When fourteen-year-old Carson Fielding bought his first horse from Magnus Yarborough, it became clear that the teenager was a better judge of horses than the rich landowner was of humans. Years later, Carson, now a skilled and respected horse trainer, grudgingly agrees to train Magnus's horses and teach his wife to ride. But as Carson becomes disaffected with the power-hungry Magnus, he also grows more and more attracted to the rancher's wife, and their relationship sets off a violent chain of events that unsettles their quiet reservation border town in South Dakota. Thrown into the drama are Earl Walks Alone, an Indian trying to study his way out of the reservation and into college, and Willi, a German exchange student confronting his family's troubled history. In this unforgettable story of horses, love, and life, Carson and the entire ensemble of characters learn, in very different ways, about the strong bonds that connect people to each other and to the land on which they live. PRAISE FOR THE RIVER WARREN “Entertaining and brilliantly written . . . As stunning in its use of language as it is touching in its human revelations.”—THE DENVER POST Winner of the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Association Book Award When fourteen-year-old Carson Fielding buys his first horse?a run-down, wild-eyed roan?from the wealthiest rancher in his South Dakota border town, he learns a hard lesson about dealing with powerful men. Years later and now completely broke, Carson grudgingly agrees to work for the rancher, training his horses and teaching his wife, Rebecca, to ride. But Carson and Rebecca fall in love, angering her vengeful husband and setting off a cruel chain of events that shock even the most hardened residents of the town. With help from his friends from the nearby Lakota Indian reservation, Carson, now wiser to ways of the American west, challenges the rancher's rule, fiercely determined to protect what he holds most dear. "Fine characterizations, crisp dialogue and a fully realized sense of place make The Work of Wolves compelling." - Denver Post "The kind of book that demands and rewards fierce loyalty.... I instantly fell under its spell." - Christian Science Monitor Kent Meyers is the author of The River Warren, Light in the Crossing, and The Witness of Combines. He lives in Spearfish, South Dakota, where he teaches at Black Hills State University. KENT MEYERS is the author of The Work of Wolves , Light in the Crossing , The River Warren , and The Witness of Combines . He is a recipient of an ALA Alex Award, two Minnesota Book Awards, and a Mountains and Plains Booksellers Association Award. His work has been included in the New York Times list of Notable Books and is published in a wide array of prestigious magazines. The Work of Wolves By Kent Meyers Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company Copyright © 2004 Kent Meyers All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-15-603142-4 Contents Title Page, Contents, Copyright, Dedication, Prologue, BEHIND LOSTMAN'S LAKE, The Careful Indian, A Fall, Trespassing, The Rememberer, The Old House, An Agreement, Equilibriums, Horses and Men, Hers, THE PHILOSOPHY OF BROKE, Angle of Spin, ROBBING AND STEALING, Mining Blame, The Lights of Koblenz, The Silent Indian, Substitutes for Speech, Well of Life, Stacking Hay, Conversion, Manifold, How to Seduce White Girls, Goat Man Forms, GOAT MAN, Sightings, Trying to Go Blind, Beadwork, Gradations of Intimacy, Ruination, Dogs and Spirits, Nine Hundred an Acre, A Thing Unsaid, A Thing Decided, Another Option, Abraham and Isaac, The Badlands, The Work of Wolves, Fire and Ice, The Invisible Cop, Another Fire, Wild, Freed, A Moment of What Remains, Some Set of Vectors, Wind, Acknowledgments, About the Author, CHAPTER 1 The Careful Indian Earl walks alone looked up from the cone of light where his calculus book lay. Through the kitchen doorway, he could see his grandmother at the far end of the living room, watching television and beading. Earl liked to wait until dark to work on calculus, liked the small reading lamp on the kitchen table, the way dark seemed to crowd in upon him and the way the light reflected off the pages, the equations clean and precise there. But he felt restless tonight. The equations jumbled in his brain. Black and meaningless marks. He looked from his island of light through the intervening dark to his grandmother sitting in her own island of light, the soft incandescence of the floor lamp bathing her face. Her hand dipped, a bird's head, the silver needle a beak, bobbing into the tray of beads, stringing eight of them like droplets of colored ice that slid down the invisible thread. From Earl's view the beads seemed to float in the air, following each other, until his grandmother's hand pulled them taut against the moccasin in her lap, then circled toward the tray again. Earl didn't dance in powwows, but it s