Stoner sat too close to Eneas Victor and got a mouthful of dust when Eneas started digging down in the dirt, started throwing up thick handfuls of dust, raking dust through his hair with his fingers, and rubbing dust on his big, naked belly like he was washing himself. Eneas put his head down to snort and chase the other players a little. He’d always growl and shake his head to make all the other bettors forget the bones he held. I saw him growl at Stoner and I saw Stoner just standing there, fists deep in his smooth leather pockets, shoulders tight to his ears, looking around slyly at all of us. And I knew deep down he was wondering about Louise, about her bronze skin and cedar-red hair, how her beauty somehow came from all that he was not and all that he could never be. And he was afraid, I think.

I saw him standing over by the pop stand, smoking, squinting hard. He looked out back past the dance circle, past the bead and candy stands, past the cooking tents to the dozens upon dozens of teepees, the canvas stretched taut over the ribs of lodge poles, the mystery of canvas or buckskin doors draped for just a small heat opening. And I wondered what we looked like to him, all these Indians, some of us in deer hides and feathers, the stick game lines, Pendleton blankets, our old women in bright kerchiefs, the young girls with long hair and the young women with their short, black hair and red lipstick who stood back from the games aloof as deer, the toothless, the drunks, the beautiful, and everywhere the small sound of bells.

I wondered what Harvey Stoner thought of the dancers, the sawdust arena, and the high clear voices clipping the drumbeat, the drums, the singing voices that weaved the dancers. I wondered what Harvey thought about Baptiste as he entered the arena because Harvey stood for a long while, watching him. I wondered because I, myself, had always stood back from Baptiste when he was sober and dressed for dancing, far back, baffled by the muscle-sleek call of his dress, the dark, chalky silks close to his neck, the white elk bones laddering the bones of his own chest, the brittle sound of his ankle bells dulled by the beat of kicked dancing dust, his quill scalp spined upward toward all of us like the needles that stitched our blood, a thousand cut-glass beads glaring on the wings of his shoulders. We all focused on Baptiste by keeping our distance. A circle formed around him by the absence of other dancers.