To speak with a creature or a plant required a heart of purity and a lifetime of learning. Only then would a ceremony of four days in a sweat-lodge bring the shaman close enough to the spirits to speak thus with those that were insensible to human communication.

Of course Hunting Wolf also knew how to shape-shift into the guise of an animal or bird. But he did not become that being, only a mere approximation of the beast. Anyone with the eyes to see could tell that it was not a real animal, that it moved in a strange way or was incorrect in its detail. And to produce such a trick took such fasting and praying and purification that the act was scarcely worth the toil. He had done it but once, and then only when they were in dispute with the Blackfoot. Their shaman spotted him at once and it was over. It had drained him. But to possess the living, as he suspected the Trickster was doing, was a sin beyond measure. He thought of the dead and wasted body of the bird and sent up a prayer for its defiled soul.

Yes, if animals were indeed talking to the white men, he knew it was not their genuine spirits speaking, but something dark, powerful and malicious. He knew it for certain now.

It was natural that the Trickster should blaspheme so, for to speak through a beautiful creature created by the Great Spirit, with a filthy and obscene tongue, was a trick so loathsome it struck at the heart of Hunting Wolf like an axe. The white men were right to be afraid.

He had watched their faces as they worked, their glances to him a mixture of contempt and apprehension. How easy it was to look into these men’s hearts. How easy to read in their foolish minds that they regarded him as little better than a dog. It bothered him little. He knew much about their world. More than they would ever suspect.

He had flown with the Eagle one night, to James Henderson’s land to understand the nature of the man and his desire to meddle with their affairs. They had soared over a green and wet land perpetually under a blanket of grey cloud, with mountains small in scale yet more ancient than his own, and full of spirits so old and complex his senses quivered to be near them in his animal guide form. They wailed and reached up for him as he flew past the jagged mountain tops, making the Eagle soar higher and faster to escape the invisible forces that sensed their presence and yearned for their contact.

When they reached a grey stone city, Hunting Wolf was alive with wonder. Huge stone buildings, laid in squares, in circles and half-circles over many miles of land. And so many people and horses. People as numerous as the buffalo once were.