He turned and started toward the house. Cindy and another woman appeared at the door, and waited. From the shocked look on their faces Sam realized how crazed he must look: naked, covered with soot, streaked with sweat and tears. He waved to them and headed around the house to wash himself in the barrel back by the sweat lodge.

As he walked by the Airstream he heard the door unlatch and looked up.

Calliope stepped out of the trailer. "Sam?" she said. "I had the strangest dream." She looked around the yard, then at the trailer. "I didn't just land on the Wicked Witch of the East, did I?"

Sam closed his eyes and took her in his arms. He held her there for a long time, laughing, then sobbing, then laughing again, feeling as if he had, at last, come home.

Crazy Dogs Wishing to Die

One day, a long time ago, Coyote was coming along when he saw a cowboy sitting on his horse, rolling a cigarette. Coyote watched the cowboy take a little pouch of tobacco out of his shirt pocket, and then some rolling papers. He poured some tobacco into a paper, then pulled the strings of the pouch tight with his teeth and put it back in his pocket. Then he rolled up the paper, licked it, and stuck the cigarette in his mouth. He lit it with a match.

Coyote had smoked a pipe many times, but he had never seen anything quite so wonderful as rolling a cigarette. "I want to do that," Coyote said. "Let me do that."

"You can't," the cowboy said.

"Why not?"

"You ain't got a shirt, so you ain't got a shirt pocket for your tobacco pouch."

Coyote didn't wear a shirt in those days. He looked at his bare chest, then at the cowboy's shirt. "I can make a pocket in my chest."

"Well, why don't you do that." The cowboy unfolded his pocketknife and handed it to Coyote. Coyote looked one more time at the cowboy's pocket, to get the size right, then he made a deep cut in his chest. He looked a little surprised, then he fell over dead. The cowboy got back his pocketknife and rode off.

A little while later, Coyote's brother came along and saw the trickster lying dead on the ground. He jumped over Coyote's body four times and Coyote sprang up, good as new.

"You did it again," Coyote's brother said.

"I really wanted to roll a cigarette like the cowboy."

Coyote's brother shook his head. He said, "If you're going to live around these white folks, Coyote, you got to learn. Just because you want something, it don't mean that it's good for you."

"I knew that," Coyote said.

CHAPTER 36

There Ain't No Cure for Coyote Blue

There is a saying that goes back to the buffalo days: there are no orphans among the Crow. Even today, if someone stays for a time on the reservation, he will be adopted by a Crow family, regardless of his race. The idea of a person without family makes the Crow uncomfortable. So when Samuel Hunter became, once again, Samson Hunts Alone, he found that there was family waiting for him, as well as his new white wife and her son. Pokey said, "There ain't near enough blond Indians, if you ask me."

And even as he left his old name behind with his old life, Sam maintained his shape-shifter ways, putting on each face as it was needed. Sometimes he was quick and clever, and other times he was simple, when simple served his purpose. When he spoke for the Crow to the government he wore traditional tribal dress and an eagle feather in his hair. But when he reported to his own people he dug out one of his Armani suits and the Rolex (that had long since stopped running), because that is what they needed to see. He was given the honor of pouring for the sweat, and the responsibility to carry on the old ways, and he programmed a computer to speak Crow, and using it, at the age of eighty, Pokey Medicine Wing learned to speak his own language.

And Sam put on many faces when he told the stories. When he told the old stories, of how Old Man Coyote made the world, of how he got his power to change shapes, of Cottontail and Raven and the other animal people, Sam was like the trickster himself, grinning and laughing, making rude noises, his golden eyes shining like fire. When he told the new stories — of the Crow man who had forgotten who he was, of a Japanese businessman who saved the life of an old shaman, of a black man who helped rescue a white child from the enemy, of all the tricks and machines that Coyote used to bring the Crow man home, and of the last coup — his voice took on a melancholy sweetness and his eyes went wide and bright, as if life itself was a delightful surprise. And when he told the story of the journey into the Underworld, of how Coyote's brother let Calliope live again because the trickster gave his own life, Sam became grave and dark, and those who doubted were quickly convinced when they saw the scar on Calliope's back from the bullet that had killed her. But even as Sam put on these faces and wore these personalities, he knew exactly who he was. He was happy.

After a while Calliope became pregnant and Sam's peace was again thrown out of balance. He was jumpy and nervous until the day the little girl was born and he saw that she had Calliope's deep brown eyes, not the golden eyes of a trickster. And meanwhile, as Grubb grew, he found that he could frighten his adopted father by hiding and making the sound of a coyote howling, and for this he suffered long lectures from his old Uncle Pokey about respecting his elders.

When Grubb was nine, in the time of the new grass, Sam took him to the great medicine wheel for his first fast. During the ride, in Pokey's ancient pickup truck, Sam instructed Grubb on how to enter the Spirit World and prepared him for what to expect there. "And one last thing," Sam said as he left the boy on the mountain. "If a fat guy in a big blue car comes along and offers you a ride, don't get in."

What Grubb saw on his vision, and what happened when he grew up, is a story for another time. But it should be noted here that over the years, as he grew into manhood, his eyes faded gradually from dark brown to a bright, shining gold.

"Coyote medicine will do them white folks some good," Pokey said with a grin.

END