The Blood of Champions: Immortal Blood, #2

By Alan Kern

How would you respond if you were time-traveled back to the 19th-century where savage natives were about to offer you up in a sacrifice to their god, and then you were suddenly rocketed forward to a time where mad scientists attempted to inject you with an experimental serum that would transform you into a transhuman slave ruled by artificial intelligence? I know, a lot to think about or even imagine. But thankfully, you won't have to because the Appleby family has already experienced all of these very things for you in this 327-page character-driven sequel to A Wife Worth Living, The Blood of Champions, enabling you to confront these challenges while perched comfortably in the safety of your over-stuffed recliner, sipping on a hot pumpkin-spiced latte.  

What sinister plans do the global elites have for hydrogel biosensors, and are they just smoking their socks to believe they can turn humans into controllable microchips? Why were Nazi doctors not prosecuted and brought to America after the war to continue their human experiments?  Why were government agitators posing as political demonstrators at a Capitol building rally, and why were hundreds of innocent patriots arrested as "domestic terrorists?" And how completely on the snout was it that hospitals became the most dangerous places to be during a pandemic?  And why did so many people believe that wearing a paper mask would protect them from a mysterious killer virus?

And further, why did a man who looks like Danny DeVito believe he could rule the world, and how could the Applebys trust a preacher who looked like Richard Nixon? How did Roger learn that he was kidnapped as a baby and given a fake wife and a fake name, and how did Magnus McCabe, a nephew of the notorious bad guy Henrik, come to live with the Applebys and rival Oliver for Heidi's affections? And why did an Indian chief believe he descended from Mr. Bojangles?

And finally, how is it possible that a man who died over a century earlier still make random appearances and deliver messages from Above to the Applebys about the upcoming epic battle between Good and Evil? All these questions and many more will be answered in this knuckle-gripping, hair-on-fire, second installment of the Immortal Blood series.    

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alan Kern
• Release date: Sep 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9798223787518

Alan Kern

Alan Kern was a Full Gospel pastor and missionary in Canada and South Africa for over thirty years. While pioneering churches in Canada, he became acquainted with the excesses of the “Toronto Blessing” movement. Invited to preach on the subject in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, home of the 1950s Latter Rain phenomenon, he interviewed several of its elderly, disillusioned former members as a part of his extensive research into this movement. Later, sent as a missionary to post-apartheid South Africa, he and his family established a tent church in the Port Elizabeth township of Zwide, during the Mandela transition years. Having personally experienced an uncontrollable “laughing” manifestation in a Cape Town church, he also witnessed first-hand the harmful effects on congregations seduced into the “holy laughter” movement. During his eight years of ministry in Port Elizabeth, he also hosted the live, radio talk show, Talk Back, which highlighted the dangers of the rapidly growing River Movement. When Elephants Fight is his first novel in a planned trilogy, exploring spiritual abuse and the challenges to overcome its devastating consequences. The author spent thirty years in a heavy-shepherding, legalistic church organization. Later, he became a substance abuse counselor for a Gospel rescue mission. Now, retired from active ministry, he lives with his beautiful wife Laurie in Oregon, while they explore the Caribbean as often as possible.  He is currently penning a sequel entitled, Towards a Crouching Lion. A third book: A Monkey’s Beauty Contest will complete the trilogy.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

WHEN THE TIDE IS IN

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were.

But without it we go nowhere.

–Carl Sagan

The five captives huddled together in the cold darkness, braced against the hand-split, red cedar timbers of a small plank house in a heavily wooded forest on the northwest Oregon coast. There were no windows to let in the morning light, save for a small, oil-papered one near the top in the back. They were tied together like ducks in a row—–Roger, Grete, Oliver, and down the line, largest to smallest, but Grete managed to pull her son Lucas across two laps to sit beside her. They were shivering, sitting on sea otter pelts that felt as silky as anything they’d known back in their own time. It was their only comfort, protecting them from the cold, damp, dirt floor. And if it wasn’t for the nauseating odor of the pelts, they would have gladly wrapped themselves in them against the crisp morning air.

There’d been a fire earlier, built in a sunken circle in the center of the shack-like structure, with a hole in the ceiling to allow some of the smoke to casually escape. Now, all that remained was the lingering vapors, gagging the frightened Appleby family and adding to their misery, having to suck in its suffocating fumes. The pungent odor of over-ripe salmon hanging from the rafters, that permeated the stale air with a rancid, ammonia-like stench, made breathing a necessary evil.   

They didn’t talk much, hungry, traumatized, and not so subtly fuming at Roger, blaming him for being time traveled back from the twenty-first century to the nineteenth. How could he have known his Ultimate Plus Miracle Blood would have this effect? And even if he had, he wouldn’t have been able to stop it.

It occurred to his new wife, Grete, that there were far more attractive settings they could have been dropped into than with the most backward, unimpressive, unheroic tribe of American Indians known as the Killamooks. And she was not shy about expressing it.

For instance, there was the mighty Chippewa, the most feared of all the tribes of the Great Lakes. Their language was the most common of tribal tongues, which enabled them to trade more freely with the French. Chief Sky, one of their leaders, once captured an eagle, which eventually became the symbol for one of the Army's most famous combat units: the 101st Airborne, also known as the Screaming Eagles.

Then, there was the Apaches. They were the first Indians to ride horses. Powerful, brave, aggressive. Like, who hasn’t heard of Geronimo and Cochise? Or the Nez Perce tribe, who once owned the largest herd of horses in North America and were famous for breeding the Appaloosa.

Then, there’s the Cherokee. They were so impressive that a female political candidate, who once ran for the presidency of the United States, claimed to be one of them. But that didn’t come to nothing after they discovered that she was just another white girl from Oklahoma. The Cherokees were the most literate of all the tribes, thanks to their brilliant scholar, Sequoyah, who invented their own written language, enabling them to read and write in their native tongue.

Finally, there was the mighty Sioux. The bravest of theirs was allowed to wear a grizzly bear claw necklace. What doesn’t that say about them? Under the leadership of such legends as Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, they decimated General Armstrong Custer’s cavalry at the famous Battle of the Little Bighorn.

Or they could have been transported back to the 1849 California gold rush, where they could have panned for gold. Or maybe they could have met Lewis and Clark as they trekked across the young nation and discovered the Northwest Passage. Or they could have witnessed the Industrial Revolution, hobnob with the likes of Mark Twain, Albert Einstein, and Charles Dickens, or even Arthur Conan Doyle in the days when he created the Sherlock Holmes novels. They could have voted for Abraham Lincoln and witnessed the abolition of slavery. Perhaps they could have attended a baseball game and watched the likes of Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. They could have taken in a gospel tent revival with Billy Sunday. They could have witnessed Jack Jackson becoming the first African American heavyweight boxing champion. They might even have settled for witnessing the fast-rising popularity of hand puppets. Anything but this, she was heard to say.

But no, they had to be plunged into a culture of people who flattened their newborn babies' heads by tying their temples to a board, giving them permanent slanted foreheads. It likely damaged their prefrontal cortexes, thus, diminishing their capacities for compassion, guilt, and shame. But to them, it was a good thing because they believed a slanted forehead increased their attractiveness and that people with rounder heads were ugly.

They were bowlegged, not from riding horses like you would imagine from the old Westerns, but because they squatted a lot. They were stubbly built, with flat feet that were practically webbed, better fitting them for digging out clams in the mud. They had broad, fleshy noses and wide mouths and wore beaded, cloth bandages wrapped tightly around their ankles, which caused their legs to swell up grotesquely. They took their native religion quite seriously and showed no tolerance for people of other opinions. When unbelievers were captured, they were usually killed.

The first thing Grete noticed after being captured was that she was completely healed from her stroke, courtesy of the Miracle Blood. The second thing she noticed was that these savages, as she referred to them, smelled like rotting fish and toe jam and had the social skills of a tiger shark, who, according to a story Roger once read about them, even in the womb, their siblings kill each other in order to survive.

At least, that was Grete’s loudly expressed opinion of them. Not that she had a history of racial prejudice, growing up in south Brooklyn, a virtual United Nation of nationalities. Ethnic backgrounds meant nothing to her—she pretty much hated everyone equally. Despite being nearly raped by an illegal Middle Eastern Muslim, she didn’t appear to have any prejudices against them. And her best and only friend from school had been a lesbian, who unsuccessfully hit on her. And so, this side of her, this harsh critique of this Native American tribe, was uncharacteristic, but at least more understandable, given her present circumstances.

But there was one thing about the Killamooks that Grete was not yet aware of, something so redeeming that it would cause her later to reverse her entire criticism of them. And that was this. By fiercely defending their harbor, dubbed Murderer’s Harbor by Captain Robert Gray, against the advancing white newcomers, the Killamooks became the last tribe to give in to the settlers, the last outpost of Native American culture in America. Had smallpox not defeated them, who knows if they wouldn't still be commanding its shores today?

Her new husband of one week, Roger, and her son, Oliver, sixteen, were less judgmental but just as miserable, as they all sat in the dark and chilly plank house, guarded by two young women who were slaves of the Killamooks. Heidi, seventeen, brought along from northern Minnesota in their RV to be Grete’s caregiver after her stroke, had wanted to speak to the young women in her broken Chippewa, but that didn’t amount to anything. Young Lucas, six, was the only one who seemed in high spirits, saying he was hoping to meet that Killermook boy, as he called him, who had first spotted him in the woods, where they had been attacked and captured just three hours earlier.

Mom, where are we? Are we going to be alright? Lucas asked.

She lifted her six-year-old onto her lap and held him tight. We’re going to be okay, Lukey. Roger is going to get us out of this, aren’t you, Roger? she said, lifting her head and giving him a look, one that revealed a side of his new bride he hadn't seen yet. 

We’ll be back to normal real soon, he assured everyone. When I went back last time, it only lasted a few hours, he said, pulling Grete closer and kissing her forehead. 

Went back where? Oliver asked.

Best if Roger doesn’t tell you about that right now, she said. This is confusing enough.

Heidi, are you okay? Grete asked.

Yes, besides needing to use the bathroom. Or whatever they call it in this time.

Roger thought about how he once helped Billy the Kid escape by using a bathroom break, but with the five of them, he quickly dismissed it as improbable.

Suddenly, the elk skin door flap of the plank house was pushed aside—the door consisting of a series of parallel walls with a small gap between them. The five captives stiffened as someone slipped quietly into the room in the dark. Lucas let out a shriek, and Grete pulled him closer. It was impossible to know who it was until they heard the voice of a young woman as she quickly brushed past them, muttering quietly, as if she was either praying or complaining about something. She squatted beside a fire pit and struck two stones together until they produced a spark, but it wasn’t generating a flame. She hurried out the way she came in and soon returned with another woman, a little older. They rushed by the frightened hostages, arguing in whispers.

Roger would have been happy to offer them his Gerber Bear Grylls Survival Series Fire Starter, but, of course, that was impossible since he left it behind in his RV, which now no longer existed, and they wouldn’t be invented for almost another hundred years.

The older girl scratched two stones together, quickly producing a spark that flared up and inflamed the dry pine needles and grass. Then, she bent over and blew on the struggling flame until it ignited some cedar shavings, and soon it leaped up to the dry timber. 

From the light of the fire, the captives could see that the two women were teenage girls. Both had smooth brown skin and long black hair. They wore knee-length grass skirts with thin leather capes fastened around their shoulders. Their feet were bare. The younger one made no effort to cover her breasts, which were fully exposed whenever she moved, while the older one was more modest. 

They walked over softly and squatted before the white prisoners, who looked even whiter against the copper tone color of the girls. Resting on their haunches, they stared at the five strangers as if viewing them in a zoo exhibit. The younger girl giggled and covered her mouth when she saw Roger’s shorts and bare legs. She touched Heidi’s snow-white hair but then quickly pulled it back, looking at her hand as if the whiteness might have clung to her skin. When she spotted Grete’s red streak in her blonde hair, she recoiled and spoke rapidly in frightened tones to the older girl.

The younger girl’s cape slipped from her shoulders, exposing burn marks on her arms, and when she turned to cover herself, the light shone on her face, revealing a fresh gash down her right cheekbone. She noticed Grete’s sympathetic eyes and smiled. She pointed to herself and said, Leena.

The older girl, named Chenoa, slapped Leena’s arm and harshly scolded her. She yanked her up and pushed her through the elk hide door flap and pulled her down beside her. Why you talk to white people, Leena? Chenoa whispered, angrily, in her broken Killamook dialect. If Wakila hear you, he beat you again. Then he makes trouble for both of us.

The devil woman has good eyes, Leena said. She smile at me like a mother.

You stupid girl. She not a devil. She just white.

You see her hair is white, but she has the red devil too. But I don’t care. She nice. But she has small feet and her head is round. Not good for finding a man. 

Your people have such strange things, Chenoa said.

You always say your people are better than us. So, you should go back to them if our ways are not good for you.

You know I cannot do that. I am a slave like you. Quiet, here comes Wakila, she whispered, turning away. He must not see us talking.

Wakila, nineteen, was given the lowly job of managing the slave girls, made even lower because that responsibility was usually performed by a woman. His spirit guide was a grizzly bear, and so he complained at being given such a demeaning role and took obvious delight in taking out his frustration on the slave girls. He plaited his hair into a long single braid that reached down to his buttocks, and he wore a necklace made of hammered metalwork and some odd Chinese coins. He had a pendant in each ear that dangled pieces of walrus tusk ivory. The two crouching girls sunk even lower as he approached them, wearing only a buckskin breechcloth.

Why you lazy and not gathering wood for the fires? he said, kicking dust at them with his bare foot. We must be warm for the night and rested for the journey tomorrow. We will travel for two days.

Wakila suddenly struck Leena with the blunt end of his spear, toppling her over in the dirt. You, go get more wood for fires, he said. You, he said to Chenoa, stay with slaves.

Leena hobbled off in search of wood. Wakila watched her disappear into the tree line before leaving for another plank house. When she was sure no one was watching, Chenoa slipped back through the elk skin door, carrying several coarse blankets, handspun from the hairs of mountain goats and Salish Wool dogs. She sat cross-legged in front of the five captives.

My name is Elizabeth. My Salish name is Chenoa, which means ‘white dove.’ But I’m known as Lizzy, she said in perfect English, handing over the blankets. 

The five stared at her long enough to make everyone uncomfortable until Roger finally spoke. How is it that you speak such perfect English?

I am born to a white man, and my mother is of the Clatsop tribe. My father was killed two years ago by the white people—they didn't think it right for a white man to be married to an Indian. My mother and I were captured by these Killamooks and made slaves.

Are we slaves now too? Grete asked.

Yes, and very valuable ones. White slaves are rare and are very good for trading.

Like baseball cards? Lucas asked.

But they will not trade you. They are planning a different purpose for you, Lizzy said.

What plans? Grete asked. What could be worse than being traded?

They are planning for a potlatch. They will meet with the southern Killamooks for this ceremony. It will be at a place called ‘The Bay of Five Rivers.’ Some call it ‘Murderer's Harbor.’ It is where the great Chief Kilchis lives.

I prefer the name, 'Bay of Five Rivers.' It has a much better ring to it, Roger said.

Yeah. And what’s a potlatch? Grete asked.

Lizzy looked away for a moment and then at Lucas. Her facial expression said, I’m not sure I want to answer that question in front of the little one.

When she didn’t respond, Roger asked again.

It is when, Lizzy began, cautiously, one tribe confesses to another tribe that they are wealthy. In their culture, this is a bad thing. So, they must now demonstrate that too many riches are wrong, and so they make a great fire and sacrifice their most valued ones. It is a thing of great honor.

The five of them stared again for a long time as if they were waiting for Lizzy to finish her story. If one could read their expressions, Roger’s and Grete’s revealed that they were slowly coming to a disturbing conclusion. Heidi’s was not far behind. Oliver looked at his mother and Roger and mimicked theirs. And Lucas, thankfully, had no idea what they were talking about.

Tomorrow morning, early, when the tide is in, we will travel in canoes for the ceremony. So, you see, I must help you escape, Lizzy said.

CHAPTER TWO

MISTER BOJANGLES

I knew a man Bojangles and he danced for you

In worn out shoes

Silver hair, a ragged shirt and baggy pants

The old soft shoe

He jumped so high

Then he lightly touched down.

—The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

––––––––

Roger remembered once reading a story of an event that took place in 1943 in Spearfish, South Dakota. A Chinook wind suddenly raised the temperature from -4 to 45 degrees Fahrenheit. That drastic change, a difference of 49 degrees, took place in just two minutes. But the wildest temperature change in American history, recorded over a twenty-four-hour period, took place on January 15, 1972, in Loma, Montana, where the thermometer jumped from -54 to +49, an incredible swing of 103 degrees. As staggering as these rapid changes were, Roger felt that having his family time traveled from crossing modern-day America in an RV to being captured by 19th century American Indians, to be even more of an extreme change.

At sunrise the next morning, Lizzy suddenly appeared through the elk skin door flap and squatted before the five captives.

They are coming now to take you to the potlatch.

How will we get there? Roger asked. 

They will put you in a canoe, a large one, that can go through the strong waters.

You make it sound like we’re just going to a potluck instead of a pot whatever you called it, Grete said to Lizzy as if she'd know what a potluck was. 

It’s a potlatch, Roger said.

Thank you for the interpretation. So, now you suddenly speak their language? Grete said to Roger, sarcastically.

It’s the Salish language, Lizzy said.

Well, thank the hell out of both of you, she said. Oh, by the way, that was a little French.

After an uncomfortable moment where no one spoke, Oliver finally asked. They’re not actually planning to, you know—

No, Roger said, glancing down at Lucas. She said something about trading baseball cards.

Hey, Grete said, I got it. Let's just Google it and see what they do at these potlatches. Maybe we're supposed to bring something. Oh, yeah, I forgot. That would be us.

Lizzy looked at the five of them for a while before finally speaking. Where do you people come from? I have never seen clothes like yours, even among white people.

Wait, I got this one, Grete said. We come from the planet Pluto. We have a spaceship just over that hill. And you’re welcome to fly away with us if you want.

Why is Mom acting so strange? Lucas asked to no one in particular. We don’t have a spaceship.

It’s okay, Lucas. Your mom is just telling a little joke, Roger said.

No, she’s not, Oliver said. She’s talking out of her mind like a crazy person.

Oh, I’m the crazy one here? I’m supposed to believe we’re not having some kind of massive hallucination—maybe we ate the mushrooms out in the woods that day and now we’re tripping. That’s easier to believe than being kidnapped by a bunch of savage Indians. Oh, excuse me, she said to Lizzy, touching her arm, I’m supposed to call you ‘Native American,’ so you’ll feel better in the future after the government massacres most of you through disease, slavery, rape, and war.  And then, she said, grabbing Lizzy by the shoulders, Pocahontas here tells us we’re going to a big shindig somewhere, oh yeah, it’s called Murderer’s Harbor. Hey, what could go wrong there, right? And we’re going to be the special guests of some nineteenth-century lunatics, who believe that burning up whatever wealth they might have acquired, so they can continue to live like, oh, I don’t know, like bat crazy cavemen, that that is somehow a good thing. So, you tell me who’s the crazy one here?

No one spoke for a while, the only sound being a commotion of some sort just outside the plank house door. They heard Leena scream, and then an argument broke out between several of the men. The captives stiffened in fear until things settled down outside.

Sorry, Mom, I just thought you sounded like that time you and Roger smashed the wine bottles all over the kitchen table.

I remember that, Lucas said. It looked like blood everywhere. Just like the time when that man was shot in our garage.

Heidi, who’d only been given one line to speak thus far, looked a long time at the family she'd left her home for fifteen hundred miles and two centuries ago. If one could read the look on her face, it might have said something like, Well, I wanted a change of life and some adventure and travel, but perhaps I should have been more specific. But like in most cases when one attempts to read someone’s countenance, when they finally speak, you realize you shouldn’t have put so much confidence in such things. Better to just wait until they actually say something.

I just want you to know, she said, looking at her fellow captives, that joining your family was the best thing I’ve ever done.

They all looked at her as if noticing her for the first time.

My life was going nowhere. I had all this education, but I didn’t have any purpose or direction for it. And my parents were trying to set me up with this neighbor boy named Olger Dahl. Then, I would have been Heidi Dahl. I didn’t want to disappoint my parents, but I didn’t want to be a Heidi Dahl. So, you guys came along at just the right time.

You could be a Heidi Appleby, Lucas said, looking at Oliver. That doesn’t sound so funny.

Oliver brushed aside his blond hair, exposing his reddened face, a face that likely said, What is wrong with you? Why do you keep saying stupid things and embarrassing me? His facial expression, however, proved to be exactly what he was thinking because those were the very next words that came out of his mouth.

After another uncomfortable silence for all of them, Grete bailed him out. I’ve got a great idea, Roger. You could call up Billy the Kid and have him come and rescue us, right? I understand he owes you one.

Everyone laughed, but probably didn't know why.

We need to play nice with these people until we see a chance to escape, Roger said, choosing to avoid Grete's dig.

Lizzy began to speak, but Grete cut her off. Nice? You think I should be nice? I tried nice all my life, and look where I’m at today? Nice is overrated. Nice people don’t know how to deal with conflict or confrontation. Nice people can’t stand for truth. They can’t stand for anything except being nice, and you don’t know who they really are. Look at Lucifer. He came on all nice in the Garden, so they didn’t know who he really was. Look how that played out for everyone.

When Grete finally finished, Roger pulled her close and stroked her hair. I believe it's going to turn out just fine.

Any details?

No, I said I believe it, not how it's going to happen. That's up to God.

Yes, it would be good to pray to your god, Lizzy said. When we come to Murderer’s Harbor, it is very dangerous. I have heard that many canoes entering there have been lost in the strong waters.

Grete pulled Lucas closer to her on her lap and wrapped her arms around him tighter. Her body was trembling. Heidi rested her head on Grete’s shoulder, and she rested her head on Roger’s. Only Oliver was at a loss for what to do or say, but when he noticed Lizzy smiling at him, he didn’t look away.

Roger leaned in and kissed Grete’s ear.

She jerked away. What’s the matter with you, kissing my ear? she whispered loudly.

It looked like it needed a kiss.

You just keep getting weirder, don’t you?

Something like that.

How did you ever get me to marry you?

I ran your husband off the road, remember?

The elk hide door suddenly flipped up, and Leena came in carrying a large wicker basket made from woven spruce roots. She squatted before the hostages and handed Roger boiled strips of elk meat and Chinook salmon. He pulled the strips apart and passed them down the row, and without hesitation, they began filling their hungry mouths before their senses could object. They drank water from a sack made of buffalo intestines, again gulping quickly to avoid the urge to regurgitate. When they finished, Leena handed them a large kettle made from the bark of a Douglas fir, which contained a soup made from clams and acorns. She insisted that Roger drink from it first, and then he passed it along down the row as if they were participating in communion.

Just as they finished, the elk hide door flipped up again, and two young men dressed only in breechcloths rushed in. They spoke rapidly and directed Leena and Lizzy to leave. Lizzy politely protested and offered herself as an interpreter for the white people. The two men exchanged looks and words and then spoke roughly to her and shoved her toward the five captives.

They said that you must get up now and go with them, Lizzy said, addressing Roger.

One of the young men untied the whale tendon ropes that bound them together. Roger stood up unsteadily while one of the men grabbed Oliver and pulled him up. When the other tried to grab Heidi, Lizzy touched his arm and took Heidi’s hand and helped her up. Roger raised Lucas to his feet and then lifted Grete and hugged her. One of the Killamooks yelled at Lizzy and poked Roger in the back.

He says you must go now with them. No time for hugging, Lizzy said.

When Grete went to hug the others, one of the young men pushed her away and yelled words that were unprintable, even though the Applebys didn't understand a word of Salish. With one of the men leading and the other motioning for the others to follow, they filed out of the plank house. After spending the last thirty-six hours in near darkness, when the captives finally stepped out of the house, they had to shield their eyes from the sharp rays of the morning sun. 

As they were herded through the small village of several plank houses of various sizes, the community of young men, elders, women, and children stared at them as if they’d arrived from another planet. And the captives looked at them as if they were witnessing a scene from another century, which, of course, they were. Their collective expression said, Is this really happening, or is this just a very realistic dream, and soon we’ll wake up back in the safety of our RV?

The native’s expressions said something like, These white people are as out-of-place as a buffalo standing on a tepee, though with the confusion of language, the interpretation might not have been a perfect translation. One of the teen girls broke rank and ran up to Heidi, surrendering to the temptation to touch her snow-white braids. Heidi smiled and returned the gesture, running her fingers through the girl’s long black hair. The young native that was herding the captives from the rear, scolded the girl and pushed her away.

As they passed through the village of longhouses with gabled roofs of overlaid cedar planks, they were joined by other young men, some carrying baskets of food and others spears and bows. At the center of the village and just off to their left, they saw a fifteen-foot totem pole, carved and painted with various animals and human faces, attached to a large plank house as if it was a tall chimney. 

Stepping out from behind the totem was an old man wearing dark, baggy pants that were a little short, white socks, a button-up, collarless white shirt under a colorful vest, a black tattered suit jacket, and a pair of over-sized black shoes that were lifted off the feet of a dead white man. He had darker skin than the others and had long black hair that cascaded freely down around his shoulders. He wore a flattened top hat that sat crooked on his head. A lit pipe hung loosely out of his mouth; it was widely believed he was partial to peyote. If the captives