Despite his effort to distract himself with dog breath aesthetics, Sam's tolerance was wearing out and he thought he might sneeze or throw up any second. Coyote licked him on the mouth.
"Yuck!" Sam sat upright and wiped his mouth on his arm. "Ack!" He shivered involuntarily and looked at the big coyote, who grinned at him from the end of the bed. "There was no need for that," Sam said.
Coyote whimpered and rolled over on his back in submission.
Sam got up from the bed and grabbed his cigarettes from the nightstand. "Why are you back? You said you were gone for good."
Coyote began to change into his human form. No longer afraid, Sam watched the transformation with fascination. In a few seconds Coyote sat on the bed in his black buckskins wearing the coyote-skin headdress. "Got a smoke?" he asked.
Sam shook one out of the pack and lit it for the trickster. Sam took a small plastic box from his shirt pocket and held it out to Coyote. "Breath mint?"
"No."
"I insist," Sam said.
Coyote took the box and shook out a mint, popped it in his mouth, and handed the box back to Sam. "The girl is going to Las Vegas."
"I don't care." The lie tasted foul in his mouth.
"If she tries to take her child from the biker she will be hurt."
"It's not my problem. Besides, she'll probably find another guy to help her out." Sam felt both righteous and cowardly for saying it. This role he was playing no longer fit. Quickly he added, "I don't need the trouble."
"In the buffalo days your people used to say that a wife stolen and returned was twice the wife she had been."
"They aren't my people and she's not my wife."
"You can be afraid, just don't act like it."
"What does that mean? You're worse than Pokey with your fucking riddles."
"You lost Pokey. You lost your family. You lost your name. All you have left is your fear, white man." Coyote flipped his cigarette at Sam. It hit him in the chest and hot ashes showered on the bed.
Sam patted out the embers and brushed himself off. "I didn't ask for you to come here. I don't owe the girl anything." But he did owe her. He wasn't sure what for yet, except that she had cut something loose in him. Why couldn't he cut loose the habit of fear?
Coyote went to the bedroom window and stared out. Without turning he said, "Do you know about the Crows who scouted for General Custer?"
Sam didn't answer.
"When they told Custer that ten thousand Lakota and Cheyenne warriors were waiting for him at the Little Bighorn he called them liars and rode on. The Crow scouts didn't owe Custer anything, but they painted their faces black and said, 'Today is a good day to die. "
"The point?" Sam bristled.
"The point is that you will never know what they knew — that courage is its own reward."
Sam sat down on the edge of the bed and stared at Coyote's back. The red feathers across the buckskin shirt seemed to move on the black surface of Coyote's shirt. Sam wondered if he might not be light-headed from prolonged dog breath inhalation, but then the feathers drew a scene, and in a whirl of images and feathers, Sam was back on the reservation again.
There were three of them: boys hiding in the sagebrush by the road that led into the Custer Battlefield National Monument. Two were Crow, one Cheyenne. They were there on a dare that had started in ninth-grade gym class. The largest boy, the Cheyenne, was from the Broken Tooth family — descendants of a warrior who fought with Crazy Horse and Red Cloud on this very land.
"You going to do it?" said Eli Broken Tooth. "Or are you full of shit like all Crows?"
"I said I'd do it," Samson said. "But I'm not going to be stupid about it."
"What about you, breed?" Eli asked Billy Two Irons. "You a chickenshit?" Broken Tooth had been taunting Billy about his mixed blood for the whole school year and citing his own "pure Indian" lineage. The fact was that in buffalo days the mortality rate had been so high for young plains warriors that a woman might have three or four husbands in her lifetime, and have children by them all. Sometimes one of the husbands was a white man, yet since they all traced their kinship through their mother's line, the white ancestor could easily be forgotten.
Billy said, "I'll bet you got a few whiteys in your wigwam you don't even know about, Broken Dick."
Samson laughed and the others shushed him. The security guard was making a pass by the monument's high wrought-iron gate. They ducked their heads. A flashlight beam passed over them, paused, and moved on as the guard turned to walk up the hill toward the Custer burial site.
"You going to do it?" Eli asked.
"Once he's past the grave he has to go check on the Reno site. He'll take the jeep for that. When we hear the jeep, we'll go."
"Sure you will," said Eli.
"You coming?" Samson asked. He was more than a little afraid. The monument was federal land, and this was a time when an Indian causing trouble on federal land was something the government was going to great lengths to discourage after the Alcatraz takeover and the killings at Pine Ridge.
"I don't have to go," Broken Tooth said. "My people put him there. I'll just sit here and twist up a doobie while you girls do your thing." He grinned.
"The gate will be the bitch," Billy said. They looked at the fifteen-foot iron spears suspended between two stone pillars. There were only two cross members they could use as footholds.
They watched the guard amble the hundred yards down the hill to the visitor center. When they heard the jeep fire up, Samson and Billy took off. They hit the gate at the same time. The gate swung with the impact and clanged against the chains and padlock that held it closed. They scrambled up the bars, then hung over spearpoints and dropped to the asphalt. As they let go the chain sent a loud clang ringing down the valley. They both landed on their butts.
Samson looked to Billy. "You okay?"
Billy jumped to his feet and dusted off his jeans. "How come the Indians in the movies can do this shit in complete stealth?"
"Vocational training," Samson said. He started running up the hill toward the monument. Billy followed.
"Snake ahead," Samson said as he ran.
"What?"
"Snake," Sam repeated breathlessly. He leapt into the air over the big diamondback rattler that was lying in the road, warming itself on the asphalt. Billy saw the snake in time to pull up and slide on some loose gravel within striking distance.
When he heard Billy's shoes sliding he stopped and turned.
Billy said, "You were saying 'Snake, right?"
"Back away and go around, Billy." Samson was so out of breath he could hardly talk. The rattler coiled.
"I thought you were saying 'Steak. I was wondering, Why is he yelling 'Steak' at me?"
"Back away and go around."
"'Snake. Well, I guess this explains it." Billy backed slowly away, then once out of striking distance ran a wide arc around the snake and up the hill.
Samson fell in beside him. The monument was still a hundred yards away. "Pace yourself," he said.
"Did you say 'Snake' again?" Billy said between pants.