It took Longarm and his Ute allies most of the day to get the outraged whites over to the Ouray Reservation, to the east. One of them was kind enough to pack the dead prisoner in, wrapped in a tarp across a pony. When they rode into the unpainted frame buildings at the government town called White Sticks, as the sun went down, a tall man in a rusty black suit came out with a puzzled smile.
Longarm rode up to him and smiled back, saying, “Got a dead man with me, Mister Caldwell. Can I store him in your icehouse for a few days?”
“God, no, but I’ll bury him under ice and sawdust in a shed ‘til you want him bac! Who are all these other folks, Longarm? What have you and my indians been UP to?”
“I’m citing them for helping me make some arrests. They’ll be bringing in some others before morning. I deputized some of Hungry Calf’s young men to round up the others headed this way by now.”
Foster rode over to protest, “See here! I am on Her Majesty’s business under an agreement with the State Department!”
Longarm said, “He don’t work for the State Department, Sergeant. You’re on land controlled by the Department of the Interior and they don’t like State all that much. Ride back and take charge of the others, if you’re all so anxious to help. Tell ‘em to make camp and sort of stay put, for now, while I make arrangements with my friends. You do have your own grub, don’t you? These Ho friends of mine don’t have all that much to give away.”
Interested despite his outrage, Foster asked, “Why do you call them Ho? This is the Ute reservation, isn’t it?”
“Sure it is. Ute is what others call ‘em. They call themselves Ho ‘cause it means folks, in their own lingo. They call you saltu meaning strangers, for reasons you can likely figure out. So don’t mess up and nobody will get hurt.”
Caldwell said, “Longarm is delicate about indian niceties. He calls Apaches by their own name of Na-dene. Calls a Sioux a Dakota.”
“All but the western Sioux,” Longarm corrected. “They say La-ko-tab.”
The Mountie sniffed and said, “All very interesting, I’m sure. Do you have a telegraph connection here, Agent Caldwell?”
“Sure. Wired into Western Union.”
“May I use it to notify Her Majesty’s Government I’ve been abducted by Ute Indians?”
Caldwell glanced at Longarm, who nodded and said, “Why not? He’s a guest.”
Longarm saw that the Mountie wasn’t going to explain things to the others, so as Foster and Caldwell went inside the headquarters building to send the message, Longarm ambled over to the large group of whites around the Indian campfire they’d helped themselves to. Longarm saw that his Ho friends had given them back their sidearms, as he’d told them to, and had hidden their horses someplace as he had instructed.
Timberline had been squatting on his heels next to Kim Stover, who sat crosslegged on a saddle blanket near the small fire. The foreman smiled thinly and said, “I’d better never see you anywhere off this reservation, Longarm. You’ve pushed me from obliging a lady to personal!”
Longarm figured Timberline was just showing off for the redhead, so he ignored him and announced for all to hear, “I’m holding the bunch of you overnight on what you might call self-recog. The Indians won’t pester You less you try to reclaim a horse.”
The midget, Cedric Hanks, piped up from across the fire, “You’ve no right to hold us here! We’re white folks, not Utes! Your writ don’t apply to us here! The Bureau of Indian Affairs has nothing to say about the comings and goings of such as we.”
“You may be right, Hanks. When that Mountie’s through, I’ll wire my office for a ruling. Meanwhile, you’d all best figure on a night’s rest here in White Sticks. I’ll see, later, about some entertainment. Hungry Calf likes to put on shows for company. By the way, I got some Ho out looking for your wife and the others. We’ll sort it out once all the interested parties are together.”
“You say they have a telegraph line here? I’d like to send some wires.”
“You don’t get to. Reservation wire’s for government business only. The Mountie rates its use because he’s a real peace officer with a government. Private detectives are just pests. As for the rest of you, since some of you put all that effort into keeping the Western Union line to Crooked Lance out of order, you got no reason to send messages into a busted line.”
Kim Stover asked, “Do you have any idea who among us might have cut the wire to Crooked Lance, Deputy Long?”
“Got lots of ideas. But I’m trying to work out proof that would hold up in court. There’s more’n one reason to cut an outlying cow town off from communications. Friends of the prisoner one of you shot might have wanted things quiet while they made a private play to spring him. Then again, the eastern meat packers might not want folks with a hard-scrabble herd in rough range to be abreast of the latest beef quotations back East. I’ll save you asking by telling you. When I left Denver, range stock was selling for twenty-nine dollars a head at trackside.”
The girl smiled for a change, and said, “Oh, that is a good price! We had no idea the price of beef was up!”
“I figured as much. We’re going into a boom on beef after the bad times we’ve been having. They’ve been having bad crops and politics over in the old countries. Queen Victoria and Mister Bismarck are buying all the tinned beef they can get for their armies. France is bouncing back from the whopping the Prussians gave them a few years back and is carving slices out of Africa with an army that has to be fed. I’d say the hungry days are over for you cow folks.”
Timberline’s voice was almost friendly as he finished counting on his fingers and observed, “Jesus! Figuring all our herds consolidated, we got near fifty thousand dollars worth of beef up in our valley!”
