Old Macheese had just started to tell a story when Baptiste stood up, so thin the dirty seat of his pants hung almost to his knees. Old Macheese spoke, saying he probably had tuberculosis. He wore a belt that had once been his grandfather’s horse bridle. He had two white splotches clouding his face and still he was the darkest Indian Louise had ever seen, a beaver-dark boy who stood with a strange certainty Louise recognized even then as trouble. When his grandfather saw Baptiste stand, he slipped the knot off the colt he was holding and headed fast toward Baptiste. Louise remembered the old man had leaned over Baptiste, listening and nodding. But Louise could not hear Baptiste.

“Baptiste has seen a salamander,” he called, “a lizard turn red.”

Louise’s great-grandfather, Good Mark, shut the corral gate and made his way up to Baptiste. Louise stood silent beside her grandmother. The other men had stopped working and had turned to see what was troubling Baptiste. The horses crowded one corner of the corral as the workers gathered at the bottom of the hill. The men crouched suddenly to the ground. They were patting the dirt, searching, feeling for something. She could see Good Mark weaving his fingers through the faded grass; his white braids were tucked in his belt. Louise’s mother shook her head, then cupped her hands together on top of her head. Louise’s grandmother tapped Louise. “Look for a lizard,” she had told Louise, half-whispering. “See if you can find the lizard.”

Louise got down on her hands and knees with the men. She combed the grass with her fingertips. She picked up a branch and brushed the ground, but she saw nothing. Baptiste Yellow Knife crept up behind her and Louise looked up to see his knife-bladed hair, his dark face. “You won’t find it,” he said. She pushed at his feet, but he did not budge. “Move,” she said. She didn’t like being told by Baptiste, a boy she barely knew, that she couldn’t do something. “You’re in my way,” she told him. She turned over stones, picked at the sage and grass, looking. She glanced at Baptiste and noticed his watching was dim. His eyes lazy. His lashes flickered and she saw the glare of black irises swirling back in his head, and then only the whites of his eyes, spooky, almost blue. “It won’t do no good,” he said, his dizzy eyes closed. “Someone will die.” Louise saw the dirt in the slim cuff of Baptiste Yellow Knife’s pants. She saw clouds bleaching to wind, a haze of dust changing light like silt changes water. She saw her great-grandmother standing on the hill, and then Old Macheese was falling back, falling, while the wind lifted her olive scarf from her head.