All the human characters in the story are fictitious, but most of the coyotes and hounds are not and this is no coincidence. - Harold Keith

The boy felt happy and excited. He liked the sweet air and the delightful chill of it at night no matter what the daytime heat had been. He would never forget his feeling of enchantment the previous afternoon when, seated on the prairie with a plate of food, he kept seeing the sky in all directions beneath his horse's belly no matter where the animal grazed around him. He was exhilarated by the lonely magnificence of the country, and the sense of freedom it inspired. It was like being in a boat on the ocean with no land in sight.

They went outside to watch the new day dawn. Although the land lay hidden in dark shadow, the tops of the river cottonwoods glowed with a fiery beauty. Yellow leaves floated down the ebony surface of the river. All around them the hundreds of tipis sat dewy and still, their occupants slumbering. They reminded Pedro of ducks on a pond, heads under their wings. Even the dogs slept. Sound carried tenfold in the cool, dry air. A man with a rope in his hands was walking solitary and silent to the herding grounds to tend to his horses. Although he was almost an arrow shoot away, the gentle thup, thup, thup of his moccasins striking the frosty buffalo grass carried plainly to their ears. Together, they watched the dull lodge skins on their tipi assume an orange cast. Pedro thought, few things are prettier than the east side of a tipi at dawn.

Later, while I was picking up wet towels, Red Rafferty came busting out of the shower, naked as a jaybird and wet as a hell-diver. His freckles glistened in the eerie glow of the gymnasium lights. The first thing he did, even before he toweled himself, was reach inside his locker for that big hat and jam it on his head.