“You meant to cause a fight,” she said flatly, knowing what he had intended without needing to ask him. “You just wanted to get on television, so you could look important to your friends. You tell them that you’re a big civil-rights activist, but all you want is to look like a big shot. You’ve been telling them that you’re a Medicine Person, a shaman, but you aren’t a shaman; you’re just a phony, a faker, and everything you do is just tricks and drugs.”

If her accusations surprised him with their accuracy, he wasn’t going to admit it. He simply crossed his arms over his chest, and she sensed he was going to try to bluff his way out of this.

“While you’re pretending to have Medicine Powers, all you’ve done is have a couple of sweatlodges and taken a lot of peyote,” she continued sternly. “You didn’t even do the sweatlodges right, and you might just as well have gone to a health club instead.”

He needs to learn a lesson, she thought. That is what Grandfather wants me to do—see that he gets it. He cares more for himself and what he can make people do than whether or not it is good for them—

That was when she realized who should deliver the lesson, and what it should be. As he regained his courage and turned a frowning face to try to bully her, she stepped back a pace, and transformed again.

This time, she wore the semblance of the She-Wolf, and she raised her nose to the moon to summon the Pack.

Howls answered her from all sides, and before the young man could blink, he found himself surrounded by the Wolves of the Pack, both the great gray timber wolves and their smaller cousins of the prairie, and even one or two of the rangy red wolves that were long gone from her world. They all stared at him with great yellow eyes, fur tipped with silver from the moon above.

“You called the Pack, sister,” said the Pack Leader, gravely.

She bowed her head to him; as a female, she need not bare her throat in submission to a male. “I did, brother,” she replied. “This is one who leads his pack into danger for the sake of his own ambition and prestige, and does not care what will befall them so long as his power is increased.”

“So,” said the Leader, turning his golden gaze on the young man, who shrank away. “You think perhaps I should challenge his right to lead, then?”

Again she bowed her head. “As you wish, Pack Leader,” she replied humbly. “I am but a young female; I only know this one needs discipline.”

The Leader grinned toothily. “Then discipline he shall have.”