Her sister draped a small pink sweater over her shoulders and Louise imagined Florence was praying, whispering for help. Florence placed a cool washcloth at the back of Louise’s neck and Louise felt dizzy.

The light in the room was yellow and so bright she could only keep her eyes open for pinched seconds. She was aware that the days of summer were mostly gone. The purple sky had delivered only the smell of rain. A bright wind scorched the cottonwoods, so dry the dust and the boards of her grandmother’s house made a whispery sound like the voices of old women. To Louise it seemed to be winter. When she closed her eyes she saw snow falling, snow sifting through the guardrails, lighting on the thick tongues of cattle, slow ice growing at the windows.

The winter before Louise had married Baptiste Yellow Knife her grandmother had told Louise a story of her first marriage. At the age of thirteen her grandmother had married a son of the chief, but not the first son. The man she married was not destined to be the chief. The man her grandmother had married was an old man. His breath smelled like tobacco and old corn and he stunk up their teepee with his bad wind. Still, her grandmother had told Louise, he wanted to leave a long legacy.

This old man had chosen to sleep with another Indian woman and had gone to her teepee. Louise’s grandmother had followed him, knowing he was up to no good, knowing he was going to rut like a buffalo with another woman. Her grandmother had heard him with this woman. She knew his voice, because most of his teeth were cracked and he sounded like he was whistling when he talked. Louise’s grandmother lifted the flap of the teepee and had smelled them. She saw the droopy sack of her husband’s balls as he mounted the smooth, flat ass of the other woman. She stood back from the teepee opening and waited. She had taken her dressing knife to this woman’s lodge. She was going to kill her husband. Her grandmother had told Louise she had dreams of being free again, of being without this old man and his old ways. But she had looked at Louise as she told the story. She had looked hard at Louise and she had said, “Even when you don’t love them, that is when they get you, because you think they should love you. They have you then.”