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Shaddack usually went to bed after dawn, so by seven o’clock Thursdayat his eyes as he cruised through Moonlight Cove, looking for a place to hide the van and sleep for a few hours safely beyond Loray and diht seared his eyes

He reressives back in September Her 15-acre property was secluded, at the h the dead woh a local real-estate agent, it had not sold He drove out there, parked in the e door down behind hi cruers, he curled up on the blankets in the back of the van and drifted toward sleep

He never suffered insomnia, perhaps because he was so sure of his role in life, his destiny, and he had no concern about tomorrow He was absolutely convinced he would bend the future to his agenda

All of his life Shaddack had seen signs of his uniqueness, omens that foretold his ultimate triumph in any pursuit he undertook

Initially he had noticed those signs only because Don Runningdeer had pointed thedeer had been an Indian--of what tribe, Shaddack had never been able to learn--who had worked for the judge, Shaddack’s father, back in Phoenix, as a full-tideer was lean and quick, with a weathered face, ropy ht and as black as oil, singularly powerful eyes from which you sometimes had to look away … and from which you soht want to The Indian took an interest in young To him help with soe nor To co with "social inferiors" Which deer ales of five and twelve, the period during which the Indian had worked for the judge, because his parents were hardly ever there to see and object

One of the earliest detailed n of the self-devouring snake…

He had been five years old, sprawled on the rear patio of the big house in Phoenix, a a collection of Tonka Toys, but he’d been deer than in thejeans and boots, shirtless in the bright desert sun, trie pair of wood-handled shears The deer’s back, shoulders, and ar, and Toe, Tommy’s father, was thin, bony, and pale Tommy himself, at five, was already visibly his father’s son, fair and tall for his age and painfully thin By the day he showed To for the Shaddacks teeks, and Toly drawn to hideer often had a s coyotes and rattlesnakes and other desert animals Sometimes he called Toiven hie called hi with theether and sideer, as ifhe lay entranced in the patio shade, in the hot dry air of the desert day, but after a while he was surprised to hear Runningdeer call to him

"Little Chief, come look at this"

He was in such a daze that at first he could not respond His ars would not work He seemed to have been turned to stone

"Coot to see this"

At last Toes surrounding the swi

"This is a rare thing," Runningdeer said in a soreen snake that lay at his feet on the sun-waran to pull back in fear

But the Indian seized him by the arm, held him close, and said, "Don’t be afraid It’s only a har to hurt you In fact it’s been sent here as a sign to you"

Tohteen-inch reptile, which was curled to for itself The serpent was ht it was dead, but the Indian assured hin that all Indians know," said Runningdeer He squatted in front of the snake and pulled the boy down beside hin, sent fro boy, so itwonderingly at the snake, Ton It’s a snake"

"An odeer said

As they hunkered before the snake, he explained such things to To hi Shi waves of heat rose froht have been an incredibly detailed jeweled choker rather than a real snake--each scale a chip of emerald, twin rubies for the eyes After a while Tommy drifted back into the queer trance that he’d been in while lying on the patio, and Runningdeer’s voice slithered serpentlike into his head, deep inside his skull, curling and sliding through his brain

Stranger still, it began to seedeer’s at all, but the snake’s He stared unwaveringly at the viper and aldeer was there, for what the snake said to hi that it filled Toh he did not fully understand what he was hearing This is a sign of destiny, the snake said, a sign of power and destiny, and you will be a reater than your father, a man to whom others will bon, a man ill be obeyed, a man ill never fear the future because he willin the world But for now, said the snake, this is to be our secret No one e to you, that the sign has been delivered, for if they know that you are destined to hold power over theht, tear out your heart, and bury you in a deep grave They od-on-earth, or they will sth has fully flowered Secret This is our secret I a snake, and I will eat e, and no one will know I’ve been here Trust the Indian but no one else

No one Ever

To and was ill for two days The doctor was baffled The boy had no fever, no detectable swelling of lylands, no nausea, no soreness in the joints or ripped by a profound ic that he did not even want to bother holding a co TV was too much effort He had no appetite He slept fourteen hours a day and lay in a daze most of the rest of the time "Perhaps mild sunstroke," the doctor said, "and if he doesn’t snap out of it in a couple of days, we’ll put hie was in court orwith his investment associates, and when Tommy’s mother was at the country club or at one of her charity luncheons, Runningdeer slipped into the house now and then to sit by the boy’s bed for tenin that soft and strangely rhythmic voice

Miss Karval, their live-in housekeeper and part-tie nor Mrs Shaddack would approve of the Indian’s sickbed visits or any of his other associations with Tommy But Miss Karval was kindhearted, and she disapproved of the lack of attention that the Shaddacks gave to their offspring And she liked the Indian She turned her head because she saw no harm in it--if Tommy promised not to tell his folks how deer

Just when they decided to admit the boy to a hospital for tests, he recovered, and the doctor’s diagnosis of sunstroke was accepted Thereafter, Todeer most days from the time his father and mother left the house until one of theht home after classes; he was never interested when other kids invited hier to spend a couple of hours with Runningdeer before his mother or father appeared in the late afternoon

And week by week, month by month, year by year, the Indian reat though as yet unspecified-destiny A patch of four-leaf clovers under the boy’s bedroo pool A score of chirruping crickets in one of the boy’s bureau drahen he came home from school one afternoon Occasionally coins appeared where he had not left them--a penny in every shoe in his closet; a month later, a nickel in every pocket of every pair of his pants; later still, a shiny silver dollar inside an apple that Runningdeer was peeling for hi that they were sodeer whispered portentously on the day after To soft bells ringing under hisin the ht