Forget Me Not

Chapter Seven

By the time Ben and Joan reached her second camp, it was starting to threaten to rain again. Ben followed Joan through the bushes into a clump of trees and then watched as Joan dismounted and moved some shrubbery aside to reveal a cavern. She stepped aside still holding the reigns to her horse in her hand. "There's enough room in there for our horses." She nodded towards the entry, as she looked up at the sky. Ben dismounted and led Buck into the cavern.

Ben looked around as Joan lit a lamp that set on a rock table that sat off to his left. There was a bed off to his right and rock shelves next to it. A fire pit was in the middle of the cavern and at the back was a place to keep the horses. That is, keep them if it was raining. There were even a couple of pictures hanging on the cavern walls; they were being held in place by natural curves in the rock cavern walls. Since the place didn't have an overly heavy smell of manure, Ben assumed Joan kept her horse among the clump of trees when the weather permitted.

"I'll take care of the horses." Joan held out her hands. Ben hesitated only because he'd always taken care of the horses. After a few seconds, he handed her the reins. She told him as she led the horses toward the back of the cavern. "Make yourself at home. You might be here longer than either of us wants, if another storm hits." Joan said as she removed the saddles and then attached feed bags to their heads.

He walked over to the rock shelves he was surprised to see the works of men like William Shakespeare, John Milton and Sir Thomas Browne, sitting on the bottom and middle shelves. Above the shelves hung a wooden sign read; *A proverb is no proverb to you till life has illustrated it ~ John Keats ,and off to his left another one read; The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy, but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain. ~ John Keats. Both signs were hanging in the same manner the pictures were.

It puzzled Ben to no end. How could someone who had obviously continued educating herself choose to live in such a place? That is, on a regular basis? Ben didn't understand it, but he wanted to. That is, he wanted to know what had happened to make it so Joan had chosen to live the way she was, or appeared to be living anyway.

"You can read anything you like, Benjamin." Joan said as she finished with the horses and walk back up towards the front of the cavern. "Like I said; might as well make yourself at home." She slipped around a natural bend in the cavern that held a small hidden 'room' and shocked Ben by hauling out two rocking chairs.

Joan chuckled at the expression on his face, as she set the chairs near the fire pit and began to build a fire. "I found them a couple of months ago. Took a bit, but I managed to get them up here. It felt good to have something besides rock to sit on," She chuckled.

Ben couldn't stand it any longer. He just had to get his answers. "Why Joan? If you are going to make this place as much like the white world as possible, why not simply live in the white world?" His confusion showed in his turned down eyebrows and shoulders which moved upwards, as he turned the palms of his hands up.

Joan smiled and let out a soft laugh, as she worked on getting the fire going. She knew he would assume she lived in her campsites regularly. That is; that she was living with this way with every intention of continuing to do so. "I do not intend to live my days out here, Benjamin." She looked towards the hidden opening of the cavern and then at Ben. "But after I left my friends, Paul and Annie, I had to have someplace to stay until I decided what to do next. I needed some place where I could be completely by myself to do that. Don't ask me why; it's just the way it is." Then, looking at the signs on the rock wall, she added softly, "Call it my place of uncertainty if you wish…" she said as she looked at him and smiled, "Now, let's talk of other things. Like what do to do about your situation, those men looking for you and your sons." She sat back in the rocker and looked back at Ben.

They had to decide to how to handle this mess they found themselves in. That being the case, the two continued talking. After deciding that, as much as they hated it, they would stay where they were for at least a week. There were plenty of supplies in the cavern, plus a stream nearby. If they were lucky, the two men would give up on searching for him and just leave. After that decision was made Ben tried to get her to tell him about the time immediately after her departure.

Joan stood up and walked to the front of the cavern moving the shrubbery just enough to do more than let air through the few small holes that could barely be seen. It was still threatening to rain. But, by the time Joan answered him, Ben was standing next to her.

Joan felt his presence, but kept her eyes on the ugly clouds in the sky. "What is done is done. I survived, I learned and I grew. You can see that for yourself, and I have acknowledged my fault in leaving." She looked at Ben and asked with an expression of one who just wanted to leave the past behind her. "Why worry about it now?"

Ben, who again found himself with the strongest feeling there was something else she needed to talk about but wasn't, put a hand on her shoulder and answered simply, "Because I care about you."

Joan said nothing, as she turned her attention back to the clouds in the sky and the fact that another storm was rolling in.

oOo

Adam, aware of the storm that was rolling in, had found himself with no choice, but to go home and wait. By the time he walked in the door, his brothers, Sheriff Coffee and nine other men were in the living room. Adam threw his hat on his father's desk and joined the group as they discussed the best way to continue. .

"I don't like it, Adam." Roy said as he watched the rain begin to fall. It's like I was telling Little Joe when he came to my office, Trace Hilman was found dead with an arrow in his back near your camp by a couple of men traveling through the area. They brought him in hours before Joe came to my office. Up until your brother showed up, we thought the camp belonged to Trace."

"That arrow tells me a renegade Paiute might be involved in this!" Howard, a local small time rancher, snapped.

"No," Adam shook his head, "There are no Paiute on our land right now. I know that much. Once this rain stops, just split up and act like you're hunting, fishing or whatever. Pa's out there somewhere. We'll stay here until we hear from the kidnappers." He would have just said he'd return to the spot where he'd left the money but he was sure it would have already been taken by the kidnappers by the time he got there.

The men didn't like it but, since Hoss and Little Joe sided with Adam, they went along with it. They would wait to start their search until after the rain stopped.

*John Keats (pron.: 31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English Romantic poet