If Calvin caught the look he did not respond. His voice was still flat, emotionless. ‘Now it has just one.’

The tunnel remained silent. No claws scuttled away in fear of another blow. No clattering gravel betrayed an animal retreating. The men looked at each other and both knew that when dawn pushed its thin light into the tunnel mouth it would describe the body of a dead marten. Used and now discarded, its heart or liver burst inside it, its veins opened or its spinal cord snapped. Something invisible and malevolent had stopped its small life in spite now that there was no more use for it. Calvin lifted another branch, stirred the fire and placed his hands back on his knees as if nothing had happened.

‘Moses’s death. You know more. Remember.’

Sam’s reply was almost sulky. ‘I’ve told you everything. I killed him. I just don’t remember how.’

Calvin sighed, and after watching Sam’s face for a few moments he put the branch down, shifted on his crossed legs and reached to his waist for his medicine bundle. With cold fingers he opened its neck and started to finger the contents. It seemed almost as though he had lost interest in Sam’s confession, but then he raised his eyes to meet Sam’s and answered the question in them. ‘We will pray and eat herbs. The Eagle can make you see what you cannot speak. The foul one cannot hear our thoughts when we are joined.’

Sam swallowed, his mouth already dry at the thought. He knew what these herbs and that joining could do. Calvin had made him see many things in the past. The white man he had become told him it was no more than a drug trip, the mind-bending trick of a toxic plant. But the wire that had sung in the wind of his soul earlier was telling him different. The ancient voice buried deep in his soul, that was proud to be Indian, sure of its hold on the earth and its place in the spirit world, was saying yes, it’s true: the Trickster could have no entry into their joined minds when Calvin and Sam dreamed together.

But Sam was afraid of what he would see. More afraid than he had ever been in a life that had held so much fear.

Calvin was laying the blackened pieces of foliage on a stone in front of him, carefully, meticulously, almost artistically. He glanced up at Sam as he arranged the leaves and stopped. ‘You know the prayer. Begin.’