Bearer of the Pipe - Tapa dura

In a continuation of the Spanish Bit saga, a young member of a Native American tribe called The People apprentices himself to his grandfather, a holy man, and must make some hard sacrifices for the good of the tribe.

picious birth, Wolf Pup has demonstrated an instinct for the ways of the wild. Yet it is in the lodge of his grandfather Singing Wolf that he seeks his true calling medicine man and future bearer of the Story Skins, the pipe, and the sacred Spanish bit. But before he can claim his destiny Wolf Pup must undertake a perilous vision quest. He must learn to see through the eyes of the deer, soar with the red-tailed hawk, sit coiled with the snake in the grass. Then a whirlwind of terror, an instant of destruction, will leave his village in ruins and chase the life-giving herds of buffalo across the horizon and beyond the People's reach. Suddenly Wolf Pup discovers that the burden of being Pipe Bearer may require the most profound and painful sacrifice of all.
From the Paperback edition.