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the distance. “Him need them, they need him,” he said.
    â€œHow you know they are not underwater?” said Du Pré. “Not in the Breaks, under the water.”
    â€œThey are not,” said Benetsee. “Their voices don’t sound under the water. …”
    â€œSo, what I do?” said Du Pré.
    â€œBe Du Pré,” said Benetsee. “Quit asking dumb questions. I got work to do, not answer dumb questions.”
    Du Pré got up and he went to his car and he got in, and when he looked back at the cabin, the door was shut. He drove back to Jacqueline’s, half angry. He had some whiskey, a smoke.
    Pidgeon and Amalie were still in the backyard, but now the old woman had her shawl round her shoulders. They were laughing. “They been laughing a lot,” said little Nepthele. He was carving a cottonwood burl. The shape of a coiled snake was coming out of the wood.
    Du Pré put on his reading glasses. “Snake?” he said.
    â€œYeah,” said Nepthele, “big rattlesnake. Saw him on the rocks the hill there. …”
    He pointed up to some jumbled flat rocks a half-mile away. “You make sketches?” said Du Pré.
    â€œ Non ,” said Nepthele, “I catch him, stick him in the freezer. Maman open the freezer, I forget to tell her. …”
    Du Pré laughed.
    â€œSnake, he is pret’ cold so he can’t move fast but she is still mad at me,” said Nepthele. He looked ill-used.
    â€œWoman don’t like finding snakes, the freezer,” said Du Pré.
    â€œYeah,” said Nepthele, “that’s what she said, kind of.”
    â€œHe still there?” said Du Pré.
    Nepthele nodded. “Froze now,” he said.
    Du Pré went to the low shed behind the house that held the two huge freezers full of elk and deer meat and beef and poultry and fish. Twelve kids ate a lot. He opened the first one and didn’t see the snake. He opened the second and found it. It was a big diamondback, nearly six feet long.
    The snake was coiled on top of a box of elkburger, five-pound lots wrapped in white paper. Its eyes were blue-white with frost. Du Pré shut the freezer.
    He walked back to where Nepthele sat. The boy dug at the wood with his tool.
    â€œBig snake,” said Du Pré. “What you catch him with?”
    â€œSnake stick,” said Nepthele, “over there.”
    Du Pré found a cane with metal pincers at one end and a doublegrip handle and cables to work the jaws. He gripped it and he wiggled the pincers. He put it back.
    â€œWhere you get that?” he said.
    Nepthele grinned. “People come, the university, look for snakes,” said Nepthele. “I help them. …”
    Du Pré nodded.
    â€œThey give this to you?” he said.
    Nepthele nodded, looked intently at his carving.
    â€œDu Pré,” said Pidgeon, “I need to go home now.”
    Du Pré stood up. “I am glad, you are getting education,” he said, looking at Nepthele.
    â€œIt is hard work,” said Nepthele, “but rewarding.”
    Du Pré nodded. There had been a flyer on the wall at the saloon, offering a reward for the return of scientific equipment … and a camera.

Chapter 11
    â€œTHEY LEFT FROM NEAR HELENA,” said Pidgeon. “Amalie remembered she went with her mother and father and brother to a Catholic cathedral, a big stone building in a city built on hills near the mountains. …”
    Du Pré nodded. He steered round a dead deer sprawled half across the lane.
    â€œThey were over the river,” said Pidgeon, “looking at the map, and they went to the west of the Bear Paws and then along the front. It must have happened near where Chief Joseph surrendered.”
    â€œShe did not say anything about mountains,” said Du Pré.
    â€œFrom that side they don’t look like mountains and it was winter and she said it was foggy,” said Pidgeon.