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Who is, this man does these things. What does he hide behind? Where is he going? I want to kill him, where do I wait.

Thing about good hunters, they wait well. Don’t bother them, they dream, don’t move.

When Madelaine came out of the bathroom in her robe, toweling her thick long dark hair, Du Pré went in and he showered quickly. He dried himself and he got dressed and he went out to the kitchen.

“I am going to Benetsee’s,” he said.

Madelaine nodded. “Him not back.”

Du Pré shrugged.

“Leave him a note,” said Madelaine.

“Don’t know, him read,” said Du Pré.

“Then you leave him note he don’t have to read,” said Madelaine. “You leave him a loaf of my good bread.”

She went to the kitchen and she wrapped up a loaf of bread in foil and she put it in a plastic bag.

“His dogs all dead?” she said.

Du Pré nodded. Dogs got old, they died.

“We get him another dog,” said Madelaine.

“OK,” said Du Pré. He did not ever argue with Madelaine. She had taught him not to do that.

“Old man,” said Madelaine. “I pray for him.”

“You pray for everybody,” said Du Pré.

“Don’t pray for your fourteen other women,” said Madelaine.

“Them don’t need it,” said Du Pré.

“I find you, another woman, you need it,” said Madelaine.

“OK,” said Du Pré.

“You find that man,” said Madelaine.

D
U
P
RÉ AND
M
ADELAINE
watched the fancydancers circling on the floor of the high-school gymnasium. Men with huge feather bustles and fans and headdresses and legpieces and all of them as proud as fighting cocks. Fancydancers. Roosters.

Wolf Point, Montana. It felt cold here even if it was hot.

“Let’s go, look at the things the traders have,” said Madelaine. There were tables and booths all up and down the halls of the schools, jewelry, clothing, crafts, one man even had some buffalo robes.

They walked down the steps of the bleachers and out into the lobby. Madelaine looked around at the displays of junk jewelry, most of it bad turquoise and cheap silverplate, made in Southeast Asia.

She spotted an old man in a ribbon shirt who didn’t have very much. Just a black cloth, worn velvet, sprawled on a card table and a few pieces set on it. The old man stood with his arms folded. He had big rings on each finger and thumb and bracelets and a necklace of silver rattlesnakes with turquoise eyes.

Madelaine stopped in front of the table.

“How far are you from your people?” she said.

“Long ways,” said the man. He smiled. He had no front teeth.

Madelaine bent over to look. She picked up a bracelet which had a huge cabochon of black-spotted turquoise set in a mass of silver. She turned the bracelet around. She squinted at the back of the setting.

“I like this,” she said. “Will you sell it?”

“Thousand dollars,” said the old man.

Madelaine nodded.

“He say a thousand dollars.”

“He does, eh?” said Du Pré, who hated shopping.

Madelaine smiled at him.

“You trade this for a good fiddle?” she said.

“Mebbe,” said the old man. “If I can play it as well as your man the first time I pick it up.”

Du Pré snorted.

“Five hundred.” said Madelaine.

“OK,” said the old man, smiling. “I give this to you, five hundred and half his fiddle. I got a saw in my truck.”

Du Pré nodded. He wondered if he had seven hundred dollars on him, since that was where Madelaine and this toothless old man were headed, after they had got through threatening to saw Du Pré s fiddle in half. He probably did.

They stood there for a moment. A band of teenage Indian kids ran past laughing. They all had on black satin jackets with red feather fans on the backs. They were headed outside to smoke.

Inside the drummers and singers were making music. The sound was very old and eerie. It had been going on here in America for thousands of years. Du Pré looked through the open doors and he saw the fancydancers speeding up, through the crowd of people drifting past. Sometimes the fancydancers danced for hours. Some dropped dead of heart attacks. It was an exhausting dance.

“Seven hundred dollars,” said Madelaine.

Du Pré dug out his wallet. He looked in one of the side pockets where he kept his hundred-dollar bills. There were two wads in it. He usually only carried one. He fished out the wad, quartered, that didn’t look familiar. There were seven hundred-dollar bills in it. He handed them to Madelaine.

The old man was fitting the bracelet to Madelaine’s wrist, squeezing the soft silver with his strong old hands.

Du Pré handed him the money. The old man didn’t count it, he just tucked it in his shirt pocket.

Du Pré looked back at the fancydancers. They were rocking back and form as they circled, dipping forward and arching their backs.

Du Pré ached looking at them.

The drums went faster, the singers ululated.

“Thanks, Du Pré,” said Madelaine.

“Uh,” said Du Pré. “There is this seven hundred dollars there I don’t know I got.”

“Oh, how is that?” said Madelaine. “One of your women you fucking tip you, you were so good one night?”

“No,” said Du Pré. “One I am fucking put it in my wallet, though.”

“Well,” said Madelaine. “Maybe, who knows.”

Du Pré laughed.

There was food being served in the cafeteria. They went in. There were pots of buffalo stew and fry bread and chokecherry syrup. Cost two dollars. They took their food to a table and Du Pré went to buy some soft drinks.

“They don’t got pink wine,” said Du Pré, setting down the paper cups.

“No shit they don’t,” said Madelaine. “They don’t allow no alcohol at all here. Too much trouble.”

“I got whiskey in my truck,” said Du Pré.

“They find it they beat the shit out of you,” said Madelaine.

Some of the young men, who were the security people, came in, and they looked pretty tough.

“Probably,” said Du Pré.

“Well,” said Madelaine. “There are some of your Turtle Mountain people.”

Du Pré glanced over. He waved at the Turtle Mountain people, in their bright red shirts and cowboy hats and boots.

“We play some tonight,” said Du Pré.

It started to rain outside, sudden slashing rain with a lot of wind. The sheet of glass in the windows flexed and shimmered.

The buffalo stew didn’t have enough salt in it. Du Pré got up and he went to get some.

He found some little packets of salt. He took ten.

He went back. Madelaine was looking at her new bracelet.

“It is very pretty,” he said.

“Yes,” said Madelaine. “Me, I like this.”

They ate their food. Pretty bland. Du Pré wished he had some pepper sauce.

“You want to smoke,” said Madelaine, “you will have to go outside. Me, I will go and look around, these other traders.”

Du Pré laughed.

“You want money?” he said.

Madelaine shook her head. “I got my nice thing,” she said. “You go and smoke.”

Du Pré carried the used bowls and plates and plastic forks to a trash can and he dumped them in. Madelaine grinned at him and she went off down a side hall rowed both sides with tables.

Du Pré made his way out front. The sidewalk was thick with cigarette butts.

The rain had stopped as suddenly as it had begun. The sun was shining down in golden shafts through the black clouds. The air was fresh and smelled of lightning.

Du Pré rolled a cigarette and he lit it and he drew the smoke deep into his lungs. He blew out a long blue-gray stream. He sighed. It tasted good.

Knots of people stood around, smoking and chatting. Little kids shrieked and ran and jumped. Their parents were inside, shrieking and running and jumping, some of them anyway.

Young bloods in ribbon shirts with fancy hairdos announced their tribe by their clothes and paints and bad attitudes of young warriors.

Du Pré snorted. Backbone of the tribe is the women, they give life, strength of the tribe is the warriors, their humility.

These boys, they got some to go, Du Pré thought. Spend a little less time, front of the mirror, little more time helping the old people.

Du Pré glanced off at a little copse of blue spruce in the middle of the lawn. There was a sculpture made of stainless steel to one side.

An old man dressed in ragged clothes was leaning against the sculpture.

It was Benetsee.

“Damn,” said Du Pré. He threw his cigarette on the ground and he began to walk toward the old man.

“Hey!” Du Pré yelled.

Benetsee moved. He was shuffling, fast enough, toward the little stand of spruces.

Du Pré got to the lawn and he started to run.

Benetsee went behind the trees.

Du Pré cursed.

He ran flat out, his cowboy boots slipping at each stride with a jerk, leather soles on wet grass.

Du Pré tried to turn and his feet shot out from under him and he fell full-length.

He slid a good fifteen feet. He was all wet on his right side. He could smell the crushed grass. His jeans would be stained. The elbow of his shirt.

Du Pré got up and he walked on, his side stitched a little, he had pulled some muscles in his chest.

Du Pré went around behind the spruces.

No one there. Of course.

Du Pré heard feet running toward him.

A couple of the young security men came around the spruces, one on each side.

“Hey, man,” said one. “Everything all right? We saw you running.”

“Oh, yes,” said Du Pré. “It is all right.”

The three of them looked at each other for a moment.

Du Pré shrugged and he walked back toward the gym.

“T
HEM POWWOWS ALL THE
same,” said Madelaine. “Same people doin’ same things. I go to ’em, but I don’t miss leavin’ them.” Madelaine grinned at Du Pré. She had her left hand on the dashboard of the car. The turquoise bracelet burned sea blue in the sunlight.

Du Pré glanced over at the fence line crossing a little feeder seep. A prairie falcon gripped a post, wings half-extended.

They were doing about eighty on a narrow two-lane blacktop road. Every once in a while, they passed a little white cross mounted on a steel fencepost. The crosses marked spots where people had died in car wrecks. On Memorial Day, family would often put plastic flowers on the crosses.

“I had some good times with them Turtle Mountain people,” said Du Pré. “Them good people.”

“That guitar player, him Daby, is a dirty old man,” said Madelaine. “He grab my ass”, you know.”

“Um,” said Du Pré. Well, he thought, you can eat old Daby for your lunch, the old bastard won’t try that again, I am sure. Maybe he drive, Turtle Mountain, ice bag in his lap, keep the hurt from his nuts getting ripped off down a little.

“He play pretty good guitar, though,” Madelaine said.

She don’t rip his nuts off. She tell him, you play pretty good, I don’t rip your plums off this one time, you know. Second time, I take ‘em, fry them, eat them. Turtle Mountain oysters.

“I tell him, mind your manners, I fry up some Turtle Mountain oysters.” said Madelaine. “Him don’t like that.”

They crested a long sloping hill and looked down suddenly into a swaled bottom, thick with cattails and loud with Canada geese. The car windows were shut but the geese honked loudly enough so they could be heard easily. Du Pré glanced over and saw young geese, in their yellow down, following their parents.

The car bottomed out as it crossed a little bridge and men shot up the rising road. A pheasant flew suddenly.

Above the water’s reach to the roots hanging down into the earth, the sagebrush reappeared.

They got to Toussaint in two hours. It was a bright and sunny day and the Wolf Mountains to the north gleamed with fresh snow up high.

“You want some pink wine?” said Du Pré.

“No,” said Madelaine. “I need to go home. I am a little worried about Lourdes.”

Lourdes was Madelaine’s eldest daughter. A good student, quiet and shy, when she grew up she would be a stately woman. She had her father’s big bones and blade nose.

Du Pré nodded. Lourdes had just turned fifteen and she was the most rebellious of Madelaine’s children, in a quiet, firm way. No scenes. No calls from the police. If she drank or smoked dope she did so very quietly. Du Pré didn’t think that she did.

Lourdes liked to control everything around her.

Lourdes was a frightened, intelligent girl.

Du Pré drove up to Madelaine s house. The front door was open. The radio was turned up very loud. Bad rock and roll music.

It was all pretty bad, Du Pré thought.

Du Pré parked and he got out and opened the trunk and he got their nylon suitcases. He took one in each hand and he walked up toward the house.

“Du Pré!” Madelaine yelled. Her voice was a little hysterical.

Du Pré came in. He set the bags down.

Madelaine was standing by the telephone, which sat on a little Parsons table Du Pré had made for her, out of some walnut he had found in an abandoned bar.

Madelaine was holding a piece of ruled notebook paper. The sort that is bound with wire. One margin was all tiny holes, now ripped out when the page had been taken from the book.

“Lourdes, she run away.”

Du Pré nodded. Neither of his two girls had ever run away, but, then, neither of his two girls got any crap from Du Pré, who knew better. My Jacqueline and my Maria, they know who they are. Father Pussycat, they call me. I give up early on.

“She say where she run away to?” said Du Pré.

“It is not running away you let your poor mother know where you are visiting,” said Madelaine. “That’s just visiting.”

“She got a boyfriend?” said Du Pré.

“Yeah,” said Madelaine. “She is hanging out with that poor Dassault boy, Sean. That asshole old man of his, name him that.”

Bucky Dassault was one of Du Pré’s pet hates. The man was wholly dishonest. He’d come out of Deer Lodge Prison on parole from a statutory rape conviction. While he was in there, he had taken extension courses and qualified as an alcohol and drug counselor. That didn’t work out well, so he became Benjamin Medicine Eagle, New Age Shaman, and he took out ads in New Age magazines and he made a lot of money. His wife had the good sense to divorce him after only three kids. Sean was around, but the other boy and the girl were in juvenile custodial programs.