"This isn't a dog, this is a coyote. This is a wild animal, Josh." Sam was flattened against the fifty-two-inch screen of his television and was still pushing so that the television was tilting back, ready to fall. He could smell a foul, musky odor coming off the animal. "Shoot it, please. Now, please."

"Quiet, Sam. I'm aiming. You can't shoot them in the head. They need that to see if it's rabid. Coyotes aren't normally aggressive. I saw it on PBS."

"This one didn't see the program, Josh. Shoot him."

"It might take two shots to drop him. If he leaps, cover your throat until I get the second one into him."

Spagnola fired and the TV shattered behind Sam. The coyote stood its ground unaffected. Sam backpedaled over the destroyed television as Spagnola fired again, taking out a vase on the mantel. The coyote looked at Spagnola quizzically. The third shot shattered the sliding glass door, the fourth and fifth punctured a stereo speaker, and the sixth ricocheted off the fireplace and out over the city.

When Spagnola's revolver clicked on an empty chamber he turned and bolted out the front door. Sam climbed off the broken television and braced for the coyote's attack. His ears rang with residual gunfire but he could hear laughing from across the room. The coyote was gone, but sitting on his couch, dressed in black buckskins trimmed with red feathers, was the Indian, his head thrown back in laughter.

"Hey!" Sam shouted. "What are you doing?"

In an instant the Indian leapt up and ran through the shattered glass door onto the deck. He looked over his shoulder and grinned at Sam before vaulting over the railing and dropping out of sight.

Sam ran to the deck and looked over the rail. The Indian was gone, but he could hear his cackling laugh echoing down the canyon into town.

Sam stumbled back from the rail and into the house, where he sat down on the couch and cradled his head in his hands. There had to be an explanation. Someone was screwing with his life. He riffled through his past as far as he would allow himself, looking for enemies he might have made. They were there — competing salesmen, angry customers, angrier women — dotting his life like dandelions on a lawn, but none would have gone to such elaborate measures to cause him trouble. In an honest assessment of himself he realized that he had never really been passionate enough about anything to really make that big a difference to anyone, good or bad. Since he'd run from the reservation he couldn't afford the high profile of passionate behavior. Still, there had to be an answer somewhere.

Sam thought about prayer, then faith, then remembered something that lay tucked away in the back of his sock drawer. He ran up the stairs to his bedroom and threw open the drawer. He removed a small buckskin bundle and untied the thong that held it together. Objects he had not seen in twenty years — teeth, claws, fur, and sweet grass braids — spilled out on the dresser. Among them lay a red feather that he had never seen before.

Sam looked at the coyote medicine and began to tremble.

A long time ago there was water everywhere. Old Man Coyote looked around and said, "Hey, we need some land." It was his gift from the Great Spirit that he could command all of the animals, which were called the Without Fires Clan, so he called four ducks to help him find land. He ordered each of the ducks to dive under the water and find some mud. The first three returned with nothing, but the fourth duck, because four is the sacred number and that is the way things go in these stories, returned with some mud from the bottom.

"Swell," said Old Man Coyote. "Now I will make some land." He made the mountains and the rivers, the prairies and the deserts, the plants and the animals. Then he said, "Guess I'll make some people now, so there will be someone to tell stories about me."

From the mud he made some tall and beautiful people. Old Man Coyote liked them very much. "I will call them Absarokee, which means 'Children of the Large-Beaked Bird. Someday some dumb white guys will come here and get the translation all wrong and call them Crow."

"What are they going to eat?" one of the ducks asked.

"They have no feathers or fur. What will they cover themselves with?" asked a second duck.

"Yes," said a third duck. "They're pretty, but they won't be able to stay out in the weather."

Old Man Coyote thought for a while about how much he disliked ducks, then he took some more mud and made a strange-looking animal with a thick coat and horns. "Here," he said. "They can get everything they need from this animal. I'll call it a buffalo."

The fourth duck had been standing by watching all this and smoking a cigarette. "It's a big animal. Your people won't be able to catch it," he said, blowing a long stream of blue smoke in Old Man Coyote's face.

"Okay, so here's another animal that they can ride so they can catch the buffalo."

"And how will they catch that one?" asked the fourth.

"Look, duck, do I have to work out everything? I made the world and these people and I've given them everything they need, so just back off."

"But if they have everything they need, what will they do? Just sit around telling stories about you?"

"That would be good."

"Boring," said the duck.

"I'll make them a bunch of enemies. They'll be hopelessly outnumbered and have to fight all the time and do all kinds of war rituals. How's that?"

"They'll get wiped out."

"No, I'll stay with them. The Children of the Large-Beaked Bird will be my favorites, although some of their enemies can tell stories about me too."

"But what if the buffalo animals all get killed?"

"Won't happen. There's too many of them."

"But what if they do?"

"Then I guess the people are fucked. I'm tired and dirty and cold from standing in all that water. I'm going to invent the sweat bath and warm up."

So Old Man Coyote built a sweat lodge out of willow branches and buffalo skins. He heated the rocks in a fire and put them in a pit in the middle of the sweat lodge, then he and the ducks crawled inside and closed the door, making it completely dark inside.

"Hey, put out that cigarette!" Old Man Coyote said to the fourth duck.

The duck threw the cigarette on the hot rocks and smoke filled the lodge. "That smells pretty good," Old Man Coyote said. "Let's throw some other stuff on the fire and see how it goes." He threw on some cedar needles and they smelled pretty good too, then he threw on some sweet grass and some sage. "This stuff will be part of the sweat ceremony, too. And some water — we need some water so it will really get hot and miserable in here."

"And we can get truly purified and clean?" asked the third duck.

"Right," said Old Man Coyote. "First I'll pour four dippers of water on the rocks for the four directions."

"And the four ducks."

"Right," said Old Man Coyote. "Now I'll pour on seven dippers for the seven stars of the Big Dipper. Then ten more because ten is a nice even number."

He handed each of the ducks a willow switch to beat their backs with. "Here, wail on yourself with these."

"What for?" asked the second duck.

"Tenderize… er… I mean… it brings up the sweat and purifies you."

Then, when the ducks were beating their backs with the willow branches, Old Man Coyote said, "Okay, now I'm going to pour a whole bunch of dippers on the rocks. I'm not even going to count, but we are going to be really hot and really clean and pure." Then he poured and poured until it was so hot in the lodge that he could not stand it and he slipped out the door, leaving the ducks inside.