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43 G i n a B e r n a r d Raw April snow disregards the carcass, which has wrestled to the surface despite ignorant drifts unaware they conceal its position near the fence. She reins her horse, contemplating the spindrift coil and whorl—a high plains calligraphy of spring—as it writes across bone in its fine cursive hand. Nothing stays buried long, she concedes and leads the mare from where a scapula blade spreads itself like a gray and ugly rumor. An angry scrim of iron sky spits at her face, pulled taut beneath the brim of a Stetson. She shifts in the saddle, leather grimacing beneath time-worn denim. Her crossing has taken years—passages marked by cairns of blood and broken bone. The too-familiar gazes from emergency room nurses who would not meet her eye. December had witnessed his last raised voice. And hand. Wyoming raged with the first of winter’s storms. The world ground to a halt and laid its shoulder to the solstice. He had tried to tame her, she supposes, his love cruel and unyielding. No matter now. Come spring, a shovel will testify the accusations her pistol had finally leveled. ...

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