Princess Waconda

Ten year old Ralph lives with his mother and step-father on the family farm in north central Kansas. It's a warm Indian summer day, fall of 1937. Ralph and his buddies, Rusty and Teag, take a Saturday venture to the twin hills west of town to search for arrowheads and discover a rattlesnake infested cave. Their cave exploration yields Indian relics as well as a young woman's skeleton. Teag sits on a rattlesnake and is bitten. After church the next day, Ralph and his mother visit Aunt Minnie at the Old Folks Home. Ralph has befriended another pensioner of the Home, Old Eagle, a half-breed Crow Indian scout and Civil War veteran, who becomes a ready source for much Pawnee lore. Tuesday an archeology professor from the University and his graduate student arrive to investigate the find. (Ralph's sister is in nursing college and the graduate student is her beau.) Ralph is excused from school to help at their research camp. Someone (or an Indian Spirit?) repeatedly sabotages their investigation, camouflaging the cave's true entrance, then a suspicious prairie fire destroys much of the professor's equipment. Eventually the cave entrance is located and entered. The important relics are no longer there. The professor departs. The story is not over. Old Eagle insists that the Spirits have more in store for Ralph and encourages Ralph to revisit the site, and to take his classmate cousin Ann...
About the Author: Ralph Neighbor was bred in Kansas, born across the state line in Missouri but raised back in Kansas, in greater Kansas City, which would seem to make him a city boy. However, the old saw 'you can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy' rings true. Rural family ties had a strong pull. He spent as much of his formative years as parents would allow in the maternal family's home province of Downs, Kansas in the north central part of the State. There he took in the culture, attended local celebrations, contributed to local mischief, listened to stories from aunts and uncles and cousins, grandfather and great grandfather. With adolescence annual autumn pheasant hunts become part of the picture. A little later came extended drives with Grandpa Floyd all over the countryside and through nearby communities, Floyd supplying colorful nonstop monologue regarding who used to live here and who used to live there, and what they did and what happened to whom and when, and what those so-and-sos from the government had done to mess up the country in general and farming in particular. Ralph has always been a good listener. Ralph did his college at Kansas State University and medical doctor training at Kansas University. He trained in Obstetrics at the hospital where he was born. He delivered many babies over the next four decades, first in Kansas, then in Washington State. Ralph and partner Pam raised four children and enjoy seven grandchildren. In addition to writing Ralph has passion for music, fly fishing, trains and worship.