They were all just looking toward the river. As I walked closer I felt the slick sweat on my back turning to salt under the drying sun. The water was so glassy my eyes teared. Everyone was quiet, quiet as a photograph. I didn’t recognize her at first. I was caught off guard. My ankles wobbled suddenly under the new weight. Louise was standing by the river with her grandmother’s arm encircling her. She was shivering. Her hair dribbled tails of water. Her dark nipples bled through her river-stained dress and for a moment I thought of the makeshift bandage I had taped to her ribs that morning. Logic betrayed me. I couldn’t reckon the image of Louise standing here by the river with the last image I held of her. She was still in Missoula. All at once I saw myself in the nightmare my life had become. I tried to piece together what I was seeing, make sense of it. But this was like no dream I’d ever had. The day was blinding and beautiful. I felt sick. I looked past Louise and her grandmother, past the small crowd gathered to gawk, looked past the cowboy spinning his lariat at the water’s edge, not making the connection.

I thought it was nothing but river grass or seaweed burnt by sun. Something, maybe nothing. Thin strands of river willow boiling in a thick coiling current just under a smooth-water surface. Up from deep-smelling water, I watched the snaking black hair. I remembered long hair. Louise’s sister. All of a sudden it hit me as I stood with the hook wicked enough to barb a full-grown man, still dangling from my shoulder. A coolness smiled beneath the squeak of my leather holster. My spine was a needle dipped to forty below. I thought of Florence spinning down to the silted river bottom, her wide eyes blinking back up at the mica-filtered light. Gone.

I turned away from the river, placed my hand on my hip. I thought of entering that dark water, pulling Florence dead and heavy from the depths, feeling her stiff, waterlogged fingers tap me as I reach to grab her, her cold hair around me like fish.

Bradlock came up from behind me and touched his hand to the base of my spine. I backed off so fast I nearly pitched into the water.

“I have a talk with you over here?” he said, nodding his head toward higher ground.

“What is it?” I asked, unable to mask the edge in my voice.

Bradlock was quiet for a bit. He lifted his hat off his head, airing his wind-worn scalp. Then he looked at me straight.