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deep. One Dog swung down from his mount and inspected the pit where the stones were being heated. Several already were brilliant orange red. He nodded to his men; they’d done good work.
    One Dog hadn’t partaken of a sweat lodge in well over a year. Within the last week or so, however, he’d felt a cloud of death—his death—winding its way around him, invading his sleep, confusing his thoughts. He could not allow this to happen. He could not fear death nor anything else if he was to keep his magic, his medicine. The sweat lodge, he knew, would cleanse him of the dreams and the sense of foreboding that haunted him and would surely replenish the power of his medicine. He’d taken neither food nor water for the last two full days, and earlier that morning had forced himself to vomit what little was in his stomach. Now he walked a couple hundred yards from the lodge, sat in the sun, closed his eyes, and reached inside himself in meditation.
    The black cloud remained around and over him, even through his long meditation. Darkness had fallen. One Dog walked to the glow of the stone pit. All the rocks were red now. They were ready. He ordered his men to fill the central pit of the lodge with the superheated stones. The men prodded individual stones into the small hole using long shafts to doso. Nevertheless, each of them broke a heavy sweat although several feet from the stones.
    One Dog entered the lodge and pegged the entrance flap to the ground. Then he sat cross-legged, facing east. The intensity of the heat made him dizzy, and breathing was difficult. He fumbled at the small deerskin sack in the pocket of his shirt and leaned forward to pour the contents into the center of the searing-hot pit. The mushroom buds immediately burst into flame and just as quickly became thick, acrid-smelling smoke that brought spasms of racking coughing that shook One Dog’s entire body. He forced the coughing to stop by holding his breath and then began to sip the smoke as one would sip a small bit of water. The holy magic of the mushroom buds touched him and he breathed more easily, without coughing, drawing in the sacred smoke, feeling his spirit loosen to accept whatever truth lay ahead of him.
    One Dog drifted from the sweat lodge to the place of his birth. Although he’d left his mother’s womb only an hour ago, the vision of his naming came to him: his mother stood holding him at the front of the tepee. His father, massive, strong, stood in front of her. A group of wild dogs approached, bodies low to the ground, teeth bared, their growling like mounting thunder. His father nocked an arrow and pulled it to the full bend of his bow—and then released the arrow. The shaft flew faster than an eye could follow, and its flint head sank four inches into the space in front of the dog’s right foreleg, piercing his heart, killing him instantly. The other dogs scattered.
    â€œMy son’s name will be One Dog,” his father declared. “One day he will kill as easily as I killed this dog. He will be a great warrior.”
    One Dog floated—drifted—to his first kill. He was but twelve years old but handled a bow like a man and was feared by the other boys his age. The victim was a miner leading a loaded-down donkey. The miner was a big man, broad shouldered, with a beard that reached his belt, and bare arms with bulging muscles that stressed his skin. He carried a pistol in a holster and a rifle in his right hand. It was a rocky, hilly area: it would have been easy to take the white man from cover. One Dog spat on the ground and made his way past the man and the donkey, keeping outcroppings and hills between them. When he stepped out from behind a tepee-sized rock, his bow was pulled and ready. “White snake!” he called.
    The miner began to raise his rifle when the arrow struck his throat. One Dog took the man’s hair and slit the donkey’s throat. “I am a