They are later joined by an orphaned 12-year-old Native American human boy named Tijo (who learns how to speak to equines), some escaped mules and donkeys, a female bald eagle named Tenyak, a female mason bee named Grace, and a young male nameless coyote who later names himself Hope. Hope is the son of an evil coyote trickster, sometimes called First Angry, who often antagonizes the herd, but Hope is not sinister like his father. During their journey, they attempt to avoid and defeat a greedy and arrogant conquistador human going by the pseudonym El Miedo (his Christian name is Ignatio de Cristobal), a competitor of Cortes, briefly allied with an egotistical Andalusian stallion named Pegasus (Pego for short). In the second book, Star Rise, it is referenced that this series takes place long before Guardians of Ga'hoole for there is an oracular barn owl (a species the natives call the omo owl) featured that mentions to Tijo that things called Ga' and Hoole have not happened yet. (Guardians of Ga'hoole takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where humans are extinct, the geography changed, and certain new species evolved.) Also, just before the prologue of the same book, there is a quote from To Be a King. At the end of the third book, Wild Blood, when the crowd of animals finally reaches the legendary Valley of the Dawn, after being led the whole time by the spirits of an Eohippus, a human girl called First Girl, and Tijo's deceased wise stepmother Haru of the Burnt River Clan People, a connection is established to the ending of the sixth book in Wolves of the Beyond: Star Wolf, where Faolan, now back in his kind's (the dire wolves) original homeland, tentatively called the Distant Blue, with his team of fellow dire wolves and other animals, finds a narrow green valley inhabited by American bison and horses. One of these horses, a creamy white individual with a face scarred from a wildfire (making the face furless and "the skin crinkled up in ugly ridges"), is stationed on a promontory just ahead of Faolan, and using the memories of his past life--the legendary ancient dire wolf named Fengo who led the dire wolves on a similar quest--he discovers that this horse also has reincarnated memories of a past life of its own, as the equine recalls Fengo from the past, and acknowledges the