shoulders and neck. I wanted to help him out, it was just my back that restricted me. I felt the drop in temperature and looked up to see pine trees spanning over my head, shading the land around them. We were on the edge of the forest, and I could hear a river. I was drawn to it, and pretty soon the entire party was drinking water or collecting it. My new human washed my sores, it stung, but they felt cleaner afterwards. They would be healed in a few days so I wasn't worried, I just wanted them to help Durango. he needed it more than me.

We spent the rest of the afternoon gathering berries, wood and animals. Small mammals were hunted for food and fur whilst larger ones we for skins to build clothes or shelter out of. They shot down a cougar, something that I felt slightly smug about. At least there was one thing that could keep them away.

By the time we returned the sun had set and the sky was clouding over. I could smell the rain in the air and hurried back to Durango. There had been a shelter created over the fire, which was now much larger than before. The food and material was distributed between the families and then taken into the tents. The girl was already giving Durango water and was rubbing some sort of paste onto his wound. She then did the same to me. It tingled at first, but then it began to soothe. I guessed that it was a healing agent and I would be able to be ridden sooner than I previously thought.

Over the next fortnight my back healed and Durango's strength greatened every day, but only slightly. By now I was letting the boy (who Durango said was called "Little Creek") ride me whenever he needed. His wife, Weeping Doe (again, Durango helped me out with her name), took care of my stallion while we were gone. I settled into being ridden bareback rather quickly, it was more comfortable. But it was hard to get my barings, since the Lakota boy held onto my main I couldn't always feel him turn me, and I sometimes felt him slip and paniced, I didn't want him to fall off. I knew that they would help us, but I simply didn't want to hurt any of them. It was my personal payback from the battle to prove I disagreed with the way their land was being invaded.

Around midday a few weeks in, I nearly had a heart attack when I saw Durango standing outside the shelter. he was having trouble but he was walking about none the less. I knew that in his stubborn pride he would hold his legs high and not let anyone help him. I chuckled, and wandered over to the enclosure.

It was like a paddock, only round, and it was used for horse training or keeping a new mustang captive until he calmed down. There was a yearling following a mare on a rope. She wasn't the mother it was easy to see, they were just giving the youngster the idea that he had to walk around the outside of the arena. I recalled my training days back on teh ranch. The skinny one rarely used his crop, but at least here they didn't hold them at all.

While the other humans would use an axe or a bow as a weapon to others, these people used them for hunting or woodcutting, only wielding them once the enemy attacked them. The Natives worked with nature, not against it like the pale ones. I hoped Durango could see the difference.

"The stallion is back on his feet, he should be able to gallop in a couple of weeks," Weepind Doe said, sweepign out the floor of the tent, "but I doubt that he can ever be ridden."

Little Creek looked up from his work. He had been attatching feathers to arrows for the past hour, and he wasn't getting very far. "Well, shallow as this sounds, I'm not interested in him. It's that mare. I feel like I know her. She observes everything we say and do, as if she understands us. Which I guess is possible." He bit the twine to cut it, then lay the arrow back with the others. "Either way, so long as he gets better I'll be relieved. By the way, you have been doing an amazing job caring for him you know."

"Oh stop it, Creek."

"No, really. Perhaps when you're old and grey you could be shamen. But don't get worked up about it, looking at you that is going to be a very long time off."

Weeping Doe laughed at his charms. She was used to her husband's complements and it felt wonderful to be married to someone who appriciated her. Little Creek kissed her on the cheek and left the tent to inspect the horses. he found them grazing by the enclosure, keeping the orphan foal company. The mare was fine with being near the orphan foal, but she seemed less willing to play parent. And the stallion was even less concerned by the foal's presence.

He laughed and the mare looked up from her meal. He still couldn't work out where he knew her from. He had never seen this horse before, he knew that much, but little pieces of her that didn't quite fit together hovered at the back of his mind. He went back the tent and collected some dies and returned to where the horses were eating. He led the mare and stallion into the enclosure, making sure that the foal didn't run off either. The three animals sniffed at the strange dies and wrinkled their noses. He began on the mare.

At first I was hesitant, I didn't know what he was going to do to me. I felt the cold line of his finger around my ankle. When I looked down I saw that he had painted a blue ring around my right foreleg. He was going to decorate us. The paints were cold at first but I got used to them after a while. He painted black spots on the top of my hindquarters in an appoloosa style, and two lines of green under my left eye. Finally, he pressed his entire left hand into the red dye and pressed it onto my face below my right eye. I stepped away to let the markings dry while I watched him do a similar thing to Durango.

His patterns were three green stripes on his left shoulder, a group of red dots on his left flank, two blue lines under his right eye with curls coming off (like the wind, I imagined) and a tiny blue circle around the bullet wound. Once he was hapy with his work, Little Creek let us out of the fenced area.

We spent the afternoon discussing our marks. Durango said the green lines on my face showed elegance and trust, since it was so close to my eye, and the handprint showed that I was tame since I had been exposed a lot to humans. The spots on my back told people that I touched the lives of many people. He didn't say anything about the ring on my ankle at first, so I started to tell him what I thought of his marks.

The three lines looked like claw marks from a cougar, showing he was tough. The circle highlighted that he was a warrior and couldn't be shot down, even if he bled, which was what the dots were about. I also told him what I had thought earlier about the blue lines, and he gloated a little that it was because of his speed.

We lapsed into silence awkwardly. We both knew well that he couldn't run very fast anymore, and in his cheerfulness he had forgotten his wound. He kept looking at the ground and told me that the ring around my leg symbolised that somethign was chaining me to this place, that I wanted to go but something selfless was keeping me there. He looked up into my eyes as if he was apologizing. I rested my head on him. He knew I couldn't leave him, but he still felt guilty for it. And now, when we had been freed, it was his fault that they couldn't leave.

Before we began eating again he said that once he was fit enough he would follow me home to my herd. I was delighted and I began to get jittery inside. I was excited. I knew that one day soon I would return home.

It was toward the end of autumn now, and Little Creek sat watching the two army horses playing on the plain. The stallion could now run again and he would let them go soon. Just one little thing stood in his way, and, cruel as it sounded, he wouldn't let them go until he knew what it was.

He did this every evening now. He would sit on a rock and watch the sun set behind the horses who would romp about in the dying grass. He would think for hours on end. He was determined to figure out where he knew that golden mare. He was in his early twenties now, and he tried a differnt tactic that evening. He tried to remember everything that had ever happened to him with horses.

His first horse, Rain. He had raised her from a filly into a mare. She was fearless and loyal to him, his best friend, even when - though he dared not say it out loud - he fell in love with Weeping Doe, that chestnut pinto mare was still the closest being in the entire world.

After an attack on their old village, he had snuck out into the desert to steal supplies from their enemy - the army of the Intruders. He had ridden Rain out to the camp and was loading food onto her, when he was caught by some of the guards. Rain had run back home and alerted the others, who came to his aid with a knife a few days later. While he was tied to the post, he met a buckskin stallion who was also tied up.

He and that stallion had broken free together, letting all the other horses out in the process, and he took it back to the village. He never did tame that horse. He laughed about it now, but back then it was frustrating. When the village was attacked for a second time, Rain had been shot. The stallion tried to save her, and saved his life by knocking the enemy leader off his horse. In payment the poor thing was dragged off and boarded onto a train. Two days later he found him in a forest fire and cut him loose.

In one final run from the cavalry, the horse allowed him to ride. The most unexpected and incredible experience of his life was when the two of them jumped the canyon and landed safely on the other side. Then he had let Rain go off with him, and for his untameable