The sounds of the wolves outside were muddled behind the modern walls of the Sheriff's office. The identity deep within the heart of the man that guided him in a white man's law jacket was buried, but the claw marks of his past still creased with age across his flesh with each glare back at Ko'atal when they stood across from one another, a body between them.
Ko'atal half expected Nightwolf to reveal him beneath the sheet, but instead of a mirror, Ko'atal found the cold body of a twenty-something man.
Hair black and fell like the wind around the cold modern metal that cared not to maintain its elegance. Eyes shut, but the Sheriff was quick to get to work and display the body to Ko'atal and Nightwolf. First the eyes would open and reveal that of a wild wolf, but the young man rested in human form.
"Look here," he let his fingers peel back the lips to show canine teeth and fangs, with one elongated fang pulled from the lifeless maw. "The bastard took a tooth as a trophy once, but didn't realize John Harjo was still inside the wolf."
"What happened?" Ko'atal pondered.
"One night John strayed too far into the old Smith's land, which we've been disputing for the past five years with the courts, their courts. Eventually these visits lead to this," he trailed with his fingers to the bullet wounds in the young man's chest. "We know John had to have been in wolf form when George Smith shot him, must have frightened the old man, he nearly died as well."
"John," Nightwolf explained, "thought he could convince them to give us the land back, to acknowledge they had built their home on land granted to us by his own government, but neither side was having any of it. He'd go and watch, as if he could keep an eye on the world of the white man, as if he was truly a wolf."
"He pushed his luck." Ko'atal spoke up, and the Sheriff had nothing to say, but nodded.
"Basically. Now, I'm not about to defend the men who chose to live three miles east of our reservation knowing full well it belonged to us, but they were just defending themselves." The Sheriff agreed. "However, if you believe in the ancient tradition of native transformation, there is no half way point, only man or wolf. John has pushed himself to the point that he has become a construct of both, his body twisted and mangled well before the old Smith man pulled his tooth out." He lowered the sheet to show fur as it rose up to the young man's exposed crotch down to twisted, digitigrade legs with mangled wolf like feet. "It's not natural, it's not our way."
"I know the affect this has one the body." Ko'atal admitted.
Nightwolf pulled the sheet slowly over John Harjo and whispered to him in words Ko'atal could not understand.
"The body is to be prepared for the journey to spirit realm." Nightwolf then added, "when his body has been accepted, that is when we will cross."
The Sheriff crossed back to his desk in the next room, sat with his back to Nightwolf and Ko'atal and pulled several manilla folders from the pile that had started to build.
"I have to hand in my report to the law enforcement in the town over, everything on it is exactly as they'll see it." He spoke, cold, and grim.
"Yes, you like to keep the Native Traditions outside of these walls, Sheriff Crowfoot, but you cannot deny who you really are." Nightwolf parted from Ko'atal to meet the Sheriff in the next room.
"I've done what I can to keep us here." The Sheriff returned to Nightwolf with a stare as distant as that he'd give to Ko'atal.
Adorned in leather and denim, boots and mere flair of his history, Nightwolf did not have as much ground as he might in the past, he turned to Ko'atal and twisted his otherwise still lips, those eyes pierced the flesh he had desired to truly pierce with a dagger.
"John died selfishly because he wanted something better for the world."
"His world." The Sheriff pierced Nightwolf's softer tone with a harsh realization.
"His world, yes, but he did it with the best of intentions."
"Some of the worst things imaginable have been done with the best of intentions." The Sheriff added and Ko'atal nodded.
"Raiden, the Thunder God is the reason why Jade had died an otherwise natural death. If it weren't for the tampering of the God of Thunder, she would still be alive." He continued, "her death was not natural."
"Then you have learned nothing." Nightwolf wiped the disappointment from his broad face down to his lips and stared into the nothing that was Ko'atal's eyes.
"I have learned that even though this kid's death was for nothing, he risked everything to save the one thing he truly believed in."
The Sheriff nodded but said nothing.
"Let us hope you think otherwise when death is staring you down and asking you what price you're willing to pay to defy it." Nightwolf gifted Ko'atal such a conundrum. What would do? This Ko'atal may still be the death of them all yet, but he saw more than just a stone wall cast around the will of a giant, but the glimmer of understanding that peaked through the cracks.
"In the face of death itself, all men crumble." The Sheriff finally spoke, and Ko'atal nodded, understood, but he would try all the same.