Norman looked over his walking treasure, taking in his riches. The donkeys were in good health with bright brown eyes. Scratching his two week beard he thought, "Better name 'em." His mother Sarah Bear, had taught him everything was something, everything signified, and a name established power and place in life. The biggest male was "Ten," the dark brown one, "Ace," and the smaller jack he called "Lucky." The smaller matching jennies, red/brown and slick, were "May" and "June." He learned as he tried to get them to move that crushed corn worked better than cussing them or whipping them. He thought after he stumbled onto that knowledge, "Guess I'll make a muleteer after all, maybe."
After a greasy, fatty steak dinner at the make-shift gold camp eatery, he went to the livery lot, haggled with the owner and got himself two horses and gear - an older gray horse and a small sorrel mare. The red stud was "Fog" and the sorrel, "Lady."
After five days of uneven riding and leading his mixed stock, he arrived at the trading post on the Occumeluftee River in western North Carolina. He picked up some supplies, then made his way up a cove to his mother's brother's cabin. As he rode up the trail, his uncle on his front porch stopped his whittling. "It's me, Uncle. Elowehi Gogv. Norman, Sarah Bear's son," Norman called from astride Fog. He got off his horse, patted his neck and walked to his Uncle Samuel's front porch. Norman handed his boyhood mentor a little sack of store tobacco, "It is good to be here with you, Uncle," Norman said smiling, his eyes making quick contact with his favorite man besides his father, John L., then he diverted his eyes to his uncle's moccasins.
After a chestnut bread, fat back, cabbage and fry bread supper served by his Aunt Pearl, the quietest human he knew, uncle and nephew took pipes to the front porch. "Uncle, I have been fortunate." Over supper Norman had told him about his failed prospecting and life-changing poker game. Now on the porch, fed and relaxed in the soft falling of dark, he told his uncle what the story meant. "With my new stock and a bit of money, I can farm and make a living down from the folks' place. The living can be for a wife and family, too." Norman's green-blue eyes were lowered as a sign of respect when his uncle looked at him. It is how the Principal People, Ani Yvwiya, the Cherokee, showed respect to one another. Direct eye to eye contact for them was a display of disrespect and arrogance. It was believed to be an assault, a threat to the spirit of the other.