The Indian said, “Choose any ponies in our police corral and they are your own from this day forward. I have heard nothing, nothing, about trouble around that distant mesa. It used to lie on Jicarilla range, or on range we disputed with others, at any rate. But now we hold nothing, nothing-much farther east than Stinking Lake. Once the medicine waters of the lake drain eastward toward the Rio Chama they are lost to us forever. Do you think it is right for Nakaih farmers to grow all that corn and squash with water they get from us without paying for it? Hear me, those Nakaih are not real farmers like the Zuni we used to have so much fun with. Like your own kind, the Nakaih came in from far away with their guns and iron tools to claim the best places for themselves. Why don’t you white eyes make them go back to Mexico, where they belong? Didn’t you have a good fight with them, and didn’t you win?”
Longarm smiled wearily and replied, “You’d be surprised how many white eyes might agree with you. But the peace treaty we signed at the end of the Mexican War gave Mexicans already settled in country taken from Mexico the right to hang on to their property and just go on acting natural, whether some of their new Anglo neighbors liked it or not.”
The Indian scowled. “I have been told this before. But I still don’t understand why Washington keeps that one old treaty with the Nakaih when it has broken so many, many with my kind!”
Longarm was far more interested in that riding stock. But supper was still being served, in the form of a sweeter corn mush the lady of the house called ta’nil’kan, so he sighed and said, “Mexico, for all her faults, ain’t never gone back on that treaty of ‘48. If she was to, say, grab Texas back or send her marines to raid the California gold fields, all bets would be off and we’d feel free to be mean as hell to the Mexicans or, as you call them, Nakaih.”
“You treat us with scorn because we don’t look as much like you as the Nakaih!” the Indian complained. “Hear me, we are men, not children! Why does the government keep treating us as if we were unruly children? Do we look like your white-eyed children?”
Longarm had to smile at the picture. Billy Vail back in Denver looked more like a big pink baby than the lady serving supper, and there was a hard black mountain gemstone called “Apache tears” with good reason. But since he’d been asked, he had to say, “It ain’t that many Indians look like children, no offense. But you can’t expect to be treated like responsible adults when you’re living on handouts as wards of the state and are inclined to throw tantrums that would get a white schoolchild sent to reform school.”
The Indian gaped at Longarm, turning a redder shade of brown as he took a deep breath, let it out, and said, “Your N’de name fits you, Belagana Hastin. You do seem to be an American-people-have-to-listen-to. I know some of our young men like to steal horses. I am a police sergeant. But I don’t think it is fair for you to say we live on charity, as if we had a choice. Hear me, back in our Shining Times, before you people came to change our world forever…”
“Spare me the violin music,” Longarm said. “it ain’t as if you and me are having a powwow on the shores of Old Virginee at this late date. You’re an English-speaking government employee who wouldn’t have made those stripes unless he could read a mite. So grow up and face the facts. I just told you why Mexican folks are allowed to just be themselves as long as they obey the same laws as the rest of us. Sometimes Mexicans steal horses. When they do they go to jail, or to the gallows in more than one Western state. But nobody sets aside reservations for Mexicans, or does a thing for them when they go broke through their own fault or just bad luck.”
The Indian said, “That’s different. They knew how to live more like the rest of you when they came up this way.”
Longarm nodded. “Then try the recently freed colored folks on for size. They couldn’t have been much more advanced than your average Indian when they were marched aboard slave ships and dumped on a strange shore to do chores they’d never heard of on their own side of the main ocean. You likely heard of the big fight we had over slavery and other differences. Some of the fighting took place out here, as close as Santa Fe. A heap of Indians got into it on one side or the other, or just raising hell in general whilst the army was too busy to ride herd on ‘em.”
The Jicarilla nodded soberly. “Your Eagle Chief Carson fought our Navaho kinsmen during that same war. I don’t see what that had to do with the black white eyes getting loose.”
Longarm said, “I doubt, if he was still around, Kit Carson could tell us. My point is that them colored folks did get loose, all at once, with no Bureau of African Affairs to treat them wisely or foolishly, and they were allowed to just sink or swim like everyone but you poor mistreated children of nature.”
The Indian called him a son of a bitch in plain English.
Longarm smiled easily and replied, “Anglo folks, colored folks, Mex folks, and even self-supporting and law-abiding Indian folks are allowed to own property, sign contracts, and even vote in most states because they act like grown-ups and get treated like grown-ups. I know you Jicarilla feel the BIA ain’t treating you fair right now. I said as much when I heard they were talking about moving you all again. I told you there was nothing I could do about it. But would you care for some friendly advice?”
The Indian said, “You are called the American-people-have-to-listen-to. How do you think we can stop the government from moving us down to the Tularosa Agency, Belagana Hastin?”
Longarm finished the last of his coffee, placed a palm over his cup to keep his hostess from refilling it, and said, “Don’t go. Get off the Great White Father’s blanket and stand on your own two feet. Not the way Victorio has ridden. We both know that trail only leads to the dark world of the chindi. But you speak English. You can read it well enough to pass a sergeant’s examination. That leaves you miles ahead of many a colored field hand who woke up one morning to find himself stuck with making his own living. I know dozens of gents around Denver, some of ‘em working at good jobs for more than I make, who used to be Arapaho, Cheyenne, Ute, and such.”
Doli grimaced. “I know others who have gone to Santa Fe to live off the blanket. Hear me, a lot of them are begging drunkards, or living off the quarters their wives and daughters make by selling themselves to white eyes!”
Longarm shrugged. “Men that worthless come in all shades from ivory to ebony. Always have. Always will. You asked me what any real man ought to do when he had the choice of running his own life or letting some pencil-pusher in Washington run it for him.”
Doli pleaded, “Can’t you at least talk to those government white eyes over at our agent’s hogan right now? They might listen to another government man who knows this country so much better!”
Longarm sighed. “I would if I thought it would do you a lick of good. I’d try just for the hell of it if I wasn’t trying to sneak into the Mesa de los Viejo canyonlands by way of a side entrance I hope nobody’s watching. What if I was to stick to the high country most of the way, then ease through such cover as I can find, say, south of Stinking Lake?”
