“That’s right,” Mr. Bradlock had said, “I’m going to talk to the girl’s grandmother.” And I knew he was imagining a strict woman in a high collar, an old woman who baked cookies. Louise’s grandmother did wear long skirts and high-topped moccasins. She covered her braided black hair with a bright kerchief, and her hair had silvered at the temples. She was also a gambler, stayed up all night for days on end to play stick game. She still rode the horses at the Kalispell horse races. She could chop wood and walk twenty miles to Mission to go to mass. She put up her own food, jerked beef, and fished in summer and winter. She stood about five feet tall but she could work like a man. She had different ideas for her granddaughter. “That’s one grandmother,” I had told Mr. Bradlock, “that won’t be turning her granddaughter over to us, even if it is for Louise’s own good.” But he didn’t listen to me.

I had to go with Mr. Bradlock to Grandma Magpie’s house. It was a mistake. Mr. Bradlock told Grandma Magpie her granddaughter was wild and uncontrollable, that he’d placed her in every school from Mission to Dixon to help her, just to have her run off to Hot Springs like a floozy. The old woman had tossed us both out of the house.

Mr. Bradlock was right in some ways. There was a wildness about Louise. I’d seen her outrun the fastest boys at the summer powwow. Once, on a dare, she swam the white, churning waves of the Flathead River. I saw her dive down between the boulders that writhed the furious current. She had jumped into the deep pond at the Magpie place to save her grandmother when she broke through ice. There were times I wished I could be like Louise.

I drove the road that day not seeing, my ideas too big in my head, not thinking I would see Louise on the road when I caught a glimpse of her running toward me. Once again, I felt like I was the one caught by her. My heart was pounding fast. I pulled my hat down over my eyes, thought she could read me. My heart raced whenever I saw Louise. And whenever I drove out near Perma I looked for her whether I was supposed to or not. I’d told myself that looking for Louise was my job, and usually it was, but it wasn’t my job that Saturday.