Longarm thought before he answered. He knew, now, that much of what he’d just enjoyed had been an act of curious cruelty.
He decided the hell with it. Real women were complicated enough and it wasn’t as if the supply was likely to run out.
She insisted, “Well, am I? Am I not the greatest lay you’ve ever had, or ever will have?”
He feigned a mournful sigh and said, “Yeah, I know when I’m whipped. If you don’t let me call on you this weekend I’ll likely wind up jerking off under your window. Can’t we make an exception, just this once?”
Her voice was triumphant as she chortled, “No. I swear by Manitou you’ll never sleep with me again. Two- Women has spoken!”
He rolled over as if to fall asleep. He figured it was the least a man could do, considering.
After a time, bored with her game, Gloria got softly out of bed and tiptoed back to her own room, the victor of her own grotesque game of revenge. Longarm got up and locked the door, muttering, “Thank God. I was afraid I’d never get any sleep tonight!”
Chapter 3
Longarm could see there was trouble long before he and Gloria reached the cluster of frame buildings in the rented buckboard he was driving. A huge crowd of Indians stood around the reservation agency across from the log trading Post the center had grown up around.
It was mid-afternoon as they arrived and the sun floated above the purple Rockies far to the west. The Blackfoot reservation occupied an expanse of rolling short-grass prairie fifty miles across, but the tracks of the Iron Horse crossed the reservation and they’d been able to get off and rent the buckboard at another town just over the horizon to the east.
Gloria sat primly at his side, less friendly than ever, having not quite managed to claim him as her latest victim the night before. Longarm had been too gallant to make the obvious remark about black widow spiders when he found her dressed and coldly formal at dawn.
An Indian ran over as Longarm reined in near the edge of the crowd, and shouted something to Gloria in the high, nasal dialect of her tribe. The girl blanched and gasped, “Oh, God, no!”
Then, before Longarm could ask her what was up, she was out of her seat and running through the crowd, who gave way with expressions of compassion for the pretty little breed.
Longarm shouted to anyone who’d listen, “What’s going on? Anyone here speak English?”
A short moon-faced man in faded denims and very tall black hat came over to say, “I am Yellow Leggings. When I was young I killed a soldier and took his horse with me to Canada. Heya! That was a good fight we had at Greasy Grass! Were you there?”
“No, I’m still wearing my hair. What’s all the fuss about?”
“I was a Dog Soldier. Now I am only a reservation policeman and they do not pay me on time. Wendigo has struck again. This time He-Who-Walks-the-Night-Winds took Real Bear. The people are very frightened.”
Longarm nodded, sweeping his gunmetal gaze over the silent, unblinking faces crowded around him. He turned back to Yellow Leggings. “Where’d it happen?”
“in his house. The almost-girl you rode in with lives there, too. I think it was a good thing she was not home last night. The Wendigo would have torn her apart, too.”
“Which house was his?”
“That one, north of the agency. The agent and some of the Indian police are in there now. I didn’t want to go inside. I am not afraid of man or beast, but I don’t like to be near spirit happenings. I told them I would wait out here and keep order.”
“Can you get somebody to tie this mule to a post Yellow Leggings? I’d better see what’s going on.”
“Go, then. I will see to your wagon and the things in back. I never steal in peacetime.”
Longarm jumped down with a nod of thanks to the older Indian and elbowed his way through the crowd. Somewhere ahead of him, a woman screamed shrilly, mindless grief. He went to the indicated cabin of unpainted lumber, finding the door open, and went inside. Gloria was being comforted on a couch by a thin, white woman and an older, fatter squaw. She was still screaming, her face buried in her hands.
Longarm saw that there was another room and glanced through the entrance as a harassed-looking young white man hurried out, blinking in surprise to see another white.
Longarm said, “I’m U.S. Deputy Marshal Custis Long. You must be the Blackfoot agent?”
“I am, and you have come to the right place, lawman. I hope you have a strong stomach.”
Longarm followed the man into the bedroom, where two Indian police in those same tall hats stood over what looked at first like a badly butchered side of beef on the bed.
Longarm suppressed a wave of nausea as he recognized the form on the blood-soaked mattress as that of a man. From the blood on the walls and ceiling it looked as if he might have been skinned alive.
The agent said, “His name was Real Bear. You’ll have to take my word for it, he was an Indian.”
“He was the man I came up here to see. How long ago did it happen?”
“Nobody knows. They found him like this about an hour ago. We were supposed to hold a meeting this afternoon and I sent one of my police over to fetch him. Now you know as much as I do.”
“Not quite. You say he didn’t turn up for a meeting. What was the meeting about?”
“Just the usual stuff. Complaints about the government rations being late, as usual. Some trouble about stolen livestock. Nothing that can’t wait, now.”
