She sat up on the hill above the small house, hidden in the trees. She could see her grandmother making her way up the hill. She brought Louise a jar of bitter, black, juniper tea. Louise knew her grandmother had boiled the juniper berries all night until the tea had turned to syrup. “I’ve been checking on you,” her grandmother said. Louise rubbed her eyes. “You’ve been asleep on and off for two days now.” Grandma handed Louise a newspaper cutout from the Ronan Pioneer. The headline read, “Butte Man Survives Road Buck.” The stranger hadn’t died. He lived with his wife and four children. She saw again his kicked arms, his swollen jaw, the hoof marks that slashed his ears. He would tell his wife this story a hundred times, leaving Louise out. She wondered if he even remembered her. She wondered if he slept with his eyes open and sightless now like he had the night the car trundled to a jolting stop, his vision turned inward toward highway shadows and women on roadsides. They had to saw through the deer to get the stranger out of the car. There was a picture of the car in daylight, the hood bowed, the window frame a maw of glass teeth. She found herself looking closely at the picture, looking down into the blurry grain of the photograph, looking for herself in the wreck, some clue that she had been there. For a moment she wondered if her life would be recorded at all, if anyone would remember her times of suffering or if she, too, would be cut away like a spine-broken deer that wouldn’t even make it to a poor person’s table.

It occurred to her that Charlie Kicking Woman was protecting her but his goodwill would only last as long as his short pangs of guilt. He had tried so hard to catch her and now that he had finally captured her he had released her.

Her grandmother pulled Louise up. Her legs felt weak and she felt oddly disappointed as if she had won a struggle that came to nothing.

“We have to get going,” her grandmother told her. Louise noticed her grandmother had braided her hair wet. Her grandmother’s hair was sleek and shining in the autumn sun. Grandma patted Louise’s arm. “I know where to hide you,” she said.