An apple sized rock burst into exploded fragments against the blade Dark Cloud was thrusting at the greenhorn. In mid tackle, the Cherokee chief lost his grip on his weapon from the rock Skunk had thrown and it went flying out of his reach. Adams grabbed both of the crazed man's hands, and kept them away from his throat as they grappled. Finally, he got a foot on Dark Cloud's stomach and shoved him away into a stumbling back pedal.
Skunk shouted when Nakoma moved to stop the attack. "Stop! It is my place to show others my father's weaknesses! I will not let him harm any of you." he said out loud. "He is sick in his mind. And I must be his son to the end."
"Skunk!" Sai-i-qua-yi told her brother. "Be careful!"
Dark Cloud was beyond rational. He ignored the twins and eyed up Adams again as Sioux braves circled near to keep things civil during Skunk's challenge for leadership. "You are a plague, Mountain Man. You are the cause of all our suffering!" the Cherokee Chief growled.
Mad Jack held Bear Grass' shoulders, terrified for Adams, to keep her safe.
Enraged at Dark Cloud, Ben appeared like an apparition and reared up tall on both of his hind legs as he walked towards Dark Cloud's back. The Sioux chief's blood shot eyes widened when he saw the Great Bear looming over him. He took a step back, two.. Then his arms began to pinwheel. He found himself losing his footing on Mother River's bank over a long cliff's drop off over a set of rapids rushing far below. He instantly fell backwards in the face of Ben's threat display, over the edge, but then barely caught himself by both sets of finger tips on the rocky lip. His legs dangled as he clung precariously over space.
Grizzly Adams gave a cry as he lunged forward, offering a hand to the endangered Cherokee chief. "Take my hand, Dark Cloud!"
Skunk walked slowly to where his father hung, below his feet. "No, Adams. It is not his wish." he said, his face hard but calm. He knelt and held out his own hand to his father. "If you are strong enough, you can save yourself from falling. Let me help you lead." he told him.
Dark Cloud snarled and used the last of his strength and hate to try and drag Adams over the side by his shirt. Ben knocked the greenhorn free and growled angrily, punching out at the chief. Both the bear and old Indian man fell away and down, far down, into the frothing chaotic waters below, and disappeared, embraced in each other's arms.
"Ben! Oh, no, Ben!" Adams screamed into the roar of the water which had claimed them both. He gasped and turned away from the spot far below as he turned to face the others. He grasped his chest in sudden pain as he stood in shock, and disbelief. "Oh..hhh. " he gurgled, and he began to sway bonelessly.
Nakoma and Mad Jack were instantly at his side as Adams fell to his knees in the grip of a huge, numbing heart attack.
"Adams! What's wrong?" The trapper's voice was frantic. "It's his heart!" He tried to hold his best friend up.
But Adams didn't see him. "...Ben? Why did you have to go and do- ?" Grizzly Adams whispered.. The breath left his body for the last time there in the heart of the bright meadow, softly. The pain was gone. Then he collapsed into light in the midst of the total darkness rushing up at him, and he left his beloved mountain and friends behind.
"No, no..." pleaded the old mountain trapper. He knew a fatal heart spasm when he saw one. Mad Jack looked up at Nakoma, his face stricken as Seven began to bray in grief at the scent of Adam's passing. "He can't be... can't be dead, Nakoma. He was just here.." mumbled the old trapper, his stunned eyes suddenly blinded by tears. He dragged Adam's head into his lap and held his lax face close to his own, as he began to cry.
Gray Stone knelt by the greenhorn solemnly, and began to keen softly in the way of his people for one who had fallen in battle. And Nakoma pulled out his braid to free loose hair to honor his old blood brother silently. Around him, the rest of the tribe joined in their leader's and Nakoma's mourning, which would go on for hours to come.
It was full dark and Nakoma and Jack were still sitting by Adam's body by the honor fire, when an inquiring rumble of a bear questioning people greeted them. It was Ben, limping, sore, but alive.
Jack held out his arms to the old grizzly and welcomed him sadly. "I knew you wouldn't die, you crazy old furball." he said, burying his head in Ben's shaggy shoulder as the bear began tiny distressed moans and sniffles over Adams. "Our greenhorn went and died, Ben. I'm so sorry. It was the shock that killed him. He didn't know you'd protect him by risking your own life.."
"..Urghh? Nnggghhhh hhhh.." The graying bear's eyes widened as he recognized his heart companion's death and his great head turned, finally heeding another call from the mountain. It was the call of the wild, beckoning to him as it always did. But Adams no longer needed him, so he obeyed his instincts and finally, relentlessly, became a part of the grand scheme of things... and Nature. Ben carefully removed the gentle paw he had placed on Adam's shoulder, and the whole tribe watched as he slowly loped away from man, for the rest of his life.
Gray Stone, Skunk, and Bear Grass, began to sing the song of the Great Bear as Ben left them forever to join up with others of his kind.
"So what happens now?" Bear Grass said to her brother, the new young chief of the Cherokee.
Skunk was solemn, still tired from the tragic events of the night before. "I will honor what I have learned from your new tribe. There's no need for the Sioux and the Cherokee to stay enemies. I think I'll lead us, ...to follow Red Sun and Gray Stone, in befriending Adam's people. If it's true that there are more of them than all Plains people put together, then we cannot avoid our fate. We can only...survive in the best way we know how." he promised his sister.
Sighing, she leaned her head against his head as they watched Nakoma's people build Adam's funeral scaffolding so he could remain a part of the sky and his mountain, in the afterlife. Below the raised platform, Nakoma was assembling a prayer bundle wrapped in doeskin. Mad Jack had already left for the settlement to share the sad news of Adam's passing to his daughter Peg.
"I will miss him." said Sai-i-qua-yi. "I did not know him long, but I feel that I knew him well."
"Mm hmm." Skunk agreed. Above their heads, a red tailed hawk greeted the day in a joyful piercing clarion, as she soared overhead.
Mad Jack quietly closed the bedroom door where Adam's grown daughter, Peg had retired to cry herself out in private over the loss of her father.
Sitting at the kitchen table, the old trapper sipped coffee and mulled over his thoughts.
::It still seems so unreal. The end of his story. The end of their legend. But I've come to a decision. I think I'll write it all down, just the way it happened, to best honor my friend Adams.. and his beloved Ben. It's up to me, an old codger whose.. penmanship's second rate, and whose memory is even less than that at times. But Adams always said it's best to get along with folks. Even if you didn't like them. But it's true. He's right. Sometimes, I don't like myself. So, I'll have at it, and we'll see what happens.::
The winter snows broke Mad Jack out of his melancholy mood. He was in the trapper's cabin at Beaver Meadow and Nakoma's blood brother's bundle was finally dry. It was exactly six months since Adams had moved on to the Great Beyond. According to Nakoma's tribe, time enough had passed to gift to his kin, the tribe's legacy, that Nakoma had given Adams by the waters of Mother River on the day that they had become Blood Brothers.
Jack was calmer now and warm from the fire in the shanty's fireplace so he worked his fingers and unwrapped the soft black doe skin. Inside, was a necklace made of jasper in the shape of a Great Bear, withered sage branches, a knife that was still showing signs of having been blooded, and... Adam's silver coin bracelet. The old trapper's eyes watered when he realized this last addition had to be new. He sniffled as he placed the greenhorn's heirloom on his own wrist proudly. "Like you, I will never take it off. Maybe it'll make me a better writer in sharing your legacy, Adams. Thank you, Nakoma. I will cherish these presents for the rest of my life."
Narration by the trapper, mountain man:
"They call me Mad Jack. And if there's anybody in these mountains that knows the real story of James Adams, that'd be me. So I'm puttin' it down into writin' just the way it happened in hopes of setting the records straight. My friend Adams was accused of a crime he didn't commit. So he escaped into the mountains, leaving behind the only life that he ever knew. Now that wilderness out there ain't no place for a green horn and his chances of survivin' were... mighty slim. Weren't no time at all before he was beaten down, ragged and nearly starved. Along about then, he come upon a grizzly bear cub, all alone and helpless. Now Adams knew that little critter couldn't survive without his help so he started right down that cliff, risking his own life, to save it. *chuckling* Now that cub took to Adams right off. And that was when he discovered, he had a... special kind of way with animals. They just come right up to him like he was a natural part of the wilderness. But that bear cub, he was extra special. And as he growed he became the best friend Adams ever had and together,... they became a legend."
Series Title Songtrack sung by Thom Pace "Deep inside the forest is a door into another land,
Here is our life and home,
We are staying, here forever in the beauty of this place all alone,
We keep on hoping...
Maybe, there's a world where we won't have to run, and Maybe, there's a time we'll call our own,
Living free in harmony and majesty,
Take me home,
Take me home.
Walking through the land where every living thing is beautiful,
why does it have to end.
We are calling.. oh so sadly on the whisper of the wind as we send,
a dying message...
Maybe, there's a world where we won't have to run, and Maybe, there's a time we'll call our own,
Living free in harmony and majesty,
Take me home,
Take me home."