Coyote Wind by Peter Bowen

six-point buck, swung the scope back, put the post and crosshair on the spot where the spine joined the skull.
    POWWWWW … and the echoes, back and forth, back and forth.
    The deer was flopping, just a little. Good place to aim for, since either the animal dropped in its tracks or Du Pré missed clean. He hurried down to the deer and slit its throat to drain it. If he shot the deer in the chest he didn’t have to do that, but it messed up the ribs and organs, and the liver was the best part.
    Du Pré walked back up to the car, jacking the shells out of the rifle. He put the rifle in the trunk and walked back, dragged the deer to a spot where it lay downhill, watched the bright blood plume from the throat.
    Blood steamed on the stones.
    Du Pré ringed the anus, tied it off, slit the deer open, jammed his hands into the chest cavity and grabbed hold of the windpipe, esophagus, and heart. He heaved. The viscera came free.
    He pulled a plastic bag from his pocket, shook it open, set it beside the guts. He cut out the heart and liver, dropped them into the sack, reached into the abdomen and carved the kidneys out from their wads of back fat. He closed the bloody sack and stuck it in the game pouch of his coat.
    Du Pré dragged the deer up to the car, his feet sometimes slipping on the wet stones. It was hard work, the animal weighed closer to three hundred pounds than two. Du Pré was running sweat by the time he had it on the ground behind the car.
    He opened the trunk and heaved the deer in. He propped the trunk open so that the air would cool the carcass. He stuck sticks in the chest cavity to keep it open, cool that meat.
    “Where’s your tag?” said Du Pré to Benetsee.
    “No,” said Benetsee. He had some more wine.
    Du Pré tagged the deer with his own tag.
    This old fart got nerve.
    I owe him one.

CHAPTER 28
    “G OT YOU GOOD, DIDN’T HE ?” said Madelaine. She was stuffing Du Pré’s bloody clothes into her washing machine.
    “No,” said Du Pré. “I expected it.”
    “He’s some old fart, eh?” she said, adding detergent to the wash.
    Du Pré was rosining his bow, getting ready to fiddle for a ribbon. Blue. My favorite color.
    Maria was coming to hear Du Pré fiddle, and Jacqueline, too. He had given Jacqueline money for a babysitter, so she and Raymond could have a little time away from the babies. Raymond worked like three men to keep them all, fine young man, perhaps in time he could fall into something paid better than jackknife carpentry, plumbing, the feed mill.
    Du Pré heard the door. Maria, laughing, and so was Madelaine, born very gay. Like they had some secret, a happy one.
    “Hey, Du Pré,” Madelaine called. “Let go yourself, come out here, see how your women love you.”
    I know my women love me, thought Du Pré, now what is this?
    The two women smiled at him. Jacqueline had come from somewhere and she, too, sat on the couch. Big white box on the coffee table, blue ribbon, little card in an envelope.
     Du Pré raised an eyebrow. “Now what’s this?”
    “So open it, see,” said Jacqueline. All three giggled.
    Du Pré took the little card out. To our good Métis man, love.
    Du Pré opened the ribbon knots, let the blue ribbon fall to the table, fold it up, use it again, hardly wrinkled.
    Tissue paper.
    Du Pré folded it back. A vest on top, soft white leather, all worked with quills in patterns, hummingbirds and suns and teepees, animals. Beautiful. The quills were all dyed with the old dyes, from sunflowers, salmonberries, choke-cherry root, he hadn’t seen those dyes in many years.
    A soft cream silk shirt, full sleeves, tight cuffs.
    Gaiters of soft white deerskin, quilled with beaver tails, the Pole Star and Big Dipper. Compasses.
    A red velvet sash with black beads.
    Moccasins with turquoise and yellow and red and black beadwork. Nez Percé that.
    A little round Red River hat, soft black felt, with a beaded band and a hard narrow brim.
    A bright turquoise silk scarf.
    “My