Coyote blue

left."
    "Nope," Coyote said.
    The cabdriver leaned on the horn. Sam signaled for him to wait, ran around to the other side of the limo, and got in.
    "Go," Sam said.
    "What about the cabdriver?"
    "Fuck him."
    "That's the spirit." Coyote started the limo and peeled away. He checked the rearview mirror. "He's not following."
    "Good.":
    "He's talking to his radio. Got a smoke?" '
    Sam dug a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket, tapped one out, and lit it. "Where's my car?"
    "I sold it."
    "You can't sell it without the title."
    "I got a good deal, five thousand."
    "Are you nuts? Five thousand wouldn't buy the stereo."
    "I needed to win my money back. I won a lot of money on the machine you put the cards in, but a shaman with a stick won it back from me."
    Sam butted his cigarette in the ashtray and hung his head in his hands, trying to let it all sink in. "So you sold my car for five grand?"
    "Yep." Coyote snatched the mashed cigarette and relit it.
    "And where is that money?"
    "The shaman had strong cheating medicine."
    "That's the kind of thinking that got Manhattan sold for a box of beads."
    "So they still tell that story? It was one of my best tricks. They gave us many beads for that island. They didn't know that you can't own land."
    Sam sighed and slouched in his seat, thinking he should be angry, or worried about his car, but strangely he was more concerned with catching Calliope. They were on the highway now. Sam glanced at the speedometer. "Slow down to the speed limit. We don't need cop trouble. I'm assuming you stole this car."
    "I counted coup: stealing a tethered horse."
    "Tell me," Sam said.
    Coyote told the story of Minty and the limo, turning it into a fable full of danger and magic, making himself the hero. He was coming to the part about the car phone when it rang.
    Sam reached for the answer button and pulled back his hand in disgust. "What's this gunk all over the phone? It looks like -"
    "I'm not to that part of the story yet."
    "Then you answer it."
    "Speak," Coyote said, and the phone lit up and clicked. "Is that you, Brandy?"
    A very deep, calm voice came over the speakerphone, "I want the car back, now. Pull over and stop. I'm a couple of minutes behind you. The police are -"
    "Off," Coyote said. The phone hung up. Coyote turned to Sam. "This is a good car. You can talk to the phone. Her name is Brandy. She's very friendly."
    "Uh-huh," Sam said.
    "That wasn't her."
    "Pull off at the next exit."

Chapter 27 – Food, Gas,
    Enlightenment, Next Right King's
    Lake, Nevada
    The exit sign said, King's Lake , but when they pulled off and followed the ramp around the base of a mesa, there was no lake, no life at all, just a dirt road and a strip of gray wooden buildings with faded facades. A weathered wooden sign read, Emergency, Nevada . The population had been crossed out and repainted a dozen times until, finally, someone had painted a big zero at the bottom and the words We gived up . Coyote stopped the car.
    "What do you want to do here?"
    "I don't know, but we had to get off the highway before they caught up with us." Sam got out of the car and peered down the empty dirt street, shielding his eyes against the sun with his hand. A prairie dog scampered across the road and under the wooden sidewalk. "This road continues out of town. Maybe it joins up with another major road somewhere else. We need a map."
    "No map in the car," Coyote said. "We can ask someone."
    Sam looked around at the empty buildings. "Right, let's just stop in at the chamber of commerce and ask someone that's been dead for a hundred years."
    "Can we do that?" Coyote asked, with complete sincerity.
    "No, we can't do that! It's a ghost town. There's no one here."
    "I was going to ask that prairie dog." Coyote walked to where the prairie dog had disappeared under the walkway. "Hey, little one, come out."
    Sam stood behind the trickster, shaking his head. He heard a squeak from under the walk.
    Coyote looked to Sam. "He doesn't trust you. He won't come out unless you go away."
    "Tell him we're in a hurry." Sam couldn't believe he was being snubbed by a rodent.
    "He knows that, but he says you have shifty eyes. Go over there and wait." Coyote pointed down the sidewalk.
    Sam walked past a hitching post and sat on a bench in front of the abandoned saloon. He watched the road leading to the highway, waiting for the dust cloud from pursuing police cars. The road remained empty. He watched the prairie dog scamper out from under the