The travelers moved three days through the storms and chilly spring rains.  They found the Delaware River and followed it, left the Catskill Mountains behind, and headed for the Poconos.  Louis took them to a small Mohawk village where he got some winter squash and beans to go with their protein-rich diet.  They moved slowly, mostly on foot as Louis had no horse.  He reluctantly got up behind Lockhart, Lincoln, or Tony several times, and once tried to ride Ghost, but both Louis and the mule quickly agreed that was not going to work.

Louis explained some things while they traveled.  “The five nations have greatly benefited the people of all the nations.  By making peace and uniting our interests, we drove the Mahican from the Eastern River and controlled the fur trade with the Dutch and later with the English.”

“Last of the Mohicans?” Lockhart said, half joking.  Katie smiled and shook her head.

“Mahicans,” Louis said, not understanding.  “Yes?”

“Algonquin tribe,” Lincoln spoke up from behind.  “Traditional enemies of the Mohawk, remember?”

Louis continued.  “We spread our influence south over the Susquehanna and Lenape people, and west over the Erie and all down the Alleghany River and into the Ohio territory.  The Shawnee are stubborn, but we have prevailed.”

“Lincoln?”  Katie asked as she saw him move out of the corner of her eye.

“Just looking something up,” Lincoln said.  “As a kid growing up watching all those western movies, I thought the Shawnee were a western tribe, like from Kansas or Nebraska territory, or something.”

The following day, the river turned from flowing southeast to a southwesterly direction.  Lincoln announced, “Port Jarvis.  We are entering the Poconos.  We are headed toward the Delaware Water Gap, though we won’t get there today.  Probably late afternoon tomorrow.”

“I will leave you there,” Louis said.  “We are already in Lenape land, though the English are pushing in from the east and up from the south.  Soon enough there will be no more Lenape land.  Some have already moved west to the Ohio territory.”

The travelers fell silent then and wondered if there was anything they could do to improve matters for the natives. Sadly, each in their own way concluded what the Kairos often said.  They had to let history play out the way it was written.  They were not allowed to interfere.

The rain came hard that night.  It rained hard all that morning as they moved along the narrowing path to the gap in the mountains.  The Mountains themselves seemed to move in closer and closer, pushing them toward the river.

“Blue Mountains.”  Katie pointed to her right before she pointed across the river.  “Kittatinny Mountains.”  “There is a ridge that connects the two, but there is a gap the river flows through.  Louis says there is a trail our horses can go, but I suspect it will be narrow.”

The rain slackened off at lunch.  Elder Stow set a screen around the camp so they could eat relatively dry and in peace.  Louis marveled at the technological wonder, which he imagined was some sort of magic.  But he had heard and seen enough in the past four days not to question these strangers.  He would do what he could for them in the hope that they might bless him.

As they began to clean up to move on, they heard something like thunder behind them.  Cannons?  Thunderstorm?  People asked, but Elder Stow settled it with a glance at his scanner and a word.  “Flash Flood.  Stay where you are.”

Everyone looked behind as Elder Stow stabilized his screen device against the impact.  In the twenty-first century, they might have imagined some dam upstream broke wide open.  It looked like a wall of water, even if it was only a couple of feet high.  Maybe just a foot high, but it rose higher behind the wall.  The water broke the banks of the river and given how narrow the way between the mountains had become, it would rise rapidly.

Louis shrieked, but the water hit Elder Stow’s screen and went around.  The thunder echoed a bit off the mountain walls.  Another sound echoed back.  After so many days of rain followed by the downpour, a portion of the side of the mountain gave way.  The mud poured down in front of them and over them, though the way behind looked clear enough.  They had to wait for the water to go down.

“Well,” Lockhart said.  I guess we are stuck here for a while.  Maybe the water and mud will be finished by morning.”  He turned back to the campfire.  Sukki and Nanette were already stirring it up again.  He turned to Katie.  “What were you saying about Otapec’s daughter whose name I can never remember?”

“Ixchel,” she said.  “And I was talking about her pet dragon in Ozma’s day.  The Agdaline andasmagora that guarded the city.”

Lockhart nodded.

Louis fell to his knees and wept.  He escaped certain death, twice, and these people never even blinked.

In the morning, the water had receded enough for the travelers to move on, though it still topped the riverbank in a number of places.  The mud from the side of the hill that did not wash down into the river proved thick in places.  Louis had to ride behind Tony through most of it.  In one spot, Elder Stow had to get out his weapon and use it on a very low setting to quick dry the way ahead so they could go over the top of it.  They had an early lunch in that spot and waited for the hardened mud to cool off.

They used Decker’s rope and the horses to move some bigger trees out of the way.  Sukki, who went back out on the point, picked up some small and medium sized trees and shoved them into the river.  They only had a couple of boulders to contend with.  Katie said the mountain appeared to be shale which meant it was not the best at holding the topsoil, but it did not make granite boulders.

Louis shrieked to see Sukki lift a whole tree and turn it to the side so the horses could go through.  He seriously shrieked when Elder Stow had to fly overhead to heat the water in that one section, to harden the mud so the travelers could ride over top when the ground cooled.  They rode over that section with some speed, thinking that even after two hours it might be like hot coals under the horse’s hooves.  Several horses and Ghost complained, but the wet mud on the other side of that section felt good and cooled them.  The travelers stopped and checked their hooves to be sure none got burned too badly.

Not long after, they moved through the actual water gap.  As Katie suspected, the way got very narrow.  They could see the land flattened out after the water gap.  It would be farm fields in the not-too-distant future, but for the present it looked filled with trees.  Before they could get there, though, they all had to halt.  Sukki stopped and pointed. Someone stood in the gap.

The man did not look anything like a native, but he did not look like a European, either.  He appeared dressed in a dull red uniform of some kind, and he seemed to be looking into a box, much like Elder Stow looked when he got out his scanner.  With that thought, Elder Stow got out his scanner and Lockhart and Katie moved up to join Sukki.  Up close, they could tell the man, though human shaped and with a human enough looking face, was nevertheless not human.