She stopped spinning the dials and looked over at him. “Is that so? And just why would you volunteer?”

“Because that’s the thing about being the leader. You have to make sacrifices. You know what I mean. You’re out here doing this because you are making sacrifices for your children, right?” Miig was playing a dangerous game. I watched and listened with nothing to offer. Should I stop him? But then what—let Zheegwon be taken?

“How do we know your bones aren’t all dried up?”

“Well, you’ll just have to take my word for it. But you know old Indians can’t lie,” Miig replied, clearly betting on the fact that mainstreamers were vastly undereducated about Native people, that they relied on hokey stereotypes and romantic tropes. “Might as well unlock my cuffs—no combination to remember. I won’t fight. Just take me instead.”

Isaac leaned toward him. “Miig…”

“I gladly offer up my dreams in place of the boy’s. It would be a noble sacrifice. Who do you think has more to give, anyway? A young boy who’s only ever known struggle? Or a man with a lifetime’s worth of experience and joy?”

She dropped and chain and nodded to Kelsey, who nodded back, then swung the gun in Miig’s direction. “No funny business, now, old-timer.”

She retrieved a ring of keys from the front pocket of her hoodie and made her way to Miig. I tried to yell, to tell them to stop, to tell them to take me instead. But all that made it out was a long, low groan. What now?

✦✦✦ ✦✦✦ ✦✦✦

Once he was led out, the rest of us sat in a haze of thick fear. It hurt to breathe in that space without Miig. Surely they would kill him. How could they not? They had barely led him out of the room without bumbling around, and he was cooperating.

“I’m sure he has a plan. He’ll escape and come back for us,” I tried. But no one answered.

We listened for sounds of escape or pain or the report of a gun ending our hope. There was nothing. Nothing but crickets in the weeds and Slopper whimpering in the corner. We’d fallen asleep from exhaustion and the remnants of the sedatives we’d been given when the door finally opened again. I slid back up the wall, sitting as high and alert as I could. I knew from the shuffling around me that everyone else was awake now.

“Shit, shit, shit…”

“Shut up, Kelsey, just get him back in his spot. Lock him back up. Hurry!”

“What’s wrong?” Isaac was zero-to-a-hundred frantic.

Miig groaned as they dragged him across the floor, the side of his shirt rust-colored and wet. One of the women hit her head on the hanging bulb, and it swung wildly, making the room an abstract rendition of itself, illuminating one face, one scene at a time—Wab’s fingers clenching the bars, Isaac’s wide eyes, Miig’s head hanging between his shoulders as they laid him down in his original spot.