said, “Longarm, allow me to present you to Miss Prudence Lee. She arrived just after you rode off.”
Longarm removed his hat as the agent added, “Miss Lee’s from the Bible Society. I keep telling her she’d do better in town, but she says she’s come to bring the Gospel to our red brothers.”
Prudence Lee dimpled prettily, considering how little there was of her, and said, “We were just talking about the ritual murders, Deputy Long. It’s my intention to show the Blackfoot the error of their ways.”
Longarm forked a leg over a chair and sat as Nan Durler shoved a mug of coffee in front of him without looking at him. He grinned and said, “The army’s sort of showed them some errors already, Miss Lee. What do you mean by ritual murders?”
“Isn’t it obvious that the medicine men have been sacrificing people to their heathen gods?”
“No, ma’am, it’s not. I’ve been told the Pawnee used to make human sacrifices, long ago, but none of the other plains tribes went in for it, even before we, uh, pacified them.”
“Come now, I know I’m a woman, but I know the terrible things they’ve done to captives in the past.”
“Captives, maybe. That was torture, not religion. The two killings we just had were simple murder. The men killed were both on friendly terms with such Blackfoot as I’ve asked.” He looked at Durler to add, “Rain Crow and I saw some old boys pow-wowing about a trip to Canada. You’d better see about issuing some rations and back payments.”
“My God, I’d better let the army know if they’re preparing to jump the reservation, too!” Durler said.
“I wouldn’t do that. Not unless you want some dead Indians no Wendigo had to bother killing. Those boys over at the fort are bored and ugly.”
Prudence Lee, having warmed to her subject, broke in insistently to ask, “What about the Sun Dance?”
“Sun Dance, ma’am?”
“That business of dancing around a big pole with rawhide thongs punched through living flesh. You can’t tell me that’s not a blood sacrifice!”
“Oh, bloody enough, I suppose. But we don’t let ‘em do that any more. Besides, you’re missing a point. Indians think it’s brave for a man to shed his own blood to Manitou. Other people’s blood doesn’t count as a proper gift.”
“Brrr! To think of God’s creatures living in such ignorance of the Word! Manitou is what they call their heathen god, eh?” Prudence asked.
“Well, Manitou means ‘god’, in Blackfoot, ma’am. I don’t know how heathen he might be. Seems to me the Lord would be the Lord no matter what you call Him.”
“Agent Durler tells me many of his charges speak English, so I’ll have little trouble setting them straight. You did say I could use the empty house next door as my mission, didn’t you, Mister Durler?”
Calvin shrugged and said, “If you won’t go back to town. You won’t be able to sleep there till we repaint the bedroom, though. Uh, you know what happened there, don’t you?”
“Pooh, I’m not afraid of ghosts. My Lord is with me, even into the valley of death, forever.”
Longarm wondered why she didn’t say “Amen,” but he knew better than to ask. He took out his watch and said, “Be more room here, if I took Spotted Beaver into Switchback tonight. I’ll get there before midnight if I leave soon.”
Durler asked, “Will the coroner be up at that hour?”
“Don’t know. If he ain’t, I’ll have to wake him, won’t I?”
“He isn’t going to like it much,” Durler cautioned.
“I don’t like not knowing what killed Spotted Beaver, either. The railroad station’s open all night and I’ll have a few questions for them, too. I’ll toss my saddle roll in the wagon and bed down somewhere along the way, once I’m finished in town.”
Nan Durler grimaced and said, “You don’t mean to sleep out on the open prairie, do you?”
“Why not, ma’am? It don’t look like rain.”
“It makes my flesh crawl just to think about it! It’s so creepy-crawly out there at night!”
“I spend half my nights sleeping out on the prairie,” he said. This wasn’t strictly true, but he thought it might disabuse her of any notions she might have about his carrying her off to his castle in the sky. Even if he was wrong, he did intend to spend at least one night in the open. This place was too full of women for a man to sleep peaceably in, alone.
Longarm’s luck was with him when he drove into Switchback about eleven that night. A lamp was lit over the coroner’s office and the saloons were still going full-blast.
He pounded on the coroner’s door until the older man came to cuss out at him. Then he said, “Got another one for you, Doc. You don’t get his skull, either. Somebody beat you to it.”
He carried the stiff, wrapped form of Spotted Beaver into the lab and flopped it on the table as the coroner lit an overhead lamp. The coroner said, “Good thing I’m half asleep and my supper’s about digested. What in hell tore this old boy up?”
“I was hoping you could tell me, Doc. What say you give him the once-over while I run over to the railroad station. We got some trains to ask about, too.
He left the coroner to his job and walked the three blocks to the station, where he found the stationmaster dressed but asleep in a cubbyhole office under an electric light bulb. The man awoke with a start as Longarm came in, glanced at the wall clock, and said, “Ain’t no trains due for a good six hours, mister.”
“I ain’t looking for a ticket. I’m a Deputy U.S. Marshal after some information. You have a train stopped out on the Blackfoot reservation this evening?”
