“All right, we’re here,” Scotty said as he and Eddie passed the green and white sign that said “Three Pines Reservation” and a huge billboard promoting the casino. “Now how the hell do we find this Lame Beaver?”

“Like I said, ask around.”

“Then who the hell are we going to ask? There ain’t nothing out here but trees.”

“It’s a pretty big reservation,” Eddie said defensively. “From what I recall, it’s still several miles to the casino. Maybe there’ll be someone around there we can ask. And from what Allen said Lame whatever’s place might be over on the far side anyway, so if we don’t get a hit at first, I guess we keep asking for a while. The worst that can happen is that we come back with nothing, but it’s a better lead than anyone else has come up with.”

Eddie couldn’t help but feel a bit nervous. This was strange country, after all, and the place had the reputation for having people running around who didn’t like whites very much, which was why he wanted to bring Scotty along in the first place. And just who the hell would he ask anyway? He couldn’t just pull into a convenience store and ask the clerk where he could buy a carload of beer could he? It’d be best if he could find someone to ask one on one, but who or where that could be was a definite problem. It about had to be an Indian, and a kid about their age might be best, but from the stories he heard they all could be a little snotty toward whites. Well, maybe more than a little. This might not be as easy as he’d thought.

They rode on together down the highway, which was empty except for the signs every mile or two advertising the casino and the golf courses around it. Occasionally a car would pass, but it didn’t seem very busy. In a few minutes they passed a sign pointing to the Three Pines Ski Lodge, and Eddie knew that the casino wasn’t very far beyond that. They soon began to see the golf courses, and then the big, garish casino building. “Guess this is the place,” Scotty said. “You want to stop and ask around?”

“I don’t think so,” Eddie shook his head. “All we’re going to find there is whites like us that don’t know shit. We need to find an Indian place.”

“Could be,” Scotty replied, feeling just a little bit nervous himself. “I don’t know where we’re going to find one though.”

“There ought to be a village or a town somewhere not far away,” Eddie said. “After all, people have to work at the casino.”

Soon they were leaving the casino area behind them, and they could see a lone figure trudging up the road, going the same way. “That might be a possibility,” Scotty commented as they got closer. Whoever it was out there, it was a guy, and maybe about their age at a glance.

“Might be,” Eddie said, stepping on the Chevy’s brake. “Can’t hurt to ask.”

Russell Little Sparrow was pissed. He’d bought the old pickup from Jimmy Elkstalker for a song, which was good, but the thing had turned out to be a piece of shit. It broke down a lot, and it left him walking all too much of the time. That goddamn Jimmy had taken him on it and taken him bad. He had to get even with him somehow sooner or later. It was a long damn walk to get into the casino for his part-time job as a janitor, and then it was a long damn walk home afterwards, and hitchhiking just wasn’t cutting it. He heard a car coming up behind him and slowing down, so he turned around and stuck out his thumb.

As the car slowed, he could see that it was a couple white kids in an older gray Chevy. He stepped back from the pavement a bit, and the car stopped next to him. The right hand window came down, and one of the white kids asked, “Hey, where you headed?”

“Assamunde,” Russell replied. “It’s about four miles up the road, and a mile or so up the side road.”

“Hop in,” the other guy in the car said. “We can take you as far as the turnoff, anyway.”

“Jeez, thanks,” Russell said, his feet thanking them even more after being on them all damn day without much of a break. Being a part-time janitor was a lousy job, but it was how you got started at the casino. The tribal council said you had to be over twenty-one to get into the good jobs, the ones that paid good money. That was still a few years off, but everyone said that getting in with the casino and keeping your nose clean was a pretty good deal. “I sure as hell wasn’t looking forward to walking that far.”

He quickly got into the back seat and closed the door. God, it felt good to sit down. “Hey, I really appreciate this,” he said. “It was gonna be a long walk on a day as hot as this is.”

“No shit,” one of the white guys in the front said. “The hell of it is that it’s going to be ass deep in snow before too much longer.”

“That’s not going to be a lot of fun,” Russell said, shivering a little. This walk was bad enough as it was – what was it going to be like when winter came and the truck broke down? Sometime he was going to have to kick Jimmy’s ass for selling him that piece of shit!

“Hey,” the white guy behind the wheel said, “you ever hear of a guy by the name of Lame Beaver? Sells beer?”

“You mean Lame Badger, don’t you?” Russell smiled, realizing that his luck had just changed a little. He’d be getting more than a ride out of this!

“Could be,” the guy said. “I didn’t hear the name real clear. He’s supposed to sell beer, no ID needed and no questions asked.”

“Yeah, that’s the guy. He’s out in the sticks out around Ossaraw. It’s not real easy to find, but he usually has beer to sell, at least to whites. He doesn’t sell to Indians or the tribal police would get on his ass.”

“What’s it worth to you to ride along and tell us how to get there?”

“Twenty bucks sound fair?” Russell asked. The odds were that these guys wanted more than a couple twelve-packs if they were looking for Lame Badger, but they were kids, after all, and the old car pretty well told him that they weren’t made of money. But add Lame Badger’s finder’s fee to it, and it might be enough to get the truck on the road again, and then he wouldn’t be facing that long damn walk every day, at least until the fucking truck broke down again.

“Sounds like you got a deal,” the guy behind the wheel said. “Now, how do we get there?”

“Stay on this road, it’ll be a ways, about ten miles,” Russell replied.

Eddie glanced over at Scotty, who had a big grin on his face, probably about as big a grin as his own. They’d hit the fucking jackpot, on the very first try! “Guess Allen had it right after all,” Scotty said.

“Sounds like it to me,” Eddie agreed, and turned his glance to their passenger. “So,” he asked. “What do kids do for fun around here?”

“Pretty much like anywhere else, I guess,” Russell told him “Hang out, shoot the shit, try to make it with a girl. Some do, some don’t.”

“Yeah, same with us,” Eddie agreed. “You hang out around the casino much?”

“I work there,” Russell told them. “You’re not exactly invited to hang out there if you’re not working, especially if you’re not twenty-one. That kind of sucks, but that’s the way the council wants it, so I guess we have to live with it. It beats not having it, I guess.”

They rode on up the road, just talking about one thing and another. It turned out that Russell played football as well, although not in the same league so they probably wouldn’t meet on the football field. But that made for enough conversation to keep them going until Russell told them to slow down and prepare to make a turn to the left.

The road out to Lame Badger’s was gravel, and not all that bad for a ways. However, after a couple miles Russell had them make a turn, and then another one shortly afterward, and this road was a lot worse. Eddie had to keep it down, but Russell told them it wouldn’t be much farther. After a half mile or so, he told them to turn down a driveway to the right.

The driveway wound through the woods for a ways, not a really bad road and with plenty of clearance. “Just around the next bend,” Russell finally told them.

“Jeez, I’m glad you’re with us,” Eddie said. “I’d never have been able to find this place on my own.”

They came around the bend, to discover a double-wide mobile home, with a large box truck parked next to it. “This is Lame Badger’s,” Russell said simply. “You probably want to park over next to the truck.”

Eddie stopped the car, and all of them got out as the front door to the double-wide opened. A medium-sized Indian guy wearing jeans and a T-shirt stepped outside as they did. “Little Sparrow,” the guy said formally, by way of recognition.

“Lame Badger,” Russell replied, just as formally. “I brought you some business.”

“Hi, guys,” Lame Badger said, a little more casually. “Where you from?”

“Spearfish Lake,” Eddie replied. “We need to get some beer.”

“Well, you’ve come to the right place,” the older Indian replied. “Did you hear about me from that Frenchy guy that comes up here now and then?”

“Not really, from someone else,” Eddie said, realizing that this was indeed Frenchy’s secret beer source. “You probably won’t be seeing Frenchy for a while, he’s in jail.”

“Christ, how did that happen?”

“Got busted for assault,” Eddie told him. “I was in the courtroom this morning when he got sentenced. Seven months.”

“Well, shit,” Lame Badger shook his head. “He was a good customer, too. At least he didn’t get nailed for contributing. So how much do you need?”

“Either fill the trunk or until I run out of money,” Eddie said simply. “We’ve got a party coming up and I don’t want to run out.”

“That the pre-practice beer bust that Frenchy was bragging about when he was up here the first of the week? I thought that was all taken care of.”

“Not with him in jail, and nobody seems to know where his stash is,” Eddie replied, simplifying the story a bit.

“Well, that sucks,” the Indian shook his head. “But, it turns out that I got a deal for you. I made a run down to a guy I know in Wisconsin yesterday, got the truck nearly full of Schadler’s. Since it’s Wisconsin brew there’s no deposit, and I can pass the savings on to you. Just as well, I don’t piss around with empties.”

“Good deal,” Eddie said. “How much?”

“They’re all twelve-packs, so ten bucks each,”

Eddie tried to keep a straight face, but he grimaced inside. Six hundred cans, which is about what he’d hoped to bring back, would be fifty twelve-packs, or five hundred bucks. That was fucking steep, especially considering it was cheap shit like Schadler’s. Bud or MGD down at the Super Market in Spearfish Lake didn’t go that high, but since he was under twenty-one he knew that beggars can’t be choosers. At least he had a solid gold source, now, one he could use again if he needed to. And at that, Frenchy had usually charged considerably more, so really, this was a bargain. “Fine with me,” he said.

“Good enough,” Lame Badger said. “Let me get the truck unlocked and you can get started loading.”

The beer was stacked on skids in the back of the truck – not all the way to the roof, but it was a lot of beer, Schadler’s or whatever it was. Eddie opened the car trunk while Scotty climbed up into the back of the truck and started handing beer down, two twelve-packs at a time, while Lame Badger stood back and kept count.

Eddie hadn’t really thought much about it, but fifty twelve-packs seemed like a lot to get in the Chevy’s trunk, so he figured he’d better pack them tight. Fortunately he didn’t have much else in the trunk, so he stacked a layer of twelves on the floor, and started packing others around them the best he could. The trunk filled up quickly, and all too soon it was pretty full. It was really a struggle to find a place for the last few twelve-packs, and finally Eddie decided that whatever happened, that was going to have to be the party whether he had enough or not. “That’s it,” he said, after having to lean on the trunk a little to get it closed. “How much am I into you for?”

“I counted fifty-four,” Lame Badger said. “So that’s five hundred and forty dollars.”

“Good enough,” Eddie said, digging in his wallet. He’d figured that this wasn’t going to be cheap, so he’d gotten several hundred-dollar bills at his stop at the bank earlier. He counted out six of them, and handed them to the Indian.

Lame Badger pulled out his own wallet, handing back three twenties in change, and handed Russell a fifty and some ones. “Good deal, Little Sparrow,” he said. “You can bring me customers like that any time.”

“Just got lucky,” Russell said. “Maybe now I can get my truck fixed. Thanks, man!”

“Yeah, we owe you, too,” Eddie said, handing Russell one of the twenties that Lame Badger had just given him.

“You guys be careful heading back,” Lame Badger told them. “You’ve got about four hundred and fifty pounds in that trunk, so the car is going to wallow a bit and look like it’s loaded. Keep it under the speed limit; you don’t want the cops pulling you over either on or off the reservation. If you come up here again, don’t have more than one or two guys in the car, and try to keep it in the morning or the early afternoon. You get four or five guys in a car with the trunk hanging low heading back after dark and the cops will pull you over without even thinking about it.”

“Good thinking,” Eddie said. “We wouldn’t have come up this late in the day if we’d know about you for sure. I guess that means we ought to be getting on the road.”

“Right, you want to be heading back,” Lame Badger told them. “Come on by again, and tell your friends.”

“Thanks, and we sure will,” Eddie replied. “All right, guys, I guess we’d better be going.”

In only a couple minutes the three were on the road again. “Good deal,” Scotty said as soon as the doors were closed. “We’re gonna have us a party!”

“Yeah, we are. Man, that’s a lot of beer. Hey,” he said so their passenger could hear him, “what was that bit about him giving you fifty bucks?”

“Finder’s fee,” Russell explained, realizing that he’d gotten about twice what he had expected out of the deal. That would get the truck back on the road for sure. “The word is kind of out that he pays ten percent for bringing new customers in.”

“Jeez, it sounds like everyone on the reservation knows about him,” Scotty shook his head.

“Well, maybe not everybody,” Russell smiled. “There are probably a few people around that don’t think too much of it, but most of the people look the other way. I don’t want to piss you off by saying it, but there are a lot of people that don’t appreciate what the white man’s milk did to Indians over the years, and they kind of think that Lame Beaver represents a little payback. Most of the people think it’s kind of cute, but if he sold beer to Indian kids he’d have his ass in a sling so quick it wouldn’t be funny, and he knows it. Since it’s a reservation the state can’t touch him, but he has to keep his nose clean with the tribal cops.”

“So what do you guys do when you want beer?”

“Get it elsewhere,” Russell shrugged. “There are a few places off the reservation that we know about, but nobody that deals it in loads as big as Lame Badger does.”

“Well, hey, thanks,” Eddie said, noticing a car with a couple of kids coming the other way. More business for Lame Badger, he guessed. “We’re just lucky we found you.”

Eddie kept it going pretty slow until he got out to the pavement – he could feel the weight of the beer in the trunk and hoped it didn’t look too conspicuous. He got the Chevy up close to the speed limit – but under it – out on the state road, and soon they were getting back to the turnoff to Assamunde. “You want us to take you home?” Eddie asked.

“No, you’d better leave me out on the highway. I can walk that far, and if we went into the village with your trunk hanging low someone might notice us and figure out what we’ve been up to.”

“Well, thanks much,” Eddie said as they slowed down near the intersection. “We’d have been up shit creek if we hadn’t seen you hitching.”

“I’d probably be hitching to work tomorrow if you hadn’t come along,” Russell said. “So really, thank you.”

In a couple minutes, after another round of thanks, Scotty and Eddie were heading back toward Spearfish Lake. Once away from the casino area he set the cruise control for a touch under the limit, which was no problem on the still nearly empty road. “Well, we got our beer,” Scotty exulted.

“Yeah, and I paid through the fuckin’ nose for it, too,” Eddie sighed. “You know, if we were over twenty-one we could have just walked into the Super Market and bought good beer like Bud or Miller’s for a lot less for a twelve pack? That fuckin’ Lame Badger has got a good thing going and he knows it. He had our nuts on a downhill pull, and the only thing I could say was ‘thank you.’ On the other hand, I guess that’s the price I’ve got to pay if I want to be team captain.”

“He must have a pretty good deal there,” Scotty agreed. “I mean, there was a shit load of beer in that truck, and I’d be willing to bet good money that he didn’t pay a third of what he charged us for it.”

“It looks like a hell of a good deal for him,” Eddie agreed. “But if he was getting ten bucks for a twelve, Frenchy would have sold it for fifteen or twenty, so he got over on the deal, too, like I said on the way over here. I’m thinking I’m going to spread the word about Lame Badger around at home, just so when Frenchy gets out of the slammer he doesn’t think he’s still got the world by the nuts.”

“I don’t think you’d want to have Frenchy find out that you were the one that spread the word like that.”

“Well, yeah, but if the word is all over the place Frenchy won’t know whose ass to kick. But that’s nothing we have to worry about right now. Now that we’ve got the fucking beer, we can get hot on getting the party set up.”

“Yeah, probably a lot of guys think the party is down the toilet with Frenchy in the slammer, so we have to get the word out pretty quick.”

“That’s what I think,” Eddie agreed. “And we can’t screw around about doing it. As soon as I get home I figure I’ve got to park this car and not move it until we head out to the party. I sure as hell don’t want to be driving all over town with all this beer in the trunk.”

“Drop me off at my house,” Scotty suggested. “I’ll get my truck and meet you at your place so we can spread the word.”

“Yeah, we need to be calling some people,” Eddie said. “But you know what? I’d be willing to bet good money that most of the people we need to talk to will be at the Frostee Freeze tonight. I mean, people are going to want to get together and talk about what happened with Frenchy.”

“You know, you’re probably right,” Scotty smiled. “If we just hang around the place and circulate a little we’ll probably get to everyone we need to talk to. If we happen to miss someone, we could chase them down tomorrow.”

“That ought to do the job. Shit, if we miss anyone, someone else will just pass the word to them. That ought to be pretty easy.”

“You still want to have the party where we talked about before? That little fishing hole off of 417?”

“Yeah, about a mile towards town from the Albany River bridge. There’s a little two-rut that leads back there, and I don’t think much of anyone goes back there.”

“I know the place, and it ought to be a pretty good spot for it,” Scotty agreed. “You want to tell people about it, or just caravan out there like we did last year?”

“That was a pain in the ass,” Eddie snorted. “I think people ought to have the good sense to keep their mouths shut. I mean, it’s the pre-practice football party, it’s important. “

“Yeah, but still, if the word gets out somebody is likely to slip up, and then where are you gonna be?”

“Shit,” Eddie shook his head. “I thought caravaning out to the party last year was pretty stupid. I mean, if the cops happen to spot a couple dozen cars all heading out to some place in one herd, you have to figure that even the dumbest one of them is going to figure out what’s going down.”

“Well, yeah.” Scotty conceded. “When you put it that way, it sounds pretty stupid. Maybe heading out there one or two at a time wouldn’t draw their attention quite as bad, and one thing you have to admit about having it there is that if the cops show up there’s a lot of woods to scatter into. But I don’t think it’s anything we really have to worry about. I don’t think the cops in this town have the guts to mess with it. Football is just too important in this town.”

“Me, either. Hey, buddy, we’re through the worst part. We’ve got the beer, we’ve got practice starting Tuesday, and we’re going to have us a party!”

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