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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.

CHAPTER 6
    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