat well when I’m out here.”

They waited for the coals to burn down. Once they had a good bed of coals, Ed started cooking. They sat on their bedrolls around the fire as the food slowly cooked. After the ride, it was nice to just sit. Kim continued to ask questions about the family relations.

Thirty minutes before sunset, the food was finished cooking. Ed put the steaks on two plates and fished out an ear of corn for each of them. With his can opener, Kim opened the canned fruit and divided the contents onto the two plates. They sat back and ate as the sun set. For a change, Kim was quiet and just enjoyed watching the sky above them darken while the western horizon glowed with hundreds of colors.

Once the dinner had been finished, Ed unburied the Dutch Oven and served up two large helpings of desert. Kim looked at the mound of food on her plate and groaned. Ed asked, “What’s the matter?”

“I was just saying goodbye to this figure that I’ve worked so hard to achieve.”

Chuckling at her vanity, Ed replied, “Tomorrow, you’ll work it all off.”

Laughing at how much work she expected to do, she had to agree. Tomorrow they would be climbing over rocks and digging in the surface of the Butte. The cobbler was outstanding and they both finished it without further discussion. Sighing, Kim laid back and said, “Why is it that food always tastes better outdoors?”

“The appetite is much stronger out here,” replied Ed. He looked over at her as she reclined. The outline of her breasts was clear as the fabric of her shirt pulled taut over them. He licked his lips and lay back in an attempt to distance himself from the effect her body had on him.

After a half an hour of letting the food settle, Ed sat up and started cleaning up the camp. He washed the Dutch Over and plates using sand. Kim watched him work amazed at how he used the sand to clean the plates. He noticed and said, “You’d be surprised at how clean this gets them.”