Up in the hills, at the Blackfeet camp, Laughing Moonwind peered out through the flaps of her lodge. She was watching the sweat lodge in the distance. Her father, Herbert Crazytail, and the other members of the Skull Society had just stepped out of it. Their faces were set and grim, painted a deathly white with black streaks under the eyes. They were dressed in wolf and bear pelts and nothing more, as was the way of the Society. They were pallid, dead-faced spirit warriors now heaped with skins. One of them wore the hideous mask of some grinning demon fashioned from the huge skull of a grizzly and strips of tight-fitting leather.
One by one, the others put on similar masks.
These were actually fashioned from the stretched and cured heads of wolves, painted up with ritual colors.
Crazytail in the lead, they started off through the forest to the sacred grove on the mountainside where they would begin their rites.
Tonight would be a bad night.
The smell of death was already on the wind.