Joe Leaphorn: Lieutenant in the Navajo Tribal Police, police officer with a masters degree in anthropology.
Anna Atcitty: niece to Mrs. Cigaret, about 16 years old, learning from her aunt.
Hosteen Tso: old Navajo man with illnesses, seeking his grandson; Tso is the great grandson of the famous Navajo Standing Medicine, lost in the era of Kit Carson leading the army to annihilate the Navajo people, in the Long Walk of the Navajo.
Mrs. Margaret Cigarette, the Listening Woman: blind older woman who knows the sings to help specific problems.
Captain Largo: Navajo Tribal Police captain based in Tuba City, who directs Leaphorn as to responsibility for the safety of Theodora Adams, who the Navajo Police are asked to keep safe.
Emerson Begay: escaped prisoner taken at Kinaalda ceremony by Leaphorn, then got away again when a driver tried to kill Leaphorn with a speeding car.
John "Shorty" McGinnis: owner of Short Mountain Trading Post for the last forty years.
Theodora Adams: young woman from Washington, D.C. who pursues Father Benjamin Tso.
Benjamin Tso: Catholic priest in Franciscan order, grandson to Hosteen Tso. He is motivated to help his people by living among them as a priest.
Jimmy (James) Tso: wayward grandson of Hosteen Tso; older brother of Father Benjamin, Gold Rims to Leaphorn, and Hoski to the police long tracking him. As first born son, he learned of the secret cave and the gift of Standing Medicine. He is driven to help his people through the violence of the Buffalo Society.
Hoski: another man in the Sante Fe robbery, of many aliases known to the FBI, born as James Tso, older brother of Father Benjamin Tso, but the two were raised in separate homes. Under surveillance, fooled the FBI surveillance by changing clothes with an accomplice in a laundromat, and left his Washington DC home for the caves near his grandfather's hogan.
Rosemary Rita Ovileras: Woman in Washington DC with whom Hoski fell in love, unexpectedly to him. That love changes his plans.
George Witover: FBI agent in Albuquerque who is eager to resolve several cases following from a robbery of an armored car in Santa Fe a few years earlier.
Alice Endischee: hosting the Kinaalda, where Leaphorn speaks directly with Margaret Cigarette.
John Tull: member of the Buffalo Soociety who blew off the back of an armored car to steal the money in Santa Fe; released on bail a few weeks before Leaphorn was attacked; he is easy to identify because of a childhood accident that damaged one side of his face. He is a Seminole man.
Jackie Noni: first approached McGinnis to buy his Trading Post, which offer was rejected; member of the Buffalo Society, at the caves with the kidnapped Boy Scouts; a Pottawatomie man.
Frederick Lynch: owner of the Mercedes auto stolen by Hoski from Washington D.C., and another of Hoski's murder victims; first considered to be the driver of the vehicle on the reservation, and thus Gold Rims.
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