Old man Mendoza confused them. He ran them until they gasped and gagged. Then he sat with them, one on one, and talked life and hoops. They knew this: Mendoza had won a championship. He might serve as guide if they let him in.

The Wildcats’ bus accelerated down state-tended asphalt across a broad valley. It turned onto Snowflake’s Main Street, and the boys peered at brick homes with sweeping wood porches and an ice-cream parlor and a grand temple of the Latter-day Saints. Erastus Snow, a Mormon apostle, founded this town with William Jordan Flake, who later served time in Yuma penitentiary for the crime of taking too many wives.

The bus pulled into the high school parking lot. Anxiety twisted like a rodent in its burrow. Mendoza turned to the boys, his face betraying nothing. “Get your bags. This is it.” Two years ago, Mendoza inherited a fractured band in Chinle, an unruly pack with four wins. He imbued it with purpose, and they won many more games. Mendoza could rattle off the names of coaches tossed aside after a losing season, like a veteran recalling comrades lost to ceaseless war. “Chinle had three coaches in the year before I was hired.”

Do you worry you might be devoured? Mendoza shrugged. He chose this path and saw no point in second-guessing. “That’s rez ball.”

This article is an excerpt from the book “Canyon Dreams: A Basketball Season on the Navajo Nation,” by Michael Powell, a New York Times sports columnist. The book was released Nov. 19.