The Bounty Hunters

PROLOGUE:

She rose from her place by the fire and filled three bowls, carrying one to each McCallister in turn. When they all stood holding the noxious smelling liquid, she spoke, “Drink and know your dreams.”

Charlie studied her, Robert hesitated sniffing the contents suspiciously, but Samuel downed his in one gulp, laughing, “Come on boys, the party's just begun.”

As Charlie and Robert drank theirs, Samuel’s legs buckled and he went to his knees. He was barely out and lying flat on the ground before Charlie’s will was robbed from him and he collapsed too.

Robert, being the biggest, resisted the brew the longest. “So you’ve killed us?” He had time to ask the Apache priestess before he succumbed. Her words echoed in his mind as he went down.

“I’ve given you your futures. What you make of them is yet to be seen.”

When the three woke the next day, the campfire was dead, the ground was cold, and there was no sign that over a hundred Indians from three different nations had been there the night before.

Charlie told the two white boys later, "Lozen took us spirit walking in the otherworld to find the threads of who we will be."

No one volunteered to share his vision. It was an incident buried but not forgotten as the three McCallister men grew to manhood.