Sabers And... Snippet 4

He'd said he'd had a vision.

Their not-a-chief-but-very-much-a-repected-leader Standing Bear had explained that he'd had a vision that The Black Hills wasn't the sacred Black Hills and that he was destined to find them.

And here we sit, in a tent smoking from the same pipe at the border of the sacred lands of The Black Hills in an Earth that isn't Earth.

While we talked, I realized several things.  I also noticed that I'd came to some conclusions and made decisions which would likely not be popular back home.  Colonel Waller might not even be on board.

Assuming we had any right to be here at all, I think that this time the Indian's claims would be honored on pain of death to any white man who violated them.  Level enforcement had been missing from all of the other treaties, regardless of what the text read.

Such enforcement was needed, because a wave of white people was surely to follow our expedition.

Of course, they'd also have to contend with what Standing Bear had called "the little people" who weren't very little.  Stoop shouldered and stocky.  Blonde hair, blue eyes and skin as white as mine.

They were everywhere in this world.

Seldom in groups larger than a family, but you were hardly ever out of sight of one of these groups.

Sgt. Harrington thinks they're pacing us and reporting in.