Counting Coup
Chapter One
Tar paper shacks, abandoned junk heaps in front yards, rutted and
littered streets-all the outward signs of people living on the
margin. Down the block from where I park, a pack of mangy dogs mosey
across the street, pacing themselves in the heat of this August day
in Crow Agency, Montana.
The only sign of energy in the town is the ubiquity of basketball
hoops ... on telephone poles, sides of houses, scrawny trees.
These hoops aren't fancy Air Jordan NBA specials purchased at the
Rim Rock Mall in Billings-they have rotting plywood backboards and
flimsy rims drooping toward the hardened dirt. Rare remnants of net,
shredded by heavy use and the fierce winds that blow off the
prairie, hang loosely.
At the park in the center of town-a luckless patch of dried grass
with a well-used outdoor basketball surface in the middle-Norbert
Hill, Paul Little Light, and Clay Dawes, three seniors on the Hardin
High varsity, are playing a lazy game of half-court crunch. I know
their names because I studied their photos in the showcase in the
lobby of the high school gym. These are the guys I've traveled to
this remote cor ... read full excerpt from Counting Coup: A True Story of Basketball and Honor on the Little Big Horn ebook
