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he heard the soft, bubbling cry of a quail, he veered toward it. Saliva flooded the coyote’s mouth at the prospect of tearing into the quail’s succulent flesh. He could almost feel the feathers tickling his nose, the tantalizing flutter of wings against his face before it went limp in his jaws. With muzzle down and bony hindquarters and banner of a tail up, he put one paw out, eased over it, and set another. The muscles of his shoulders and haunches bunched to pounce.
    â€œ Ba’ts’osé, Brother Coyote …” The voice came from a rounded lump next to a large creosote bush. Twin reflections of the full moon shone in the dark eyes that looked out from it. “I have troubles enough,” the mound said. “Play your tricks on another.”
    The mound stirred as Sister shifted under her blanket to relieve a cramp in her leg. By the moon’s bright light she thought she could see chagrin flash in the coyote’s eyes when he realized she was not a quail. He turned and sauntered back to the jackrabbit’s spoor.
    Sister had spoken Coyote’s name aloud deliberately. Speaking someone’s name put great weight to the request, but that might have been a mistake. Old Man Coyote was a trickster. Sister wondered if evil consequences would follow her talking to him.
    Coyote was responsible for death. Back when the earth was new and animals spoke like people, Coyote had thrown a stone into water. He had declared that if it sank, all living things would experience a sleep from which they would not
awaken on this earth. The stone sank, and people and animals and plants had been dying ever since.
    Sister wondered if death and the Mexicans had taken everyone she knew. She imagined walking north alone. She imagined arriving at her village and finding her grandmother and the other old ones dead, too.
    She withdrew deeper into the cave of her blanket and stared out at the expanse of thicket along the river. Night and the pale moonlight had changed the landscape and made it menacing. Thorny mimosa vines wove the willow, acacia, and cactus into an impenetrable wall. She walked along it, but she could not find the narrow trail made by wild pigs and deer passing through it on their way to the water. She could not even find the stubby cylinder of gray rock standing near the path.
    Her brother had pointed it out. “It looks like Mouse’s penis.”
    Sister had laughed. Everyone knew the story of Coyote trading his big penis for Mouse’s small one so he could woo a beautiful woman.
    Now the rock was gone. Maybe Trickster Coyote had taken it the way he had taken Mouse’s penis. Sister took a long, deep breath to still the panic rising in her. In her life she had experienced danger. She was familiar with death, with hunger and thirst, bone chilling cold, and intense heat, but she had never lived alone.
    She gave the quail cry again, and this time she heard an answer from the thicket. It would probably have fooled another quail, but she recognized it as her brother’s. He had taught her to make the cry, after all.
    It sounded again, and she walked along the shadowy wall of vines and bushes, following it. She found the path and crawled into it, relieved to have the thorny branches close in around her. Soldiers on horseback could not follow her here. Even Ghost Owl would not likely risk becoming entangled in the thicket’s treacherous embrace.
    She stood up in the clearing.
    â€œEnjuh,” Morning Star said. “It is good.”

    She wrapped her arms around his waist and felt the strength of him encircling her. She held on as if he were a log floating in a flood. She inhaled his aura of smoke and sweat, tobacco and horses. She felt the sharp pressure of the hawk-bone amulet that hung around his neck.
    â€œI was afraid they had killed you,” she murmured.
    â€œSoldiers from Sonora attacked the camp. The people of Janos say they knew nothing about it.”
    â€œOur