As civilization begins to reach the Colorado of the late 1870s in the form of roads and telegraph lines snaking west, young Cal, thrust into the world of the white man without even knowing his birth name, faces wars between worlds he can’t fully place himself in.
When the cavalry arrived to move the Arapaho into reservations, Cal, the sole survivor of a wagon train massacre and raised by the Arapaho, is “rescued.” Pulled out of the only life he remembers. He subsequently is fostered by a sheep herding family in a Rocky Mountain valley on the verge of a range war between the cattlemen, the sheep men, and the farmers as the latter began to fence the land, and is thus caught between worlds, none of which he can completely identify with.
Cal also finds himself torn in finding his sexual identity, tossed between an Arapaho brave, a half-breed cowboy, and a cruel ranch owner.
Calamitous events in the unsettling birthing of Colorado and the effects of encroaching eastern civilization claw at Cal to take sides and make momentous decisions of his own—if the men who matter in his life will give him choices.
The mule obviously felt safer here, in the more open terrain and on the surer path, even if Cal himself went on higher alert. It wasn’t just the big animals he was watching for but also for maverick Arapaho braves who had escaped the forced relocation to the south and were existing alone or in small bands in the mountains. He would have been surprised, though, to find marauding cattlemen at this elevation. Cowboys didn’t like the mountain, and there was little to draw them this high. Cal imagined that, to a cowboy, the mountains were too much like the hated fences. That was what Cal was counting on by taking the mountain path. Completely oblivious to the dangers at hand, now the mule wanted to get on with the journey at a faster clip than the ever-vigilant rider did, and Cal continually found himself reigning the mule in.
It was about the time that Cal broke into the timberline that he had every reason to be worrying. He presence hadn’t gone unnoticed. Tracking him now was one of those solitary Arapaho braves Cal was watching for. Cal, however, wasn’t anywhere near as able to detect the young brave following him as the Arapaho was in tracking his prey.
Not long after breaking into the open, Cal came upon a turbulent mountain stream taking snow melt down into the valley and knew that he was half way to Hayden now and that he could start looking for someplace safe to camp for the night, which was quickly approaching. He followed the stream back down the mountain, looking for and picking out a good place to cross, and then continuing on for a bit to find a glen in the forest next to a pool of water below a waterfall to make camp. This, he reasoned was as safe a place to spend the night as any.
His was a false sense of safety, though, the Arapaho brave followed him at a distance down the stream and climbed a tree as they neared the glen, knowing instinctively that Cal would set camp there, and attentively watched Cal’s every move as he made a campfire, set up a lean-to tent, and boiled coffee for an evening meal of hard bread and smoked trout.
Ilesh clung to the branch of the tree, almost motionless, for more than three hours, watching Cal prepare and eat his dinner, check to ensure that the mule was safely staked out, inventory what he had in his saddle bags, douse out the fire, strip down to his underlinens, and crawl into the lean-to he’d constructed against the protected side of a rock outcropping.
The young Arapaho brave was well versed in being one with the tree, and he had the strength to perch there, motionless for as long as he needed to. In the years since, as merely a boy, he had eluded the American soldiers who were rounding his people up and shipping them off, Ilesh had lived up to his name, which translated as Lord of the Earth in Arapaho. He had grown lithe, yet muscular, and straight and strong. And he had learned to steel himself against the elements, clothed only in a breechcloth and leather leggings and moccasins, in all but the coldest weather.
He waited there until the dark of night before silently slithering down the trunk of the tree. The mule knew he was there and moved nervously away as far as its tether would permit. But Ilesh came closer to the beast and put his hand its muzzle, stroking it and keeping it from whinnying its fear. Having calmed the mule down, Ilesh reached down and pulled his breechcloth away, freeing a long, thick knife. Taking this in hand, he slowly stole toward the lean-to, entered it, and landed at a full stretch on Cal, who was lying on his back.
Ilesh had the element of surprise and he was a stronger man than Cal. The struggle was fierce, with Ilesh having the advantage of hold from the beginning, as Cal was just waking up. Slowly but relentlessly, Cal was tiring within Ilesha’s full-body embrace. The Arapaho brave forced his knees between Cal’s thighs and spread and raised them. The brave’s knife was long and hard and sharp. It sliced into Cal again and again and again. Cal thrashed about, but he couldn’t withstand the relentless attack of the Arapaho brave for long.
