It was late in the summer and I had moved down to the summer camp to work more ore when the first Indian came. Slowly, a straggle of women and childre... came into my summer camp and busied themselves looking around. Only a handful of old men and Walla accompanied them. All the other young men had stayed to defend the village, they said. Walla, who still suffered from his wound, had tried to stay, too, but they had insisted he act as guide to find my camp, although I was sure that a blind man. Markham from two doors down. "My! Shannon," he said, "you were really concentrating there. What do you have to bother your pretty head about, a pretty young girl like you?"Her face flamed. "I'm really sorry I wasn't watching where I was going." She ducked away before he could repeat his question.Her mother was off showing a series of houses to demanding clients and not due back for hours. She'd left detailed instructions for dinner, and Shannon started in on them immediately. Half an hour. We both continued chatting. “So what have you and Heather been doing”, “oh nothing just working pretty much”, with that she gave me a funny face, but I didn’t say anything. “What time will Jason be home?. “Probably not until nine tonight, why? She stood up to get another cup of coffee, “nothing” I told her, “just I have not seen him”. “Well and I don’t think you should” she said, “what does that mean?” I responded back “well I don’t think its a good idea you and he talk”. She turned from. So, he hooked the camper up to the backof his truck, we climbed in and I mean, I climbed in, it was one of thosethat are pretty high up off the ground and a bit of an effort for me toget in. Mike always found this funny but he wasn't an ass about it.We got to the lake, a secluded little place that seemed a million milesfrom nowhere and started setting everything up. By the time the sun wentdown, we were sitting beside a nice warm fire and on our third or fourthbeer. We got to talking about.