I hoped I’d get some power beneath my wheels in the powdered snow. I didn’t need torque on this snowy road. I needed to move fast. I started the drive forward with my headlights off, slipping only inches forward, and then my car fishtailed, and I had enough speed to sail. I cleared the first hump of snow and then I shoved up over the hill, flipping my light switch, whooping my siren, stopping in time to catch two men running. I got out of my car and yelled for them to stop. Then I fired into the air. I felt the crawling unease of someone looking at me over my shoulder.

I used my spotlight and chased the hills until I caught Harvey Stoner. He had placed his hands squarely on top of his head. He flinched into the light. “Who’s with you?” I asked. I refused to call him by his name, refused to recognize him or admit he had any power here. “We meet again, Officer,” Stoner said, but I looked away from him. Someone was slumped on the ground. He was heavy-drunk, a gunnysack of meat. I shined my flashlight on a man. He turned to me and mustered the strength to stand. He was only recognizable by his stance, his unshakable stance. He’d taken a mean hit to his eye. Baptiste Yellow Knife.

“Charlie,” he said, “you come here to save me?” Even at my distance, I could smell the juniper berries on his breath, the stench of cheap gin. I looked at Baptiste. Stoner may have gotten one good punch in but that would be the end of it. Yellow Knife was too drunk to harm. He was like the drunk in the automobile accident, the limber-loose scarecrow.

“Who else is here with you?” I asked. I could see there was someone else.

“Here.”

I turned my flashlight on Jules Bart. He lifted his hand to his face to block the light. “Just making things fair,” he said. “Evening out the score.”

“Don’t leave me here with these candy-asses,” Yellow Knife said. “I’ll be here all night.” Yellow Knife reminded me of the Blackfeet warrior who had been captured by the Flatheads. The Flatheads plucked his eyes out; they cut off his fingers, branded him. And after every torture he would laugh at the Flathead men and call them women.

“You come around here, Charlie, sniffing for my wife? Join the line.”

I pulled myself up. I had been trained to let things be. Be slow to anger. Be patient. Be courteous. I remembered seeing Louise on the floor of her grandmother’s house, beaten. I remembered seeing her earlier. Yellow Knife had beaten her again in the worst way, in the hidden way a man can beat a woman, so there are no bruises, no true signs, only the light in her begins to die. I remembered Hemaucus Three Dresses.