Our property intersected the old Magpie allotment so I had watched Louise grow up. We would burn the fields at the end of summer, mend the wind-worn fences. I remember seeing Louise out in the fields, skinny and smart but definitely nothing to look at. She was a tomboy with straggly hair. She must have been about eleven years old when she broke her grandmother’s horse. I watched Louise crawl up on that stallion’s broad bare back without a bridle, and the horse gave her a ride, the kind of ride I’ve seen cowboys take when they’re looking to win, a bucking hard ride that would land Louise flat on her bony ass. But the next day she was riding smooth, the horse and Louise like one. No champing bit, no ass-slapping ride, just grace. Her nose was snapped near the top by a tumble from that stallion, but the break has served as a reminder of her fine bones and her tough spirit. Because of that break her nose looks delicate now. She was a roughneck child, ugly even, but now there’s not a soul that can hold a candle to Louise. I often think about the day when she made a fool of me, when she was just thirteen and I was taking her home, the hot wind blowing through the open windows, the flush on her face. I found myself looking at her. She is beautiful and she is not beautiful. I compare Louise to the land, connect the idea of her somehow to when I was a kid and we’d have to go to wakes in Camas Prairie. God, I hated that country. It was hot and dry, nothing but weeds or cold stinging wind at thirty below. A couple of trees. An August dust so fine it powdered your knees when you walked, or sand-snow drifting across houses and roads, brutal and blinding. That was Camas Prairie. Now I drive that stretch of road in winter and summer. I come down into that valley and the fields are pale and the sky is pale and peaceful with a sun that lights even the ragged weeds, every distant hill, every rock shimmering a different color. I can see for miles, and I can’t stop looking or thinking about how lucky I am to see this country, to belong here. I can’t stop looking at this land, and I guess that’s what Louise is like to me. She’s always changing. I can’t get a fix on her. But because we have shared close to the same plot of land, because we are from the same tribe, we are alike. Something about Louise and something about all the Indians here is something about me, a blood kinship, a personal history shared.