Longarm and the Wendigo

LONGARM AND THE WENDIGO by Tabor Evans

Jove/HBJ New York Copyright 1978 by Jove Publications, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be mailed to: Permissions, Jove Publications, Inc., 757 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 78-71600

First Jove/HBJ edition published January 1979

Printed in the United States of America

Jove/HBJ books are published by Jove Publications, Inc. (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich) 757 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017.

Also in the LONGARM series from Jove/HBJ

Longarm Longarm on the Border Longarm and the Avenging Angels

Chapter 1

It was a glorious morning in Denver and Longarm felt like hell. The tall deputy squinted as he left the musty brown darkness of the Union Station to get punched in the eye by a bright morning sun in a cloudless sky of cobalt blue. A sharp breeze blew from the snow-topped Front Range, behind him to the west, as he walked stiffly east toward the Civic Center. The mile-high air was clear and scented with summer snow and green mountain meadows. Longarm wondered if he was going to make it to Larimer Street before he threw up.

At the corner of Seventeenth and Larimer he found the all-night greasy spoon he’d aimed for and went in to settle his guts. He wasn’t hungry, but ordered chili and beer as medication. The beanery was nearly empty at this hour, but Longarm recognized a uniformed member of the Denver Police Department seated at another stool down the counter and nodded. He’d only nodded to be neighborly, but the copper slid his own stein and bowl over next to Longarm’s and said, “‘Morning, Uncle Sam. You look like somebody drug you through the keyhole backwards! You spend the night drinking, whoring, or both?”

“Worse. I just came up out of Santa Fe on a night train that had square wheels and no seats worth mention. Rode shotgun on a gold shipment bound for the mint, here in Denver. Spent the night hunkered on a box in the mail car, drinking the worst coffee I’ve tasted since I was in the army. I suspicion they use the same glue in Post Office coffee as they put on the back of their stamps.”

He took a huge gob of chili, washed it down with a gulp of beer, and added, “Jesus, you can’t hardly get real chili this far north of Texas. Pass me some of that red pepper to the lee of your elbow, will you?”

The copper handed him the pepper shaker and opined, “Oh, I dunno, the cook here makes a fair bowl of chili, for a white man.”

Then he watched with a worried frown, as Longarm proceeded to cover his beans with powdered fire. To the policeman, Longarm was sort of interesting to study on. The Denver P.D. was sincerely glad the deputy marshal was a lawman rather than on the other side; arresting anything that big and mean was an awesome thought to contemplate.

The Deputy U.S. Marshal was civilly dressed in a threadbare business suit of tobacco tweed, but a bit wild and wooly around the edges. His brown flat-topped Stetson had a couple of large-caliber holes in it and the craggy face under the brim was weathered as brown as an Indian’s. The big jaw masticating chili under the John L. Sullivan mustache needed a shave, and though he wore a shoestring tie under the collar of his townsman’s shirt, he somehow managed to wear it like a cowhand’s bandanna. They said he packed a derringer in addition to the double-action .44 in that cross-draw rig he wore under the frock coat. They said he had a Bowie in one of the low-heeled army boots he stood taller than most men in. But the big deputy was one of those rare men who didn’t look like he needed weapons. When he was in one of his morose moods, like this morning, Longarm looked able to knock a lesser man down with a hard stare from his gunmetal eyes.

The copper asked, “You aim to eat that shit with all that pepper in it, or are you aiming to blow yourself up?”

Longarm chewed thoughtfully and decided, “That’s better. Chili’s no good unless it makes a man’s forehead break out in a little sweat. I can still taste that damned Post Office coffee, but I reckon I’ll live, after all.”

“You must have a cast iron stomach. You, ah, wouldn’t want to let your friendly neighborhood police in on it, would you, Longarm?”

“In on what? You want me to fix your chili right for you?”

“Come on. They never detailed a deputy with your seniority to ride with the Post Office dicks. Somebody important robbing the mails these days?”

Longarm took a heroic gulp of beer and swallowed before he belched with a relieved sigh, and replied, “Jesus, that felt good. As to who’s been robbing the midnight trains between here and Santa Fe, I don’t know anymore than yourself about it. I just do what the pissants up at the Federal Building tell me.”

“I hear since the Lincoln County War’s run down there’s about eighty out-of-work gunslicks searching for gainful employment. You reckon any might be headed for my beat?”

Longarm studied for a moment before he shook his head and said, “Doubt it. Denver’s getting too civilized for old-fashioned owlhoots like we used to see over at the stockyards. Your new gun regulations sort of cramp their style. To tell you the truth, I sort of dozed off once we were north of Pueblo. Colorado’s getting downright over-civilized of late, what with street lamps, gun laws, and such.”

“By gum, I run a cowboy in for a shooting just two nights ago, over on Thirteenth and Walnut!”

“There you go. That’s over on the other side of Cherry Creek where the poor folks live. ‘Fess up. You ain’t had a real Saturday night in the main part of town this year, have you?”

“The hell we haven’t. I’ll bet Denver’s still as tough a town as any! I disremember you saying you heard any shooting in Santa Fe! I’ll bet the hands riding into Denver of a Saturday night are just as mean as any you met down New Mexico way!”

“No bet. Santa Fe’s got sissy as hell since the new governor said folks can’t shoot each other any more in Lincoln County. Hell, I was in Dodge last month and you know what they got? They got uniformed police and honest-to-God street lamps in Dodge now! Things keep up this way and we’ll likely both be out of a job!”

Leaving the policeman nursing his injured civic pride, Longarm paid the silent, surly Greek behind the counter for his breakfast and resumed his walk to work, feeling almost human. He knew he rated the day off for having spent the night on duty, but these new regulations about paperwork meant he had to report in before he could go home to his furnished digs for some shut-eye.

The Federal Building sat at the foot of Capitol Hill. Longarm went in and climbed to the second floor, where he found a door marked UNITED STATES MARSHAL, FIRST DISTRICT COURT OF COLORADO.

He entered, nodded to the pallid clerk pecking at his newfangled typewriting machine, and made his way to an inner door, where he let himself in without knocking.

His superior, U.S. Marshal Vail, glared up with a start from behind his big mahogany desk and snapped, “Damn it, Longarm! I’ve told you I expect folks to knock before they come busting in on me!”

Longarm grinned and was about to sass the plump, pink man behind the desk. Then he saw Vail’s visitor, seated in an overstuffed leather armchair near the banjo clock on the wall and tipped the brim of his hat instead, saying, “Your servant, ma’am!”

The woman in the visitor’s chair was dressed severely in black, with a sort of silly little hat perched atop her coal-black hair. She was about twenty-five and pretty. She wasn’t quite a white woman. Maybe a Mexican lady, dressed American.

Marshal Vail said, “I’m glad to see you on time for a change, Longarm. Allow me to present you to Princess Gloria Two-Women of the Blackfoot Nation.” Longarm managed another smiling nod before the girl cut in with a severe but no less pretty frown to say, “I am no such thing, Marshal Vail. Forgive me for correcting you, but, John Smith and Pocahontas notwithstanding, there is no such thing as an Indian princess.”

Vail shrugged and asked, “Aren’t you the daughter of Real Bear, the Chief of the Blackfoot, ma’am?”

“My father was war chief of the Turtle Clan. MY mother was Gloria Witherspoon, a captive white woman. There are no hereditary titles among my father’s people, and even if there were, no woman could inherit the rank of war chief.”

Vail looked annoyed but managed a wan smile as he nodded and asked, “Just what is your title, then, ma’am?”

“I’m a half-breed. On rare occasions, I’m called miss.”

Longarm ignored the bitterness in her almond eyes as he leaned against the back of another chair and suggested, “I don’t reckon your family tree is what you’ve come to Uncle Sam about, is it, Miss Two-Women?”

Vail cut in before she could answer, saying, “I’ve got the lady’s complaint down, Longarm. It’s your next job.”

Longarm didn’t think it was the time to point out that he rated the day off. He knew it wouldn’t do any good and the odd little bitter-eyed woman interested him. So he nodded and waited for Vail to fill him in.

The marshal said, “This lady’s daddy sent her to see us, Longarm. A bad Indian’s gone back to the blanket. I got his wanted papers here somewhere … anyway, I want you to run up to the Blackfoot reservation in Montana Territory and-“

“Ain’t you assigning me to a job for the B.I.A., Chief?”

The girl said, “The man my father is worried about isn’t a problem for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, sir. They don’t know he’s alive. My father reported him to the Indian agent at Fort Banyon. They told him they’d file a report on the matter, but of course we know they won’t. Like myself, Johnny Hunts Alone is nonexistent.”

Longarm asked, “You mean he’s …”

“A half-breed. You don’t have to be so delicate. Half-breed’s one of the nicer things I’m used to being called.”

Vail found the “wanted” flyer he’d been rummaging for and said, “He may not exist to the B.I.A., but Justice wants him bad. Matter of fact, we don’t have him down as an Indian, half or whatever. We’ve got him as one John Hunter, age thirty-six, no description save white, male, medium height and build. When he ain’t hiding out on reservations he robs trains, banks, and such. We got four counts of first degree on him in addition to the state and federal wants for armed robbery.”

Longarm pursed his lips and mused, “I remember seeing the wanted flyers, now. Funny, I had him Pictured in my head as just another old, uh-“

“White man,” Gloria Two-Women cut in, stone-faced. Both men waited as she continued, “Like myself, Johnny Hunts Alone is a Blackfoot breed. In his case, his mother was the Indian. They say his father was a Mountain Man who, uh, married a squaw for a trapping season. She gave him his half-name of Johnny, hoping, one would presume, his father might come back some day.”

Longarm asked, “Was he raised Indian, then?”

“To the extent that I was, I suppose. I’ve never met him. They say he ran away to look for his white father years ago.”

Vail explained, “The way I understand it, this Johnny Hunts Alone, John Hunter, or whatever, can pass himself off as white or Indian. He sort of raised himself in trail towns, hobo jungles, and such till he took to robbing folks instead of punching cows. The reason he’s been getting away with it for years is that we could never find his hideout. According to this little lady’s daddy, the jasper’s up at the Blackfoot reservation right now. Miss Gloria, here, will introduce you to her daddy and the chief’ll point the owlhoot out to you. Seems like a simple enough mission to me.”

Longarm sighed and said, “Yeah, it always does. Do you mind if I ask a few questions? Just a result of my suspicious nature.”

Without waiting for permission, he stared soberly at the girl and asked, “How come your Blackfoot relations are so suddenly helpful to Uncle Sam, Miss Two-Women? Meaning no disrespect, the Blackfoot have a reputation for truculence. Wasn’t your tribe sort of cheering from the sidelines when Custer took that wrong turn on the Little Big Horn a few summers back?”

“Like the Cheyenne and Arapahoe, they were allied with the Dakota Confederacy, if that’s what you mean. Since you’re so interested in the history of my father’s people, you probably know the survivors have been penned like sheep in one small corner of Montana.”

“I read about it. Did this Johnny Hunts Alone take part in the Great Sioux Uprising of ‘76?”

“of course not. Do you think my father would inform on a fellow warrior?”

“There you go. So why is your daddy so anxious for us to arrest one of his people?”

“Honestly, don’t you know anything about Indians? The renegade is not a Blackfoot to my father and others like him. Johnny Hunts Alone ran away before he was ever initiated into any of the warrior lodges. When our people were fighting for their lives against the Seventh Cavalry he was off some place robbing banks.”

“So your dad and the other chiefs don’t owe him much, huh?”

“Not only that, but the man’s a known thief and a troublemaker. Thanks partly to my mother, Real Bear speaks English and can read and write, so perhaps he’s more aware than the others of what a wanted fugitive on our reservation could mean to us.”

“What’s that, ma’am?”

“Trouble, of course. Our tribe is … well, frankly, licked. Most of us are resigned to making the best of a bad situation. But there are hotheads among my father’s people who’d like another try at the old ways. Some of the Dream Singers have been having visions, and meetings have been held in the warrior lodges of which I don’t feel free to tell you the details. My father is one of the more progressive chiefs. He’s trying to cooperate with the B.I.A. He’s trying to lead his people into the future; he’s man enough to face it. An outlaw hiding among the young men, boasting of how many whites he’s killed.”

“That makes sense, ma’am. As you were talking just now, it came to me I’d heard your daddy’s name before. Real Bear was one of them who voted with Red Cloud against the big uprising. Though, the way I hear tell, he did his share of fighting once his folks declared war. You mind if I ask you some personal questions, ma’am?”

Vail cut in to point at the clock above Gloria’s head as he snapped, “She might not mind, but I do, dang it! You folks have a train to catch, Longarm! You can jaw about the details along the way. Right now I want you to get cracking. I’ll expect you back here about this time next week, with Johnny Hunts Alone, John Hunter, or whomsoever, dead or alive!”

It wasn’t until he’d escorted Gloria Two-Women aboard the northbound Burlington that Longarm gave serious consideration to her race. Under most circumstances, he wouldn’t have given it much thought, for she was a pretty little thing and his mind was on the job ahead.

As the conductor nodded down at the railroad pass they were traveling on, Longarm asked, “What time are we due in Billings? I make it about twelve hours before we have to change trains, don’t you?”

“We’ll be getting into Billings around ten this evening, Marshal. Uh, you mind if I have a word with you in private?”

Longarm glanced at the girl seated across from him, gazing stone-faced out the window at the passing confusion of the Denver yards, and got to his feet to follow the conductor with a puzzled frown. The older man led him a few seats down, out of the girl’s earshot, before he asked in a low whisper, “Is that a lady of color you’re traveling with, Marshal?”

“You’re wrong on both counts. I’m only a deputy marshal and she’s half white. What’s your problem, friend?”

“Look, it ain’t my problem. Some of the other passengers has, uh, sort of been talking about the two of YOU.”

“Do tell? Well, I’m a peaceable man. Long as they don’t talk about us where we can hear it, it don’t mean all that much, does it?”

“Look, I was wondering if the gal might not be more comfortable up front in the baggage car.”

Longarm smiled wolfishly, and took the front of the trainman’s coat in one big fist as he purred, “She ain’t a gal, friend. Anything in skirts traveling with me as her escort is a lady, till I say she’s something else. You got that?”

“Loud and clear, Marshal. This ain’t my notion!”

“All right. Whose notion might it be, then?”

“Look, I don’t want no trouble, mister.”

“Old son, you’ve already got your trouble. You just point out who the big mouth belongs to and then maybe you’d best go up and ride in that baggage car!”

“I’m just doing my job. Forget I mentioned it.”

“I’d like to, but I got a twelve-hour ride ahead of me and I don’t aim to spend it fretting about my future. I’m going to ask you one more time, polite. Then I’m likely to start by busting your arm.”

“Hey, take it easy. I don’t care who rides this durned old train. It’s them two cowhands up near the front of the car. I heard ‘em say some things ‘bout niggers and such and thought I’d best head things off.”

Longarm didn’t turn his head to look at the two Young men he’d already marked down as possible annoyances. He’d spotted them boarding the train. They looked to be drovers and one was packing a Patterson .44 and a bellyful of something stronger than beer.

Longarm let go the conductor’s lapel and said, “You go up to the next car. I’ll take care of it.”

“I got tickets to punch.”

“All right. Go on back to the next cars.”

The conductor started to protest further. Then he saw the look in Longarm’s cold blue-gray eyes, gulped, and did as he was told.

As Longarm sauntered back the way he’d come, Gloria looked up at him with a bemused expression. He nodded and said, “We’ll be picking up speed in a mile or so. You want a drink of water?”

“No thanks. What was that all about?”

“We were talking about the timetable. Excuse me, ma’am. I’ll be back directly.”

He walked toward the front of the car, shifting on the balls of his feet as the car swayed under his boots. One of the two men in trail clothing looked up and whispered something to the heavier man at his side. The tougher-looking of the two narrowed his eyes thoughtfully but didn’t say anything until Longarm stopped right above them, letting the tail of his coat swing open to expose the polished walnut grips of his own Colt, and said, “You boys had best be getting off before we leave the yards. Might hurt a man to jump off a train doing more’n fifteen miles an hour or so.”

The one who had whispered asked, “What are you talking about? We’re on our way to Billings, mister.”

“No you ain’t. Not on this train. You see, I don’t want you to be upset about riding with colored folks, and since I aim to stay aboard all the way to Billings, we’d best make some adjustments to your delicate natures.”

The heavyset one with the gun looked thoughtfully at the weapon hanging above Longarm’s left hip and licked his lips before he said, “Look, nobody said you was colored, mister.”

“Is that a fact? Well, it’s likely the poor light in here; I’m pure Ethiopian. You want to make something out of it?”

“Hey, come on, you’re as white as we’uns. You wasn’t the one we was jawing ‘bout to that fool conductor!”

His companion added, “You just wait till we gits that troublemaker alone, mister. He had no call to repeat a gent’s observings.”

“Boys, this train’s gathering speed while we’re discussing your departure. You two aim to jump like sensible gents or do I have to throw you off unfriendly like?”

“Come on, you can’t put us off no train! We got us tickets to Billings!”

“Use ‘em on the next train north, then. I’ll tell you what I’m fixing to do. I’m fixing to count to ten. Then I’m going to draw.”

“Mister, you must be loco, drunk or both!”

“One!”

“Look here, we don’t want to hurt nobody, but-“

“Two!”

“Now you’re getting us riled, mister!”

“Three!”

“Well, damn it, Fats, you got the damned old gun!”

“Four!”

The heavyset one went for his Patterson.

He didn’t make it. Longarm’s five-inch muzzle, its front sight filed off for such events, was out and covering him before Fats had a serious hold on his own grips. The drover snatched his hand from his sidearm as if it had stung his palm as he gasped, “I give! I give! Don’t do it, mister!”

“You did say something about disembarking, didn’t you, gents?”

“Look, you’ve made us crawfish. Can’t we leave it at that?”

“Nope. You made me draw, so now you’re getting off, one way or the other. Let’s go, boys.” After a moment’s hesitation, Fats shrugged and said,“Let’s go, Curley. No sense arguing with a crazy man when he’s got the drop on us.”

His younger sidekick protested, “I can’t believe this! I thought you was tough, Fats!”

But he, too, slid out of the seat and followed as Longarm frog-marched the two of them out to the vestibule between the cars. Fats looked down at the blurring road ballast and protested, “Hey, it’s goin’ too fast!”

“All the more reason to jump while there’s still time. It’ll be going faster, directly.”

“You got a name, mister?”

“Yep. My handle’s Custis Long. You aim to look me up sometime, Fats?”

“Just don’t be in Billings when we gits there, mister. We got us friends in Billings!”

Then he jumped, rolling ass-over-tea-kettle as he hit the dirt at twenty-odd miles an hour. Longarm saw that he wasn’t hurt, and as the younger one tried to protest some more, he ended the discussion by shoving him, screaming, from the platform.

Longarm holstered his gun with a dry smile and went back to where he’d left Gloria. The petite breed’s face was blank but her eyes glistened as she said, “You didn’t have to do that to impress me. You’ve already called me ‘ma’am.’”

Longarm sat down on the seat across from her, placed his battered Stetson on the green plush beside him, and said, “Didn’t do it for you. Did it for myself.”

“You mean they offended your sense of gallantry?”

“Nope. Just made common sense. They got on drunk and ugly and we have a good twelve hours’ ride ahead. Had I given ‘em time to work themselves up all afternoon, I’d likely have had a killing matter on my hands by sundown. This way, nobody got hurt.”

“One of them might dispute you on that point. I was watching out the window. The fall tore his shirt half off and left him sort of bloody.”

“Any mail who don’t know how to fall has no call wearing cowboy boots.”

“What am I supposed to do now, call you my Prince Charming and swoon at your feet?”

“Nope. I’d rather talk about the lay of the land where we’re headed. You said your daddy, Real Bear, is the only one who can point out this Johnny Hunts Alone to me. How come? I mean, don’t the other Indians know a stranger when they see one?”

“Of course, but you see, it’s a new reservation, just set up since our tribes were rounded up by the army in ‘78. Stray bands are still being herded in. Aside from Blackfoot, we have Blood and Piegan and even a few Arapahoe gathered from all over the north plains. My father doesn’t know many of the people living with his people now, but he did recognize Johnny Hunts Alone when the man passed him near the trading post last week.”

“The owlhoot recognize your dad?”

“Real Bear didn’t think so. My father knew him over fifteen years ago and they’ve both changed a lot since, of course. It wasn’t until my father got to my house that he remembered just who that familiar face belonged to!”

“In other words, we’re traveling a far piece on the quick glance and maybes of one old Indian who might just be wrong!”

“When you meet Real Bear, you’ll know better. He doesn’t forget much. Aren’t you going to ask about our house?”

“Your house? Is there something interesting about it, ma’am?”

“Most white people, when they hear me mention my house, seem a bit surprised. I’m supposed to wear buckskins, too.”

“Well, I ain’t most people. I’ve been on a few reservations in my time. What have you got up there, one of them government-built villages of frame lumber that could use a coat of paint and a bigger stove?”

“I see you have seen a few reservations. Ours is a shambles. The young white couple the B.I.A. sent out from the East doubtless mean well, but … you’d have to be an Indian to understand.”

Longarm fished a cheroot from his vest and when she nodded her silent permission, thumbnailed a match and lit up, pondering her words. He knew the miserable fix most tribes were in these days, caught between conflicting policies of the army, the Indian agency, and loudmouthed Washington politicos who’d never been west of the Big Muddy. He took a drag of smoke, let it trickle out through his nostrils, and asked, “What’s this other trouble you mentioned about the young men wanting another go at the Seventh Cav?”

“The boys too young to have fought in ‘76 aren’t the real problem. Left to themselves they’d just talk a lot, like white boys planning to run off and be pirates. But some of the older men are finding civilization more than they can adjust to. You know about the Ghost Dancers?”

“Heard rumors. Paiute medicine man called Wovoka has been preachin’ a new religion over on the other side of the Rockies, hasn’t he?”

“Yes. Wovoka’s notions seem crazy to our Dream Singers, but the movement’s gaining ground and even some of our people are starting to make offerings to the Wendigo. You’d have to be a Blackfoot to know how crazy that is!”

“No I wouldn’t. The Wendigo is your Dad’s folks’ name for the devil, ain’t it?”

“My, you have been on some reservations! What else do you know about our religion?”

“Not much. Never even got the Good Book that I was brought up on all that straight in my head. Blackfoot, Arapahoe, Cheyenne, and other Algonquin-speaking tribes pray to a Great Spirit called Manitou and call the devil ‘Wendigo,’ right? I remember somethin’ about owls being bad luck and turtles being good luck, but like I said, I’ve never studied all that much on anyone’s notions about the spirit world.”

“Owl is the totem of death. Turtle is the creator of new life from the Waters of Yesteryear. I suppose you regard it all as silly superstition.”

“Can’t say one way or another. I wasn’t there. It might have took seven days or Turtle might have done it. Doubtless sometime we’ll know more about it. Right now I’ve got enough on my plate just keeping track of the here-and-now of it all.”

“Does that make you an atheist or an agnostic?”

Longarm bristled slightly. The last person to call him an atheist had been a renegade Mormon night rider who had left him to die in the Great Salt Desert. He had had plenty of time to ponder on the godless behavior of those who accused others of godlessness. “Makes me a Deputy U.S. Marshal with a job to do. You were saying something about devil worship up where we’re headed, Miss Gloria.”

She shrugged and replied, “I don’t think you could put it that way. People making offerings to the Wendigo aren’t Satanists; they’re simply frightened Indians. You see, it’s all too obvious that Manitou, the Great Spirit, has turned his back on them. The Wendigo, or Evil One, seems to rule the earth these days.”

“Is he supposed to be like our devil, with horns and such, or is he a big, mean Indian cuss?”

“Like Manitou, the Wendigo’s invisible. You might say he’s a great evil force who makes bad things happen.”

“I see. And some of your folks are praying to him while others are taking up Wovoka’s notions about the ghosts of dead Indians coming back from the Happy Hunting Ground for another go-round with our side. I don’t hold much with missionaries, since those I’ve seen ain’t been all that good at it but right now it seems you could use some up on the Blackfoot reservation.”

“We have a posse of diverse missionaries on or near the reservation. My father would like to run all Dream Singers off, Indian as well as white. I hope your arrest of Johnny Hunts Alone will calm things down enough for him to cope with.”

Longarm nodded and consulted his Ingersoll pocket watch, noting that they had a long way to ride yet. The girl watched him silently for a time before she murmured, “You’re not as dumb as you pretend to be.”

Longarm smiled. “Pretending such things sometimes gives a man an advantage. Speaking of which, you’ve got a pretty good head on your own shoulders. I can see you’ve been educated.”

“I graduated from Wellesley. Does that surprise you?”

“Why should it? You had to go to school someplace to talk so uppity. I know those big Eastern colleges give scholarships to bright reservation kids. It’d surprise me more if you’d said you’d learned to read from watching smoke signals.”

“You are unusual, for a white man. By now, most of your kind I’ve met would have demanded my whole history.”

“Likely. Most folks are more curious than polite.”

“You really don’t care one way or the other, do you?”

“I likely know as much about you as I need to.”

“You don’t know anything about me! Nobody knows anything about me!”

Longarm took a drag on his cheroot and said, “Let’s see, now. You’re wearing widow’s weeds, but you’re likely not a widow. You’re wearing a wedding band, but you ain’t married. You were born in an Indian camp, but you’ve been raised white and only lately come back to your daddy’s side of the family. You’ve got a big old chip on your pretty shoulder, too, but I ain’t about to knock it off, so why don’t you quit fencing about with me?”

Gloria Two-Women stared open-mouthed at him for a time before she blurted, “Somebody gave you a full report on me and you’ve been the one doing the fencing. Who was it, that damned agent’s wife?”

“Nobody’s told me one word about you since we met, save yourself. You knew I was a lawman. Don’t you reckon folks in my line are supposed to work things out for themselves, ma’am?”

Before she could answer, the candy butcher came through with his tray of sweets, fruits, sandwiches, and bottled beer. Longarm stopped the boy and asked the girl what she’d like, adding, “We won’t stop for a proper meal this side of Cheyenne, ma’am.”

Gloria ordered a ham on rye sandwich, a beer, and an orange for later and the deputy ordered the same, except for the fruit. When the candy butcher had left them to wait on another passenger, she insisted, “All right, how did you do that?”

“Do what? Size you up? I’m paid to size folks up, Miss Gloria. You said your mama was a white lady, and since you’re about twenty-odd, I could see she must have been taken captive during that Blackfoot rising near South Pass in the ‘fifties. When the army put ‘em down that time, most white captives were released, so I figured you likely went back East with your mama when you were, oh, about seven or eight. You may talk some Blackfoot and you’ve got Indian features, but you wear that dress like a white woman. You walk white, too. Those high-buttoned shoes don’t fret your toes like they would a lad’s who grew up in moccasins. You sure weren’t riding with the Blackfoot when they came out against Terry in ‘76, so I’d say you looked your daddy up after he and the others settled down civilized on the reservation just a while back. Here, I’ll open that beer for you with my jackknife. It’s got a bottle opener and all sorts of notions.”

He opened their drinks carefully, aiming the warm beer bottles at the aisle as he uncapped them. Then he handed her one and sat back to say, “I was born in West-by-God-Virginia and came West after the War. I fought at Shiloh …” Longarm’s voice trailed off.

“You were doing fine. What made you stop?” Gloria asked.

“Reckon both our tales get a mite hurtful, later on. We’re both full-grown, now, and some of the getting here might best be forgot.”

“You know about my mother deserting me once she was among her own people, then? How could you know that? How could anyone know so much from mere appearances? Is that orphanage written on my breast in scarlet letters, after all?”

“No. I never met your mama, but I know the world, and how it treats a white gal who’s ridden out of an Indian camp with a half-breed child. You ought to try to forgive her, Miss Gloria. She was likely not much older than you are right now, and her own kin likely pressured her some.”

“My mother had a white husband waiting for her. I wonder if she ever told him about me. Oh, well, they treated us all right at the foundling home and I did win a college scholarship on my own.” She sipped her beer and added in a bitter voice, “Not that it did much good, once I tried to make my way in the white man’s world. I was nearly nine when the soldiers recaptured us, so I remembered my father’s language and could identify with that side of my family. You were right about my reading about the new reservation and running back to the blanket, but how did you figure out my widow’s weeds?”

“Generally, when folks are wearing mourning, they mention someone who’s dead. On the other hand, one of the first things I noticed was that chip on your shoulder and your hankering to be treated with respect. I’ll allow some folks who should know better can talk ugly to any lady with your sort of features, but widow’s weeds and a wedding band gives a gal a certain edge in being treated like a lady.”

“It didn’t stop those two cowboys you put off the train.”

“They were drovers, not cowhands, ma’am. And neither had much sense. Most old boys think twice before they start up with a lady wearing a wedding band, widow’s weeds or no. They were likely drunker than most you’ve met. So ‘fess up, that’s the reason for the mournful getup, ain’t it?”

She laughed, spilling some of her beer, and answered, “You should run away with a circus! You’d make more as a mind reader than a lawman!” Then she sobered and added, “You’re wrong about the ring, though. I am married, sort of.”

He didn’t rise to the bait. She’d tell him in her own good time what she meant by “sort of” married. From the smoke signals he’d been reading in her eyes, she couldn’t be married all that much.

Chapter 2

They had to lay over in Billings for a grotesquely routed train that promised to take them close enough to the Blackfoot reservation. Gloria said they’d be able to hire a buckboard for the last few miles, and Longarm’s saddle, Winchester, and other possibles were riding with him to where he could commandeer a government mount from the army. The local train connecting up with the line north wasn’t leaving Billings before morning and they got in a little after nine-thirty. They spent an hour over steak and potatoes before Longarm had to deal with the delicate matter of hotel accommodations.

It wasn’t checking in with a woman he was worried about. He had enough cash to pay for separate rooms. But even in the dim light of a gas-lit town, Gloria’s Indian features drew stares, and some of them weren’t friendly. Billings was only a few miles from the old battleground of Little Big Horn and the local whites had long memories as well as buried kinfolk in the vicinity. As they entered the lobby of the Silver Dollar Hotel he murmured, “Should anyone ask, remember you’re a Spanish lady from Sonora.”

“I’ll do no such thing!” she murmured, adding, “I’m a Blackfoot and proud of it!”

“Maybe, but I’ve got to do the fighting, so I reckon you’d just best hush and let me do the talking, hear?” He strode over to the hotel desk and flashed his federal badge at the night clerk. “We need two rooms. I’ll take one with a bath.”

The clerk nodded impassively and shoved the registration book toward the deputy. “I can fix you up with adjoining rooms, bath between. This lady, uh, your missus?”

“Of course not. What would I want with two rooms if we were married up? Do I look like a sissy?”

The clerk laughed as Longarm registered for them both, signing Gloria in as “Miss Witherspoon.”

Unfortunately, the girl glanced over his shoulder to protest, “That’s not my name, damn it!”

A couple of sleepy-looking gents lounging among the potted ferns of the lobby sat up to stare with greater interest as Longarm sighed and said, “Now, Miss Gloria, let’s not make a fuss about it. You said your mama’s name was Witherspoon, and-“

“I am Gloria Two-Women. My mother abandoned me and I’ll not bear her name, even for a night.”

The clerk raised an eyebrow. Longarm quickly touched the side of his forehead and confided, “She’s a federal witness I’m taking up to Fort Benson. She’s a mite, uh, confused.”

“She says her name is ‘two women,’ Deputy.”

“There you go. I told you how it was. She’s only one woman at a time as anyone here can plainly see.”

One of the lobby loafers got slowly to his feet as he said, “I can plainly see she’s Indian, too! What are you, mister, a squaw man?”

“Paying for two rooms, friend, I don’t reckon it’s your concern. I am also a U.S. Deputy Marshal and you are stepping on the tail of my coat, so why don’t you go back yonder and warm your seat some more?”

“I rode with Terry in ‘76 and I don’t give two hoots and a holler who you work for, mister. You got no call to bring Indians in here!”

Longarm saw two others rising, now, and the desk clerk was muttering unfriendly things about the town marshal. He took Gloria’s elbow in his free left hand, nodded, and said, “We’ll be on our way, then, gents.” He half-dragged the girl outside, as behind them the lobby rang with jeering laughter. He started up the boardwalk with her, chewing his unlit cheroot, too steamed to say much.

She marveled, “You just let them run us out like we were trash!”

“Nope, it was your hankering to see a fight that got us run out. If you aim to sleep this night, you’d best stuff a sock in that pretty mouth of yours next place we try!”

“Why didn’t you stand up to them back there? I thought you were a man!”

“Was, last time I looked. I likely could have whupped the whole lobby, if it had made a lick of sense. But I was looking for a couple of rooms, not another Little Big Horn.”

“Oh, you know you could have backed them down!”

“Maybe, but then what? You like to sleep in hotels angry folks are throwing rocks at all night, Miss Gloria? Suppose I had bullied us a brace of rooms? Then suppose those browned-off vets had gone looking for some help? I’m supposed to be a peace officer, not the biggest boo in Billings. We’ll try a block up the street and maybe this time you’ll have more sense.”

“I can’t believe it: You were so brave when those men were annoying us on the train.”

“Yeah, I can see I made a mistake back there. You like to see white men humiliated, don’t you?”

“I just have to stand up for my rights, damn it.”

“What rights? They were going to give us two rooms and a bath, weren’t they? Where does it say in the Constitution you have a right to be a pain in the neck?”

“I’m not ashamed of being what I am.”

“Like hell you ain’t. Look, I know the sort of sassing you’ve had to take off white folks in your time. You want to put feathers in your hair and do something about it, it ain’t my never-mind, but let’s eat the apple a bite at a time, huh? Your daddy sent you to fetch a U.S. Deputy Marshal to bail him and his folks out of a fix. Suppose you let me get there peaceably before you start another uprising!”

“I don’t have to put up with insults, just because of my race.”

“Yes, you do. No matter what your race is, somebody don’t figure to like it. I was chased from hell to breakfast by Apache last summer, just for being white. When we get where we’re going, you’ll likely see me catching a few dark looks from your daddy’s folks, too. The thing is, there’s enough trouble in this world for all of us, even when we don’t go looking for it. I see a hotel sign up ahead. This time, damn it, I’ll thank you to be that Mexican lady I told you about!”

“They take a lot off your kind, too.”

“That’s true. If we were checking into a hotel in Texas I’d say you were a Blackfoot. Hereabouts, they ain’t mad at Mexicans.”

He escorted her into a smaller, shabbier hotel and this time there was no incident at the desk. There was no adjoining bathroom to their two small rooms upstairs, either, but Longarm didn’t comment. There were chamber pots under the beds and he supposed it might be a good lesson for the young woman.

He let her into her own room and handed her the key, with a warning about opening to anyone but himself, then gave her a terse good-night nod. He went to his own room, and before lighting the lamp, stared down into the street for a time. He’d been watching in the glass windows to see if they’d been followed from the other hotel, but it seemed as if his crawfish act had satisfied the local Indian fighters.

He locked the door and sat on the edge of the brass bedstead, tearing up a newspaper he’d found on the dressing table. He crumpled the shreds of newspaper and threw them on the threadbare rug between the bed and the locked door before he hung his gun rig on a bed post, put his watch and derringer under a pillow, and got undressed.

Nude in the darkness, he scratched his chest morosely as he thought of the bath he’d missed. He needed a shave, too, and there were soot and fly-ash in his hair from the long train ride north. Well, he’d just have to bear with it for now. Damn that fool squaw!

As he was sliding under the covers there came a soft rap on his door. Longarm got up, drew the .44 from its holster, and went over to the door, standing to one side as he asked, “Yeah?”

“It’s me, Gloria. Are you still awake?”

“Yep, but I’m naked. What can I do for you, ma’am?”

“I want to apologize for the way I acted down the street.”

“Forget it. We’re both worn out from all that riding, smoke, dust, and such. You get some shut-eye and I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Can I come in for a moment? I’m too keyed-up to sleep.”

He went over to the bed and slipped on his pants before going back to open the door. The girl was wearing a white shift and was barefoot. Her tawny skin seemed darker against the white cotton in the dim light and her hair smelled like wilted tea roses. He shut the door and locked it behind her as she stepped on a paper ball and exclaimed, “Good heavens! What’s all this paper doing on the floor?”

“Old Border Mex trick. Keeps folks from pussyfooting in on you while you’re snoring.”

“Do things like that happen often, in your line of work?”

“Not often. Once would be too often, though. I don’t have a chair in here for you. You can sit on the bed and I’ll sort of stand here while you tell me what’s on your mind.”

She went to the bed, slipped the shift off over her head and sat down, stark naked, before she said, “I want to sleep with you.”

Longarm blinked but managed not to gasp his surprise as he waited a breath to steady his voice. “Just like that?”

“What’s the matter? Don’t you want to sleep with me?”

“Well, hell, sure! But I sort of figured-“

“I know what you’ve been figuring, all day. Most men would have made their move by now. This time tomorrow, we’ll be on the reservation where it’ll be a federal offense for you to trifle with me. I knew this was the one night you’d have to try and, damn it, you just move too slow, Longarm!”

Grinning, he unbuttoned his pants, let them fall around his ankles, and stepped out of them. She lay back as he loomed over her, wrapping arms and legs around him as be sank into her tawny body with both feet braced firmly on the rug. She thrust her body to meet his own hungry thrusts and her open mouth was a warm pit of savage desire as she sucked his tongue almost to the point of pain.

He let himself go without attempts at finesse or mutual orgasm, the first time. Then, having made her acquaintance, he moved them both to the center of the bed and got down to serious lovemaking, murmuring, “Still think I move too slow?”

“Let me get on top. I like to take charge.”

“I noticed.” He grinned, rolling off to let her have her way. And have her way she did. Every time Longarm tried to respond with movements of his own she’d kiss him and whisper, “Just float with me, darling. Mama knows what she’s doing. I’ll take good care of baby. You’ll see!” Longarm knew better than to argue with a lady, so he lay there, spread-eagled and as puzzled as he was delighted by the lovemaking of this strange, dark little woman.

It was too good to last forever; she’d literally wrung him out like a lemon and as she took his limp flesh between her moist lips, he sighed, “You’ve got to let it rest a mite, honey. I don’t reckon I could get it up again with a block and tackle right now!”

She laughed and threw herself down beside him, resting her head on his shoulder as she fondled him and purred, “We’ll see about that. Did you-?”

Longarm silenced her with a finger on her lips. “Don’t say nothing. I’ve just been looking up through a knothole in the bottom of heaven and I want to hear the angels sing some more.”

“Am I as good as a white girl?”

“That’s a fool thing to say. You’re at least as good as any kind of gal, white, red, or even blue. I disremember doing it with a blue gal, but I doubt she’d teach me anything you left out.”

“You’re sure I satisfied you completely, darling?”

“You’ve got your hand on how satisfied I am. If I was more satisfied I’d be dead.”

“Then why did he leave me, the brute?”

Longarm nodded in sudden understanding as he sighed and said, “Likely crazy, if you ever done him like that. Who are we talking about, the brave you’re ‘sort of’ married up with?”

“My husband’s a white man, the son of a bitch!”

“Oh. I was wondering what we were trying to prove just now. When did this lunatic run off on you, Gloria?”

“About a year ago. He was a soldier at the fort. He said—he said he loved me.”

“Yeah, most men do, when they marry up with someone. What happened to him? He get transferred out?”

“Of course. There’s not much you don’t know about Indian matters, is there? My father warned me it would happen, but I thought Roger meant it. You know what my father tried to tell me?”

“Sure I do. The new army regulations say no soldier can trifle with a reservation gal unless his intentions are honorable. Your Roger had to marry you or leave you be, and seeing you’re so pretty.”

“Roger said he considered me a white girl! He said he’d take me with him when he left the fort. He said he’d told his folks about us and that they’d be proud to have me back East. He said … he said … God damn it, you know what he said. You men all say the same things when you mean to do a woman wrong!”

“Well, he likely meant it at the time, honey. I know what it’s been like for you, but-“

“You know nothing, white man! You don’t know what it’s like to grow up wishing you were white, or even black, for God’s sake, if only you could belong somewhere!”

“You seem to be accepted by your tribe, Gloria.”

“A lot you know! Why do you think they call me Two-Women? If my father hadn’t been a chief-“

“Now just back up and study what you’re saying, honey. Your father is a chief.”

“Perhaps, but if he’d been just another brave-“

“If? If? Hell, if the dog hadn’t stopped to pee he’d have caught the rabbit. Everything in life’s an ‘if,’ and we have to make do with the ifs the Good Lord gives us. Try ‘if’ another way and your mama never would have been taken by Blackfoot. Or you could have been born dead, or a boy, or some other Indian kid named Mary. You know what you’re doing, honey? You’re picking a fight with it—instead of living with all you got!”

“That’s easy for you to say. But if you’d been born a breed …”

“Well, I wasn’t born a breed. Or the Prince of Wales, either. I was born on a hard-scrabble farm to folks too poor to spit. I’d have settled for being a Hindu maharaja with elephants and dancing gals to play with, and my complexion could be damned. So don’t go cussing me for being white. It wasn’t my idea and it ain’t been all that easy.”

“What would you have done if you’d been born an Indian, or colored?”

“Can’t say. It never happened. I’d likely be another jasper, but I’d likely have managed to make do with what I was. Those ifs don’t give us much choice.”

“You’d have made a terrible Indian. You think too West Virginian.”

“Likely you’re right. Seems to me your own head’s screwed on funny, though. If you don’t like the name Two-Women, how come you almost got me shot by insisting on it over at that other hotel this evening?”

“It’s my name, the only name I have.”

“What’s wrong with your mother’s name, Witherspoon?”

“Those people rejected me. My father’s people accepted me, however grudgingly, as at least a half-person.” She shuddered as she added, “Not that I don’t have to put up with sly remarks on the reservation. Some of the older squaws got quite a laugh when my soldier boy deserted me as the cast-off squaw he must have considered me.”

“Gloria, I suspicion you fret too much over things. Your Daddy must think highly of you or he’d never have sent you on a mission for his tribe.”

She fondled him almost painfully, as she asked, “How am I as a lover? Am I really the best you’ve ever had?”

Longarm was only half-lying as he nodded and ran a hand over her moist flesh, assuring her, “I don’t like to brag, but I’ve been with some nice gals in my time and, yes, you are purely the best I’ve ever got next to.”

“Do you think you’ll always remember me as the best lay you ever had?”

“I’ll have to. Anything better would kill me, but what’s this about remembering? We’re just getting started.”

“No. After this night, you’ll never be able to touch me again.”

“I won’t? Well, sure, we’ll have to be careful once we’re near the reservation and all, but-“

“Never, she insisted, adding, “You can do it all you want tonight, if you’re man enough, but one night of love is all I give. To anyone. I suppose you think I owe you an explanation?”

He said, “No. I suspicioned it was too good for you to be really enjoying it. I heard about an actress back East who plays the same trick. She’s had men duelling over her, lowing out their own fool brains and beating on her door at all hours with flowers, books, and candy.”

The beautiful breed’s voice was downright nasty as she asked, cruelly, “Are you suggesting you’ll be different, Mr. Longarm?”

“oh, I’ll want you. I’ll likely remember this night as long as I live and some night, alone on the trail, I’ll do some hard wishing, most likely. But I don’t reckon I’ll play your game.”

“Pooh, you don’t even understand my reasons.”

“Sure I do. You’re a pretty little thing all eaten UP inside with hate for us menfolks. One fool man betrayed your love and now you reckon you can get back at us all by turning the tables. You’re playing love ‘em and leave ‘em ‘cause you got loved and left. Your revenge is to drag us poor old boys into bed and pleasure us crazy, leaving us with nothing but the memory of the best lay any man could ever dream of, and no way to ever get it again. I’ll allow it’s mean as hell, but it ain’t original.”

She sat up suddenly to snap, “I suppose, now, you’re going to try and say you lied before? I suppose you’re going to pretend it won’t bother you never to have me again.”

Longarm thought before he answered. He knew, now, that much of what he’d just enjoyed had been an act of curious cruelty.

He decided the hell with it. Real women were complicated enough and it wasn’t as if the supply was likely to run out.

She insisted, “Well, am I? Am I not the greatest lay you’ve ever had, or ever will have?”

He feigned a mournful sigh and said, “Yeah, I know when I’m whipped. If you don’t let me call on you this weekend I’ll likely wind up jerking off under your window. Can’t we make an exception, just this once?”

Her voice was triumphant as she chortled, “No. I swear by Manitou you’ll never sleep with me again. Two-Women has spoken!”

He rolled over as if to fall asleep. He figured it was the least a man could do, considering.

After a time, bored with her game, Gloria got softly out of bed and tiptoed back to her own room, the victor of her own grotesque game of revenge. Longarm got up and locked the door, muttering, “Thank God. I was afraid I’d never get any sleep tonight!”

Chapter 3

Longarm could see there was trouble long before he and Gloria reached the cluster of frame buildings in the rented buckboard he was driving. A huge crowd of Indians stood around the reservation agency across from the log trading Post the center had grown up around.

It was mid-afternoon as they arrived and the sun floated above the purple Rockies far to the west. The Blackfoot reservation occupied an expanse of rolling short-grass prairie fifty miles across, but the tracks of the Iron Horse crossed the reservation and they’d been able to get off and rent the buckboard at another town just over the horizon to the east.

Gloria sat primly at his side, less friendly than ever, having not quite managed to claim him as her latest victim the night before. Longarm had been too gallant to make the obvious remark about black widow spiders when he found her dressed and coldly formal at dawn.

An Indian ran over as Longarm reined in near the edge of the crowd, and shouted something to Gloria in the high, nasal dialect of her tribe. The girl blanched and gasped, “Oh, God, no!”

Then, before Longarm could ask her what was up, she was out of her seat and running through the crowd, who gave way with expressions of compassion for the pretty little breed.

Longarm shouted to anyone who’d listen, “What’s going on? Anyone here speak English?”

A short moon-faced man in faded denims and very tall black hat came over to say, “I am Yellow Leggings. When I was young I killed a soldier and took his horse with me to Canada. Heya! That was a good fight we had at Greasy Grass! Were you there?”

“No, I’m still wearing my hair. What’s all the fuss about?”

“I was a Dog Soldier. Now I am only a reservation policeman and they do not pay me on time. Wendigo has struck again. This time He-Who-Walks-the-Night-Winds took Real Bear. The people are very frightened.”

Longarm nodded, sweeping his gunmetal gaze over the silent, unblinking faces crowded around him. He turned back to Yellow Leggings. “Where’d it happen?”

“in his house. The almost-girl you rode in with lives there, too. I think it was a good thing she was not home last night. The Wendigo would have torn her apart, too.”

“Which house was his?”

“That one, north of the agency. The agent and some of the Indian police are in there now. I didn’t want to go inside. I am not afraid of man or beast, but I don’t like to be near spirit happenings. I told them I would wait out here and keep order.”

“Can you get somebody to tie this mule to a post Yellow Leggings? I’d better see what’s going on.”

“Go, then. I will see to your wagon and the things in back. I never steal in peacetime.”

Longarm jumped down with a nod of thanks to the older Indian and elbowed his way through the crowd. Somewhere ahead of him, a woman screamed shrilly, mindless grief. He went to the indicated cabin of unpainted lumber, finding the door open, and went inside. Gloria was being comforted on a couch by a thin, white woman and an older, fatter squaw. She was still screaming, her face buried in her hands.

Longarm saw that there was another room and glanced through the entrance as a harassed-looking young white man hurried out, blinking in surprise to see another white.

Longarm said, “I’m U.S. Deputy Marshal Custis Long. You must be the Blackfoot agent?”

“I am, and you have come to the right place, lawman. I hope you have a strong stomach.”

Longarm followed the man into the bedroom, where two Indian police in those same tall hats stood over what looked at first like a badly butchered side of beef on the bed.

Longarm suppressed a wave of nausea as he recognized the form on the blood-soaked mattress as that of a man. From the blood on the walls and ceiling it looked as if he might have been skinned alive.

The agent said, “His name was Real Bear. You’ll have to take my word for it, he was an Indian.”

“He was the man I came up here to see. How long ago did it happen?”

“Nobody knows. They found him like this about an hour ago. We were supposed to hold a meeting this afternoon and I sent one of my police over to fetch him. Now you know as much as I do.”

“Not quite. You say he didn’t turn up for a meeting. What was the meeting about?”

“Just the usual stuff. Complaints about the government rations being late, as usual. Some trouble about stolen livestock. Nothing that can’t wait, now.”

“One of your Indians said something about another Wendigo killing. Has anything like this happened before?”

“Not here at the center. Some of the old folks have been jawing about spirits out on the prairie, but I don’t seem to be missing anybody. To tell you the truth, I didn’t take it too seriously. I’m shorthanded here, and I’ve been having trouble with the damned army again, and-“

“I know people in the B.I.A. Anybody think to look for sign?”

One of the Indian policemen looked up to say, “No sign. No footprint. Nobody see Wendigo come. Nobody see Wendigo go. We find only … this.”

Longarm touched a finger to a blood spatter on the wall and said, “Dry. Must have been done last night in the dark.”

The agent snorted and said, “Tell me something I haven’t figured out an hour ago! Of course he was killed at night! Who in hell’s going to walk out of here covered with blood and carrying a man’s skin, in broad daylight?”

Then, before Longarm could answer, the agent suddenly ran to the window, leaned out, and threw up.

Neither Longarm nor the Indian police said anything as he recovered, turned wanly from the window, and said, “Sorry. Thought I got it all the first time. I, uh, never saw a thing like this before.”

Longarm’s voice was gentle as he said, “It ain’t a thing you see every day. Maybe we’d best go outside to talk about it.”

“I have a duty to investigate,” the young man said.

“Sure you do. So have I. But this U keep. If these other peace officers can’t find sign to read in here, the two of us ain’t likely to. I see our next best bet as some solid jawboning on the whys and wherefores.”

“Well, we’d best take the chief’s daughter over to our place and put something strong in her. Right now I could use a drink myself!”

“Let’s go, then. Which one of these peace officers is the ranking lawman, hereabouts?”

Both Indians and the agent looked surprised. Then the agent nodded at the taller of the two and said, “I guess Rain Crow, here, has the most seniority.”

Longarm nodded at the Blackfoot and said, “Glad to know you, Rain Crow. You can call me Longarm. I reckon you’d best come along while we put some twos and twos together.”

Rain Crow asked, “You want me to come with you, in the agency?”

“You’re a lawman, ain’t you?” Longarm shot a quizzical glance at the agent, who said, “Of course. I’m assigning you to help the marshal, Rain Crow. He’ll need a guide around the reservation and help with his horses and-“

“I’ll get a boy from you to wrangle for us,” Longarm cut in, adding, “I’m going to need men like Rain Crow as my deputies.”

To his credit, the young agent caught on and nodded as the Indian followed them out of the blood-spattered bedroom.

Out in the other room, they found the couch empty. The agent nodded again and said, “Good. I see Nan and old Deer Foot managed to get poor Gloria out of this god-awful place. We’ll likely find ‘em in our kitchen.”

“Nan would be your wife, Mr. …”

“Durler. Calvin Durler. My wife Nan and I have been out here about a year. I’m afraid we’re still pretty green.”

“You talk like a farming man, Calvin. I was born in West Virginia, myself.”

“I’m afraid we’re from farther east. Our home was in Maryland.”

“Tidewater Maryland or the Cumberland?”

“Cumberland, by God. I’m not that much of a dude!”

“There you go. I suspicioned you had hair on your chest, Calvin.”

The youth laughed and said, “I’m still ashamed of throwing up like a baby, but I thank you for the neighborly way you took it.”

“Hell, you never threw up on me, Calvin. Maybe if more folks got sick to their stomachs when folks they knew got killed, we’d live in a more peaceable world.”

The three men went outside and elbowed their way through the upset, questioning Indians to the larger agency residence. Calvin Durler led his guests to the side door and they went in to find Nan Durler brewing coffee in her sparsely furnished, whitewashed kitchen. Her husband asked, “Where’s Gloria?” and the blonde woman replied, “In the bedroom. I made her lie down. Deer Foot’s with her.”

“Deer Foot’s our housemaid,” offered Durler to Longarm, who’d figured as much.

The agent took a brandy snifter from a sideboard and poured two glasses, holding one out to Longarm. The deputy held it out to the Indian, saying, “Where’s mine, Calvin?”

The agent and his wife exchanged glances. Then Durler said, “I didn’t make up the regulation, Longarm, but it’s against the law to give an Indian a drink.”

“Yeah, I heard,” said Longarm, placing the glass, untasted, on the sideboard.

The Indian said, “I know what is in your heart, but it is all right. I will not be offended if you white men drink without me.”

“You may not be, but I would,” said Longarm. “When my deputies can’t drink, I can’t drink. Maybe we’d best all have some coffee.” Durler nodded eagerly and said, “That’s just what I need, a hot cup of coffee. I’ll pour it, Nan.”

But Nan Durler, who’d been watching and sizing up the play, shook her head and said, “The three of you gents sit down. It’s my place to pour for guests.”

With the niceties out of the way for the moment, Longarm faced the other white man and his new Indian sidekick across the plank table and said, “All right, I’m a man with an open mind, but I can’t buy a spook dropping down out of the sky to skin folks alive. So what we have is a human killer as well as his victim.”

He saw the hesitation in the Indian’s eyes and asked, “You got another notion, Rain Crow?”

“I don’t know. The Dream Singers say Wendigo walks the night because our people have turned from the old ways. I know you think this is foolish, but-“

“Hold on. Foolish is a strong word, Rain Crow. I ain’t one to sass my elders. Some of the old folks, red or white, just might know things I don’t. I’ll go along with evil spirits, if I cut an evil spirit’s trail. I have to say, though, most of the men I’ve seen killed have been killed by other men, up to now. Chief Real Bear sent word to us about a rogue Blackfoot breed named Johnny Hunts Alone. Does that name mean anything to either of you gents?”

Durler looked blank and shook his head. Rain Crow frowned and said, “I have heard the name. The old ones say his white father rode with us long ago, in the Shining Times of the beaver trade.”

“Real Bear reported that he’d come back to the reservation. You’re a reservation peace officer, so you likely know a lot of folks hereabouts.”

“I know many people, many. But this man you speak of is a half-breed.”

Longarm nodded. “Yep, somewhere in his mid-thirties. What’s his being a breed have to do with it? You have breeds living among you, don’t you?”

“Of course, but not many, and they are known to everyone. Real Bear’s daughter in the other room is half white. There is the Collins family and the Blood woman called Cat Eyes. Then there is Burning Nose and-“

“In other words, breeds are rare enough for everyone on the reservation to take note, or likely gossip some about ‘em?”

The Indian smiled. “The old women like to tell dirty stories and everyone knows how breeds come into the world. Yes, if there was a half-white Blackfoot called Johnny, I would have heard about him.”

“You think Real Bear was lying, then?”

“No. He was a good person. If he said this man was among us, it must be so. Yet it is not so. I don’t have an answer for this.”

“Try it another way. Could a breed be passing himself off as a full-blooded Blackfoot?”

“This is more possible than that Real Bear lied, but he would have to look like a full-blood and he would have to act like a full-blood. You know how it is with breeds.”

“No, Rain Crow, I don’t know any such thing. You don’t like breeds, do you?”

The Indian looked uncomfortable. Longarm said, “They have the same troubles on our side of the fence, Rain Crow. Most white folks suspicion breeds of all sorts of things.”

“You think they’re bad people, too?”

“No, I think they’ve got a hard row to hoe. Whites don’t trust ‘em because they’re part Indian. Indians likely wonder if they can fully trust a man who is half white. I reckon a breed gets looked at sort of closer than the rest of us. Though, when you think on it, the best chief the Comanche ever had was a breed named Quanna Parker and the worst renegade who ever scalped a white man was a lily-white bastard named Simon Girty. So I’d say breeds are likely no better or worse than most folks, but I’ll go along with you on Johnny Hunts Alone having a hard time passing himself off as a full-blood. Not just because he’s a breed, but because he was raised mostly white. He’d have to be clever as old Coyote to pass muster here on the reservation.”

“Heya! You have heard the tales of Coyote?”

“Sure. You ain’t the first Indian lawman I’ve worked with. Let’s study more on where this jasper might be hiding. You know the layout, Rain Crow. Where would you be if you were a white-raised Blackfoot?”

“The reservation is very big. It has five towns and much open range. How do you know he didn’t leave when Real Bear recognized him?”

“Come on, Rain Crow, you ain’t going to play cigar store Indian on me, are you?” Longarm prodded gently.

The young Blackfoot looked away and said, “You don’t think Wendigo killed Real Bear. You think he was killed by a real person.”

“There you go. And Real Bear was a good man with a good heart, so if he was killed by a real person-“

“Heya! The only one who’d want him dead would be someone who was afraid he’d been recognized! Someone who didn’t want Real Bear to tell on him!”

“Now you’re talking like a lawman, old son. So do you reckon we should look for spooks, or-“

“I will start asking the old ones about the Shining Days when the man called Johnny Hunts Alone lived among us,” said Rain Crow, getting to his feet and leaving without ceremony.

As soon as the policeman was gone, Longarm grinned at the agent and his wife and said, “I’d purely like some of that brandy, now.”

Durler laughed and poured each of the three of them a shot, saying, “You sure have a way with Indians. I swear to God, I haven’t been able to get much cooperation from any of my charges.”

“I noticed. Maybe you could start by talking to them.”

Durler protested, “Nan and I have been doing our best to make friends with our charges and-“

“That’s the second time you’ve called them your charges,” Longarm cut in. “Before the army whipped ‘em down and fenced ‘em in, they thought of themselves as men.”

“I see how you played on Rain Crow’s pride, Longarm, but I’ve got responsibilities here, and damn it, they act like children around most white men.”

“Sure they do. That’s probably because every time they haven’t acted like children, lately, somebody’s shot at them! You take away my gun and smack me alongside the head every time I try to think for myself and I’ll act childish, too. But I wasn’t sent up here to tell you how to do your job for the B.I.A. I ain’t buttering up your, uh, charges, to steal your job, neither. You see, I ain’t about to track down a renegade hidden out amidst all these folks unless I get some of ‘em on my side.”

“You think you can talk the Blackfoot into turning the renegade in?”

“Well, one Indian did it. Now that I’m here, it’ll only take one more.”

“In other words,” Durler said, “you think some of the Indians are hiding him from us?”

“He has to be hiding somewhere. What else are the Blackfoot hiding from you?”

“Hiding from me? I don’t know. What would they be keeping from me?”

Longarm shrugged and said, “A reservation’s like a jail in some ways. There’re always things the cooped-up folks don’t want the warden, or the Indian agent, to know. If Real Bear was working for our side, Johnny Hunts Alone would be on the other.”

Durler nodded and said, “You mean the troublemakers might be hiding him from you. If only we knew who the troublemakers were.”

Longarm’s eyebrows rose a notch, then he frowned and asked, “Don’t you know which Indians are bucking you, Cal?”

“Not really. All of them seem a little sullen and none of ‘em come right out and say they aim to scalp me. I think some of ‘em might be drinking when I ain’t looking.”

“I smelled firewater when a couple passed me to windward, but you always have drinking on a reservation. It’s as natural as small boys smoking corn silk behind the hen house. How about Dream Singing? Gloria Two Women made mention of some Ghost Dancing her daddy was worried about.”

Durler laughed and shook his head, saying, “Oh, I’m not worried about that crazy new religion of Wovoka and his raggedy Paiutes. We got a notice about it from headquarters. The army says it’s not serious.”

Longarm looked disgusted and said, “Army didn’t think much of Red Cloud’s brag over in the Black Hills, either. ‘Fess up, Cal. Do you know if there are any Ghost Dancers on this reservation?”

Durler shot a sheepish glance at his wife, who seemed very interested in her fingernails at the moment. Then, seeing she wasn’t going to help or hinder, he sighed and said, “Damnation, Longarm, I’ve got over fifteen thousand sections of damn near empty prairie to cover!”

“I know. How much of it have you ever really looked at?”

“Not one hell of a lot, as you likely suspicion. But it ain’t as if I haven’t been trying to do my job! I’ve got six villages, a model farm, and more damn paper work than ten Philadelphia lawyers could handle! I’m putting in a sixteen-hour day and I’m still swamped, as Nan can tell you!”

His wife looked up to nod grimly as she muttered, “He’s up past midnight, every night, with those infernal books of his!”

Longarm looked away, uncomfortable with the message he thought he might be reading in Nan’s upset eyes. To steer the conversation away from a topic he thought might be getting under both their skins, he said, “I know you’ve a lot of corn to shuck, Cal. How are you getting on with the other white folks?”

“What white folks? We’re up to our necks in Blackfoot. They hate us for being white and the whites in town and over at the army post hate us for feeding the rascals. The only white who ever comes out here is the sutler who owns the trading post across the way. He comes when the spirit moves him, which ain’t often. I’m supposed to issue cash to my Indians, but Washington’s slow in sending it and the sutler doesn’t give credit.”

“I know the type. He likely has an uncle in Washington, too. It’s all cash and carry? No swapping for furs and hides or-? Never mind, that was a fool notion.”

Durler smiled thinly, glad to be able to pontificate on something he knew better than his visitor. He said, “Yeah, the Shining Times are gone and so are most of the buffalo. The Indians still hunt a mite. Not enough game left for trading the old ways. We give each Indian family a small cash allowance and the trading post sells ‘em the most expensive salt and matches this side of the Mississippi. Like you said, somebody likely has an uncle.”

“That council meeting Real Bear never made it to was something about missing livestock, wasn’t it?” the marshal asked.

“Some of the Indians complained of white cow thieves. Don’t know if it’s true or not. Along with the demonstration farm, which grows mostly weeds, we have a reservation herd, which sort of melts away as you look at it each sunup. It’s a toss-up who’s worse as a farmer—a Blackfoot or a cowboy. I know for a fact some of ‘em have run steers for private barbecues. There are a lot of hard feelings between us and the local whites, so it wouldn’t surprise me all that much if a few government cows wind up wearing a white man’s brand.”

“Surprise me more if they left you alone. What reservation brand have you registered with the territorial government?”

Durler said, “Oh, most of ‘em are delivered with U.S. stamped on their hides. I haven’t been able to teach my Indian herders all that much about branding, and as to a registered brand, well …”

“Good night!” Longarm exclaimed. “And you’ve still got one cow left! You sure live in the midst of Christian neighbors, Calvin!”

“Look, I’m an Indian agent, not a cowhand. I thought I was a farmer, before I tried to grow stuff in this prairie sod. They told me the Indians would help us, but-“

Longarm shoved himself away from the table and got to his feet, saying, “I’ve got to get over to the fort and borrow a horse from the remount sergeant. I’ll be back before sundown and we can jaw some more. You got an ice house or something we can store the body in?”

“Store it? Ain’t I supposed to bury Real Bear?”

“Sure, after I get a sawbones to look him over and tell me what he died from.”

“Come on, we know how he died! He was skinned alive.”

“Maybe. I’d like an M.D. to give me an educated guess as to bullets, poisons and such, though. He’ll keep a day or so in this dry, thin air, so you put him in a shady spot with maybe some chopped ice in the box with him. I’ll show you how when I get back. I want to make it over to the fort and back by daylight.”

He tipped his hat to Nan and ducked out the side door as the agent followed him toward the buckboard. The crowd of Indians was still in place, standing sullenly silent and not appearing to notice either white man as they crossed the village street. Longarm found a young boy seated on the trading post steps with the reins of his rented mule in hand. He gave the kid a nickel and a smile for his trouble. The kid put the coin in his britches and went away without saying thanks or looking back. Longarm couldn’t tell whether they were all pissed at him, the agent, or white folks in general.

It occurred to Longarm that unless he found the killer of Real Bear pretty quickly, things were likely to get ugly hereabouts.

Fort Banyon was little more than an outpost, manned by an over-aged second lieutenant and a skeleton platoon of dragoons. A cluster of log buildings surrounded a parade ground of bare earth and was surrounded in turn by a rail fence, broken in places. Everything from the tattered flag drooping from the flagstaff of lodgepole pine to the threadbare uniforms of the men lounging on the orderly room steps told Longarm there hadn’t been a general inspection for some time and that morale was low, even for a frontier garrison.

He wasn’t challenged as he drove through the open gateway and across the parade to the orderly room. The C.O., a dumpy man with a florid face and an unbuttoned officer’s blouse, came out on the porch to stare at him morosely as Longarm hitched the mule to a rail. As the deputy walked over to the steps the officer asked, “Did you bring mail from town?”

“No sir. I’m a Deputy U.S. Marshal, not the mailman. I need a mount. I generally ride a gelding at least fifteen hands high. Got my own saddle and bridle.”

“What are you talking about, mister? This is an army post! We don’t sell horses!”

“Aw, hell, Lieutenant, this argument I keep getting from you fellows is as tedious as shitting on an ant pile. I know you’re supposed to give me an argument and we both know that in the end, I’ll get the horse. So what say we agree it’s a hell of a note how the Justice Department imposes on the army and I’ll b on my way.”

Before the officer could reply, his first sergeant came out to join him. The C.O. said, “Lawman. Says he wants a horse.”

The sergeant shook his head at Longarm and said, “We’re short on mounts, mister. We’re here to keep an eye on them Blackfoot, not to be a remount station.”

“Yeah, I noticed how scared you are of Indians. Your pickets damn near shot me as I came in. You look like an old soldier, Sarge. Do we have to go through all this bullshit? You know damn well I’m riding out of here on one of Uncle Sam’s ponies, and if you keep me here much longer I aim to make you feed me supper, too!”

“You’ve got requisition papers, I guess?” the sergeant said.

“Sarge, I’ve got carte blanche. I’m covering first degree murder. Federal. So give me something to sign and I’ll be on my way.”

The two army men exchanged glances. Then the lieutenant shook his head and said, “Nope. I’m shorthanded on men and mounts. Maybe you can borrow a pony over at the reservation agency. They’re federal, too.”

“Yeah, and my legs drag when I ride Indian ponies. I ride with a McClellan saddle and too much gear for one of those skinny critters I’ve seen over yonder. Maybe if Custer hadn’t shot all those Indian ponies they’d have one fifteen hands high, but he did, and they don’t.”

“You don’t like our army, mister?” the lieutenant bristled.

“Why, boys, I like it more than I can tell you. Hell, if I was mad at you, I’d likely try and give you a hard time.”

“You feel up to giving a platoon of dragoons a hard time, mister?”

“You mean whup all thirty-odd of you? Not hardly, Lieutenant. I’m a friendly cuss. So why don’t you lend me a mount and I’ll tell you what; I’ll just forget about a few old reportables, next time I wire the government.”

“Reportables? You must be drunk, lawman! You got no power to report doodly shit about army matters!”

“Well, I ain’t connected up with the Inspector General’s office, though, now that you mention it, I do have some drinking pals in Denver who work for the I.G. All us lawmen sort of exchange information.”

He looked around thoughtfully before adding innocently, “But you’re likely right. I don’t figure the I.G. would be interested in little things like no guards posted or a few busted fences or that flag nailed up there night and day without proper hoisting lines. Tell me something, Lieutenant. How do you hold proper flag ceremonies twice a day, the way you’ve got it sort of up there for keeps?”

The officer scowled and started to bluster. Then he shrugged and told the sergeant, “Give the blackmailing son of a bitch a horse.”

“Does the lieutenant want him, ah, well-mounted?”

“By all means, Sergeant. He’s a fellow federal officer,” the C.O. said sweetly.

Longarm followed the first sergeant down the barracks line to the corrals as some of the enlisted men who’d heard the exchange followed. Longarm sighed wearily. He’d been through this same hazing so many times, he knew the routine better than most soldiers did.

They got to the remuda corral, where a civilian in buckskins perched atop a corral rail, jawing with a uniformed stable hand. The first sergeant introduced the civilian as a scout named Jason, they winked at the horse wrangler and said, “Cut old Rocket out for this nice deputy, will you?”

The stable hand grinned and took a throw rope from the gatepost as Longarm said, “I’ll trot back and fetch my saddle.”

“Don’t you aim to watch us pick your pony, mister?”

“No, I know you’ll do right by me. By the time you get that bronc roped and steadied I’ll have time to fetch my saddle, walk to town, get a drink, and walk back.”

He knew he was only half jesting, so he strolled back up the line to the buckboard, removing his Winchester and possibles from the saddle in the wagon bed with slow deliberation. He knew that while they might even try to kill him, they wouldn’t steal his gear, so he left it in the buckboard.

As he turned with the McClellan braced on one hip, he saw that the civilian scout, Jason, had followed him part of the way up the company street. Jason was almost as tall as Longarm and a bit older. There were a few gray hairs among the greasy thatch on his head and in his spade-shaped beard, and his suntanned face was creased with friendly laugh-wrinkles. Jason fell in at Longarm’s side as they walked back to the corral, saying, “They treated me the same way when I was first posted here, mister. I ain’t generally a tattletale, but I reckon they’ve gone overboard with old Rocket.”

“Bad bronc, huh?”

“No. Rocket’s a killer. I can see you know which end of the horse the bit goes in, but if I was you I’d pass on Rocket. It’s not like it was a shameful thing to do. There ain’t a man in this outfit who is ashamed when it comes to old Rocket.”

“I thank you for the warning, Jason. If I live, you can call me Longarm.”

“Where do I send your possibles after the fool horse throws you and stomps on your head?”

Longarm didn’t answer. He saw that the soldiers had roped and blindfolded a big gray gelding and led him into an empty corral next to the remuda. As the others held Rocket, Longarm threw his saddle over the broad back and cinched it, asking, “Ain’t most of these grays assigned to army bands?”

The stable boss grinned and said, “Yeah, old Rocket was a mite, uh, spirited for parades. So they sent him out here to fight Indians. You ain’t scared of spirited horses, are you, lawman?”

“Let’s get it over with,” said Longarm, getting the bridle on over the blindfold after punching Rocket in the nose to make him open his mouth for the bit.

He put a foot in the stirrup and hoisted himself up into the saddle, ready for anything. But nothing happened. The big gray stood as placid as a plough horse while Longarm settled in the saddle and got a firm grip on the reins. He muttered, “One of that kind, huh?” Then, in a louder tone, he said, “All right, yank the blinds and give me room.”

The soldiers scattered as the stable boss pulled the bandanna blindfold out from under the bridle and joined his messmates on the surrounding rails. The big gray blinked at the sunlight, took two steps backwards toward the center of the corral, and tried to jump over the late-afternoon sun, as someone shouted, “Hot damn!”

Longarm yanked hard on the reins to force the gray’s head down and to one side as they came down. The Spanish bit he’d rigged his bridle with had been purchased with such emergencies in mind, and while he customarily rode with a gentle hand on the reins, he could hurt a horse with the bit if he had to, and right now he had to.

Rocket didn’t like it much. He was used to army bits as well as having his own way. With his head held down almost against Longarm’s left stirrup, he had to buck in a tight circle; any good rider can stay aboard a bucking horse as long as it bucks in a repeated pattern. Some of the soldiers might not have known this, so they were impressed as the big lawman rode easily, swaying in tune with the mindless anger of the killer bronc.

Then Rocket saw he wasn’t getting anywhere bucking in a circle, so he danced sideways and threw his full weight against the corral rails. He had intended his rider’s right leg to take most of the shock, but Longarm saw it coming, kicked free of the right stirrup, and got his leg up in time. The big gray followed up his knee-breaking attempt with the purpose of which was to throw a sideways crabbing Longarm before he could get his leg back down in place. Longarm expected that, too, so it didn’t work.

The big gray fought to raise his head, trying to get the cruel bit between his teeth. Then, when he saw that the enemy tormenting him had the bit well-set, he decided, as long as his muzzle was down by the man’s left foot, that he might as well bite it off.

Longarm snatched his toe back as the big yellow teeth snapped at it, then he kicked the gray’s muzzle, hard. Rocket tried a couple more times before he gave up on that one, his nostrils running blood.

They circled the corral a few more times, spinning like a top, but the gray was tiring, and like any bully, Rocket didn’t like to get hurt; Longarm was the meanest critter he’d ever been ridden by.

“You got him, mister!” someone shouted. “Just stay on a few more minutes and that old bastard will be your asshole buddy!”

Longarm shouted, “I don’t want to marry up with him, I want to work with him!”

He steadied the gray as he stopped bucking, rode him once around the corral at a weary trot, and reined in by the rails, climbing quickly off and perching by the boss wrangler, maintaining his hold on the reins. Rocket saw an opportunity and pulled suddenly back to unseat him, but Longarm leaned back and gave the Spanish bit a vicious yank, drawing more blood. After that, Rocket stood very still indeed as Longarm said, “That was sure interesting. Now, I’d like to pick out a gelding fifteen hands high and if you give me another bronc I’ll kill you, personal.”

“You made your point when you stayed aboard old Rocket, mister. We was just having a little friendly fun. I’ll issue you Betsy. She’s a good steady mare.”

“No you won’t. I said I’d pick a gelding. I reckon I earned it, don’t you?”

The wrangler noted the chilly look in Longarm’s eyes and nodded soberly. “Yep, I’d say it’s time to quit while I’m ahead.”

Chapter 4

Longarm got back to the Indian agency near sundown, riding a tall chestnut and leading the mule and buckboard.

Calvin Durler came out to help as he unhitched and unsaddled in the agency corral. Durler said, “Nan’s got a room fixed up for you and we have Real Bear in the root cellar, wrapped in a wagon tarp. Nan didn’t like it much, but what the hell, we haven’t harvested enough to mention, so the cellar’s mostly empty and I put her preserves on the other side.”

Longarm nodded. “I’ll run the body into town come sunup. The army post has no surgeon but they tell me there’s a county coroner in Switchback. You do have a telegraph line here, don’t you?”

“No. We’re supposed to, but they never installed it. I use the one at the federal land office in town on government business. The land agent’s sort of mad about it, too. Who’d you aim to wire?”

“My office. They figured I’d just come here, arrest the jasper Chief Real Bear pointed out, and be on my way back by now. I don’t reckon they’ll think Johnny Hunts Alone got the drop on me if I don’t get in touch tonight. You’re sure I won’t be crowding you folks?”

“Hell, we’re delighted to have white folks to talk to. Nan and me don’t go to town much. The locals seem to blame us for past misdeeds of the Blackfoot, and maybe some Comanche, too! We’ve got us some champion Indian-haters in this territory!”

“Well, Montana was all Indian land up till a few short years ago, so the locals are mostly the same people who drove the Indians back into this one corner to start with. How’s Gloria Two-Women taking her daddy’s murder, now? Did you get her calmed down enough for me to talk to yet?”

Durler shook his head exasperatedly. “Oh, she’s jumped the reservation again, Says her name is Withersomething-or-other, now.”

Longarm arched an eyebrow. “Do tell? When did all this happen?”

“While you were over getting this horse. Gloria said a lot of crazy things, then she sort of took herself in hand and went over to her house to pack her duds. Deer Foot helped, but it’s a funny thing—Gloria won’t speak Blackfoot anymore. She says with her daddy dead she’s not an Indian anymore. How do you figure that?”

Longarm shrugged. “Likely makes as much sense for her to try to make it as a white woman, after all. If I’d been here, I’d have suggested she try living in Oklahoma, where breeds have an easier time than most places. Maybe she knew that, though. She didn’t say where she was going, huh?”

“Nope. Just rode to Switchback to catch a train. They could probably tell you at the station where she took it to, if you really want to question her about what happened.”

“Hardly seems worth it,” Longarm sighed. “She was with me when her daddy was killed, so we know she didn’t do it. I, uh, got to know her pretty well on the train ride up from Denver, so I don’t reckon she left anything out I could use, and even if she was here, she couldn’t identify the jasper for us. Is Rain Crow back with anything, yet?”

“He was by here an hour ago. He hasn’t found out much we didn’t know already. He did say the old ones don’t think a man did it. They say the Wendigo punished Real Bear for turning his back on the old ways and accepting a breed as his daughter.” Durler shook his head wearily and added, “It’s as well Gloria lit out. She was a proud little thing and some of the talk about her is right ugly.”

Longarm studied a crow flying past and tried to appear disinterested as he asked, “Oh? What sort of gossip are the old squaws spreading about the gal?”

Durler shrugged and said, “The usual back-fence bullshit about any gal who lives alone, if she’s pretty. She lived right next door, so Nan and I can tell you she was proper. They say she was married to a white man once. It was before we got here, so I can’t say what went wrong. As far as I know, she was a perfect lady.”

“I’ll remember her as perfect, too,” said Longarm, shifting his weight to meet the younger man’s eyes again as he changed the subject. “I noticed you’ve got corn in the feed troughs. You been shipping it all this way with all this free grass around?”

“I grew the corn on my so-called model farm. The soil hereabouts is piss-poor or I’d have grown a real crop.”

Longarm laughed and said, “You must be one hell of a farmer, Cal. If you’d asked me if you could grow corn on this reservation I’d have said it was impossible!”

Durler stared morosely down at the tawny stubble all around and said, “It damn near was. Like I said, it’s poor soil and the Indians shirked such honest toil as I assigned ‘em.”

Longarm knew it wasn’t his job, but he couldn’t keep his mouth shut about such an obvious greenhorn notion. He said, “There’s nothing wrong with the soil, Cal. It’s the crop that was all wrong. You’re a mile above sea level and damn near in Canada. About the only farm crop you can grow up here is barley. Corn’s a lowland crop. Needs at least twenty inches of rain a year to survive.”

“Yeah, I noticed our fields were a mite dry. I had Indians haul water to the corn. They didn’t cotton to it much, but I knew Indians ate corn, so …”

“Cal,” Longarm cut in, “it ain’t my call to tell you how to run your spread, but there’s Indians and there’s Indians. Your Blackfoot lived on wild game, roots, and such, before the army showed them the error of their ways. It’s no wonder they’ve been shirking. No offense intended, but you ain’t showing them how to farm the high plains. You’re showing them how to make the same mistakes every other nester who’s been dusted out has made, over and over.”

Durler’s jaw had a stubborn set to it as he snapped, “I’ll admit I don’t know this country, damn it, but what am I to do? My job is to make small-holders instead of hunters out of the Blackfoot. They gave me the job because I was a fair farmer, back East!”

“I don’t doubt it, Cal. There are abandoned homesteads all over the prairie, left by men who came out West with the skills they learned in other parts. You just can’t farm out here the way you do back East.”

“Will you show me how, then?”

“I don’t aim to be here all that long. For openers I’d say to drill in some rye and barley next time. Then I’d get some of the old-timers to advise me about the climate, soil, and such.”

“None of the nesters will talk to me, damnit!” the agent said sourly.

“I didn’t mean white old-timers. These Indians were here long before it got so civilized. I know you’re not keen on farming and you’ll have as much to show them as they have to show you, but you’ll do better talking to them than lecturing them. You get my drift?”

“Hell, only a handful speak English.”

“I know. It would make your job a lot easier if you and Nan learned Blackfoot.”

“Good God! We’d never be able to in a million years! I don’t know one word of Blackfoot!”

“Sure you do. They speak Algonquin, which is about the easiest Indian language there is for a white man to pick up. Damn near every Indian word we already know is Algonquin.”

“I tell you, I don’t know word-one!”

“How about squaw, papoose, moccasin, tomahawk, or s or possum?”

“Those are Algonquin words?”

“So are tom-tom, pow-wow, wampum, and succotash. I’ll bet you know what every one of those words means, don’t you?”

“Sure. I reckon they must have been the first Indian words the white folks learned when they got off the boat.”

“There you go. You’re halfway to learning the lingo already. You don’t have to learn to speak it perfectly, but they’ll respect you for trying. My Spanish is awful, but most Mexicans brighten up when I give ‘em a chance to laugh at me, rather than the other way around. A little gal in a border town once even helped me learn a bunch of new words.” Longarm smiled. “The lessons were purely enjoyable.”

The agent chuckled. “I’ll see if we can get Deer Foot to teach us some Blackfoot. Meanwhile, supper should be almost ready.”

They went inside and found Nan Durler as good as her husband’s word. The fare was simple, but well-cooked, and like most country folk, the three of them ate silently. It was something they didn’t think about; witty dinner conversation is a city notion. Nan had made a peach cobbler for dessert and insisted on Longarm’s having two helpings before she’d let him step out onto the porch for an after-dinner smoke. He’d expected his host, at least, to join him. But he found himself alone on the steps, puffing a cheroot as he watched the stars come out over the distant Rockies.

It was peaceful outside, now. The Indians had drifted off home after jawing about the murder of their chief all afternoon. Somewhere in the night a medicine drum was beating softly, probably to keep the Wendigo away. Longarm judged the drum to be a good two miles distant, so he decided Rain Crow could tell him, later, what the fuss was all about.

He was halfway through his smoke when Nan Durler came out to join him. She said, “Calvin’s at his books again. Sometimes he spends half the night on those fool papers for the B.I.A.”

Longarm nodded without answering as the blonde sat beside him on the steps. After a while she shuddered and said, “They’re at that old drum again. Sometimes they beat it half the night. I don’t know if I hate it more when the Indians are whooping it up or when they’re quiet. Back home we had crickets and fireflies this time of year.”

“Night noises are different on the prairie. I sort of like the way the coyotes sing, some nights.”

“It wakes me up. It’s no wonder the Blackfoot think the Wendigo walks at midnight out here. Some of the things I hear from my window are spooky as anything.”

“Well,” Longarm observed, “you’re pretty high up for rattlers, hereabouts. I can’t think of much else that can worry folks at night.”

“The other night, I heard the strangest screaming. Calvin said it was a critter, but it sounded like a baby crying.

“Thin, high-pitched hollerings? Sort of wheeeeee wheeeee wheeeee?”

“Yes! It was awful. Do you know what it might have been?”

“No ‘might’ about it, ma’am. It was a jackrabbit.”

He didn’t add that jackrabbits screamed like that as they were being eaten alive by a silent coyote. He didn’t think that part would comfort her.

She shuddered again and said, “I guess it could have been ‘most any old thing. Sounded like it was getting skinned alive … oh, dear …”

“I’ll be hauling the body into town, come morning, ma’am. I could wrap him in a tarp and leave him out in the buckboard overnight if it frets you to have him in your root cellar.”

Nan grimaced and said, “Leave him be, but let’s not dwell on it. I’m going to have to take at least two of the powders the doctor gave me if I’m to sleep a wink tonight.”

Longarm asked cautiously, “Oh? You take sleeping powders often, ma’am?”

Her voice was bitter as she said, “Just about every night. My husband seems more interested in his books than in sleeping and I get so, so lonely when the wind starts to keen out on the prairie!”

“Most folks get used to the prairie after a time, ma’am.”

“Most folks have neighbors, too. The Indians look through us, and you know we’re outcasts to the other whites around here, don’t you?”

Longarm shrugged and said, “Well, who wants to butter up to the grudge-holding kind, ma’am? There are likely others over in town who aren’t so narrow-minded.”

“I doubt it. You should see the looks they give us when we ride in from the reservation! You’d think the Indian Wars were still going on!”

Longarm noticed that she’d somehow moved closer to him and decided she was probably too upset to have realized it. He shifted away a little and said, “The Blackfoot were hostile Indians and it hasn’t been all that long, ma’am. Some folks are sore about the Civil War and those memories are almost old enough to vote. You’ve got to remember some of your neighbors, red and white, were swapping lead not five years ago this night.”

She moved closer, as if uneasy at the gathering dusk and asked, “Have you fought Indians, Longarm?”

He saw that there wasn’t much room left for his rump, so he stayed put as he answered, “Yep. You name the tribe and I’ve likely traded a few shots with ‘em.”

“But you don’t seem to hate Indians at all.”

He tried to ignore the warmth of her thigh against his as he looked away and suggested, “I’ve been lucky about Indians. They never tried to do more than lift my hair. I mean, they never killed a woman or kid of mine. I was over at Spirit Lake just after the Sioux first rose under Little Crow and it was mighty ugly, but none of the dead white folks were my kin. I’ve left some squaws keening over their own dead in my time, so I can afford to forgive and forget. But it was right ugly out here until recently. The soldiers and other whites have done some terrible things, too, and not every Indian is the noble savage some have written about. Ugly feeds on ugly, and like I said, it wasn’t all that long ago. We have to give both sides a mite more time to get used to having one another as neighbors.”

Nan’s hand was suddenly on Longarm’s knee as she said, “You think Calvin is a fool, don’t you?”

“I never said such a thing, ma’am!”

“You didn’t have to. I’ve seen the mockery in your eyes. To you he’s just a green kid, isn’t he?”

Longarm got to his feet, not knowing how else to get her hand off his knee, as he said, “Getting sort of chilly, ain’t it?”

She remained seated, looking up at him oddly as she asked, “Are you afraid to answer me?”

Longarm shook his head and said, “I thought I had, ma’am. You asked did I think your man was a fool and I said he wasn’t one. He’s younger than me and, has a few things to learn. But he’ll do.”

“For you, maybe. Where are you going? It’s early yet, and I’ll never get any sleep this night.”

“I’d be proud to sit out here and jaw some more,” he said as tactfully as he could, “but I’ve got to get some shut-eye, and like I said, there’s a chill in the air.”

“I noticed,” she said, looking suddenly away.

He saw that she didn’t intend to go inside, so he said good-night and left her sitting there, nursing what ever was eating at her. He noticed that she didn’t answer, either. She surely seemed a moody little gal.

He went to his room and locked himself in from force of habit before sitting on the bed to pull off his boots. He frowned at the door for a time, then he said, “You’re getting a dirty mind, old son. You just leave that damned door locked, hear? Her man is just down the hall, and damn it, a gent has to draw the line some damned where!”

The town of Switchback, as its name indicated, was a railroad community where the trains added a second engine to negotiate a sudden scarp in the high plains before going over the mountains to the west.

Longarm left the dead Indian with the county coroner and walked across the rutted street to the land office, where he found a federal official named Chadwick in charge. Chadwick was about forty and looked like a superannuated buffalo hunter, except for his broadcloth suit. Longarm told the land agent his reasons for calling and Chadwick led him back to a lean-to shack behind his office, where he kept the telegraph setup.

A writing desk stood under a long shelf of wet cell batteries. A sending and receiving set shared the green desk blotter with paper pads and some leather-bound code books. Chadwick asked if Longarm knew how to send, and seeing that the lawman needed no further help, left him to his own devices.

Longarm got on the key, patched himself through to Denver Federal, and sent a terse message:

CHIEF REAL BEAR MURDERED STOP STILL LOOKING FOR FUGITIVE STOP INVESTIGATING BOTH CASES STOP SIGNED LONG DEPUTY U S MARSHAL DENVER

Then he left without waiting for a reply. If he gave Marshal Vail a chance to contact him, he’d probably be saddled with all sorts of foolish questions and instructions.

He accepted a cigar from the land agent, and as they shared a smoke, filled his fellow federal man in on what had happened. Chadwick shook his head and said, “I heard the medicine men are jawing about evil spirits again. You don’t think it means more Indian trouble, do you?”

“Don’t know what it means. While I’m here, I’d best ask you some questions about the situation. You have many cattle spreads hereabouts?”

“Of course. That’s what I’m doing here in Switchback. Since the rails came through and Captain Goodnight brought the longhorns north, Montana’s turned to cattle country. Ain’t that a bitch? Five, six years ago this was all buffalo and redskins!”

“I noticed the electric lamp over the railroad yards. Anyone wanting to claim more land would come to you, wouldn’t they?”

“Sure. Most of the good stuff’s been filed on, though. I guess you want to know how many offers I’ve gotten on the reservation, right?”

“I admire a man who thinks on his feet.”

“Knew what you suspicioned the minute you told me about the dead Indian. But you’re barking up the wrong tree. I’ve had requests to extend the open range west into the reservation, but everyone knows by now that my hands are tied. Land and B.I.A. are both under the Department of the Interior, but I can’t file claims on Indian-held land and neither can anyone else.”

“So there’d be no money in it for white folks hereabouts to trifle with the Blackfoot. How about revenge?”

“You mean some white man killing Indians just for the hell of it, like Liver-Eating Johnson? Maybe, if he was sort of crazy. This Indian you brought in was killed right on the reservation, right?”

“Next door to the agency.”

“There you go. You show me a white man who can creep to the center of a reservation, kill a chief, and creep back out without leaving sign, and I’ll show you a white man who can out-Indian an Indian! I was out here when the Blackfoot were still in business killing folks, and while I don’t like ‘em all that much, I’ll give ‘em the edge on skulking. You know what I suspicion? I suspicion that old Indian was killed by one of his own! I don’t know a white man in the territory who could have pulled it off the way you say it happened.”

“I’d say you’ve got a point,” Longarm agreed. “Most Indian-killers pick ‘em off along the edges of the reservation. I’ve got a warrant on a breed named Hunter or Hunts Alone. Any of the spreads hereabouts hire a breed hand, lately?”

“A breed, working on a Montana spread? Hell, they’d hire a nigger first. Not as if they have. I’ve never seen a nigger cowhand, have you?”

“Yep. First man ever killed in Dodge City was a colored hand called Tex. Someone shot him the first day of the first drive up from Texas and they’ve been shooting ever since. I’ll take your word for it that Most Montana hands are white, though. How about the railroad or some other outfit?”

“You mean here in Switchback? I know just about every man in town, at least on sight. I don’t miss much, either, and I don’t like Indians. If there was a half-breed working in Switchback, even swamping out saloons, I’d have seen him, maybe five minutes before I ran him out of town. I could tell you stories, Longarm!”

“I’ve heard they Found some fellows after Apache worked ‘em over, too. We don’t have a good description of Johnny Hunts Alone, though. He could take after his pa’s side of the family. No telling how white he might look.”

“Didn’t you say Chief Real Bear said he was on the reservation?”

“Yeah,” Longarm said. “I see what you mean. He couldn’t look too white, unless some of the others have fibbed about not noticing.”

“He’s got to look nigh pure white or pure Indian, then, whether he’s hiding out with them or us. You can’t have him both ways.”

“You’re right. I thank you for the smoke. I’d best get over and see what the doc can tell me.”

Longarm left the land office and went back to the coroner’s. Inside, he found Real Bear even more messed up than when he’d been found. The coroner seemed cheerful, considering, as he looked up from the god-awful mess in his zinc-lined autopsy tray and said, “They fractured his skull before they started taking him apart. He was struck from behind with a blunt inStrument and most likely never knew what hit him.”

“That’s some comfort. You can’t tell what the weapon was, huh?”

“If I could I’d have said so. You mind if I keep his skull? Save for being stove in a little, it’s a beaut.”

“I told his kin I’d bring him back for a proper funeral, Doc. Are you a headhunter? I took you for a Presbyterian.”

“I’m writing a paper for the Smithsonian on hereditary bone structure. The Mountain Men spent more time screwing squaws than trapping beaver and some of the skull formations out here are getting interesting as hell.”

“Going to bury him head and all anyway. But while we’re on the subject, Doc, I’ve got papers on a Blackfoot breed who may be passing as anything. Is there anything I should be watching for?”

“You mean like the mark of Cain? It would depend on both parents. I’ve met pure-blooded Indians pale enough to worry about sunburn and some Scotch-Irish as white as you or me who have those same high cheekbones and hooked noses. I’d say if your man’s part Algonquinoid he might be a bit hatchet-faced for a white, but his complexion could go either way. If you could get your suspect to take down his pants—a lot of Indians have a dark sort of birthmark on their tailbone.”

Longarm grinned as he thought of a pretty little squaw he’d had with the lights on and dog-style, but he shook his head, and said, “That doesn’t seem a decent request, even from a lawman to a suspect. Could you sort of put him back together for me, Doc? I’d like to carry him home in a neater bundle.”

“Come back in about an hour. You figure they’ll leave the body in one of those tree-houses, or was he a Christian?”

“The Indian agency doesn’t let ‘em bury folks in the sky anymore. I know what you’re thinking, Doc, but forget it. This one’s gone for good.”

He said he’d be back directly and stepped outside, glad to inhale some fresh air after the medicinal smell of the coroner’s lab.

He headed back to where he’d left the buckboard, wondering what his next move ought to be, and suddenly grinned as he spied a wooden Indian standing in front of a cigar store next to a saloon. He muttered, “We were just talking about you!” and changed course to pick up some more smokes.

The unplanned move saved Longarm’s life, but only by an inch.

Something buzzed across the back of his neck, followed by the report of a high-powered rifle, and he wasted no time wondering if it had been an angry hornet. He loped for cover at a long-legged run without looking back as another bullet ticked the tail of his coat, and then he dove head-first through the front window of the saloon, sliding across a table on his belly in a confusion of broken glass, scattered chips, and cards, as the men whose poker game he’d broken up flew backwards from the table in all directions, swearing in surprise.

Longarm landed on his shoulder, rolled, and came to his feet with his gun in his hand and facing the shattered window as he shouted, “Hold it! I’m purely sorry about how I came in, but I come in peace!”

A gambling man kneeling in a corner with a drawn derringer got up, saying, “We heard the shots outside, stranger. How’d you get so popular?”

Longarm moved to the other window and looked out, gun in hand. It came as no great surprise to him that the street and boardwalks were devoid of life or movement. Everyone within sound of the shots had taken cover.

The bartender joined Longarm at the window. He had a barrel stave in one hand but his voice was reasonable as he said, “Before you bust this window, friend, who’s paying for the one you just come through so sudden?”

Longarm kept his eyes on the buildings across the way as he took out his wallet with his free hand and flashed his badge, saying, “Uncle Sam is paying for the glass and a round of drinks for everyone. Get back out of the light, though. That jasper was firing an express rifle!”

The gambling man with the derringer laughed and said, “Hell, nobody shoots folks I’m drinking with! You want me to see if I can circle in on the son of a bitch for you, Marshal?”

“It’s a kind thought, friend, but I imagine he’s pulled up stakes, and I don’t want gunplay with all those shops across the way likely filled with folks. I guess it’s safe for us to have that drink, now.”

“Any idea who tried to bushwhack you, Marshal?”

“I’m only a deputy, and I’ve got lots of folks gunning for me. Getting shot at comes with the job.”

He turned from the window to see the dozen-odd men in the saloon lining up along the bar as the bartender poured a long row of drinks. Longarm bellied up to an empty place and called for a shot of Maryland rye as he holstered his .44 and took out a voucher pad. When the barkeep brought his drink, he tossed it back in one throw, grimaced slightly, and explained, “I’m saying I busted fifty dollars worth of window in the line of duty. I can’t write off the booze, of course, but figuring a nickel a shot-“

“Hey, that window came all the way from St. Louis, mister.”

“That’s why I’m saying it was worth fifty instead of the twenty-odd you paid for it. Don’t shit me and I won’t shit you. I’m an expert on busted windows and I owe a certain obligation to the taxpayers.”

“How ‘bout seventy five and I’ll throw in another round of drinks?”

“Nope. I didn’t hurt anybody and I ain’t charging for the interesting diversion added to a dull afternoon, so I figure the boys rate one drink on me for such inconvenience as picking up cards and chips off the floor. If you want to argue about the damages, you are free to sue Uncle Sam for more. And now, having done my Christian duty, I’ll be saying adios.”

Without waiting for a reply, Longarm moved over to the swinging doors, risked a peep out front, and stepped out on the plank walk. Nobody shot at him, so he shrugged and went next door to the cigar store he’d been headed for in the first place.

As he stepped inside the richly scented darkness of the little shop, a female voice snapped, “Freeze right there, you son of a bitch!”

Longarm froze, staring soberly down the barrel of an S&W .45 in the right hand of a big blonde woman wearing the cotton shirt and batwing chaps of a working cowhand. Her face was sort of pretty under the beat-up Stetson she wore cavalry style, dead-center and tipped forward.

Longarm said, “Your servant, ma’am. I’d tip my hat, if you didn’t have the drop on me.”

“What in thunder’s going on out there?” the woman asked.

“I’m a U.S. Deputy Marshal and somebody just took a couple of shots at me. Now you know as much as myself.”

The store owner’s bald head appeared above the edge of the low counter he’d been hiding behind and he said, “I sure wish you’d put that gun away, Miss Sally.”

The big blonde hesitated, then shrugged and lowered the muzzle of her revolver. Longarm noticed she hadn’t put it back in the holster riding above her ample hips, so he kept his hands away from his own sides as he put them on the counter and said, “I came in here for some nickel cheroots. Do I save money buying ‘em by the boxful?”

“You want some nice scented cheroots I just got in? They smell sort of lavender when you light up.”

“Not hardly. I only want to smoke, not smell pretty.”

The girl called Sally laughed and said, “He’s been trying to sell them sissy cigars for months. You got a name, Marshal? They call me Roping Sally.”

“Deputy marshal, ma’am. My name is Custis Long. They call me Longarm.”

“I can see why. Custis is a sissy name.”

“I know. My mama was a gal, Miss Sally.”

“Hell, I don’t hold with that ‘Miss Sally’ shit. My friends treat me like I was one of the boys.”

The storekeeper explained, “Roping Sally owns the Lazy W. Her cows are scared of her, too.”

Roping Sally laughed, finally got around to holstering her gun, and said, “My poor sweet cows are waiting to join up with the Blackfoot, too. So give me my plug and I’ll be on my own way, damn it.”

Longarm raised an eyebrow and asked, “Are you the owner Calvin Durler’s been buying beef from, out at the Indian agency?”

“I’m one of ‘em. Got a herd of twenty waiting over in the railroad corral right now. Letting ‘em sort of rest and drink their fill before my boys and me herd ‘em over to the reservation.”

Longarm smiled sardonically and said, “The government pays by weight instead of by the head, huh?”

Her face was innocent, but her voice was mischief-merry as she nodded and replied, “Yep. That’s why I’m watering and feeding ‘em fit to bust before I run ‘em over in the cooler afternoon. As long as that dude’s paying by the pound, I may as well sell him plenty of water and cowshit with the beef. Damned Indians lose ‘em before it’s time to slaughter, anyway.”

He nodded. “So I heard. It’s no federal matter, I suppose, but watered stock is one thing and cow thieving is another. Don’t reckon you have any ideas on who’s been running off some of the reservation herd, huh?”

“It ain’t me. Sometimes I suspicion the Indians just lose cows down a prairie dog hole. Agent out there’s supposed to be making cowhands out of ‘em but he don’t know his ass from his elbow. He keeps buying beef and they keep getting lost, strayed, or stolen. Makes it a good market for the rest of us, though it does take forever to get paid.”

“Well, you don’t sell your best stock to Uncle Sam, do you?”

“Hell, do I look stupid? Prime beef goes east to Chicago for the top price and cash on the barrelhead. I don’t sell them poor redskins really dangerous sick cows, though. Just such runts and cripples as might not make it alive to Chicago’s yards. I shoot critters with anthrax, consumption, and such. Some folks say I have too soft a heart to be in the cattle business, but it wouldn’t be right to feed folks tainted beef.”

“I can see you’re a decent Christian woman—no’ offense intended. I have a dead Indian over at the coroner I’ll be carrying back to the reservation in a little while. I’d be pleasured to ride out with you.”

Roping Sally shook her head and said, “You’d best go on ahead, unless you like to ride right slow. I drive beef at a gentle pace. We’ll likely mosey in about sundown.”

“No use running weight off twenty head, huh? I knew a trail boss one time who used to haul a tank wagon along and water his stock a mile outside of Dodge.”

Roping Sally laughed and took a healthy bite from the cut plug the storekeeper had handed her. She said, “I know all the tricks of the trade, but I fight fair. I figured you for a gent who knew his way around a cow. You rope dally or tie-down?”

“Tie-down. I value my fingers too much to mess with that fancy Mexican dally-roping.”

“Tie-down’s too rough on the critters. I’m a dally roper, myself.”

“You must be good. I notice you’ve got ten fingers.”

“‘Course I’m good. That’s why they call me Roping Sally. If you’re out there when we ride in this evening, I’ll show off a mite with my border reata. The Indian kids get a kick out of watching me, too.”

Her boast gave Longarm an idea, but he didn’t mention it. He said, “I’m staying at the agency, so we’ll meet around sundown, Roping Sally.”

Then he finished buying his smokes and went to see if the dead Indian was back together yet.

Chapter 5

The funeral of Real Bear took about fifteen minutes, Christian time, and maybe twelve hours, Indian time. Longarm didn’t hang around to see the Indian ceremony. Calvin Durler read a short service over the open grave in the little burial plot a mile from the agency and Nan Durler threw a clod of earth and a handful of wildflowers on the pine planks of the chief’s coffin.

Then, as the three whites moved back, a Dream Singer called Stars Were Falling moved to the head of the grave with a rattle and started chanting as some kneeling squaws with shawled heads began to wail like coyotes.

Longarm and his host and hostess went back to the buckboard. Calvin drove back to the agency house with Nan at his side and Longarm sitting in the wagon bed, his boots dangling over the tail gate.

He’d told Cal the cattle were coming, so, after dropping Nan off at the house, the two men saddled up and rode in the other direction to the fenced-in quarter-section in which the reservation herd was supposed to be kept.

Calvin Durler sat his bay mare morosely as be tallied the small herd in the big pasture, muttering, “Damn. I’m supposed to have thirty-seven head. I only make it thirty-six. I’m missing one. I’m missing the damned kid who’s supposed to be watching, too.”

Longarm swept his eyes over the nibbled stubble of buffalo grass and said, “I see a break in the fence, over to the left of your windmill and watering tank. What are you missing?”

“I just told you. A cow,” Durler said impatiently.

“They’re all cows, damn it. Are you short a calf, a heifer, a steer, or what?”

“Hell, Longarm, I just count ‘em. I don’t know ‘em personal.”

“Yeah, you’re overgrazing too. Takes more than five acres a head of this short grass to graze longhorn. You’re treating them like a dairy herd instead of range cows.”

“Look, it’s the only way I know. How would you do it if you were me?”

“You’ve got a water tank to keep them from straying more than a few miles. I’d get rid of that foolish barbed wire and let ‘em at the grass all about.”

“Then how would we catch ‘em when it comes time to slaughter?”

“Round ‘em up, of course. Don’t you have any Indians who know how to drive critters in off the range?”

“I can’t get ‘em to watch the fool cows while they’re fenced, and to tell the truth, I don’t know much more than they do about working these spooky cattle.”

“I see some that ain’t branded, too. You do need help and that’s a fact.” Before Calvin could defend himself, Longarm squinted off to the east and said, “I see twenty—no, twenty-one head coming out to join you.”

Durler looked across the quarter-section and nodded, saying, “That’s Roping Sally and two of her hands with the new stock I ordered. Wait till you meet her. She is purely something.”

“We met in town this afternoon. Sure sits a horse nice andBoy, look at that, will you? The herd smelled strangers and was about to spill before she cut and milled the leader. That gal knows her cows!”

“She’s crazy, too. Nan says it’s not natural for a gal to dress like a man and ride astride like that. Nan’s scared of her. Thinks she might be one of those funny gals who are queer for their own kind.”

Longarm didn’t answer, not knowing about Roping Sally one way or the other. The cowgirl spotted the break in the fence and, thinking in the saddle, swung the leaders for it with a slap of her coiled leather reata. Her two helpers swung in behind the stragglers without being ordered, and together, the three of them worked the little herd through the gap to join the others.

Roping Sally called out something to one of her hands and the man dismounted to repair the fence as Roping Sally loped her big buckskin their way, her long hair streaming from under her Stetson as she shook out a community loop from her coil. She was halfway to them as she twirled the braided leather rope above her head, letting the loop grow larger and larger as she came. Then she flicked her wrist and the loop dropped vertically in front of her like a huge hoop. The well-trained buckskin leaped through it without breaking stride as she twisted in the saddle and recovered her loop with a wild whoop of sheer animal joy.

Durler laughed and said, “Every time she does that I keep saying it ain’t possible. How in hell does she do that without hanging up in her own rope?”

Longarm said, “It’s not easy. Pretty as hell, though.”

Roping Sally reined in near them, reeling in her reata like a fishing line with a series of blurred wrist movements and slapping the coil back in place neatly as she called out, “I found a stray I suspicioned was yours, Cal. Likely a half-weaned calf looking for his mama and halfway to town when he run into us. You gonna take my word on the weights this time or do we have to cut ‘em out and run ‘em over to your fool scales by the slaughterhouse again?”

Before the agent could answer, Longarm said, “We were just talking about that, Sally. New government policy. Uncle Sam’s buying them by the head, now.”

“Do tell? What’s the offering price per head these days?”

“They’re offering ten dollars a head for scrub stock. But seeing you’ve got some prime beef mixed in with those other cripples, how does fifteen sound?”

“Shit! I can sell ‘em to the meat packers at railside for more than that!”

“I know. Maybe you’d do better that way.”

She grinned and said, “Might have known you’d wise old Cal up. When do I get my money? Ain’t been paid for the last beef yet.”

Durler said, “I sent the voucher weeks ago, Sally. You know how Washington is.”

“That’s for damn sure. I’d starve to death if nobody was buying my good beef. Say, Longarm, what are you doing in that army saddle? I thought you was a cow man.”

“Used to be. Working for Uncle Sam on a government horse and rig these days.”

“Hell, I wanted to see if you could throw a rope without hanging yourself. You want to borrow Buck?”

Longarm was about to decline, but he noticed a handful of young Blackfoot had drifted over to watch the sundown diversions.

He remembered the idea he’d had in the cigar store and nodded. By now one of the teenaged hands riding with Roping Sally had joined them and the girl swung out of her dally saddle as he steadied the buckskin for her. She walked over to Longarm with a swish of her chaps and said, “You can tie down if you’ve a mind to. My reata’s a new one.”

Longarm dismounted and walked around to the near side of the buckskin. He shot a glance at the girl’s mount before he put a foot in the stirrup, muttering, “That’s the way it’s going to be, huh?”

He swung up in the saddle as the grinning boy passed him the reins and moved away. The buckskin took a deep, shuddering breath and exploded between Longarm’s legs.

He’d expected it since noticing the white of the buckskin’s rolling left eye, so he was braced for a dispute from the one-woman horse. Buck crow-hopped five or six times, saw he had a rider aboard, and started getting serious.

Roping Sally yelled, “Ride him, cowboy! Wahooooo!” as Buck and Longarm got acquainted. The buckskin shook himself like a wet dog at the top of every ascent through the evening sky and came down with the spine-snapping jolt of a serious bronc who wasn’t afraid of sinking up to his knees in bedrock. The Indian kids were shouting now. Longarm didn’t know if they were rooting for him or the horse as he noticed Buck was losing interest in killing him. He yanked his hat off with his free hand and started slapping it across the buckskin’s face, grunting, “Let’s get it all out of you, you old son of a bitch!”

But Buck had had enough. He was sensible as well as ornery and it’s tedious to work up a sweat over a man who won’t be thrown. Longarm saw that he had the buckskin under control and ran him hard once around the inside of the fence line to get the feel of him as he uncoiled a loop of reata. As he came by at a dead run, he whirled his medium-sized loop just twice to open it, and threw.

The dismounted Roping Sally crabbed sideways as she saw his intention but the leather loop came down around her head and shoulders anyway as she grabbed it, yelling, “You drag me and I’ll kill you!”

Longarm let go the coil to keep from doing any such thing as he reined Buck to a skidding stop, whirled him around, and dropped to the earth with a bow of mock gallantry.

Roping Sally looked relieved and said, “I thought you were mad. I forgot to tell you old Buck ain’t named after his color.”

“It was sort of interesting. You want to do me another favor?”

Roping Sally disentangled herself from her own rope and coiled the other thirty-five feet in, clucking about the way he’d let the oiled leather lay in the dusty stubble before she asked, “What’s your pleasure? I don’t screw, if that’s what you mean.”

“You see them Indian kids watching? Cal, here, has been trying to get them interested in working cows. I thought maybe you, your hands, and me might show them how much fun it can be.”

“I get your drift. What’ll we show ‘em? More rope work or some fancy cutting?”

“Let’s just play it by ear. I don’t have a saddle horn or rope, so I’ll cut. You three throw some cows down for the hell of it.”

He turned to Durler and said, “We’re putting on a wild-west show for your kids, here. Why don’t you talk us up? You might mention that working cows is almost as much fun as hunting buffalo was, when they had buffalo to mess with.”

Durler laughed and said, “I got you, Longarm. You there, Short Bird! Come over here, I want to talk to you.”

So, as the Indians watched, Longarm started cutting cows out of the uneasy, milling herd as Roping Sally and her two helpers went through the motions of roping and branding. Longarm enjoyed it as much as the grinning Indian kids, for Sally was a lovely thing to watch in the soft evening light as he worked with her. His army mount wasn’t a good cutting horse, but he managed well enough, and every time he sent a steer running her way Sally roped it on the first cast. She roped underhanded, overhanded, and sideways, as if her reata was an extension of her fingers. She caught and stopped them by the horns, by either hind foot, and once she dropped a rolling loop in front of a young steer and grabbed him around the belly as he leaped through the hoop. Her dismounted helpers threw each critter she caught and hogtied it as if for branding. Longarm noticed they never got sloppy, like some hands, and threw a critter on the wrong side. He Surmised that every animal she owned was branded on the left rump, the way well-tended cows were supposed to be. It was nice to see serious work. In his time he’d seen cows branded on the right side, either flank, or shoulder. Some old boys didn’t seem to give a damn where they marked a cow, as long as they got done by supper.

It was getting darker and Longarm knew enough showmanship to call a halt before the audience got restless, so he rode up beside Sally and yelled, “That’s enough! We’ve run fifty pounds out of this beef and if they’re not interested by now, they never will be.”

“Hot damn! You cut good, Longarm! What in thunder are you wasting time with that badge for? Any damn fool can work for Uncle Sam! Takes a man to work cows!”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. I just saw a gal who could show Captain Goodnight a thing or two.”

“My daddy wanted a boy. I just grew up as much of one as I knew how.”

They rejoined Calvin at the gate and the agent was smiling as he said, “If they didn’t enjoy it, I surely did. I still think some of those tricks aren’t possible. My wife and I would be pleased to have you and your hands join us for supper, Miss Sally.”

“That’s neighborly of you, Cal. But we gotta get home. You can send me the receipt for these new cows when you’ve a mind to.”

And then, without another word, she swung her mount around in a tight turn and was off across the pasture at a dead run. Her hands were a bit surprised, but they followed and the three of them jumped their ponies over the far wire without looking back.

Calvin laughed and said, “One thing’s for sure, Longarm. Nan’s wrong about her not liking men. I think you could have some of that, if you’ve a mind to.”

“Hell, Cal, she chews tobacco!”

“I noticed. Sure built nice, though. I suspicion you touched her heart by catching her with her own rope.”

Before Longarm could answer, an older Indian came up at a dead run on a painted pony, shouting, “Wendigo! Wendigo!”

It was the moon-faced Yellow Leggings. Durler called back, “What are you talking about? What Wendigo? Where?”

“North. Out on the prairie. Near the railroad tracks. Wendigo got Spotted Beaver! They just found him!”

“Spotted Beaver, the old man with that band of Bloods? What happened to him?”

“I told you! Wendigo got him! It was a bad thing they found. Wendigo killed Spotted Beaver and flew away with his head!”

“His head was taken, for sure,” said Longarm, staring down soberly from the saddle at the god-awful mess that a dozen Indians stood around in the moonlight. It was too dark by the time they’d ridden over with Yellow Leggings to make out every detail, but it was just as well. The corpse spread-eagled on the grassy slope near the railroad right-of-way had been carved up pretty badly.

Rain Crow rode over, holding a coal oil lantern in his free hand as he reined in beside Longarm to say, “No sign. I circled out at least a mile all around. You can see where Spotted Beaver’s pony walked. You can see where it ran away. You can see where they rolled in the grass as they fought. That is all you can see. The Wendigo is said to walk the sky at night.”

“I don’t mean to question you as a tracker, Rain Crow, but a man on foot might not leave much sign in this buffalo grass.”

“That is true. We don’t know how long the grass has had to spring back from a careful footstep. But we are five miles out on open prairie. You can see where Spotted Beaver left hoofmarks.”

“A man can walk five miles in less than two hours, even walking carefully.”

“True, but where would a human go? There is nothing north of the tracks for fifteen miles. We are twenty-five miles from the reservation line. Nobody came in to Spotted Beaver’s campground. The Bloods knew something was wrong when his pony returned without him. They fanned out as they searched in the sunset light. If a man had been walking, they would have seen him.”

“Suppose the killer was waiting out here, killed this man, then rode Spotted Beaver’s mount and-No, that won’t work, will it?”

“I have been thinking. The Bloods tell me the old man decided to ride out to look for medicine herbs late this afternoon. He told nobody but his own people, and they were all together when he was killed.”

“Yeah. Hard to set up an ambush when you don’t know where your victim’s likely to ride. Maybe some old boy who just hates any Indian did it,” Longarm speculated.

“You mean a white man? I have thought of this too. The railroad tracks are not far. But the trains do not stop, crossing the reservation.”

“So, while a mean cuss might snipe at a stray Indian from a moving train, he wouldn’t cut off his head and mess him up with a carving knife, would he? I’m going to check their timetable, anyway. There might have been a work train out here this afternoon. Though I can’t see how a whole work crew would stand by as one of ‘em killed and carved an old man up like this.”

“You don’t think it was the work of the Wendigo, then?” Rain Crow asked.

“I’ll be in a fix if it was. I never arrested a ghost before.”

Calvin Durler rode over from where he’d been talking to some other Indians and said, “My folks are spooked pretty bad. They keep saying there is an evil spirit on the reservation.”

Longarm said, “I won’t argue about evil, and I’m not ready to buy a spirit.”

“Jesus, they’re still keening over Real Bear, and now this! We’ve got to put a stop to these killings, Longarm! What are you aiming to do?”

“Not sure. I reckon we’ll just have to eat this apple one bite at a time. I’ll have a word with any Indian who has a mind to talk about it Then I’ll run this body in for an autopsy, too, and see what the railroad has to say about track-walkers and such.”

“I guess we’ve done all we can for tonight, then?”

“No. You go on home and lock your doors and windows. I figure I’m just getting started.”

Chapter 6

The old Blackfoot’s face was painted with blue streaks and flickered weirdly in the firelight, and though he wore a shirt and dungarees, his long gray hair was braided with eagle feathers hanging down on each side of his narrow skull. He squatted near the fire in a pool of light as the others listened from the surrounding shadows of the open campfire. From time to time he shook the bear-claw rattle in his bony hand to make a point as he half-spoke, half-chanted, “Hear me! This place is not where men should live! Do you see buffalo about you? Do you see the skull-topped poles of the Sun Dancers? No! There is nothing here for us but white man’s beef and who-knows-what in the iron drums of food he expects us to eat!”

Sitting their mounts beyond the firelight, Longarm and Rain Crow listened silently as the old man wailed, “In the Shining Times we ate fat cow! In the Shining Times we were men! In the Shining Times great Manitou smiled at us and our enemies wet their leggings at the mention of our name! But when the Blue Sleeves came we let them treat us like women. We let them tell us where we could live instead of fighting them like men! I say Wendigo has come among us because Manitou has turned his back on us in shame. I say we should fight again as men. I have spoken!”

Rain Crow started to translate, but Longarm hushed him, muttering, “I got the drift. Who’s that other old one coming forward now?”

“He is called Snake Killer. Do you want me to tell them to stop?”

“No. Let them have their say. Nothing here’s all that surprising.”

Snake Killer was, if possible, even older than the man whose place he was taking at the fire. He wore one tattered feather with a scalp-tip in his gray braids. His legs were bare, but he wore an old army tunic against the chill of the night. Longarm suspected that the tunic might have been issued to a Seventh Cav trooper, once. He could see where the arrow holes had been neatly darned over.

Snake Killer said, “Hear me. I do not count my coups, as all here know about my fight with the chief of the Snakes in the Shining Times. I agree this is a bad place for us. I, too, fear that Manitou no longer smiles on us, but I think it would be a bad thing to fight the Blue Sleeves again. They beat us when there were only a few white men on the high plains, and now there are many. Many. I say we should go north, into the lands of the white she-chief, Victoria. In Canada there are not so many white men. In Canada there are still buffalo along the Peace River. There are other people like us on the Peace River, but I think we could beat them and take their hunting grounds away. It would be a good fight—better than fighting the Blue Sleeves for land they’ve already ruined forever.”

Longarm swung his mount away and rode toward the agency as Rain Crow fell in beside him. The Indian policeman sighed and said, “They are just talking, I think. If you catch Wendigo in time they may not jump the reservation after all. Old Snake Killer likes canned beans and his bones are too brittle for the warpath.”

“Yeah, but that same conversation’s probably going on around a dozen fires tonight. Have any of Wovoka’s missionaries been talking to your folks, Rain Crow?”

“You mean that Paiute prophet who makes medicine shirts and tells of ghosts helping us against the army? I chased one away a few months ago. I know how to read and write. I think a man who puts on a medicine shirt Wovoka says is bulletproof would be foolish. I have seen one. The medicine shirt was badly tanned deerskin with painted signs all over it. They said its medicine would protect the wearer from a soldier’s bullets. But when I tested it with my knife it didn’t turn the tip of my blade! That’s when I chased the man away.”

“But not before you decided his medicine was no good, huh?”

“Of course. I am what I am. I was too young to fight in the Shining Times, but my father took hair from two of your soldiers before they killed him. If I thought I could drive all of you back across the big water, I would do it. But I know I can’t, so I am trying to learn. They say the Shining Times can never come again and I believe this. So I must be … I must be something new.”

“Well, you’re honest enough, and we’ll likely always need good lawmen, red or white.”

“It is almost a job for a real person. Tell me, is it true you white men count coup when you kill an enemy? I have heard it said yes and I have heard it said you just get drunk after a victory.”

“You heard it partly right both ways, Rain Crow,” Longarm said. “Sometimes we hoist a few drinks to celebrate a job well done and the soldiers get medals if they’ve done something worth bragging about.”

“I know what medals are. You wear them on your chest instead of your head. Have you ever heard of an Indian getting one of these medals?”

“Sure. The army’s decorated some scouts for gallantry in action.”

“I couldn’t scout for the army. They never fight anyone I don’t like. If they asked me to help them kill Ute or Crow I would scout for them and win many medals. But they always want to kill our allies.”

“Well, the killing’s almost over, I hope. Save for some Apache holding out down near the other border, the army doesn’t have much call for scouts any more. They’ve got a white scout over at the fort. You know him?”

“Jason? Yes. He is a good person, for a white man. I asked him why the soldiers were still there and he said he didn’t know. He said he just goes where they send him. He said he didn’t think the soldiers were mad at us any more.”

“Yeah. I’d say their officer is a pissant, though. He’s bored and spoiling for a fight. I do hope if your folks decide to act foolish they’ll jump north instead of any other way. Wouldn’t take much to start that old lieutenant shooting.”

They rode back to the agency, where Rain Crow said he’d stable Longarm’s mount before going back to his own shanty. Longarm asked if he wanted a cup of coffee first and the Indian said, “No. The woman is nice to us, but she is afraid. Deer Foot says she thinks the agent’s wife is going to run away from him one day. When this happens, I do not want to know anything about it.”

Longarm said good-night to the Indian and went inside, thinking of Rain Crow’s notion. If the Indians saw it too, he hadn’t been as dirty-minded as he’d first supposed. Nan was fixing to run off with the first man who made her an offer and she was a pretty little thing. On the other hand, Calvin Durler was a decent cuss. Being a Christian surely could get tedious.

Inside, he found the Durlers seated at the kitchen table with a tiny white girl dressed like a sparrow. Calvin said, “Longarm, allow me to present you to Miss Prudence Lee. She arrived just after you rode off.”

Longarm removed his hat as the agent added, “Miss Lee’s from the Bible Society. I keep telling her she’d do better in town, but she says she’s come to bring the Gospel to our red brothers.”

Prudence Lee dimpled prettily, considering how little there was of her, and said, “We were just talking about the ritual murders, Deputy Long. It’s my intention to show the Blackfoot the error of their ways.”

Longarm forked a leg over a chair and sat as Nan Durler shoved a mug of coffee in front of him without looking at him. He grinned and said, “The army’s sort of showed them some errors already, Miss Lee. What do you mean by ritual murders?”

“Isn’t it obvious that the medicine men have been sacrificing people to their heathen gods?”

“No, ma’am, it’s not. I’ve been told the Pawnee used to make human sacrifices, long ago, but none of the other plains tribes went in for it, even before we, uh, pacified them.”

“Come now, I know I’m a woman, but I know the terrible things they’ve done to captives in the past.”

“Captives, maybe. That was torture, not religion. The two killings we just had were simple murder. The men killed were both on friendly terms with such Blackfoot as I’ve asked.” He looked at Durler to add, “Rain Crow and I saw some old boys pow-wowing about a trip to Canada. You’d better see about issuing some rations and back payments.”

“My God, I’d better let the army know if they’re preparing to jump the reservation, too!” Durler said.

“I wouldn’t do that. Not unless you want some dead Indians no Wendigo had to bother killing. Those boys over at the fort are bored and ugly.”

Prudence Lee, having warmed to her subject, broke in insistently to ask, “What about the Sun Dance?”

“Sun Dance, ma’am?”

“That business of dancing around a big pole with rawhide thongs punched through living flesh. You can’t tell me that’s not a blood sacrifice!”

“Oh, bloody enough, I suppose. But we don’t let ‘em do that any more. Besides, you’re missing a point. Indians think it’s brave for a man to shed his own blood to Manitou. Other people’s blood doesn’t count as a proper gift.”

“Brrr! To think of God’s creatures living in such ignorance of the Word! Manitou is what they call their heathen god, eh?” Prudence asked.

“Well, Manitou means ‘god’, in Blackfoot, ma’am. I don’t know how heathen he might be. Seems to me the Lord would be the Lord no matter what you call Him.”

“Agent Durler tells me many of his charges speak English, so I’ll have little trouble setting them straight. You did say I could use the empty house next door as my mission, didn’t you, Mister Durler?”

Calvin shrugged and said, “If you won’t go back to town. You won’t be able to sleep there till we repaint the bedroom, though. Uh, you know what happened there, don’t you?”

“Pooh, I’m not afraid of ghosts. My Lord is with me, even into the valley of death, forever.”

Longarm wondered why she didn’t say “Amen,” but he knew better than to ask. He took out his watch and said, “Be more room here, if I took Spotted Beaver into Switchback tonight. I’ll get there before midnight if I leave soon.”

Durler asked, “Will the coroner be up at that hour?”

“Don’t know. If he ain’t, I’ll have to wake him, won’t I?”

“He isn’t going to like it much,” Durler cautioned.

“I don’t like not knowing what killed Spotted Beaver, either. The railroad station’s open all night and I’ll have a few questions for them, too. I’ll toss my saddle roll in the wagon and bed down somewhere along the way, once I’m finished in town.”

Nan Durler grimaced and said, “You don’t mean to sleep out on the open prairie, do you?”

“Why not, ma’am? It don’t look like rain.”

“It makes my flesh crawl just to think about it! It’s so creepy-crawly out there at night!”

“I spend half my nights sleeping out on the prairie,” he said. This wasn’t strictly true, but he thought it might disabuse her of any notions she might have about his carrying her off to his castle in the sky. Even if he was wrong, he did intend to spend at least one night in the open. This place was too full of women for a man to sleep peaceably in, alone.

Longarm’s luck was with him when he drove into Switchback about eleven that night. A lamp was lit over the coroner’s office and the saloons were still going full-blast.

He pounded on the coroner’s door until the older man came to cuss out at him. Then he said, “Got another one for you, Doc. You don’t get his skull, either. Somebody beat you to it.”

He carried the stiff, wrapped form of Spotted Beaver into the lab and flopped it on the table as the coroner lit an overhead lamp. The coroner said, “Good thing I’m half asleep and my supper’s about digested. What in hell tore this old boy up?”

“I was hoping you could tell me, Doc. What say you give him the once-over while I run over to the railroad station. We got some trains to ask about, too.

He left the coroner to his job and walked the three blocks to the station, where he found the stationmaster dressed but asleep in a cubbyhole office under an electric light bulb. The man awoke with a start as Longarm came in, glanced at the wall clock, and said, “Ain’t no trains due for a good six hours, mister.”

“I ain’t looking for a ticket. I’m a Deputy U.S. Marshal after some information. You have a train stopped out on the Blackfoot reservation this evening?”

“Stopped? Hell, no. There was a westbound freight around four and an eastbound crossing closer to six. No reason to stop, though, and both were on time, so they likely didn’t.”

Longarm took out a cheroot, stuck it between his front teeth, and spoke around it as he fished in his pocket for a match. “Some one killed an Indian near your tracks. I wondered if you might have some crewmen who lost kin at Little Big Horn or such.”

The stationmaster shook himself wider awake and thought for a moment. “I know the boys on both crews. I don’t think either of them would be mean enough to shoot at folks as they passed by.”

“This jasper got off to work close up with a knife. How fast do your trains run through there?”

“Hmmm, the eastbound’s coming downgrade a mite, so it’d be crossing the prairie there about forty-odd. Westbound might slow to twenty or thirty on uphill grades. I’m going by the timetables, you understand. So we’re talking about average speeds. Be a mite faster going down a rise than up, but, yeah, I’ll stick with those speeds. You want the names of the engineers?”

“Not yet. Looks like I’m sniffing up the wrong tree. While I’m here, though, do your trains run the same time every day?”

“Not hardly. Depends on what’s being freighted where. We get a wire when a train’s due in or out, but the timetable varies. Why do you ask?”

Longarm took a match from his pocket, igniting it with his thumbnail in the same motion, and touched the flame to his cheroot. “Man figuring to hop a slow freight would have to know when one was coming.”

The stationmaster looked astounded. “Hop a freight on open prairie? We don’t run freights that slow, Deputy. Be a pisser to reach for a grabiron doing more’n ten miles an hour, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah. Like I said, I’m likely in the wrong place.”

Longarm left the man to sleep away the rest of his night in peace and went back to the coroner’s.

The coroner couldn’t tell him anything he didn’t know already. Spotted Beaver had been killed and cut up, down, and crosswise. Except for the head, nothing important was missing. The coroner found nothing to tell him what had killed the headless trunk, though he muttered laconically, “None of that knifework did him a lick of good. If he was shot or bashed, the evidence left with his head.”

“Could you say what was used to rip him up like that, Doc?”

“Something sharp. Wasn’t a butcher’s meat saw or animal teeth. but name anything else from a pen-knife to a busted bottle and I’ll swear to it.”

Longarm asked, “Can I leave him here with you for the night, Doc?”

“Sure. I’ll put him away for you on ice. I know you’re driving a long, lonesome ways, but they don’t bother me all that much.”

“I’m not worried about traveling with a dead man. Done it before in my time. Come morning, though, I aim to ship the remains to Washington for a real going-over at the federal forensic labs. I’ll come back before high noon.”

“I’ll tin his internals in formalin for you, then. What do you figure I missed?”

“Likely not a thing Doc. But it pays to double-check.”

“I don’t have the gear to look for obscure drugs or poisons, but you don’t think he was drugged, do you?”

“Don’t know what to think. Just covering every bet can come up with till I hit a winning hand.”

“Makes sense. How come you’re making such a roundabout night of it, though? You could take a room over at the Railroad Hotel and get an early start, since you’re due back anyway, before noon.”

Longarm kept his true reasons to himself as he said, “I’ve got an appointment at the agency, come sunup. They’re expecting me back tonight.”

He said good night and left, going next to the saloon he’d busted up. The night man on duty didn’t know him but a couple of the men who’d seen him come through the window wanted to buy him a drink. So Longarm let them, then stood a round in turn as he casually swept the crowd with his eyes from under the brim of his hat. Nobody seemed too interested in him. He told the two boys drinking with him part of what had been going on and repeated that he was heading back to the agency alone.

Then, having spread the word as much as he could without being too obvious, he left. He climbed to the buckboard seat and drove out of Switchback at a trot.

It was after two in the morning now, and the moon was low in the west, painting a long, zigzag chalk line of light where the black mass of the distant Rockies met the clear, starry bowl of the sky. It would be darker soon, and though he knew the mule could see well enough by starlight to carry them safely back to the agency, which wasn’t now all that far, he had other plans.

They knew at the agency that he was supposed to be bedded down out here in the nothing-much. He’d told everyone in town who’d listen much the same thing.

He slowed the mule to a walk about three miles out of town and just over the horizon from the top windows of the agency. There was no wind and the night was as quiet as a tomb. Longarm looked up at the Milky Way arching palely against the night sky and muttered, “He-Who-Walks-the-Midnight-Sky, huh? If you’re up there you’d best get cracking, Wendigo, old son. You’re running a mite late of midnight.”

He wheeled off the wagon ruts and reined in fifty yards away on the open prairie. The moon had dropped out of sight behind the Front Range now, and the outlined snow fields were dimming away. Longarm tethered the mule in its traces to a cast-iron street-anchor and put an oat bag over its muzzle, saying, “You’ll have to manage through the bit, old mule. Ain’t sure how long we’re staying hereabouts.”

He threw his bedroll to the ground a few yards from the buckboard and spread it out in the darkness. He pulled up some bunches of dry buffalo grass and stuffed some under the weather tarp to make the bedroll appear occupied. Then he took kindling and some dry cow chips from the wagon bed and built a small night fire eight feet from the bedroll, moving back and keeping himself to the north of the little flickering fire as he moved back to the tethered mule and buckboard. He took his Winchester from the wagon boot, levered a round into the chamber, and hunkered down under the wagon.

A million years went by.

Longarm shifted quietly to a more comfortable position, seated in the grass with his back against a rear wheel and the rifle across his bent knees as he chewed an unlit cheroot to pass the time and keep awake.

Another million years went by.

Somewhere in the night a coyote howled and once a train hooted far across the prairie. He muttered, “Must be a special. Stationmaster said the next train was due in six hours and that was two or three hours ago.”

Then he heard something.

He didn’t know what it was, or where it was coming from, but he suddenly knew he wasn’t alone on the lonely prairie. He realized he’d stopped breathing and inhaled slowly through his nose, straining his ears in the dead silence all around.

A big gray cat was walking around in Longarm’s gut for some fool reason; he told himself he didn’t believe in ghosts. Nobody sensible believed in ghosts, but then, nobody sensible was sitting out here in the middle of nothing-much after making himself a target for whoever might be interested.

He heard the sound again, and this time he grinned as he identified it, muttering, “Man or devil, the son of a bitch is riding a pony!”

The sound he’d heard was someone dismounting, trying not to squeak saddle leather in the process, but not quite managing. Longarm had the sound located, more or less. Someone had reined in on the far side of the wagon ruts and climbed down for a more Apache-style approach than most found neighborly when coming in on a night fire.

Longarm rolled forward, shoving the Winchester into position for a prone shot as he stared into the inky blackness and listened for a footstep. Once he heard what might have been the distant ting of a spur on dry grass, but it was hard to tell. Whoever it was, was moving in like a cat. Longarm studied the stars along the skyline, and after a while, one winked off and on. He knew where the other was, now, but it was too far to do anything about. Another star went out and stayed that way. The jasper was standing there, likely studying the fire and what he could see of the bedroll. If he had a lick of sense he’d move a mite closer in. He was way too far out for a decent shot.

Then a distant female voice called out, “Longarm! Look out!” and a rifle flashed orange in the darkness near the vanished star. Longarm fired at the flash and rolled away from his own gun’s betraying flame as, much farther off, a third gun fired, twice.

He heard the sound of metal on dry grass, followed by a groan and a thud. Longarm was under the tailgate now, so he rolled over once more and sprang to his feet, his Winchester at the ready.

The feminine voice called out again, closer, and Longarm heard the sound of running boot heels and jingling spurs as Roping Sally shouted, “Are you all right, Longarm?”

“Stay back, God damn it! I can’t see a damn thing and I only shoot at one thing at a time!”

“I got him outlined against your fire and he’s down! I’m coming in!”

Longarm circled wide. Then, as he got well clear of his night fire, he too could make out the inkblot on the grass. Another shadow stepped over it and kicked it, muttering, “There you go, you mother-loving, bushwhacking son of a bitch!”

As Longarm moved in cautiously, Roping Sally turned to the sound of his footsteps and said in a girlish tone, “He’s dead as a turd in a milk bucket, old son! Who got him, you or me?”

“Maybe both of us put one in him, Sally. What in thunder are you up to out here?”

“I saw you come out of the saloon and ride off. Then I spied this jasper running for his pony like he aimed to go somewhere serious, so I sort of tagged along after him. I had him betwixt your fire and me when he dismounted, sneaky-like. So I did the same and, oh, Lordy, I thought you were in that fool bedroll!”

“So did he, most likely. Let’s see who he used to be.”

As Longarm knelt and turned the dead man over in the fitful glow, Sally said, “Hot damn! I might have known you were setting a trap for the bastard! Who was he, and how’d you know he aimed to follow you?”

Longarm muttered, “Shit—sorry, ma’am. His handle was Fats. I threw him off a train in the Denver yards and he said he’d remember me. I guess he did. As to knowing he was likely to follow me, I was aiming higher. You see his rifle hereabouts?”

“Over there to the southeast. Looks like an express rifle to me.”

“Me too. He was the one who took a shot at me in town the other day, damn it! Poor silly varmint tracked me all the way up here just because I made him look foolish one time. He had a younger sidekick, too.”

“He followed you alone, Longarm. You reckon his pal is in Switchback?”

“Hope not. I’ve got enough on my plate up here. You hear mention of a new hand in the country called Curley?”

“Nope. There’s a Curley riding for the Double Z, east of town, but he’s been here for at least two years.”

“Damn! I can’t chance not watching for one more old boy with a poor sense of humor and I can’t waste time hunting him down. I’ve got bigger fish by far to fry!”

“Tell me what the bastard looks like and me and my friends’ll be proud to round him up for you,” Sally offered.

“Can’t do that, Roping Sally. No telling how many innocent drifters might get hurt if I turned you loose with a private posse!”

“Well, can I tell you if I see or hear tell of folks named Curley?”

“Sure, Sally. But just don’t get excited before you talk to me about it, hear?” Longarm cautioned.

“I’ll be sly as hell. What are we to do with this rascal here?”

“I’ll put him in the wagon bed and see if they’ll bury him for me someplace. Might be papers out on him, somewhere. He took things too seriously for a boy with a clean record.”

“Hot damn! You mean I might get a reward for shooting him?”

“If there’s anything like that I’ll see that you get the money, but you’d best let me take credit for gunning him, Sally. I don’t want any of his friends dropping by to pay you a call some night.”

“Aw, hell, I was aiming to brag on it some,” Sally said disappointedly. “Lots of folks in this county treat me like a sissy!”

“You’re all man, Roping Sally, but let’s not build you a rep as a gunslick if we can help it. It can make for nervous nights. Believe me, I know!”

“I’ll do as you say. Where you heading now?”

“Hadn’t thought about it all that much. I doubt if anyone else is likely to creep into this web tonight. I gave my bed at the agency to a guest of the Durlers. Hmm, I’d best carry you and this jasper back to town and try for some shut-eye at the hotel.”

“You can stay at my spread, if you’ve a mind to. It’s just to the northwest of town.”

“Uh, I figure to get up with the chickens, Sally.”

“Hell, don’t we all? You come on home with me and I’ll fry you some eggs before we turn in.”

Longarm didn’t answer. Roping Sally punched him on the shoulder and asked, “What’s the matter, are you scared of me?”

“Not hardly. But what’ll folks say about it in Switchback?”

“Who gives a hoot and a holler? I don’t keep any hands on my spread. The boys I was riding with before live with their folks in town and I hire ‘em as I need ‘em. Ain’t nobody there but me and a mess of critters. I got dogs and cats, Shanghai chickens, a Poland China hog, and my remuda and herd keeping me company, but not one of ‘em ever gossips about me worth mention.”

Longarm laughed and said, “We’ll talk about it along the way.”

Chapter 7

Roping Sally’s house was a large one-room soddy with a lodgepole roof and a cast-iron kitchen range sharing space with a fourposter bed and enough supplies to stock a general store. They’d stored Fats in the smokehouse and put the mule in with Buck. Longarm sat at an improvised table made of planks laid across two barrels. He smoked as he watched Sally putter at the range with her back to him. He noticed that the seat of her pants was tight and worn shiny between the wings of her flapping chaps, and though she was a mite broad across the beam where she sat a horse, her waistline was as trim as if she’d been cinched up in a whalebone corset. The hickory shirt she wore was tight enough for him to see she wasn’t wearing a corset, or much else, under it. She was one handsome woman—considering she chewed cut plug—but Longarm couldn’t figure her out. He was either getting into something too good to be true, or just as likely, about to make a terrible mistake.

The girl turned with a grin and plopped two coffee mugs and a pair of tin plates down in front of him, saying, “There you go. Wrap yourself around those eggs before you tell me I can’t cook.”

“Uh, don’t we use some forks or something, Sally?”

“Oh, Lordy, I’m so flusterated I clean forgot the silverware! You’ve likely suspicioned I don’t entertain all that much.”

He waited until she’d put some oversized cutlery on the planks before he said cautiously, “You told me, coming in, you didn’t have any fellows sparking you.”

“Hell, there ain’t a man in Montana worth spit on a rock. Present company not included, of course.”

“Sally, you can’t tell me somebody hasn’t tried,” Longarm said skeptically.

“Sure they have. Sissy little things who have to sit down to pee, most likely. I knew they were just after my daddy’s cows.”

“Oh, you got a daddy hereabouts?”

“Dead. Got thrown and busted his neck, summer before last. He raised me to be a cowhand and he likely raised me right, for I’ve done right well here, without him. What’s the matter with the eggs? You ain’t eating ‘em.”

Longarm put a forkful of rubbery, over-fried eggs in his mouth and chewed hard. He swallowed bravely before he shook his head and said, “You got ‘em just right, Sally. I’m a mite tuckered after such a long, hard day, is all.”

“Why don’t we go to bed then? Which side would be your pleasure?”

“Sally, I’d best spread my bedroll out in the wagon bed, out back.”

“What in thunder for? I took a bath last Saturday. Besides, that fellow in the smokehouse tore shit out of your blankets with that old express rifle.”

“Sally, how old are you?”

“I’m old enough, I reckon. My daddy and me ran just about the first longhorns north from the Powder River Range to this here territory and I shot my first Sioux before I lost my cherry!”

Longarm brightened and said, “Oh? I was, uh, wondering how soon we were likely to get to that subject.”

“My daddy said I wasn’t a virgin anymore when I told him about it. He was sore as hell, but there wasn’t all that much he could do about it, since the cuss who cost me my cherry was long gone. You want to hear about it?”

“Not really. Just wanted to know where this trail was leading me. You take the right side and I’ll take the left and we’ll likely wind up in the middle. You want me to blow out the lights?”

“What for? There’s stuff all over the floor and we’d likely bust a leg finding our way.”

“Suits me. Most gals like to undress in the dark.”

Roping Sally looked puzzled and said, “You reckon we ought to take our clothes off just to sleep two or three hours? It’s going on four, and my old Shanghai rooster starts crowing any minute now.”

“Well,” Longarm said, “you’re right about it being late, but I sleep better raw, so I’d best blow out the lights.”

“I’ll do it. You just climb over those boxes and I’ll join you.”

He did as she told him and had his boots off about the time Roping Sally doused the last lamp. He undressed, frowning and puzzled, then got under the covers as Sally climbed in on the other side, saying, “I took my britches and boots off, but I don’t like the way these old blankets scratch when I don’t wear my shirt.”

Longarm reached for her and snuggled her head against his shoulder as he asked mildly, “You ever think of using sheets?”

“They just get dirty and torn up when I’m too tired to shuck my boots after a hard day’s ride. What are you hauling on me like that for?”

“Don’t you want me to cuddle you some, first?”

She moved closer and nestled her body into the curve of his as she said, “It sure feels nice. I like the way you run that hand up and down me, too. Feels like you’re petting me right friendly.”

Longarm slid his hand to her face in the dark, turned her chin up, and kissed her lips. Roping Sally’s lips were a mite wind-chapped and her breath smelled like a tobacco shop, but she responded after a moment of hesitation. Longarm wondered why women always seemed to want to back off at the last minute after damned near running a man all around the corral to rope and saddle him. He kept his lips against hers as he moved the hand downward. Sally stiffened as he cupped her mons in his palm and rubbed her lightly through her shirttail. She rolled her mouth aside and whispered, “Are you getting dirty with me?”

Longarm was finding it difficult to keep his amazement concealed. He said levelly, “Honey, there ain’t anything dirty about this. It’s why the Lord made men and women different, is all.”

“I don’t know if you ought to do that, though. You’re getting me all mushy and funny-like.”

But she had her own free hand on the back of Longarm’s, now, and when he asked if she wanted him to stop, she pressed it closer and murmured, “Don’t know what I want. It feels nice as anything, but I ain’t sure I ought to let you keep going.”

“Sally, it’s going on four, I got a long day ahead of me, and this palaver must cease. We’ve got no time for any more games!”

Suiting his actions to his words, Longarm cocked a leg over her, parted her ample thighs with his knee, and climbed aboard, moving her damp shirttail above her navel as he guided himself into her. Her matted pubic hair was wet with her own desire and though she was tighter than he’d expected, he sank full-depth into her on the first thrust.

Sally gasped, “My God! What are you doing to me?”

He tactfully avoided a direct answer. “Could you maybe move your knees up some? You’re tighter than a drum, and-“

“Oh, Lord, I’m ruined! I swear I think you’re screwing me!”

Longarm frowned in the darkness, but this was no time to discuss the details. She began to respond with hard, rocking thrusts of her own, even as she sobbed, “You never told me you wanted to get dirty! This is terrible! How will we ever be able to look one another in the eye again, come daylight?”

“I’ll stop if you’ve a mind to,” Longarm lied considerately. But Roping Sally dug her nails into his bouncing buttocks, spread her legs wider, and moaned.

Longarm figured she was one orgasm ahead of him by the time he stopped to get his breath back, still in the saddle. Roping Sally was breathing hard, too, but she sighed, “Oh, my, that was more fun than Saturday night after roundup! Can we do it again? I know you’ve ruined me forever, but now that I know what all the fuss is about I’m sort of getting the hang of it.”

Longarm thought of himself as a patient man, but this was too much.

“Sally, what in thunder are you talking about? You’re not going to tell me that old sad tale about being a virgin, are you?”

“I don’t know what tale you’re talking about, but if you mean to ask have I done it before, I ain’t. You won’t tell anybody, will you?”

“Honey, you told me you lost your cherry years ago and that your pa was pissed at the jasper who did it!”

“Oh, that was when our wrangler put me aboard a spooky bronc when I was maybe thirteen. I rode the bronc, but when I got off, my crotch was all bloody and Daddy was sore as hell. He said the ride had busted my cherry, and-“

Longarm’s eyes rolled upward and he slapped his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Oh, Jesus! I see the light and I’m purely sorry, ma’am!”

“You ought to be sorry, you dirty old thing. You just screwed me and I’m a ruined woman, but to tell you the truth, I ain’t all that riled. You want to do it some more?”

He stayed inside her, but didn’t move, as he cleared his throat and said, “Sally, we’ve got to talk about this. I know a gent’s supposed to do right by a lady and all, but I ain’t the marrying kind … damn it! I had you down as a tough old cowgal!”

“I’m tough enough, I reckon. You don’t think getting screwed is likely to turn me sissy, do you?”

“Not hardly, but … shit, I just don’t know what to say.”

“Are you sore at me? I know folks are supposed to be ashamed to see each other after they’ve been ruined, but you know what? I still like you, even after being dirty with you.”

He kissed her tenderly, and said, “I like you, too, honey. I just ain’t been down this trail too many times and I don’t know what I’m supposed to say or do.”

“Well, you’ve said we’re still pals, and as to doing, I wish you’d either take that fool thing out of me or move it right some more!”

Longarm laughed and started responding to her mischievous thrusts. In a short while, it didn’t seem all that big a fuss. Roping Sally might have been a late-bloomer, but for a virgin, she caught on quickly.

Longarm was awakened at sunup by the sound of flowers and the smell of birds. The morning breeze was banging sunflower heads against the window over the bed and the chickens in the upwind henhouse stank something awful.

He stretched and the blonde head cupped on his naked shoulder murmured, “Don’t get up, yet. The chores can go hang this morning. I want to hear some more of those facts of life you were jawing about before we went to sleep.”

He scraped a thumbnail through the stubble on his jaw, ran a tongue over his fuzzy teeth, and sighed. “I’ve got to get back to my job, honey. Besides, I’ve told you all I know about the birds and bees and how you gals might keep from getting in a family way.”

She raised her head shyly, stared at him in the wan gray light, and grinned, saying, “I can look you in the eye, anyway. Likely I ain’t ruined after all.”

“I told you it came natural, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, but Daddy said folks jeered at ruined womenfolks. We’d best not tell anybody we’ve been screwing, huh?”

“I don’t think we should do it in the streets of Switchback, but between us, we can likely whup anyone who jeers all that much. Why don’t you catch a few more winks? I’ll get something to eat in town before I start asking around about the fellow we shot last night.”

“I am purely tuckered. When will you be coming back this way again? You are fixing to, ain’t you?”

“Well, sure, if you want me to. I’m going to be right busy most of the day, but if I get the chance, tonight-“

“Hot damn! I’ll take a bath, then. You were right about it being nicer with all my clothes off. Maybe I can find some sheets around here somewhere.”

Longarm swung his bare legs out from under the covers and started to dress as Roping Sally watched. When he stood up to pull his tight riding pants up she sighed and said, “Jesus, you’re pretty. Did you get them shoulders roping cows or hugging other gals?”

“Little of both, I suspicion. You’re built nice, too, Sally.”

“I’m in fair shape from hard work and clean living, up to last night, I reckon, but these fool big tits of mine get in the way when I’m wrestling steers to the ground. You sure you weren’t funning when you said you liked ‘em?”

“I kissed ‘em both, didn’t I? Go back to sleep, now. I’ll try to make it back around sundown.”

He finished dressing and went outside. He got the stiff, heavy corpse from the smokehouse and threw it in the wagon bed, tossing a tarp over the late Fats before hitching the mule in its traces. Then he climbed up and drove out across the cattle guard to the road to Switchback in the crisp morning sunlight. Nobody saw him, thank God. He didn’t know what he was going to do about Roping Sally and himself, but at the moment he had other things to worry about.

Chapter 8

Switchback kept early hours, so by the time he’d eaten breakfast near the railroad station, had a shave at the barber shop he found open across the street, and asked some more questions about the railroad, the coroner’s office was open.

The coroner came out to lift a corner of the tarp as he asked, “What are you doing, starting a collection? I can tell you what killed this one without an autopsy. He was hit front and back with bullets. Either round would have been enough.”

“I’m just reporting the killing to you for your county records, Doc. I’ll see that he gets buried. You got the specimens for me to ship to Washington?”

“Canned his liver and kidneys along with the heart and lungs. You can have them any time you like. Are you sending them East on the noon express?”

“Yep. I’ll see about getting the rest of the remains out to the reservation for burial this afternoon. Got another errand to do, first.”

“You want to put this cadaver in my vault for now, or do you feel the need for company?”

“I’d take that kindly, Doc, if it ain’t imposing.”

“It is, some, but you’ll impose on everybody if you leave him out in the hot sun under that tarp much longer. I’ll get my helpers to tote him inside if you want to leave your buckboard parked here for a while.”

Longarm thanked the helpful county official and headed for the land office. He found Agent Chadwick lounging in the open doorway and asked if he could use the federal telegraph line again. Chadwick nodded and led him back to the wire shack as Longarm filled him in on everything but Roping Sally.

Longarm sat at the desk and got to work on the wire. Chadwick, after a time, lost interest and went back out to the front office. It took Longarm over an hour to make all his inquiries and get some answers. When he had finished he got up and went to join the land agent. He found Chadwick just saying good morning to a surly-looking man in range duds. The land agent handed Longarm a cigar and explained, “That was old Pop Wessen. He’s heard about trouble on the reservation and wants to file a homestead claim out there. Got sore when I told him it was a foolish notion.”

“I wanted to ask you about that, Mr. Chadwick. What would happen to all that land if the Blackfoot sort of, well, lit out for Canada or someplace?”

“You mean abandoned the land held in trust for them? Nothing, right away. I suppose the army would round ‘em up and bring ‘em back, in time, don’t you?”

“Those the army left breathing. Would the land revert to public domain if it stayed empty long enough?”

Chadwick shifted his cigar and thought for a moment before he said, “It’d take a long time, but if Uncle Sam just couldn’t get any Indians to live on that range for, oh, at least seven years … you know what? I don’t know what the regulations are. I’ve got enough paper on the open-range questions I answer for white folks.”

“Seems to me some of the Cherokee lands down Oklahoma way got taken by white settlers after the Cherokee picked the wrong side in the War. If those Blackfoot lit out and abandoned the reservation, hmm, seven years is a long time, ain’t it?”

“I think I get your drift. You’re suggesting someone’s trying to run the Indians off, eh?”

“It’s a natural suspicion, but planning on filing on abandoned land seven years up the road seems a right cool game for anyone with murder on their mind. You’re sure there’s no way anyone could get at that range sooner, huh?”

Chadwick puffed his cigar pensively. “Not as far as I know. Find out anything about that old boy you shot last night?”

“Yeah, he had his last name in his wallet. The nickname Fats fit the wanted papers on him. He was a gunslick for hire. New Mexico has a murder warrant on him and he’s suspected in other parts of picking fights for pay.”

“But you said you had a fuss with him in Denver.”

Longarm nodded, slowly scratching the back of his neck. “I did. What I’m trying to figure, now, is whether he trailed me up here for personal reasons or was in town on other business, saw me, and decided to pay me back. I never told him I was coming to Switchback. I disremember saying so to anyone in Billings.”

“You mean someone here in town might have sent for a hired gun and the rest was just dumb luck?”

“A man could take it either way. You have any ideas on who might be fixing to start a private war, hereabouts?”

Chadwick shook his head. “Not offhand. Save for the troubles out at the reservation, we ain’t had much trouble up here lately.”

“You issue range permits, don’t you?”

“Sure. I register homestead claims and hire out government grass on a seasonal basis. You know how most cattle outfits work. They claim a quarter-section with timber and water for the home-spread, then range their cows on the open prairie all around. Uncle Sam’s supposed to be paid a range fee by the head, but they cheat a lot.”

“You hear tell of anyone fighting over range?”

“Nope, I ain’t. The herds are building fast, since the buffalo thinned out, but most of the locals are friendly enough about it. They let the cows mix on the open range, work the spring and fall roundups together, and cut and brand neighborly. There’s maybe a little friendly rivalry, but nobody’s ever taken it past fists.”

Longarm chewed thoughtfully on his cigar, then said, “Let’s look at it another way. Cal Durler says he’s been missing cows. Any others been having trouble along those lines, hereabouts?”

The land agent looked surprised as he asked, “Are we talking about rustlers, Longarm?”

“We’re talking about what I call cow thieves. If some local stockman has been building his herd the sudden way, it might account for some of what’s been going on. Cow thieves get shot a mite in these parts unless they have some guns to back their play. So a dishonest cattleman might hire some guns—or on the other hand, some neighbors who aim to put him out of business might do the same.”

Chadwick nodded in understanding and blew out a stream of smoke before saying, “I’ve heard talk about the reservation herd losing strays. Some of the locals think it’s funny as hell. That kid Durler has a lot to learn. I don’t think anyone’s really stealing his cows, but you’ll have to admit an unbranded calf running wild along the reservation line might be tempting fate.”

“Yeah, I’ve been trying to show him how to herd cows properly. But if you’re right about the local cattle outfits, it’s odd about those hired guns.”

Chadwick shrugged and said, “That one you had to shoot was likely just passing through, then. Or maybe he was trailing you personal.”

Longarm put a hand on the doorknob and said, “Maybe. I thank you for the use of your wire and I’d best be on my way.”

“Don’t mention it. Where you headed next?”

“Thought I’d drift around town and get the feel of things before I ship some stuff East at noon and get on out to the reservation. To tell you the truth, I’m sort of stuck for some answers.”

Leaving the land office, Longarm walked across the dusty street toward the saloon. In the shade of the overhang he found the army scout, Jason, talking to an older man with a tin star pinned to his white shirt. Jason thrust his bearded chin at the approaching deputy and called out to him. Longarm joined them on the plank walk in front of the swinging doors and Jason said, “Longarm, this is Sheriff Murphy.”

As Longarm nodded to the lawman, Murphy said, “How come you didn’t report that shooting you had last night, Deputy?”

“I did. The body’s over at the coroner’s. We had it out on the open range and I figured it was a county matter.”

The sheriff fixed him with a hard look. “I like to know when folks get killed in or about Switchback, mister. I know you federals think your shit don’t stink, but I’d take it kindly if you let us poor country boys in on things once in a while.”

“Sheriff, I meant no offense. I truly thought the doc would fill you in, and as you can see, he did.”

“Well, yeah, he did tell me about it, but-“

“There you go. I’ll tell you what. Next time some old boy takes a shot at me, I’ll run right over to your office. By the way, where is it?”

The sheriff jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Down thataway, near the station house.”

“That’s settled, then. I hope you boys drink before noon. I see the bar is open.”

Before anyone could answer, Jason shouted, “Down!” and pushed Longarm hard, as he dropped behind the nearby watering trough.

The first shot parted the air where Longarm had been standing and crashed through the boarded-over saloon window he’d broken the last time he’d been by. The second raised a plume of spray from the watering trough and spattered Jason with water as he shouted, “Up behind that false front! The hat shop next to the land office!”

Longarm had dropped behind a barrel he hoped was filled with something. He aimed his drawn .44 at the drifting smoke cloud above the building the scout had indicated and snapped, “I’ve got him spotted. Watch your head!”

Another shot from above the hat shop gave away the sniper’s position behind the false front lettered Hats and Bonnets. Longarm figured the last S was his best bet, but he crossed both Ts with bullets as he fired three times. Jason popped up and sent an army .45 round through the pine boards as, somewhere, someone screamed and they heard the clatter of a rifle sliding down shingles and a loud, wet thud.

Jason said, “He dropped between the hat shop and land office, in that narrow slot.”

Longarm saw Agent Chadwick peering out of his doorway and shouted, “Get back inside, Chadwick! Jason, you and Murphy cover me!”

Then, without waiting for an answer, he was up and running. He crossed the street in a zigzag run, flattened himself against the corner of the hat shop, and quickly reloaded as he got his breath. A woman stuck her head out of the hat shop and Longarm motioned her back inside with a silent, savage wave of his .44. Then he took a deep breath and jumped out, facing the narrow slot between the buildings as he fired for effect into it. He dropped to one knee under his own gunsmoke and took a long, hard look at the body lying face-down, wedged between the plank walls on either side. Then he stood up and thumbed more cartridges into his Colt as Jason ran across to join him, saying, “Murphy lit out. I think he ran into the saloon and just kept going. We get him?”

“Yeah. I owe you, Jason.”

“Don’t mention it. Lucky I seen the sunlight flash on his barrel as he was fixing to do you. Anyone you know?”

“They called him Curley. He was a friend of the one I got last night. I’ll be surprised as hell if he don’t have a record, too.”

By now Chadwick had joined them, peeking around the corner to gasp, “Jesus H. Christ! How many of these hired guns do you figure we have in Switchback, Longarm?”

“Don’t know. I make it two less, right now. I’ll get him out of there in a minute. Right now I owe Jason, here, a drink. He just saved my ass.”

Chadwick followed them to the saloon, as did the hat shop owner and a dozen others in the neighborhood who’d heard the shooting and wanted to steady their nerves.

The scout didn’t seem to think he’d done all that much, considering, but he let Longarm buy, muttering something about the way the army paid folks, these days. As they leaned against the bar together, Longarm said, “It’s lucky I found you in town. I mean, aside from what you just did for me. I’ve been meaning to ask some questions about the army’s interest in the Blackfoot.”

“Hell, they ain’t all that interested, Longarm. Beats me why we’re here. Likely Washington just figures soldiers’ve got to be some durned place if they ain’t another.”

“You been getting anything on expected Indian trouble?”

“From the Blackfoot? They were ornery enough, a few years back. Ain’t lifted anybody’s hair for a coon’s age, though. They were rooting for Red Cloud back in ‘76, but only a few kids really rode with the Sioux. The old men kept most of the tribe back, playing close to the vest till they saw which way the cards were stacked. It’s a small tribe, but they bled enough for a big one in the Shining Times.”

“Were you out here then? You don’t look old enough to go back to the beaver trade.”

“I ain’t. Came West as a hide hunter after the War. Knew some of the old Mountain Men, though. Most of ‘em’s getting on in years, now, but my first boss hunter was left over from the Shining Times. Used to brag on a Blackfoot arrow he still carried in his hide.”

“You ever hear mention of a breed called Johnny Hunts Alone?”

“Hell, I know him. He skinned for me five or six years ago, down by the Powder River. Wasn’t very good at it, though. He was sort of a lazy, moody cuss.”

“Damn! You’re the first man I’ve met who can tell me what he looks like, then!”

Jason stared soberly at his drink and said, “Maybe. But he never done me enough harm to mention, Longarm. How important are the papers you might have on him?”

“I could lie and say I just wanted to talk to your old sidekick, but you just saved my ass, so I won’t. Telling it true, I aim to take him in dead or alive on a murder warrant, Jason.”

The scout shifted uncomfortably. “You’re giving me a hard row to hoe. Johnny once talked some roving Sioux out of taking my hair.”

Longarm shrugged. “I can’t make you tell me, but-“

“But you can likely make me wish to God I had, huh? All right. As long as I was fool enough to allow I knew him, and seeing he ain’t around Switchback anyway, he’s maybe half a head shorter than me and looks like what he is—half white, half Blackfoot.”

“Can’t you do better than that?”

“He’s only got one head, damn it. He’s just another breed. Maybe younger than me and not as pretty. Oh, he does walk with a limp. I disremember which leg—he got shot one time. To tell you the truth, we never jawed much. He was a quiet, moody cuss, like I said. Never killed anybody while I rode with him, though.”

“The limp’s the only thing I don’t have on my papers, so I owe you another drink. Chief Real Bear told us Hunts Alone was on the reservation.”

“Maybe he is. I’m buying this round.”

“You said he looks half white. The Indian police say they know all the breeds out there and none of them is him. You figure Real Bear could have lied for some reason?”

“Beats me. I didn’t know the man. I’ve jawed with a few Blackfoot since they sent me out here, but I’d be lying if I said I knew any of ‘em well.”

“You talk their lingo?” Longarm asked.

“Not enough to matter. I’m pretty good in Sioux and I can make myself understood in the sign lingo all the plains tribes use. Blackfoot’s sort of like Cheyenne, ain’t it?”

“Just about the same. You said Johnny Hunts Alone talks Sioux as well as Blackfoot, right?”

“Oh, that old boy could pow-wow fierce,” Jason said. “He’d have made one hell of a scout if he hadn’t took to robbing and such. We figured he had something gnawing at him, but like I said, he was only after buffalo when we rode together.”

Longarm picked up the fresh drink the bartender had put before him and said, “I’d like you to think about this before you answer, Jason. If you were to see Hunts Alone before I did-“

“I’d warn him,” said the scout, flatly. Then he added, “I’d tell him you were after him and give him a head start for old times’ sake. Then I’d come and tell you true which way he’d lit out. I don’t like being in the middle like this, but we’re both working for Uncle Sam, so I’d do both duties as best I could. If that sticks in your craw, I’m sorry as all hell, but that’s the way I am.”

“A man has to stick by old friends, as long as he don’t get crazy on the subject. Let me ask you one more question and have done with it. If I was to come on the two of you together, how big a slice of the pie would you be expecting?”

Jason took a swallow of his drink and said, “That’s a pisser, ain’t it?”

“Yeah, but I’d like an honest answer.”

“Well, to be honest, I don’t know. I can’t see gunning you. I reckon I’d likely stand aside.”

“That’s good enough, Jason. Naturally, if you saw me coming before Johnny did, you’d likely mention my intentions to him?”