When she left the house the clouds that had been in the distance were moving in fast. Trees were creaking with wind. She felt the sting of cold and wished she had grabbed a jacket. Rain pelted her like hail. She began running to stay warm. She crossed the highway and followed the old Dixon trail. It cut a mile or so off the highway. When she reached Miner’s Hill she walked under the pine trees to get out of the storm but wind drove thin needles of rain down through the branches, so she ran again. She ran to forget her sister, to forget Baptiste, to forget the hollowness that lined her chest. Grouse drummed the bushes with the pounding of her heart. She had forgotten the way the cold wind could feel in the heat of running, clean and cleansing. And sooner than she would have liked she came upon the land where Jules Bart lived. She followed the hill slope that dipped down to a wide corral. She saw his white barn. A few horses were running the far fence line. She thought of Baptiste and the horses he carefully tended. Baptiste would talk to Champagne and the horse would rub his muzzle on Baptiste’s chest. She wondered if his mother was caring for her son’s horses now. She thought of Champagne, winded from running, turning wild without Baptiste. The storm was purple over the hills and moving fast. Wind pushed at her back. Wind pressed the grass flat and the horses ran hard. Rain dripped from her face, from her hands.

She had not seen Jules Bart since the day her sister died, since the night she had gone home with him. She had followed him down a dark hall. She had seen the glint of his spurs hanging neatly on the wall. Cowboy hats and silk scarves hung from dusty antlers above his bed. A spiderweb laced the top of his window but his house was neat and orderly. She noticed small details of lace on the nightstand and dresser, the signs of a woman who had lived there long ago. She looked at the bubbled glass–covered photographs of a thin man with a handlebar mustache, an unsmiling young woman in a severe black dress. Yellowed newspaper clippings curled back from the walls, pictures of Jules smiling too wide under World Champion headline titles, and she had wondered what the point of it all was. Jules Bart champion rodeo roper. Her sister sleeping in the dark room of Ferron’s Funeral Home. His house had been so dark that night she had been aware of little else but him. She had leaned into Jules Bart, closed her eyes to his room, because he smelled sweet as juniper.