Chapter 1

Meredith Lightfoot pressed the electronic switch on the floor to start the “Music Minus One” piano accompaniment to the cello piece she was currently working on: The Swan by Camille Saint-Saëns. It was part of a larger work, The Carnival of the Animals, that Meri wanted to play at her planned cello recital next fall.

Caroline Lightfoot, born just a month ago at Christmastime, found this piece so relaxing that she almost always fell asleep in her crib when her mother started to play. Her brother, Strongbow, quieted also, usually just listening to his mother play the soothing melodic piece.

When she wasn’t busy with her cello, or with her growing brood, Meredith Lightfoot wrote mystery novels, usually in a Western setting of the late 1800s.

Sitting in another corner of the large music room, quietly crocheting another baby blanket, was Karri Cooper, Meri’s widowed mother, who had come from Passaic, New Jersey, to help out in the final stages of the pregnancy. She’d already finished two blankets, “but it’s so cold” in north-western Pennsylvania, so she was working on another. She just ignored her daughter’s argument that it was cold only outside the cabin. Having no particular reason to leave, she stayed at the casa Lightfoot, sleeping in the baby’s room. Seth Lightfoot was working on yet another addition – a wing for his mother-in-law.

Seth Lightfoot was a 4^th level Waabanow of the Anishinaabeg, a sub-group of the Algonquin Nation. He shared an ever-growing ‘cabin’ in the Hammersley Wild Area of the Susquehannock State Forest, which was located in the north central part of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, with his wife, his two children, and now his mother-in-law. Thank heavens his mother only came occasionally to visit from her home in southern Ontario.

Also living in the nearby portion of the Hammersley Wild Area were all sorts of animals: wolves, birds, smaller and larger mammals – and other animals of all types – all of whom the Waabanow could communicate with. His skills as Waabanow, or shaman, of the tribe extended to other arcane skills; but it was his ability to speak with animals that provided his primary method of paying the bills, these days: he was an “unconventional” veterinarian and sometime consultant to state and local law enforcement.

So where was Seth Lightfoot, Waabanow 4^th level, while his wife and her mother watched his children and the cabin expansion was languishing unfinished under a layer of snow? He was on a case, some 100 miles away, in the cold and snowy southern tier of western New York State.

He had been called to the small (1 square mile) Oil Springs Reservation because of the rape of a member of the Seneca Tribe. The 15 year-old young woman was found in the Oil Springs One Stop convenience store and gas station by a customer at 1:13 a.m. three days ago, on a Friday night. She had been beaten, was unconscious and was obviously raped, although there was no semen present.

The Reservation had an “official” population of exactly one: the old Seneca Indian who owned and nominally lived at the One Stop. It is located about in the middle between Cuba, Abbotts, and Ischua (pronounced: ISH-way), N.Y., a little north of I-86. The girl lived closer to Abbotts, technically with her mother. Her father had died of lung cancer six years ago. Her mother had, in fact, been arrested for prostitution – her way of earning enough to live. The girl was Spotted Bird Elkwood, part of the larger Elkwood Clan within the Seneca Nation. She was working at the One Stop to earn money on the weekends, and was now in intensive care at the Cuba Memorial Hospital, just four blocks from the world-renowned (!?) Cuba Cheese Museum.

Although Seth was not a Seneca, he was called in to help by the senior members of the Elkwood clan: 87-year old Red Feather Elkwood (a male) and 92-year old Flying Eagle Elkwood, a now-retired medicine woman. He couldn’t turn them down, and he didn’t want to. To say that he was angered at Spotted Bird’s rape was akin to saying that the Titanic had an encounter with some ice.

Seth was just having his initial conversation with Red Feather, Flying Eagle and their extended families. Flying Eagle held a terry-cloth blanket in her lap, and took the initiative with Seth. The talk had been about his trip from northern Pennsylvania, where he was going to stay while he was in New York and a little chat about the noon-day meal. Seth recognized it as an introductory discussion to a subject that the two old Indians found uncomfortable. Flying Eagle reached a point where she paused and looked him squarely in the eye. The silence stretched into long moments. Finally she took a deep breath and broke the silence.

FE: “You speak with animals, do you not, Waabanow?”

S: “I can, mother, and please call me Seth.”

RF: “Son, you ain’t gonna change this old bat’s manners. If she wants to use your title, live with it.” He slid his upper dentures out a bit and back into his mouth. Just a charming habit – he wasn’t about to alter his long-time manners either.

The old woman unwrapped the bundle on her lap. A ferret popped his head out and looked around.