The teacher gave a nervous, self-deprecating grin. “It’s been a pleasure, I guess. It’s such a relief to find out you’re not going out of your mind.”

“Mr. Saperstein,” said Singing Rock, resting a gnarled hand on the music teacher’s arm, “there may be times in the next twenty-four hours when you wish that you were.”

*

Singing Rock worked over the kitchen table until midafternoon, the blinds drawn to keep the light from distracting him, and an angular desk lamp over his papers and magical artefacts. While Harry and Neil paced the veranda waiting for Mr. Saperstein to call with news from the Highway Patrol, the South Dakota medicine man laboriously prepared lists of the enemies they were about to face, and gathered together as many spells as he could to hinder and obstruct those enemies. Out of his suitcase came bones, hanks of hair, and earthenware jars of powder.

Just after three o’clock, when the sky was low and heavy with metallic gray clouds, he came out of the kitchen door and stretched.

Harry asked him, “Are you finished in there?”

Singing Rock shrugged. “As finished as I’ll ever be.”

“I never knew Indians were such pessimists,” retorted Harry. “No wonder you lost the West.”

“We were pessimists because we’d already lost the East,” Singing Rock reminded him.

Harry lit another cigarette and coughed. “I sometimes wonder whether you’re fighting on the right side. With an attitude like yours, you and Misquamacus would make a fine pair.”

Singing Rock raised his head a little, and looked across at Harry with eyes that were bright and penetrating.

“One day, in one of my lives, I hope to be far greater than Misquamacus,” he said.

Harry raised an eyebrow. “You’re trying to tell me that you’ve lived before, too?”

Singing Rock smiled. “It always used to amuse the Indians, before they began to understand how callous the white men actually were, how much the white men knew about living, and how little they understood about life.”

“You’re in a very philosophical mood.”

Singing Rock pulled across a weather-bleached chair and sat down, resting one booted foot on the veranda railing. “Maybe I am,” he said quietly. “But I believe we’ll be facing Misquamacus again tonight, and this time he’ll be ready for us.”

Harry walked to the edge of the veranda and rested his hands on the railing. He felt unpleasantly sticky and hot, and the afternoon seemed completely airless. Even out here, it was like being shut in a cupboard. The smoke from the cigarette drifted lazily away in blue puffs.

“Well,” he said, “I suppose it’s a great honor to be first on the zapping list of the greatest Indian medicine man who ever lived. Just think, I may never have to eat at the Chock full o’ Nuts again.”

Neil said, “Have you worked out who most of the medicine men are?”