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powerful Fire Stick. A Raider descended on him with a scalping knife, but Black Horn slashed with his own knife of white flint, and the enemy warrior had to catch his own entrails as they bulged from the wound.
    The young warriors of the Burnt Meat People took courage and charged again as the Raider with the Fire Stick tried to make medicine with it, going through many strange incantations. Arrows were beginning to fall among the enemy warriors, and they threw their wounded and dead over Black Horn’s captured horse to flee, leaving Black Horn on the ground. The Noomah braves pursued them afoot until the Fire Stick warrior put the evil thing against his shoulder and made it smoke and rumble again.
    It killed no one this time, but it caused the earth to blow red dust into the air very near the place where Shadow stood watching. This power frightened the boy, yet he gathered from the way the Raiders were running that the Fire Stick medicine was not all-powerful. Once used, it took some time to conjure again. Still, it caused him to fear, and his fear turned to anger as he heard the wails of mourning for this horrible day. He did not know whether his uncle was dead or yet alive, only that he had failed to rise from the ground, and this made Shadow angrier still.
    The iron knife was in his hand, and he used all his weight to make it plunge into the body of the fallen Raider beside him. The body jerked as the blade cut deep, and the boy sprang away, afraid the warrior with the arrow stuck in his head might still be able to fight.
    He thought it better to finish this invader with a rock, and he turned to find one large enough to crush a skull.

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    The medicine woman, Broken Bones, had been summoned, but had refused to come. Black Horn knew it would have been useless anyway. The evil power of the Fire Stick was greater than the old crone’s magic. Broken Bones was better off with the way she had chosen, for this world had gone bad.
    From where he lay in the shadow of Red Canyon’s wall, Black Horn could see the old sorceress now, high above, in the fading sunlight. She stood over the crevice on the canyon rim into which the people were lowering the body of Wounded Bear, wrapped in a good buffalo robe with his pogamoggan and bound tightly in rawhide.
    The old man had died well, swinging his war club. It was a lucky thing for an old blind man to die in battle. Black Horn felt lucky, too, for he would soon die of his battle wounds while still in his prime and never have to suffer the disgraces of old age. He would never be relegated to making bows and arrows and telling stories in winter lodges.
    Yet, he worried about this wound in his belly from the Fire Stick. Would it torment him in the Land of Shadows with this same incredible pain? He had not allowed himself to be killed in the hands of his enemies, and so he should not have to worry about such a thing, but the Fire Stick was new, and its power was yet unknown.
    Only his wife, Looks Away, had stayed near him, risking whatever horror the wound of the Fire Stick might still hold. Its evil magic had shot all the way through him, making a small hole where it had entered and a very large ugly wound where it had left. He had not seen the large wound on his back, of course, but he had listened to the young warriors talk fearfully about it as they carried him back to the canyon.
    But this wound did not frighten Looks Away, and she had stayed with him. She had made a good wife, and he loved her. It was Looks Away who had taught him much of what he knew about horses. He had captured her on a raid against the Yutas. He had found her so pretty that he protected her from the other warriors and treated her with kindness. The Yutas had more horses than the True Humans, and Looks Away, after Black Horn made her good and took her as his wife, told him much about ways to train and handle ponies. And she told him strange tales of trading parties carrying captured Noomah children away to