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group of mounted Lakota who surrounded the wagons one morning, shouting and firing into
the air. But Alphonse grabbed his arm. "Look," he said, "they're not in war paint. If you want
something to do, go join them." The younger man mounted up and rode into the circle, to the
delight of the Lakota, who invited the Terrebonnes' party to camp with them that night.
Alphonse handed down through the generations the code of the voyageur along with a
stern lesson: Never fight an Indian. He's defending his land, and considering who we are, he
might be your kin.
Alma's red Mitsubishi rental sedan has antilock brakes and front wheel drive, for which she
is immediately grateful as she downshifts to take the steep hill to the valley floor. The view
hasn't changed, coal plant and refineries puffing in the middle distance, MSU-Billings standing
steady in brick against the backdrop of the rims, the breadth of Twenty-Seventh Street cutting
straight to the river.
Alma heads the car toward the massive hospital complex growing inexorably outward from
North Twenty-Seventh Street, consuming a charming old neighborhood. This is the place she
came in the ambulance with Vicky, right after the accident, Alma's scrapes barely meriting
notice next to her sister's crushed leg and internal injuries. She remembers family beginning
to arrive as she sat in the corner of a surgical waiting room, wrapped in a blanket, resisting the
attentions of a hovering nurse. She remembers a uniformed police officer inquiring in a low,
tentative voice about what she'd seen. She refused to say a word, or even look at him. Tense
conversation hummed around her, but her mind was still out on the interstate, wandering, ter-
rified. "Man up," Alma whispers to herself. She parks, squares her shoulders, and marches in.
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