“They’re convinced she’s alive down there.” He kept looking at me and I began to think he was believing it too. He pointed to a group of men I had known for years, both Indian and white men standing on the old Perma Bridge. I saw Sam White Elk then, standing up near the road with his back to the river, turning the straw hat he held in his hands. “Have a look yourself,” Bradlock said. I put my hand over my mouth, listening. “She’s out there, standing. Her eyes are open. They think,” he began, looking back at Grandma Magpie and Louise, “it’s just the current holding her, I know, but her arms are moving back and forth like ….” and he looked away from me when he said this and stopped talking.

“What?” I said. It seemed too long a while before he answered me back.

“… like she’s gesturing for someone to save her.” He leaned closer and whispered to me then, “And the Indians aren’t the only ones believing this.” I was confused. I wanted to go to Louise but recognized it was not my place to be beside her. Sam White Elk had made his way to the middle of the bridge. He had bent over and cupped his hands to his knees, staring into the water. He looked as if someone had just knocked the wind out of him. Some of the men had straddled the railing on the bridge. Others were just peering over the side. Some of the old ranchers had taken off their cowboy hats and I understood this was their small way of showing respect. Ordinarily the death of an Indian, even an Indian child, would have gone unnoticed by the whites, but this death had caught everyone up. I knew this would be a story even the old ranchers would be telling for years, not a ghost story or an eerie story, but an inexplicable story turned sideways, almost funny, so it could be dismissed. I joined the men on the bridge with a burdened heart.