Bitterroot (Billy Bob Holland 3)

Behind her, the Indian biker girl from the bar walked between the tables, watching me, as though she knew me or expected me to intuit private meaning in her stare.

"Why not get a new cigarette machine instead of putting tape all over it? It not only looks like shit, the cigarettes don't come out," she said to the woman behind the cash register.

"Let me give you some breath mints instead. Oh, there's no charge. Don't they sell cigarettes on the reservation?" the cashier said.

The Indian girl took the last cigarette out of her pack and put it in her mouth, her weight on one foot, her eyes staring into the cashier's.

The cashier smiled tolerantly. "Sorry, honey. But you should learn how to talk to people," she said.

"My speech coach says the same thing. I'm always saying blow me to patronizing white people," the Indian girl said.

She paused by our booth and momentarily rested her fingers on the tabletop and lit her cigarette.

"Your doctor friend is in Lamar Ellison's face. I'd get him out of here," she said, her eyes looking straight ahead.

She walked away, toward the bar.

"Who is that?" Cleo said.

"I don't know. But I don't like eating at the O.K. Corral," I said.

I got up from the table and went back to the bar.

"Your food's getting cold, Doc," I said.

"I was just coming," he replied. Then he said to the bikers, "Y'all think on it. Why get your wick snuffed being somebody's hump? I'll check with you later."

I placed my hand under his arm and gently pulled him with me.

"What's wrong with you?" I said.

"You just got to turn these guys around. It's the rednecks who win the wars. The liberals are waiting around on a grant."

"We're eating supper, then blowing this place. Or at least I am."

"You're in Montana. This is no big deal."

He cut into his steak and put a piece into his mouth and drank from his beer, his eyes looking reflectively at the three engineers from the gold mine.

I waited for him to start in on another soliloquy, but an event taking place in the bar had suddenly captured his attention.

Two men and a woman had come in, people who were obviously from somewhere else, their features soft around the edges, their shoulders rounded, their faces circumspect yet self-indulgent and vaguely adventurous. They had taken a booth in the bar, then perhaps one of them had glanced at the bikers, or said something or laughed in a way a biker did not approve of, or maybe it was just their bad luck that their physical weakness gave off an odor like raw meat to a tiger.

One of the bikers took a toothpick out of his mouth and set it in an ashtray. He rose from his chair and walked to their booth, drinking from a long-necked beer bottle, his jeans bagging in the seat. He stared down at them, not speaking, the stench of his body and clothes rising into their faces like a stain.

"Somebody's got to put a tether on those boys," Doc said.

"Don't do it, Tobin," I said.

Doc wiped the steak grease off his mouth and hands with a napkin, the alcoholic warmth gone from his eyes now, and walked back toward the bar.

Cleo rested her forehead on her fingers and let out her breath.

"This was a mistake. It's time to go," she said. She looked up at me. "Aren't you going to do something?"

"It's somebody else's fight," I said.

"How chivalric," she said.