Louise imagined Baptiste finding her coat. She allowed herself to think he was feeling bad he had left her alone. She imagined Baptiste looking out the small window of his room, looking for any other sign she may have left behind. She imagined he was running the dry fields toward her grandmother’s house. He was running through waist-high weeds. He was running on hard stones. He was coming for her. She would teach Baptiste Yellow Knife that she was not one to be left alone.

She saw Harvey Stoner at the counter of Malick’s and as she approached him he glanced back at her and leaned over the counter.

“Bull Durham,” he said. She wanted to turn around to see him purchase the tobacco but she didn’t even glance his way. She had seen him before. She could feel his attention on the backs of her legs, the curve of her buttocks, and she liked his attentions. He was watching her, stiff-eyes forward, the see-all watch that suggested indifference but Louise knew better. She lifted a can of peas from the high shelf and flexed the calves of her legs. She paused in her reach. When he turned her way pretending not to be looking she licked her finger and slowly wiped the dust off the silver top of the can.

She had known about Harvey Stoner for years but he was only beginning to notice her. He tapped his storebought cigarettes on his silver case when she passed him, or he’d put his hands on his hips and look off beyond her like he didn’t know she existed. Small things overdone. Maybe a glance her way as he lifted his car hood, his eyes on her in the rearview mirror as he pulled out of the churchyard. She could feel him like heat. Harvey Stoner. He was forty-eight years old. A Caucasian and a rich man in Dixon. Everyone said he had made something of himself. He drove fifty-seven miles to Missoula every day on government business. He lived on the reservation because he wanted to, because of the wide-open land. He drove big cars through all the small towns that Louise had spent hours walking to. The miles were easy for Harvey Stoner. There was no distance he couldn’t cross, no place he wasn’t welcome. She thought of Baptiste, how he could make himself welcome, too, with his fist and his hard words rinsed by alcohol.