Coyote blue

girl, clucking over others like a mother hen. She snuck a cinnamon roll to a scruffy teenage hitchhiker with no money and asked after him like an older sister, then moved across the counter and found the kid a ride with a gruff cowboy trucker. One minute she was swearing like a sailor, the next she was blushing like a virgin, and all the customers who sat at her counter got what they needed. Sam realized that he was watching a shape-shifter: a kind and giving creature. Perhaps he was meant to notice. Perhaps that was what he needed. She was good. Maybe he was too.
    He turned to Calliope and caught her in the middle of losing a bite of oatmeal down her chin. "We can do this," he said. "We'll get him back."
    "I know," she said.
    "You do?"
    She nodded, wiping oatmeal off her chin with a napkin.
    "That's the scary thing about hope," she said. "If you let it go too long it turns into faith." She scooped another bite of cereal.
    Sam smiled. He wished that he shared her confidence. "Did you ever go to South Dakota with Lonnie? Will we be able to find them?"
    "I went to the big summer rally, not this time of year. They don't camp with the other bikers. They rent land from a farmer in the hills. All the Guild chapters stay together there."
    "Could you find it again?"
    "I think so. But there's only one dirt road leading in there. How will we get Grubb out?"
    "Well, I guess just walking in and asking for him isn't going to work."
    "They usually have guns. They get drunk and play shooting games."
    Coyote said, "Wait for them to go to sleep, then sneak in and count coup."
    "They don't really sleep," Calliope said. "They do crank and drink all weekend."
    "Then we will have to trick them."
    "I was afraid you'd say that," Sam said. He spun on his stool and looked out the windows of the truck stop to the gas pumps, where a black stretch Lincoln was just pulling away.
    ~* * *~
    Sam woke up in the passenger seat. The Z was parked sideways on the side of the road, the headlights trained over a pasture. The driver's seat was empty. Coyote, who was curled up in the tiny space behind the seat, growled and popped his head out between the seat. "What's going on?"
    "I don't know." Sam looked around for Calliope. It was raining out. "Maybe she stopped to take a leak."
    "There she is." Coyote pointed to a spot by the barbed-wire fence where Calliope was standing by a young calf, working furiously on something at the fence. A mother cow stood by watching.
    "The calf's tail is stuck on the barbed wire," Coyote said.
    Sam opened the car door and stepped out into the rain just as Calliope finished untangling the calf, which scampered to its mother.
    "It's okay," she called. "I got him." She waved for him to get back into the car. She ran to the car and got in.
    "Sorry, I had to stop. He looked so sad."
    "It's okay. Pasture pals, right?" Sam said.
    She grinned as she started the car. "I thought we could use the karma balance."
    Sam looked for a road sign. "Where are we?"
    "Almost there. We have to get going. There's been a car behind us for a while. I got way ahead of it, but I felt like it was following us."
    She pulled onto the road, ramming through the gears like a grand prix driver. Sam was peeking at the speedometer when he saw a colored light blow by in the corner of his eye. "What was that?"
    "The only stoplight in Sturgis," Calliope said. "I'm sorry, guys, it sort of snuck up on me. The Z goes better than it stops."
    "We're here already?" Sam said. "But it's still dark out."
    "It's a few more miles to the farm," Calliope said. "Sam, if a cop saw me go through that light can you take the wheel? My license is suspended."
    Sam checked his watch, amazed at their progress. "You must have averaged ninety the whole way."
    "I had to go to jail the last time they caught me. Three months. They taught me to do nails for vocational training."
    "You did three months for a traffic violation?"
    "There were a few of them," Calliope said. "It wasn't bad; I got a degree. I'm a certified nail technician now. In jail it was mostly LOVE/HATE nails, but I was good at it. I would have had a career except the polish fumes give me a headache."
    Coyote pulled Grubb's blanket out of the hole in the back window and looked through. "It's clear. There's a car behind us but it's not a cop."
    The sleeping town was only a block long – a stoplight with accessories. Calliope drove them through town and turned south on a county road that wound into the Black Hills. "It's a