“Pretty strong stuff, all right.” Longarm looked critically at the steaks, and went on, “It’ll be a few minutes before they’re done. I’ll go get our bedrolls and tend to the animals, if you’ll stir the potatoes to keep them from burning.”
During supper, the pair of them found a rising number of things to talk about. Longarm was appalled at Maidia’s conception of the way the Indians in the Nation lived, and the relationships between them and the whites. Like most post-Civil War Easterners, she saw the Indians of the Nation as a new kind of slave to be liberated from the white man’s yoke.
“You don’t really mean the Indians have their own police force?” she asked him at one point, when Longarm mentioned the Indian police.
“y, sure they do, with uniforms and everything. There just ain’t enough of them to cover the whole Nation, that’s all. And the Indian police don’t let sheriffs or town marshals from Texas or Arkansas or Kansas come into their territory, either.”
“But you can, because you’re a federal officer,” Maidia concluded.
“That’s right. U.S. marshals and the army, that’s all the outside lawmen allowed by the Indians into the Nation.”
“But the army keeps the Indians penned up here!” she objected.
“That ain’t quite all the army does, ma’am. Mostly, it keeps the Indian Wars from starting up again. Not against us white folks,” he said hastily, as Maidia was about to break in. “Indians have been fighting each other since way back before history began. But it’s getting to the point now where the Osages will talk to the Cherokees, and a Kiowa won’t try to kill a Cheyenne on sight. Give them a little time, and they’ll settle down like us, to a war every ten or fifteen years instead of just one war that goes on all the time.”
Maidia studied Longarm’s face for a moment, trying to decide whether he was joking or serious. Finally she said, “You really mean that, don’t you, Marshal?”
“Why shouldn’t I? It’s the truth.”
“You make the Indians sound so bloodthirsty.”
“I wouldn’t call them that, Miss Harkness. They just don’t put on a lot of false fronts, the way we do.”
“But I’ve always been taught-“
Longarm interrupted her, “I know what you were taught. Most of it was wrong. You’ll see that, after you’ve been in the Nation awhile. No, ma’am, on the whole, there’s not any better people than the Indians. Or smarter, or more truthful. An Indian gives you his word, he won’t go back on it unless you go back on yours first.”
“You’re giving me new ideas, Marshal. I’ll try to remember what you’ve said.”
“You do that. But I reckon I’ve just about talked your ear off. If we’re going to get started at daybreak, we better turn in.”
Longarm busied himself with the fire, banking it for the night, to give Maidia a chance to go off into the bushes without her feeling that he was watching her. He heard her retreating footsteps and heard her returning, and quickly whirled back to the fire, bending to light a cheroot from a twig he picked up from its edge. He held the whiskey bottle out to her.
“I was just about to have my nightcap. You might as well take one, too. You’ll sleep better if you do.”
Obediently, she took a swallow of the liquor. Longarm smiled inwardly when he saw her drinking from the bottle, as he had, instead of looking for a cup. He drank his own good-night tot, and proceeded to make his bedtime arrangements: boots laid flat and covered with his folded coat; his Ingersoll watch and chain, with the mean little derringer attached to the other end of the chain, tacked into a boot. He spread his vest flat by his left shoulder, laid his unholstered Colt on it, and covered the pistol with his hat to shield it from the damp night air. He became aware that Maidia, already in her own bedroll, was watching his methodical preparations with a great deal of interest.
She said, “From the way you’re arranging your things, Marshal, I get the idea you think those men might come back while We’re asleep.”
“They won’t be coming back,” he assured her. “One of them is dead, and two of the others have got bullet holes in them. But if they do show up, or if anybody else does, I’ll be ready.”
“So I see. That will make me sleep a lot better. Good-night, Marshal Long.”
“Good-night, Miss Harkness.”
Longarm watched through slitted eyes until he saw Maidia give up trying to gaze through the darkness. She looked in one direction, then in another, before she finally settled down to sleep. When her face settled into repose and her breathing became deep and even, Longarm closed his own eyes and relaxed. In no time at all, he was also asleep.
Longarm might have been sleeping two minutes or two hours when Maidia’s stifled, startled cry aroused him. He rolled out of his blankets, to his knees, in one swift motion, sweeping aside the hat that covered his Colt. In an instant, the revolver was in his hand. The banked fire gave off the very faintest glow. There was barely enough light for him to see Maidia. She was sitting up in her bedding. Her head was cocked, swiveling slowly from side to side as she peered into the darkness that surrounded them.
“What’s the matter?” Longarm asked her.
“I heard something. A woman screaming somewhere, I think.”
“Funny, I didn’t hear it. And I count myself a light sleeper.”
