I can still see the old man standing there, leaning against a tree. He was a little, short, three-quarter blood Indian with high, broad cheekbones and deeply creased skin. Dipped in water, he probably wouldn't have weighed 150 pounds. But he was tougher than most of the men who towered over him. And even to the end of his days, his eyes never lost their sparkle. His name was William Ikard Paul, but his friends called him Pike.
We grandkids called him Pop.

When I was a boy, my cousins and I used to cut wood with him. He'd say, "Let's stop and blow for a while," then lean against a tree and chew on a matchstick while he caught his breath. Pop always had a matchstick or a toothpick between his teeth. Not long before he died, my aunt gave him a solid gold toothpick.

He would tell us stories while he rested. Or lecture us on the proper way to build a fire, or how to shoot a man. "Boys, never take out a gun unless you're going to use it. If you have reason to pull a gun, never talk or hesitate. Just raise it to the third button on a man's shirt and pull the trigger." One day when it was just Pop and me, I asked him if the town of Pauls Valley, Oklahoma was named after our family. He replied, "That's a fact.” I asked him if he would tell me about it. He said he would, "but it'd take a spell."
It did. Over the next several years, as I grew into manhood, I would sit wide-eyed while Pop regaled me with tales so full of adventure, they seemed to come from the pages of a wild-west story book. They fired my imagination and fueled my dreams.

At least for a time.

As I got older, I got to disbelieving. Somewhere along the passage of years I decided he'd just been "making up a windy" to occupy his time.
Pop had been dead for two years when his stories came back to life for me. My wife Cindy fell in love with those old Paul family legends, and her several years of research verified nearly everything he had told me, and unearthed a good many things he hadn't. Most of it was right there in the historical record, just waiting to be found.

Even the wildest of Pop's tales were true.

--Bill Paul

It all began in the spring of 1995, when I was struggling to finish up my master's thesis. We had recently come across pictures of five generations of Bill’s family, and had just had them matted and framed and hung in the living room: Smith Paul, Sam Paul, Joe Paul, Bill's grandpa "Pike," and Bill's dad.
I had my notes spread out on the floor one night, and was trying to concentrate. But for some reason, I found myself drawn to Sam's picture.

I didn't know a thing about the Pauls' story at the time, beyond the legends I'd grown up with. But that night, the strangest sensation came over me. It was so strong it was almost like a voice: "There is a phenomenal story here.”

For the next several years, I spent Saturdays, every other Friday, and an awful lot of lunch breaks doing research. I never planned where I would go, but every time, I somehow ended up where I needed to be. I never came away empty-handed. Not once. Through it all, I had the strongest feeling I was being led to each new discovery.
--Cindy Paul