She slept so hard the palms of her hands felt weak. She heard wood crack, the brush of branches pushed aside. She sat up slowly, rubbing her left shoulder. She thought Florence was on her way up the hill but when she looked down she saw Baptiste Yellow Knife. She felt a blue lick of adrenaline skim her chest. He looked like he had a rough time reaching her, and he was drunk. His skin was oily with sweat and he had unbuttoned his shirt down to his belt line. His skin was shiny. His hair was dusty. He had a thick butcher knife strapped to his thigh with leather thongs and she thought for a moment he had stumbled on her by chance when he was out hunting. But she knew better. He had traveled miles from his mother’s house to find her. She felt uneasy. Baptiste Yellow Knife was another man when he was drinking. He smiled at her when he stood over her and she noticed that he was weaving. When Baptiste Yellow Knife got drunk he was mean. His teeth looked big. She noticed he had tattooed her name on his hand with indigo pen ink. The tattoo was large, in wide block letters, blue pigment staining his skin forever with her name. Louise tried to imagine Baptiste poking the ink-dipped needle into his brown hand again and again, ink pooling beneath his skin, her name sinking into his blood.

He sat down next to Louise on her blanket and for a moment she was glad for the company. But even her boredom did not make Baptiste Yellow Knife a welcome visitor when he’d been drinking. He didn’t speak to her and she didn’t speak to him. It occurred to her that Baptiste had ways of finding things out that had less to do with his mother’s medicine power and more to do with his desire. He had the clean whistling eyes of a screech owl. She believed he could look for her in darkness to hunt her out. She had trusted him to hide her from Charlie and now she wondered if he was expecting payment. She felt she had trusted him too much, because she couldn’t count on Baptiste to stay away from the bottle. Baptiste Yellow Knife could find her, because he had memorized the shape of her footsteps in weeds and tall grass. He knew the brush of her hands past the huckleberry bush and wild roses. He knew the way leaves turned as she passed them, the way her scent fused with spearmint and sage. He knew the sound of her breath and the sound the wind made as it passed around her. He could trace her because he wanted her. He could sniff her out.