Baptiste’s voice was heavy in her ears. Charlie would hear Baptiste and take her back to Thompson Falls. Weakness pressed deep into her chest. Her hands were trembling like the honeyed saplings at the thick base of the hill. Charlie had stopped walking. He rested his hand on his holster. And still Baptiste kept talking. Charlie was close enough to hear Baptiste, to see them in the weeds. But Charlie only tilted his head up as if he were hearing something far away. Louise looked down at Charlie standing in the open field. The sudden wind had brought back the heat of summer. Clear heat shuddered the long September grass, a heat that looked wet in the distance, a wavering, filmy heat that seemed to wash over him. Louise wrapped her arms around her knees and watched Charlie. Charlie began walking toward them again. She breathed through her mouth. “He can’t even hear us,” Baptiste told her, but Charlie kept walking steadily toward them.

She believed Charlie was playing a trick on them. He was letting them hide like children, letting them play their game, but as Charlie got closer she could see his face and she knew. His eyes watered with the hard setting sun. Baptiste tapped Louise’s hand. “We are hidden,” he said. He pointed toward the stiff juniper that lined the river. She looked carefully.

“See that,” Baptiste said. “See.”

She saw the large herd of deer as if she were imagining it. First a twitch. Then a rolling haze. A great shuddering movement like wind on grass.

She could see the gray highway, the stuttering light on the river. She could see light cradled in sweetgrass. She could not remember seeing light as if it were more than just light. Silver light channeled down the rock face of Revais Hill. Light glanced off Charlie’s smooth face. Louise wondered if the sun itself shed its skin to hide all the animals. “That’s right,” Baptiste said, and she wondered if he was answering her.

In this field, these hills, the sun ached over red leaves, hid bear and deer. Trout slept in the hazy shadow of early evening, safe. She wanted to believe she was safe, too, that there was a place for her to hide from all of them, from Baptiste Yellow Knife, from Mr. Bradlock, from Charlie Kicking Woman’s chase.