“We do and we don’t. You know about interservice rivalry, Longarm. The B.I.A. would never release grazing rights to us.”
“Doesn’t your office hire out land in the Indian Nation, down Oklahoma way?”
Chadwick frowned and said, “I’ll have to ask about that. It’s my understanding the Indian Nation’s a special case. As you can see, I don’t have any B.I.A. regulations here. Doesn’t Durler have a library of his own out at the reservation?”
Longarm sighed, “Yeah. I’ve been looking through those fool books, too. I never was good at Latin and they seem to have been written by some old boys who never learned enough English to matter. Durler says he doesn’t know what the Wendigo wanted, either. Do you think he’s telling me the truth?”
Chadwick blinked in surprise before he asked, “Jesus, do you think the Indian agent himself might have been behind the killings?”
“Somebody was. I’ve been going with the notion that Durler doesn’t know too much about stealing money from the government, yet.”
Chadwick laughed and said, “It takes a while. I’m still working on my education. By the way, how long have you been in the service, Longarm?”
Longarm chewed his unlit cheroot and answered soberly, “Seven or eight years. They haven’t caught me stealing from them yet.”
“That makes two of us. Us little fellows never get to put our hands in the cookie jar, do we? You have to know those thieves in Washington pretty well before they let you at the pork barrel.”
Longarm didn’t answer, so Chadwick continued, “I don’t know Durler all that well, but I’ll stick my neck out and say he’s probably as honest as most of us field men. If he was thinking of pocketing bribes for granting range fees to any local cattleman, he’d be foolish to run his own Blackfoot off.”
Longarm frowned and said, “Keep talking. How would a crooked Indian agent go about getting rich at his job?”
Chadwick hesitated. Then he shrugged and said expansively, “Hell, we all know how the Indian Ring worked it under Grant. They didn’t chase Indians off reservations. They crowded ‘em in like sardines. If Durler was a crook, he’d want all the Indians out there he could get!”
“How do you figure that, Chadwick?”
“Jesus, I thought you said you’d been reading the B.I.A. regulations!” Chadwick said impatiently. “The B.I.A. gets money from Congress to take care of them. The money in mistreating Indians is in skimming off part of the government allotments for food, clothing, medical supplies, and so forth.”
“Then the more Indians an agent has to work with, the more loose change there is to sort of lose in the cracks?”
Chadwick laughed a bit enviously, as he nodded and said, “There you have it. If I was a crooked Indian agent I’d have ten times as many Indians out on that reservation. Then I’d divert about ten cents on the dollar and retire rich!”
Longarm nodded as if in sudden enlightenment and agreed, “You’d make more that way than selling range permits for a side bet under the table, huh?”
Chadwick sighed in open envy this time as he said, “Oh, God, yes. Cows only eat grass. There’s no way to fiddle with the price of beans and white bread, feeding cows. They don’t wear shoes or sleep under blankets, either. I’ll bet that agent Cal Durler replaced is living in a big New York brownstone, now.”
Longarm frowned and said, “Back up. Are you saying the agent young Cal replaced might have been a crook?”
Chadwick grew suddenly cautious as he answered slyly, “I don’t want you to quote me about a fellow federal man, but it’s common knowledge he was a Grant appointee. His name was McBride and the new reform administration threw him out on his ass as soon as they went over his books.”
Longarm ripped a piece of yellow paper from a pad on Chadwick’s desk and wrote the name down before he asked, “Was this McBride ever charged with anything, or are we only funning?”
Chadwick said, “I told you I have no real evidence. No, they did not put him in jail. The way I heard it, they let him resign peaceably, after he had some trouble explaining why he was collecting rations for three times as many Indians as there were in all Montana Territory.”
“They get a federal indictment on this McBride jasper, or is all this just suspicions?” Longarm asked, folding the piece of paper and putting it in his pocket.
“Oh, you know half of Grant’s boys, including Grant, were never out-and-out arrested for stealing half the country. I’ll allow the old general, himself, was just a fool who trusted too many old friends after he was President for a while. President Hayes has been taking things back gentle. Just firing or transferring boys caught with their fingers in the till.”
“I know. I’ve only been allowed to arrest half the crooks I’ve run across in my travels. Crooked or honest, politicians like to sweep old scandals under the rug. I reckon stealing from the taxpayers is a trade secret. I’d better have a few more words with the Justice Department on your telegraph, though. Some of what you just told me is interesting as hell.”
Chapter 15
When he was finished at the land office, Longarm went to get his chestnut at the livery near the railroad station. He put off his intended return to the reservation when he spotted a trio of morose-looking but well-dressed Indians, hunkered on the station platform with their backs braced against the wall.
He walked over to them, flashed his federal badge, and asked, “You boys wouldn’t be the Crow policemen from the B.I.A., would you?”
The leader of the trio nodded and said, “I am Constable Dancing Pony. You must be the one who killed the crazy man who killed the man we came here to arrest.”
“I’m sorry you boys came out here for nothing,” Longarm apologized. “Since you’re headed home, can I take it
