Coyote blue

it had happened before. And people were dying on the Lakota reservation at Pine Ridge, killed by the tribal police in what amounted to a civil war.
    "Enos works whenever he can find someone to fuck with," Billy said. "I'd like to hang that fat fuck's scalp from my lodgepole."
    "Oooooo, brave warrior, heap big pissed off," Samson chided in pidgin – speaking Tonto , they called it.
    "You telling me you wouldn't want to see Anus's head through a rifle scope?"
    "Yeah, if I thought I could get away with it. But a rifle would be too quick."
    For an hour and a half, between stops to add water to the radiator, they theorized on the best way to do away with Enos Windtree. When they finally arrived at the party it had been decided that Enos should have his entire body abraded with a belt sander and a two-inch hole saw slowly driven through his skull with a drill press. (Samson and Billy had just finished with their first year of shop class and were still fascinated by the macabre potential of every power tool they had used; this fascination, of course, was fed by their shop teacher, a seven-fingered white man who described in detail every accident that had mangled, mutilated, or murdered some careless shop student since the turn of the century. The teacher had been so successful in instilling respect for the tools in the boys that Billy Two Irons had taken to skipping two classes after shop to mellow out and would have had a nervous breakdown had Samson not finished building his friend's birdhouse for him.)
    Billy pulled the Fairlane slowly onto the dam and up to a dozen cars that were parked haphazardly on the three-hundred-foot structure. He threw the car into reverse and gunned the engine until the transmission screamed in protest and the car stopped in a jerking, squealing mechanical seizure.
    Samson was out of the car in an instant and a warm wind coming off the newly formed reservoir washed over him with the scent of sage. Twenty people were gathered at the rail of the dam, beating drums and singing a song of heartbreak and betrayal in Crow. Samson scanned the faces in the moonlight, recognizing and dismissing each until he spotted Ellen Black Feather, and smiled. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Her long hair was blowing in a black comet tail behind her, her shirt was wrapped tight around her in the wind, and Samson noticed, to his delight, that she was braless. She saw Samson and returned his smile.
    It was perfect. Just as he had envisioned it on a dozen nights while he lay in the dark with his cousins sleeping around him. They would sing and drink for a while, maybe smoke a joint if somebody had one, then he and Ellen would finish the evening in the backseat of the Fairlane. He walked to Ellen and sat beside her on the rail of the dam, oblivious to the three-hundred-foot drop behind him. As he started to beat his drum and sing he looked back to the car to see Billy adding water to the radiator. It suddenly occurred to him that if he were going to enjoy the favors of Ellen Black Feather in the back of Billy's car, it would be a good idea to move the twenty jugs of water first. He excused himself with a pat on her knee and returned to the car.
    "Billy, help me get these jugs into the trunk."
    "They're all empty, don't worry about them."
    "I'm going to need the space. Just open the trunk, okay?"
    Billy handed him the car keys. "Hunts Alone, you are a hopeless horndog."
    Samson grinned, then took the keys and ran around to the back of the car. He was loading his first armload of jugs into the trunk when he heard a car pass by and the singing abruptly stopped. Samson looked up to see the green tribal police car stopping in the middle of the partiers, some thirty yards away.
    "Fuck. It's Anus," Billy said. "Let's get out of here."
    "No, not yet." Samson eased the trunk lid down and joined Billy at the front of the car. They watched Enos Windtree climb out of the car and reach back in for his nightstick. The partiers stood stock-still, as if they were standing near a rattlesnake that would strike at the first movement, but their eyes were darting around looking for possible lanes of escape. All except for Ernest Bulltail, the biggest and meanest of the group, who met Enos's gaze straight on.
    "This is an illegal gathering," Enos rasped as he swaggered up to Ernest. "You all know it, and I know it. The fine is two hundred dollars, payable right now. Cough it up." Enos punctuated his demand by driving the end of his