She said, “I’ve never been there, of course. But somebody told us it was too close to those old Anasazi ruins for comfort. I think they said they branded their cattle with a drawing of one of those big straw hats Nakaih wear. But it was upside down, like so.”
He watched as she traced a fingernail in the dust between her upraised bare feet. He said, “That could be meant as a simplified sombero upside down, or a chongo-horned cow’s head, right side up. Mexican brands are more artistic than our own.”
She said that was the best she could do.
He said, “It has to be one or the other, and I speak enough Mexican to ask once we get down where it’s safer to talk to folks on open range. Do you reckon your kinswoman’s Mexican husband would take you in for a few days if we asked politely?”
The Na-dene gal looked sincerely puzzled. “What would he have to say about it? A man can ask his asdza to offer food and shelter to his own friends. But everyone knows she has the final say.”
Then she scowled and demanded, “Why do you want to leave me alone among Nakaih strangers? I knew you were tired of me after all the nice things you said about my body! You men are all alike. You go through life like that wicked Holy One, Begochidi! You grab us poor trusting things by our privates when we least expect it, then you run away crying, ‘Bego! Bego!’ as if you had done something brave!”
He handed her the cheroot. “Folks who say your kind and mine have nothing in common have surely never played slap-and-tickle with a lady of either persuasion. I ain’t tired of screwing you, honey lamb. I just don’t want to have to worry about another backside they might shoot at as I poke about those canyons on the far side of the Chama Valley. I told you why I’d been sent down this way to scout them, remember?”
The tawny little gal began to unbutton the front of his borrowed blue shirt as she lay back on the summer-cured grass between those rocks, replying mockingly, “I thought it was just to see me. Do you like what you see, Belagana Hastin?”
Most men would have, as she spread her chunky thighs wide in the dappled morning sunlight. For while all such sights were inspiring, some were prettier than others. She said she admired his dong too, when he dropped his jeans to show it was already hard.
So the day would have passed quite enjoyably, had they had just a tad more to eat as they screwed, smoked, and lazed the sunlit hours away. Then it was dark enough to move on, so they did, both ponies a bit balky now, and their own rumps feeling less rested than usual.
It was still fairly early after moonrise. So the other riders they heard first could have been on less pressing business than witch-hunting. But as the riders were moving past the cottonwood grove Longarm and the girl were hiding in, that blamed police buckskin neighed, inspiring the Indians in the middle distance to rein in and discuss the situation.
Longarm could only cock his Winchester and hope for the best for now. But Kinipai naturally understood what those old boys were saying about odd noises in the dark. So she suddenly let loose with what Longarm considered a rusty imitation of a great horned owl.
He said so with a chuckle as the Indians lit out at full gallop. When he told her she’d have never fooled any West-by-God-Virginia ridge-runners with such odd hootings, she demurely explained that she hadn’t been trying to imitate any old owl. She said she’d heard one of them call another by name. So she’d wondered what they might do if Owl called out that name.
He laughed harder and said he’d always thought she was smart as a button. She sighed and said, “I’ve picked up some terrible habits since I met you. Pretending to be a Holy One is as bad as burning pollen. Our Pueblo enemies hold dance ways where masked elders act out the parts of their spirits. But I was taught by my uncle how disrespectful that would be to our own Holy Ones. I don’t know how I shall ever be pure enough to conduct any blessing ways now!”
He said, “I don’t see how, either. No offense, but ain’t you in the position of one of those Salem witch women, if she’d got away and run off to live with the Mohegans or Pequoit?”
She didn’t know what he was talking about. That didn’t surprise him. He said, “I mean that, seeing you’ve been drummed out of your old chanters’ guild as a tried and convicted witch, your best bet now would be a total change of position.”
She said she liked some of the positions he’d taught her.
He laughed and said, “For Pete’s sake, we’re both dressed and on horseback. So pay attention. I’ve had this same conversation with a heap of disgruntled folks of various nations. I’m sorry as hell about that wrong turn Columbus took on his way to India, but he took it, and you folks wound up Indians, whether you wanted to be or not, at least as long as you kept on behaving like Indians.”
She pouted. “Hear me, what is wrong with the way my N’de people behave? We have always been this way, ever since Spider Woman showed us the way to these sunny lands from the dark caves we used to live in.”
He said, “That ain’t true. Your own Changing Woman tells you that nothing stays the same, without changing, unless it’s dead, and even the dead keep changing, sort of disgustingly, until nothing’s left.”
She said she wouldn’t know about that, having been taught from her girlhood to avoid the dead and to speak about them as seldom as possible.
He shrugged and said, “I got to see more of dead boys in blue and gray at more than one battleground back East. So I see why a Jicarilla who didn’t have to watch ‘em bloat up and turn all sorts of ugly colors might not want to. My point was that living folks can cling to their old ways after their old ways don’t work no more, or they can follow Changing Woman’s advice and take up ways that do work. That kinswoman living Mexican on that ranch we’re looking for ain’t being asked to move clean down to the Tularosa Agency against her will. She’s likely eating, drinking, sleeping, and so on as good or better than she ever did. And meanwhile, there’s no BIA agent telling her to line up and sound off her allotment number.”
Kinipai protested, “Hear me, she’s no longer N’de since she wed that stranger and accepted the strange ways of his cruel Holy Ones, the Mary Mother, who was not able to save her only son as Changing Woman saved the Hero Twins, and the Jesus Chindi, whose medicine failed to protect him from his enemies and whom even his followers call a dead man’s chindi!”
Longarm dryly observed, “‘Holy Ghost’ don’t sound as spooky. I ain’t out to convert an Apache witch to the Santa Fe, as the Mexican call their Holy Faith. I know this fullblood Arapaho family running a tolerable cattle spread
