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best friend, my companion, my family.
    After a few seconds of silence, the agent spoke again: “What kind of a woman lives with a wolf?” He didn’t look at me at first, but then turned and locked his dark brown eyes on mine.
    â€œIs this about the investigation?” I asked.
    He continued to hold my gaze and gave a fleeting grin. After a moment, he looked back at the chapel and said, “This crime scene is pretty well trashed.”
    â€œI know. I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was a crime scene until after the damage was done.”
    He popped his shades on, raised up his chin, and smiled. “I like a challenge.”

5
    Facts of the Matter
    Daniel Kuwany wanted to believe that the predator he’d shot was a wolf. “They say wolves are coming down at night now. The people hear them howling, especially the village priests when they go out to pray on the rooftops.” The shepherd eyed Mountain with suspicion. “Is that wolf there a pet or something?”
    I had hooked Mountain’s lead to my belt with a carabiner so he couldn’t run the sheep. “Something like that,” I said.
    Kuwany licked his fingers as he finished the rest of the meat-filled tortilla he’d been having for lunch. Grease stained his shirt cuff where the mutton juice had oozed down his wrist.
    â€œThe animal you wounded was a cougar,” I said. “A female with two cubs to feed. The three of them are starving. That’s why she’s been coming close to the pueblo, raiding the sheep.”
    â€œHow do you know?” he asked.
    â€œI saw her. And her cubs.”
    Kuwany, who had been sitting over a weak fire trying to force it to thrive on sage limbs and dried chamisa, jumped up and grabbed his rifle. “Tell me where they are, and I’ll go shoot them.”
    â€œThey’re not there anymore. They were at the ruin out by the abandoned Indian school.”
    â€œThat’s a bad place.” He carried his rifle with him and went to a brown plastic tub, took off its lid, rummaged around, and came back. He held something between his fingers and offered it to me. “Take this,” he said, gesturing for me to open my palm. He had completely forgotten his fear of Mountain and was now standing just a few feet from the wolf.
    I opened my hand.
    Kuwany dropped a stub of root into my palm. “You better take some of this, or you’ll get ghost sickness.”
    I looked at the little stub of woody tuber. “Osha?” I asked.
    â€œYou know how to do it?”
    â€œYes.”
    He set his rifle down and picked up the blackened enamel coffeepot that was sitting on a rock beside his fire. He poured some of the dark liquid into a brown-stained, plastic coffee mug. “Take a bite of it now. Wash it down with this.” He handed the mug to me. “Then you better keep the rest of it.”
    My medicine teacher from Tanoah Pueblo, Anna Santana, had taught me about osha and its many uses, including protection from ghost sickness. As I had been trained, I pressed the root to my forehead and closed my eyes—a gesture of both invitation and listening to the wisdom of the plant, which helped it to work its healing power. Then I bit off a piece from the end and chewed the fibrous chunk so it would release its medicine from the pulp.
    Kuwany watched me intently.
    When I had softened the chaw, I took a big slurp of the coffee and swallowed the gob, which had tripled in size. “Thank you,” I said, swallowing again.
    â€œIf that cougar was living where you said, it could be a ghost.”
    â€œShe wasn’t living there. She was living at the ruin up the slope, near the canyon rim. She just came in the school while we were there. We spent the night there during the storm.”
    Kuwany’s eyes bulged. “You spent the night in that place?”
    â€œWe had to have shelter from the blizzard.”
    The shepherd picked up his coffeepot and