They had stopped above the town to bury and honor their dead. Three-Rivers conducted this ceremony and then the AllPeople separated and departed. Angh and Healer had dressed in the clothes of the Spanish chiefs. In this manner, when Three-Rivers sent them back from the Planting Valley, they would at least look like Sunset People, if a bit out of style. Eddie also gave them each some money to ease their way back to base. It was then that Healer came to him with a problem. He brought Three-Rivers over to a Son of Fierce Woman called DeerSlayer who was soon to die from a hole in his chest. “Three-Rivers, send me back now with this man and Juan. We are only a stone’s throw from Mercy Hospital. We can save this man, but not here.”

Three-Rivers spread his arms and flourished his pimp-cane. “Mister Hicks I’m firing up!”

With that the squirrel leaped to the ground with his hat and hid under it. He then held out his pimp-cane for Eddie to take and grabbed DeerSlayer’s hand in his and held Juan’s as well, as Healer took hold of both of the men’s other hands. He connected with the Oneness within and began to feel the rotation of the world, then the rotation of the sun, then the rotation of the great spiral cloudbank in the void.

As his stomach lit up he sensed one such as he across the mountains, pulsing along the Good-River, in the Good-River-Country.

I will come to you later Sister. First I must send them to Sunset.

He screeched out away from the blue rock with Healer on his neck and the wounded clutched in his talons; out beyond the un-peopled worlds and down the spiral cloudbank…

…He lay in the base of the gently rocking white birch canoe as Father guided them through the cloudbanks beneath the Starlit Path. Father then looked down into his blazing eyes and spoke, “My beautiful boy it is not yet your time. You will come to me soon enough. Lives, even such as yours, are fleeting moments; but the rustle of a hair on The Beginner’s head, to whom our Time is nothing more than a summer breeze. Rest boy, you shall be needed upon your return to them…

…He woke to the rocking of a river…no, the rocking of a bed, a bed that moved, dragged on the ground behind a great snorting horse. He opened his eyes to see T.T., Angh and Eddie walking above, besides and behind him. They smiled with relief when he looked up into them. Then he heard an irreverent voice, “Iz ‘bout time boy! ‘Ere ‘ave a chestnut—shelled it my own self.”

He rolled his head to the right to see Mister Gerald Hicks holding out a great big nut, his face now painted blue for visions rather than red and black for war.

His own voice cracked and sounded frail, “Thank you Mister Hicks.”

The squirrel then whispered conspiratorially in his ear, “En I stole some a dat Spanish rum too boy—our lille secret. Got a gourd of it tucked in yo pack. We partyin’ tonight , soon as dese greedy loogin’ friends a ours is asleep.”

Angh held his hand as he walked by his side. “Three-Rivers, you had no vitals for an hour after the event. Bruco and I do not want to risk your health like that again. We must find the branch capacitator and egress utilizing it. My opinion is that you can only safely egress in the first-person. Don’t send away any more jumpers, okay, for us. We do not want to lose you.”

“Yes Angh. Do not worry, I yet feel the Oneness within. Angh, I felt it, when I fired up—the First Branch Capacitator. Tell Jay it’s in the Ohio Country, on the river, in the territory of the Shawnee.”

The Oneness within beckoned him and he floated to it, in the white sky canoe, without Father, guided by…