As the beautiful young Indian girl cries over his remains, and begs the Great Spirit for more time with the white man, to tell him just how much he means to her, a dirty white hand suddenly emerges from the ground near her!!! The hand clutches at the grass and at the girl's leather moccasin, finally gripping her smooth round calf and ankle.
Catori shrieks and begins to pull away as another hand claws its way up from under the earth, followed by the head and shoulders of the man on her mind.
"Buddy?!" she cries thru tears, as he climbs from the crack in the earth once again, using the rope which was still tied around his waist and conveniently looped around an outcropping of rock near the hole. "How do you survive?"
Forgoing the obvious mush ('your love gives me the strength', or 'I couldn't die before seeing your sweet brown eyes and smile one more time, beautiful flower' or even 'red bull buffalos give me wings'😉(for once, for Revan's sake) Buddy admits, "Just lucky I guess... and lucky to have friends like all y'all..."
He explains further:
When I saw what was going on back at the Comanche camp, when Greg and Luis explained things to me, I was upset. I traded one of Luis's spare saddle blankets with the medicine man for a flask of fire water; don't tell Luis, we will blame it on the deputies... I felt like the outsider I am, so I drank half the flask of fire water then mounted up on Twenty-One and left camp.
I rode for hours, not really caring where I ended up, and the firewater was having its affect on me. I heard gunshots and commotion, then came upon a dead deer, freshly killed. Its carcass was badly torn up, it hadn't been gunshot, and it wasn't cleaned or gutted proper, but I figured the meat would still be good, so I planned to bring the deer with me, figuring I would eat well for a few days while I made my way where ever fortune would lead me.
Unfortunately, I couldn't lift the full dead weight onto my horse though, and all my drunken efforts to do so only managed to get my saddle and blanket bloody and messy. I decided then I would take the deer back to camp, to offer a peace offering, and a gift on your engagement, and to steal another clean saddle blanket from Luis. So, I set my rifle down and began to gut and clean the deer. I moved close to the crack in the earth, to dispose of the entrails so mountain lions and vultures wouldn't be drawn into the area...
That's when a mountain lion approached the clearing, spooking Twenty-One, who reared up, and kicked the deer and me behind him, then bolted. I stumbled backward, clutching at anything I could hold on to to keep from falling into the crevice. I pulled at the deer carcass, but, as i had already made the first few cuts in its hide to gut it, the flaps of flesh gave way, and all I pulled out were handfuls of intestines and entrails.
I fell backward into the crack in the earth, pulling all the guts down on top of me, and twisting, quite possibly breaking, my left leg... OOOF!
The pain was excruciating and I must have passed out for some time. I was awakened by the shifting of the earth, as the crevice seemed to expand and grow while I lay there, and I slid and tumbled further into the depths. Finally, the muddy marshlands gave way to solid craggy bedrock, which was less comfortable to lay on, but more solid. Then the marsh water trickled in from the surrounding soft earth, and began to fill all around me. I scooped up all the steaming entrails and used them as a warm blanket as best I could, until I would regain my wits and figure a way out of the pit... but, I knew I was in bad shape, and probably wouldn't live to see the daylight, or look into your sweet chestnut eyes and tell you what a foolish old man I have been these past days...
((think that explains pretty much everything, all the clues and what not... if not, let me know, and I will add on more...))
"I was laying on this rock all the while I was down there..." Buddy continued, after finishing the story part of his story, getting to the moral, "And, as the water filled up around me, and the guts grew cold and useless as a blanket, I dug the rock from my back, to stay as comfortable as I could in my last few hours of life... I have held on to that rock this whole time, even as I held onto the visions of you in my mind and heart, while I faced certain death..."
he opened his hand, revealing a dull off-white stone that filled up his palm, a rather large rock!
"This is diamond, uncut, unpolished, untouched by the greedy hand of man until I found it in the pit... a diamond in the rough, like me..." he offered the rock to Catori and smiled. "Since I no longer have a deer as a peace offering, this will have to do... keep it safe, and untouched by the white man who would destroy its natural beauty for profit... and think of me, the unpolished rock with something precious buried inside, and be happy with Miko, and the tribe..."
"I had a ring once, a pair of them, never wore it or shared them, and then I lost the chance, and I've since lost the rings... I didn't think I would get the chance to give you something precious and thoughtful as this, but I wouldn't waste or lose that chance now... and you shouldn't either... Beautiful Flower..." (sorry DR 😛)
he smiled again, the cringed, rubbing his injured leg as discreetly as he could manage....