Peddler ran a little late the next day – there was no particular reason, other than more switching moves than normal, and they barely made it onto the yard tracks before Beepit came around the bend heading north. There’d been no real problem, because both trains were in contact with each other, but it was never good to hold Beepit up, either, because it impacted on a tired crew’s time in bed – and everybody switched jobs often enough that everybody knew it.

What Peddler running late meant was that Danny was a little later than he wanted getting to Debbie’s; she was ready to go when he pulled in. He was still in his work clothes, but he made a quick stop at the house to shower and change into decent clothes for a casual dinner with Blake and Jennifer. In Danny’s opinion, jeans and a T-shirt just didn’t cut it when you were having dinner with four millionaires and a doctor of literature. They made it to his oldest sister’s nice house on Point Drive a little before seven, and found Blake and Jennifer sitting on the front porch, sipping lemonade with a young couple.

"Right on time, you two don’t mess around," Jennifer laughed. "Let’s go through the introductions, and then we can get down to the good stuff. Danny and Debbie, this is Dr. Myleigh Harris, otherwise known as the Queen of the Celtic harp, and her boyfriend, Trey Hartwell."

Dr. Harris was a small woman, maybe an inch over five feet, Danny thought. She was good looking, with shoulder length dark hair, deeply tanned, wearing a short summer dress. "Jennifer," she protested, "I have told you repeatedly that Trey and I are but compatriots dealing with mutual business. I hardly think boyfriend and girlfriend are the proper terms to use."

"You know," Blake sighed, "I’ve heard that rant at least once a day from the both of them for almost a week now. I’ve also watched them. They’re lying. You can see it in their eyes."

Trey was taller, sandy haired, deeply tanned, wearing a pair of slacks and a golf shirt. He just shook his head and grinned at Blake’s remark, as Jennifer went on, "And these two are my brother Danny Evachevski and his girlfriend Debbie Elkstalker. At least, I think they’re admitting it."

"Congratulations, Jennifer," Danny grinned, seeing that she was in an up and hyper mood this evening. "I think you’re the first to call us that to our faces."

"But you’re not denying it, right?" Jennifer laughed.

Danny looked at Debbie, who looked just a little abashed as she said, "Well, no, we’re not."

"Come on, you two," Jennifer said, "find a seat, and you can get to know each other. I think every one of you is going to find the rest of you interesting. I know there’s some good stories to be told tonight."

"Are Phil and Brandy coming?" Danny said as he held a chair for Debbie.

"Oh, they’ll be along sooner or later," Jennifer sighed. "I suspect that Brandy is out in the driveway with a couple kids and a basketball, and Phil is looking for a whip to drive her inside to get her clothes changed. That’s what usually happens over at their house on any given evening this time of year. Anyway, just to get thing moving – Danny, I know I’ve mentioned Myleigh to you. She really is a master of the Celtic harp, and is a professor of English Literature at Marienthal College in Kansas City. Trey is a senior there, studying sound engineering. He spent four years in the Army before he went to college, so he’s a little beyond the typical college kid. Myleigh sort of plucked him out of the guide’s seat of a raft in the Grand Canyon to record what they’re turning into her latest album."

"I wasn’t a guide," Trey protested, "just a swamper, a helper, a rookie at that. There are some people down there that are real magicians at the oars."

"Just for a touch more background," Jennifer smiled, "Myleigh’s new album is mostly her idea and all a creation of her own, which Trey recorded live in the Grand Canyon the last part of last month and the first part of this month. They recorded a tremendous amount of music, most of which is amazingly good, and whittling it down to a single CD is the toughest musical job I could ever imagine."

"Again, I must protest," Myleigh said seriously. "I dare say that little of what Trey recorded is my music. I only feel that my harp, Blue Beauty, and I were instruments that the Canyon itself was playing. It was altogether a strange and eerie experience for me, for I somehow felt that the spirits of the Canyon, the world around me, and nature itself were all rolled into one and speaking to me."

Danny glanced at Debbie, to see that she was staring back, wide-eyed and slack jawed. Oh, yes, this was going to be an interesting evening. And whooo, boy does she use the language!

"I’ve heard you say that before," Jennifer grinned. "And it’s part of the reason that I wanted to have Debbie here tonight. I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know much about this, but I’ve heard her make some interesting comments about man’s relationship with nature."

"I don’t know about interesting," Debbie shrugged. "Danny and some of my friends and I happened to talk about it some over the weekend. Dr. Harris . . . "

"Please, Myleigh," the pert dark-haired woman smiled. "Should you take a literature class at Marienthal I would of course insist upon the normal formalities, but this is hardly the case. But I’m sorry, I should not have interrupted you. Please forgive me."

"No problem, Myleigh," Debbie grinned. "What I was starting to say was that your view of spirit and nature is not unlike that of the Indian. We see man and nature and spirit all as one and the same thing, not as separate things. Most people have to listen hard to hear the spirits, but apparently they spoke clearly to you. It must have been an exciting experience for you. I thoroughly understand your feeling that the Canyon was speaking to you. It was."

"Do you really think so?" Myleigh frowned. "I’m hardly a spiritual person. While I deeply enjoy and respect the music that was created through my presence, I’ve found the idea that I was having a supernatural experience deeply troubling."

"Oh, don’t be troubled, Myleigh," Debbie grinned. "Trey, you said you recorded the music. Did you hear the Canyon speaking to you directly?"

"No, I didn’t," he said. "It’s just as much a mystery to me as it is to Myleigh. Don’t get me wrong, I love the music that she plays, but this was not her kind of music. There are a lot of words I could use to describe what was recorded, but ethereal and inspired lead the list."

"It had to have been inspired," Myleigh shook her head. "I’ve listened to some of the music Trey recorded, and I have difficulty playing it. Yet out there in the Canyon, I just sat down and played."

"The spirits were speaking to you quite strongly," Debbie smiled. "Myleigh, I envy you your experience. It must seem truly magical to you."

"You sound very sure of yourself," Myleigh frowned.

"Myleigh," Jennifer laughed, "I snuck a ringer in on you. Debbie is a tribal shaman, this is her field, like the harp is yours."

"Please Jennifer, not shaman," Debbie smiled. "It implies things that I am not. The term the Shakahatche use is ‘katara.’ There is no direct translation to English, but the word touches on many things, and admittedly, shaman is one of them, but not the only one."

"Sorry, Debbie," Jennifer said. "I didn’t know that."

"It’s no problem," she smiled in reply. "Most people understand the word ‘shaman’ and don’t know any better, so I make allowances. But I think we need to go beyond that." She turned to Myleigh. "I understand that you’re not a spiritual person. Many people feel they are not. Danny is one, for instance. But from having been with him, I can tell that the spirits touch him from time to time. Sometimes he senses something, but can’t put a finger on it. I like to think that I’m a little more used to it, but sometimes the spirits have to hit me in the head with a brick, so to speak, to get my attention. I can be just as spirit-blind as the next person. Tell me, how did the spirits speak to you?"

"I . . . I can’t say," the small woman said, clearly at a loss for words – and uncomfortable with that, as much as the memory of the experience. "I didn’t hear the music in my head, I heard it in my ears as I played it. About all I can say is that at times the desire to play Blue Beauty came over me very strongly. I can’t tell you why. We passed places, I thought, that to look at them I would want to play there, and nothing happened. Other times, it would come over me in a, well, you can’t use the word ‘nondescript’ about the Grand Canyon. A more or less normal place. Sometimes they came over me at night, and I’d wake Trey up so we could record. Toward the end of the trip, the feeling didn’t come as often. I remarked to Trey once that it wasn’t feeling so much that I was losing the inspiration as I felt it was nearing completion. I have no idea why I said that."

"Myleigh, were you frightened when this desire came over you?"

"No," she said. "I don’t think Jennifer explained. Trey and I did two trips, two weeks then two and a half, with a week’s break between them. I had Brown Bess, my other harp, on the first one. Brown Bess is a relatively new harp I’m not terribly comfortable with. I kept getting these feelings about playing, and finally I started to do it. The music amazed me. Like Trey said, it’s not my kind of music. But then, perhaps halfway through the trip, I began to realize that I was struggling with Brown Bess. Randy, of all people, made the comment that since the harp is so new to me, I hadn’t put the same soul into it that I have in my years with Blue Beauty. By the time the trip was over with, I knew I had to make the trip again with my beloved harp. The suggestion to record it actually came from Al, the owner of the raft company. So, Trey and I made the second trip, taking along some recording equipment. By the second trip, I was a little used to having the desire come over me."

"Very interesting," Debbie smiled. "Is there any chance I could hear a little of this music? I’m extremely curious."

"I don’t see why not," Myleigh nodded. "Trey, would you be a dear and run down and grab something? Perhaps one of the tracks we were working on today?"

"Sure thing," he said, getting up. "I’ll be right back."

As Trey headed for the basement, Myleigh turned to Danny. "I fear I must ask," she said, "are you some kind of mystic as well?"

"Afraid not," he smiled. "I’m just about as puzzled about it as you are. I just accept the fact that Debbie thinks she knows what she’s talking about and go from there. After all, she has more experience with it than I do."

"That’s the first step, Danny," Debbie grinned. "I keep thinking there has to be some Indian in you somewhere."

"Well, there is," Jennifer said. "Not much, but a little."

"Huh?" Danny frowned. "Are you sure?"

"Oh, yes," Jennifer replied. "Back last winter when I couldn’t sing and couldn’t play the guitar, I spent a little time working on the family genealogy. Danny, you’re aware that Mary Evachevski wasn’t Dad’s mother, aren’t you?"

"Yeah, I guess," he frowned. "I never paid attention to it since I only remember Mary a little."

"That’s right, she’s all I remember, too," Jennifer said. "Dad’s real mother died when he was born, in 1932. Her name was Bernice. She was a quarter Indian."

"Do you know that for sure?" Debbie asked. "Or is it just a family legend?"

"I’ve seen the marriage records for her parents," Jennifer said. "Alice Morton and Tom Parker. Alice’s mother and father were Charles and Mary Morton, but I don’t know what her maiden name was. But I came across a record that they were married by the Presbyterian missionary at Three Pines in 1886, so the odds were that . . . "

"Danny, give me the keys," Debbie snapped.

"Go for it," he replied, pulling the keys for the Lumina out of his pocket. "You want me to go with you?"

"No, I know where to look," she said, grabbing the keys and taking off at a dead run to the car parked in back of the house. "I’ll be right back."

"What’s that all about?" Jennifer frowned as Debbie ran for the car.

"Debbie has copies of the journal of Reverend Robert Carter, the Presbyterian missionary at Three Pines up through 1892," Danny said. "We were going through part of them last night when you called, and we spent a couple hours reading out of one. Reading aloud, I can make out his handwriting better than she can. It’s easier to read than great-grandpa Ingstadt’s. I haven’t looked at 1886, but Debbie says they contain birth, marriage and death records."

"You’re kidding," Jennifer snorted. "I spent a solid month trying to track that down, and what I wanted to know was right here in Spearfish Lake? Well, I guess we’ll know in a few minutes."

Just then, Trey came back upstairs. "We shall have to hold off on playing the recording for a few minutes," Myleigh informed him. "We have a bit of familial drama occurring."

"I wouldn’t go so far as to say drama," Danny shook his head. "But a touch of curiosity, anyway. It obviously means more to Debbie, but I’ve come to understand that some things mean more to her than they do to me. She told me not long ago, ‘If you’re going to hang around me, you’re just going to have to put up with mysterious once in a while.’"

"She certainly seems to be an interesting woman," Myleigh grinned. "You know, Jennifer tells me that there is another interesting woman who happens to be a mutual acquaintance." She eyed him carefully. "Jennlynn Swift."

"You know Jennlynn?" Danny said, his jaw dropping.

"Why yes," Myleigh smiled. "I met her at my friends’ Christmas party the Winterset before last," Myleigh said. "She was kind enough to fly us here from Phoenix in her Learjet. Quite a unique woman, with what I feel is a most interesting hobby. I must admit, though, if she was telling the truth, I can scarcely believe it."

"Uh, Myleigh," Danny said tentatively. "Did she ever use the words, ‘Redlite Ranch?’"

"She didn’t, but Crystal’s brother and wife mentioned it on another occasion. They work with her."

My Spirits . . . er, my God, Danny shook his head. Myleigh was on the Canyon trip with Josh and the others this spring! Of course she had to know Jon and Tonia . . . Tanisha. The place had just reached out and touched him . . . again! "Myleigh," he shook his head and sighed. "Believe it. The wildest stories about Learjet Jenn are the truest ones."

Jennifer soon admitted that she hadn’t been able to keep from telling Myleigh how he happened to know their mutual acquaintance, but at least his oldest sister had been able to include the "hands off the merchandise" line. Stiffly making up his mind that he was not going to tell the Jon and Tonia story to her under any circumstances, he was getting down to the end of one of his standard stories when Debbie returned, carrying one of the black notebooks, and a huge grin.

"Well, did you find out anything?" he said, reading her grin pretty well, he thought.

"Sure did," she said. "Sorry I took so long, but I wound up calling Ellen Standing Bear to check a point."

"So, what did you find?" he asked.

She spread the notebook out on his lap, and flipped open the pages to a bookmark. Curious, Jennifer came over to look over her shoulder as Debbie pointed out an entry half way down a page. Reverend Carter’s handwriting was now cramped by arthritis, and the handwriting wasn’t as pretty, but it was legible. The entry was simple, under an entry summarizing marriages for 1886: May 19. Charles Morton and Mary Elkstalker.

"Elkstalker?" Danny gasped.

"Hi, cousin," she grinned, bending over to kiss him quickly. "That’s why I called Ellen, to check. We share a great-great-great grandfather, back in the era when they were starting to pass down last names. She isn’t sure, but she thinks she remembers an entry back in the early 1860s that could at least give a name another generation back. She’s going to dig around for it tomorrow."

"Elkstalker?" Danny shook his head again. "Debbie, my dream the other night . . . "

"It may not have been a clone of the story I told you," she nodded. "Like I said a few minutes ago, sometimes you feel the spirits nudge you. Maybe now I have a little better idea why."

Though the rest of the evening was long, it seemed short. Once Phil was able to drag Brandy in from the driveway, there were eight people there with vastly different backgrounds and so much was going on, it was hard to keep track of it all. A high point was listening to some rough cuts of the tracks of Myleigh’s playing in the Grand Canyon; Danny didn’t think he needed the smidgen of Indian that was in him to hear spirits being involved in that music. Trey had it right: inspired and ethereal.

Danny offered to help Blake with the final preparations prior to serving, even though he knew there wasn’t much he could do in the presence of such expertise. That left the two of them alone in the kitchen while everyone else was still out on the porch listening to Debbie explain the relationship of man, spirit, and nature more deeply. "Interesting woman you have there," Blake commented.

"I think so," Danny grinned. "Blake, I’d sort of hoped to get you and Jennifer alone for a minute but I can see it’s not going to happen. I’m in the store tomorrow. I could give you a call, or if you could drop by, I’d appreciate it."

"Store stuff?" Blake asked. "Like we were talking about the night Jeremy was born?"

"Yeah," Danny said. "Nothing real important at this point, but I’d sort of like to update the two of you on the direction my thinking is taking."

"I’ll talk with Jennifer," he replied, chopping a cucumber with elegant ease. "We may call or we may drop by, depending on Jeremy’s sleep schedule."

Dinner proved to be halibut steaks with an exotic sauce and some kind of rice, but it rapidly moved on toward unidentifiable from there. The conversation drifted onward, spending a while on Debbie’s interest in preserving the Shakahatche language, which led to the story of Ellen and Ruth Standing Bear and Norma Red Cliff. It proved that Phil had picked up a few phrases of the Athabaskan language used in some native villages in interior Alaska – and Debbie could make out some of the words.

What with his primary interests going to Debbie, Danny hadn’t talked to Phil and Brandy in a few days, but over dessert it proved that they were getting set to take a little time off out of Spearfish Lake together, leaving in a couple of days. "Shelly’s still on her honeymoon," Phil reported. "And we have to get our entries in by hand on the morning of July 1 if we want to get in the first starting pool. So, that means me. That’s fine, I can stand the chance to gossip with some of the other Iditarod people."

"Plus, it gets Brandy away from her basketball for a few days," Jennifer snickered. "But you said ‘entries.’ Does that include Candice?"

"Sure does," Phil grinned. "The suburban mom is going to Nome next March."

Jennifer shook her head. "I can’t believe that John didn’t explode when he heard that."

"He’s not real happy," Phil conceded. "But Candice has him pretty well taped. After all, she told him back after the Beargrease that she was doing it next year. Danny was there when she did it, he knows. He just didn’t believe her, and for months he thought she was teasing him. But there’s something about a fifteen hundred dollar check that tells the accountant in him that she’s not teasing, but he’d already gone along with it and isn’t in a position to change his word. That doesn’t keep it from being a little touchy over there."

"Poor John," Jennifer shook her head. "He’s a nice guy, but let’s face it, he has the spirit of an accountant."

Finally, Danny and Debbie just had to break away, since both of them had to work in the morning – Danny at the store, since this was the second day of the trade-around of work days with Stormy. They headed back to Debbie’s place, and soon were in bed. "I can’t believe it," Danny said as he held her close, "cousins?"

"Not real close," Debbie said. "About as shirttail a relative as you can get. It’s not that uncommon among The People. There aren’t all that many of us, and there’s been a lot of intermarriages over the years. The old joke is that a man goes to a Shakahatche family reunion to meet women."

"Well, still," he laughed, "talk about a long shot! I mean, the fact that Myleigh and I both know Jennlynn isn’t even a warm-up. In fact, I think I already knew that but didn’t think about it. Do you think maybe the spirits are trying to tell us something?"

"What do you think, my korican cousin?"

"I don’t know and you know I don’t know," he snorted. "That’s the kind of question I ask my hudaroi katara cousin. What do you think?"

"I certainly wouldn’t rule it out," she whispered in his ear. "Danny, I love the feel of you squeezing my butt, but ask yourself this question: why are you doing it in the kosanti rhythm?

"What?" he asked. "I hadn’t realized I was doing it, and what’s the kosanti rhythm?"

"That’s the two-two-six drumbeat that’s often used in ceremonies," she told him. "Do you remember my telling you about Dorothy playing her drum at my vision quest? That rhythm. The one you are pounding deep into my heart through your gentle touch on my bottom, my at least a little bit Indian korican."

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