The Only Good Indians

The sound of the train wakes Lewis up in the middle of the night, and he realizes Peta isn’t in bed with him. Peta has believed Lewis that there is nothing between him and Shaney, since he gave her several books to borrow in front of Peta, but his relating the hunting story to another Indigenous woman has hurt her. He hears the garage door opening and stumbles downstairs.

He enters the garage and sees that Harley has been trampled to death, even though the garage door was only open a few inches for circulation. Peta is there crying, and Lewis inadvertently checks her feet for blood to see if it was her. She tells him she woke because she heard something on the stairs, which frightens Lewis. He realizes it’s one week from the anniversary of the massacre.

Lewis tells Peta that he didn’t tell Shaney the end of the story and offers to tell Peta now. When he went to gut the cow elk, he found that she was pregnant, a fetus still moving inside of her. He insisted on burying it and on dressing the cow elk properly, letting no part of her go to waste. He skinned her using a trading post knife that was poor for the job.