Lonnie sipped his coffee, and Henry, smiling, glanced at me.

“Then St. Peter turned on his throne and looked at the Cheyenne woman. He asked her, ‘Do you have anything you’d like to say?’ The Cheyenne woman nodded and said-‘Yeah, what are you doing in my chair?’”

Lonnie laughed so hard, rolling his head from side to side with his mouth hanging open, that no sound came out. After a while he began slapping Henry on the leg; I suppose just because the Bear had both of his and because he was also Cheyenne. “Um hmm, yes, it is so.”

Herbert, who had recovered from laughing at his own joke, lit his cigar, rapped the table, and signed off with his signature slogan-“Stay calm, have courage…”

The entire booth responded with the rest: “And wait for signs.”

Henry, probably glad for the interruption, put his own cold coffee on the table, smiled indulgently, and watched the disc jockey stroll away. It really wasn’t the Bear’s fault that our site had been suddenly appropriated at the last minute; as he’d explained to me, clearing all the events of all the organizations on the reservation was akin to herding prairie chickens.

I stared down at the platinum ring with the smallish diamond that was between two inset chips. “What’s the librarian’s name, Lonnie?”

At the mention of our collective obstruction, the laughter died away in his throat. “Oh, it’s my sister Arbutis. Umm hmm, yes, it is so.”

Henry raised a hand and massaged the bridge of his nose with a powerful thumb and forefinger. “Ahh-he’, I had forgotten.”

I knew Arbutis Little Bird-more as Lonnie’s daughter’s aunt than as his sister. Melissa, with whom I’d been involved in a complicated case a couple of years ago, was now away in Bozeman playing point guard for Montana State. The news couldn’t have been worse for our cause-Arbutis was a steely-eyed, iron-bottomed gunboat of a woman whose natural response to everything was an absolute negative that brooked no discussion.