For all of you who know me, being scared is not my thing. I don’t know what I was thinking agreeing to go on the adventure with John. I must have been oxygen deprived at some point.

            After John and I had dinner a couple of nights ago; I think. I’m not even sure what day it is, I went in another direction. I figured if we split up, we can cover more ground since we obviously can’t stay here forever. I did think it was a good idea, the key word here being “did”.

            I made my way out of the middle wooded area where we started and dug up the arrowheads and took left to go to another wooded area. I knew it was pretty far from John since when I screamed his name, he didn’t answer. So I assumed he didn’t hear me, but I think—unbeknownst to me at the time—someone…or something else did.

            I pitched my tent as soon as I found a spot set pretty deep into the woods. It was gorgeous. I decided to do more digging since there was still sunlight and you could see there was going to be a very big, shiny moon that night. Plus I had one of those big, fat flashlights. I wasn’t worried about being able to see.

            After digging for quite some time, I’d found a few more arrowheads, a piece of what I believe is turquoise. It’s fairly large I would think for something that basically looks like a rock in shape. I wasn’t completely sure until I remembered a woman here named Moira Link; she told me there was a copper mine just outside of Dutch. I read somewhere years ago, that turquoise gets its color from the oxidation process through copper being in the vicinity. I thought around here, the only copper mines were in Arizona and New Mexico. The Navajo Indians were one of a few manufacturers of the jewelry along with a few other Southwestern tribes. So now I wonder, is there actually a copper mine or did the Chief and his tribe find the turquoise on their travels around California only to bring it back to “their” ground and bury it?

            Once the sun started to go down, I looked around and discovered I had dug several holes. I don’t remember digging that many, but I got so involved and once I found the turquoise, I couldn’t help myself. I made my way backward from where I was to fill in the holes.

            Finished with that, I climbed into my tent and pulled out a book I brought with me called, “Djinn on the Rocks” and read for a while. I was starting to doze off when I heard a noise, it sounded like thin sticks being snapped as if someone was stepping on them. Quietly I opened my tent flap and saw them, three men; they were see-through like tissue paper and dressed in cavalry uniforms standing about twenty feet in front of me around a small table with a map spread on it. They weren’t talking, just standing there, one was pacing, one was smoking a cigarette and the third was simply looking around mindlessly. It was like they were waiting for orders or something.

            I felt like I was moving in water, everything went in slow motion. I blinked a couple of times, hard and stepped out of my tent thinking I couldn’t really be seeing what I was seeing. It didn’t take long for the scene in front of me to vanish. I walked a bit closer toward the spot where the table in my vision was and realized they really were gone. Again, I blinked. I thought I was just exhausted and turned around to go back into my tent when I stopped in my tracks…

            Just beyond the back of my tent was a rather large Indian. He immediately made a bee-line toward me holding his tomahawk up high in the air over his head. I was frozen in my spot! I really tried to move, but couldn’t. As if time went fast forward, he came at me faster and faster; just as he reached me and made ready to swing his axe, I put my arms up over my head to cover it and suddenly, he disappeared! You know when you’ve seen in the movies where something just disintegrates before the camera lens and it looks like there specks of dust in the air from where the apparition exploded? That’s just what it was like! I would never have believed it had I not seen it with my own eyes.

            I jumped back in my tent, zipped it up tight and stayed awake all night with the flashlight on and my trowel in my hand. Granted it wasn’t much of a weapon, but I wasn’t going down without a fight.

            Needless to say, I can’t wait to find John tomorrow. There’s safety in numbers, or so I’ve heard.