Coyote blue

the coffee table before him: a hollowed-out log full of junk. But there was nothing quite so exciting as turning junk into money, and he was so excited now he could have peed his Wranglers. God bless archaeology. God bless museums. God bless historic preservation. God bless America!
    Where else could a piece of oil-field trash with a fourth-grade education be living in a twenty-room house with a new Corvette in the garage, wearing thousand-dollar sea-turtle-skin boots and two pounds of silver and turquoise jewelry? And all of it from buying and selling Indian junk. God bless every eggheaded, gopher-hearted anthropologist that ever wrote a paper or dug a hole. Damn!
    Arnie got up and went over to his bar, where he poured himself a snifter of Patron tequila – thirty bucks a bottle, but the finest cactus juice ever burned hair off your tongue. And it calms you down. Can't let them think you're in it for the money, the dumb shits: most of 'em could say howdy in thirty-seven dead languages, tell you the time a day a shaman shit two hundred years ago plus the ritual that went with it, but couldn't tell a nickel from a knothole when it came to money.
    They always went to the tribal council or a medicine man when they wanted to buy something – that was their big mistake. You got to do your research. Find out what family's got something and then find the one in the family who drinks the most. When he's feeling his firewater, you be there with the cash. Presto, you got yourself a priceless Indian artifact for dirt cheap. Arnie had just picked up a whole basket of heirloom beadwork over at the Yakima res – a hundred bucks. The Yakima were just getting into crack cocaine and Arnie was in on the ground floor with investment capital. The beads had been in the families for hundreds of years and he'd already had an offer of ten thousand for them from the Museum of the West – upon authentication, of course.
    Anthropologists, here's to 'em! Arnie thought. He toasted the fish in the aquarium by the bar and tossed back the Patron, then took a gamble by looking out the front window. A white Blazer pulled into the circular driveway and two men got out, both of them tall – one, an Indian in a suit, and the other in a corduroy jacket and khakis: the anthropologist. The Indian must be the expert he talked about on the phone. City Indian: making a living off of being Indian, going on about exploitation and such. Worthless troublemakers: wouldn't shoot one if I needed to unload my gun.
    Arnie stashed the snifter under the bar and went to the front door. He brushed back the sides of his hair with his fingers – careful not to disturb the five strands combed over the top – and opened the door.
    "Mr. Houston, I'm Dr. Lanier from the University of Washington. This is Running Elk, the gentleman I mentioned on the phone." The Indian nodded.
    "Come on in," Arnie said, waving them into the tiled foyer. "I took it out of the safe and put it on the table for you." He didn't really have a safe, but it sounded good.
    He led them into the den and stood by the coffee table. "Here she is."
    The Indian moved to the fish tank and peered in. The professor walked around the table looking at the log, as if he were afraid to pick it up. "Have you opened it?"
    Arnie had to think. What was the best answer? These fellows liked playing detective, finding their own clues. "No, sir. The fella I got it from told me what was inside, though. Four arrows, an eagle skull, and some, er…" Damn, how do you describe it? It was just brown powdery shit. "And some sacred powder."
    "And who did you get it from?"
    "Fellow on the res. Old family, but he didn't want me to say. He's afraid of the Traditionals getting revenge on him."
    "I'm going to have to open it to determine the value."
    "Quite so," the Indian said, still looking in the fish tank. The anthropologist shot him a nasty look. What was up with these two? An Indian who talks like a Brit; if that didn't just beat the ugly off an ape.
    "It's okay with me," Arnie said. "Looks like them ends just come off like bottle caps." That's exactly how they had come off when he opened it.
    "Jolly good, old chap," the Indian said. "The fish say that it's been opened before."
    "Thank you, Running Elk," said the professsor. He seemed kinda ticked.
    He set his briefcase on the table next to the bundle, snapped open the lid, and removed some white cotton gloves. "We don't want to disturb the integrity of the contents," he