He knew that Louise needed him, that he should be there for her, but he couldn’t face this trouble, not now. He needed to think awhile, he told himself. He planned instead to drink the day away. He planned to forget his troubles, find a place where he could drink in peace. He walked toward the river, heard the slow water struggling in the channel. He thought of the fish, cold and sweet beneath green water. He saw a magpie, white and black against the blue sky, and remembered Louise’s great-grandfather in his cap of magpie feathers. He stomped a path in the deep snow and cleared a place to sit. He would forget, he told himself. He would forget everything. But he did not forget.

Baptiste felt the sting of snow. He felt old anger rising in his throat, anger with himself. Anger sizzled in his belly. He sat for a long time, alone, and the snow was so cold his hands shook. He looked at the whiskey bottle and thought of the Indians who didn’t drink. He drank because the white man had told him he couldn’t drink. He had convinced himself he was winning the battle, but even with Harvey Stoner dead and gone he was losing his own life to drink. He had already lost the part of himself that gave him the will to fight. He lifted up the bottle and sloshed the amber fire. The drink called to him, but this time he wouldn’t answer. He threw the bottle with all the strength in his arm, threw it so far from himself he didn’t hear it hit the ground. And then Baptiste Yellow Knife stood up. He knew what he had to do and yet he felt powerless and small. His face was wet with streaming tears.

The whole sky lit. He turned his face to the sun and closed his eyes. He listened and he waited. He could see the red pulse of his blood. He could hear his slow and easy breath. He waited for what would come to him.

When there was death, the holy man would come, the man with his long hair wrapped in white silk. Baptiste could see him riding. Baptiste could feel the clean heat singing in the man. And he knew who the man had come for. He had come for Louise. Wind was blowing so hard it lifted Baptiste’s hair from his scalp. He could smell the sweet ring of cottonwoods, spearmint lifting from the low hills. Baptiste remembered how his mother had taught him to pray with his hands open and his arms outstretched, with his hands empty to the sky for he had nothing in this world. He braced himself and opened his palms to the spirit and he prayed. “Give my life back to me,” he prayed, knowing he was asking for the life of Louise.