Born Indian. Was there ever a time when he wasn’t ashamed to be Indian? Yes. There had been times when he had been proud. Eden and Calvin had sometimes touched a part of him, an atavistic nerve that made him proud, although pride wasn’t an exact enough description for the emotion. It was more like the thing Eden meant about the substance of the earth. A sense of belonging, of understanding who you were and being glad that you were part of it all. Eden had almost gotten him to believe that Sam was part of a very special family. A family who if they only knew it, held a power that was as important to the world as clean air and fresh water, for keeping mankind alive and safe. White men didn’t know it, on account of them no longer understanding the old world and the way it worked, and what’s worse, they didn’t care. But they’d care plenty if it wasn’t for folks like Eden and his Pappy and his Grandpappy and so on before him. You just don’t know you’ve been safe, Eden said, until the man holding back the dog lets go.

But now where were the Indians that Sam had been proud to belong to for that brief moment? Did the Indians who staggered, shouting and fighting from the Craigellachie Hotel bar respect anything, except someone who’d get in another beer? And their repayment for that search for oblivion, was short lives and a legacy of misery and despair to their children. Those were the Indians now. Brown-faced Canadians who drank and ranted, who hit their kids, or worse. Brown underprivileged Canadians. Nothing more. Who cared if white Europeans did it to them? Why did they let it happen? What was there to be proud of in that? And if Sam were part of such a frigging special family, what had Moses been? It was all horseshit. All of it. Except …

A face in the crowd.

Sam’s head buzzed faintly as he stood looking at those darkening mountains. He closed his eyes and leaned on his poles, his head resting on one arm. He had recognized it, just like Eden said. What he had to decide now was whether it had happened, or whether he was projecting some weird fantasy from the past into his conscious mind because he was sick.

But the face had not been human. What did Eden say? A bear in a flock of geese? Yes. That was good. Exactly right. There was no mistaking it. Other people had been fooled all right. Only Sam saw what lay behind that milky white membrane that pretended to be skin and he felt a twist of nausea in his stomach as he remembered what he’d seen.