The sister-in-law got tired of her sister’s handsome husband. She went back to her sister and begged her to take him back. But her sister had finally set up with another good man. So the sister-in-law tricked the man outside and locked all of her doors and pressed cardboard to her windows. Three days later he was still standing outside her house. He began pressing his face to the locks at her doors. If there were any gaps in the cardboard at her windows he would find them. She would see his watery dark eye blinking at her. He would call her name again and again until his voice grew hoarse and whispery. Then every third day or so he would fall asleep. She knew this because he would stop knocking on her door, or pounding on the sides of her house. She would sneak away then but he would always find her. And he would chase away her friends when he walked toward her, his hard-on straining one of her old dresses. She would tell him to go away. She would shoo him like a cat but still he followed her. She threw back at him the knots of his hair that she had once carefully gathered from his favorite chair. She gave him back the small bits of clothing she had snipped from his clothesline. She gave him back all the things that held him to her but those things had gained their own power. She could not release him.

He haunted her for years. She had to leave her home and all the people she loved but even then he followed her.

For a short time Louise had thought about using love medicine on the rodeo roper to pay him back for ignoring her. When she had asked her grandmother about herbs and blood her grandmother had laughed. “You don’t need love medicine, Louise. If you used love medicine on any man you’d kill him.” Louise did not expect her grandmother to laugh. She thought her grandmother would scold her, warn her of danger. Her grandmother had once told her that love medicine could wear itself out, break like a tight knot pulled. Love medicine runs its course. Louise didn’t really believe Baptiste Yellow Knife had put the medicine on her. But her grandmother had warned her Dirty Swallow was using her medicine, all of her medicine to hold Louise to Baptiste. “Baptiste is not the man for you, Louise, maybe no man is the man for you. That’s OK too,” her grandmother had said. “Fight this. Anyone under the spell of love medicine never believes they are.”