A mule deer leaped from the dense brush and clipped across the changing river. Louise heard its hollow clocking steps and then its hooves shattered the river skin. Ice creaked like an old door closing. She saw the deer’s dark eyes roll up white, a clear splash of water gurgling. And then the river was silent. There was only the jagged black hole. Smoking water. The deer was gone.

The wind chattered in the red bramble.

She was sleepy. She decided to sit down by the roadside, to rest for a minute. The hills were black against the pale sky. She thought of summer, the hushed noises of birds, the smell of sweet nettle on a hot day. The huckleberries, sarvis berries, Indian celery were hidden beneath the knee-deep snow. Louise blew breath into the cup of her white palms, then stuffed her hands back into her pockets. She curled her fingers tight and felt the burning pulse of blood.

She blinked her eyes to the cold. Florence stood among the tall grass, half-hidden in the orange thicket. She wasn’t looking at Louise, and Louise felt no fear in seeing her. Florence was looking toward the river. Louise tilted her head and looked, looked closely. Louise knew she was seeing the dead. Her sister had died. Louise didn’t want to think the old stories of life and death were not just story but procedure, stories that revealed something sure and unquestionable. Signs to follow. If you drop a rock in water it will sink. If you touch your hand to the red-bellied stove you will burn. When you near your own death, you will begin to see the dead. She felt she was in the first stages of a great wind; it was hissing now at her ankles.

She thought to chase Florence, to run back toward the river in the deep snow that cupped the base of tall trees and buried the stickery bushes. She thought to chase her sister and she thought she might catch her, hold the tail end of her and pull her back. But as Louise strained to see Florence, Florence turned into the torn shirt of a rancher. An old fence marker. Louise rubbed her forehead.

She sat for a long time by the road, for an hour maybe, before Baptiste showed up and sat beside her. She wasn’t startled by him. She knew he would find her, but she did not know where Baptiste had come from. He was beside her. She was sure she could feel the warmth of him. She held her head in her hands resigned to the past they shared. The Yakima woman was nowhere in sight.