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as a buffalo?” asked Harold.
    â€œI believe so. But who can say?” The old Indian shifted on the horse. The lance, in his left hand, tilted toward the west.
    They came to a fence of barbed wire stretching as far as they could see to either side. The posts seemed to shrink away, as though the fence was only inches high everywhere but right before them. A tumbleweed was jammed below the lowest wire, and a clump of fur clung to the one above it. The old Indian got down from the horse. He closed his big fists around the upper wire and popped the staples loose. He held the wire down and whistled to the horse, which stepped across beside him. And on they rode toward the west.
    â€œWhere’s the circus now?” asked Harold.
    The old Indian pointed over the horse’s ear, a little to his right.
    â€œWhen do we get there?”
    â€œNot tonight. Tomorrow, maybe.”
    The grazing clouds were coming closer. The wind that drove them bent the grass and lifted the feathers on the old Indian’s lance.
    Harold smelled smoke on his buckskins. “Why do you follow it?” he asked.
    â€œI’m in it,” said the old Indian. He sounded a bit offended.
    He was small and withered. Harold couldn’t imagine him performing in a circus.
    â€œI do some fancy riding,” said the old Indian. “I whoop and holler and dash around the ring a bit. It’s just a show; it’s what the people want.”
    Harold smiled. “How long have you done that?”
    â€œI started with Buffalo Bill. In that Wild West show he had.”
    Harold straightened; his head came up from the old Indian’s back. “You knew Buffalo Bill?”
    â€œNo one knew Bill,” said the old Indian. “He was a different person for everyone he met. He was full of himself. Read too many of those books.”
    â€œWhat books?” asked Harold.
    â€œThe ones about himself.” The old Indian bent his shoulders back and straightened them again. “He was always reading them. Sometimes he’d laugh and sometimes he’d say, ‘Yeah, I remember that.’ Didn’t matter if it never happened. He lost himself inside himself. Not like the Cannibal King.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” asked Harold.
    â€œYou will understand when we find him.”
    It was all the old Indian would say. They rode along, and the tumbleweeds went sailing by on the waves of grass. The buildings of a town rose up far to the north and vanished again behind them. They spent the night on the open prairie and heard the coyotes calling.

Chapter
    8
    T he morning clouds were thick toward the west. Blue and black, smeared with yellow, they made the sky look bruised and battered. The feathers of the old Indian’s headdress flapped like wings, and Harold was forever fending them off.
    â€œHe’s a good man,” said the old Indian suddenly.
    â€œWho?” asked Harold.
    â€œThe Cannibal King.”
    The old Indian glanced back. He saw the feathers fluttering and took off his headdress. He added it to the bundles, folding it carefully as the reins hung slack across the horse’s neck and the animal plodded along.
    They crossed another fence, and a third, a dirt road running north to south between them. Again they ran their shadows down and trampled them at noon. And then the sun went on ahead, and the clouds came up to meet it.
    Darker than before, the clouds oozed across the prairie, pressing on the grass. Lightning flickered through them, faint in the distance. And they drove before them a herd of tumbleweeds that bounded in fright. They drove black streaks of crickets, songbirds by the hundreds and a flock of whirring crows.
    Harold sat closer to the old Indian, until they shared his tattered saddle blanket. He heard the wind passing through the feathers on the lance. His helmet straps slapped his neck, and he heard the snorting of the horse’s breath.
    â€œWe’ll have to stop,”