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On a nearby ridge overlooking Turtle Man's Lodge and the lab construction, Running Bear watched and waited, propped against a tree trunk in a white outfit that rendered him virtually invisible to those he watched. The construction effort intrigued him. These Mohawks here were definitely up to something, but what? He took more photos and studied the construction efforts using high-powered binoculars.
At the peak of construction as many as twenty Tribe members were diverted from other necessary duties to construct the new building. Compared to the huge dome and lodges nearby it was a very small building, but there were many solar panels arrayed nearby to provide power to it. Indeed half the solar panels of the Reservation had been relocated to power the new building. What could be so important and urgent?
He carefully studied everyone who came and went, looking for Green. He identified only four white-skinned people, but none of them were Green. They were undoubtedly the Rumsfelds, the uncle, and the Reservation doctor. He continued taking photos and videos, and watching using his binoculars, even after the snows came. Now that the heavy snows had finally stopped, and he sensed that something important would soon happen at the new building.
"I brought you hot soup, Running Bear," said a voice behind him abruptly.
He span around so fast that he dropped his binoculars in the deep snow. Not ten feet from him stood Mouse: the damned mind-reading Mohawk witch-woman! She held a big thermos in her colorfully gloved little hands.
"You have been thinking with so much disgust about the cold meals you eat that I grew concerned about your health," she said.
"You read my thoughts, Old Mother?"
"Since you arrived here ten days ago, Running Bear. We always keep track of trespassers. Come back to your tent with me and I'll feed you hot soup. It is venison and barley; your favorite."
"You know too much about me!"
"Only as much as we need to know in order to decide what to do with you."
"And so you decided to feed me soup? Is it poison?"
"I am hopefully not so poor a cook as that," she said, as she bent low and slipped into his tiny tent.
After glancing about futilely for other Tribe members Running Bear followed her into his tent, and found her sitting at the far end of it, already pouring soup out of the thermos into two cups that she must have concealed in her robes. The aroma was incredible. He hadn't had good hot food for ten days, not since he began his long clandestine incursion into the Reservation. He had used trails that he learned about from the white Forty-Sevens Club members that had tried without success to reach and climb Giants' Rest Mountain. They were careless and were always stopped by the Mohawk Guards before they reached the Mountain.
Running Bear was not careless. When possible he paralleled the trails instead of traveling directly on them. He made no fires or loud noises. He traveled mostly through the night using infrared goggles. He drove most of the way using a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle with a super quiet electric engine. He had indeed been very careful, but he had been discovered anyway. He might as well eat her soup, he decided. She probably had a dozen warriors with rifles hidden nearby to enforce whatever she wanted him to do.
"No," she said, "there is only me here with you, Running Bear: a harmless little old woman with her thermos of tasty soup. Have some."
Harmless? Running Bear doubted that!
She handed a steaming cup of soup to him. The cup warmed his hand and the smell of it brought back fond old memories. His Mother and his Aunt used to make soup like this for him. His mother had made him this soup the last time he saw her alive. He watched as Mouse began to sip soup from her cup. Elders eat first, he thought, remembering his manners.
"And then warriors," she said, finishing his thought. "You may now eat, young warrior."
He sipped the soup. It was incredible!
"Yes, it is true. I came to bribe you with my incredible soup, Bear Cub."
He shook his head and smiled. "Bear Cub! I haven't been called that for many years!"
"Yes, I know. And I know the promise that you made to your Mother years ago just before she died. It is a promise that you have kept for the last decade, to value the welfare of your Tribe and all Native Americans above all else."
Running Bear could only nod his head. Like his father before him he had been wasting his life in his tribe's casino, drinking and womanizing, but on his last visit to his mother she had extracted the promise from him, a promise that at the time he had no intension of keeping. Indeed he was partying at the casino the night that she died alone. After that his previously ignored pledge to her somehow become the driving force in his life. He had never told anyone of it, but there were evidently no secrets to be kept from this woman. "What do you want of me, Old Mother?"
"What did you think of the ceremony that we held the day that you arrived? The one that diverted you to camp away from the village and to instead spy upon this more isolated Lodge?"
"You made the whites in your midst members of your Tribe, did you not? I was most impressed with the bears and wolves."
"I was most impressed to detect you on our Reservation less than twenty-four hours after we removed you from it," said Mouse. "You must have traveled all night to accomplish such an amazing thing."
"I like to challenge myself, Old Mother, but I was indeed just in time to witness the end of your ceremony that inducted the four whites."
"And why do you think we did that?" she asked.
"You must need them for some purpose that I have not yet determined. You have now constructed a strange and modern looking building for them."
"Yes, and we obtained from them their pledge of secrecy. That is what we want from you, Running Bear. We want you to honor your pledge to your Mother by promising us not to divulge our secrets to anyone, especially the NSA. In return you will personally learn our secrets. You are an intensely curious man. That is what you want, isn't it?"
"Perhaps. I have not told the NSA about the jants here, as that might cause them to invade your Reservation. Are there other secrets that you keep?"
"You know that there are. Unless we discover otherwise, the jants are a white man problem. There are other secrets and responsibilities that are strictly Tribe business. Those secrets must remain with us. You must agree to this."
Running Bear smiled. "Isn't that a bit perverse, to let me in on your secrets but forbid me from telling anyone about them? That would not be an easy thing."
Mouse smiled back at him. "Who said that life is easy? Perhaps you have lived too much among the white man, Running Bear. "
"I do not mind so much living here, Old Mother, beneath the stars and among the trees and animals. It reminds me of my youth."
Mouse smiled. "Accept our belated hospitality, Mohican. Come out of the cold to instead stay with us in our Great Lodge. We will talk further and I will make you more soup. Besides, I'm afraid that any alternative is much less attractive."