Longarm and the Shoshoni silver

A million years crept by. Then a distant voice called out to him, "We see you there, stranger! Stand up with your hands polite and tell us what you're doing in these parts!"

Longarm did no such thing. Assholes who fired on anyone using a public right of way in broad day could hardly

be trusted not to gun another asshole who gave them such a swell chance.

The same voice called out, "I swear we'll open fire if you ain't on your feet by the time I counts to ten!"

So Longarm waited as the cuss in those trees to his east counted aloud, then fired again and again in the general direction his poor old hat had been headed. Longarm figured from the rate of fire that the rascal had a single-shot breech-loading .51 without a scope sight. He was firing too blind at the limit of his effective aim. Those awesome express rounds would kill at over a mile if they hit, but in practice an average shot was doing better than average if he could hit anything at three hundred yards.

Judging by the sun dazzle he'd spotted just in time, Longarm had the range figured at more like five hundred, which was another good reason to keep his own peace with the grass stems all around. He knew that even if he'd been able to see the son of a bitch, his Winchester's effective range was two hundred. So he had to get a good bit closer, or the asshole would have to get closer to him, before it would be a fair fight.

Another voice, a tad further south, bawled, "Cut wasting that expensive shot and ball, Pearly. I think he's already hit."

The high-powered rifle spanged again before the original rascal called back, "He'd better be, now that you've yelt my name to the four winds, you stupid kid!"

The stupid kid yelled back, "Aw, shit, I'll go look if you're too yeller-bellied. Pearly."

The one who seemed to be called Pearly called back, "Don't you dast! That ain't no ragged-ass sheepherder over yonder, kid. Pappy told us not to take no chances with this old boy, and he'd skin me alive if I was to get you kilt instead."

The one called Kid digested that, then called, "Well, we can't just wait here like sparrow birds on a telegraph wire till someone else comes riding along, can we?"

Longarm didn't see why not. But nobody was asking him. So he offered no suggestions as he lay there, dying for a smoke.

A grasshopper landed on the barrel of his Winchester and began to wash its front legs with tobacco juice spit, as if to tease a poor soul forced to do without as the sun rose ever higher. Longarm muttered, "Just you wait, Bug. We'll be having our first frost most any morning now at this altitude, and you know what the ant warned you grasshoppers about in that old tale by Mister Aesop."

The grasshopper paid him no mind. So he knew he was holding as still as he needed to. Critters always noticed movement before a human might. The older of the humans responsible for this dumb fix bawled out, "Come back here, you fool kid! We can't even be sure where he landed in all that deep grass!"

So Longarm knew what was headed his way long before the grasshopper near his front sight suddenly spooked and went whirring off on wings of black and gold. Longarm simply raised the sight until it was aimed at blue sky just above the amber tips of the screening grass. Sure enough, a tall gray hat preceded a tanned moronic face into Longarm's dead aim, to wind up dead and in point of fact sort of messy as Longarm blasted away point-blank while the dumb jaw commenced to drop at the sight of its own impending demise.

As the kid's shattered skull jerked backwards from under its big gray hat Longarm was already rolling sideways. So he wasn't at all where he had been when that more careful as well as more distant rifleman fired sensibly but too late at the haze of gunsmoke left by Longarm's deadlier shot.

When Longarm saw the rascal was aiming at the moving grass tips above him he froze on his belly again, but gripped his Winchester by its warm muzzle to reach as far away as he could with the butt plate, and then rolled it through the grass in apparent agony as he wailed, "Oh, shit, I give! I

give! You got me bad and I need a doc!"

The one called Pearly bawled, "I'll give you one, you fucker! Are you still with us. Kid?"

Neither Longarm nor the one he'd just shot replied, of course, as Pearly shot the shit out of nothing much where Longarm had been rolling that butt plate about. He had it back in place against his right shoulder by the time Pearly let up, called again to his sidekick, and then wailed, "Aw, shit. Pappy ain't gonna like the way this turned out at all! Come on. Kid, quit funning me and say you only ducked, all right?"

Longarm just lay low.

Another million years later he heard hoofbeats, two ponies moving off on the far side of those aspen judging from the echoes all around.

Longarm still lay low. He'd played the same old Indian trick in his time. It was an old Indian trick because it had worked so many times.

The sun got high as it ever went and began to roll down the west slope of the clear autumn sky. Despite the altitude and his recent promise to that grasshopper, Longarm was really commencing to despise President Hayes and the reforms that called for damned old frock coats the damned sun could bake a man in as if he was a damned potato wrapped in damp adobe. For if it was true old U.S. Grant had been asleep at the switch while his crooked cronies had robbed him and the rest of the country blind, at least a federal deputy had been able to get by in no more than a shirt and vest back then, as long as he combed his damned hair now and again.

There was no safe way to roll out of his tweed coat without a grass stem or more giving away this new position. As if to prove that, he heard those damned ponies coming back, or leastways, he heard two ponies coming at a trot, sounding more as if they were on that dirt road just a few yards off. But Longarm never let on he might still be alive until he heard someone rein in and call out in a female voice, "Is

that you I see with one hand out on the roadway, Deputy Long?"

He stayed put but risked calling back, "Not hardly, ma'am. I suspicion you're looking at someone I just shot, and watch those aspen over to your left as you dismount on my side Indian-style."

The unseen gal laughed harshly and allowed she always did. So Longarm wasn't too surprised when he propped himself up on one elbow for a better look at the so-called Princess Tupombi. She was already demurely afoot in her garish cigar-store-Indian outfit, holding the leads of her dapple gray and his roan cayuse. He figured out why his saddle was aboard the roan instead of the paint before she called out, "Are you hurt? When your pony came back without you I thought it best to come looking for you with a less-jaded mount."

Nobody seemed to be shooting at either of them at the moment. So Longarm got gingerly to his feet and headed her way, calling a mite softer with a brighter smile, "That was mighty considerate of you with old Tanapah really feeling his oats this afternoon."

It didn't trip her up as planned. The pretty little thing gave a happy gasp and proceeded to give him what for in Ho, despite her big blue eyes and more Celtic than Comanche features.

Longarm laughed sheepishly and stopped her as he began to shuck his coat without letting go of his Winchester. "Hold your fire, ma'am. I know Tanapah is the sun father, that ayee means yes and ka means no. But after that I don't know much more Ho than any other Saltu."

She sighed and said, "My mother's people call your kind Taibo more often. Who's that Taibo sprawled in the grass over there?"

Longarm said, "I'm still working on that. I thought Saltu was the proper word for stranger. Princess."

She explained, "Saltu is a word, not the word. Don't you call a Mexican a dago as well as a greaser?"

He cocked a brow and replied, "I get along with 'em best by referring to 'em as Mexicans. I take it Taibo is a tad worse than Saltu."

To which she demurely replied, "Of course. Didn't they tell you my mother's people were Penataka?" and he silently chalked that up as another point in her favor.

He had it on good authority that the Penataka or Honey Eaters were the biggest and hence most common Comanche clan. A show-off with a fair grasp of Indian lore might have been more tempted to claim membership in the smaller but more celebrated Kwahadi, who'd ridden to glory under Quanah at Adobe Walls and in other noisy shindigs.

He was commencing to feel she might be only half fake. Buffalo Bill was half fake these days, yet he really had killed Yellow Hand and all those buffalo before he'd taken to dressing so odd and bragging on things he'd never done.

Longarm took the reins of his roan from her with a grateful nod and lashed his rolled tweed coat behind his McClellan as he tersely brought her up to date on his recent misadventures. She followed afoot, leading her barebacked gray by the single line of her rawhide hackamore or bitless bridle. He'd already noted how Quill Indian she rode, despite the odd coloration of her eyes and deerskin duds. His bit-led roan commenced to fuss as he led it closer to the scent of fresh-spilled blood. He whacked its muzzle just enough to gain its undivided attention, and got them all a mite closer before he turned to ask the pretty breed, "Would you mind both brutes again just a minute or so? I see where my hat landed now, and we'll want this dead one lashed facedown across my saddle as well."

"Speak for yourself," she said in with a wrinkle of her tawny pug nose, adding, "He tried to kill you. Let him rot. I'll help you drag him further from the road if you're concerned about the few who may come this way before the carrion crows have had a good meal of bad Taibo."

He moved off through the deep grass to retrieve his

capsized Stetson and put it back on before he explained on the way back to her, "I'd like to have others look him over before the crows eat what's left of his fool face. I seem to have upset a white-trash clan back in Zion and this jasper and his sidekick made mention of someone they called Pappy, who seemed to want me dead. Personal. If this poor soul turns out to have been named Robbins, I can work out his pappy from there. Easy."

With the pretty breed minding the ponies he hunkered down to go through the dead man's duds, adding, "If nobody in Zion can identify him I'll have a bigger wonderment on my plate and . . . Hello, I see he took out a library card in San Antone one time. Outlaws do that a heap. But I doubt his name was really Miles Standish. Albeit his hat over yonder reads sort of Texas as well and . . . Yep, I sure want the folks in an Idaho county seat to look this cuss over before he starts to spoil."

She helped mostly by holding Longarm's Winchester and soothing both ponies as Longarm manhandled the still-limp body up over and facedown across his McClellan. As he was lashing the cadaver securely in place with latigo strips, she observed he seemed to have a knack for such gruesome tasks. To which he could only modesdy reply he'd had some practice.

She said, "I'll bet you have. You are the lawman my Ute cousins call Saltu Ka Saltu, aren't you?"

He shrugged and said, "I reckon. I arrested a mucky-muck with the B.I.A. who'd been held over from Grant's Indian Ring one time, and the Utes seemed to find that sort of astounding."

"The stranger who is not a stranger," she mused with a sort of Mona Lisa smile. "I can see why they were astounded. My father was Scotch-Irish, and a decent man, but you people fucked the Utes above and beyond the call of duty, after they'd helped you round up the Navajo back in the sixties."

Longarm winced and replied, "I wish you wouldn't say

anybody helped me personally round anybody up. That was Kit Carson they sent after wayward Navajo that time, and Carson himself complained to Washington when the B.I.A. under Grant let the Indian Ring get a few Ute leaders drunk and grabbed all that land out from under the whole nation. Do you reckon that gray of your own would be able to carry the both of us at a trot, Princess Tupombi?"

She said, "He'll have to, unless one of us means to ride atop a dead man or walk that far. I wish you'd stop calling me Princess, by the way. I'm not even the porivo my mother was. But no matter how often I try to explain that to Shoshoni Sam he keeps insisting nobody would understand what a porivo was and that princess seems close enough."

Longarm chuckled and took the reins so she could vault lightly up on her gray, to land astride as well as bareback, giving him quite a view of her long tawny legs.

It wouldn't have been polite to ask if she was wearing any underdrawers. So he just forked aboard behind her, holding the lines of both ponies in his left fist as he swung the Winchester around her slim waist to ride across her lap, with his gun hand still gripping the action. His right wrist fit into the nice angle formed by her trim pelvis and widespread right thigh as if it belonged there.

She didn't argue about that, but warned him she'd better hold the lead pony's single rein. He let her, even though it meant a left fist down against his own less interesting hip as he asked her which of them ought to heel the critter's ribs.

She said, "Neither. This one's Penataka bred and broken. He'll buck if anyone tries to abuse him Taibo-style."

She proved that by clucking softly to the gray. The next thing Longarm knew they were moving out at an easy mile-eating trot he should have found ball-breaking with no stirrups to stand in, but didn't, thanks to the smooth gait and springy spine of the pony.

It wasn't true all Indians were natural cavalry generals,

any more than it was true every Russian wood-carver had the makings of a Cossack. Some nations would as soon eat a horse as get on one, and as dangerous as Lakota could be coming at you at full gallop, they still called their mounts tashunkas, or big dogs, and tended to be rougher on them than green cavalry troopers because they set great store in stealing the horses they rode, and thus had little time to waste on breaking them gently.

Other nations, the Cayuse in particular and the Comanche, Shoshoni, and Utes in general, tended to baby the ponies they bred, as well as stole, with a mighty good eye for horseflesh. So they tended to ride the ideal Indian pony of Ned Buntline's Wild West Romances, and this dapple gray he was riding with a lady in wine-red Indian duds was a swell pony, even by Comanche standards. When she modestly denied breaking it herself, they established she'd been educated as white as the white kids of the boarding school her Indian trading pop had sent her to would let her act. She'd been baptized Mary Jo, but took an adult Indian name, as Indians got to, once she'd run home to her momma. Tupombi meant no more than Brunette, which got less odd when you considered her Comanche kin had allowed her to choose it, and that the white kids at that boarding school had been inclined to call her Nigger. She said a porivo, which her momma had been, translated more as a woman who was allowed to be heard with as much respect as a powamu, or important man with medicine, than a regal title such as Shoshoni Sam had suggested.

He said he savvied some of the more open customs of Ho-speaking folk who shook their feathered pahos at Taiowa, the Great Creative Mystery. When she told him she could see he really had been paying attention, he felt bold enough to ask, "So what's all this nonsense about asking Sacajawea of the Lewis and Clark Expedition to join a Wild West Show at this late date?"

Tupombi said, "It's not nice to call a story nonsense before you've heard it. The one I'm sure they told you,

in your own Taibo schoolbooks, is pretty silly in its own right."

He asked how so, even as he tried to recall the little he'd read and heard about old-timers who'd died before he'd been bom. The pretty little thing sort of riding in his lap began with, 'That name they put down as her real one was awfully dumb. She was a Shoshoni girl, captured by Minnetaree Hidasta and sold to a metis or half-breed French Canadian that Lewis and Clark soon hired for a guide. His name was Charbonneau. He is not important to my true story of Boinaiv."

Longarm frowned and said, "Lewis and Clark didn't think much of old Charbonneau, who seemed to know less about the mountains ahead than his pretty young squaw. But who was this Boinaiv?"

She sounded impatient as she answered, 'The one everyone keeps calling Sacajawea, of course. Her real name, Boinaiv, means Daughter of Grass. I don't know the vision that inspired that. When Boinaiv cried so much because she'd been captured and taken east across the Shining Mountains, her captors, not any Ho-speakers, started to call her Bird Woman, or Sakaka Wea, as you'd say that in their Sioux way. Sacajawea means nothing sensible in Ho."

Longarm thought and decided, "By gum, wihaw does sound the way Lakota and such refer to their womenfolk. They don't like it when you call 'em squaws. But hold on, I do recall reading somewhere about Sacajawea meaning something about canoes in her own native lingo."

Tupombi snorted. "A bird woman riding in a canoe being pulled? Some so-called Indian scholars have tortured Sacajawea into such Shoshoni baby talk, and Shoshoni Sam keeps saying nobody will ever pay a dime to meet anyone called Grass Baby, and I fear he may be right. I only agreed to help him and Miss Marvella to find Boinaiv. I owe them for getting me out of a fix a lot like the one the crying Boinaiv found herself in when Lewis and Clark came along. I was stranded in Kansas City when the owner of an other Wild

West Show decided he didn't like my stuck-up-ways. Then the manager of my hotel insisted on being paid or taking it out in trade, in bed with me."

Longarm grimaced and said, "That's how come mothers warn their daughters about show folk, ma'am. But even assuming way nicer show folk took you under their wing and asked you to help 'em track down a more famous Indian lady, what in thunder makes you think a gal who marched over the mountains with Lewis and Clark back in the days of the first Napoleon, as a woman grown, would still be—"

"Somewhere in her nineties," Tupombi cut in. "She was in her early teens, pregnant or not, when she led the way west back in 1804. But there's more to it than the mere fact it would be possible for most any healthy person to live to be a hundred or more. If you know my mother's tongue at all you know the people you call Snakes and Comanche are really one. So both nations tell the same tale of a proud Ho woman leaving the breed brute who beat her and his other Indian wives. They say that to avoid Charbonneau and other Taibo mountain men who might have helped him she rode far south, far, to fall in with the Quohada or Antelope People you also know as a Comanche band. They say an important powamu made her his paramount wife because she was not only beautiful but knew so many secrets of both his red and white enemies. I cannot tell you his name because nobody knows it now. You know how my mother's people are about the names of those who have gone back to Taiowa."

Longarm nodded soberly and observed, "Makes the true history of you all a chore to figure too. But we can still talk about Bird Woman because she's still supposed to be alive?"

Tupombi nodded the back of her head to him but said, "She was given that name by enemies. I know you find this hard to understand. Shoshoni Sam finds it impossible because he understands no Ho at all. He keeps trying to

say things to me in baby-talk Algonquin. He thinks squaw, papoose, and moccasin are Shoshoni words."

Longarm said, "Well, he does call himself Shoshoni Sam. What makes you think Sacajawea or, all right, Boinaiv would be way up at Fort Hall, dead or alive, if she was last seen married to a Comanche chief down around the Staked Plains?"

Tupombi said, "I just told you her man was turned into a ghost nobody remembers much about. They think it might have been in a bad fight with Taibo, whether Mexican or Anglo, back when everyone was fighting for control of West Texas. By this time Boinaiv wasn't afraid of her French Canadian man anymore, and before she'd run away from him they'd had a son, a healthy one with a lot of puha, who'd been sent to a fine school by the red-headed chief, William Clark."

Longarm brightened and said, "Oh, sure, I know about John Baptiste Clark Chapineau, better known as Pomp and bom along the way to the wide Pacific. Wasn't there some scandalized gossip at the time about old Clark giving the lad his name as a middle name after being so friendly with his Shoshoni mamma?"

Tupombi shrugged and sounded unconcerned as she replied, "He could have fucked her had he wanted to. That was one of the reasons she and a dozen or so other Indian girls had been brought along. But Pomp Chapineau was almost surely the son of her half-breed lord and master because she was carrying when the two of them joined the expedition. Do you want to hear my story or do you want to talk dirty about a girl who had no say at all in the matter?"

He said, "Well, Clark never would have named that Judith Basin after a gal waiting for him back home if he hadn't been sort of fond of her as well. Keep talking about Sacajawea-Boinaiv and her long-lost mixed-breed son. Didn't he die of Rocky Mountain spots during the Montana gold rush, around '66?"

She sighed and replied, "Some say it was water on the lungs. I told you my mother's people don't like to talk about ghosts. I don't know whether Boinaiv ever met her grown son again when the two of them were seen around the Montana gold fields about the same time. I hope she did, and that he was kind to her. In any case she was last seen back north, in Shoshoni country where she belonged."

"Back up and study on an old lady searching for a middle-aged son just after a war betwixt the states that's already commencing to fade into legend," he said. "Even if she survived the shock of her breed son's death, you've still got her in Montana Territory, on the wrong side of the Divide for Fort Hall. So what's the sense of sccirching for her on the Fort Hall reserve when she belongs at the Wind River Agency with the Eastern Shoshoni?"

They could see Mormon cows grazing all about by this time as they kept riding in, with Tupombi expl2iining, 'To begin with, she doesn't belong with the eastern bands. She was bom and raised a West Shoshoni of the Agaiduka band. After that, she wouldn't be at the Wind River Agency, dead or alive. Shoshoni Sam wired Fort Washakie over a month ago, when I first told him the story."

Longarm frowned at the kissable back of her tawny neck as he silently digested that. It would have been impolite to suggest a Wild West gal who'd been stranded in a K.C. hotel might make up an even wilder story if she felt she had to.

Chapter 8

The dead gunslick was a mite stiff and grinning like a shit-eating dog by the time they got him into town. From the way some of the townsfolk gaped one might think they'd never seen a white man riding double with a pretty Indian and leading a cadaver on another pony before.

Longarm unloaded the one he'd nailed on the sunny side of the modest country courthouse, where the afternoon warmth could sort of thaw a bowed body into a more dignified position on the grass. Tupombi said she'd carry both ponies back to the Overland stop and see to their proper care. He said he'd join her and the others there as soon as he compared notes on the one called The Kid with the local law.

That didn't take long. Tupombi and the ponies were barely out of view before a morose old cuss wearing a gray Abe Lincoln beard and gilt county badge elbowed through the growing crowd in a suit less dusty than Longarm's. The younger federal lawman had naturally pinned his own silver badge to his tweed vest before riding anywhere worth mentioning in the company of a gunshot victim.

The county deputy introduced himself as Bishop Reynolds. So Longarm knew he took his law-enforcement duties less seriously than your average political appointee. The stem-faced Mormon lawman paid close attention, however, as Longarm filled him in on why he'd just deposited

a dead man on the grounds of the Zion County Courthouse. The Kid was still grinning foolishly with what was left of his face from, say, the eye sockets down, but as Longarm had hoped, he was commencing to lie straighter now. An undertaking gal who'd baked him a swell cactus pie one time had explained that temporary stiffness to him, and told him how they dealt with it in her trade.

As Bishop Reynolds dropped to one knee and began to fumble with the dead man's buttons Longarm said, "He ain't one of your own. He wore his hat with a Texas crease, packed doubtless-fake Texican identification, and as you can see now, wore red flannel underwear."

Bishop Reynolds left the dead man's shirtfront half ajar as he grimly observed, "I thought he was a gentile. Tell me more about the trouble you had with Pete Robbins and his godless litter."

Longarm smiled thinly and observed, "News sure travels, even when it ain't got far to go. But I didn't have that much trouble with the timid cuss who serves grub to white travelers and redeye to red locals. They seem to have simply lit out as soon as I told 'em I was a federal lawman who couldn't be bought off."

He nudged the gentile he'd brought in with a thoughtful boot tip as he added, "I didn't expect them to take things this seriously. It was my impression we were talking about nothing more sinister than swapping trade liquor for wild game and vegetables. Anyone making a habit of that ought to know the federal government may frown on trading redeye to its reservation wards, but doesn't get excited unless you start distilling it untaxed as well."

Bishop Reynolds got back to his feet, muttering, "Where did you think Pete Robbins got his com liquor, from mj? The Salt Lake Temple has enjoined us to obey the law of the land, which is why you see me wearing this badge to enforce the temporal laws of Deseret."

"No offense, but this ain't Utah Territory," Longarm said, as respectfully as the occasion seemed to call for.

The church elder and deputy sheriff sniffed and said, "I still take my serious commandments from our Salt Lake Temple, and before you start up about that, I'd best advise you Salt Lake defines the law of the land as those provisions and only those provisions of the U.S. Constitution all of us must abide by. There's not one word in the federal constitution that requires any state or territorial government to license any liquor distillery, so . . ."

"Pete Robbins is a moonshiner," Longarm finished, staring soberly down at the one called The Kid. "I can see how a cuss with an illicit still out in the nearby hills might have more to worry about than sneak-swapping a jug someone else made for a side of venison now and again. But how do you reckon they knew where to lie in wait for me so far south of town? I only told one gent, and him a stranger here as well, I was heading out to see what might have bogged that government party down."

Old Reynolds glanced about, as if to make sure all the faces in the fair-sized crowd were on his side before he cautiously confided, "You couldn't have passed anyone Pete Robbins had any business with if you rode directly south."

Longarm cautiously asked, "Meaning we might be talking about a home spread to the east, west, or north, with or without its own sweet scent of sour mash?"

Reynolds shook his head and replied, "We're talking about this other gentile you've deposited dead on our courthouse grass. My duties to your kind do not include your bad habits. I frankly see little or no difference between a man smoking or drinking stimulants himself and tempting others, red or white, to do the same."

Longarm nodded, but demanded, "Do you take as casual an attitude about an already lost sinner trying to dry-gulch a federal lawman within the fuzzy outlines of your theocracy. Bishop Reynolds?"

The older man shook his head no, but pointed out, 'There's not one shred of evidence connecting this total stranger with any of our local folk. Saint or sinner."

Longarm started to say something dumb. Then he nodded grudgingly. "You're right. This one's not about to confess any other motive, but that's not saying he couldn't have had one. Just before I got him instead, I heard his peird call him The Kid. That pard would seem to have answered to Pearly, and they were both out to get me at the behest of someone called Pappy. I don't suppose that means much to anyone here?"

Reynolds said it didn't, and turned to the others all around for any light they could shed on the subject. But nobody there had heard of a Zion County rider called Pearly. So many riders answered to Kid that nobody wanted to jaw about a Kid none of them had ever seen before. More than one Mormon townsman confirmed that Miss Zelda at the Overland stop called her uncle, Pete Robbins, most anything but Pappy. Even her half-witted kid brother, another kid entirely, seemed to fathom the difference between a pappy and an uncle.

Lx)ngarm asked more questions, and soon made a deal with ambitious locals in exchange for the contents of the dead man's wallet along with his guns, fair watch, and silver-mounted spurs.

A Mormon druggist who doubled as a part-time undertaker said he could tidy the cadaver up enough for a gentile photographer to record his dead features for future reference. After that, there'd be just enough time left over to plant him, unembalmed but wrapped in a tarp almost good as new over in Potter's Field, beyond the town dump.

By this late in the afternoon they all had to concern themselves with the remaining daylight. So as the druggist and his hired help got cracking with the cadaver, Longarm took the older lawman aside to say he'd be at the Overland stop at least one more night, if anyone more important wanted him to sign anything.

Reynolds sniffed, pointed out he'd already told Longarm he was the local bishop, for land's sake, and said he'd send a boy over to get that squaw's signature as well, once he'd

had time to write a proper report for the country records. So they shook and parted friendly, with Longarm feeling fairly sincere. For despite some of the fine print in that Book of Mormon, he had to respect folks who went by what they said they stood for.

Most everybody said they considered women human beings, and most everyone who'd never had any kith or kin scalped just gushed about that noble savage. Mister Lo. But Bishop Reynolds acted as if the signed deposition of a female Indian was worth taking the time and trouble to record.

As he strode the short but dusty distance to the Overland stop Longarm reflected on how well Mormons seemed to get along with both their womenfolk and Indian neighbors. The Angel Moroni had told them the American Indians were one or more of the Lost Tribes of Israel. So instead of calling them damned diggers and shooting them on sight, the way more sensible Saltu might, the Saints had tried to convert them or, failing that, make friends with them at least.

Longarm didn't ascribe the sinister motives others might to the Mormon Indian policy. He'd always found it easier to share tobacco smoke instead of gunsmoke with any Indian who'd meet him halfway. So he doubted it was true all Indian attacks in and about the Great Basin had been instigated by murderous Mormon missionaries, although there had been that massacre at Mountain Meadows, and the army must have had some evidence against Brother Lee and those other Mormons they hung that time for attacking that wagon train and blaming it on Indians.

He found a friendlier-looking Indian, with big blue eyes, out front as he approached the Overland stop. Tupombi said, "What have you been doing all this time? I was about to come looking for you. Those Scotch people have ridden on, with night about to fall and a chance of snow in the cold wind's breath."

Longarm sniffed, didn't smell anything but sage after a long sunny day, and replied, "Do tell? Well they got a Great

Basin man guiding 'em and a half-moon rising. Did they say what inspired 'em to light out alone after all? Dame Flora told me earlier how much she wanted to tag along with that bigger government party."

Tupombi said, "The porivo with flaming hair said she was tired of waiting, waiting, and wanted to use the talking wire the army must have up at Fort Hall."

Longarm frowned thoughtfully. "Rhinegold hired on as a man who knows this country and he's expecting an army telegraph at Fort Hall?"

Tupombi nodded. "They do have a telegraph at both Fort Hall and Fort Washakie. Shoshoni Sam wired both forts to ask about Boinaiv, or Sacajawea. They said they'd he2u-d she died a long time ago. So there must be two army forts, no?"

Longarm shook his head. "No. There's a small army garrison at Fort Washakie, on the far side of the Divide. Fort Hall was the grand notion of a fur trader called Wyeth. He built it as a trading post on the Snake River back in the shining times of the beaver hat craze. The Hudson Bay Company from up Canada way bought Wyeth out back around '36 because he'd picked such a swell location."

"Then why did they call it a fort?" she demanded with her female logic.

Longarm smiled down at her to explain, "Same reasons they called Bent's private fort on the Arkansas a fort. Because it was built as a fort, of course. No offense, but some of your momma's kin have a time grasping our notions of property rights, and the trade goods a trader might have on hand are gener2illy picked with demand on the part of the consumer in mind."

She said, "Oh. Then those Scotch people are going to have to pay to use the telegraph wire from a trading post? Good. I told them it was a bad time to push on into disputed country alone, sind your Dame Flora spoke to me as if I was a child."

Longarm shrugged and said, "She ain't my Dame nothing and she talks that way to most everybody. I take it you, Shoshoni Sam, and Madame Marvella mean to wait some

more for that lost, strayed, or stolen column of dudes I just can't account for?"

She said they were, that the station manager had agreed to let the well-traveled Madame Marvella rustle up some supper in the kitchen if she'd show his Lulu how it was done, and that her own dear momma had never taught her to prepare food in the Taibo fashion and that she wasn't interested in learning.

He chuckled and confided he'd always ducked mess duty in his army days as often as he could. When she said her mentor, Shoshoni Sam, had been smoking inside by the stove a few minutes ago, Longarm chuckled fondly and suggested, "What say we let him smoke alone, lest he feel inspired to teach you a useful trade? When I was in the army I found that out of sight was out of mind. So I tried to avoid showing up for anything less important than pay call, mail call, mess call, and such. Why don't we mosey back down to that general store and give Madame Marvella and Lulu time to set the table inside? I feel certain Shoshoni Sam or the station manager will holler for us before our grub gets too cold."

She fell in step beside him as he flung his coat over one shoulder but left his gun hand free. When she asked what they might be after at the store ahead he explained, "Nothing. They'll likely be fixing to close for the night. Meanwhile, they got front steps just made for watching the road south as old Tanapah calls it a day in the west."

She took it wrong. She pouted, "Don't mock my puha, even if you think it's sort of silly. My father's people tried to convince me I should shake paho at a weakling who'd allowed his enemies to nail him to a cross without fighting them, and I thought that was sort of silly too!"

He motioned at the store steps they could see ahead now as he soberly replied, "Your boys don't fight when the ahotey is skewering 'em to do some sun dancing either, speaking of odd religious notions, and having witnessed more sun dances than I ever wanted to, I'm sure I'd as soon be crucified if I just had to choose one or the other."

She insisted it wasn't the same. Men could be like that when you argued religion with them too. So he said soothingly "Let's just say I only meant the sun was mighty low in the west and talk of things that might have answers, such as how high could up go or how long might forever last."

She laughed and confessed she'd never figured those puzzles out either. They saw the general store had been shuttered against the gathering dusk as they sat down on the warm plank steps. But Longarm decided not to reach for a smoke in such a public place, with or without any Mormons in sight.

Tupombi locked her tawny fingers around her upraised although modestly skirted knees as she leaned back, saying, 'The sunset is beautiful, no matter who or what is painting the clouds so many colors, many. You were telling me why Fort Hall is not an army post. Is it still a trading post?"

He thought before he went on. "Well, there's a trading post to be found there, across from the Indian agency and such. Think of it more as a sprawl that busted out of its original stockade back in wagon train days before the war. Sited as it was, where the Oregon Trail met the Shake River, Fort Hall might have grown into as big a town as Fort Boise, another Hudson Bay trading post over to the west. But it never did, because it was handier to the strongholds of the Bsmnock-Shoshoni bands that worried travelers along the Oregon Trail whether they did anything worrisome or not."

Tupombi sighed and said, "We heard about the army killing all those men, women, and children near the big bend of the Bear River. It seemed very cruel to us."

Longarm stared off into the sunset as he quiedy replied, "Well, some of us took some Indian pranks sort of serious as well. I'd as soon argue religion as figure out who first did what, to whom, with what. Miss Tupombi. Can't we forget the self-seeking tales told by mean rascals on both sides and

agree most folk, red and white, act about as decent as others might let 'em?"

She said it was easier for him to say, adding, "You don't know the bad things, many bad things, some of your people have done."

He shook his head. "You're wrong. I still got this fool badge pinned to my vest and I've been toting it six or eight years now. I won't offend your Comanche ears with half the tales of blood and slaughter I could fill 'em with. So suffice it to say I've seen lots of bad things done to folks, red and white, by human monsters, or just plain folks, as red or white. Folks can sure act scary when they're scared of one another."

She agreed it might be friendlier to gossip about less bloodthirsty topics. He said he had no idea whether Dame Flora or her maid, the plainer but sort of shapely Jeannie, took care of the gruff but rather virile-looking Angus after dark. She said she'd walked in on Shoshoni Sam and Madame Marvella in the middle of a crime against nature. But he told her he didn't want to hear about it before she could say just what they'd been up to, or down on.

He was sorry he'd gotten her off the subject of the older couple as soon as she shifted her attention from their private lives to his own. Most gals he met seemed content to learn he wasn't married up or seriously spoken for. But Tupombi wanted to know how he satisfied his natural feelings if he didn't have any lady friends.

He told her a deputy on duty in the field just had to grin and bear it, unless he got lucky. So she naturally asked if he thought it really changed a man's luck if he dallied with ladies of color.

He laughed, sort of red-eared, and allowed he'd seldom heard a Comanche breed described as a lady of color. Which inspired her to blush even harder and protest she hadn't been suggesting any such thing.

Before he could ask what she had been suggesting with all this suggestive talk, they both heard the thunder of hooves

and rattle of wheel rims and tie rods to the south. So they turned as one to spy the Overland stage coming in, fast, through the gathering dusk.

The six-mule team hauled the swaying Concord coach past them at full gallop. Neither the driver nor shotgun man seemed to pay much attention to anything around them. As Longarm and Tupombi watched the rear boot of the coach fade north behind all that dust, Tupombi observed they'd come in as if Quanah Parker, in the flesh and wearing paint, was right behind them.

Longarm got to his feet and held out a hand to help her do the same as he replied, "Great minds run in the same channels. I was about to say supper could be almost ready by now, and either way, that coach just came up the trail that missing government team was supposed to be following."

As they legged it back to the Overland stop faster than they'd left it, Tupombi brightened and said, "Oh, I see. You want to ask the coach crew whether they passed your friends on the trail or not."

Longarm sighed and replied he'd just said that. He knew why she was talking so much and saying so little. He'd once caught himself being sort of windy in the company of a gal he really wanted, before he'd learned it was a dead giveaway and more likely to spoil a good chance than advance it. Women of experience, the best kind to experience, were inclined to shy at would-be lovers who came at them acting sort of silly. He'd learned to be wary of silly gals for the same practical reasons. The game was confusing enough when you played it with other sensible grown-ups.

Indians were not considered grown-ups, even when they seemed to be acting sensible, under current federal law. So a foolish white boy could get himself in a whole lot of trouble acting silly with silly little Comanche gals who might or might not be listed as government wards by the B.LA.

He didn't ask Tupombi if she was as they strode up the dusty street together. He knew some breeds were while others were not. Just as he knew the only thing that lied worse

than a man with a hard-on was a woman feeling "unfulfilled." That was what gals said they were when they were feeling homy, "unfulfilled."

The Concord with its mule team had naturally swung around to the back by the time Longarm and Tupombi joined the new arrivals in the main waiting room, along with Shoshoni Sam and the manager.

The manager said he'd just come from the kitchen and that supper would soon be ready, provided everyone there called scrambled eggs and fried venison a supper. So it was just as well the coach had come up the delta carrying plenty of mail and only four passengers, all male and two of them Mormons who meant to sup with kith or kin in town.

The jehu, a grizzled peg-leg who'd been driving the same route a good spell, warned the two Saints not to hurry, saying, "If we're running late we're running late. I don't meant to leave here till well after daybreak in the morrow, after hearing Mister Lo is off the reserve this fall again!"

He wasn't the only one there staring sort of pensively at the obvious Indian Longarm had come in with. So Longarm quietly told the jehu, "She's with me and other mild-mannered folks here. Before you tell us about wild Indians, might you know anything of a party of white government men headed this way from Ogden for way longer than it should have taken 'em to crawl on their hands and knees?"

The somewhat younger shotgun man volunteered, "That's who warned us about the Indians. We met up with 'em this very afternoon, forted up beside the trail where it fords Club Creek."

Longarm consulted his mental map, located the dumb place they'd picked, and decided, "Indians or no Indians, they could have made it in to town by now from that close!"

The jehu nodded and said, "We just did. Allowing for my swell driving, they could be coming in anytime now. Only they won't be. They 're scared. I mean, there must be over a dozen of the timid souls, with plenty of shooting irons and no women or children along. But they told us they mean to stay

put there for the night, the yellow-bellied greenhorns."

His shotgun man hesitated, then decided, "Fair is fair and their scouts J/V/tell 'em to stay put whilst they rode on ahead."

One of the two remaining passengers volunteered, "It was the two more experienced scouts they'd hired in Ogden who spotted Shoshoni sign and ordered the party to fort up while they scouted ahead. None of us saw any Shoshoni. On the other hand we were moving as fast as spit skips across a hot stove."

"The Shoshoni ain't supposed to be on the warpath this autumn," Longarm said. "Those gents from the B.I.A. and Land Use were sent all the way out here to treat with the local Shoshoni bands. So why in blue blazes would they be trying avoid meeting up with any?"

The jehu shrugged and growled, "Don't look at us. Blacky here just told you none of us saw any Shoshoni!"

The passenger called Blacky, an obvious mining man who seemed to know his way around these parts, explained, "It was the greenhorns' scouts, the missing ones, who said the Indians were acting sort of spooky. They must have known what they were talking about, whatever it was they'd spotted, for they've been missing entire ever since they had their dudes fort up and rode off!"

The manager's drab Lulu came in to tell them, or warn them, it was supper time. So they all filed in to the dining room. Tupombi went on back to the kitchen to help the other two women without having to be asked. Longarm had already noticed she was pretty and smelled as clean as most gals who rode astride in deerskin. It was a joy to see she had some manners as well.

After that the meal was rough and ready, with the fancy perked coffee making up for the overdone eggs and greasy venison. Sort of. One almost had to admire a cook who could fuck up eggs and ruin well-hung venison. It showed a sincere ambition to stay out of kitchens as often as possible.

The three gals joined in once all the menfolk had been served. Longarm wasn't surprised, or displeased, to see

Tupombi pull her chair up to his table. He'd picked that table with a view to jawing some more with the jehu and shotgun man. They seemed to want to talk more about some gals they knew up at the Montana end of their run, until Tupombi joined them and they had to talk cleaner. So they all about agreed those missing scouts could have simply gotten lost after bragging they knew more than they really did about these parts. At that point a Mormon kid in a straw hat and bib overalls came in to ask which one of them might be Deputy Long.

When Longarm pled guilty the kid came over to hand him a sheaf of neatly handwritten papers, saying he worked for Bishop Reynolds and that these papers had to be signed before they went into the county records.

Longarm told the kid to sit a spell while he read what he and Miss Tupombi were supposed to sign. When the shotgun man asked the young Saint if he'd like some coffee, the kid turned the jest back on him by saying he'd rather have a snort of Napoleon brandy, if they had any. They then decided to talk to him as they might to any good old boy.

Longarm paid little attention, at first, while he scanned the fairly accurate transcript of his early conversation with Bishop Reynolds. The church elder and county deputy had a sharp ear and a good memory for what he heard. Longarm signed and passed the papers and his indelible pencil on to Tupombi, warning her to read the page she was supposed to sign before she did so. Just then he heard something about Indians across the table.

He swung around imd asked the Mormon kid to repeat that last part about smoke talk. So the Mormon kid said, "Jim Colgan, riding for the Circle Bar, saw it. They're gentiles but otherwise decent enough. Jim rode in special to warn anyone who hadn't noticed. Seems the Shoshoni have been sending smoke signals from the hogbacks over to the east. You can see way out across the range and over miles of the Overland Trail from any of them high hogbacks, you know."

The jehu and his shotgun man had heard all that the first time. After the kid had repeated it for Longarm the jehu shrugged and said, "Well, they can't be sending smoke signals about us, and them government men are down the other way, by Club Creek."

Lx)ngarm muttered grimly, "Another party headed north just a few hours ago. Do any of you gents know another professional guide who, answers to Rhinegold? Ira Rhinegold, I think he said his name was."

Nobody there had ever heard of Dame Flora's guide, let alone Dame Flora and those other Scotch pilgrims. The shotgun man opined, "Anyone else out yonder with eyes in his head would have seen as much smoke rising as that cowhand Colgan."

Longarm nodded grimly and said, "I know. So where are they, if that smoke talk inspired that cowhand to head back this way?"

The shotgun man suggested, "Same place them two missing scouts from that other party wound up?"

Longarm sighed. "I sure hope none of 'em wound up where white folks have been known to wind up during a real rising. Two of the folks we're jawing about are women, and nobody deserves to wind up the way I've found more than one poor soul, sort of scattered out on the range."

Tupombi handed the signed papers back, smiling sort of uncertainly, as she murmured, "It's not our fault. After Taiowa told Kokyangwuti to fashion us real people, she asked Sotuknang to give us our share of air, water, and earth. But he gave us hunting grounds surrounded on all sides by strangers, strangers who always wanted to fight us!"

Longarm dryly muttered, "Or vice versa. Are you trying to tell us you Comanche and your Shoshoni cousins haven't killed more strangers, red or white, than all the other nations combined?"

She smiled sweetly and replied, 'That's true, and I counted coup on my mother's people. Our young men are fierce as

Real Bear and sly as Old Man Coyote and, as you just said, the Shoshoni are Ho too!"

Longarm got to his feet, saying, "Excuse me, folks. I got to get it on up the trail and see about some Scotch folk now."

But as he headed out the archway, slipping his frock coat back on over his gun rig, Tupombi tagged along, demanding, "Where do you think you are going, to do what, at this hour? Hear me, Custis, my Shoshoni cousins may not be after anyone at all. Sometimes smoke talk is no more than idle gos-

Sip.

He told her, "First I'm going up to fetch my McClellan and Winchester. Then I reckon I'll ride out on that roan, tired as it may be. For the paint would be too easy to spot at a distance in the moonlight."

She followed him up the stairs, protesting, "Don't be such a dumb honaheyheya ! My Shoshoni cousins are not supposed to be on the warpath. If they are not, there is nothing to worry about. If they are, those other Taibo are already dead, and how are they supposed to answer you if you ride in circles after them in the dark?"

'They could be forted up," Longarm answered, opening the door of his hired room.

She followed him in, insisting, "In that case they are already safer for the night than you would be, playing nanipka in the dark with roving war parties, like a willful child, until they catch you and you're it. My mother's people don't play hide and seek by your rules, and forget that bullshit you've heard about Indians not wanting to fight in the dark!"

He chuckled and said, "I told you before I'd scouted for the army in my misspent youth. The damn fool who put that nonsense in an early guidebook must have gotten a heap of greenhorns killed by this time. I remember this shavetail fresh out of the Point who didn't think he needed to post night pickets along the Bozeman Trail during Red Cloud's War and . . . Never mind. I got to see what I can do for them Scotch folk, and meanwhile, I want you to stay here and keep an eye on my other pony for me."

She stamped a softly shod little foot and said she'd do no such thing. "Just let me get my own few things from my own room down the hall and youMI be mighty glad I came along when and if I have to talk someone out of lifting the hair off your thick head!"

He started to argue. But she seemed as determined and her words made some sense. Lewis and Clark had been mighty glad they'd had a fluent Ho-speaker along that time they'd run into the Shoshoni band of their pretty young guide, Sacajawea. With any luck at all now the Indians were still sparring for position, whatever might be bothering them.

He asked about that as he followed the pretty breed down the hall. She said it made no sense to her either if those government gents were really dealing in good faith with as smart an old cuss as Chief Pocatello. He followed her into her own room, and realized he might have made a tactical error when Tupombi slammed the door shut cuid turned and grabbed for him in the sudden darkness.

He suspected she'd played this sort of nanipka in the dark in the past, judging from her aim as she took advantage of the load he was packing to kiss him, French, and grope him, dirty, at the same time.

He let go of his saddle to grab her back, if only in self-defense, as she demurely hoisted her fringed deerskin skirts to run a naked thigh between his legs when they wound up against the securely shut door. He savored her sweet kissing a spell, being only human, but warned her as they came up for air, "I'd sure like to. Miss Tupombi. I want you so bad right now I can taste it. But there's a time and a place for everything, and we'd never forgive ourselves if we found out Dame Rora and her party were being tortured to death all the time we were enjoying one another!"

She hadn't been wearing anything at all under that red deerskin, and began to rub her fuzzy little self against the bulging front of his tweed pants as she clung tightly to him, husking,

"Speak for yourself. I'm not going to let them torture you, Custis. Not if I have to shame myself all the way with you right here and now!"

He was feeling mighty ashamed of the way his old organ-grinder was rising to the occasion despite his determination to behave in a more responsible manner. He caught himself wondering whether it would matter if they tore off just a quick one to sort of settle their nerves before they rode out to see if Dame Flora and her party needed help. Then he gently but firmly stiff-armed Tupombi away, growling, "Hold the thought, and once we know what's up out yonder I promise I'll get it up for you some more."

When she tried to press close again his voice got harder, saying, "I mean it, honey. I'm a lawman first and a ladies' man when it don't stand betwixt me and my duty. So stand aside and let me be on my damned way with or without your help, hear?"

Before she could answer they both stiffened in each other's arms at the roar of at least two revolvers, big ones, blasting the shit out of something, or somebody, close!

Longarm shoved the little breed gal so hard she wound up flat on her bed covers across the room. He hadn't meant to shove her that hard but damn it, she'd been in the way of his cross-draw as he'd spun and grabbed the knob with his other fist.

He had his .44-40 out as he slid out into the hallway from a direction that other cuss down the way must not have expected. The buckskin-clad stranger gasped in wide-eyed terror as he turned from the smoke-filled doorway of Longarm's original room, two smoking .45-55 Schofields in hand, as Longarm told him conversationally, "Drop them guns and grab some rafters nowV

The mysterious stranger hesitated. So Longarm fired thrice, dead center between those fucking gun muzzles trained his way, and that, of course, inspired the unfortunate who'd just shot up his room to stagger back, bounce off a stucco wall, and thud wetly to the floorboards faceup, atop

the nastier exit wounds of Longarm's rapid fire through his rib cage.

Longarm stayed where he was, reloading, as Tupombi joined him by her doorway while others called up the stairs at them. Longarm called back, "Somebody best fetch Bishop Reynolds some more. I suspect I just got the one who got away this afternoon."

Moving in through the clearing smoke with his own gun loaded six-in-the-wheel, Longarm spotted one of the other man's bigger thumb-busters on the floor between baseboard and bloody buckskin. The stoutly framed army-issue revolver had been rechambered for those more lethal rounds and fitted with tailored grips, likely Mex, carved from mussel shell or maybe real mother-of-pearl. So Longarm muttered, "Howdy, Pearly. Now all we got to figure out is the true identity of Pappy, after which we might be able to figure out why killing me was so important to you determined rascals."

Tupombi pointed through the clearing smoke at some goose down floating out the door of Longarm's room. He nodded and said, "Yep, it was my own poor feather bed he just shot the liver and lights out of, the poor bastard."

He couldn't resist adding, with a lopsided grin, "Ain't you glad you waited till we was in your room before you tried to get us both into such a ridiculous position?"

Chapter 9

The gunplay had naturally been heard all over a town as modest as that one, and one advantage of small-town crowds for a lawman was the simple fact that most everyone in such a crowd knew most everyone else in town. So it didn't take long to establish Pearly as a total stranger to those parts as well.

This time Bishop Reynolds showed up with his temporal boss, a High Sheriff Alcott who didn't rank as high in church affairs but still seemed a Saint it wasn't safe to offer a cheroot to. So Longarm didn't, and when he said he had to ride on after those Scotch folk as soon as possible, the stem old High Sheriff told him it wasn't possible, but that he'd send a posse comitatus out to bring Dame Flora and her party back, dead or alive.

Meanwhile, having shot two men within twenty-four hours in or about Zion County, Deseret, they thought the least a gentile stranger who claimed to be a lawman could do would be to explain some of this infernal gunplay at a formal sit-down with the county coroner, who was off somewhere hunting strays at the moment. It didn't really cheer Longarm all that much to learn they'd elected a gentile stockman with some knowledge of veterinary medicine as their county coroner.

But after some consideration Longarm decided it might be best if he went along with the local lawmen, who knew the

local lay of the land way better than he did.

It stood to reason a posse of riders familiar with the rugged range this side of Fort Hall would be able to search it at least as thoroughly, in far safer numbers. And besides, he'd still been sent all this way to ride herd on those other dudes, bogged down or forted up, whichever, in the other direction entirely.

The manager allowed they'd be proud to overnight him some more, and rustled him up another room, a couple of doors closer to the one Tupombi and his possibles were in. He didn't say so as Lulu led him up there after things had simmered down and then left him unmolested to go back down and molest the manager some more.

Longarm lit a sneaky cheroot from the candlestick Lulu had left him and smoked it down, reclined across the unwounded feather bed with the window sash flung wide. Then, figuring the others had bedded down for a spell, he got back up and slipped out into the mighty dark hallway without that lit candlestick. For he knew where he was headed and it was nobody else's beeswax.

Tupombi opened up, although just a candlelit slit, without yelling through the door he'd tapped on discreetly. He could still see she didn't go to bed in deerskins. But she was standing sideways lest he spy anything important as she braced her bare hip against that damned door, murmuring, "Heavens, I was almost asleep and what are you doing at my door at this hour, Custis?"

He said, "Rapping on it, of course. Ain't you fixing to invite a man in for just a minute?"

It was tough to read her eyes with all the light coming from behind her bare ass like that. So when she fluttered her lashes and demanded to know what sort of a girl he thought she was, he decided to take her at her word. He didn't know any Indian words for "prick-teaser," although that game was hardly confined to the gals of his own persuasion.

He said, "I ain't out to trifle with any wards of the government. Miss Tupombi. I only need some stuff from my saddlebags, and as you'd likely notice if you'd be kind enough to

glance down, my old McClellan should be somewhere on your floorboards betwixt the doorjamb and the baseboard."

She said, "Oh," in an oddly pouting way. Then she told him to hold on just a moment, and shut the door in his face. Before he could get sore, however, she opened it again wider, and he saw she'd wrapped a towel around her tawny young charms. Indians didn't worry as much as Queen Victoria about bare shoulders and thighs.

He stepped inside with a tick of his hat brim and a nod of his thanks to simply bend over and pick up the saddle with other gear lashed to it. He'd been right about where it had landed amid the earlier confusion. As he straightened back up with the McClellan braced on one hip the pretty little breed softly murmured, "You used to call me honey, and I told you I was educated white, and I never applied to the B.I.A. for an allotment number when I went back to my mother in my teens."

To which he could only reply, with a wistful smile, "I've been known to call a lady all sorts of sweet things whilst we kissed a mite sassy, Miss Tupombi. But seeing we seem to have had us some second thoughts, I'll just tote this saddle and the rest of my awkward self out of your cooled-down presence, hear?"

He meant it. Women could tell, and it only counted when men meant it. So she somehow managed to bar the whole way out with her pretty little self as she sort of sobbed, "Don't speak to me so coldly. I was only trying to keep you from riding out in the dark to certain death. I wasn't trying to tease you, Custis. But now that we don't have to worry about that. . ."

"Nothing's certain but death and taxes," he said, adding, "If you're rich enough you don't even have to pay the taxes. But I get your general drift, and I'm glad you were so anxious to save my life for me, ma'am. It was an experience I'll never forget."

She didn't move her towel-wrapped hips from the door latch. He hesitated an awkward moment and softly asked, "Can I go, now, ma'am?"

She let go of the towel. As it limply peeled away from her slender but curvacious tawny torso in the soft romantic candlelight he was too thunderstruck to say anything. So it was she who asked, with a knowing expression, whether he really wanted to go.

As she'd doubtless suspected he might, Longarm let go of his dumb old saddle, skimmed his Stetson across to the chest of drawers, and hauled the naked lady in for an even friendlier kiss than that last time. But as they came up for air, with her groping at his buttons, she pleaded with him not to tease her anymore. So he swept her up in his arms, carried her over to her bed, and was in her, deep, with both pillows under her bounding buttocks, before he'd bothered with all his own duds.

She found it as amusing to help him undress without taking it out or even slowing down, once they had those infernal boots off. By that time they'd both come, Tupombi more than once, and so it was a calmer and more relaxed Longarm who settled in for a long bareback lope across clean sheets and a goose-down mattress. He had to chuckle as he thought back to his anthropology experiments with old Sandy Henderson back at that museum. For just as he'd told that curious redhead, gals used to screwing in a tipi screwed much the same as everyone else in a feather bed.

The only sign Tupombi gave of holding with some Indian notions was when she locked her bare ankles around the nape of his neck, dug her nails into his writhing behind, and sobbed, "Hai-hai-yee! Ta soon da hipey!" which hardly needed much translation because he was coming at the same time.

After that they put her candle out and shared a smoke in the cool darkness as they let their overheated flesh rest up and dry a bit. She smoked Indian-style, taking longer, deeper drags and trying to swallow it for keeps. He knew that in most dialects the Indian verbs for smoke and drink were the same. He liked his own way of smoking better, and it wasn't as if they were having some formal tobacco ceremony then and there.

He asked about that as he snuggled her bare flesh against his own. She said Pocatello and his Shoshoni-Bannock sub-chiefs would likely pass the calumet around with those gents from back East, if ever they wound up anywhere near Fort Hall. He was amused when she added, "My mother's people know your people don't feel a treaty has any puha unless everyone smokes from the same calumet. Most of our powamu keep a pretty calumet on hand for such occasions."

He laughed, took a drag on his less-impressive cheroot, and asked how Ho-speakers made peace with other Indians if a peace pipe wasn't all that important.

She explained, "Oh, we Ho you call Comanche make the same promises, with the same ceremonies, to everyone we don't want to fight with at the moment. It's usually a good idea to make peace with an enemy who has the advantage. It gives you the chance to recover and get back at the heyheyas when you have the advantage."

He passed her the smoke, muttering, "You sound like our General Phil Sheridan. He's always held peace treaties with warrior clans to be a waste of paper and tobacco too. So how might a Ho-speaker really make peace, to fight no more forever, like Chief Joseph agreed that time?"

She didn't reply until she burped a tiny puff back up. Then she passed the cheroot back to him, saying, "Heinmot Tooyalket, the one you CdX\ Joseph, was not Ho and never made any peace with anybody of his own free will. He fought you until he had been beaten, beaten, and had no more puha.^'

Longarm frowned uncertainly up at the dark ceiling as he mused, half to himself, "Pocatello and his young men have been mauled a time or two, but they've never been whipped to a frazzle and found themselves pinned down so many miles from home. So let me put it another way. How might a Ho-speaking chief who still leads a heap of young men, in his own country, make a lasting peace with that commission I've been sent to back, if only I ever meet up with the sons of bitches?"

She answered simply, "I don't know. My mother's people don't make peace with anyone for long unless they really like them. A Ho goes by what he or she feels inside, not by what has been said with tobacco smoke or ink."

"Then those Shoshoni acting odd over to the foothills could be feeling something mean inside?"

"Of course. That's why I'm going to fuck you all night and keep them from killing you. Get rid of that silly cheroot and let me show you how / feel inside."

116

Chapter 10

Come morning, the Overland manager had rustled up some local farm kids to replace his missing kitchen and dining-room staff. He said he didn't care if old Pete Robbins ever showed up again or not. He was sore as hell at the moonshining bastard for leaving them in such a fix and he'd said as much, in writing, to his district supervisor up Montana way.

That Montana-bound coach had already left, along with his letter, by the time Longarm and Tupombi heard about it at breakfast. The two of them had risen sort of late that morning, and Shoshoni Sam seemed a mite annoyed about that when he finally caught up with them at their comer table, as they inhaled bacon, eggs, and plenty of the strong black coffee the new cooks had brewed out in the kitchen despite the Book of Mormon.

Shoshoni Sam said he and Madame Marvella had been up for hours, and that those riders had reported back after finding neither the Scotch folk nor any Indians who might have been after them, so when were they fixing to ride out after Sacajawea some more?

Tupombi glanced shyly at Longarm, who said, "Don't look at me. I can't ride on before I've had a few words with the local coroner, and even then, I'd best wait here for those other federal men."

Tupombi said it sounded safer if they all waited there for that far bigger government party. She sounded sincere, even to Longarm, as she explained, 'They should have broken camp to the south by now, if they haven't gotten into a fight with anyone. If they have gotten into a fight, and haven't been able to break out, I don't think I want to leave town with only two or even three people."

Shoshoni Sam sighed and said, "You sound as bad as Madame Marvella. She's been pestering me to turn back ever since she heard about them smoke signals."

Longarm meant it when he quietly suggested, "You could do way worse than listen to the lady, Sam. The road ahead keeps getting rougher, with or without Indian trouble. I should have told you sooner that Fort Hall's just a dinky agency with few facilities for travelers."

"We can't turn back before we find out whether Sacajawea is still alive and willing to join up with us!" the older man shouted.

Longarm shrugged and said, "Seems to me she'd have joined up with someone, or at least written a book by now, if she felt so inclined and that ain't her buried up to Fort Union. I mean, all sorts of folks who've been west of the Big Muddy more than a week have written a heap of books and given heaps of lectures, dressed in snow-white beaded buckskins, whilst the one and original Sacajawea did see way more of the West, in its Shining Times, and they say she learned how to read and write, in English, French, and Lord knows how many Indian dialects."

He reached for an after-breakfast smoke, the new Mormon help being accommodating, as he elaborated. "We're talking about a woman who had access to President Thomas Jefferson in the flesh, and we know he was mighty interested in Indicui matters. So how come Sacajawea was never asked to jot down just a simple dictionary of the half-dozen Indian lingos Lewis and Clark agreed she was fluent in?"

Shoshoni Sam said he didn't know. Tupombi quietly suggested, "Maybe she didn't want to. It's bad puha to even

repeat some words in my mother's language. It couldn't be a good idea to freeze them forever, always, on paper."

Shoshoni Sam said that sounded like a mighty poor way to preserve any lingo. Longarm said, "I think I can explain. We ain't the only ones who think some words have more medicine than others."

The showman demanded an example. So Longarm looked away from the lady in their presence as he softly suggested, "You might try substituting shit for manure, in mixed company, if you'd like to see how some words hit harder than others meaning the same thing. Miss Tupombi here can correct me if I'm wrong, but I've also been told it's bad medicine to say anything about anyone you ever knew who might be dead."

Tupombi nodded soberly and said, '^Ayee, that is true. I can remember my poor mother as Laughing Dancer, because that was how we said her name in Taibo. But all four of her ghosts would be upset with me if I ever repeated her name in Ho!"

Longarm added, "Meaning there's a tendency to change such words as laughing or dancing to, say, amused or prancing. A pal of mine who studies Indians thinks they started out with no more than two or three distinct lingos. The hundreds recorded so idi are the combined results of changing words on purpose smd, like we just heard, not wanting to pin anything down on paper for keeps."

Tupombi nodded and said, "The Shoshoni ahead used to speak just the same as my mother's people. We can still understand one another clearly. But in the time since our bands first parted we've begun to sound a little different. I find it even harder to understand a Paiute, and I'm not sure the Chihuahua are real people at all."

Longarm assured her Chihu2ihua didn't think much of Comanche, and turned back to Shoshoni Sam to say, "There you go. Even if you did find an old lady who remembered Lewis and Clark, she'd likely refuse to say their names out loud and then where would you be?"

They were still arguing about it when Bishop Reynolds came in with a jovial-looking gentile in batwing chaps and a hat almost as floppy, whom he introduced as Greg Lukas, their county coroner when he wasn't raising beef or doctoring sick ponies. So Longarm took his leave of Tupombi and Shoshoni Sam to drift over by the town dump, where they were fixing to plant the second stranger Longarm had shot it out with so recently.

As the three of them walked the short distance Bishop Reynolds told Longarm he'd explained the gunplay as best he knew how. When Longarm commenced to give his own version, the coroner cut in with an easygoing, "I heard. Stands to reason a man has every right to gun a son of a bitch who's just shot the stuffings outten his goose-down mattress, even when he ain't a federal lawman."

When Longarm said he was glad to see they'd taken him at his word, Lukas chuckled dryly and said, "Oh, I reckon we had us some solid evidence as well. The bullets we dug outten your hired bedstead were all .45 caliber, as were the chambers of his two pearl-handled six-guns. Both his guns were empty when you caught up with him, by the way. But that's all right. You couldn't have known, and the slugs you put through him were all .44. We dug 'em out of the plaster earlier. So everything you told Deputy Reynolds here was in total agreement with the material evidence. I don't suppose you've figured out why either of 'em might have been after you?"

Longarm shook his head and truthfully replied, "I can't figure out who either of 'em could have been. Nobody from these parts has been able to identify either and I've searched my brain, more than once, for any wanted outlaws who describe at all the same."

Lukas indicated a path between two monstrous piles of rusting tin cans as he said, "We've taken photographs of both of 'em, for future reference. I'd still like you to have a last peek, by broad day, at the one you gunned last night in such murky light."

Longarm agreed that made sense. As the three of them came out the far side of the pass through the range of rusty cans, Longarm saw a couple of other gents, dressed cow, on their feet by a pile of fresh dirt near the center of a weed-grown and trash-iittered quarter acre. As they drew nearer he spied two feet, wearing no more than wool socks. The poor cuss he'd shot lay in just those socks, his pants, and his bloodstained shirt on the far side of the pile. The shallow grave they'd dug for him lay just beyond. Lukas called out, cheerfully, "Just hold the thought, boys. This lawman who kilt the rascal would like a last look at the same."

The grave-diggers stepped back. Longarm strode closer, paused, and stared soberly down at the Mona Lisa smile of a total stranger. He already knew the one called Pearly had been packing no identification at all, even fake. He looked to have been around twenty-five, or a tad older than the one he'd called Kid. When Longarm asked about that one, Lukas pointed with his chin at a slightly mounded bare patch, saying, "Already feeding the worms. They planted him late yesterday the way you arranged. He was already turning funny colors, I'm told, and the county can't afford embalming for drifters nobody cares about."

Longarm gazed about the disturbed and sort of disturbing plot as he couldn't help noting, "Bishop Reynolds here already told me that. I see you don't bother marking the graves neither?"

Lukas shrugged. "Why should we? We got a fair idea where we've planted someone recently, and nobody never comes to put no flowers on the graves. We got us regular Mormon and gentile churchyards here in Zion, Deputy Long. Nobody anyone ever gave a shit about winds up here in Potter's Field."

Longarm nodded. "Well, I can't say I was all too fond of this poor bastard, whoever he might have been. I sure would like photo prints of both of 'em before I leave, but as of right now, your guess is as good as mine."

Lukas nodded and one of his hired hands nudged the body with a boot heel to roll it, stiff as a plank, into its grave. It landed facedown. Longarm was just as glad when they commenced to kick and then scoop dirt in on top of the cadaver they were planting without even a muslin shroud. It helped some to reflect on how they'd have left him for the carrion crows had things turned out the way they'd planned the day before.

Walking back to town with the coroner and the others, Longarm casually asked just how many unmarked graves they could be talking about back yonder. Lukas thought before he answered. "Two dozen tops. Some before my time. You don't get many unclaimed dead folks in an out-of-the-way town like this, even though it is the county seat."

Bishop Reynolds nodded. "We take care of our own. Overland takes care of the few who die aboard its coaches on their way to or from the gold fields."

There was barely time enough for the locals to recall half the six or eight vagrants buried back yonder since Lukas had taken over as coroner a couple of summers back. Then one of the Mormon townsmen met them on the far side of the trash piles to tell old Bishop Reynolds a bunch of gentile riders were coming in from the south, lathered and still riding hard.

Longarm figured, and everyone agreed, it sounded like that government party. As they spied a stationary column of dust down the road ahead Lukas observed, "Looks as if they've reined in at the Overland stop."

Longarm said, "I noticed. They come all this way to treat with Indians and it seems the Indians have scared 'em shitless. I got to find out why."

That was easier said than done, once they joined the confusion all around the Overland stop. A dozen sweaty and dusty riders could run in heaps of circles, and their two dozen ponies and six or eight pack mules weren't making much more sense as they argued about who got watered first.

Once he'd established the boss men were already inside, Longarm tracked them down in the smoke-filled dining

room, with Reynolds and Lukas following him. Those ranch hands and grave-diggers who worked for Lukas both ways went around to the back to lend their know-how with stock to some poor souls who didn't seem to have the knack.

Longarm and his own companions found a portly red-faced cuss of, say, fifty gulping coffee and puffing cigar smoke across that same comer table at a slightly older and far skinnier cuss with a hatchet face and superior brand of cigar. Longarm couldn't have afforded to smoke with either of them on a regular basis, but even so they were both dressed less refined, in sort of dusty Davy Crockett outfits. Longarm was too polite to ask why, or to point out Davy Crockett had been dressed more like a white man when he'd headed out to Texas as a grown-up. Indians and white folks who had to live like Indians wore buckskin because they had nothing better. Had machine-woven textiles not felt better against human skin wet or dry, there'd have been no point in inventing half as many textile machines. But you'd never guess that from Currier and Ives prints or half the covers of the current Wild West magazines, and so even old Bill Cody seemed to think he had to gussy up like a Cheyenne squaw lest someone accuse him of being just off the boat.

As Longarm introduced himself and his local associates to the apparent mountain men of an earlier era, the fat one owned up to being a congressman called Granger, serving on some congressional committee, while the skinny one was a Senator Rumford, the nominal head of the outfit. Granger, who seemed most likely to kiss babies and chew the fat, said they'd been worried sick about Longarm long before they'd lost those other two Indian experts.

When Longarm smiled uncertainly and allowed he'd been told they had at least one real Indian as well as Indian experts along, the more morose Senator Rumford explained, 'The B.I.A. loaned us a couple of Paiute, in the beginning. They quit soon after we told them they might meet Bannock up at Fort Hall."

Longarm nodded. "They do say Bannock used to ride down

Paiute just for practice. Lord knows few wandering diggers have a thing worth taking, save for their scalps. But I reckon us cruel white folks ain't the only ones who bully the weak without all that much reason, the way dogs chase cats. You say you're missing some white scouts as well?"

Senator Rumford made a wry face and replied, "We're still working on whether they deserted or whether Indians got them. They had us dig in, down the other side of Club Creek, while they scouted on ahead."

"That's the last we ever saw of them," the portly Granger said, waving his claro like a smoldering baton. "It was over forty-eight hours ago and we knew we were within running distance of this safer settlement. Pearly and The Kid smd they'd seen something else ahead, bless their cautious hearts, and—"

"Hold her right there!" Longarm thundered as Bishop Reynolds and his country coroner exchanged startled looks. Longarm demanded, "Could we be talking about a husky cuss in his mid-twenties, sporting pearl-handled Schofields, and a younger cuss armed less dramatically?"

It was the turn of Granger and Rumford to exchange startled glances indeed as Longarm filled them in on Pearly and The Kid as soon as they'd confirmed his descriptions.

When Senator Rumford half rose from the table, ashen-faced, to accuse Longarm of having made a terrible mistake, the still-standing Longarm shook his head firmly and replied, "It was them who made the terrible mistake. Senator. They never took me for any Indian when they opened up on me in the open, and after that, I heard 'em jawing back and forth about me personally. They knew it was me, and somebody they called Pappy had sent them after me with murderous intent!"

Bishop Reynolds volunteered, 'The one with the pearl-handled .45-55s was not registered here as a guest last night. Deputy Long here was. His room number would have been in the unguarded register behind the deserted desk

for anyone to read at that hour."

Longaim cocked an eyebrow at the older lawman and said, "I do admire a peace officer who plays his own cards as close to his vest. Need I add it was Pearly, not me, who flung a door open and blew the liver and lights out of a bed he had every reason to expect me to be bedded down in?"

The crusty old Saint smiled thinly and replied, "You need not, and I've a fair notion which room you came out of instead. But let's stick to pure and simple gunplay."

Longarm did, and soon established, with the help of Granger and Rumford, that the reason Longarm had gotten so far ahead of the other government men had been the two scouts' constant talk of Indians, with them getting everyone else to dig in, over and over, while they scouted ahead.

"For me," Longarm decided modestly enough as soon as he'd had time to consider other options. Lest anyone there think he had too high an opinion of himself, he explained, "You gents had been told I'd be joining up with your expedition. Somebody must not have been too keen about that. By bogging you down at least every few miles, they got to scout out all around in hopes of heading me off, as they finally did in their own half-ass way."

Senator Rumford started to ask a dumb question, then proved he wasn't so dumb, despite his New England twang, by declairing, "I see it now. Anyone can say they're only scouting out ahead. They did take their own sweet time, time enough to scout our back trail as well as the trail ahead."

"Why ahead at all?" asked the portly Granger.

To which Longarm could only modestly reply, "They figured there was a chance I'd head you off. They figured right. At the rate you gents were moving, no offense, I could have headed you off afoot."

Senator Rumford didn't sound offended as he explained, "We felt we had to move with caution in such wild country. We're carrying a modest fortune in freshly coined silver dollars, you know."

Bishop Reynolds demanded to know who'd told them the Mormon Delta was such wild country. Longarm shut him off with a soothing smile and said, "Never mind all that. Tell us what you'd call a modest fortune in silver, Senator."

Rumford said, "Sixty thousand dollars, adding up to just under a couple of tons of specie. The damned fool Indians demanded it. They simply can't seem to grasp the concept of paper money."

Longarm whistled softly and then dryly suggested, "I ain't sure I'd put much faith in anything on paper if I was an Indian with sixty thousand dollars' worth of anything to sell. I was wondering about them big old pack mules. Might I ask just what the taxpayers are out to buy with that much solid silver?"

Granger volunteered, "At least four hundred thousand acres the Shoshoni-Bannock bands don't really need, this side of the Snake River."

Senator Rumford confirmed both Washington and Salt Lake felt the land in question would be much improved by white settlers because the otherwise-fertile soil needed irrigation works to bring it up to its full potential.

When Granger added something about Indians not understanding a thing about agriculture, Longarm managed not to mention those vast irrigation projects Indians had come up with down to the southwest before Columbus had been a gleam in his daddy's eye. He said instead, "That many acres of pure-ass desert would be a bargain at double your offer, no offense. So them Shoshoni must want that silver awesomely bad!"

He reached for one of his own smokes in self-defense, muttering half to himself, "So how come the Shoshoni have been acting so spooky of late?"

When Granger suggested their treacherous scouts, for whatever reason, could have been just making up some Indian trouble, it was Bishop Reynolds's turn to declare, "Some Indians have been sending up smoke signals to the north, and Shoshoni are about all the Indians we get in these parts."

Lukas nodded and said, "Banncx:k seldom ride this far south since Buffalo Horn got his fool self shot acting sassy that time. Some of my riders have reported smoke talk over to the foothills too. That's how come I been out rounding up my herd the last few days."

Longarm asked the stockman how many head he might be missing. The Easterners couldn't see why until Lukas allowed he didn't seem to be missing enough to matter, adding, *They can't be raiding us for livestock, after all. Lord only knows what they're really talking over with all that infernal smoke!"

Longarm frowned uncertainly and ventured, "It could be no more than us. Whether we were coming or not, I mean. If old Pocatello demanded two tons of silver for anything, he surely expects to see it before the first real snowfall."

Granger said with a pout that neither he nor the stock would be ready to push on for at least a spell. Then two more men from their outfit came in, followed by Shoshoni Sam, Madame Marvella, and a mighty innocent-looking Tupombi. So seeing he was going to have to start all over again, Longarm suggested they haul over an extra table and more chairs. Bishop Reynolds got out of helping by heading out to the kitchen to demand some danmed service.

The two new government men were an Indian agent and a head mule teamster with at least one Indian grandparent, both loaned by the B.I.A. Tim McBride, the whiter of the two, allowed he'd been deputy agent at the White River Agency in Colorado before the Utes there had been pushed across the Green River into less civilized range. Duke Pearson, the breed, said he'd been allowed to go on driving mules trains most anywhere because his grandmother's Ute band had been smart enough to steer clear of the Meeker Massacre and such. Neither B.I.A. man had any fringes or beadwork on or about their persons. They were both dressed for comfort on the trail in sort of uncertain autumn weather. Either one of them could have passed for a hand employed by Lukas digging graves or punching cows.

By the time they had all of that straightened out they'd all found seats at the two shoved-together tables. By the time a weary Longarm had repeated a tale he was commencing to find tedious, the Mormon kids from the kitchen had everyone there but the bishop sipping coffee and nibbling marble cake. Bishop Reynolds had his cake with buttermilk.

After confirming suspicions he'd already had about those two so-called scouts, Tim McBride opined, 'They were slowing us down deliberate, more than they really needed to if all they had in mind was dry-gulching Deputy Long here."

Before anyone could answer, McBride brightened and asked, "Say, might you be the Deputy Long called Longarm, the one the Utes call Saltu Ka Saltu?"

Longarm nodded modestly. Duke Pearson grinned too and said, "Well, I swan, and wait till I tell the folk back home I met up with the gent who arrested that son-of-a-bitching agent who was robbing 'em blind that time."

Then he remembered there were women present, stammered as much at Madame Marvella, and apparently apologized more handsomely to Tupombi in Ho. She tried not to let her suffering show as she coped with his Ute accent, and demurely replied in her more trilly Shoshoni-Comanche version of the same basic lingo.

McBride said Pearson had never noticed any Indian sign either on the trail from Ogden, and repeated his charges against the late Pearly and The Kid, whom he'd known by more formal names he now tended to doubt.

Longarm hauled out his notebook and stub pencil as he told the Indian agent, "There's a government telegraph up at Fort Hall. I got to wire in a progress report when we reach it any case. So I'd be obliged if you'd jot down the names and home addresses those rascals gave you when they signed on with the B.I.A."

McBride took the pencil and paper but explained, even as he was block-printing in Longarm's notebook, how Senator Rumford, not the B.I.A., had hired the two sneaks down in Ogden.

Senator Rumford told Longarm, "It was as much your fault as mine. Deputy Long. We'd been told you'd meet us there. When you didn't, and Thomas Wynn, the one called Pearly, warned us of some Indian trouble and offered to guide us through country they knew so much better . . ."

"We've established they were big fibbers," Longarm said.

Duke Pearson snorted, "Indian trouble! What Indian trouble this late in the game? I told you gents way back when that the Western Shoshoni never could hold a candle to real troublesome Indians, and that was before they were whipped, like cur dogs, by Colonel Connor from the Humboldt to the Bear way back when."

Tupombi said something that sounded mighty surly in Ho, then switched to English so that everyone there could follow her drift as she snapped, "Pat Connor was a child-molester and a disgrace to the colors of his own nation! Who did he fight at Bear River? Women and children! That's who he fought at Bear River!"

It was McBride who mildly mentioned the hundred-odd Shoshoni warriors camped near the Bear River with their dependents under Chief Sag witch when Connor's Nevada Volunteers caught up with them.

Longarm liked Tupombi too much to mention George Clayton, Hank Beam, or Henry Smith, jumped and scalped by Sagwitch for no better reason than that the Shoshoni found them way out on the range alone. Pretty white ladies back in Denver didn't like to be reminded of all those South Cheyenne jumped at Sand Creek for no particular reason either. So he hushed them both, saying, "Bear Creek was years ago and Pocatello's band managed to stay out of it."

McBride grumbled, "Until he took the shot-up Sagwitch in and hid him from the troops until he was fit to fight another day, you mean!"

Longarm shrugged. "Whatever. Pocatello ain't done nothing like that recently, and seems to want to swap more Shoshoni land for silver. So the question before the house is why a cuss called Pappy, who has to be somebody

else, seems so intent on queering your simple real estate transaction?"

Their local stockman, Lukas, suggested, "I wouldn't be so sure no Indians could be up to .. . whatever. I'll agree those jaspers Longarm had it out with were likely faking Indian trouble if you'll tell me who's been sending all them smoke signals, up the trail where neither of them dead rascals could have ever been."

Bishop Reynolds frowned thoughtfully and declared, "We don't know that. If they told the senator here they knew the country, who's to say they didn't know the country, and even some Indians, all the way up the trail?"

Longarm was about to point out how anyone with even a small band of hostiles in cahoots with them would hardly have to move in alone on a lawman alone, no matter what the lawman's reputation. But he had a better idea. So once he determined the older gents meant to rest up there until noon, and that Shoshoni Sam and the two gals meant to tag along with them, he persuaded just one of the gals to tag along with him, to his room upstairs.

Once she had, he was reminded once more of old Sandy, back at the museum in Denver, while he showed the tawny and more muscular Tupombi how some Taibo went at it dog-style, atop a feather mattress.

She found the novel position exciting. He made up for the workout she'd given him before breakfast by closing his eyes to picture a bigger redhead's paler rump as he thrust in and out a spell, then opened his eyes to stare fondly down at the renewed novelty of such a friendly Comanche ass.

So what with one position and another, the morning passed all too quickly, and then it was time to mount something less frisky, in this case his hired paint, as they all rode out to the north under a blazing noonday sun, the poor dumb sons of bitches.

Chapter 11

It could have felt worse, a lot worse, at other times or places that far west of the Big Muddy. Even those parts of Idaho Territory defined as true desert were high desert, with the thin dry air all around sucking the sweat out of you suddenly enough to give you a sort of chill whenever a cloud passed between you and the purely white afternoon sun, and that was in high summer.

This late in the year old Tanapah couldn't really get his back into his shining, even on the dusty Snake River Plains out ahead. So things just felt shirtsleevey as they followed the trail over rolling, partly timbered, but mostly grassy range, as long they kept moving and let their duds flap some. A lot of the grass was cheat closer to town, where the range had been overgrazed by old Lukas and other gentile stockmen who raised scrubbier beef more casually than your average Saint. The few cows they encountered naturally scattered at the sight of that many riders headed their way. Longarm doubted cows really knew what happened to them after they'd been cut from the herd to be cut up into handier portions. But it hardly mattered to any critter with Hispano-Moorish ancestry. For the Mexican-Texican longhom had been bred to stay alive until its owner was damn well ready to slaughter it and running like hell from anything it didn't aim to eat or fuck was a good way for a cow to stay alive on open range.

After no more than three or four trail breaks they saw fewer cows and far more real grass, mostly buffalo, bunch, and grama, sun-dried to rib-sticking straw for grazing critters. Longarm had been told some buffalo had roamed this side of the Continental Divide in the Shining Times. There were old Indian tales of longhom buffalo, bigger, meaner, and dumber than the regular kind. Longarm hadn't seen any this far west since he'd first come West just after the war. For some reason the pronghoms the more western tribes liked to hunt instead seemed to prefer the sagebrush country ahead, on somewhat lower and flatter ground. He figured he'd know better which kind of hunting ground old Pocatello had for sale when he saw some of it. The best land for farming wasn't always the best kind for hunting, and vice versa. But it figured to be piss-poor land for anything if the Indians were willing to let it go so cheap. Pocatello wasn't exactly a poor dumb Arawak, watching Columbus wade ashore. So it might be interesting to know whether the Shoshoni thought they or Uncle Sam was taking it up the ass.

It happened both ways. The old boys who'd sold Manhattan Island for twenty-odd dollars' worth of perfectly good trade goods hadn't been the only Indians who'd sold land they didn't happen to own to the paleface and nobody would have ever invented the term "Indian giver" if at least some Indians hadn't wanted their swaps back after they'd used up the salt or drank all the liquor in the jug. Pocatello was supposed to know how to read his own copy of the Book of Mormon, and he'd been smart enough to demand solid silver. So what was really going on, and why was that smoke rising over to his left? Those cowhands had said they'd spotted smoke talk above the far higher ground to his right.

Longarm had been riding point with Tim McBride, a quarter mile out ahead of the others. When McBride saw the same smoke and commenced to rein in Longarm muttered, "I see it. Don't let on you do just yet."

McBride kept pace with Lx)ngarm and his hired mount— since the last watering it had been the roan—and said, "I don't savvy that smoke talk at all."

Longarm said, "Neither do I. We're not supposed to. It ain't a regular code, like Morse. Different series of puffs mean whatever the puffer and puffee agreed on earlier. But for openers I'd say someone over to our west is telling someone else to our east about where we are, how many we are, mayhaps even who we are."

The Indian agent snorted and said, "That part ain't what I don't savvy. What I don't savvy is why they seem to be scouting us from low ground and signaling our whereabouts to somebody else on high ground!"

Longarm nodded. "I follow your drift, and for once the B.I.A. seems to have hired a white man with brains, no offense. I doubt they could be signaling anyone who already has a better view of us from those hills to our east. How do you cotton to the notion of them signaling ahead, say to someone just as low-down, over the horizon to our north?"

McBride agreed that made more sense, and asked what they ought to do next. So Lx)ngarm suggested, "What if you was to just keep following this same beaten path, at the same pace, with no shift in the dust column keeping pace behind us, whilst I sort of eased my way out around that smoke talk to jump 'em from behind and have a little talk with 'em?"

McBride demanded, "How? I'm pretty sure they must be on that one lone swell rising a few dozen feet above the others all about."

When Lx)ngarm agreed he had the same location in mind McBride pointed out, 'They'll surely see you peeling away from the party and be long gone before you can get within miles of'em!"

Longarm said, "We're edready within miles of 'em. I make it no more than two miles out, unless they're on another swell entirely, in which case they can't see us at all, so what are we arguing about?"

McBride laughed dryly and said, "Well, you might be able to drop out as we're crossing the next draw, if it's deep enough. But they'll still spot you again the moment you ride close enough to matter."

Longarm said, "I know. That's why I mean to dismount in the first deep draw we come to, tether this pony smack by the trail, and sort of pussy-foot out and around. I wear these low-heel boots with a certain amount of pussy-footing in mind."

They heard faster hoofbeats overtaking them. As they glanced back they saw Senator Rumford and Shoshoni Sam coming fast with worried expressions. Longarm called back, "Don't point out any smoke talk to us, gents. We were just talking about 'em. Someone could be out to spook us. So don't act spooked cuid farther along, as the old song says, we'll know more about it."

As the two other riders joined them Longarm added he was glad they had, explaining, "Human eyes, like crow birds, only count as high as three for certain without actually counting. That's how come we say three or four. When we dip below the line of sight from yonder whatever, I'll drop out, you three will just ride on naturally, and they might not notice. It's an old crow-hunting trick. You've all no doubt hunted crows as kids by having four or five old boys go into some cover near a roost, having all but one come back out, and giving that one old boy the chance to blast the wise-ass birds when they decide it's safe to flutter down and roost some more?"

He wasn't too surprised to learn the crusty New Englander knew more about hunting crows than Shoshoni Sam. The four of them rode on another few furlongs. Then, where the trail swung down through an alder-choked draw, Longarm announced that had to be the place and reined in to haul out his Winchester and dismount while the others just kept going.

He tethered the roan to a handy alder, gave it an assuring pat, and said, "I know you'd like cotton wood leaves better, if these were only cottonwoods in leaf instead of bare-ass alders. But I reckon we all got to take

the luck of the draw from time to time."

Then he was moving west through other bare alders along the east-west wooded draw. It wasn't easy. Where alders grew at a\\ they tended to grow like giant porcupine quills a human body had a time fitting between. That was doubtless why some called such thicket's "alder hells," and back home in the wetter slopes of West-by-God-Virginia, alder hells got big enough and thick enough to trap and kill a lost stranger much the way a sundew plant could trap and kill an unwary hover fly. But out this way in dried country the springy broom-handle trees didn't slow him down that much, and he began to miss the hell out of them as soon as they petered out to leave him moving along a damned old sandy wash with his Winchester at port arms, chambered and cocked.

He hadn't gotten near enough west when even that meager cover petered out on him and he had to belly-flop and crawl up a damned old grassy rise, aiming for the half-ass cover of some rabbit bush and soap weed along the crest above him.

He took off his hat and risked a look-see between two clumps. He saw that he and McBride had been right about the source of all that smoke talk. Nobody seemed to be smoke-talking just then, but he could make out the fainter shimmer of rising smoke nobody had tossed wet grass on yet. He couldn't say whether that meant a pause in the conversation or whether the conversation was over. Before he could work out the best way to work around to the far side from where he lay, he saw someone else already had. A trim red figure on a spunky gray pony was tearing along the skyline fit to bust with a free hand upraised in the High Plains peace sign. Tupombi was too far out for him to hail. But he could hear her distant squawks as she charged the wispy column of blue smoke, and he surmised from all those "Kaf" sounds she was requesting somebody hold their damned fire.

Hoping to draw at least some of the fire his own way, since he knew he was way out of range, Longarm broke cover to wave his hat and yell pleas and curses at all concerned.

Tupombi spied him and be saw her wave back. But she never reined in until she'd made it to the very rise that smoke was coming from. When Longarm saw she was still alive, staring all about as she sat her reined-in pony that close to the smoke column, he muttered, "Aw, shit." and headed over to join her there.

It took a spell, crossing more than one grassy draw afoot, and then they were close enough to converse. So he called out, without breaking stride, "Thanks a heap. I was out to catch 'em, not spook 'em all the way back to the Snake River. What got into you, girl?"

She called back archly, "You, my big strong skookumchuk. I did not want them to kill you. That was what I was shouting just now."

He trudged on up to her, muttering, "I wish you hadn't. I was trying to sneak up on 'em."

To which she rather smugly replied, "Don't be silly. You are not a real person, as pretty as you are. My mother's people sneak up on your kind. It's not supposed to work the other way around."

He lowered the hammer of his Winchester, but swept the horizon around them with his thoughtful eyes as he muttered, "I reckon you never heard tell of Roger's Rangers, clean back in the French and Indian Wars, or Sullivan hitting those Mohawk towns like a row of dominoes on orders from General Washington. Some of our own boys talk as overconfidently about riders from back East too, forgetting where the steeplechase and thoroughbred racing was invented."

He stepped around her pony for a better view of the dying signal fire. He'd been right about them burning mostly grass with a couple of cow chips to keep it going. There was little more than a pile of smoldering gray ash now. The chalky limestone rocks laid out all across the rise were at least as interesting. Some were out of place or half hidden by weeds, but one could still make out the wheel-like pattern, about twenty yards across, as if a monstrous stone wagon

had busted down up here one time.

When he asked if she knew what it meant, Tupombi shook her braided head and said, "No. I have seen puha like this on the other side of the Shining Mountains, but they were not made by my mother's people. So I don't know what they mean."

When he mused aloud about medicine wheels he'd seen himself, in the company of other Horse Indians who couldn't say who'd made them or why, Tupombi suggested, "You'd better get up on this horse with me. There is a smell of rain in the air and we are far from shelter over this way."

He sniffed the freshening breeze and allowed she could be right, despite the way old Tanapah still shone. Then he sniffed some more and told her, "Hold the thought. There's somebody dead around here."

Tupombi looked away, murmuring, "I was hoping you might not notice. Maybe it's just an old coyote. In any case this is a. puha place and it's bad puha to bother anything that's been dead that long!"

He started walking into the breeze, searching for the source of the stink as he insisted, "I'm paid to pester dead folk who've died mysteriously and that's no critter lying dead just upwind. It only takes one war to teach one's nose the difference and . . . Yonder."

Tupombi rode no closer as Lx)ngarm stalked over to a pile of dried brush wedged against the wind between two clumps of greener soap weed. When he got there he saw someone had kicked a few bushels of dirt over the remains as well. But the dry, almost constant winds had exposed two withered feet, clad in black silk stockings, and a more horrible sight at the other end, where most of the moldering head lay exposed.

There was no way to say whether the woman had been young or old. What was left of her maggot-eaten face was just plain ugly. Her hair, a sort of mousy brown, was still pinned neatly atop her skull. A glint of gold caught his eye, even as he was trying not to puke. So he dropped to one knee beside the rotting remains to gingerly move some weed stems aside

and gently finger the little heart-shaped locket the dead woman had been wearing under a summer-weight bodice of fake black silk. Real silk wouldn't have tattered so soon. Longarm got a good grip on the evidence and said, "I'm sorry, ma'am. But nobody is ever going to identify you on your looks alone, no offense, and they seem to have overlooked this personal item someone who knew you in life might recall."

He gave a good yank. The gold-washed chain of mild steel was a good deal more solid than the soggy cartilage of her spinal column. So he had to say he was sorry again when her head fell off.

He rose to his feet, letting the still-solid chain dangle as he opened the tiny heart. There were tiny tintypes inside of a silly-looking young gent and a plain young gal with her hair piled the same way. Heading back to where Tupombi still sat her pony, Longarm called out, "I think I just found one of the missing Scotch spinster gals. If you'd like to carry me back to where I left my own mount, we'll rejoin the others and see about a waterproof tarp to wrap her in."

Tupombi looked startled and asked why. He said, "Because she's dead and starting to fall apart, of course. I ain't being all that sentimental, albeit her own kith and kin would doubtless want her buried Christian rather than scattered across open range. I want some doc to look her over and see if he can figure out how she wound up so disgusting when all she came looking for was a Mormon husband."

Tupombi asked, "Does it really matter how those Shoshoni might have killed her?"

He answered, "I'm still working on who might have killed her. I doubt the ones sending smoke signals from nearby did it. I figure she's been dead close to a month. It's hard to say exactly when a body's been covered over and then exposed for unknown intervals. At any rate, them old boys you just chased away from here with all that yelling couldn't have laid out yonder medicine wheel either. So they might not have known anything about her at all."

The pretty Comanche breed smiled radiantly down at him as she said, "I see why the Utes call you Saltu Ka Saltu, Custis. I would hate to have you after me if I had done something bad. But I know you would never say bad things about me if I was innocent, whether I was Ho or Taibo."

Chapter 12

Nobody else wanted to look at the dead woman when Longarm and his grim discovery caught up with the main column an hour and change later. He'd wrapped the soggy remains in a double layer of rubberized canvas, secured with rawhide latigo, but it still managed to spook stock within a dozen yards. So he had to ride lonesome, off to one side of the trail, downwind, leading a mighty pissed-off pack brute with the dead lady aboard.

Hence he didn't hear half the mutterings that must have transpired before Tim McBride, now riding alone on point, called dinner break in a watered draw.

It was Tupombi who joined Longarm downwind of the others as he was tethering his ponies to some bare chokecherries. She'd dismounted and buried her face in his open vest before he could ask why she seemed so weepy.

She sobbed, "We're turning back. Madame Marvella was already making an awful fuss before you proved her right about dead white women around here. Shoshoni Sam said there's just time to make it back to town before dark if we leave right away. But Custis, my Taibo skookumchuk, I don't want to leave you, ever, ever!"

He held her gently as he softly said, "I've grown sort of used to your sweet company as well, honey. I'd be lying if I said I was pleased by the notion of you and your pals turning

back. But Madame Marvella has a point, and I'd be lying if I promised you anything once this mission's over. I know I ought to be whipped with snakes, but a tumbleweed job like mine just keeps me from making promises to anyone, no matter how warm I feel to 'em."

She said she understood, and asked if they couldn't part with sweeter sorrow up the draw in deeper brush. He was sorely tempted, dumb as it might have been, but then Madame Marvella yelled for Tupombi from somewhere else amid the trees. So Longarm sighed, settled for a brotherly kiss, and led the reluctant gal and her pony back to the others, saying, "I got a favor to ask of your boss, seeing he's headed back to the county seat."

Tupombi murmured back, "I don't have to do everything they say and maybe Pocatello's band would take me in, up at Fort Hall, after you don't want me anymore."

He told her not to talk silly. So she simmered down, and then it was Shoshoni Sam's turn to tell Longarm he was talking silly when, over by the cookfire, Longarm told the old showman what he wanted.

In the end, of course, the show folk headed back to the county seat, and the county coroner, with Tupombi and the dead gal, each of whom Longarm found so interesting in her own distinctive way.

Everyone else in the northbound party seemed mighty relieved. Senator Rumford said he was anxious to make up the lost time, smoke signals or not. So they pushed on harder, with riders scouting well out on all flanks as the country kept getting more open. There were double pickets the one night they had to camp out, at Longarm's suggestion, on a timbered rise, surrounded by open grassy slopes, with no fire.

Senator Rumford wanted to push on, insisting they were not that far from Fort Hall and that nobody could scout them at any distance in the dark.

Tim McBride backed him, although with some hesitation, pointing out they'd likely be smack on top of the fool

Shoshoni by daybreak and that pushing the stock that hard, through cool night air, would be safe as long as they were near the end of the drive.

But Longarm snorted and said, "I thought you said you'd spent some time in this high country, Tim. I wouldn't bet on whether we face rain, snow, or worse this side of sunrise, but that Comanche gal we left back yonder agreed with me earlier we could be in for what her kind call waigon weather."

He saw neither man seemed to understand and added, "Waigon is the Thunder Bird in Ho. Whether we ride into Fort Hall in sunshine or soaking wet, we don't want to surprise any Indians. The Shoshoni in particular have grim memories of white men barging in on 'em by the dawn's early light. Pocatello must be expecting us, seeing he asked for all that silver we've been packing in to him. But those smoke signals may mean other factions ain't as friendly and, like I said—"

"Don't you think Shoshoni killed that woman back near that old medicine wheel?" Tim McBride asked.

Longarm shrugged and replied, "Can't say who killed her before I find out. Sticking to the little we really know, we don't know shit about the reception we can expect up the trail ahead. I just said all them Indians may not agree with Pocatello about Shoshoni real estate. It can take as few at two Indians to express a dozen opinions on anything. They're not that much different from us, and after that, we still don't know those smoke signals were meant to be all that sinister. I know they puffed at us, and others before us. Meanwhile, there's no proof any Indian is on the warpath, and we could all be spooking at neighborhood gossip."

Senator Rumford grumbled, "I wish you'd make up your mind. First you say we'd best move in cautiously, and then you point out there may be no trouble at all!"

Lx)ngarm nodded soberly and said, "It's best to keep both options open in Indian country. Senator. I could tell you tales of overconfident gents waking up dead and bald whilst, at the same time, grim things have happened to Indians who

didn't know they were on the warpath till they heard bugles blowing and field guns blasting. So unless you'd like to claim that Indian land the old-fashioned way, from dead Indians, it might be best to ride in sedately, well after sunrise, after Pocatello's scouts have had time to announce our visit."

Senator Rumford grumped off in the darkness to fuss at someone else while Longarm, McBride, and other natural leaders drifting in worked out the best way to get them all through the night.

Since they'd already agreed on the site and cold suppers, there was little more than the details left to work out. Longarm didn't like to sound bossy, as long as he was getting his own way on important matters. So he just leaned against a tree and smoked as the others decided who'd pull guard, with whom, and where. Longarm had already noticed the fair-sized outfit had sort of split into three more or less friendly factions, based on natural feelings. Aside from the quartet of older gents from the congressional delegation, the eight or ten Western riders split without obvious rancor into those who'd worked with McBride and Pearson before and those who'd worked at other Indian agencies or other outfits. So nobody fussed, and Longarm just went on smoking, when McBride and young Jeffries, off the Rosebud Reserve, decided it worked best if the congressmen, led by Longarm, took first watch, Jeffries and his bunch took second, and McBride and the others off the White River Agency worried about the wee small hours.

Having agreed on that, they secured all the stock downwind, with the packs, including all that silver specie, smack in the center of camp so everyone would bed down all about it. By the time they'd all eaten uncooked canned goods it was dark enough to make them wonder where the danmed moon might be. Longarm wasn't the only one to notice there were no stars out either, and surmise a mess of clouds up yonder.

Pulling first watch, glad as hell he was wearing a frock coat and vest as he drifted through the trees with his Winchester,

dying for a smoke he dared not light, Longarm found his inner thoughts more interesting than the almost pitch blackness all about him.

He'd elected to circle farther out, suspecting the others on this watch, being the greener apples in this barrel, would stick closer to their bedrolls than they ought to. So he had mostly open slopes to his left, the way his cradled Winchester pointed, as he circled clockwise along the ragged tree line. He couldn't see shit on such an overcast night, of course. But he felt safer when it began to snow. He knew no Indian night crawler with any brains would crawl far enough to matter in even a light snowfall. The idea of night crawling was to hit and run, not leave a trail even a schoolmarm could follow come daybreak.

Halfway through his watch he went back to his own bedroll to break out his oilcloth slicker. The damned snowfall was warm enough to melt into tweed instead of brushing off. He caught Congressman Granger fucking off in another bedroll, but didn't fuss when the older asshole said something dumb about having a lung condition. Granger wouldn't have been any more use out on picket, and at least he lay there in the way of anyone coming after the piled packs in the middle of camp. The others were naturally bedded down on the other sides. Some of them were already snoring. It was commencing to snow harder by the time Longarm was back along the tree line wrapped up in his crunchy poplin and linseed oil slicker. He was tempted to smoke, knowing nobody could see any better amid the swirls of invisible snow. But he didn't. He'd learned as a soldier in his teens that night picket was either tedious as hell or more exciting than you'd really planned on, and it had always been the pickets who'd been certain it was safe to fuck off who'd been nailed in the dark when it hadn't been.

So he kept doing it right, dull as it felt, with the snow now deep enough to crunch under his boots, inspiring him to circle a mite slower, his bored brain racing in circles as it considered all his recent adventures and tried to make some sensible pattern out of them.

Nothing sensible seemed to work. Plodding on, trying not to think about some other recent adventures lest he have to plod on through wind and snow with a full erection, Longarm managed to come up with a few really wild patterns. He knew the head docs had a name for a poor soul who took every possible plot against him as probable. So he decided that while it was possible some kith or kin of that rich pain in the ass he'd shot back in Denver had it in for him, there was simply no way in hell old W. R. Callisher's friends or relations could have killed that lady of the little locket—long before he'd shot Callisher, from the smell of her.

The same reasoning let everyone connected with this expedition off the same hook, even Pearly, The Kid, and their mysterious Pappy, as soon as one considered how long Scotch spinster gals had been vanishing in these parts.

"Back up," he warned himself aloud. "You don't know that poor lady of the locket was one of them vanished Scotch spinsters till you show her locket to someone who can say for certain. For all you really know she was a happily married Bulgarian, or far more likely a Mormon homestead gal killed, or may haps just left out there, by . . . Aw, shit, this ain't getting us nowhere and we need more damned/acr^!"

The wet swirling winds didn' t offer any. They just kept getting wetter. The damned snow was starting to mix with rain by the time Longarm decided it was time to wake young Jeffries and his watch.

When he got back to the snow-covered pile-up on the crest of the rise, he found all the damned dudes had beaten him under the covers. He was more disgusted than annoyed when Senator Rumford told him Jeffries and his own bunch had already gotten up and moved out through the trees.

Longarm peeled out of his slicker and slipped into his own roll before he could get wet, taking off the bumpier stuff as he lay under the waterproof top tarp. It wasn't easy to get comfortable. But it had been a long day, not even counting the earlier screwing, so the next thing he knew he was screwing a Scotch spinster on a big plaid-covered bedstead by broad day

while Dame Flora and her maidservant made snide comments and old Angus played on a bagpipe.

Then, before he could come, he was wide awake—^that always seemed to happen, dammit—zind he saw it was bright moonlight, not broad daylight, he'd been screwing in buck naked. So now he was back in his rumpled shirt and pants, needing to piss, and what time was it?

He propped himself up on one elbow, wiping the sleep gum from his eyes with his free hand before he groped for his watch in the duds he'd been using as a pillow. It was four in the morning. He'd have likely made it till morning, he felt sure, had not that break in the storm conspired with his kidneys to wake him so early, and if he could just fall back to sleep quickly, he might not have to crawl out of this nice warm roll just yet and . . .

"Aw, shit, let's get it over with," he decided, tossing a flap of tarp aside to haul himself on out. He saw everyone around lay dead to the world in the moonlight as he hauled his boots on over his socks. He figured right McBride and Pearson would be on watch with their bunch at this hour. He didn't call out to them lest he disturb the others closer. He reached for his Winchester, without having to think about it, and rose to find a politer place to piss.

That was easy enough to decide on, since he already knew where the stock was tethered, downwind. He naturally wanted to piss on the far side of the stock. He might have spooked them passing too close in tricky light. So he circled wide, on rain-soaked pine duff one could have crossed silently in Dutch clogs, and nobody knew he was there as he heard Pearson insisting, "I say now's the time. It'll soon be light again, and you know that son of a bitch can get those son-of-a-bitching Shoshoni to track us if he asks 'em to!"

Longarm forgot about pissing as he flattened his shadowy shape against a pine just as the voice of McBride replied, "I know what the Indians will do for a Saltu they trust. That's why I say we've got to do him before we light out. None of the others can do shit once we're over a rise or more, but that

savvy bastard's got to die here and now!"

Longarm was pretty certain he knew who they were talking about before he heard Pearson protest, "It's too big a boo. Pappy. You can't gun a man in the middle of a camp, in tricky light, without risking all sorts of return fire!"

McBride said, "Bullshit. The sky's cleared entire and that moon is shining almost bright as an overcast day. I can see all of you plain as hell now,"

Longarm broke cover to throw down on the four of them from the hip, levering a round into the chamber to let them know he was a force to be reckoned with as he said conversationally, "Pappy is right, gents. I can almost see the whites of your fucking eyes. So raise them fucking hands and raise 'em wow!"

Two Agency teamsters did. McBride tried to swing the muzzle of his own saddle gun in line while Duke Pearson simply bolted, bleating like a sheep, so Longarm blew McBride off his feet before he swung the smoking muzzle of his Winchester the other way to nail the bolting breed in the small of his back. You could tell it was a shithouse-lucky spine-shot by the way his hat soared skyward while he landed on his face in an oddly graceful swan dive.

Longarm swung his muzzle back to cover the remaining members of the plot. He saw he'd done right and fired again, folding the one who'd dropped his hands, his six-gun still bolstered as his numbed right hand let go of the grips. As he finished falling to the soggy duff, the only one still on his feet clawed wildly at the moon above them, sobbing, "Please don't do me, Longarm! I was only working for 'em. I swear I never done nothing really bad to nobody!"

Longarm told him to unbuckle his gun rig and step clear of the results as he moved in on the fallen McBride, Winchester trained. McBride was sort of writhing about, like an earthworm caught by a sunrise on a brick walk. So Longarm asked not unkindly, "How are you feeling. Pappy?"

The treacherous Indian agent groaned, "Awful. Who told on us, you sly rascal? I knew from the beginning you were

good, but this seems plain ridiculous!"

Longarm heard other voices calling out in the dark and yelled back, "Over this way, gents. Watch out you don't spook any pack mules you may stumble over. I just caught me some silver thieves and a heap of answers here!"

McBride croaked, "No shit, I need a doc. I fear you've killed me, you fucker!"

To which Lx)ngarm replied in an amiable tone, "I was aiming to kill you when I shot you. It seemed only fair, considering."

Then he turned to the one unscathed survivor, adding, "I reckon you'll be able to tie up all the loose ends for us. Westmore, ain't it?"

"Don't tell him shit!" McBride croaked from the ground as they were joined by old Rumford, young Jeffries, and the others. So Longarm said, "I wish you'd just shut up and die. Pappy. Westmore here has to tell us everything he knows because he doesn't want to hang. Ain't that right, Westmore?"

The younger teamster stammered, "Hang? For what? Every time we tried to kill you one of us wound up dead, but all right, I may as well tell you all I know, you murderous cuss!"

Chapter 13

Westmore did, more than once, with two congressmen and a mess of more honest riders to bear witness. But as was so often the case, the simple enough plot of a corrupt Indian agent and his not-too-bright recruits only formed one gear wheel of what seemed more like a cuckoo clock when you really studied on it.

Westmore confessed, after all his pals had finished dying, that he'd been part of a vicious but uncomplicated plan to make off with all those untraceable silver dollars. Westmore said the brains of the gang, if one wanted to call him that, had been Tim McBride, known as Pappy to his junior crooks. Making off with the Shoshoni silver had occurred to McBride as soon as he'd been asked by the B.I. A. to escort the congressmen and act as their translator. McBride, in turn, had recruited Duke Pearson, who could actually speak Ho. The B.I.A. was always taking some flea-brain's word that he was a real expert with Indians, Longarm thought.

The lesser thugs, recruited as easily in turn, had included boys lying in wait for Longarm as well as those fake scouts who'd been out to make sure he never joined up with the expedition.

When Senator Rumford wanted to know why, Westmore stared sadly at Longarm to reply, "Jesus H. Christ, what a

dumb question! Pappy knew Longarm here would be harder to outfox than all the rest of you put together. Didn't he just prove that? Don't the Utes call him by pet names because he busted up an Indian Ring that had half the Indians and all of the whites fooled? Pappy had worked under gents of the Grant Administration Longarm and others like him had put in jail. When he heard the B.I.A. had fucked him up by asking for a man the Indians trusted even more, he knew he had to get rid of Longarm or let the damned Shoshoni have their damned silver!"

Longarm warned, "You're talking in circles. I know how Pearson scared off those other Ho-speaking scouts, talking Ho to 'em behind some backs. Get to those smoke signals and the dead woman I found so close to that medicine wheel."

Westmore seemed sincerely confused as he insisted, "Not a one of us knew shit about any of that stuff. I swear none of us killed any old white gal. I was riding next to Duke when he first spied them smoke signals. He was surprised as the rest of us. I don't think Pappy knew anything about 'em neither!"

Longarm nodded soberly and decided, "If he did, he was sure a bom actor. I think he went along with me on that stuff because he accepted it at face value, same as the rest of us. He was looking for no more than a crack at grabbing all that silver and running for it, through the mountains to the east he likely knew better than the rest of you gents, no offense. So we keep on getting back to other plotters, red, white, or rtoth."

Young Jeffries opined it seemed obvious Indians had killed that Scotch spinster over by the Indian medicine wheel. So Longarm had to ask if anyone there had ever heard of a Quill Indian placing proposals of marriage in your average Scotch newspaper.

They all agreed it was a poser. Then, since by then they were all wide awake and the sky to the east was pearling gray, they ate, broke camp, and were on their way, with the tarp-wrapped corpses lashed across their own saddles and Westmore being led aboard his pony with both hands cuffed behind his back.

When he protested he'd surely fall off and bust his neck if his pony burst into full gallop, Longarm suggested dryly he try not to gallop off anywhere.

Having left Zion so late the day before, they'd had to camp less than halfway to Fort Hall. So they had a full day's ride ahead of them. But the weather held just right for rapid progress as the country around kept getting safer-looking.

The stock moved frisky because the overnight storm had left a cool tang in the air and drinking water at most every trail break. The same gray skies that kept the sun from warming them up too much were an inspiration to take short breaks and push on, lest another early snow catch them out in the middle of nowhere.

As for the country, the swells all about got flatter and further apart as they rode ever closer to the Snake River Plains up ahead. Some rises overlooking the trail sprouted more evergreen timber than Longarm really cottoned to, so those had to be scouted before the mules packing so much temptation passed within rifle range. But at least they saw no more smoke signals, which was tougher for the surviving crook to explain, and led some others to mutter mean things about his veracity.

But they were too busy to question him enough to matter. Thanks to the shoot-out having left them short-handed, even the politicians from back East had to pitch in and help with the pack mules and saddle-swapping chores. But Longarm was glad to see they were good sports about it, and some of his more Western companions might have learned something as well. Older gents who'd gone into politics had all been younger gents doing something else in their time, and folks east and west had to know something about horses in a horse-drawn age. The sort of soft and sissy-looking Congressman Granger turned out to be a bom mule skinner, or at any rate a man who'd plowed a fair farrow behind his own daddy's mules as a boy.

Hence the long day on the trail passed without any noteworthy problems, and along about five, when they finally did see Indians on a rise ahead, Longarm told his companions

those hand-me-down army blues most of them had on meant they were Indian Police off some nearby agency. When Senator Rumford observed the only agency in those parts was the one at Fort Hall, Longarm said that was what he meant.

As the Shoshoni met them on the rise, an English-speaking Corporal Shoogan in command of the eight in uniform, the other dozen being free thinkers who'd just tagged along, told them they were a mite overdue as well as welcome. When Senator Rumford demanded to know how far they were from the Fort Hall Shoshoni-Bannock Reservation, the moon-faced Shoogan told him, "You've been on it for some time. We are still a great nation and all the hunting grounds you see around you, all, are still our hunting grounds. Even Little Big Eyes in Washington will tell you this is so."

Longarm explained the senator had meant the agency itself. So Shoogan pointed north and said. "This side of sundown, if you Taibo would like to cut this bullshit and ride."

They rode. The modem agency built more or less on the site of the original fortified trading post lay well their side of sundown, surrounding a tall sun-bleached flagstaff with the well-weathered Stars and Stripes still flapping in the last light of the day.

By this time Longarm had brought Corporal Shoogan up to date on his own problems. Shoogan told him they'd be proud to hold Westmore as long as need be in their swell jail and that, yes, they had a talking wire running east along the old wagon route, if Longarm could get one of the Taibo at the agency to work such a strange ahotey for him.

When Senator Rumford asked whether they'd find Chief Pocatello in one of the low-slung log or sun-silvered frame structures they could see ahead now, Shoogan snorted, "Of course not. Pocatello is our Powamu Puhahow! What would he be doing in our jail, dispensary, or working for the Taibo with other household help? Hear me, Pocatello has his own cabin, a big one, on a bend of our big river where the fishing is always good!"

Rumford asked how, in that case, he was supposed to meet with Pocatello and his sub-chiefs to talk about real estate. Shoogan shook his head and said, 'Tomorrow, maybe, after you and all your friends have had time to bathe and change your clothes as guests of the agency. Hear me, you will want to get some sleep, a lot of sleep, before you meet with our tribal council in the morning, if it doesn't rain. Every powamu there will want to make a speech, a long speech, and you will be expected to listen respectfully to every word, even though most of them don't speak a word of Taibo."

For some reason, that didn't seem to cheer up the gents from back East worth mentioning. Longarm kept his own council amid all the confusing jabber until they'd all reined in out front of the main agency building, where the Shoshoni-Bannock agent and other whites were lined up along the veranda to greet them. More than one face in the crowd looked familiar, and Lx)ngarm was glad. But he waited till he and the Indian Police were leading Westmore over to the nearby lockup before he asked Shoogan when Dame Flora and her two servants had made it in.

The Shoshoni said, "Yesterday, on lathered ponies. They said they had seen smoke talk and felt afrsiid. The flame-haired woman who has such a high opinion of herself told us they were looking for Taibo women who came far, far, to marry Mormons. This was a stupid place to look for such stupid women, if you ask me. We told her we didn't know anything about it. She said everyone she talks to keeps telling her that. I am glad I don't have such a woman. I would have to beat her all the time if I ever wanted to eat. All she does is talk, talk, talk about other stupid women nobody knows."

Westmore wanted to talk some more as Longarm handed him a couple of smokes, warned him he'd best make them last, and said he'd let him know, later, where the powers that be might want him delivered to stand trial and for what. When Westmore intimated he might be able to suggest some angles on that dead lady Lx)ngarm had found near the medicine ring,

Longarm told him it was a mite late and that he meant to ask some Indians.

He wasn't surprised when, stepping back outside with Shoogan, he learned the Agaiduka Shoshoni didn't know much more than he did about those mysterious stone circles. Shoogan said he'd heard a mysterious people called the Tukaduka had laid out medicine wheels for mysterious reasons, back before Spider Woman had led the first Ho into this world from somewhere more mysterious.

As he started to untether his hired paint from the hitching rail out front, Longarm paused thoughtfully and said, "One of those crooks you said you'd store in that springhouse for us answered to Duke and spoke Ho fluently. So run that Tukaduka by me again, pard."

Shoogan shrugged and said, 'Tukaduka just means sheep-eaters. I don't know why our old ones called the ones who were here before us sheep-eaters, but they did."

Longarm decided, "Somebody must have noticed 'em eating sheep, likely wild bighorn sheep if we're talking about way back when. And ancient folks who nailed enough mountain sheep to matter with no more than bows and arrows would rate my admiration as well. So might tuka or duka mean what?"

Shoogan said, ^'Tuka means sheep. Duka means those who eat. What are we talking about?"

Longarm shrugged and replied, "Likely nothing. Old Duke did eat lots of grub. But even if that was how he got his nickname, I can't connect him up with any Tukaduka medicine wheel, and I doubt lost tribes were sending smoke signals down that way in any case."

He mounted up, resisting the impulse to ask a Shoshoni whether the ancient Tukaduka might have practiced human sacrifice, the way the Pawnee had before they'd given it up without being asked. A lawman who asked questions for a living learned not to ask them of folk who couldn't know the answers.

He rode the short distance back to the main agency building, and dismounted near the roan he'd left there with other tethered ponies. He switched saddles out there in the gathering darkness in case he wanted to head out soon aboard a fresher mount. Then he mounted the plank steps and strode on into the good-sized main hall, where he found his own dudes flustering around Dame Flora MacSorley by the baronial stone fireplace where a pitch-pine fire was acting sort of frisky this evening as well.

Senator Rumford called him over and introduced him to both the Scotch lady he already knew and a far homelier middle-aged Indian agent of the male persuasion. When Longarm explained where he'd just been, the agent suggested he head on back to the dining room and tell the squaws to rustle him a late snack, explaining, "You just missed a simple but hearty serving of planked salmon and home fries with serviceberry pie."

Longarm said he'd do that. He didn't feel up to explaining why he'd had to finish his chores first to an asshole who called his own Shoshoni women squaws, as if they'd been Arapaho. Dudes such as Dame Flora and the senator had excuses for not bothering with any Indian lingo. But you'd think a cuss getting paid to look after Shoshoni would learn at least a few simple words.

As Longarm strode off, the senator called something about a big powwow with Pocatello in the morning. Longarm didn't care. He was more surprised, and not too happy about it, when the auburn-haired Dame Flora chased him clean out of the room, saying, "Wait for me. They just told me you found the remains of a white woman."

He said, "Sent her in to the county seat for the coroner to do something with her. I was fixing to mention her to you later, on a less uncertain stomach. Whether she was one of your missing gals or not, she wasn't a topic I'd want to take up over a meal."

But Dame Flora had already eaten, or maybe had had time to get more interested in the topic. So she tagged right along,

insisting they'd told her about that infernal locket. So as they entered the smaller dining room, where a couple of Shoshoni pias were clearing the long table by lamplight, Longarm got out the small gold-washed locket to hand over to the pretty but sort of pesky Dame Flora.

One of the Indian gals came over, hesitantly, as if to see what they wanted. Longarm tried to tell her in English, and when that didn't work he patted his belly and tried, ''Duka. Me ka duka this evening, ma'am."

It worked. She brightened, blew Shoshoni bubbles at him, and commenced to lead him off with her as Dame Flora suddenly sobbed, "Oc/i, cha 'n'eiU But it is! It was poor little Una Munro you found murdered and scalped by Indians down the trail, and we three must have ridden right past her remains!"

He tagged after the Shoshoni gal, with the Scotch gal after him, as he explained, "She hadn't been scalped, or even stripped now that you mention it, and we found her half buried a good ways off the trail, ma'am. Never would have found her at all had not I been scouting others who might or might not have been the ones who put her there."

By then they were back in the darker, steamier kitchen, where the waitress gal was sort of chanting in Ho at an older and far fatter gal who shot Longarm a dirty look and finally managed to convey, in words he couldn't quite follow and hand signs he knew better, that she was willing to rustle him up some grub if he didn't expect cheese with his pie, Taiowa damn it.

He signed back that coffee and sandwiches would be fine with him as Dame Flora kept pestering him about rotting corpses. He led her over to a comer where they'd be out of the way as he told her "I don't know why any Indians would murder an unarmed immigrant gal and not even take her pretty locket. She could have lost her shoes most anywhere. I don't see how Shoshoni sending smoke signals that close to where she lay could have known she was there. I might not have, had the wind been blowing another way. Most folks

who've hidden a body a good ways off on open range try not to attract attention to it. Soon as I wrap myself around some coffee and grub I mean to go ask some Shoshoni about those Shoshoni smoke signals."

She asked what made him so certain they'd been Shoshoni. The fat old gal was coming their way with a mug of coffee and a plate piled high with com piki and salmon sandwiches. So Longarm told the Scotch gal, "Because Bannock don't ride that far south and Paiute are afraid to come that far north. Now hush and let me talk to this Shoshoni lady."

They both seemed mildly surprised when Longarm thanked the fat gal by extending both hands, palms down, and sweeping them low like some fool pagan praying to some idol. Then he set the mug and sandwiches aside on a comer of her cast-iron range, to leave both hands free as he tried to ask directions to the lodge of her Chief Pocatello. It wasn't easy, and he had a time following her directions once she seemed to follow his drift.