“But yoifve made the point that the man was a killer and at least a little crazy. So let me be the first to congratulate you.”
“Congratulate me? What for?”
“What for? Why, damn it, you’ve solved your case! You caught the Wendigo and everyone can breathe easy again!”
Longarm took out a cheroot and lit it, saying, “Hell, it’s just getting interesting. Did you know Mendez didn’t savvy telegraph codes? I tapped out a message to him on the bar one day, and he never blinked an eyeball when I said a dreadful thing about his mother. He was a moody cuss, too.”
“I don’t follow you, Longarm. The man was a railyard bully boy, not a dispatcher. He wasn’t supposed to know Morse code. Oh, you mean about the railroad’s schedules, right?”
“Somebody had to tell him ahead of time when the slow trains were moving across the reservation. He had no call to hang around the dispatch sheds, either.”
“Boy! I’m glad my wire’s not connected to the railroad’s! I expect you’ll be checking on that, right?”
“Already did. Our federal wire’s not tied in with the railroad’s. I hope you understand I’ve got a job to do.”
“I’m getting used to the idea. What did your friends in the Justice Department say about that scrape I got into a few years back?”
“Oh, you were telling me the truth. They said your boss had been a crook but that you’d had no way of getting at the missing money even if you’d aimed to.”
“Thanks, I think. If you’re not arresting me, these days, who do you have in mind for the Wendigo’s confederate?”
I’m keeping an open mind on that. It’s possible Mendez had some other way of knowing the schedules. It’d take forever, which seems a mite long, to check out every switchman and train crewman who might have gossiped about who was running what to where. While I was using your wire I got in touch with my boss. Marshal Vail says he’s pleased about the Wendigo, but he’s still pissed off at me for not catching that rogue half-breed, Johnny Hunts Alone.”
“You know, I’d forgotten all about that?”
“Denver didn’t forget. The warrant I pack on Hunts Alone was the only reason I came up here in the first damn place. You might say this crap about the Wendigo, Mendez, or whomsoever was a side issue.”
Chadwick laughed and said, “Some side issue! You scattered the poor bastard from hell to breakfast!”
Longarm smiled. “Well, he wasn’t too tidy while he was alive. I’m sorry I shot him, though. He died too sudden, and before he could tell me some things I wished to know.”
“You still think he had a motive, then? I mean, a sensible motive a sane person might understand?”
“There’s no big mystery to that part of it. Mendez was a killer by nature and a bully by profession. He was playing Wendigo to run the Blackfoot off their land.”
“Damn it, Longarm, we’ve been over that till I’m blue in the face from explaining. There’s no way anyone can claim that Indian land. I not only looked it up in the regulations, I wired Washington to see if there’d been any new rulings on the subject.”
“Do tell?” Longarm raised an eyebrow. “What did Washington say?”
“The same thing I’ve been telling you. Even if this particular reservation was completely abandoned for a full seven years, the land’s been set aside in trust for the Blackfoot Nation.”
“In other words, as long as one Blackfoot’s still living anywhere in the country, no white man can claim an acre of that range?”
Chadwick rolled his eyes heavenward and said, “Not even if the Blackfoot ran up to Canada and took an oath to Queen Victoria. I checked that out with headquarters while I was at it. As wards of the state the Indians are not allowed to sell, give, or even throw away a square foot of their land, once it’s been allotted to them.”
Longarm asked, “What about some other tribe being given an abandoned reservation?”
Chadwick looked blank. Then he went to the bookshelf and started rummaging through a buckram-bound book of regulations, muttering, “I can see it, in time. But that couldn’t be what the Wendigo, or Mendez, had in mind.”
“Why not?”
“Hell,” Chadwick said disgustedly, “you know how slowly the government works. And even if the B.I.A. did assign some other tribe the lands, what good would it do any white man?”
He opened the book to the regulation he’d been looking for and nodded, saying, “Seven years with no other claims, as I thought. Besides, even if another bunch of Indians were brought in, what would it mean to a white cattleman? I agree, all that ungrazed range might tempt almost anyone who might have hired Mendez, but as 1 keep trying to tell you, there’s no way on earth they can get it!”
As he put the book back, Longarm asked, “Let’s try it another way. What if someone were to just hire the range? Doesn’t the government charge a modest fee per head for running cattle on public lands?”
“Certainly. Collecting range fees is part of my job.”
“All right. What would it cost me, per head and season, if I came to you for a grazing permit on those reservation lands?”
Chadwick reached for his bookshelf, hesitated as if lost, and turned to say, “I don’t know. You’d have to ask Durler, the Indian agent.”
“I have. He doesn’t know how to rope a cow, either. I thought the Land Agency had the final say on all government lands not being used for anything else.”
