In this position Samson was facing the visitor center. He could see some lights going on inside. He struggled to push himself up on the bar, but the spearpoint was barbed. "I can't get it."

"Shit," Billy said. He held the gate with one hand and drew a flick knife from his back pocket with the other. "I'll come up and cut you down."

"No, don't let go of the gate," Samson said.

"Fuck it," Billy said. He let go of the gate and it clanged with Samson's swinging weight. Billy jumped on the bars and as he climbed Samson could hear the fire door open and slam again, then footsteps. Billy stood at the top of the stone pillar and put the knife to Samson's pant leg. "When I cut, keep hold of the bars."

Billy pulled the knife blade through the denim and Samson flipped over and slammed the bars again, this time right side up. The gate clanged again. Samson heard the jeep starting and saw the beams of the headlights come out from behind the visitor center. He looked to Billy. "Jump!"

Billy leapt from the fifteen-foot pillar. As he hit the pavement he yowled and crumpled. "My ankle."

Samson looked to the visitor center, where the jeep was pulling out. He grabbed Billy under the armpits and dragged him down into the ditch. They waited, breathlessly, as the jeep stopped and the guard, gun drawn, checked the lock and chain once again.

After the guard left they crawled down the ditch toward Eli. When he came into view, Samson helped Billy to his feet and supported him while he limped up to the big Cheyenne, who was taking a deep hit on a joint.

"Want a hit?" he croaked, holding the joint out to Billy.

Billy took the joint, sat down in the grass, and took a hit.

Eli let out a cloud of smoke and laughed. "That was the funniest fucking thing I've ever seen in my life." Then he spotted the wet streaks on Samson's pants. "What happened, Hunts Alone? I thought you were going to piss on Custer's grave. You get so scared you wet yourself?" He threw back his head to laugh and Samson wound up and tagged him on the jaw with a vicious roundhouse punch. Eli dropped to the ground and didn't move. Samson looked at his damaged fist, then at Eli, then at Billy Two Irons. He grinned.

Billy said, "You couldn't have done that twenty minutes ago and saved us all this trouble, could you?"

"You're right," Samson said. "I couldn't have done that twenty minutes ago. Let's get out of here before he comes to."

Samson helped Billy to his feet, then out of the ditch onto the road. As they headed toward Crow Agency it seemed to get darker as they walked, then darker still, until there was no light at all and Sam was in his bedroom staring at the back of a black buckskin shirt trimmed with red woodpecker feathers.

"It was a stupid thing to do," Sam said.

"It was brave," Coyote said. "It would have been stupid if you had failed."

"We found out later that Custer wasn't even buried there. His body was taken to West Point, so it was all for nothing."

"And what about the night on the dam? Was that all for nothing?"

"How do you know about that?"

Coyote turned and stared at Sam with his arms crossed, his golden eyes shining with delight.

"That was nothing but trouble," Sam said finally.

"Would you do it again?"

"Yes," Sam said without thinking.

"And the girl is nothing but trouble?" Coyote said.

Sam heard the words echoing in his mind. Going after the girl was the right thing to do. After all the years of doing the safe thing, it was time to do the right thing. He said, "You really piss me off sometimes, you know that?"

"Anger is the gods' way of letting you know you are alive."

Sam got up and stood face-to-face with the trickster, trying to read something in his eyes. He moved forward until their noses almost touched. "All you know is that she's going to Las Vegas? No address or anything?"

"Not so far. But if she misses them there, the biker is going on to South Dakota. She'll follow. I'll tell you the rest on the way."

"I don't suppose you could change into a Learjet or something practical."

Coyote shook his head. "Just living things: animals, bugs, rocks."

Sam reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out the box of breath mints, and handed them to Coyote. The trickster raised his eyebrows in query.

Sam said, "Eat those. I can't handle dog breath through an eight-hour drive."

Part 3

Quest

CHAPTER 23

Pavlov's Dogs and the Rhinestone Turd

Las Vegas

The only distractions from the noise of his own mind were desert-dried roadkills, thrown retreads, and road signs reflecting desolation. Sam drove, smoked, and fought drowsiness by worrying about how he would find the girl. The trickster slept in the passenger seat.

Sam had been to Las Vegas three times before — with Aaron — to see championship boxing at Caesar's Palace. Two hundred dollars bought them seats at nosebleed altitude, closer to the moon than the ring, but Aaron insisted that there was nothing like being there. Without binoculars, following the progress of the fight was like tracking down a rumor. Sam usually watched the women and did his best to keep Aaron calmed down.

As soon as they walked into a casino Aaron started. "This is my town! The lights, the excitement, the women — I was born for this place." Then Aaron would drop a couple thousand at the tables and suck free gin and tonics until he staggered. In the morning Sam would drag Aaron out of a tangle of satin sheets and hookers, throw him in the shower, and listen to his long lament of remorse and hangover as he lay in the backseat of the car with a jacket over his head, whining the whole way home about how he would never return. Aaron never failed to fuel the greed machine and was always dumbfounded when it juiced him of his hope.

It was the machine that fascinated Sam. While Aaron ground himself through the velvet gears, Sam watched the workings of the most elaborate Skinner box on the face of the Earth. Drop the coin, hear the bell, see the lights, eat the food, see the women, hear the bell, see the lights, drop the coin again. The ostentation of the casinos did not create desire for money; it made money meaningless. There were no mortgages in a casino, no children needing food, no car needing repairs, no work, no time, no day, no night; those things — the context of money — were someplace else. A place where people returned before they realized that a turd rolled in rhinestones is a turd nonetheless.

Sam saw the glow from Las Vegas rising over the desert from thirty miles out. He poked Coyote in the leg and the trickster woke up.

"Hold the wheel," Sam said.

"Let me drive. You can sleep."

"You're not driving my car. Just hold the wheel."

Coyote held the wheel while Sam punched buttons on the console. The screen of the navigation system flickered on. Sam punched a few more buttons and a street map of Las Vegas lit up green on the screen. A blip representing the Merecedes blinked along Highway 15 toward the city.

"Okay," Sam said, taking the wheel again.

Coyote studied the screen. "How do you win?"

"It's not a game, it's a map. The blip is us."

"The car knows where it is going, like a horse?"

"It doesn't know, it just tells us where we are."

"Like looking out the window?"

"Look, I'm going to have to sleep when we get to Vegas. I don't even know where to start looking for Calliope."

"Why don't you ask the car?"

Sam ignored the question. "I'm going to get us a room." He dialed information on the cellular phone, got the number of a casino hotel, then called and reserved a room.

The exits off the highway were marked by names of casinos they led to, not by the names of streets or roads. Sam took the exit marked Camelot. He followed the signs down the surface streets lined with pawnshops, convenience stores, and low-slung cinder-block buildings under neon signs that proclaimed, CASH FOR YOUR CAR, CHECKS CASHED HERE, MARRIAGES AND DIVORCES — TWENTY-FOUR-HOUR DRIVE-THRU WINDOW.