*This is a work of fiction. Any similarities between people, places or names are entirely coincidental. I do not own the characters, the book or the movie and I do not profit from this story. I am writing it just for fun.

Shadows of the Past

Chapter 1: Road Trip

As the sun prepared to rise, a soft summer breeze blew in through the open bedroom window, moving the curtains back and forth and gently brushing over Uncas as he lay sleeping in the bed. Playing with his hair, the breeze blew a few of the long black strands across his face and he rolled over onto his other side, putting his back to the window. Still the breeze played with him, now blowing directly on his face. Gradually coming awake, Uncas realized it could not be the breeze he was feeling since he had turned away from it and he slowly opened his eyes to find Alice's face not more than a few inches from his, her lips puckered as she blew on him.

"Oh goodie, you're awake!" she said playfully.

"What time is it?" he mumbled, noticing the room was only just beginning to lighten up.

"It's time to get up! We're getting an early start this morning, remember?"

"Not this early! The suns not even up yet." he muttered as he pulled the bed sheet over his head, intending to go back to sleep.

Alice groaned. Today, she and Uncas, along with Cora and Wolf, were leaving on a ten day couple's road trip, the first vacation the four of them had an opportunity to take in a very long time. In the six years since everyone had arrived in New Mexico, vacations were always family outings that included Papa, Duncan and later, Duncan's wife, Marie. Once the children started arriving, those vacations were reduced to occasional day trips.

But now that Chingachgook, his wife Lila who is also Uncas and Wolf's mother and Nathaniel had arrived and could help to watch the kids, it gave Alice and her sister a chance to escape for some 'alone time' with their husbands. This trip was going to be the honeymoon the two couples never had and Alice was eager to get started. Looking at the large lump curled up under the sheet next to her, she decided to try a different tactic to get her sleepy husband to wake up.

"Uncaaaasss!" she softly purred as she moved the sheet off of his head and slowly ran her finger over his bottom lip.

"Nnnnnnnnh." was Uncas's mumbled response as he rolled onto his back and pulled the sheet back over his head again.

"Uncaaaasss! Wake uuuuuup!" she purred again as she slipped her head under the sheet and kissed his lips, then kissed her way down his neck to his bare chest, then down to his abdomen and was continuing on downward toward his manhood until Uncas grabbed her. Pulling her up and pushing her onto her back he rolled on top of her, pinning her down while he tickled her sides.

"Eeeeee!" she squealed as she tried to tickle him back, her giggles mixing with his deep laughter as the summer breeze continued to gently move the curtains.

Wolf walked through the desert, keeping an alert eye open for any signs of deer. His father and Nathaniel were walking behind him, looking at the hard, dry ground for the hoof prints of a large buck they'd been tracking. Suddenly the buck leaped out of a clump of scrub oak just ahead of them and ran swiftly away. Raising his Winchester rifle to take a shot at the fleeing deer, the ground suddenly shook violently. No sooner did the tremor pass then a strange whirring noise filled the air. Since the deer was now well out of range of his rifle, Wolf turned to his father and brother and found them sitting in a cottonwood tree eating ice cream cones and reading comic books.

Once again the ground shook, again followed by the whirring sound and Wolf opened his eyes, waking to find it had all been a dream and the earthquake and strange noise was from the two suitcases his wife Cora had plopped onto the bed and opened. Rubbing his eyes against the bright light coming from the lamp on the nightstand, he raised his head and watched for a moment as she rummaged through the luggage before he dropped his head back down to the pillow.

"What are you doing? he asked, yawning as he placed his arm over his eyes to shield them from the light.

"I'm checking to make sure we have everything we need. There's not going to be any stores close by where we'll be staying so I want to be sure I haven't forgotten to pack anything."

"Babe, you already have just about everything we own stuffed into those bags. Try as you might and I know you already have, you can't fit the whole house in them."

Cora responded by giving her husband a squinty eyed look and zipped the luggage back up. As she put each suitcase back on the floor, faint giggles and laughter briefly came from the room next to theirs before becoming quiet again.

"Sounds like Alice and Uncas are starting their honeymoon before we even leave!" Cora said with a smile. "Does that give you any ideas?...Wolf?" Turning to look at Wolf, she saw he had fallen back to sleep and was snoring softly.

"Oh no you don't." she said seductively as she slipped out of her nightgown and slid into the bed with him.

A few hours later Little Lila, Maggie, Robbie and Little Ian helped Grandma Lila and Auntie Marie finish wrapping some breakfast burritos for the travelers to eat on the road. Chingachgook, Nathaniel, Duncan and Grandpa Ian sat at the kitchen table while Alice and Cora drilled them with instructions regarding the do's and don'ts of taking care of the children while they are away. As the four men looked to each other for sympathy, Uncas and Wolf walked in through the back door and Nathaniel mouthed the word 'help' to them.

"We got the truck loaded up. You girls about ready?" asked Uncas.

"We just have to go over a few more…." Cora started to say, but stopped when Wolf took the list of instructions out of her hands and set it down on the table.

"Relax!" he told her. "Everything's going to be fine. You've got three experienced parents here. Pop did a great job on the two of you and Duncan, and as for Mother and Father, well look at how Nathaniel and Fox and I turned out…ok, forget I said that last part." said Wolf as he took Cora by the arm and led her toward the back door before she could say anything. "Look, the kids will be fine, don't worry about them. With their mommies and daddies gone, their grandparents and uncles and aunties are going to spoil them rotten."

"That's what I'm afraid of." said Alice as Uncas herded her toward the back door as well.

Standing next to Wolf and Cora's SUV, the two couples said their goodbyes to the family and told the four little ones to be good and to mind their elders before piling into the vehicle. Pulling out of the driveway with a couple of beeps on the horn they were on their way, heading toward the main road which would take them to the Interstate. For a while they rode in silence. Although they were all looking forward to the trip, this was the first time they would be away from their children for more than a day and already both couples were missing them. Finally Uncas broke the silence and set the mood for fun.

"Well, we've got an SUV full of gear, food in the cooler and a couple of maps tucked into the glove compartment. Look out rez, here we come!"

Getting into a festive spirit, everyone settled in for the long, leisurely ride and Alice passed out the breakfast burritos. She and Uncas munched on theirs in the back seat while Cora held one up for Wolf to take bites from while he drove.

"It was really great of your buddy, Don, to offer his mom's house for us to stay in while she's away visiting family. We've never been to the Navajo Reservation before. Where is the house located?" Cora asked Uncas.

"Don said it's near a little town called Shelter Rock, which is somewhere around Tuba City and Cameron. He said there's just a few houses there and a trading post where we can pick up a few odds and ends, but he recommends we stock up on supplies in Tuba City before we go to his mom's place because it's really remote out there. Which means we'll have lots of privacy!"

"I'm liking this place more and more!" said Alice with a giggle.

"There's no well out there either," continued Uncas, "the ground water is too contaminated from Uranium mining, so we're going to have to haul water in. His mom is gonna leave her pickup for us. There's a big tank in the back we can fill up and bring water to the house with. We're going to be roughing it, ladies. Are you ready for it?"

"It's nothing we haven't done before." said Cora, remembering the old days back in 1757. "At least we won't have any war parties chasing after us this time!"

Five hours later, the two couples had entered the eastern portion of the Navajo Reservation. After having driven south from Santa Fe to Albuquerque, they headed west on I-40 to the town of Gallup, taking in the beautiful scenery along the way. A gently rolling landscape of buffalo and grama grass, peppered with scrub oak, pinion, and juniper pines eventually was joined by tall mesas of red sandstone. Small herds of horses and cattle could periodically be seen grazing on the dry vegetation. From Gallup they headed north and then west, crossing into Arizona and stopped for lunch and a little sight seeing in the town of Window Rock before continuing westward to Tuba City.

Uncas had taken over the wheel after their lunch break and he cruised along at a steady pace. Tired from the long drive and full from a wonderful lunch of Navajo Tacos, Wolf snoozed in the back seat with Cora while Alice dozed in the passenger seat next to Uncas. Taking a drink from his water bottle, Uncas took his eyes off of the road for only a second before turning his attention back to the road.

"Geez!" he shouted in surprise as he yanked the steering wheel sharply to the left then back over to the right, pulling the vehicle onto the right hand shoulder where he slammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop.

"Fox! What the hell?" said Wolf after he and the women were jolted awake when the SUV swerved.

"I almost hit somebody! Didn't you see her?" said Uncas, panic clearly evident in his voice.

"Who?" asked Wolf, looking out the windows.

"That girl! She was walking right out in the middle of the…..where the hell did she go?"

"What girl? I don't see anyone." said Cora as she looked out the back window.

"Maybe she jumped out of the way and fell into the ditch. We better check it out." said Wolf.

After a quick but thorough inspection of the area, no sign of the girl could be found anywhere and Uncas would have thought he'd imagined it all if he wasn't so sure of what he saw.

"What did she look like?" asked Alice as they all climbed back into the SUV and continued on their way.

"I couldn't see her face because she was looking down at the ground and her long hair hung forward and covered it. She was wearing a long dress, kind of like the ones women wore in the 1800's. I couldn't see her feet either but she walking really fast and she seem angry. Her hands were balled into fists and she was swinging them at her sides. It was like she was really pissed and in a hurry to get away from somebody or someplace."

"Was she Navajo?" asked Cora.

"No, she was white. In fact she was really white, her dress, her hair, everything."

"I think you saw a chindi, brother." said Wolf, who was suddenly uncharacteristically serious.

"What's a chindi?" asked Uncas.

"Chindi is the Navajo word for ghost. There was nobody else back there but us. If that girl was real, we would have seen her. In fact, you would have seen her walking long before you finally did spot her since this road is pretty straight. And there is nowhere that she could have disappeared to so quickly." his brother explained.

"A ghost? In broad daylight?" asked Cora.

"Sure. They don't just show up at midnight like everybody thinks. You can see them anytime. The Navajos are cousins to us Apaches and our lands are near each other. We've traded stories with them about the strange things our people have seen over the years. This land is old and has a violent past. A lot of unexplainable things happen out here."

A shiver went down Uncas's spine as he continued driving. "She looked real enough." he thought to himself, but then again, there was something odd about her. Something that said she shouldn't be here.

"Well, this trip is off to an interesting start. We've encountered our first ghost!" said Alice, trying to cheer up her husband who still looked a bit shaken. "I wonder what else is going to happen?"

In no hurry to reach their destination, the travelers made several stops along the way for sightseeing. When they finally reached Tuba City it was early evening. Stopping at the local supermarket, they stocked up on food and any other supplies they felt they might need, not knowing what would be waiting for them at the house.

As Uncas and Wolf loaded the groceries into the back of the vehicle, Cora noticed a old black pickup truck with a camper on the truck bed parked in a corner of the parking lot. Two men appeared to be selling something from the back of the camper to a third man. All three were white men, the two from the pickup dressed in grubby jeans and tee shirts, the third man looking uncomfortably out of place in a dark grey suit. Grey Suit handed one of the men an envelope and while the other man put several large boxes into the trunk of Grey Suit's luxury sedan.

"What's going on over there?" asked Wolf as he came up beside Cora.

"Just a couple of guys selling something out of their camper. I wonder what that man bought?"

"Dunno. Well, whatever they were doing, they're all leaving now." said Wolf as Grey Suit drove off, followed by the men in the pickup. As he watched to them leave, Wolf took note of the make and model of both vehicles. Something about that whole little scene struck him as odd.

"What's up?" asked Uncas, noticing the look on Wolf's face.

"Nothing!" he replied with a smile. "Let's get going. We need to find the house before it gets dark."

Pulling out of the parking lot, Uncas 'called out' to his brother. Both shared a unique ability to communicate telepathically, something their mother attributed to their being identical twins. They also shared each others pain and always received the same injuries, which nearly killed them both once.

"Ok, what's going on? You've got that look in your eyes that you get when you're hunting." Uncas silently asked Wolf.

"That little deal going on back in parking lot just seemed strange. Who wears a suit and drives a car like that out here?"

"Somebody with a lot more money than we've got. It's none of our business anyway, this isn't our jurisdiction. You've been working in the Sheriff's Department for too long. You're not happy unless you're on the trail of something. We're both off duty and on vacation, remember?" said Uncas. "Besides, we're Search and Rescue, not Criminal Investigation. That's Duncan's job."

After driving south of Tuba City for another twenty minutes, they turned off onto a dirt road and followed it for several more miles. More of a dirt track than a road, they had to drive very slowly over the rough ground which was full of rocks and deep ruts. At one point a handful of free range cattle stood in their way, refusing to move. Only after Uncas got out of the SUV and chased them away were they able to continue. Alice smiled as she remembered Uncas chasing the horses the day they first met.

Making their way along the dirt track, they had to cross three separate dry washes, which was very tricky. Wolf had to negotiate the SUV at an angle down the steep banks and back up the other side, all the while maintaining a steady speed without stopping or else they would get stuck in the deep loose sand in the riverbed.

"There's no getting to and from this place in a hurry, that's for sure." said Uncas. "Start watching for a wooden post with a tire around it. It should be over here on the left." After driving for another five minutes, Alice spotted the marker.

"There it is!" she said, pointing toward a post with a tire propped up against the front of it.

Turning down another dirt track that led past the post, they drove for another mile, following the track around a low mesa. Rounding the other side of the mesa, they saw the house backed up against it. It was a small, Government Issue ranch style house with a wooden deck on the front and some small solar panels on the roof, which the homeowner's family pitched in to buy for her. A couple of pinion trees grew next to the left side of the house, providing welcomed shade. Another octagonal shaped building made of logs with a dome shaped sod roof was nearby, along with a ramada made of wooden poles, two small storage sheds and a large corral. Called camps by the Navajos, the house and outbuildings were well taken care of.

"Well, be it ever so humble, this is our home. At least for the next eight days it is." said Uncas.

"I love it!" said Alice. "What an adventure! We're going to have such fun!"

Uncas took the house key that his friend had given him out of his pocket and opened the front door. The house was very tiny but cozy and consisted of a livingroom with a bathroom behind it, a kitchen in the back of the house and two bedrooms off to the left, with a big wood stove just in front of the front door. The kitchen had a propane cooktop and a small refrigerator. Wolf flicked a light switch on the wall and a large pedestal floor fan started to spin. Checking the refrigerator next, he found it was also working and a large stockpot full of mutton stew was inside along with a note:

Made the stew before I left

this morning. Knew you'd

all be hungry and tired when

you got here. Thanks for

house sitting for me.

Love,

Annie xxoo

"At least we have some electricity, thanks to those solar panels. And it looks like Don's mom arranged dinner for us." said Wolf.

"Ohhh! How sweet of her to do that!" said Cora.

After unloading the SUV, the two couples sat out on the front deck to eat the mutton stew while enjoying a magnificent sunset. Except for the mesa directly behind the house, the land around the camp was flat and stretched for miles in any one direction to more distant mesas. Not another home was in sight anywhere.

"You were right, Fox." said Wolf. "This place sure is private. You could walk around naked out here and nobody would ever see you. Hey! Maybe while we're here we could….."

"NOOO!" was the unanimous chorus from the sisters.

Looking at his grinning brother, Wolf gave a shrug. "Can't say I didn't try."

Exhausted from the long day of driving and sightseeing, Uncas and Wolf went to bed as soon as it was dark. Alice and Cora soon followed after they washed the dishes and put them away. Turning off the kitchen light and joining their husbands in their respective bedrooms, neither of the sisters noticed a light moving in the distance near one of the mesas.

*Author's Note: I wanted to set the scene for this story by describing the house and the land, which will come into play in future chapters. While this is not a ghost story, it is going to be peppered with actual paranormal experiences that my boyfriend and I have each experienced over the years. Since my boyfriend is Navajo, I am very familiar with life on the reservation and the camp that I have our honeymooners staying at is actually based on his late mother's camp. The town of Shelter Rock and the solar panels and refrigerator are of my creation for the story. The actual home does not have electricity and, until fairly recently, did not have running water. By the way, my boyfriend's mother lived there by herself until she was in her early 90's. Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoy this story. Reviews are much appreciated. May you always walk in beauty! (Navajo blessing)