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  In fact, neither of Will's grandparents showed the slightest inclination toward making Cassie more comfortable, or talking sociably to her, and neither seemed to think this behavior was unaccountably rude. Cassie vaguely remembered a colleague who had done his dissertation on what he referred to as tipi etiquette: how the Plains Indians of the nineteenth century had lived. She could recall something about women on one side and men on the other, about warriors eating before anyone else, about the impoliteness of walking between a person and the central fire. Cassie didn't know if these customs still held, but she felt there was a set of rules that she hadn't been told, rules she would have to divine herself.

  She began by straightening up the magazines. Cyrus looked over his needles once, grunted, and kept on knitting. When Cassie had made two neat stacks, she stood up and walked into the kitchen area. She rummaged through the shelves until she found a stack of white dishcloths, and she wet one with soapy water and began to scrub down the front of the refrigerator.

  Dorothea didn't look up at Cassie, didn't even acknowledge that Cassie was less than three feet away. "You know," Cassie said, her voice too loud and bright for the tiny house, "I have a friend at UCLA who specializes in Native American anthropology." She didn't add that the man was a cultural anthropologist, so she'd barely spoken to him in three years. Instead, she racked her brain trying to remember his course syllabus and her own graduate work.

  "The truth is," Cassie continued, "I don't know anything about Indians. I don't know what Will told you, but my specialty dates back before that." She rinsed her dishcloth in the sink. "Except for weapons," she said. "I'm pretty good with weapons. I did my dissertation on violence, on whether it was learned or innate--" Cassie stopped, thinking of the irony of that, given what her marriage had come to. When nobody responded, she kept speaking. "Let's see...I can remember a New Mexico group called the Clovis culture that invented a stone spearhead that could be lashed to an arrow, which obviously made it easier to kill mammoth..." Cassie's voice trailed off, thinking of this group of nomads forty thousand years ago slaughtering a huge, shuddering beast; and then Cyrus's own grandfather, who might have hunted the buffalo in much the same way just a hundred and fifty years earlier. She stopped herself from continuing, realizing she sounded as if she was giving a lecture. Over her head, Cyrus and Dorothea exchanged a look:Is she always like this ?

  "Well," Cassie said more quietly. "You probably already know this." She shook her head, calling herself a fool for coming on like a locomotive when she should have been creeping along quietly.

  Dorothea came over to her and wrung the dripping dishcloth, draping it over the sink and gesturing with her hands so Cassie understood this was the way she liked it to be. Dorothea glanced around the gleaming kitchen, nodding, and then pulled on her parka. She crossed in front of Cassie, grasping Cassie's chin with strong fingers and turning her face up. In Lakota, she said something, a strange collection of clicks and syllables that Cassie thought softer than a lullaby.

  After Dorothea walked out the door, Cyrus stood by the window, watching her go back to work for the afternoon shift. He knew what Cassie was about to ask. "She says you should remember something while you are with the People," he translated. "What you consider these specimens of history are still our great-great-grandfathers."

  He did not turn from the window, but he held up his hand, beckoning Cassie. She stood and walked over to Cyrus, and he settled his arm around her shoulders in a gesture that was not an embrace but more of a prodding. His long, straight fingers rested on her collarbone. Cassie gazed at the vast landscape with Cyrus, knowing he did not notice the oceans of snow, the corpses of abandoned trucks, and the tattered tarpaulins blowing off a neighbor's hut. Instead he saw the place where his ancestors' footsteps lay beneath his own, the place that--because of this--he would call home.

  WILL SAT UP FROM THE PILE OF BLANKETS HE WAS USING AS A BED and stared at Cassie, asleep on the pull-out couch. When he lived with his grandparents it had been his bed, and he watched her body press into the hollows in the mattress he himself had made.

  He was drenched with sweat; he had been dreaming of her. Crazy as it sounded, she had been a Kit Fox, a member of one of the ancient warrior societies. Every Sioux boy had grown up hearing of the Kit Foxes and the Strong Hearts, wishing that the People were still at war with the Chippewa so they too could count coup and prove their bravery. The Kit Foxes had been the most dramatic. They had worn red sashes they would peg to the ground, meaning they'd fight on that spot until they won, they were killed, or they were released by a friend. Will could remember how he'd played at this behind the school during recess; how once he'd filched his grandmother's shawl to use as a sash and had been grounded for a month.

  In the dream, Cassie's belly was swollen with her child, and she wore the sash high, just below her breasts. From a distance Will saw her stake herself to the soft earth and begin to sing.

  I am a fox.

  I am supposed to die.

  If there is anything difficult

  If there is anything dangerous

  That is mine to do.

  Out of nowhere, Alex Rivers appeared, circling around her, coming closer and closer. He cuffed Cassie across the side of the head, and from where he stood Will shouted out to warn her, but she did not move. She stood her ground, even when the blows brought tears to her eyes.

  Will dreamed that he screamed at the top of his lungs and started moving, racing toward the spot where Cassie was. Without losing speed, he reached down and pulled up her stake, wrapping his arm around her hips and forcing her to run just as fast as he was.

  He woke up panting, angry and somewhat amazed that Cassie lay three feet away from him, curling and uncurling her fingers in her sleep. He moved quietly, in rhythm with the sounds of his grandfather's breathing coming from behind the bedroom curtain, and sat on the edge of the mattress.

  Cassie was awake before his entire weight had eased down. Will put a finger to her lips, and then pointed in the direction of the curtain. "I'm leaving tomorrow," he whispered.

  Cassie struggled to a sitting position, but Will held his hand on her shoulder, pressing her back. "Why?"

  "Because I have a job in L.A. Because I hate it here." Will smirked. "Take your pick."

  She had to know it was going to come to this; he'd as much as said it straight out. But to his horror, Cassie gulped back a sob. "You can't leave me here alone," she whispered, knowing full well that he could and he would.

  When she turned away from him, he stroked his hand over her brow, feeling guilty. Cassie was small and plain, the girl next door; he'd seen a hundred women prettier than she was. He wondered what it was about this woman that could rob his mind of set intentions, that could trap a movie star into marriage.

  Will stared at the back of Cassie's head, forcing himself to remember the way he'd kept his thumb over his grade school report cards when he carried them home, because the students were listed not only by surname but also by the percentage of Indian blood in their veins. He tried to think of the winter he and his grandparents had lived on beef jerky and canned squash because the government rationing program had gotten screwed up.Yes , he thought,I need the distance . But even as Will thought this he lay down beside Cassie until her quivering back was pressed tight against his chest. He did not move against her, not wanting to make this into something it wasn't. Instead he listened to her heart, and to his grandparents' soft snores, twisted around each other. He gently covered Cassie's stomach with his hand. "You won't be alone," he said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  DURING March, while the snow at Pine Ridge melted to little patches and drifts caught between the cottonwood trees, Cassie grew accustomed to the reservation. Because it was her safe haven, she did not see it for what it was--a place with more murders per capita than anywhere else in the United States, a people bled dry by poverty and indifference. Instead she chose to notice how beautiful the nut-brown Sioux babies were, how the mud puddle