A lawman with a hardy appetite for life and an unshakable faith in the explicable, Southern Ute Acting Chief of Police Charlie Moon is not prepared to accept a purely supernatural explanation for the recent strange events of April 1. Nevertheless, something carried off Tommy Tonompicket and his unlikely drinking companion, research scientist William Pizinski, in the black chill of the Colorado night. And something ripped the head off a man outside a lonely cabin in the mountains...and left two large, fanglike punctures in his chest. And though Charlie's eccentric old aunt, the shaman Daisy Perika, claims the gargantuan avenging arachnid Grandmother Spider has risen up from the depths of Navajo Lake, the hulking, good-natured tribal policeman feels in his gut that this is murder, pure if not simple, and most probably by human hands.