Longarm on the Santee Killing Grounds

She said she did, despite the dubious look in her big brown eyes, so he continued. "The doctrine of undisputed habitation, or squatter's rights, goes back before King William's Doomsday Book. For as law and order came out of the Dark Ages, it was tough to produce a written title search on such property as you might or might not have held a spell."

The Minnesota gal brightened and said, "Oh, they tell about such things in the Sagas! The Norse tradition held that land belonged to the first man who'd drawn water and built a fire on it, as long as he was man enough to defend it."

Longarm nodded and said, "Defending it against the claims of any others was the sticking point in any such notions of land titles. It was tough at times to say who might have been first on a particular plot of ground. So the early courts held that any man who'd held his claim for seven years or more, undisputed by any others, likely had as good a claim to it as anybody."

She asked, "What about Indians, in the case of land on this side of the main ocean?"

He grimaced and said, "Now you're straying from common law into a can of historical worms. Whether this corner of Minnesota became so civilized by Indian treaty or criminal trespass is moot, with all the original Indians marched off to the Dakota Territory. As of, say, 1864 this has all been federal open range or taxable privately held land, depending. If Chambrun's been allowed to file a proper homestead claim, despite his complexion, so be it. Five years after his claim's been approved by the Land Office, providing he doesn't mess up entirely, the land is his to keep, cherish, or sell at a profit as far as Uncle Sam cares."

She nodded. "But if they never filed, and just fenced off some open land on their own?"

Longarm said, "I told you I got to look up the local view on squatter's rights. But unless Minnesota law reads different, and specific, Chambrun and his kin get to keep that quarter section as their own as soon as they've held it seven years with nobody else disputing 'em." Ilsa stared wide-eyed across the table. "I can see why you said it was only a matter of two years either way. But would they let an Indian pull a stunt like that, Custis?"

To which he could only reply with a shrug, "Depends on what you can prove an Indian, or vice versa, in a court of law, should that be your pleasure."

She looked mighty puzzled, even as she picked up the coffeepot to refill his cup. So he said, "No more coffee for me, thanks. It's tougher for some folks to decide who might be an Indian than it can be to decide who's colored. I ain't sure I follow the logic myself, but in those courts as enforce color codes, it seems a person known to have any colored ancestry is colored. But the same folks who won't rent a room to an octoroon, with one colored grandparent, seem just as able to classify anyone less than half Indian as a white person with a little Indian blood."

"Then this Wabasha Chambrun could be a white man in the eyes of the law?"

Longarm shrugged. "Depends more on the B.I.A. than his biology. Chief Ross of the Cherokee was seven-eighths Scotch-Irish, and there's many a blue-eyed blonde drawing their government Indian allotment just by putting on a fringy shirt and lining up like the rest of their nation. Folks listed as Indians by the B.I.A. are identified as such by allotment number, tribal agency, and such. But there's nothing to prevent a member of a so-called friendly band from just going into town, getting a job, and forgetting the whole deal, no matter how much Indian blood he may or may not have in him. So saying what Chambrun says about a French-Canadian daddy is true, and if he's never been listed on paper as any particular sort of Indian, he's about as white as you or me, at least as far as federal law can prove."

She said she'd never heard such nonsense, and made as if to pour him some more coffee anyway. So he put a hand across the top of his empty cup. "Waste not, want not, Miss Ilsa. It ain't as if I don't admire your coffee. I just don't want to toss and turn all night, as I'm apt to with my mind filled with caffeine as well as a heap of other distractions!"

She sighed and said she knew what he meant, murmuring something about it having been over a year since last she'd felt really fulfilled in her lonely bed.

That was what womenfolk called getting laid, fulfilled, and hadn't she said her man had been dead longer than that?

Longarm tried to ignore the sudden tingle in his pants as he tried not to wonder too hard whether she'd made a slip or was out to tell him something. For a man could mess up either way at times like these. He had a good thing going already, with nobody in New Ulm so sure just where he was forted up after dark, and the sweet old widow woman was likely to think he was lower than a sidewinder's belly button if he abused her generous hospitality by grabbing for a dessert she wasn't really offering.

On the other hand, Hell had no fury like a woman turned down once she'd offered, however delicately. So he didn't dare say he'd had all the supper he cared for and just wanted to go to bed before he had a better handle on her own bedtime aspirations.

He figured it might be safest to ask her whether she knew that other Swedish gal, Helga Runeberg, out at the Rocking R. He sensed he might have been safer asking about somebody else when his hostess flared. "I've seen her around town in her silly hat and buckskin skirts, the self-satisfied young snip! I might have known she'd been flirting with you since you'd been riding no more than ten miles from her door!"

Longarm had to laugh. "Hold on, Miss Ilsa, I've never laid eyes on the gal in question. I was more interested in her common sense than her looks."

The older woman didn't sound too sensible as she snapped, "Helga Runeberg hasn't got any common sense. Her poor father would turn over in his grave if he knew how she rides all over, unescorted, as carefree as one of her cowboys."

Longarm said, "It was one of her cowboys as told me his boss lady had said she was able to tell a real lawman from a fake lawman at first sight. I was hoping to save me a ride out her way with some educated guesswork as to how a carefree cowgirl might know so much about lawmen."

The widow woman shrugged inside her loose nightdress and replied, "I wouldn't put anything past Helga Runeberg. They do say she was sparking a married deputy sheriff till Pastor Lindorm heard about it. Maybe she knows a lot of lawmen in the Biblical sense. I don't really care to know her at all."

Longarm made a mental note to drop by the Rocking R the next time he was out that way, and surprised himself by having to stifle a real yawn he hadn't been expecting.

The widow woman noticed and said, "Good heavens, it is almost ten o'clock, and I'm not usually such a night owl myself. I suppose you must be anxious to get to bed, right?"

He allowed that was about the size of it as they both rose from the table. He started to help her move the dishes to the drain board of her modern wet-sink, but she told him they could wait till she felt more in the mood for housework. So he didn't argue as he started to follow her out of the kitchen, Winchester in hand.

As she moved just ahead with her candlestick, she laughed and asked if he always went to bed fully armed. He told her he hardly ever got all the way in bed without leaning the Winchester in a handy corner and hanging his gunbelt over a bedpost. He assumed she was leading him to some guest room. So he was mildly surprised when they wound up in a perfumed chamber with a lot of Irish lace draped around the big fourposter.

Ilsa set the candlestick on a nearby bed table and softly asked, "Do you mind if I get undressed in the dark, Custis? I know it seems old-fashioned, but as I said before, I don't get to do this much anymore."

He figured the safest answer called for simply pinching out the candle without saying anything as the room was plunged in darkness.

He leaned his Winchester against the wall behind the bed table as he heard the soft rustle of cloth coming off and that odor of lilac water and vinegar grew stronger. He waited for her to shyly suggest it was all right for him to come to bed before he shucked his own gun, boots, and duds as calmly as he felt able, rolled in under the covers, and took the warm cuddly nakedness he found there in his own bare arms. Then as she sobbed, "Oh, Custis, I feel so low. Whatever must you think of me?"

He ran a friendly hand down her naked flank as he suggested he feel her somewhat lower, and then he kissed her firmly as she tried to cross her legs and say something dumb about what he was trying to do to a poor defenseless widow. Then he was doing it to her, and she was doing it back with considerable skill, as her poor embarrassed lips kept murmuring all sorts of accusations and excuses for what just came naturally at times like these.

He knew better than to say anything before he'd made her climax and allow she just might like it. So he tongued her ear and humped her hard, with her big bare breasts crushed against his naked chest and one hand under her tailbone as he helped her bounce in time with his thrusts. She suddenly wrapped both legs around his waist to hug him further into her as she sobbed, "Oh, Custis, I'm really trying to respond to you, but it's been so long and you have to give a girl time to warm up!"

He told her to take all the time she wanted, since he wasn't going anywhere but in and out of her for the foreseeable future. But he still had to wonder, even as he came in her and just kept going with no need to change positions, what a gal this tigress was jealous of might be like in her own right!

But of course he never said so. For even as he was pleasuring her dog-style a good half hour later, old Ilsa was purring, as she arched her spine to take it deeper, that he was never going to get away from her now that she'd caught up with him at last.

She seemed to think he had just what it took to satisfy her hungry ring-dang-do. But he didn't see why. She felt tight as a schoolmarm as he just went on doing what came naturally in anybody that passionate.

He could only hope she was feeling natural as she suddenly shot off his erection, rolled over on her back, and pleaded with him to finish in her the more romantic way.

He felt mighty romantic as well, coming with her softer warm flesh crushed beneath his excited heaving body. But then she sort of spoiled the afterglow by murmuring, her lips against his bare shoulder and her hand clutching his balls right firmly, "Oh, Custis, I'm so happy, and I can't wait to see how surprised everyone will be when we post the bans with Pastor Lindorm!"

He didn't answer. He sensed it could be considered impolite to tell a gal she was loca en la cabeza right after you'd come in her. There'd be plenty of cold gray dawn to go into why a man who packed a badge had no call marrying up with anybody young or old, for richer, poorer, or whatever, till Mister Death grinned that spoilsport grin at all concerned.

He was sure she'd follow his drift when he told her about those department funerals he had to go to all the time. A lot of gals had, and hell, some of them had been young enough to marry up with if a man was ready to do dumb things like that.

CHAPTER 14

It was a caution how some folks could think so smart with their heads and so dumb with their glands. But by the time she'd fed him a swell breakfast in bed, Longarm had convinced the hot-natured Ilsa it might be wiser to keep their understanding a secret until he found out who was gunning for him and how come.

It hadn't been easy. The strong-willed widow woman had said she'd be proud to share the fate of her new-found true love. She'd only given in after Longarm managed to convince her she was being downright sneaky in the name of the law. They said the glamorous Confederate spy, Miss Belle Siddons, had enjoyed the sneaky part of her services to the Southern cause even more than screwing all those Union officers half to death. Lots of men enjoyed it better sneaky too.

After breakfast, a tub bath, and a blow job, Longarm ambled over to the Western Union to see if anyone else was excited about him. He found some messages waiting for him there care of the telegraph office.

Durango and the South Ute agency were still working on just who that so-called Calvert Tyger they'd buried and the kid who'd gone off the trestle into the San Juan might have been. Longarm was even more certain someone ad been fibbing about that charred body registered as Tyger when he opened a message from his home office to discover his fellow deputies, Smiley and Dutch, had found two other rooming house registers that claimed, in different handwriting, Calvert Tyger had spent some recent nights in other parts of Denver at the same time, before somehow moving on alive and well as far as any fool records showed, So some damned body, for some damned reason, seemed to be going around checking in and out for the night under the assumed name of a wanted man. It made no sense to Longarm, but on the other hand, he wasn't the asshole doing it!

It got worse when he stopped by the nearby sheriff's office to ask if those other federal deputies from Saint Paul had by any chance arrived and asked for him the night before.

The same deputy sheriff he'd talked to before said nobody from Saint Paul had arrived at all. Then he handed Longarm a telegram they hadn't mentioned at the Western Union, since it had been addressed to other lawmen, and said, "Looks as if all you federal men could be barking up the wrong tree here in Brown County."

Longarm scanned the wire from the Texas Rangers, and heaved a vast sigh. For according to Texas, another of those recorded hundred-dollar treasury notes from the Fort Collins robbery had surfaced at a bank in Amarillo.

As he handed the message back, Longarm said, "Try her this way. A bank in any part of the country would have that list of serial numbers and money-changers who might give a shit. But nobody making change in a gambling hall or house of ill repute would have that list or care where the money came from as long as it was good."

The local lawman answered dubiously, "A hundred-dollar bill does stand out in a crowd, you know."

Longarm nodded. "I just said that. Any card dealer or crib gal presented with such paper would doubtless ask the floor boss or madam to okay it. But without that list, all the smartest eye could detect would be whether the note was genuine or not. Once they changed it for the high roller or low-lifer, they might or might not take it to their own bank for safekeeping. The odds are just as good they'd pass it on to some other business folks as rent, liquor-bill payment, or whatever. So there's just no saying how many hands any of these fool bills might have passed through before they were spotted by some sharp-eyed banker such as P.S. Plover around the corner."

The deputy sheriff shrugged and said, "I'll be damned if I see what we're arguing about then. I just said it may not mean a thing that a single one of them stolen treasury notes turned up here in New Ulm. I may have wax in my ears. But didn't you just agree with me?"

Longarm nodded soberly. "I surely did, up to a point. I can go along with that one note from Fort Collins just sort of finding its way here through a whole chain of innocent hands, if you'd like to tell me how come somebody seems so anxious to keep me from questioning your apparently innocent county residents about it. By the way, might either Israel Bedford or Wabasha Chambrun be registered to vote this fall here in Brown County?"

The deputy sheriff said the ones to ask about that would be over at the county clerk's across the square. So that was where Longarm turned up next. The older gent in charge reminded Longarm of what young Henry, back at the Denver office, was likely to look like in twenty years if he didn't watch out. But the skinny, balding, prune-lipped cuss seemed friendly enough as he scanned Longarm's badge and identification and said, "Figured you'd be along most any time now. Two other lawmen were here just this morning, asking if you'd been by."

Longarm put his billfold away with a puzzled smile. "It ain't considered polite to poke about another lawman's jurisdiction without letting him know you're in town, and I know for a fact the gents of whom we speak never checked in with the sheriff across the way. What might they have looked like and what sort of badges might they have flashed?"

The country clerk frowned thoughtfully and replied, "I never asked to see no badges. That might have been why they never offered to show me any. As to what they looked like, one was tall and the other short. They were both about your age and dressed like undertakers who punched cows or vice versa. Is that any help?"

Longarm got out a couple of smokes as he mused, half to himself, "Two deputies riding out of the same federal district court as me describe about the same way. But I can't see Smiley and Dutch behaving so unprofessional. If my boss sent them all the way to New Ulm for a damn good reason, they'd have strode right into your sheriff's office to ask about me, knowing I'd have been there ahead of 'em if I was anywhere in this county."

He thought some more as he got both their cheroots going with a wax Mexican match. Then he shook out the light. "Well, since they seem to be looking for me, I'll let them worry about who they might be until they catch up with me and I can just ask. What I'm here about is voter registrations. To be specific, I'd like to know whether two different Brown County boys who seem to have handled the same suspicious money might be on your books as registered resident voters."

The older man proved he was worth what they paid him by nodding soberly and replying without hesitation, "I know who you mean and they are. Israel Bedford voted in the last election, here in Brown County. That Chambrun cuss just signed up this spring. We had to let him, even if he does look Sioux, because he packs a U.S. Army discharge, honorable, and other government documentation indicating he must be a white man, or at least a U.S. citizen."

Longarm raised a thoughtful brow. "Regular army discharge, or one of those certificates they give Indian scouts after a single campaign?"

The old-timer snorted in disgust. "I fought under Pope in the east and west, dad-blast your respect for your elders, and I guess I know an honorable discharge, U.S. Army, when I see one they gave somebody else. Chambrun says he did a postwar hitch with the Ninth Cav as a trooper, not a scout. Ain't the Ninth supposed to be one of those colored outfits? Chambrun don't look colored to me. He looks like a sonovabitching treacherous Sioux, and some old boys who know say they heard him talking to his woman in that very lingo one day here in town. Ain't that a bitch?"

Longarm blew a thoughtful smoke ring. "The complexion or conversational habits of a particular homesteader are none of my beeswax as long as he don't bust no federal laws they pay me to enforce. You say he had other official papers to show you when he was here to register to vote this fall?"

The clerk nodded. "His homesteading permit, from the Land Office. He had to offer some proof he had a legal address here in Brown County, didn't he?"

To which Longarm could only reply, "Reckon he did, and I reckon you just answered a whole lot of other questions I was fixing to ask about Wabasha Chambrun. Like I said, it's none of my beeswax how a homesteader who talks Santee to his wiyeh may or may not have convinced the War and Interior Departments he's more white than, say, Sitting Bull. If he holds a homestead claim he holds a homestead claim, meaning he does seem to have a permanent legal address, which leads to more interesting questions, such as which old boy, Bedford or Chambrun, would be hurt most by being unable to account for that hundred-dollar treasury note."

The county clerk showed he was up on county gossip by observing that he'd heard the mysterious bill they were talking about was good for its face value in silver specie. Longarm nodded grimly and replied, "That was doubtless why the robbers took it at gunpoint. I aim to ask Chambrun where he got it, then ask on back some more, till I meet up with somebody who just can't convince me he came by it innocently!"

They shook on it, and Longarm headed back to Ilsa Pedersson's to see if she'd loan Blaze out to him again. This time he meant to make straight for the Chambrun homestead, and the day was still young enough to make it well this side of sundown.

As he strode along the sunny side of the street an old colored woman with a wheelbarrow filled with garden truck came out of an alley to ask him if she'd make it to the river in time.

When he politely got out his pocket watch and asked in time for what, she explained she aimed to sell her swell fresh vegetables to the steamboat passengers headed on up the Minnesota to Montevideo. When she allowed the steamboat Would be putting into New Ulm around three that afternoon, he assured her she was way early. It might not have been kind to tell her how early. She likely didn't know how to read and write either. Longarm got along better than some of his kind with folks who still failed to grasp the Victorian concept that time was money. Recent slaves, perhaps because they'd been slaves, could usually grasp the notion something was fixing to happen this morning, this afternoon, or at least sometime today. Indians tended to get surly when you tried to pin them down to the exact week in a moon they'd agreed on earlier.

He figured the old colored lady might sell some of her produce by the landing, or at least sit in the shade, enjoying the change in her daily chores, for the next four hours or more. He wondered idly, as he strode on, whether Wabasha Chambrun and his family kept track of time the way he'd have had to in the army, or the way his wife had likely learned about such matters ... where?

Growing up Indian had gotten complicated since the first squaw men had married up with gals such as Miss Pocahontas. She hadn't been the first such gal who'd liked to dress up like a white lady and wound up treated to a Christian funeral. On the other hand, some old mountain men who'd settled down with Indian gals had wound up more Indian than some Indians, fluent as hell in the lingo of their in-laws and taking Wakan Tonka more seriously than they'd ever taken the Wasichu Good Book, and even fighting against their own kin on the side of their adopted race. So when you got right down to cases, there was just no saying how much Indian blood old Chambrun or even his Santee-speaking wife might really have. For it wouldn't be polite to ask a suspect to open wide so you could examine his teeth, and that wasn't foolproof proof in any case. That anthropology gal who studied Indian skulls had told Longarm there were even full-bloods who didn't have those concave backsides to their damned front teeth. There was no one thing that could prove or disprove more than a general impression. Defining an Indian from, say, a Swede was a lot like defining beauty. You could say at a glance whether a gal was pretty or ugly, but there was no exact line you could draw with all the pretty gals on one side and all the ugly on the other. That was doubtless why they said beauty was in the eye of the beholder, or how a cuss some saw as an Indian could file a homestead claim as an old soldier with an honorable discharge and never mind who he wanted to raise his family with.

Turning the corner near the Pedersson place, Longarm noticed two cow ponies, saddled with double-rigged ropers, tethered to a rose-covered picket fence in the sun when there was a thornless hitching post in the shade just a few yards down, closer to Ilsa Pedersson's front yard. Longarm glanced thoughtfully at the house the roses went with. He couldn't see any front door. The house faced another way entirely. So what were those two ponies doing there in a sort of uncomfortable limbo?

Longarm knew from his own romantic past that a gent paying a call on a lady with a rep to worry about might not want to tether a mount smack out front. On the other hand, he'd seldom come pussyfooting for some broad daylight slap-and-tickle aboard two ponies at once.

Moving catty-corner to the shady side, Longarm crawfished back to an alley entrance and did some serious pussyfooting of his own until he'd circled wide to approach Ilsa Pedersson's property on its blind side. He rolled over her plank fence, screened from the only window on that side by some white lilac, and moved in fast on his feet. He knew how tough it was to see out through that frosted glass since he'd been shaving on the far side of it. He hadn't thought at the time to see whether old Ilsa kept it locked or not. When he reached it, to find it level with his shoulders as he stood in yet another flower bed, he was able to slip the blade of his pocket knife under the sash and lever it up a crack.

As he did so he heard somebody else suck in their breath, too close for comfort, just on the other side. So he hunkered down and hugged the whitewashed siding as, sure enough, somebody inside tried to raise the same damned sash, muttering a puzzled remark about damned kids with sling shots.

The man inside gave up trying to raise the swollen wood sash as soon as he had it high enough to bend down and peer out the six-inch slit he'd managed, bawling, "I see you, you little shit! Cut it out or I'll tell you mamma on you, hear?"

Longarm didn't answer. He knew he was no little shit. So it seemed safe to say the cuss he'd startled with a sudden creak of window sash was just bluffing as he peered out at nothing much. Longarm's Stetson hat was just below his field of vision. Longarm knew he'd guessed right when the man inside snorted, "Kids ought to go to school all summer, damn their eyes!" and slammed the frosted glass shut again.

Longarm figured he'd been in there taking a leak. He had no idea who the proddy cuss might have been. Ilsa had said she peddled bobwire and other hardware from her house, But why would, say, a retail merchant or homesteader tether catty-corner across the way instead of smack out front?

"Didn't want us to notice he'd come calling," Longarm muttered as he moved along the shady side of the house. "It gets even spookier when you consider that second pony. It don't add up as a rival for a pretty widow gal's favors, and a man on more innocent beeswax wouldn't worry about nosy neighbors while calling on a business woman during business hours with a chaperon in tow!"

Longarm eased around a rear corner, gingerly rose for a cautious peek, and saw nobody was in Ilsa's corner pantry. Better yet, she'd opened the pantry window from inside to cool a couple of fresh baked pies on her broad sill.

They were talking in the kitchen. They seemed to be talking about him. For one male voice was saying, "Of course there's been no sign of that Denver boy out back. You'd have heard this here scattergun going off if he was within range of yonder back door. Get back up front and cover the front door like we agreed, you nervous ninny!"

Another male voice sort of whined, "I guess I got a right to feel nervous, knowing they're expecting just the two of us to take out a gunslick with his rep, and I still say I heard something outside when I was in the crapper just now!"

The one who appeared to be the boss, the one covering the most likely entrance with a shotgun, raised his voice a tad as he insisted, "Get back to your damn post and stay there till I tell you different, whether by word of mouth or gunshot. I swear I was a fool to let them saddle me with such an itchy greenhorn!"

Longarm worked faster, taking advantage of the noise as boot heels clumped sullenly off through the frame house. He slid the pies silently aside and eased his long frame over the sill as smoothly, and as noisily as a weasel slipping into a hen house. Then he was over by the pantry door, six-gun in his big right fist as he gingerly inched the door open just a crack. The first thing he saw, with a stiffled sigh of relief, was Ilsa Pedersson in a far corner, bound and gagged but seated upright in one of her kitchen chairs. He could tell by her scared staring eyes that she saw him as well. There was no way to tell her not to look his way with such an interested expression. So he was more chagrined than surprised when some cuss he couldn't see gruffly demanded, "What are you staring at like that, pretty lady?"

Longarm had little choice but to kick the door all the way open and blaze away as the startled jasper near the stove with that ten-gauge tried in vain to swing its muzzle up in time. For nobody with a pistol and a lick of sense tried to take a man with a ten-gauge alive in a close-quarters fight. So Longarm nailed him twice in the chest to sit him uncomfortably on the hot stove while he blew a hole in Ilsa's pressed-tin ceiling without really knowing what he might be aiming all that buckshot at. Then he just fell forward off his hot seat, too dead to notice his pants were on fire.

Longarm didn't care either. For sure enough, just as he'd spun into another corner, facing the hall door, it popped open to let a somewhat taller and younger gunslick enter, a Colt '74 in each fist as he yelled, "Hot damn! Did we get him?"

Longarm put three rounds in him and got out his derringer backup as he wearily replied, "Not yet," then moved in to see what he'd done to that one. The younger one lay across the threshold with his spurred boots in Ilsa's kitchen and the rest of him making a mess on her hall runner. As Longarm hunkered to feel for a pulse his victim croaked, "Is that you, Alabam?"

Longarm softly replied, "Yep. How did we know that lawman might be staying here?"

The dying stranger sighed and murmured, "Don't you remember? It was your grand notion to ask around town about that black pony with a white blaze. When the kid heard it was kept by a widow who lived all alone, you were the one who said it surely sounded like old Longarm's wet dream!"

Longarm smiled thinly and muttered, "They told us true about the horny rascal, didn't they? By the way, old son, who told us?"

There came no answer. Longarm felt the downed man's throat again and then, since the smoke was getting bad by now, he got back up to go pour a pitcher of what turned out to be fruit juice over the smoldering body spread out face-down by the stove. It sure smelled funny in the end. He threw open the back door as well as another window, and moved to cut Ilsa out of her pigging string bonds as he said, "Sorry about that dessert topping, honey. Thought it was water."

The widow gal, who'd been baking up a storm when they'd burst in on her, removed the wad of dishrag from her own mouth as she gasped, "I was afraid you'd never get to me, you brute! Let me up! I have to pee so bad my back teeth are floating!"

So he let her run for it, and just managed to reload and pin his own badge to his own chest by the time that deputy sheriff and a quartet of town constables showed up out back, their own guns drawn.

Longarm stepped out on the back porch, holding up a hand for some decorum as he saw other men, boys, and at least a few gals stampeding onto the Pedersson property. He declared, "I want you New Ulm lawmen to keep this growing crowd out of Miss Ilsa's flower beds." Then he motioned to the county deputy. "You'd best come on in and tell me whether two gents I just shot were the same ones as were asking so many questions about me earlier."

The deputy sheriff followed Longarm inside, marveling, "Whatever has Miss Ilsa been cooking in here? Smells like candied ham mixed up with burnt wool, for Pete's sake!"

Longarm said that was about the size of it as he rolled the short one over with a boot tip. The county lawman stared soberly down at the dead man's blankly staring face and firmly declared, "That's the senior deputy from Saint Paul. How come you shot him, Deputy Long?"

Longarm answered tersely, "Had to. Got an eyewitness. I got me another one over here by this other doorway. Miss Ilsa may have heard him confess they'd been sent after me by name. He died before I got him to say who they were working for. But I'm going to be mighty surprised if our Saint Paul federal office sent either. You naturally asked to see theirbadges and credentials when they called on you before?"

The deputy sheriff smiled down uncertainly and allowed, "This taller one was introduced as a junior federal man, but to tell the pure truth, nobody asked to see no papers, once that older one flashed what surely looked like a badge pinned to his wallet."

They went back in the kitchen. Longarm hunkered down to gingerly probe the charred pants of the dead man by the stove until he found a singed and juice-soaked wallet. As the local deputy watched bemused, Longarm opened it up to expose a badge of German silver and some rather official-looking identification. Then he muttered, "Mail-order badge. Sold by a Saint Lou novelty house for the use of kids, so-called private outfits, and pests like these. I see he filled out these lodge membership cards under the name of John Singleton Mosby. Reckon he thought Smith and Jones had been used up."

The Minnesota deputy frowned thoughtfully and asked, "Wasn't old Johnny Reb Mosby the Confederate raider we used to call the Gray Ghost?"

Longarm nodded wearily and said, "I arrested an owlhoot rider who said he was Paul Revere one time, and the hell of it was, the name on his birth certificate really was Paul Revere. But this old boy's not young enough to be named after the real Colonel Mosby of wartime fame."

The Minnesota lawman decided, "You'd still have to admire a rebel raider a heap to name yourself after him, wouldn't you?"

Longarm soberly replied, "That's about the size of it, and they've sent me to backtrack a gang of unreconstructed rebel admirers who've raided considerably, after starting out in these parts to begin with!"

The deputy sheriff removed his hat to scratch his head as he sighed and said, "I'm missing something here. I know they all say Calvert Tyger, Brick Flanders, and them other Galvanized Yankees started out in these parts years ago. But didn't you say yourself both them crazy rascals are supposed to have been burnt up in rooming house fires?"

Longarm nodded and said, "More than once in Tyger's case. On the other hand, the last I heard, Colonel John Singleton Mosby was still alive and full of piss and vinegar, no matter how dead this namesake at our feet seems to be right now." lisa Pedersson seemed awfully pensive when she finally came back out. Longarm didn't see why. He was the only one who knew for certain where she'd just been, and it wasn't as if he'd never noticed she had the usual entrances and exits down yonder.

Some of her neighbors pitched in to help tidy up as the local law hauled the bodies off to be photographed and stored in a cool place in the hopes somebody might come forward to claim or at least hazard a guess as to who they might belong to.

Longarm didn't think a widow gal living alone would want all her neighbors to know she liked it dog-style. So he made sure nobody else was listening when he offered to spring for a new hall runner and some ceiling tin. But she just got all flustered and ran up front again with her apron over her red face. So he figured, as soon as he had the chance to do so quietly, it might be best to slip his saddle and possibles off her property and over by the boat landing. For it was getting late to ride Blaze clean out to that Chambrun place to begin with, and there seemed to be at least one member of the gang left in New Ulm. The one that dying jasper had only named as "the kid" was not only out there somewhere, but had the added edge of being the only one who knew all the faces involved!

CHAPTER 15

The Minnesota got a mite tricky to navigate above, say, Mankato. But the little stern-wheel steamboat, Moccasin Blossom, carried some local freight and passengers every other day, and this turned out to be one of those days. And since two can keep a secret if one of them is dead, Longarm didn't tell anyone in town what he planned to do next. He found that same old colored lady over by the boat landing, and gave her four bits to smuggle his baggage on board, disguised as garden truck, once he'd had a sneaky conversation with the little tub's purser in the shade of a riverside sycamore.

The purser was the officer in charge of who got to ride upstream with them or not. He allowed his skipper would be proud to assist a federal man on a secret mission, and even suggested the best way for Longarm to board without that mysterious "kid" noticing.

So just before they shoved off again, a tall figure sporting a crewman's billed cap and packing a big gunny sack on one shoulder moved up the gangplank with the purser and some of his other men.

Longarm might have chanced the gang not thinking to plant anyone aboard a steamboat long before he'd even thought of using it to get past them on the northbound county road. But when the purser said he'd be safer from prying eyes on the Texas deck than in the passenger salon, Longarm was quick to take him up on it. But he didn't get to shake and smoke with the bewhiskered older skipper in the pilothouse until after they'd backed out into the main current and swung the Moccasin Blossom's blunt bows up the main channel, such as it was. A steamboat skipper had too many other worries on his mind to stand at the wheel staring straight ahead. So once he'd warned his younger pilot to mind that slick to starboard they were already swinging wide of, he had the time to accept one of Longarm's cheroots and hear him out.

Once Longarm had tersely explained his desire to be put ashore where he could hire another pony and approach the Chambrun homestead from the unexpected upstream side, the skipper nodded and told him his best bet would be the Kellgren spread, a good-sized cattle operation just the other side of the county line.

When Longarm quietly replied that seemed a tad far, considering the hour, the skipper insisted, "It's less'n twenty statute miles and we'll have you there in no time."

Longarm smiled thinly. "Wasn't worried about getting that far by steam power. Still have to get back by horse power, and like I said, that old sun ball's already halfway down the sky bowl. Don't you reckon any outfits further down this river could have even a mule they'd be willing to hire out?"

It was the purser, who got to gossip more with the locals, who horned in from the other side. "Gunnar Kellgren and his outfit are all true-blue white. That's more than can be said for the trash along the west bank from the Bedford place up to the county line. I swear I don't know what's come over the Land Office, the way they let niggers and even Quill Indians file for whole quarter sections of those old Santee killing grounds!"

Longarm glanced out the glass to his left. He had to admire the rate at which the Moccasin Blossom was overtaking and passing willows, sycamores, and such along the chalky banks. Further out the land rose balder, with good-sized rises hither and yon in the near-to-far distance. He said he'd heard the Santee had held the west banks of the Minnesota from New Ulm to Big Stone Lake, close to two hundred miles upstream, before that ill-advised raid on that poultry farm.

The purser nodded. "Their strip was ten miles wide as well, leaving the shiftless redskins nigh two thousand square miles of hunting grounds, after which they were allowed to join their Sioux cousins over in the Dakota for the twice yearly buffalo drives. They threw that all away for a basket of eggs and some scalps to brag on whilst they fried them!"

Longarm doubted they wanted to hear there might have been a little more than that to the Santee Rising of '62. He asked to hear some more about the new nesters moving onto the lost Santee reserve.

They were rounding a willow-covered sand bar now, so Longarm had to look sharp out ahead as the skipper grumbled, "There's one of 'eM, tied up to that snag near the bank, the crazy old crone!"

When the sun-silvered jumble of planking and shingles suddenly resolved in Longarm's eyes, he saw it was a tumble-down shack perched atop a log raft someone had moored in the backwater formed by a mass of waterlogged driftwood along the west bank. As a raggedy jet-black figure came out on deck to flap crow-like sleeves at them and scream like a rabbit caught in a bobwire fence, the skipper dryly went on. "That'd be the Bee Witch. Crazy old nigger gal. They say she keeps a young Santee breed in bondage, as if to make up for her own misspent youth as a slave."

The purser objected mildly. "They say that kid they call Sweet Sioux sells honey in town on her own. Paddles down to New Ulm in a painted canvas canoe about twice a month."

The skipper shrugged and said, "So I've heard. They still say the Bee Witch has some hold on the Indians. They call her something like witch in Sioux."

Longarm thought, brightened, and said, "Might that be more like witko, sir?"

The skipper decided, "Close enough. Do you speak Sioux, Deputy?"

Longarm modestly replied, "Not hardly. But from the little I have been exposed to, the Sioux-Hokan dialects ain't half as complicated as Na-Dene, or what you'd call Apache or Navajo. The folks who'd as soon call themselves Nakota, Dakota, Lakota, and such talk dialects with a heap of the same notions about vocabulary and grammar as we follow. So witko would come out as 'crazy,' not 'witch,' in Santee."

As they passed the dark figure shaking her upraised black fists at them, Longarm smiled gently and remarked, "She's sure acting witko, ain't she? Lord knows what a Navajo might call her. They don't abide by our notions of lingo at all. I mean, you ask a Santee or Omaha what his dog is, and he'll say right out it's his shunka. But a Navajo will want you to tell him exactly which of his dogs, doing what, to whom, you might be asking about. They got whole different words for a man's dog, a woman's dog, running, scratching, and so on, see?"

The skipper exchanged glances with his purser and replied, "If you say so. When Indians want to talk to me, they'd best talk plain American if they know what's good for 'em. But I can see why Uncle Sam might send someone who speaks some Sioux to question old Wabasha Chambrun. Lord knows you don't get straight answers out of the shifty-eyed cuss in English!"

Longarm asked, "You mean you know Chambrun personal?"

The skipper shrugged. "We've delivered some heavy hardware to him now and again."

As if to back his word, a distant sunflower windmill flashed a suddenly turning metal blade at them above the tree tops along the shore, and the skipper pointed the cheroot Longarm had given him and observed, "There's the Chambrun spread now, off to the northwest on the far side of the county road. You can't see anything but the new windmill we delivered this spring from here."

Longarm took a drag on his own smoke and let it all out before he observed, "Well, the Land Office does expect a homesteader to make taxable improvements on his claim before it's his to have and to hold free and simple. But them patent windmills cost more than your average pony, don't they?"

The skipper nodded soberly. "They do indeed and I follow your drift, now that you've told me about Chambrun paying for that riding stock with a hundred-dollar treasury note. I fear I'm simply not able to say how Chambrun paid for that patent windmill and all the other fancy trimmings we delivered there this spring. It was sent prepaid from Chicago Town. We just ran it up from the railroad back where you just came aboard. Hardly worth putting in."

The purser volunteered, "Rocks. Chambrun staked his claim along one of the worst places to put in along this already rocky enough old river. Ain't that just like an Indian? Even the other breeds and freed darkies in these parts know enough to consider river traffic as well as that muddy wagon trace along the damn bank."

The skipper nodded. "Damned right. Even dumb Swedes who can't speak English consider the lay of the land before they file a homestead claim along a damned river. Land near a good landing site is sure to rise in value as this valley fills up over time."

The purser said, "Lord, I sure wish I'd had the sense to file a claim across from that new railroad town called Fairfax! For nobody expects a man to waste time and effort plowing land where railroad and river traffic meet and grain elevators sprout like mushrooms!"

They were already passing that distant windmill. As Longarm kept staring at it wistfully, considering how far back he'd have to track as this day grew ever shorter, the skipper said, "Chambrun and his brood of Lord knows how many little Indians will get to plow until they're old and gray back yonder. Some of the boys who helped them haul that windmill gear and bobwire rolls ashore say the land the fool breed has claimed isn't much less rocky as you get back from the river. They spotted more than one outcropping in the forty-odd acres cleared so far. So it's safe to say that when you see rocks poking up out of a field, the soil can't be all that deep anywhere else!"

The purser suggested, "Mayhaps they're planning on a mining operation instead of cattle or wheat?"

Longarm didn't feel the call to chew that bone. He knew the old Santee reserve had been surveyed for minerals of any value before the B.I.A. had offered it to them in exchange for their original woodlands closer to the Great Lakes. The most valuable thing this corner of Minnesota had to offer was dirt, rich prairie dirt that grew crops better where it lay deepest, and surely even an illiterate would be likely to look over any land he meant to file a homestead claim on before he ever signed his X. So what in thunder might have made the oddly prosperous Wabasha Chambrun feel he just had to homestead a quarter section with rocks sticking out of it and no decent boat landing on the nearby river?

When he voiced his puzzlement, the skipper just shrugged and told him, "You just said at least some Indians don't think the way we do. The Santee could have kept all the land you see off to the west if they'd only behaved halfway sensible. The B.I.A. had built trading posts and even schools and dispensaries for 'em, at two different agencies, so's they wouldn't have to travel too far. Old Little Crow and the other chiefs got to live in fine frame houses, just like us white folks, only better. They paid no rent and got their roofs fixed free when they leaked. So what did they do, just because they had to wait a little longer for their government handouts in wartime, in the middle of summer after a good spring hunt, for Gawd's sake?"

The purser explained, "We were working together on an earlier and slower steamboat called the Saint Anthony at the time. We were the ones hauling army supplies up to Fort Ridgely after Little Crow and his warriors tried in vain to take it, the poor ragged assholes!"

The skipper snorted, "Flowers in their hair, for Gawd's sake. Hit all along the river treacherous and dirty, with most of the first whites killed the poor fools who'd thought they were on good terms with the Indians."

The purser grumbled, "Trying to be on good terms, you mean. The two-faced redskins got the first white settlers they killed into a friendly shooting match, then attacked the poor simps once their guns were empty and it was the Santee's turn to shoot!"

The skipper growled, "They slaughtered four hundred whites the first day. More than half of 'em women and children. Fifty-odd whites near the downstream agency, who'd never trusted Sioux they knew better, got away to spread the alarm. Just in time. Scared settlers flocked in to Fort Ridgely on the far side of the river. Forty-eight of the soldiers had already been ambushed and scalped, leaving a garrison of thirty troopers to protect over two hundred scared-skinny civilians with no earthworks or even a stockade betwixt them and the so-called friendly Indians!"

Longarm could read, and had read some about the events that were so vivid to the older men after all those years. So he was the one who said, "By the time Little Crow worked up the nerve to attack Fort Ridgely, they'd been reinforced by another hundred or more real soldiers, along with some twenty-odd civilian volunteers who did have time to throw up some breastworks, and let's not forget the modest but ferocious field artillery pieces on hand. I read someplace the bursting shells killed lots of Santee."

The skipper grumbled, "You'll have read in other books how the only white killed three days later down by New Ulm was a young girl caught in the cross-fire too. But old-timers who were there make it thirty-six whites killed and most of New Ulm in ashes by the time the Sioux gave up. The whites gave up too, and stampeded down the river to Mankato, at the big bend, as soon as they dared break cover!"

The purser, who seemed to enjoy figuring numbers said, "Eight hundred or more whites killed outright, a hundred and seven whites captured, along with a hundred and sixty-odd breeds and friendlies who'd been treated just as rough by the time they were rescued. At least thirty thousand whites in all had been pushed off their homesteads, dead or alive, and they figure less than half the white gals raped ever owned up to it when they were taken back from the savage bastards!"

Longarm muttered he'd read there'd been some argument as to just how many of those hundreds of condemned ringleaders had deserved to hang or not. He knew what these old Minnesota white boys would have to say about the Episcopal missionary, Henry Whipple, who got Abe Lincoln to commute the sentences for all but the likes of a brave called Cut Nose, who bragged from the scaffold how he'd killed Wasichu men, women, and children until his arm got too tired to kill any more. Old Billy Vail hadn't sent him over this way to find out how folks felt about the long-gone Santee. Although he'd have to take that smoldering hatred into account as he tried to decide the guilt or innocence of an odd homesteader with what seemed at least a few Quill Indian in-laws.

CHAPTER 16

The Kellgren spread had its own steamboat landing, man-made but natural-looking at first glance. They'd graded the slope gentler than the river current would have, and then paved it with cobbles to keep it that way. The Moccasin Blossom didn't tie up there to put one man ashore. They simply nosed in as far as they could, and swung the gangplank the rest of the way so Longarm could run down it with his saddle and possibles on one shoulder and make it to dry ground with a squishy skip and jump. Some passengers who hadn't known he was aboard came out on deck to watch bemused. But nobody seemed excited about his getting off out there in what seemed the middle of nowhere.

The skipper had told Longarm he'd find the Kellgrens a tribe of amiable Vikings playing cowboys, with anyone who wanted to play Indian well advised to stay the hell away from them.

But in point of fact they didn't turn out that odd. Longarm had no sooner toted his McClellan over to that country road than he was met by a couple of kids in their teens on cow ponies almost as blond as they were. When they asked who he was and why he'd come, Longarm flashed his badge and explained his need for the hire of a horse.

They said he'd have to ask their elders over to the house, where he'd be just in time for coffee and cake if he didn't want to upset their mamma. One of them took the McClellan from Longarm's shoulder before he could slip the Winchester from its saddle boot. But as it turned out, they were just trying to be helpful.

When they broke through the last of the riverside timber and got to the country road, Longarm saw the three-strand fence on the far side extended well over the usual quarter mile in either direction. The mighty small town or mighty big homespread atop the rise ahead was at least a full furlong from the gate. Being afoot, Longarm politely opened and shut the gate for the two young riders. When he commented on the size of their spread on the way up to the white-trimmed cluster of housing and outbuilding, the one packing his saddle for him bragged on how big their old man preferred his surroundings. The kid said they'd come west from a regular-sized homestead in Wisconsin after making it pay but getting to feeling crowded. When Longarm mildly observed they seemed to have way more than a quarter section fenced out this way, the other kid bragged on the open range to the west they grazed as well. The one with Longarm's saddle explained, "Pappa paid cash for already proven claims, half a dozen in all. It was just after Custer and his boys got wiped out further west. Pappa read in the same papers how these more Indian-free parts were getting wiped out by grasshoppers. So he figured nesters who'd been grasshopper-broke might be willing to sell out cheap-"

The Kellgren kid who'd bragged on their herd chimed in. "Them bugs were still at it when we hauled in here back in '77. You never did see such hungry grasshoppers. They'd eat all the leaves off all them trees back yonder and grazed all the grass you see now, right down to the bare dirt. Mamma and the girls had to hang the laundry to dry indoors that first Summer, lest them greedy bugs chew holes in the sheets for the starch!"

Longarm quietly observed he'd seen grasshopper plagues. They occurred about every seventh year between the Rockies and the Mississippi. The kid who'd bragged on their grazing told him cows were safer to raise than crops in grasshopper country. For in a pinch a hungry cow could graze on grasshoppers, and the grass grew back thick as ever once the plague had passed.

The kid packing his saddle waved expansively to the north and said, "Both the Linderboms and Ericssons lost their newly planted orchards as well as cash crops by the time Pappa made 'em an offer. He paid 'em more than he really needed to, seeing they were our sort of folk. They were down to living on eggs, since chickens are the only stock that really thrives on grasshoppers alone."

Longarm idly asked who they'd bought out to the south. The kid with the saddle innocently replied, "Oh, we got the Alden and Marvin spreads for next to nothing."

Longarm didn't ask why. Anglo-Saxon country folks could be just as quick to take advantage of fool furriners.

By now they were close enough to the two-story shingled-frame main house to make out the four full-grown and gaggle of smaller figures watching from the front veranda. As they got within earshot, the Kellgren kid who wasn't packing any load rode forward at a lope to doubtless gossip some about their unexpected visitor.

So nobody asked to see his badge when they invited him to come on in and tell them all about it while he had some coffee and a slice or more of Momma's ostkaka.

Gunnar Kellgren looked a lot like Santa Claus must have before he got fat and his full beard had gone from wheat-straw to snow-white. His old woman, Miss Frederika, was a big motherly gal in blond braids and flour-dusted pinafore who looked as if she still liked to screw when nobody was watching. The two of them spoke tolerable English, but a tad more singsong than their pure American kids.

The cheerful kitchen of their stout frame house was painted in the pale sunny way most Scandinavians fancied, with everything that wasn't buttercup-yellow either mint-green or baby-blanket-blue. The coffee they served him at the yellow kitchen table was black as sin. The ominously named cake turned out to taste like cheese and cherries, only sweeter. As he enjoyed two whole slices Longarm told them more about his needs. Gunnar Kellgren said they'd be proud to lend the government a good mount, and that Longarm could just leave it in that livery near the landing in New Ulm when he was done with it. For his boys rode into town more often than their momma and the pastor of their church felt they ought to.

When Longarm said he was on an expense account and offered to pay for the hire of their pony, the expansive Swede looked hurt and asked, "Do we look like barley growers, Deputy Long? We don't keep our cows in the house with us but there are plenty out back, along with many a draw filled with firewood and running water across both our lawful holdings and the open range we graze almost entirely our own selves."

Longarm said he was sorry if he'd insulted anybody. Then, the free loan of that pony settled, he innocently asked who else might be sharing the open range off to the west.

Kellgren sounded just as unworried when he answered, "Other cattle folk named Runeberg. They're all right. Pretty little Helga Runeberg has been running the outfit since her own daddy died. It's a shame she'd be a tad too old for Junior here. If our two families ever married up they'd leave a grand cattle empire to our grandchildren someday!"

Longarm allowed he'd heard Helga Runeberg ran a mighty big outfit from her own spread along the Sleepy Eye. Then he added, "That would be better than a score of country miles to the southwest, wouldn't it?"

Kellgren nodded casually and replied, "I said it would make a grand empire. Like ourselves, of course, Miss Helga only holds a section or so she has to pay taxes on. But none of the farm families moving in along either our river or Miss Helga's claim more than a half mile back from the roads to market. Field crops can't be driven down off the rises on its own hooves, and after that, this part of Minnesota is laid out just right for cattle folks and farm folks to live and let live."

Longarm didn't need to be lectured on the advantages of drilling in spuds or grain on bottomland while grazing beef or dairy stock on the higher rolling prairie between river valleys. So he washed down the last of his second slice of ostkaka with the last of his coffee, and made a show of taking out his pocket watch to see how he was doing as to time.

The burly cattleman took the obvious hint and rose from his side of the table, suggesting they go have a look at the riding stock. So Longarm picked up his McClellan from the kitchen corner and trailed after Kellgren and his older boys.

All the ponies in the corral out back looked well fed and spunky. Longarm said so, and added that since they knew their own stock better than he did, he'd leave the choice to them.

One of the kids wanted to lend Longarm a chestnut with four white stockings. But old Kellgren snorted and said, "The man said he wants to cover a good bit of ground, a lot of it after dark, not rope or cut, Junior."

He pointed out a bigger blue roan and told Longarm, "You'd want old Smokey there. Sixteen hands at the shoulder to pack a man your size through thick and thin. There's only one thing, though. I see that bridle lashed to your saddle has a stock bit and Smokey is a lot of horse. Would you care for the loan of a meaner spade bit?"

Longarm said, "Not hardly. I got a lot of wrist, and old ladies call you names when you ride a pony into town foaming pink."

Kellgren said it was up to the rider to decide such matters, and told his boys to saddle Smokey up for their guest. As they were doing so, with the big blue roan objecting some, Longarm asked Kellgren more about his neighbors to the south, since he'd have to pass more than one on his way to the Chambrun spread.

The big Swede shrugged and said, "We get along. It's best to stay on neighborly terms. Whether they sneak some beef on you or not, it makes it easier to deal with them when the time comes to buy them out."

"You've been planning that far ahead?" asked Longarm thoughtfully.

Kellgren sounded as if his conscience was clear when he replied, "You have to, if you expect to leave this world better off than you came into it. I know the government was anxious to fill all this wide-open space with somebody that pays more taxes than buffalo or buffalo-hunting redskins. But we all know four out of five homesteaders fail, even when they're white folks who know what they're doing. The trashy halfbreeds and colored folks down the river as far as the Bedford freehold can't know what they're doing. They don't even listen when a well-meant white neighbor tries to tell them what they're doing all wrong!"

"What are they doing all wrong, and ain't any of them white?" asked Longarm with a puzzled frown.

Kellgren shook his leonine head and said, "Nope. All but those colored Conways down the other side of Chambrun seem to be breeds or poor-white squawmen married to kin of that full-blooded Chambrun woman, Miss Tatokee Something. Sometimes she's supposed to be this and other times she's supposed to be that. But Miss Matilda, who fetches and carries for the Bee Witch, says she's a full-blood Santee, and Miss Matilda ought to know, being part Santee in her own right."

"You all know this so-called Bee Witch?" Longarm asked.

Kellgren said, "Sure. She's not really a witch. Just an odd old colored woman who keeps bees. She acts sort of wild and crazy when mean kids tease her. But the honey she sells is so clean and clear my Frederika serves it straight from the jar. We mostly deal with her helper, Miss Matilda, a young breed gal who gets around better. Like I said, she's the one who says the Chambrun squaw's a full-blood Santee, no matter what the government said about moving them all out to the Dakota Territory."

Longarm somehow doubted even a part Santee would have called any other woman a squaw. But by now they had old Smokey saddled and bridled. In the meantime, it wasn't getting a lick earlier. So Longarm asked no further questions about the neighbors to the south, and just made certain he had that New Ulm livery right as he mounted up and rode out, with the sun agreeing with his pocket watch it would soon be suppertime.

But there were a few hours of daylight left as he rode the big blue roan down the county road, admiring the view as well as the easy gait of the long-limbed gelding. To his left, between the road and river, second- and third-growth bottomland hardwood grew so thick in places you hardly knew the water was there. Most such trees grew back from the stump as circles of saplings around the ghost of the original full-grown alder, cottonwood, willow, or whatever. All that gathering of free firewood since the Santee had been run out had made for a genuine jungle in summertime and doubtless good brush shelter for critters the rest of the year. Off to his right, as the prairie rolled higher, whether as slopes or rocky bluffs, such trees as still grew either marched in file down scattered watercourses, or circled up like a wagon camp atop otherwise bare grassy rises, with a cow peeking out from such cover every now and again. Longarm knew that when this had still been an Indian reserve the trees had grown far thicker, with real woodlands sometimes reaching clean to the river banks in some stretches. For unlike their buffalo-running cousins further west, or perhaps the way those cousins had started out before they'd met Tashunka, or Horse, the Santee had lived far more like their Ojibwa enemies, on the bounty of their original woodlands around the Great Sweet Waters, where Hiawatha had met his Santee sweetheart, Miss Minnihaha. Woodland Indians could be hell on trees with useful bark, such as birch or elm, but they liked to choose dried-out deadwood for fires, and had less call than white folks to chop down green and still-growing timber. Someone had sure cut a heap of it since the Santee had been run out back in '63. Neither the Kellgrens nor the neighbors he'd said were at least part Indian would have had much call to log this seriously so far from their own woodpiles. It seemed as likely the more valuable red oak, rock maple, basswood, and such on the drier slopes had been cut and rafted downstream for fun and profit before many homesteads had been filed upstream from New Ulm after the land had been thrown open to white folks.

A harried lark was cussing about it from a bobwire fence and the shadows were getting longer when he overtook a raggedy kid driving a dairy cow on foot, likely homeward bound, along the far side of that fence with soft words and a big stick. Longarm reined in to stand in the stirrups and peer down the road ahead as he called out, "Evening, cowboy. That your homestead a furlong on with that smoke plume waving at us in the breeze?"

The kid called back, "I may not have me a pony to ride, mister. But that don't give you no call to mock me."

Longarm laughed lightly and replied, "Mocking was never what I intended. Anyone can see you're a boy in command of a cow. And as for you having a pony or not, any Mex matador can tell you it's a heap braver to mess with a cow afoot than mounted up. That particular cow looks pure Jersey as well. You'd never get that matador to mess with a Jersey in the bull ring. How come you're so brave?"

The kid replied, less pissed, "Got no choice. They sent me to fetch old Napin Gleska when she didn't come in to get milked with the others. You were right about her being a purebred. We got us a whole dozen milkers of the very best."

"Brand-new four-strand fence I see there too," Longarm noted in an admiring tone. "Your folks must be doing mighty well."

The kid whacked the milch cow's tawny rump with his stick as he shook his head and explained. "Ina Tatowiyeh Wachipi gave Pa all the money we needed to prove this claim. She's the one who's rich, and she don't sit on her money like an old broody hen expecting to hatch it neither! She's a real Nakotawiyeh! Not a stingy old Wasichu lady!"

Longarm nodded as if he understood everything they were talking about. "Others have told me Wabasha Chambrun's fine wife was a true-heart. Santee Nakota, right?"

The kid sounded smug as he stuck out his skinny chest to declare, "Just like my real ina. It ain't my fault I'm only half Nakota. They'd have never let us claim this land back if my ina hadn't married up with a Wasichu like you."

Then he jabbed the Jersey under her tail with his stick and shouted, "Hokahey, you lazy cow! Iyoptey niyeh or I'll never get any supper tonight!"

Longarm could see the kid was busy. So he said so and rode on, digesting the little he'd learned as he repeated their few words in his head. Others had told him the Chambruns weren't the only odd newcomers who'd filed homestead claims up here on what had once been the Santee Reserve. He'd meant what he'd said to that kid back there about fancy dairy breeds and one more strand of new Glidden Brand bobwire than most nesters strung. The more eastern dialect the kid had larded his English with was close enough to the little Lakota Longarm knew, despite it's being a tad more guttural with the L sounds transposed to N, for Longarm to figure the kid had likely meant to call the Chambrun woman his aunt instead of his real mother. A lot of the nations used the same words for all the elders of their parents' generation. Tatowiyeh Chambrun, to keep it simple, could as easily be just a friendly older woman as true kin. Indians tended to be better friends and uglier enemies than some. So a full-blood married to a homesteader who had hundred-dollar treasury notes to spend would doubtless help out another full-blood gal married up with yet another nester.

The breed kid had innocently verified what others suspected about Chambrun having a Santee woman, whatever in thunder he claimed to be. The kid had called her a Nakotawiyeh, or woman of the allies, as close as it worked out in Wasichu. But he hadn't argued when a friendly stranger referred to her as a member of her own particular Santee nation.

Longarm ignored the yard dog and other raggedy kids who seemed so interested as he rode past their soddy. He had meant his remark about their chimney smoke a tad sardonically. For few white nesters could afford that much of a fire just for a summer supper, and Indians were inclined to burn less than a third as much fuel, left to their usual habits. But he knew that a prosperous wiyeh, living "Fat Cow" because her man was so successful, could be inclined to build such a fire as it drove everyone out of her tipi with their eyes burning so she could modestly brag on the way her man had been spoiling her.

He rode past the next fenced-in spread he came upon, knowing grown folks fibbed more to the law than their kids might and that suppertime was a rude time to come calling in any case.

The summer sun set later that far north than it might in some other parts. But the sky to the west was a crimson memory of the day, and the wishing star was winking down at him from the east when he saw a lamp lighting up a quarter mile ahead. As he slowed old Smokey to a thoughtful walk, he was sure that dark cluster down the road had to be the Chambrun place and that at least the lady of the house was a full-blood from a fighting nation.

Longarm had read that same crap about Sioux being afraid to fight after dark because the Great Spirit might not be able to find their ghosts if they were killed. Old Ned Buntline said Calamity Jane had ridden with the Seventh Cav as well. But the simple truth about the fighting tactics of the Horse Nations was that nobody with a lick of sense, red or white, ever ordered a full cav charge after dark because it simply smarted to ride into a solid object at full gallop.

After that, wakan Tanka (or Wakanda) translated more like Great Medicine or Big Mystery than Great Spirit, which would have been Wanigi Tanka if any old-time medicine man thought he knew who was running his own world. Nobody was supposed to come looking for your four ghosts when you got killed. Some of you went looking for your enemies to haunt them, which was why they maimed your corpse to cripple your ghost, while another part of you went to live with Old Woman in her lodge beneath the Northern Lights. Longarm agreed with his Indian pals that it might be more fun to roam with those other ghostly parts of your dead self in what some translated as the Happy Hunting Ground, although no Indian thought his ghost would have to hunt very hard, where it was never too hot, never too cold, you always felt as if you'd just eaten, and all you had to do was ride forever on a fast immortal pony.

Meanwhile, back here in the living world, dusk was considered a swell time to raid an enemy, and knowing this, most Quill Indians could be more proddy about sudden bumps in the dark than a stranger riding at them in broad daylight. So Longarm reined in a furlong out and drew his.44-40 to peg a shot at that wishing star.

As he sat his stationary mount reloading, that lamp winked out in the window of the soddy in the middle distance.

A long time later a cautious voice called out, "Who's there and what might you want?"

Longarm called back, "I'd be Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long, and I'd like a few words with Mister Wabasha Chambrun. I fired that shot lest you take me for a thief in the night."

The man in the darkened doorway of the soddy called for him to come on in in that case. But nobody struck a light inside before Longarm had dismounted in the dooryard and was tethering his mount to their hitching rail in plain view. That lamp inside was relit as he approached the front door, hands polite and Winchester still in its saddle boot for anyone to plainly see.

Wabasha Chambrun, after all that talk, turned out to look mighty unremarkable in his checked shirt and bib overalls. He could have passed for a fairly clean-cut Mexican in town, if he'd said that was what he was.

The same could not be said for the moon-faced old gal over in a corner near that lamp. Nobody but Buffalo Bill wore fringed buckskin in the summer when they didn't have to. But her blue print Mother Hubbard didn't disguise her long slick braids or the red line she'd painted along the part of her greased black hair. It wasn't true a full-blood always kept a poker face. Her smoldering sloe eyes were driving mental splinters into him where it really hurt a man as her husband said something to her in her own lingo.

She muttered, "Ohiney!" and turned her back on them as Longarm noticed that the four half-grown kids peering through a doorway at him seemed a tad less Indian and not quite as sore at him. "You got here too late for supper," Chambrun told Longarm, "and I know better than to offer you any of her choke-cherry lard dessert. But I told her to put the coffee on and she will, in a while, if she knows what's good for her. I ain't talking Santee to her to be rude. Tatowiyeh Wachipi's a good old girl in many ways, but she refuses to even try and learn Wasichu."

Longarm almost asked if Tatowiyeh Wachipi might not translate as something like Dancing Antelope Gal. Then he wondered why he'd want to ask a dumb question like that. Chambrun already knew what his woman's name meant in her lingo, and it was often surprising to hear what people might have to say when they didn't think you knew a word they were saying.

As his sullen woman cussed some more and threw a length of pitch-pine in the firebox of their cast-iron corner range, Chambrun waved Longarm to a seat at the table in the middle of their main room cum kitchen. As Longarm removed his hat and sat down, the somewhat older and burlier breed said easily, "I know why you've come. But just as I've told everyone else, I can prove I was right here in Brown County when they robbed that government office over in Fort Collins!"

Longarm nodded amiably and replied, "Nobody thinks you took part in the holdup itself. You'd know better than the rest of us how you came by that hundred-dollar treasury note you gave Israel Bedford in exchange for that riding stock."

Chambrun shook his head and said, "I came by it as honestly as Neighbor Bedford. I sold some stock of my own for cash to yet another farmer whose name was Tom, Dick, or mayhaps Harry."

"Might we be talking about dairy stock?" asked Longarm innocently.

Chambrun, caught off base, nodded before he decided it might be smarter to say, "We don't milk any cows on this spread. That's one of your customs none of us have ever bothered to learn, so I reckon you'd as soon have you coffee black than creamed our way, with flour?"

Longarm said he always drank his coffee straight. Then he took a breath, held it so his voice would come out dead level, and told the breed dead level, "I know at least one part-Santee family who keeps some dairy stock and milks 'em, just before supper and doubtless once before breakfast whether they're creaming their coffee or just selling the produce to Wasichu. I was never told they bought a fine Jersey purebred off you, Mister Chambrun. I was told they'd been given a helping hand from a generous... aunt?"

Chambrun sat down across from Longarm with a confused whoosh of wordless breath. Longarm leaned back and didn't press him. Sometimes the fibs you gave them time to make up could reveal as much as half truths you slapped out of a worried mouth.

But it wasn't Chambrun who broke. He seemed at a total loss for words as his wife came over, slamming two empty tin cups down on the bare wood as she snapped, in perfect English, "Your damned coffee will be ready in a minute. My Wabasha has done nothing wrong, nothing. It was I who gave him that paper money. All of it. Are you going to take me down to Mankato so they can hang me too as my children watch and weep tears of blood?"

Longarm answered quietly, "Not hardly, ma'am. Possession of stolen property ain't good for much more than a year in jail, and that's only when they can prove you knew it was stolen. So if I were you and I'd come by that recorded treasury note honestly, I'd just tell the law the truth and have done with it. The fine print on that note allows you had every right to spend it, any way you saw fit, as long as you broke no laws to come by it, see?"

She said something about that coffee, and went back to her range to consider his offer. Chambrun asked which one of those windy kids up the road had blabbed to the law about family matters.

Longarm smiled thinly and replied, "Would you want me to tell on you after I'd tricked a bitty dab of gossip out of you?"

His wife turned around to stare thoughtfully down at him, her dark eyes filled with worried wonder. She said, "You say you don't care where people might get money as long as they have broken none of the laws they pay you to enforce. But hear me, what do you have to do with the regulations of the Bureau of Indian Affairs?"

Longarm answered honestly, "Nothing. I don't ride for the B.I.A. and Brown County ain't an Indian Reserve no more. If you're hinting you might have saved up or even re-invested some B.I.A. allotments, when everyone knows you spend it all on white flour and ribbon bows before it's time for another handout, that's between you and your B.I.A. agent. If you had a B.I.A. agent. Since you seem to be living off the blanket on your Wasichu homestead claim, I fail to see what beeswax of my department it might be."

She stared long and hard. Then she nodded and said, "I think I know who you must be. They spoke of a man like you at the Crow Creek Agency out in the Dakota Territory. Our western kinsmen called you Wasichu Wastey and said you spoke as straight as you could shoot. Are you not the one Mahpiua Luta calls his Medicine Grandson?"

To which Longarm could only modestly reply, "I reckon old Red Cloud and me are on friendly enough terms considering. He's one wise old gent, and likely would have kept his own bands out of that dumb Custer fight whether I'd warned him that time or not. It hardly took as much medicine as some said I must have had to predict the way things were sure to come out in the end. Red Cloud got invited back east to Washington after he'd won his war along the Bozeman Trail with the U.S. Army back in '68. So he knew what Tatanka Yotanka, Tashunka Witko, and the others would be up against if they opposed old Terry's advance on their Paha Supa treaty lands. All I told the big chief that he hadn't heard was how certain members of the crooked Indian Ring in Washington were hoping for a nice big battle, because that would give them the excuse to just tear up the Treaty of 1868 entirely and grind the whole Lakota Confederacy up like sausage meat."

Tatowiyeh Wachipi sighed soulfully and said, "You spoke the truth. After the good fight at Greasy Grass along the Little Big Horn, they said we were savage children it was pointless to bargain with, and they took away the powers of all our chiefs and moved us off all the good lands, all of it. Do you think that was fair, after signing the Treaty of 1868 with Mahpiua Luta in ink?"

Longarm shrugged and said, "Depends on how you read a treaty, I reckon. The Five Civilized Tribes lost their rights to self-government in the Indian Nation after they chose to fight on the Confederate side in the war. There was nothing in any treaty about the government granting perpetual scalping rights to anybody."

Chambrun said, "Hold on! My own ina's folk were Osage and they fought on the Union side in the War Betwixt the States!"

Longarm nodded and said, "That's doubtless how come the Osage got their own strip in the Indian Nation, carved out of Cherokee and Creek holdings along the Arkansas. I'm glad to hear you really have Osage blood, Mister Chambrun. But how come we're jawing about such ancient history when all I ever asked was where you all got that one infernal treasury note?"

She pouted, "How can you prove the one we paid Israel Bedford for some stock was the one they say somebody stole from that payroll? A Wasichu who hates us would find it easy, very easy, to switch the paper we paid a neighbor in good faith with another he knew to be stolen. Did we think to keep a record of the serial numbers on our own money? Did Israel Bedford? Does anybody, unless they have a good or bad reason?"

Longarm started to say something that might not have been perfectly fair. Then he nodded soberly and said, "Hokahey. Let's try that on for size. Let's say Banker Plover had already short-stopped one of those red-hot treasury notes and was keeping it on ice for some devious reason. Let's say he just waited until an innocent party came in to deposit a plain old innocent hundred-dollar note. Then let's say the banker switched 'em and called the law on a customer."

Chambrun said that worked for him. His wife agreed it only confirmed what she'd always thought about Wasichu who dealt in treacherous written words and complicated numbers that always left you owing the trading post more than you'd expected.

Longarm shrugged and quietly asked, "How could Banker Plover have known where Bedford got that recorded note before he had the chance to ask him?"

The breed and his wife exchanged puzzled glances. She said something too fast for Longarm to follow in their private lingo. Then she turned away to see about that coffee.

Chambrun chuckled and said, "She says you must be Wasichu Wastey because you chew your thoughts so good before you spit them out. Now that you've put it that way, even I can see how unlikely it was that old P.S. Plover could have had it in for us in particular."

As his woman brought the coffeepot back to the table, Longarm asked either one who cared to guess, "Then what might that banker have had against Bedford? There's the old boy who'd have been in a whole lot of trouble if he hadn't been able to point to you, and you hadn't owned up to giving him that mysterious treasury note."

Tatowiyeh Wachipi poured the reheated coffee as she told Longarm in a weary voice, "There is no real mystery about where I got that money, and other money. From Wowinapa, you call him Mister Thomas Wakeman, and others of our people who now live as if they were Wasichu and, as you suggested, invest allotment funds for some of our people still drawing them from the B.I.A."

Longarm whistled softly and asked, "Ain't Thomas Wakeman, also known as Wowinapa, the surviving son of Little Crow?"

Dancing Antelope Gal nodded soberly and replied, "Just as I am a niece of Wamni Tanka. You called him Big Eagle and sent him off to the state penitentiary as if he'd been a common thief instead of a great war leader!"

Longarm shrugged and said, "He got off light. The state posted a twenty-five-dollar bounty on Santee scalps and a heap of burnt-out homesteaders got new starts by collecting quite a few. But weren't we talking about Little Crow's grown son, who lives respectable these days?"

She nodded soberly and said, "As Thomas Wakeman, Wowinapa is now an Episcopal deacon and an official of the Y.M.C.A. Other Santee who never wanted to go to that Crow Bend Agency have done as well. Hear me. Some of them have done very well, very, off the blanket and under a Wasichu haircut."

Her husband volunteered, "A gent can get hurt asking a stranger drinking next to him in a saloon how he might have come by that deep tan and sort of high cheekbones."

Longarm nodded impatiently and said, "I drink regular with such old boys, and a fellow deputy out of the Denver office makes no bones about his Indian blood. Could we stick to that hundred-dollar treasury note?"

The lady of the house nodded and said, "A group of Indian or former Indian businessmen have formed a syndicate with the quiet intent of getting back as much of this ancestral Santee land as possible the Wasichu way!"

Her husband chuckled fondly and said, "We ain't had much luck in trying to hold it Indian-style. No matter how the damned treaty may read, somebody on one damned side or the other always seems to trip over some damned provision. You were the one who just said what happens when Washington gets the excuse to scrap an agreement on the grounds of breach of contract."

Longarm laughed incredulously and said, "Let me see if I got this straight. You treacherous Sioux, having failed to lick the U.S. Army and take this continent back by force of arms, mean to take at least some of it back by way of the Federal Homestead Act?"

Chambrun asked smugly, "Why not? The government lets freed slaves and Swedes who speak even worse English than us file homestead claims before they've bothered applying for citizenship. Where in your Constitution or Good Book does it say a human being born on U.S. soil to families that go way back before Columbus can't call his or her ownself an American farmer, as long as he or she can abide by all your fool rules?"

"And pay all bills in legal tender?" the moon-faced wife of the otherwise normal homestead added as her breed kids snickered from the next room.

Longarm didn't want to compound the confusion by making objections or asking questions that had no direct bearing on that Fort Collins robbery. So he sipped some bitter brew to compose his own thoughts. He knew it could look either way to that kid with the cow, and it really cut no ice whether the Chambruns were using other folks' money or acting as distributors for that mysterious syndicate. So he put down his cup and got out his notebook as he quietly said, "If I take your word how you came by that recorded hundred-dollar note, I'm still going to have to backtrack it all the way to Fort Collins, or at least to someone criminal for certain. So you'd best give me some other names I can check out. You say these sort of retired Santee have been advancing you homesteading kith and kin the money it takes to make a go of a government claim?"

Chambrun nodded, and might have said something if his moon-faced wife hadn't cut him off with a rattle of Santee Longarm couldn't keep up with.

It was tough enough to follow a Mexican conversation in rapid-fire Spanish when you knew most of the words but didn't think in Spanish. The folks you were trying to listen in on tended to run on to the next paragraph while you were still translating the first in your own head.

It was even worse when you only knew some baby-talk Indian. The Sioux-Hokan dialects weren't as confusing as some others, but that didn't mean the grammar was simple as English. The nouns and verbs changed enough, depending on who was talking about whom, while the singular and plural could stay the same. So while Longarm was still brushing up on the little he knew of their lingo, the Chambruns had come to some agreement on how they meant to talk to him in Wasichu.

It was Chambrun who spoke up, although Longarm suspected that none of these white or breed squawmen had the final say when they'd been funded by the kith and kin of their purebred wives. The burly breed said, "We're not going to tell you, Deputy Long. Didn't they ever tell you that tale about the golden goose?"

Longarm nodded soberly and replied, "They did, and I follow your drift. I'd be sore if I'd advanced somebody the money to start a sort of agricultural experiment and they called the law on me too. On the other hand, looking at it from my side of the checkerboard, I've been ordered to trace that treasury note all the way back to the cuss who took it from that government payroll at gunpoint, and so far the trail seems to end at your very doorstep."

Chambrun shook his head stubbornly and said, "No, it don't. Israel Bedford is the one who presented a thing to the bank that was listed as stolen. Banker Plover read the number of that particular piece of paper off his official list. Nobody never read shit off nothing when I paid Bedford for that riding stock."

Longarm frowned and said, "Hold on. Bedford says the note he took to the bank was the same one he got from you."

Dancing Antelope Gal cut in. "We can say we got it from Old Man Coyote as long as we didn't have to prove it. Why do you take the word of Israel Bedford over that of my husband? Because the Wasichu has blue eyes and thus his heart must be pure?"

Longarm wet a finger and drew an invisible chalk mark in the air between them as he said, "I'll give you that point, even though they say in town that Israel Bedford has a good rep."

Chambrun grumbled, "What's wrong with my rep? Has anybody said I steal from my neighbors or fail to pay my bills on time? It's all the fault of that Mark Twain, making Indian Joe the halfbreed the villain. I know what they say about us two-faced snakes in the grass, but was Simon Girty who led all those raids along the old frontier part Indian? Was Benedict Arnold or Judas part Indian?"

Longarm grimaced and said, "I just said I conceded that point. But they still expect me to make some arrests in connection with that hot paper, old son."

Chambrun shrugged and said, "Arrest Bedford then. He's the one who spent that treasury note in town for certain. It's my word against his that I handed him that particular treasury note and no other. But if you want to arrest me, on no more than a white man's sacred word, I reckon I'll just have to take my chances with the grand jury if it goes that far."

His wife said, in a less teasing tone, "We know none of the people we are ... fronting for would hold anybody up. It would only upset them, very much, if we told you who they were and let you bother them. If they knew anything, anything about stolen money, they would never pass it on to people of their own nation."

Then she crossed her arms and quietly added, "So hear me. I have spoken."

Longarm finished all but the dregs in his tin cup as he composed his words carefully. "I know nobody would knowingly pass on a recorded hundred-dollar treasury note if they knew about those lists of serial numbers, ma'am. But you've just now convinced me an innocent person could accept and pass one on in ignorant good faith. So can't you see how some perfectly respectable businessman of the Santee or part-Santee persuasion could have accepted some of that hot paper in trade, and might be able to tell me just who in thunder stuck him with it?"

The Indian woman didn't answer. Her husband rose from the table to say, "I reckon I have spoken too."

So Longarm shrugged, got to his own feet, and put his hat back on as he replied, "In that case there's nothing left for me to say but pilamiyeh, or is that pinamiyeh in Santee, and in either case I'll be back if your story don't hold water, hear?"

CHAPTER 17

The darkness had finished falling by the time Longarm mounted up to ride on, the bitter taste in his mouth only partly inspired by that dreadful coffee back yonder. The moon was up and out to shine bright, but a herd of big black clouds were stampeding across the sky from the southwest to make the night air taste like electric tingles felt and make the moonlight mighty tricky. But as he rode old Smokey downstream, Longarm could tell the road under them lay at a nine- or ten-degree grade, and they'd told him aboard that old steamboat how Chambrun had claimed high rocky ground instead of richer bottomlands up and down the river for the taking. For folks trying to live off the blanket like white settlers, they sure had some mighty odd ways, maybe left over from the vision-seeking notions of less advanced times. Indians were always camping way up in the middle of the air, and starving themselves on top of rock outcroppings, until a friendly wanigi took pity on them and sent a vision from the spirit world. Longarm had never heard of anyone having a vision in the warm comfort of a really swell campsite.

As they followed the gentle grade down to more sensible cropland, shifting shadows made everything to either side of the county road wriggle and writhe in the ghostly moonlight. Longarm had figured out as a kid why folks felt proddy moving past a graveyard when the moon was full and the hoot owls were feeling amorous. So he told old Smokey not to believe in ghosts, even if they were smack on the very warpath those Santee had come boiling down once the pot had boiled over up at the lower agency. Of course, they'd hit that military post on the far side of the river first, likely fording the Minnesota at some handy crossing and...

"That's it!" Longarm assured his mount as he chuckled and added aloud, "Old Chambrun was right. It might not be smart to assume a man can't think sensible as anyone else just because he's got some Indian blood!"

He reined in to light a cheroot as he expanded on his inspiration. It made just as much sense as he got his smoke going and shook out the match. It only stood to reason a well-funded breed, scouting earlier than the rest of his bunch for a good spot to claim, might see the advantages of a place along the river where they'd never build any steamboat landing but might surely build a bridge, or even a railroad trestle, once this valley commenced to fill in some more!

Longarm blew smoke at a sycamore making obscene gestures at them in the shifty light and told Smokey, "They call it the law of eminent domain when they want to run a railroad or bridge approach across your property. You got to let 'em. But they got to pay you a fair price, or as much as the land would be worth under, let's say, corn and taters. So if I had my homestead on the best bridge site for miles, I reckon I'd let them force me to sell the acres they needed at their price, and then I'd set my own price on what I had left, once I'd cut 'em up into building lots for the crossroads settlement you generally find where a serious river crossing intersects a county road!"

He heeled his borrowed mount to ride on. Then he suddenly reined in some more, and sure enough, those other riders he'd only thought might be echoes reined in themselves after they'd noticed he had.

He rode on at a comfortable lope, knowing for certain there were four or more riders about a quarter mile back. It got less easy to say for certain once there were more than three.

Longarm figured he could take up to half a dozen with his Winchester if he could surprise them from good cover. There were plenty of shifty-lit trees to his left, between the road and riverbanks. If he turned old Smokey loose to run on for some oats, as ponies were inclined to behave by nature... Shit, the gelding would doubtless head back to its familiar fodder and water at the Kellgren spread, meaning an empty saddle passing those other riders on the road to give them plenty of warning someone had dismounted up ahead to lay for them!

"I reckon we'd best stick together," Longarm told his loping blue roan as he hauled out his Winchester anyway with a hell of a night ride still ahead of them.

He knew the big gelding was made out of flesh and blood, like he was, and only a steam-driven machine, whether afloat or on wheels, was about to swallow that much distance in one gulp. So those others, who had to know that much, would likely wait until he took a trail break before they... what?

"Let's find out," Longarm growled as he neck-reined old Smokey off the road to burst into the second growth off to their left. The gelding didn't like it much, and it was tough on Longarm's knees without chaps as well. But he forced the blue roan through the springy jungle as far as a little moonlit cove, where he dismounted on the drier side and tethered Smokey to an alder, saying soothingly, "You got plenty of browse and all the water you can drink. So keep your voice low whilst I work back a ways with this saddle gun and see if I can find out what this is all about!"

Old Smokey didn't argue. Longarm found it far easier to move his own smaller frame through the tanglewood on foot. Closer to the sometimes-moonlit road he found a fallen sycamore with a swell clump of box elder sprouting just right to break up his own outline as he lay behind it in the grass with his Winchester propped across the mottled sycamore bark to cover the road.

Nothing happened. It felt as if the Ice Age had come and gone, to be replaced by the rise and fall of the Roman Empire at least. The moon was now overhead, but the night kept getting darker as those clouds got thicker, and he could only hope a night bird had just shit on his hat brim in passing, because otherwise it was starting to rain and he'd left his damned slicker by the river with his damned saddle on that damned gelding!

Another drop hit his left wrist, closer to the muzzle of his '73. There was nothing he could do about it. If it rained hard he'd get wet. If it didn't, he wouldn't. Those other riders doubtless had slickers handier on their damned saddles. They were likely back up that road a piece, putting them on. They'd be along directly, the dry and comfortable sons of bitches.

But still they didn't come, and now it was starting to really rain. Longarm lay there, getting soaked, as the raindrops pounded out yonder on the road as if intent on muffling the sounds of any approaching hoofbeats. He considered whether that could be what had inspired the mysterious riders on his trail to hold back. He knew that same rain made it tough for him to judge whether anyone else was out there in the dark or not. He doubted he'd want to ride in on anybody with his own loaded gun, not knowing just where the rascal was in shifting darkness with all but the loudest sounds drowned out.

It was even possible they'd never been after anybody to begin with, Longarm decided, as he went back over various conversations he'd had in recent memory.

He hadn't told anyone in New Ulm where he was headed or how he meant to get there. It hardly seemed likely anybody aboard that steamboat could have followed him on horseback. The Kellgrens had had the drop on him earlier and acted friendly as hell after he'd told them who he was and where he was headed. So why would any of their riders be trailing him?

He'd passed other spreads without stopping. But that didn't mean nobody had spotted a stranger riding by in broad daylight and gotten to fretting some. County folks living alone with all sorts of oddities on their consciences had given Longarm some anxious moments in the past. Just hearing a lawman was in his neck of the woods had been enough to set off that old prospector living in sin with his daughter up a canyon that time, poor old bastard.

But it was just as likely the Chambruns had been unsettled by his unexpected visit and personal questions. It was true they'd acted as civilized as he'd had any right to expect. But they'd had more than one boy back yonder big enough to pack a gun, and who but a total asshole would gun a lawman on his or her own property when the poor cuss had a good eight- or twelve-hour ride ahead of him on a damn-near-deserted county road?

"Meanwhile I'm as likely to die of a summer ague if I don't get out of this cold rain!" Longarm grumbled, even as he forced himself to just stay put and take some more while he counted to a hundred for at least the hundredth time.

Then he hauled in his gun muzzle and rose back to his soggy feet, knowing that even if they were still out there in the stormy darkness, they couldn't begin to guess where he might be in the dark.

He made his way back to his rain-soaked mount, untethering it but not remounting just yet as he said, "I'm sorry about this too, pard. I was spooked over Lord knows what, and whatever it was don't seem to be after us no more. So what say we get back to the road and move on at least as far as that Conway spread? Them colored nesters ain't on our list of suspects, like the Bedfords further on, so we'll ask for shelter there, all right?"

He started working their way through the dripping tanglewood. It wasn't easy. The saplings and sticker brush seemed even thicker in the direction he'd chosen. Then he spied light through the branches ahead and marveled, "We can't be that close to the Conway place or any other I remember from the pilothouse of the Moccasin Blossom."

Then he thought back harder and decided, "That crazy old colored lady they call the Bee Witch! It has to be a lamp in a window she has facing the shore, and she was tied up right by the bank. So how do you feel about asking our damned way at least?"

He led the gelding after him through the riverside growth as the moon winked on and off through the scudding clouds above them. That rain had blown over and it seemed to be clearing up, if that was how you wanted to describe soggy footing and dripping leaves all about. So the moon had burst through to beam down on the rambling shanty out on that log raft as Longarm spotted the plank stretched ashore and politely called out, "Ahoy, yon houseboat! This here would be a mighty wet U.S. Deputy Custis Long, bearing neither warrants nor malice for anyone on board. Now it's your move."

He'd been expecting most any move than the one busting out of the shanty, wailing like a banshee and flapping what seemed to be big old buzzard wings at him as his mount spooked and fought the bit while Longarm stood his ground and just called, "Howdy, ma'am."

The raggedy black apparition moaned in a spooky voice, "Go away or I'll turn you into a toad and have you for my supper!"

Longarm chuckled indulgently and replied, "I thought it was frogs, or their legs leastways, some folks ate, ma'am. Far be it from me to call a lady a big fibber, but I'm more worried right now about catching my death in this wet outfit than I am about getting turned into a toad."

"Don't you think I can do it? Don't you know I'm the Bee Witch?" the spooky shadow cackled.

Longarm gently replied, "I heard your Santee admirers called you something more like Sapaweyah, ma'am," figuring that it might sound needlessly familiar to toss in that part about her being witko, or crazy. Indians looked on being crazy with more respect than white folks or, as in her case, colored folks. Some Indians, though not all of them, considered insanity a sign of at least a possible meeting with a wanigi, good or bad. No medicine man would go out on a limb and say for certain a raving lunatic was in good with the spirits, but on the other hand, it might be just as safe to treat such a confused and confusing person with respect.

This one waved her wings, or sticks threaded through shaggy black tatters, anyway, and desperately moaned, "Go away! I have spoken!"

That wasn't exactly the way an old colored lady, sane or insane, might have put it. So Longarm nodded and said, "Evening, Miss Matilda. You say the Bee Witch is feeling poorly tonight?"

The dark figure out on the raft let her fake wings drop and stood frozen in confusion, or perhaps fear, without answering. Longarm let it ride until he saw it would be up to him and gently said, "I ain't using wakan sapa, Miss Matilda. They told me your old boss lady had a younger orphan gal out this way helping out, and no offense, you talk more like an Indian lady than a colored lady, even trying to talk spooky. Would you like to talk more sensible now?"

She didn't answer, but it sounded as if she might be crying out there under that raggedy witch outfit. But Longarm insisted, "I told you I was federal law, and you seem to be afloat on a federal waterway instead of private property. So I could likely make it stick if I was to board you without a fussy search warrant."

He let that sink in before he added, "On the other hand, I told you true this pony and me are cold and wet. So would you like to talk a mite more sensible about that and give me less cause for suspecting you of Lord knows what?"

The small spooky figure sobbed, "I have done nothing wrong, nothing! If I show you where to shelter your horse and give you both food and water, will you keep my secret?"

Longarm almost asked what her secret was. Then he decided he'd cross that bridge after he made sure old Smokey wouldn't cool lame on him and the Kellgrens. So he said he didn't ride for the B.I.A. or anyone all that interested in bee culture, and that brought her ashore, showing more of her head in the moonlight as she murmured, "We can't keep our pony cart and burro aboard the raft. I'll show you where I pitched the tent this time."

Longarm followed her along the bank a ways to where, sure enough, an old army perimeter tent stood back in the sticker bush screened over with cut branches. The small gal had explained along the way how much safer she felt out on that raft after dark with all sorts of Wasichu moving up and down the river or that county road to the west.

It was far warmer inside the thick beeswax-dubbed canvas because a small burro had been in there, giving off dry heat through all that summer rain. It got easier to see in there after Longarm struck a match and lit an oil lantern hanging handy on the center pole. The two-wheeled cart she'd mentioned took up close to a third of the remaining space. But he saw the blue roan would have enough room if he tethered it next to the burro. Both brutes being geldings, they just nickered at one another while Longarm exchanged the bit and bridle for a more comfortable rope halter and peeled off the wet saddle and sopping blanket.

The gal said he could drape both over the side rails of that pony cart. So he did as he saw she was pouring cracked Corn in the elm-bark trough the two brutes were close enough to share. In the soft lantern light the head sticking out of the raggedy black costume she had on wasn't spooky at all. The fine bone structure under her tawny complexion and raven's-wing hair said she was at least part Wasichu. She hadn't painted the part in her braided hair Santee-style either. Dressed up more sensibly, with her hair pinned up more fashionably, she might have passed in town for a high-born Mexican gal had she wanted to. He was still working on why she wanted to be taken for a crazy old colored lady.

He never said so. He said he'd sure like to wipe old Smokey down with some dry sacking if they had any.

She nodded, and worked her way around the far side of the pony cart to fumble out some feed sacks and, better yet, a tattered but clean and dry horse blanket. Longarm wiped the blue roan as dry as he could manage while he told her she was an angel of mercy and asked if she'd like to tell him some more about the Bee Witch now.

She started to cry. He went on wiping until he saw no improvement for the effort, and then he fastened the horse blanket over the corn-munching critter and quietly suggested, "I met up with another beekeeper down to the Indian Territory a spell back, preserved in wax like a bug in amber. Of course, the slow learner he had working for him when he died naturally wasn't bright enough to just bury the poor old gent, or did you sink her in the river?"

The young breed gal wailed, "I did nothing at all to Sapaweyah Witko! Come with me and I will show you she is not aboard her house raft dead or alive. I don't know where she is. I have not seen her since the moon when the wolves run together."

Longarm frowned thoughtfully down at her and demanded, "Are you saying she's been missing since the other side of our New Year's Eve, Miss Matilda?"

The girl nodded. "She said she was going into New Ulm to tell her own people something on the talking wire. If you wish to call me by name, I am called Mato Takoza."

Longarm nodded soberly. "I stand corrected and I sure am wet. You wouldn't have a stove, or at least a peg to hang some of these wet duds on, aboard that house raft, would you, ma'am?"

She said she had both, and asked him to douse that lantern before he followed her outside. So he did. Neither his mount nor her burro seemed to care. As he followed her back along the same path Mato Takoza explained, or bragged, how her grandfather had been a war chief almost as important as Little Crow himself, before the blue sleeves had killed him in the fight at Birch Coulee. Longarm had already figured her name meant something like Grandchild of the Bear. It might not have been polite to point out none of the ranking chiefs the milita or regulars bragged on had been called Mato. It was possible he'd been a Big Bear, a Medicine Bear, or some other sort of Bear. It was even more likely he'd been an enlisted Santee remembered as more important by his kith and kin. Longarm had yet to meet anyone whose daddy had been killed as a Confederate private, the C.S.A. records being sort of scattered since the war, and Indian war records had been hampered by neither modesty nor words on paper.

He followed the proud Santee beauty across that springy plank and into the lopsided shingled structure that took up most of the raft.

She'd left a candle lit inside. So he could see the front room was a work shed, smelling strongly of honey and devoted to the extraction gear and mason jars of her trade. Most of the jars seemed to be filled. When he commented, she said she'd been saving all the money she got in town from the Bee Witch's regular customers. She said she hadn't tried to drum up extra business on her own.

When Longarm said he hadn't noticed all that many beehives in the woods, she explained she'd set out two score that spring, along the edge of the trees to the west, shaded by the trees from the hot noonday sun but offering her bees plenty of flowery foraging on the far side of that county road. Longarm was country enough to know she was talking straight when she said more kinds of flowers grew, in greater numbers, where Wasichu had messed with the original lay of the land. Her kind had set grass fires late in the season to keep their hunting grounds open and lush for the critters they ate. But even had they wanted more posies they'd have had to wait till white settlers brought a whole Noah's Ark of extra old country greenery such as alfalfa, chickory, clover, dandelions, and even that Kentucky bluegrass everybody thought as American as apple pie, which was Pennsylvania Dutch in the first place.

The center of the surprisingly roomy shanty was taken up by a main room where, bless her heart, the pretty little thing had lit a combined cooking and heating stove against the damp chill. She seemed as anxious to show him the whole layout as he was to inspect it. He had to allow the two bedchambers opening into the far end of the main central room smelled too clean for her to be hiding a corpse on board.

Mato Takoza sat Longarm at a plank table and rustled up a length of cotton line and a cheesebox of clothes pegs. She strung the line catty-corner across the top of the hot stove, from hooks screwed into the two-by-four framing just right, and told him to shuck his wet duds so she could dry them for him as she whipped up some fresh coffee and scrambled eggs.

He was willing enough, till he got down to just his dank pants, soggy undershirt, and gunbelt. By this time she'd shed her raggedy black spook dress, and it was surprising how womanly a gal with such a young face could look in a thin cotton shift. She didn't have to hang her black rags to dry. As she pegged his to the clothesline she asked how come he was ashamed to take off his gun and pants. She said, "Hear me, you are much bigger than me and you can see I am wearing no gun under this flour sacking. Hang that gunbelt over the Winchester in the corner behind you, and we can have a lot of fun watching one another for false moves!"

He chuckled and replied, "You might suspect me of plotting other sorts of moves if I was to sit here in my birthday suit so close to anybody pretty as you, no offense."

She was too dusky for a blush to show in such dim light, but she fluttered her lashes and sounded a tad flustered as she stammered something about being just a halfbreed, sakes alive. Then she fetched him a blanket from another room, saying, "Wrap this around you if you're afraid I'll peek. But get out of those wet clothes if you don't want to catch a summer cough. It will get colder before it gets warmer here on the water."

He knew that was true. So he ducked into one of the bedrooms to strip down to his bare feet and come back out, wrapped in the dark blue blanket with his free hand holding his gun rig and boots as well as soggy duds. She took everything but his six-gun, saying his boots would dry safer if she stuffed them with newspaper and didn't stand them too close to her stove. He went and hung his gun rig on a nail above the Winchester he'd stood in the angle of some framing. He'd found it could be as educational to pretend you were completely disarmed as it could to pretend you didn't know a word of Spanish or Indian dialects. So the less said about the derringer under the blanket the better.

By this time she had everything hung and she'd rustled up the makings of that light supper she'd offered. As she put the pot on to boil, under his dangling duds, and greased a cast-iron spider for the eggs, Mato Takoza told Longarm more about herself.

She said she'd been a girl-child during the big Santee Scare of '62 and the long forced march to Crow Creek that had followed inevitably after that much bad blood between her two races.

Both her ma and pa had been breeds, raised Indian by pure-blood gals who'd been married up with Wasichu trappers while they'd been out this way. Mato Takoza's momma's clan had fought more and hence lost more under Little Crow. But later. out at the Crow Creek Agency, the young gal's daddy had taken to strong drink and wife-beatings in spite of, or maybe because of, never counting coup in the short but savage uprising. Mato Takoza was too smart to call it "The First Sioux War" the way some old soldiers and even civilian volunteers put it when they got to bragging.

She busted half a dozen eggs into her greased spider and got to scrambling them, along with some chopped-up wild onion grass, as she told him how her homesick momma had brought her back to the old Santee Agency at Redwood Falls, only to find Wasichu, many Wasichu, living there now. She sounded mighty steamed as she complained, "Hear me, my mother's people were not woodland creatures. We had learned long ago to build cabins and plant fruit orchards by watching you Wasichu. Out at Crow Creek they expected us to winter in tipis where the wolf wind howls across open prairie from the Moon of Many Colored Leaves to the Geese Nesting Moon. We had built nicer houses here than a lot of Wasichu, and now Wasichu had moved into them. All of them."

Longarm shrugged his bare shoulders under the blanket and resisted the obvious observation about the spoils of war. He knew they'd never admitted starting a war, and he didn't want her to lose the thread of her own story.

She didn't. She dished out the eggs on tin plates as she told him how she and her late momma had gotten by as hired help to homesteader housewives, since both had looked half-white and it had been easy enough to say they were friendlier "Chippewa" when no real Ojibwa were about to call them fibbers. After Mato Takoza's ma had died of the consumption or some other lung rot, she'd heard tell of the Bee Witch, a crazy old colored lady who lived free and easy up and down the river, and so, being less afraid of the white man's flies than some purebreds might have been, she'd tracked the Bee Witch down to ask her for a job.

It hadn't been easy. Mato Takoza had learned that spooky crow-flapping act from the old colored lady, who was more worried about being robbed or pestered than really witko. The Bee Witch had tried to scare the Santee breed off, and when that hadn't worked they'd got to talking enough so they could finally cut a deal.

Mato Takoza said the Bee Witch had been an easygoing boss, once she'd taught her young apprentice how to herd bees without getting stung too often. Mato Takoza said the older gal had been way more educated than she'd let on to strangers. As she motioned him to dig in and moved back to her stove to check the coffeepot, she told him how the old colored lady had read herself to sleep with big old books, and how she'd liked to sketch with pencil and ink on a drawing pad as she let her younger helper do most of the simple chores that went with a mighty carefree life.

Longarm said the old gal sounded as if she might have been a house slave in her younger days, explaining, "Most slave states had laws against teaching bond-servants to read or write, since they thought a little knowledge could be a dangerous thing after a slave called Nat Turner read a copy of the Declaration of Independence and thought he was included in that part about all men being created equal. But lots of easygoing slave-holders didn't mind, and even taught some of their people, as they called 'em, to read. For one thing, it made a house slave more valuable if he or she could read written instructions."

Mato Takoza said, "I wish I could read. Miss Jasmine, that was her real name, left heaps of books under her bed and it's been lonely, lonely, since she never came back from town last winter."

Longarm thought about that as he ate. He hadn't known he was this hungry, and her scrambled eggs with onion grass would have tasted swell if he hadn't been. Her coffee was grand too when she poured it to go with their dessert of only slightly stale fruit cake. When he asked if it was store-bought, she fluttered her lashes and modestly allowed she'd learned to cook Wasichu-style sometime back. She might have taken it wrong if he'd pointed out she was still Indian enough to know about onion grass. She might have learned that from some settler gal in any case. All country folks tended to learn what grew tasty, for free, wherever they might wind up. A heap of what folks back East took for old-fashioned American cooking had been invented by Indians.

In the meantime Billy Vail hadn't sent a senior deputy all this way to search for lost, strayed, or stolen colored ladies. But after his worried young hostess brought up that part about the telegraph office again, he said, "I'll ask if they recall your Miss Jasmine at the Western Union in New Ulm. I got to ask 'em about other folks who may or may not be getting wired money orders fairly regular, and how many colored ladies by any name do you reckon they've sent lots of wires for as well?"

As he washed down some fruit cake, Mato Takoza recalled the Bee Witch had once said she'd hailed from one of the Carolinas. Longarm assured her they'd remember her or not, no matter where she'd come from, adding, "Every railroad town has at least a few colored folks. But I'll be asking about someone they ain't used to seeing around town. How did she get into New Ulm to begin with, by the way? You run her in with that pony cart?"

Mato Takoza shook her head and explained the Bee Witch had her own riding pony, or had had one leastways. She'd already asked in town about the older woman's pony. Nobody in New Ulm had owned up to having seen it coming in or going out. Longarm agreed that had him stumped. He said, "An old colored lady in touch with kith or kin in other parts could be inspired by a sudden wire to hop a train without dropping a line to an illiterate, no offense. But she'd have had to leave that pony she rode to town with somebody."

"What if she fell in the river, or got murdered along the way?" the younger gal asked, owl-eyed.

Longarm shrugged and said, "Either way, we wind up with a leftover mount. A pony suddenly riderless for any reason would tend to run home to its familiar feed trough left to its druthers. So since it's been gone this long, it's safe to say somebody else has it, with or without the old lady's approval. What did this pony look like and was there anything at all unusual about its saddle or bridle?"

Mato Takoza said, "She rode bareback with a rope bridle, the Indian way. It was an Indian pony she'd traded for honey with one of your own kind who couldn't seem to break it your way. Miss Jasmine knew enough to mount an Indian pony from its right side. It stood about thirteen hands. It was a red and white paint with white mane and tail. It was pretty, and just the right size for a small woman too modest to sit it astride. She called it Mister Jefferson Davis. I don't know why."

Longarm said he did. He had no call to make a written note of a description so simple. As he'd told her, folks in town would remember or they wouldn't. He wasn't unkind enough to say his own boss hardly expected him to dig any deeper than a few routine questions when it hardly seemed likely anyone had paid for a jar of honey with a hundred-dollar treasury note.

That reminded him of more suspicious folks out this way and so, as she refilled his cup and allowed she didn't mind if he smoked, Longarm asked her what she knew about that other Santee lady, Tatowiyeh Wachipi Chambrun.

The younger and prettier Santee made a wry face and told him, "She says she is related to Wamni Tanka. Maybe she is. Or maybe she is long joking, the way my mother and I used to around Redwood Falls."

Longarm wasn't certain he followed her drift. As he rose to pad over to his dangling vest for a damp cheroot and those hopefully waterproof matches, he cautiously asked, "Might this long joke involve folks pretending to be what they ain't?"

She nodded innocently and said, "It is not hard for Absaroka to pass for their Oglala enemies, and a lot safer when they are outnumbered. At the Greasy Grass fight some of Custer's Absaroka scouts saved themselves by throwing off their blue coats and playing the long joke. Nobody knows why a band of Ree told everyone they were Pawnee for many years, many. But they did, and those two nations don't get along much better than Santee and Ojibwa!"

Longarm came back to the table and sat down to light up as he said he saw why they called it a long joke. She marveled at his waxy Mexican matches, and he said he had more he could leave her in his saddlebags. Then he asked what point there might be in a lady from another nation trying to pass herself off as Santee on the old Santee killing grounds.

When the admitted Santee looked puzzled, Longarm explained. "You just said you and your late momma had to say you were Chippewa to get around old grudges left over from all that bloodshed back in '62. So why would anyone who wasn't a true Santee brag on being a Santee in a neck of the woods where Santee still ain't all that popular?"

The Santee breed said she didn't know. Longarm said it made little sense to him either, but might be worth checking once he got back to New Ulm.

She asked when he meant to ride on. Longarm glanced at his hung-up duds and decided, "Not too sudden, at the rate that tweed's drying out despite your swell stove. It's already getting late and to tell the truth, I ain't too sure of my welcome once I do ride in, early or late. I don't suppose I could impose on you further by just bedding down out here for the night?"

She sucked in her breath and really looked flustered. He started to assure her he meant he'd noticed they had at least two beds in as many separate rooms. But then she came around to his side of the table to grab hold of his head by both ears and bury his face against her heaving marshmallow breasts, sobbing that she'd been so afraid he was never going to ask. So he just scooped her up and carried her in where he'd noticed the biggest bed. When she giggled and said her room was the one next door, he said he didn't care and just lowered her down to shuck his blanket, lift the hem of her shift, and lower his naked hips into the soft love saddle formed by her welcoming tawny thighs. When she giggled and asked him if he really thought he needed that derringer in his own fist, he shoved it under the head of their mattress and murmured, "Not hardly, but remind me to haul up that old plank and fetch both my saddle and six-gun back here once we've, ah, got more relaxed."

As she felt him entering her, Mato Takoza gasped, "Oh, hinhey! You call what you are doing to me relaxing? What do you and your Wasichu girls do for excitement? Not so fast yet! You're so hanska, and it has been many moons since the last time I did this with a boy much smaller, in every way!"

So Longarm slowed down and thrust less than he really wanted to, marveling at the surprising ripples of her almost too-tight but responsive love maw. It was her own idea to wrap her short muscular legs around his waist and hug him closer for some kissing she'd never learned off any Indian boys. Few regular Americans French-kissed with that much abandon as they tried to bust a man's spine with a leg-hug and literally sucked on his old organ-grinder with their smooth wet innards. So Longarm assumed she was warmed up enough for more serious action, and he knew he was right when she flung all her limbs to the four corners of the universe and war-whooped, "Hokahey! Iyoptey! Why are you holding back? Don't you like me, you big sissy?"

CHAPTER 18

The river water was warm enough, but the night air was chilly when they went for a moonlight swim to cool off their bare behinds. Longarm saw why Mato Takoza had suggested it when they wound up in a mighty interesting position with her hanging on to the edge of the raft facing away from him.

Then the moon ducked back behind the clouds and thunder rolled up and down the river, so they got out, dried off, and were huddled for warmth under the cover of the Bee Witch's bed by the time heavy rain was pounding on the shingles above their entwined bodies.

It warmed them up fine. But it was tough to fall asleep in a bed neither was used to after all that coffee. So after they'd shared a cheroot and talked about the missing Bee Witch some more, Longarm lit the reading lamp on the old gal's bed table while her naked student beekeeper rolled across him to rummage out some of the expensive tomes the so-called crazy lady had kept under her bed.

Longarm doubted any lunatic would have spent much time with such dry but educational reading material. There were books on geology, civil engineering, and such, along with an atlas and a folder of even more detailed survey maps put out by the government. Longarm sat up in bed with his cheroot gripped between his teeth as he looked over a large-scale contour chart of just Brown County, Minnesota, and a few square miles of other counties that fit into the space left over on the rectangular chart. Mato Takoza snuggled her naked charms closer as she confided, "Miss Jasmine liked that drawing. She used to thumbtack it to her drawing board and trace it on this funny stuff that might have been very thin flour sacking or maybe wax paper. When I asked, she got cross with me. So I never asked anymore."

Longarm lightly rubbed the fingertip of his free hand over the stiff manila paper as he murmured, "Draftsman's tracing silk. Costly and won't bear careless handling. The slick sizing over the mesh of fairy-dust weaving is meant to hold and to cherish traced lines, drops of spit, or moist fingerprints. So that might explain why she didn't even want an illiterate reading over her shoulder, no offense, but what in thunder would an old colored beekeeper be doing with contour maps and tracing silk?"

"Making her own maps?" the breed gal suggested innocently.

Longarm hugged her closer and said, "Bless you, my child, and as soon as I can get it up again I aim to kiss you. But let me have my arm back right now. I need both hands to investigate this further."

She sat up long enough for him to haul that arm out from behind her bare shoulders, but as she grasped what he was doing she protested, "Don't get that paper all dirty! Miss Jasmine will be angry, angry!"

Longarm went right on rubbing tobacco ash all over the survey map with gentle fingertips as he said soothingly, "It'll all brush away in the end. In the meantime this is an old trick we use when we find paper somebody's written or traced something else on top of."

As the pretty breed watched in wonder, the tobacco ash, blacker where it stuck in the grooves left in the thick paper by a heavier hand wielding something sharp, proceeded to draw lines across parts of Brown County where no government surveyor ever had. Indians made pretty fair maps on their own. So even though she didn't know how to read or write, Mato Takoza was able to follow the drift of the missing Bee Witch when the hitherto invisible line reached the Minnesota the two of them had just been swimming in.

"That line crosses the river just above the driftwood jam this raft is moored below!" she decided.

Longarm soberly replied, "I noticed. Whether your Bee Witch had another wagon trace or a railroad in mind, she figured it ought to cross the river up by the Chambrun place."

He took a drag on the cheroot to produce more ash before he went on. "I'd have to agree with her if somebody asked me to survey yet another trestle site. These contour lines show higher ground to either side of the river, meaning a mid-stream span high enough for the bitty steamboats up this way to sneak their stacks under."

He rubbed in more ash as he mused, "Any engineer worth his salt could figure that much out in bed with his true love and this public knowledge. Did your Miss Jasmine ever drill holes in the ground as she barged her beehives up and down the banks?"

Mota Takoza started to say no. Then she thought and decided, "Hear me, it would be rude to follow anyone into the trees when they took along a shovel and a mail-order catalogue. Everyone digs at least a little hole to squat over if they intend to camp more than a night in the same spot."

"Unless they crap in a handy river," Longarm objected. He didn't ask how often she'd done that. Her sudden silence spoke louder than words. He just said, "Either way, you wouldn't have to dig far to be sure there's as much granite under the Chambrun claim as more local folks keep saying. When you plant foundations for a trestle you want to make sure they don't shift. Foundations planted in granite bedrock ain't about to shift, even on the flood plain of a somewhat whimsical river, so, yep, Chambrun knew what he was about when he up and claimed that high, dry quarter section. Or should I say his Santee wife and her secret pals picked it for him? Did your Miss Jasmine ever go over to borrow a cup of sugar or mayhaps sell a jar of honey at the Chambrun place, kitten?"

Mato Takoza thought before she said, "Not while I was with her. I told you I don't know that Tatowiyeh Wachipi who thinks she's such an important person. What are you afraid the Chambruns might have done to Miss Jasmine?"

Longarm frowned thoughtfully and replied, "Don't know and, damn it, I wish there wasn't so much stray sign across the trail Billy Vail sent me over this way to follow. But if what I'm commencing to suspect about a harmless colored crazy lady pans out, the Chambruns would be the last ones along this river to want her harmed or hampered in any way."

She naturally wanted to know more. So Longarm explained how easy it had been for Miss Harriet Tubman, a lady of color, to pass herself as a silly old Negro mammy searching for her missing owners like the faithful darky of Dixie mythology, while acting as one of Allan Pinkerton's top Secret Service agents behind Confederate lines. He said, "The South was too proud to use colored spies. So they never looked twice at a dumb darky, when they might have asked what a white person they didn't know was doing in that particular place at that late hour. They say Harriet Tubman talked her way past a reb patrol close to Robert E. Lee's headquarters late one night by allowing she was searching for mushrooms. Every country boy in that patrol knew it was the wrong time of the year for field mushrooms, but they figured a dumb old nigger woman wouldn't know as much as them."

"I told you Mother and me played the long joke on Wasichu women to get work," the pretty breed replied. Then she asked, "What do you think Miss Jasmine was trying to hide by pretending to be witko?"

Longarm shrugged his bare shoulders and said, "Who she was working for, most likely. Nobody planning to run another rail line across the Minnesota would want it to get out ahead of time. It takes a year or more just to plan your route, grease the right political palms, and get title to the right-of-way you finally decide on. Railroads and even wagon routes have had to swing wide over greedy folks holding out for more money than a detour might be worth. Folks go witko, building tipi tankas in the sky, when they consider all that money they'll wind up with if only they can hang tougher than the rich folks trying to buy 'em out. So I doubt anyone in these parts knew, any better than you, what the so-called Bee Witch was really up to."

He took another drag on their shared cheroot, but began to brush the survey chart clean as he added, "Might as well keep her secret for her. It's easier to see now how come she took so much trouble to keep strangers well clear of this raft."

As if to prove his point they heard a cascade of tinny clankings, inspiring Longarm to say, "What the hell?"

His bed companion murmured, "That's how I knew you were moving along the bank before. Miss Jasmine showed me how. You tie one end of a dark fishing line to a sapling someone moving along the trail has to push aside. Then you run it, tautly, through a hole in the work-room wall, and hang some tomato cans up inside to-"

"Never mind the details! Let's worry about who in thunder it might be at this owlhooting hour!" Longarm trimmed the lamp to plunge the interior into darkness as he rolled off the bed to silently slip into the other bedroom for his Winchester. She followed close, whispering, "Nobody ever comes this late. Nobody!"

As if to prove her a liar for certain, somebody yelled in the near distance, and Longarm was glad they'd hauled that plank in. The male voice hailed them again in English, and when nobody answered he switched to Santee. Longarm was able to follow the coldly correct "Hokahey!" meaning something like "Get the lead out, damn it!" But then Mato Takoza went outside, and she and the strange Indian lost him as they rattled back and forth in their usual mixture of soft pleasant vowels and strangled or hissed consonants. Longarm, crouching behind her, had no way of controlling the parley, and could only hope Mato Takoza knew what she was doing as she seemed to be talking sweetly to the son of a bitch. Then, as yet another voice chimed in ashore, it seemed there were at least two sons of bitches!

Longarm followed just enough to figure she was inviting them to come aboard for coffee and cake, Indians having the same notions as other country folks when it came to offering leastways. But even as he hunkered low with his Winchester, Longarm heard one of the men on shore call the pretty little thing his Unshi, or grandmother, and respectfully decline.

As the two or more of them went crashing back along the bank through the tanglewood, Mato Takoza hugged her naked breasts to his bare back and sobbed, "They were looking for you! They said they were your friends and just wished to tell you something. But you had already told me about someone following you along the county road, and I didn't think you wanted them to know where you were!"

Longarm rose, getting a better grip on her as he shifted the cold-steel Winchester to his other side, saying, "You thought right. Did you get any line on who they might really be, and how did you manage to get rid of them like so?"

As they moved back inside, her naked hip rubbing his bare thigh, Mato Takoza said, "As I told you, they said they were friends of Wasichu Wastey, but neither offered me his name, not even a fighting name one offers a respected enemy, so I knew they did not want me to know who they were and I thought it might not be wise to press that."

She reached coyly down to grasp his flaccid manhood in the dark as she added, "I invited them to come aboard for the rest of the night. But then I had to warn them I might be tehinda, if they still followed the wakan of their elders."

Longarm started to ask, then he recalled what tehinda meant and had to laugh. He'd heard Sandwich Islanders considered a gal having her period taboo, as they put it, although few Indian nations got that excited, and were content to just stay the hell away from a gal and her quarters until the bad medicine passed on and she could make herself acceptable again with a smoke bath.

But since they both knew that in this case Mato Takoza had only been fibbing, Longarm found it surprising when she insisted in proving she wasn't anywhere close to that time of the month by shoving two pillows under her brown bottom and having him hold the lamp close as she spread her legs invitingly again. He didn't really care as he found himself rising to the occasion.

CHAPTER 19

It got tougher to ambush a rider when you didn't know when or which way he'd be coming. So Longarm left early and rode high and wide for New Ulm, working his way through more than one drift fence as he circled out across the upland prairie between the bottomlands of the Minnesota and the more modest Sleepy Eye.

There were other less famous draws and a mess of tree groves a drygulcher might have found right handy, and a thoughtful rider had to consider each as he approached, his own saddle gun across his lap. But as Longarm had surmised from the start, nobody was laying for him where he hadn't told a soul he was headed, and he met nobody out that way but cows, mostly longhorn stock with a dab of Angus or white-face to tender up their beef for the eastern market, now that the Depression of the early '70s had faded to bitter memory and housewives could act fussy about the meat they put on the table again.

The aptly named Sleepy Eye met up with the even more logically called Cottonwood around ten miles west of New Ulm. So Longarm cut east across higher rolling range and, as far as he knew, made it all the way into the bluffs just west of town without being seen by a soul.

He rode old Smokey down a deserted pathway past a brick kiln nobody seemed to be working that morning, and drifted into town at a walk, occasioning no more than casual glances from the townsfolk he found up and about. For thanks to his long detour it was well past mid-morning, and even the residential streets were fairly busy.

Gunnar Kellgren had told him he could leave old Smokey in the care of that livery near the boat landing. But the blue roan was a pretty good mount, and Longarm wanted to make sure he still had the use of old Blaze before he cut himself entirely afoot. So he rode first to see if old Ilsa Pedersson had recovered from her awkward feelings about two dead bodies in her house to explain to the neighbors.

She hadn't. Longarm found her raking under the shrubbery in her front yard when he reined in and dismounted. But as he was tethering to her hitching post the widow gal came over, rake in hand and face all flushed under her sunbonnet, as she flustered, "Good grief, Custis, what are you doing here in broad daylight?"

He frowned down at her uncertainly and replied, "I sort of thought I was staying here. Correct me if I'm wrong, honey."

She shot an uneasy glance up the maple-shaded street and murmured, "Come back after dark, on foot, no earlier than ten, and we may be able to sneak you in the back way, darling."

Longarm started to say it made little sense for a man to pussyfoot clean across town after he'd had to find another place to leave his saddle and such. But she might have thought he was acting proud, and a man just never knew before noon how he'd feel about going to bed with a particular gal after dark. So he just nodded and said he might or might not be back, depending on what they had for him over at the Western Union by the depot.

Ilsa almost put an anxious hand on his sleeve before she remembered her own rep and softly pleaded, "Promise you'll come back for at least one proper good-bye before you leave town for good."

"What about the neighbors?" he gently asked.

To which she replied with a Mona Lisa smile, "Let them get their own friends to say good-bye to. I'm not cross with you, darling. It's just that I have to live on this street and, well, it isn't every day a respectable widow has to explain three strange men shooting it out in her hitherto respectable residence!"

Longarm had to smile at the picture, but assured her he followed her drift, and would have kissed her before mounting up again if he'd thought she wanted him to. For she'd been a good old gal, and it was making him wistful already to think of her as no more than another fond memory.

But that was the way things had to be when a tumbleweed cuss wore a badge and a gun in this old uncertain world, So he rode on over to the river, where, sure enough, they knew the Kellgrens at that livery and said old Smokey would be welcome out back in their corral until such time as somebody rode in to pick him up.

Longarm asked what they charged to leave a man's saddle and possibles under lock and key instead of their more casual tack room. The elderly Swede who ran the place said it depended on whether he was a customer or not. So Longarm told him truthfully he just didn't know whether he'd need to hire another mount or not, and they settled on ten cents a day as a fair rate.

Longarm was glad. Toting his Winchester all over town could be a bother, and there were other things worth stealing in his saddlebags.

Being he had the time as well as the small room in the back to change in, Longarm left the livery in clean but faded jeans and an old darker blue army shirt he sometimes used when he wanted to look a tad different at a distance. For sometimes the fractions of shooting time it could take a shooter to make up his mind could make one hell of a difference in the outcome.

There was little a man could do about walking taller than average, and changing the Colorado crush of his sepia Stetson hardly seemed worth the bother. So he simply kept his eyes peeled as he made his way back to the Western Union afoot.

They'd been expecting him. There was no word yet on that stranger who'd gone off the railroad trestle into all that white water. But a long night letter from Billy Vail was waiting there to order him on back to Denver. According to Longarm's cagey old boss, one hell of a tracker in his own right, he'd sent his senior deputy on a wild-goose chase and he was sorry as hell.

Longarm told the telegraph clerk he wasn't ready to wire back just yet. Then he put the night letter in a hip pocket and headed up to the sheriff's office. This time that deputy was able to introduce Longarm to the sheriff in person, a potbellied but strong-looking old cuss called Verner Tegner. He said to call him Vern, and might have reminded Longarm of Billy Vail if he hadn't smiled so much.

As they lit up the cigars the sheriff handed out to guests in an election year, Longarm asked what they'd found out about those two gunslicks he'd had to lay low at the Widow Pedersson's. The local lawmen exchanged embarrassed glances, and the deputy said, "We're still working on them. Sent out an all-points by wire yesterday. Ain't had any nibbles as yet. Hired guns are most often from somewheres far and wide, you know."

Longarm took hold of the back of the bentwood chair the sheriff had pointed out for him, spun it around, and sat astride it so the two of them would consider it polite to sit. Then he sighed and told them, "There seems to be a lot of that going around. My boss back in Denver just wired he's cut the trail of that Tyger-Flanders gang way closer to the scene of their last known crime. Some of that hot paper's turned up in other parts as well. A bank in Salt Lake City stopped one, and then somebody got arrested trying to break a hundred-dollar treasury certificate in Chicago. They had to let the suspect go when he was able to prove he'd been dealing faro at the time of that Fort Collins robbery. Being a professional gambler, he naturally disremembers just who he might have won the infernal money off of."

The sheriff nodded sagely and said, "We never thought Israel Bedford was an outlaw. That Chambrun cuss likely got the hot paper as innocently. When a gang pulls a robbery, they generally have spending the money in mind. So by this time there's no saying how many innocent hands the purloined payroll has been scattered through far and wide."

Longarm took a drag on the cheap cigar, noting it burned hot in its own right the way such flashy political handouts were inclined to, as he quietly observed, "Chambrun naturally told me he'd come by the money honestly, and even suggested somebody might have switched a good note with a wicked one. Can either of you gents come up with a motive for Banker Plover wanting to get a halfbreed in trouble?"

The two lawmen looked blank. The sheriff was the one who suggested, "I don't know what sort of a name Plover might be, and he's not likely to vote for me this fall, the Republican cuss, but I fear I can't see why he'd want to frame any nester for anything. I don't think his bank could hold a mortgage on the Chambrun place, could it?"

Longarm shook his head and said, "The Chambruns Won't own the land to mortgage it before they prove their claim, and now there's something I hadn't even considered until just now, bless your hearts!"

They naturally wanted to know what he was blessing them for.

Longarm explained, "I got an interesting line on that Bee Witch you gents may have heard about."

Tegner laughed and said, "Oh, her? She's crazy but harmless enough."

Longarm said, "I'm not so certain she was crazy, but she surely seems to be missing. Worse yet, I suspect she was working a secret survey for somebody planning yet another bridge across the river, up by Chambrun's claim."

The two local lawmen agreed they'd never heard such an outlandish suggestion about the crazy old Bee Witch.

Longarm insisted, "She was charting proposed crossings on a sort of fancy tracing paper out to her house raft. I looked for the tracings by lamplight and broad day. They weren't on board. Neither was she. I don't know whether she just abandoned her false identity because she'd finished what they'd sent her to do, or whether somebody waylaid her and destroyed her work to delay her employers considerably."

Sheriff Tegner frowned through his own tobacco smoke. "What good would that do anyone trying to keep somebody from building another span across our river? Lord knows we could use more this side of the one way up by Fairfax, and a good site is a good site. So why wouldn't they just send some other sneaks to survey the same way?"

Longarm replied, "I just said that. Meanwhile, a homesteader with an unproven claim smack in the path of a railroad wouldn't be able to hold out for a fraction of what a landowner free and simple could demand and likely get!"

Sheriff Tegner gasped, "Hot damn! It's an election year as well, and none of my white pals like those trashy Sioux to begin with. I'll get right out there to arrest the son of a bitch in person and-"

"I'd wait till I had a better case," Longarm said. "For all we know for certain, there's no case to begin with. I'd hate to have a murder victim turn up alive and well if I was running for sheriff this November."

Tegner called him a spoilsport, and asked why Longarm had brought the whole mess to his attention to begin with.

Longarm explained, "I got to. I promised a lady I'd find out why her Miss Jasmine, the Bee Witch's given name, never came back from an errand here in town. I'm handing you some other odd doings on a plate before I have to leave as well."

"You're going somewheres?" asked the sheriff's younger deputy.

Longarm nodded. "Since the two of you are real lawmen, you know real life don't work the way it seems to in those detective yarns by Mister Poe, Mister Twain, and such. In real life it seems one damned crook after another is pulling off some crime with no consideration of the cases we're already working on."

They agreed that was for damned sure. So Longarm explained, "My own Marshal Vail sent me here to New Ulm when that money from that payroll robbery turned up in the old stamping grounds of at least the leaders of the gang involved. I seem to have stumbled over other odd doings, and I mean to leave you a full report on paper before I leave. But as you just pointed out, that payroll seems to have been spread all over, meaning there's no particular significance to the transaction that brought me here, albeit you'll notice some assimilated Indians seem to be up to some mighty murky real-estate dealings."

The local deputy said, "You got to watch Indians once they learn to read and write. I hear old Quanah Parker's wheeling and dealing in Texas real estate since he decided to live white."

Longarm shrugged and said, "That's my point. A lady friend of mine down Texas way calls Chief Parker her Uncle Quanah, and seems to think he's sort of cute in his long braids and stovepipe hat. Meanwhile, like a heap of slick-talking Indians, or official Indians, such as Miss Belle Starr of the Cherokee Strip, Uncle Quanah can be as Indian as need be to draw his government allotments, and as Parker from Texas as he likes when it comes to making deals with other white cattlemen."

The deputy nodded sagely and said, "Charges a dollar a head if you want to drive your herd to market across Comanche land, or six cents an acre if you want to graze there, now that most of the buffalo are gone."

Longarm said, "Let's stick to your own Santee of fond memory. I was told flat out that a good many local Indians you ran out of these parts years ago mean to come back, living white, after gaining legal title to some of their lost Santee Sioux reserve."

"That ain't fair," Sheriff Tegner protested. "I rode with the Sixth Minnesota, and don't try to feed me that shit about Mister Lo, The Poor Indian. I was there when we had to bury white men, women, and bitty babies, all swelled up and flyblown, out on the prairie after the savages scalped 'em, stripped and raped 'em, the men and babes included! I heard that whining shit about them Sioux not getting their rations on time with a war going on back East, and I neither know nor care whether crooked traders short-stopped hard cash as well. Hardly a white person they butchered in revenge could have known doodly-shit about the government's dealings with Indians they'd been assured were friendly. It was that same old refrain you hear from every sniveling crook, red or white, once he's caught!"

The deputy nodded and chimed in falsetto, "Honestly, Sheriff, it was all my cruel landlord's fault! He evicted my poor momma for not paying her rent, so I naturally raped that lady across the street for revenge!"

Longarm grimaced and said, "You don't have to convince me. Like I said, right or wrong, this syndicate of breeds and pure-bloods seems interested in local real estate and may or may not be up to something worse. I'm going to have to leave it up to you, interesting as I found it, because my boss feels I'm wasting time around here."

He nodded at the deputy he'd talked to before and explained, "Like I told you earlier, we had too many Calvert Tygers burning to death in rooming house fires. My boss figured, correctly as it just turned out, somebody was trying to convince us Calvert Tyger was dead out Colorado way. So when he got word about that payroll money turning up here where Tyger commenced his shady career, he added two and two to come up with a wrong number."

Longarm took the vile cigar out of his mouth to hold it over the back of the chair and let it smolder politely as he sighed and continued. "I wasn't the only deputy working for Billy Vail, of course. He had a half-dozen others poking about closer to home. So the day before yesterday Deputy O'Foyle out of our office came across yet another Calvert Tyger registered as a guest of the Colfax House near the Overland Terminal in Denver. So that night, Billy Vail had deputies at the hotel, and sure enough, they caught a son of a bitch fixing to set fire to the place after midnight, and never mind all the innocent men and women upstairs, whether they were married to one another or not!"

Sheriff Tegner whistled and declared, "Hot damn! If I caught me a firebug out to cremate yet another Calvert Tyger, I vow I'd soon make him tell me why!"

Longarm nodded soberly. "Old Billy did. It takes him a tad longer, since he hates to leave bruises, but he usually gets the straight story with his gentler means of persuasion. The unfortunate they caught, who's facing a good jolt in prison even with the charge reduced from attempted murder to arson, was a well-known petty thief with a serious drinking problem. He says--and Billy Vail believes him--he was recruited for the job by a more prosperous sinister stranger who gave him a hundred up front with the promise of another hundred after the hotel went up in smoke with yet another Calvert Tyger." The local lawmen looked blank. It was the younger deputy who asked, "But how did they murder another such gent if the plot to set his hotel on fire failed?"

Longarm said simply, "They couldn't. We have the supposed Tyger in protective custody too. His real name's Peppin, and he'd never heard of Calvert Tyger before someone who describes a heap like the cuss who recruited the firebug offered him drinking money and a free room if only he'd play a little joke."

Longarm took a thoughtless drag on that cigar before he remembered why he'd taken it out of his mouth. "The generous sneak told Peppin he was working for a rich mining man who wanted his wife to think he'd checked into the Colfax House alone during a business trip down to Denver."

Sheriff Tegner decided, "Sensible story. Just sneaky enough for an average drunk to buy. The plot was for this Peppin to die as another Calvert Tyger, a famous outlaw, whilst he thought he was covering up for some rich dog and his play-pretty at another hotel in town, right?"

When Longarm nodded, it was the local deputy who demanded with a puzzled frown, "To what end? What's the point of somebody letting you find Calvert Tyger dead over and over again?"

Longarm said, "That's one of the things Billy Vail wants me to look into as soon as I get back to Denver. The first notion that comes to mind would be that the real gang leader wants us to think he's dead so he can settle down and enjoy all that payroll money. I can go along with old Billy's thesis that the real Brick Flanders, with his red beard, glass eye, and gold front tooth, would be better off drugged and burnt up in a fire than tagging along with a leader those two bums from the Colfax House describe as sort of smooth-talking but bland-looking. Another member of the gang could have changed the rooming house register easy enough before his fire burned up the already dead Brick Flanders."

Sheriff Tegner whistled again. "I can see why you ain't as worried about land grabbers who might or might not waylay a colored lady now and again. Anyone who'd burn folks up in his own name, over and over again, has to be just plain mad-dog mean!"

Longarm shrugged. "Billy Vail feels, and I'm inclined to agree, the surviving members of the gang have some motive, nasty as it may seem. It ain't as if Calvert Tyger ain't been at it as long as Frank and Jesse, you know, albeit he's been way more cautious and not half as active. So why would a careful occasional cuss who's always allowed things to cool down betwixt jobs suddenly take to burning his own self up in fire after fire, whilst still on the dodge for that big Fort Collins job?"

Sheriff Tegner said, "I follow your drift. You'd think that once he and his pals got away clear with all that money, they'd leave Colorado entire instead of trying to convince you their leader was still in the state, albeit burnt to a crisp."

The younger local deputy volunteered, "I'd let that money I took cool down before I spent it too. I forgot to ask about the hundred dollars they gave that one cuss to set fire to that hotel the other night."

Longarm shook his head. "Billy Vail didn't forget. It was in ten- and twenty-dollar silver certificates. We just don't know whether the crooks who stole the money knew those serial numbers had been recorded. It ain't the usual routine. But the paymaster up there in Fort Collins did it, poor bastard, and now nobody will ever be able to ask why. Suffice it to say it's one of the few breaks we've had on this case. Had the money been untraceable, and had Calvert Tyger simply left the state, as you suggested, we'd be sniffing a mighty stale and musty trail by now."

He got back to his feet, saying in a brighter tone, "Meanwhile we ain't, Lord love all crooks, too slick for their own good, so like I promised, I'll put all I know about your local mysteries on paper before I leave town. I've just a few more errands to tend in New Ulm before I do. So I'd best get cracking."

They rose as well to shake and part friendly with him. Longarm strode out front and headed next for the bank. Some cynical sage had once written, doubtless in French, that a stiff prick had no conscience. But even after he'd cooled off, he'd promised the poor worried Mato Takoza he'd see what he could find out about her missing Miss Jasmine when he got to town. So here he was, and now that he knew the Bee Witch had sometimes called herself Miss Jasmine Smith, as unlikely as that sounded, there was an outside chance she'd cashed checks or money orders at one bank or another. The folks she worked for would have hardly funded her with cash or money orders she'd have to cash less discreetly at the post office or Western Union.

By this time it was going on noon, and the streets of New Ulm were starting to get hot as well as less crowded. For folks working in a town this size tended to go home for their noon dinners.

So Longarm spotted the cuss keeping pace with him, a pistol shot back, sooner than he might have had the walk been more crowded when he glanced at window glass in passing. A man With a job such as his learned to do that every chance he got. So Longarm was pretty certain the dark figure on his ass was really on his ass, once he'd crossed the street, actually out of his way to the bank, and spotted that same mysterious cuss at the same distance, behind him, in the plate glass of a dress shop.

The cuss wasn't reflected sharp enough to make out in detail at that range, but Longarm could see he was dressed cow, although a tad fancy, in a silver-trimmed black charro vest and shotgun chaps. His features were a dark blur under his big black Stetson Buckeye with its high crown pinched army-style, That didn't mean near as much to Longarm as the fancy Cleveland twelve-gauge the cuss had cradled casually over one forearm, as if he might be after duck or quail in the center of town.

Certain the cuss was tailing him, although uncertain about the motive, Longarm strode on as if he hadn't noticed, and swung the next corner as he might have if he'd been headed for somewhere down that side street to begin with.

It worked even better when, just around the corner, Longarm spied a service entrance in the brick wall of the corner store and crawfished into it, casually drawing his.44-40 but holding it down at his side politely. The man on his tail with that scattergun swung the corner wider, as a trained gunfighter was supposed to. As he spotted Longarm and broke stride, Longarm called out an easygoing howdy, and never raised his own gun muzzle until he saw he had to.

They fired as one, the dark stranger's twelve-gauge blowing a big dusty crater in the cinder paving between them as Longarm's round of.44-40 punched him in the gut to jackknife him out from under his large hat and lay him low.

Longarm managed just in time not to squeeze off the extra round or so that seemed safest on such occasions. He covered his downed foe thoughtfully instead as he strode over to smile down, saying, "I was admiring that fowling piece you just dropped, pard. English made over to London Town, right?"

He could see now the man he'd gunned seemed almost pure Indian despite his duds and short haircut. Longarm hunkered down, six-gun in hand but held politely, to quietly ask, "Where are you hit and, just in case, who would you like us to get in touch with for you?"

The dying man just glared spitefully as his lips moved silently in what could have been a curse, a prayer, or a death song. By the time Longarm had pinned on his federal badge and Sheriff Tegner had joined the gathering crowd, the black-clad stranger's jet black eyes had commenced to film over and he wasn't moving his lips or breathing.

As Tegner hunkered beside him, Longarm quietly said, "I ain't sure what just happened. He was tailing me from your office to here. But he had the drop on me earlier, and never got really hostile until I challenged him."

The sheriff said, "Remind me never to challenge you, Longarm. I think I know this old boy. He looks a mite older now, but don't we all, and he reminds me of a scout we had with the old Sixth Volunteers. If it's the same cuss, his name was Baptiste Youngwolf. Last I'd heard, he'd run off to his reservation. Lots of 'em were like that when it came to taking orders, you know."

Longarm softly said, "I've ridden some with full-blood scouts. If this was one who rode with you, Vern, might he by any chance have been Santee?"

The sheriff shook his head and replied, "Hell, no, Chippewa. Even if you could get yourself a Sioux to scout Sioux for you, you'd not be sure you could trust such a two-faced cuss yourself. Him being Sioux could complicate hell out of things!"

Longarm grumbled, "Not hardly. This would all make more sense if I could be more certain this was a Santee-speaker I may have overheard just last night."

"He was Chippewa," another old-timer in the crowd decided. "I recall that same hatchet face and the cavalry crease of his big black hat from earlier days as well. I never rode with the Volunteers, but I used to drink with some. This old boy was one of their scouts like the sheriff here says. The soldiers called him Chief, as I now recall, and now that I think back, they did say old Chief deserted with some white boys and never hung about to draw his last pay."

Longarm got wearily back to his feet, muttering, "A lot old Billy Vail really knows! I got to go send him a wire, Vern, if that's all the same with you."

The sheriff got to his own feet, saying, "As long as you wasn't planning on leaving Brown County before we can tidy this up with the coroner's office. I doubt there will be any fuss, you being a lawman and him coming after you with that scattergun and all. But they are likely to want some more details for the death certificate and bill of mortality book. You reckon he was really that cuss called Chief who ran off with them Galvanized Yankee deserters that time?"

To which Longarm could only reply, "That works better than any Objibwa working in cahoots on something else with folks he'd have been raised to call Nadowessioux and hate like sulfur and molasses!"

Then he added, reloading his six-gun, "After that, like your county coroner, I sure would like to have some-damned-body fill in some of the damned details! For I'll be switched with snakes if I can make one lick of sense out of all this bullshit!"

But before he could elbow away through the gathering crowd, one of the newcomers loudly demanded, "Jesus H. Christ, who tangled with the Chief and what's the Chief doing there on the ground?"

It was Gus Hansson, that young cowhand Longarm had met the other night on the open range west of the county road. Longarm turned to the surprised-looking kid to declare, "He's dead because he tangled with me. It was his own notion. I'm still working on how come. You say you knew him more recent than these older gents, Gus?"

Hansson nodded, but stared at Longarm as if he'd just been caught jerking off in church as he replied, "Well, sure I knew him. We was riding for the same outfit. Miss Helga Runeberg hired him as a top hand not two weeks ago, and she ain't going to like this at all!"

An older local in the crowd proclaimed with a more noticeable Swedish accent, "Yumpin' Yesus! Helga Runeberg has always been as mean as she was pretty and she has more than a dozen riders! If I wass you I'd get out of town before she finds out, no matter who I wass or why I yust shot one of her boys!"

Longarm smiled thinly and announced for all who had any interest in the matter, "I did what I had to and I'll leave these parts when I've finished what I came to do. If anyone wants to build what just happened here into a blood feud, be advised I can get just as mean as pretty too!"

CHAPTER 20

Longarm spent more time than he felt he had to spare at the Western Union office near the depot. First the fuss in charge had to argue with him about rates, seeing he wanted to send more than three full pages of close-set block lettering to his home office at day rates collect.

The clerk pointed out they charged way less than a nickel a word after midnight, when the moonlit wires might otherwise hum idle in the wind. But Longarm said he'd have told them to send it as a night letter if he hadn't wanted his boss to get the damned report directly.

They didn't argue, since he paid up front for the shorter wires he sent to the Indian agents at Crow Creek and Leech Lake, hoping to get a better line on that dead Indian, whether Ojibwa or Santee. Then he had a longer argument over their prior telegraph traffic, with the old fuss in charge insisting Mister Ezra Cornell would rise from his grave to haunt them if they betrayed their sacred trust to all their customers.

Ezra Cornell had been the rich old bird who'd gotten richer than old Sam Morse on the telegraph by founding and stringing the Western Union Telegraph Company just in time for the Civil War. He'd made so much money he'd had enough left over to build a university and get his son elected governor of New York, after Ezra had died, by setting down some company rules in stone. One that had given Longarm a pain in the past was that nobody who didn't work for the company was ever to read a private message sent by a paying customer.

Longarm explained, "I've had this argument with you boys before and, so far, I've usually won. Old Ezra never intended his employees to obstruct justice. He just didn't want small-town gossip emanating from his scattered offices."

He let that sink in and added, "I ain't interested in whether an elderly colored lady who might have called herself Smith was sending or receiving dirty messages. I only need to know if anyone like that availed herself of your services at all, damn it!"

The clerk sniffed and grudgingly allowed, "We have very few darkies in New Ulm to begin with. I suppose it's safe to tell you no elderly colored women by any name have availed themselves of our services in recent memory."

Longarm nodded. "Now we're getting somewheres. As you'll see whilst you're sending that tedious report to my boss, Marshal Vail, I just had to shoot me an Indian they called Chief Youngwolf. Santee, or what you'd call Chippewa. I described him in more detail in them wires I just asked you to send to the Sioux and Chippewa B.I.A. agents. You'd know if a pure-blood wearing a black Stetson Buckeye had been in and out of here all that much by any name, right?"

The Western Union man declared that as a matter of fact they had fewer Indians sending or receiving telegrams than colored folks, the Great Sioux Rising of '62 having left Indians unpopular as hell in this particular corner of Minnesota.

Longarm started to ask a dumb question about breeds. He decided an Indian gunslick laying low in a county so crowded with blue-eyed blond Scandinavians would as likely recruit a pure white to front for him if he was shy about dealing with Western Union in person.

Longarm confided to the clerk, as much to diagram it in his own puzzled mind, "Somebody communicating by wire with Colorado pals on a fairly regular basis would doubtless be using some slick code if he was too slick to just wire back and forth naturally."

The Western Union clerk asked how Longarm knew his mysterious red outlaw had been trying to communicate with anyone by wire to begin with.

Longarm said, "That's easy. I never put an ad in your local paper to announce my arrival. Youngwolf has been laying low on a cattle spread closer to Sleepy Eye than here to begin with. I'd have never thought to look for him there if he hadn't come looking for me with a twelve-gauge just now, if that was his true intent. I'd sure like to ask the white pal he must have had fronting for him just what in blue blazes this is all about. For up until a few minutes ago I was inclined to agree with my boss that there wasn't all that much going on here in New Ulm!"

The somewhat mollified telegraph clerk agreed it seemed a real poser. Longarm didn't want to get him het up again by asking to go over all the wires they'd sent or received for, say, the past seventy-two hours. He knew that even if he won the fight, he'd have a hell of a chore just reading that many messages without a clue as to which ones might be in code.

Folks who hadn't had to try decoding tended to mix codes up with ciphers. A cipher was kid stuff next to a code. The cipher everyone since the ancient Greeks tried first involved simply switching the letters of the alphabet around, so an X might stand for an A or a Z for an E and so forth. But any signal corpsman worth his salt would know right off that a message reading something like "UIF RVJDL CSPXO GPA KVNQFE PWFS UIF MBAZ EPH" had to be cipher, and once you knew that, it wasn't too tough to figure the letter used most likely stood for an E, the next most an A, and so on till you got a few words to make sense and could fill in the rest.

But a simple pre-arranged code could be almost impossible to break because it worked the way kith and kin might talk when they didn't want the kids to know just what they were saying. It was just as easy and less shocking, for instance, for the lady of the house to suggest they put the kiddies to bed and go for a stroll in the moonlight than it was to say, "Let's lock the kids up and screw," although her man had as good a notion of what she really had in mind. Crooks tended to use messages such as, "Aunt Edna sends her regards," when they wanted to say a robbery was off, still being planned, or all set to pull off. There was simply no saying how a gang leader back in Denver or Durango could have wired the Chief he was coming this way, or what to do about it once he arrived. He mulled the recent events in his own mind as he legged it over to the post office. The Indian they called the Chief had surely been following him, to whatever purpose, when he'd forced the issue. Those other Indians who'd mentioned him by name, in Santee, might or might not have been working with an outlaw everyone had down as a blood enemy. Crooks had no shame. Or what if those Santee trying to get a foot back in the doorway of their old hunting grounds were not in cahoots with the Indian he'd just shot it out with, but worried about something else he might uncover on them? The wheels were still spinning within wheels inside his head when he hit pay dirt, sort of, at the post office. A mousy but not too bad-looking mail sorter recalled a nicely dressed colored lady who'd picked up more than one bulky letter from Chicago, she thought, addressed to one Judith Jones in care of General Delivery, New Ulm. Longarm said that sounded close enough to Jasmine Smith. Longarm had no call to pursue how such a lady might send mail to Chicago, since there were public mail drops all over. It added up to the sneaky so-called Bee Witch sending her tracing-silk drawings by mail and getting paid for them the same way. Whether she'd sent all they'd wanted and she'd just left for other parts, or whether someone else had committed foul play to keep her from finishing, was still up in the air. He'd told pretty little Mato Takoza that, either way, he saw no reason why she shouldn't just go on herding bees out yonder for fun and profit until further notice. He had to go next to the county courthouse, where, just as Sheriff Tegner had said, they were holding a meeting in the cellar to see how they wanted to record that dead Indian. As the older lawman introduced Longarm to their coroner and his pals, Longarm learned they'd already determined the cause of death had been internal bleeding, occasioned by a.44-40 round busting the old boy's aorta all to hell inside him. Longarm said he'd aimed low in the fond hope of getting more out of the son of a bitch than he had. Nobody there disputed the right of a lawman, or any white man, to fire on an infernal Indian pointing a twelve-gauge anywhere near him.

The coroner said he'd already sent a rider out to talk to the dead man's female boss, in hopes Miss Runeberg could shed some light on what one of her riders had been doing in town with that Cleveland to begin with.

Once that meeting was adjourned pro tem, Longarm walked Sheriff Tegner and his deputies back to their nearby office, and borrowed a desk to write up as detailed a report for Brown County as they had any right to expect. He suggested Tegner keep a friendly eye on the breed gal running that honey and wax operation in the absence of the missing Bee Witch. Since everyone else was acting so sneaky about a possible bridge site up the river, Longarm put things plain enough for a cuss as friendly as old Tegner to make some profitable real-estate deals if he felt like it. Old George Washington had been decent enough in his day, and nobody had begrudged him a little land speculation near the end of the Revolution. Doing well for oneself while doing good for others was a grand old American custom. Longarm didn't care what others did as long as they didn't break federal statutes on purpose or hurt a soul he had any use for.

But just in case he was missing something important, Longarm went next to that bank, arriving just in time to see them shutting the big front door from across the way.

He hurried on across, muttering about banker's hours, and ignored the "Closed" sign hanging behind the medium-sized glass door panel to knock on the shellacked oak as if he really meant it.

That pretty blond gal, Miss Vigdis Magnusson, came to the door to wigwag her finger at him chidingly. Then she recognized Longarm and popped the door inward, gasping, "Hurry! Get in here before anyone catches us being naughty! We've been closed nearly an hour and I was just about to duck out the back way. Everyone else has already left for the day and I'm not supposed to open up to anybody for any reason!"

He started to say he'd come to see her boss, old P.S. Plover. But she'd just said the cuss had left for the day, and sometimes a lawman could get more out of a bank employee who knew less about the law as it applied to running a bank. So he smiled sincerely at the buxom blue-eyed blonde, admiring how different she looked next to the gal he'd had breakfast with at dawn, and said, "Mebbe it's just as well your boss ain't here, Miss Vigdis. By the way, do any of your personal pals call you Viggy?"

She fluttered her lashes and allowed that sounded cute as she led him back to that office they'd been in before. She didn't seem to care why. As they passed the time-locked vault she said she'd sort of hoped he'd drop by again. Once they got all the way back, Longarm noticed the blinds had been drawn and everything looked sort of gravy-brown in the light still getting through from outside.

Vigdis, or Viggy, motioned to an overstuffed leather chesterfield against one wall and said, "Sit right down and tell me just what you wanted from me, Custis."

So he sat, smiling up at her a mite awkwardly as he chose his words and decided to take the bull by the horns, beginning, "You look like a sensible gal a man can just level with, Miss Viggy. I don't have too many friends here in New Ulm I can turn to for help and, well, to tell the truth, I'd like you to get even more naughty for me than you were by letting me in after closing hours."

She blushed hard enough to make out from where he sat, despite the dim daylight, and declared, "Certainly not! Just because a girl smiles sort of warmly at a nice-looking man, it hardly gives him the right to come right out and ask her to be naughty!"

Longarm laughed out loud as he grasped her meaning and protested, "hold on, Miss Viggy! I never meant I wanted you to get really naughty with me once we wound up alone back here."

She answered demurely, "Well, in that case, you're forgiven. But I warn you, I don't go in for any of that really naughty stuff some girls say they like, and you promise you won't tell anybody, right?"

He started to tell her she had him all wrong. But then he noticed she seemed to have had nothing on under the summer frock she seemed to be shucking. So he just hauled her down on the tufted leather to treat her right as the two of them got him out of his own gunbelt and most of his duds. She didn't ask him to shuck his army shirt and boots until they'd gotten to know one another better on that old chesterfield. But once she'd come, on top, with him kissing her big creamy tits in turn, she even decided she didn't want her shoes in the way. So a good time was had by all, and she declared she'd seldom been ravaged so romantically by such a grand kisser. It was her notion to call what they were doing "ravaging." Longarm wasn't certain he'd had any say in the matter. He believed her when she said she'd found it lonely working in a stuffy old bank with all her school chums clean down the river in the bigger town of Mankato.

After they'd screwed, kissed, and smoked a spell, Longarm decided it was safe to tell her what he'd really come for. He told her about the Bee Witch, or a sly old colored lady acting as some sort of secret surveyor for Lord only knows who. He explained he knew it was against banking regulations to release such information without a court order, but that he'd been hoping, seeing they were such pals, she might see fit to bend the rules a tad.

She did better than that, for a gal who said she didn't go in for any of that naughty French or Greek stuff. Smoking his cheroot in the gathering dusk, without having to strike a light or even get off his bare lap, Viggy said, "I know who you must mean. She had a savings account with us under the name of Janice Carpenter. She was getting these monthly checks from the Chicago and Northwestern, or was it the Minny Saint Lou? We cash so many railroad payroll checks. I'd have to look it up to be sure. But I do know she withdrew all her savings back around Christmas-time, and now that you mention it, I don't think I've seen her around town since then."

Longarm took the smoke back for a thoughtful drag as the naked lady in his lap reached down to adjust his semi-erection for more comfort, to her, and coyly asked, "Can't it wait, darling?"

He leaned his bare back harder against the tufted leather to thrust up into her at a friendlier angle as he said soothingly, "No need to put you to that much bother, you sweet little Swedish doll. The most eccentric beekeeper fixing to get herself murdered would hardly have known she wanted to close her bank account first. The timing sounds right, and I don't suppose you'd recall how much she had with you at the usual rate of interest?"

Viggy writhed her bare bottom to take it even deeper as she told him in a surprisingly conversational tone, "I'd really have to look that up. All I recall at this late date was Mister Plover swearing because it was the last day of a busy week and he had to send for more cash after she and several others withdrew better than four-figure amounts during the holiday shopping season."

Longarm nodded and said, "That's all I really needed. In figures, I mean. Let me get rid of this fool cheroot and see if we can't do this right!"

They could, dog-style, with her bare belly hooked over one softly padded arm of the chesterfield and her big pale rump thrust up at an interesting angle.

As he watched his old organ-grinder sliding in and out of her, he was reminded, by the contrast, of the smaller darker gal he'd had at dawn in a similar position. Good old Mato Takoza was likely to make out well enough on her own in the beekeeping business. That handsome withdrawal by her Miss Jasmine likely meant the so-called Bee Witch had left for good without bothering to sell off her ramshackle raft and beehives. She'd doubtless been paid so much for her secret railroad survey she could have given that pony to some kid in town for a Christmas present.

Viggy arched her spine and moaned that she was coming again. So he buckled down to serious screwing for a time. But then he was out of wind and recovering his conscience. So leaving it in but sort of soaking, he told her, "Tempting as it may be to drift with the easy answers, I like to wrap things tight as I can. So now I'm fixing to ask you to be really naughty, Viggy."

The beautiful blonde sighed and thrust her tailbone higher as she said, "Well, if you really can't be content with the way we've been coming. But only after we've both had a bath at my place and if you promise not to low-rate me as a queer-girl afterwards."

He started to assure her that hadn't been what he'd had in mind. Then he asked her how far her place was and what sort of a place they were talking about.

She explained how, being an out-of-town gal with a warm nature, she'd boarded here and boarded there in New Ulm until she'd found herself a carriage-house loft fixed up as a furnished flat with its own indoor plumbing as well as a bitty kitchen and all.

Longarm caught himself starting to thrust some more, and forced his bare ass to hold still as he soberly warned her, "I could sure use a place to stay that nobody else in town knew about. But I got to tell you there could be one or more hard-cases hunting for me even as we speak and, well, I'd sure hate to see any bullet holes in hide so fine, honey lamb."

She moaned, "If you're not going to move it, take it out so's we can get dressed and out of here before dark! What would it look like if others spied us slipping out the back door in the gathering dusk, as if we'd been up to something like we've just been up to?"

He chuckled and withdrew, saying, "I admire a natural gal who's good at acting innocent. But as to other transgressions I had in mind, if only you'd hold still and let me tempt you, I'd like you to rustle me up the bank ledger that would have the last transactions of Miss Janice Carpenter now."

Viggy rolled into a nude seated pose on the tufted leather as she gasped, "Good heavens, I'd feel less wicked taking it Greek-style! Mister Plover would have a fit if he knew I'd been screwing you in his private office, but he'd fire me for sure if he ever caught me letting an outsider go through our books!"

Longarm slid down beside her. "I only want to have me a peek at that one doubtless filed-away and inactive ledger, honey lamb. What if I was to just slip it under my arm, escort you home, and mayhaps take some notes from it on your kitchen table--when we weren't in bed, I mean. That way, nobody could possibly catch me at it here in the bank after business hours."

She sighed and said, "I swear I'm going to wind up Frenching you before this night is over, you persistent thing. Even one such ledger is heavy and awkward, and what on earth do you expect to find that I haven't already told you?"

He said, "Exact numbers, for one thing. If there should be any record of just whom she was getting regular checks from, I know some railroad dicks I could wire to make certain the old colored lady got out of here alive and rich instead of dead and robbed."

Viggy gasped, "Good heavens, you do deal with a rough crowd, don't you? But I'm sure the poor thing was never robbed. Now that I recall, she made that Friday withdrawal late in the day. So who but I could have known she was carrying that much money and... Surely you don't suspect me of any crime, Custis?"

He patted her bare thigh and assured her, "Not federal leastways. I ain't sure what Brown County has on its statute books on cohabitation, and you just made me promise never to tell."

He bent over to gather up the shirt they'd thrown to the floor and rustle up a cheroot and a light as he explained. "Eating the apple a bite at a time, I don't mean to worry about the old gal getting in any trouble around here before I figure out where she would have gone from here and whether she ever got there."

So while he lit the smoke, the big buxom blonde went bare-ass into another room, and soon returned with her big firm tits draped over the spine of an oblong ledger bound in slate-gray buckram. When she asked why he couldn't just jot down the little they had on one depositor, Longarm explained, "Might spot something interesting about others who put money in or took some out around the same time. I once caught a crook so dumb that after he'd held up a bank with a mask on he deposited the exact same amount with them, doubtless figuring it was the safest place in town to leave his money, knowing he was the only serious bank robber about."

Viggy laughed and said she couldn't believe any crook could be so stupid. Longarm had to chuckle fondly before he agreed. "Leavenworth ain't exactly a rival of Yale or Harvard. If the average crook was half as smart as he thought he was, he'd go into some safer line of work. You take that morose Indian I met up with earlier today, for example. He's been wanted for years. But he'd found himself a job as a cowhand well clear of town, and I'd have likely never considered looking for him out at the Runeberg spread if he'd only had enough sense to stay put. I don't have anything on Miss Helga Runeberg, or didn't until this very day. But old Chief Youngwolf couldn't leave it at that. He had to come looking for me with a sissy English shotgun, and now look where he's spending the night."

He took a drag on the cheroot before he added, "They don't aim to plant him in Potter's Field before we can verify who he was air tight. I'm pretty sure he had to be the same Ojibwa who ran off with some white army deserters years ago to stop trains and rob banks for a living. Why don't we get dressed and talk about the wages of sin some more at your place?"

She dimpled sweetly, and allowed she'd like some supper as well as more sinning. Then, as they were getting dressed, she casually asked how come the mean Indian had been gunning for him like that.

Longarm shrugged and said, "They asked him to, I reckon. I had less luck at the Western Union than here. Reckless as old Chief may have been, he was too slick to visit the telegraph office in the dusky flesh, and his white confederate must have been sending and receiving some innocent-looking code."

The beautiful blonde innocently asked how Longarm knew the hatchet-faced Indian had a white confederate.

Longarm hauled on his jeans, saying, "I just told you. Nobody at your Western Union office here in New Ulm remembers anyone at all like Youngwolf, and his Colorado pals must have warned him I was on my way or he wouldn't have come to town to... Hmm, they might have only told him to keep an eye on me whilst they tried to figure just what I knew by whomsoever I met up with."

He began to button his shirt as he decided, "Too late to ask him now. My point is that they must have been communicating by wire. It'd take too long by longhand. Not only that, but to keep in touch by wire he'd have either had to ride into town more than your average cowhand could afford or have somebody here in town in cahoots with him, see?"

She didn't, bless her. She asked innocently, "Why would he have to ride into town to pick up a telegram from Denver? I heard Western Union will deliver one for a modest extra fee."

He laughed and said he could just picture a crook getting secret telegrams by messenger in a bunkhouse. Then he suddenly stared at her thunderstruck and declared, "Jesus H. Christ, speaking of dumb bastards, I sure take the cake! For you're right! He wouldn't need much help, or even a slick code, if he'd never been using the Western Union here in New Ulm at all!"

CHAPTER 21

It wasn't too late to ride, but Longarm had other questions to ask there in New Ulm before he did. So he went on home with Viggy for the night.

They met nobody as she smuggled him in the back way from the alley. She'd already told him on that chesterfield that she didn't smoke. So the lingering smell of another brand of tobacco in her otherwise tidy quarters in the carriage-house loft helped Longarm understand how any gal so young could know so many interesting positions.

He hadn't told her he was a virgin either, and he'd already seen she kept her buxom blond body clean and tidy too, so what the hell. And there was a lot to be said for such a comfortable port in a storm with an easy lay who wasn't likely to piss and moan about it when a man just had to get it on down the road.

Screwing, scrubbing, and sweeping seemed to sum up the big blonde's household skills, though. They'd have wound up supping on weak tea, burnt toast, and jam if Longarm hadn't found some buckwheat flour and sorghum molasses in the back of her cupboard. She said a man who could make flapjacks after screwing a gal so fine would make a swell catch for some lucky lady who was ready to settle down.

Fortunately, she didn't seem ready to settle down just yet. She'd read those books by Miss Virginia Woodhull, advising ladies young and old to get on top and never marry up with any skunk who didn't think a woman ought to have the right to vote.

After she'd been on top enough to settle her nerves a spell, she said she didn't mind if he left the lamp lit and sat up to read in bed, as long as he didn't expect her to. But after he'd gone through that bank ledger more than once, taking notes, Viggy rolled over in bed to prop herself up on one bare elbow, a pretty sight, and demand he explain what he was muttering about.

Longarm pointed at an entry with his stub pencil, but she didn't seem that interested in the tight handwriting as he explained, "That Wabasha Chambrun said he had no notion where that hundred-dollar note he gave Israel Bedford came from, and this far back leastways, he had no account with your bank. But here's an entry saying one of your tellers cashed a thousand-dollar check for one Antelope Chambrun just before Christmas. Miss Tatowiyeh Wachipi, Chambrun's pure Santee wife, must shorten her name when she signs it in Wasichu."

Viggy shrugged a bare shoulder and said she didn't recall either redskin around her bank all that much. Then she asked how he knew the check they'd cashed for them had anything to do with that hot treasury note.

Longarm smiled gently and replied, "It couldn't have. The Tyger gang hadn't pulled off that robbery in Fort Collins yet. The point is that the Chambruns seem to be telling the truth about big checks coming their way from other prosperous Indians. Your New Ulm bank had no problems with the out-of-state check, made out to the female or full-blood branch of the Chambrun family by the Pipestone Bonemeal & Fertilizer Company of Omaha, Nebraska."

Viggy observed she'd heard Pipestone was a place in Minnesota.

Longarm chuckled fondly and agreed. "Not too far from here, as a matter of fact. Pipestone, Minnesota, is named for the sacred red cliffs where the old-time Santee, amongst others, quarried the red catlanite or pipestone they carved into calumets, or what we tend to call peace pipes. The Indians smoked 'em for all sorts of medicine. I reckon it was only natural for some breed or assimilate going into a profitable business in Omaha to name his new venture after old-timey good medicine. I suspect I passed their trackside operation the last time I was in Omaha. There's a heap of meat-packing going on around there these days, and a smart gent who ain't afraid of hard work and dirty hands can make a heap of wampum on the fringes of meat-packing by disposing of the leftover blood, crud, and bones at a profit."

Viggy repressed a yawn and asked what on earth grubby redskins in Omaha might have to do with anyone in New Ulm.

He told her he liked to know when folks were fibbing to him or not, and added, "Your boss, old P.S. Plover, caught the serial number on that later treasury note as it was passing through his bank. So it's unlikely the Chambruns got even one such note from you folk. But I see here you charged 'em one percent, or ten dollars, when you cashed that earlier check from Omaha."

Viggy nodded innocently and replied, "Well, of course we did. One percent is about the least any bank charges for cashing a check drawn on another bank for a person with no regular account with them. Would you have us go to that much trouble for nothing at all?"

Longarm said, "Not hardly. I never said you were bilking check-cashers. On the other hand, ten dollars is a week's salary for a top hand, and old Tatowiyeh Wachipi might well have scouted up some banker willing to cash a sure thing for less."

He wrinkled his nose and added, "That opens up a whole other line of questioning, and I just don't want to take the time to canvass every infernal bank in the county!"

She lay back down and coyly asked what he did feel like doing now that they'd rested up a spell. He laughed and said he wanted to take just a few more notes, since he doubted he'd have the strength or the interest in dry numbers once they got weak and wet some more.

He was right. Despite that weak tea, they fell asleep in each other's arms an hour later, to be awakened at dawn by rain on the roof and a distant rumble promising there was more to come.

The buxom blond banking gal said she was glad it was such a dreary morning. After breakfast in bed, with toast and jam making more sense with the two of them in more of a hurry, Viggy told him she wanted him to give her a good head start down the alley with her umbrella and Macintosh. So he did, hoping the infernal rain would let up as he smoked at her kitchen table and went over his notes. She had of course hauled out with the ledger itself under her rain gear.

It was still raining when Longarm couldn't stand sitting still up there anymore. He was wearing his thin practical range denims, but it was only wet outside, not cold, So he let himself out Viggy's back gate around eight-thirty, and damned if there didn't seem to be an old biddy out by the hen house in her yard across the alley just as Longarm tried to slip past. It would have looked more sneaky not to tick his hat brim at a lady, so he did, but she just sniffed and looked through him at the rear windows of old Viggy's little hideaway. Longarm didn't ask her who that other heavy smoker might be. With any luck the cuss might not find out about him.

Good and wet by the time he got to the livery, Longarm knew from sad experience he didn't want to break out his own rain slicker and put it on over wet denim in summertime. So he just dickered with them for the hire of a buckskin mare who didn't mind muddy roads, they said, and got even wetter riding her over to Courthouse Square in the steady summer drizzle.

The sheriff was off kissing babies some more. Longarm called on the coroner's clerk to tell them he had to ride over to Sleepy Eye, but meant to return before leaving for good. He handed the clerk a damp but legible sheet torn out of his notebook and added, "Whilst I'm scouting the Western Union over by that other railroad stop, I sure wish you'd check this modest list of bank depositors against the bills of mortality this side of, say, Christmas."

The clerk allowed he would, but naturally wanted to know how come. So Longarm explained, "An old lady keeping her money in the bank as Janice Carpenter vanished from the face of this earth just after she drew it all out. I got some pals in railroading circles who may or may not be able to tell me where she went from here. Meanwhile, going over the bank ledger with another pal last night, I noticed more than one additional depositor cleaned out all or most of their savings around the same time."