“I know. You’ll be able to build your schoolhouse without obstructin’ justice and such. As long as we’re on the subject, that prisoner of yours …” Then Longarm caught himself and decided he’d said enough, if not too much, for now.
He was saved further conversation by the arrival of Hungry Calf at the fire. On foot, the chief looked much shorter than he had while astride a pony, for the Ho were built like their Eskimo cousins in the northlands they’d wandered down from before Columbus took that wrong turn to India. Hungry Calf’s arms and legs were a bit shorter than most white mens’. Yet his head and torso were bigger than Longarm’s. Given legs in European proportion to his body, he’d have been as tall as Timberline instead of being a head shorter than Longarm. It was just as well he was friendly. A hand-to-hand set-to with the bear-like Hungry Calf would be one hard row to hoe.
The Indian said, “The people are happy to have something new to talk about. The maidens would like to have a fertility dance to entertain our guests.”
Longarm nodded and said, “That’s right neighborly of my brother’s people. You tell ‘em it’s all right. Then come back. I’d like a few more words with my Ho brother.”
As the indian waddled off in the darkness Longarm turned back to the crowd of mostly-young male cowhands and said, soberly, “I want you all to listen up. The Indians are trying to be neighborly, and some of them young squaws can be handsome-looking to a healthy man, so I’d best warn you, Indians on a reservation are wards of the state and you’re not allowed to trifle with ‘em.”
One of the Crooked Lance riders snorted, “That’ll be the day! This whole damned camp smells like burning cow… excuse me, Miss Kim.”
“Burning cow pats is what you’re smelling, sure enough. I don’t want anyone here to get close enough to smelling any squaws to consider himself an expert on the subject. If the Indian agent catches you at it, it’s a federal charge. If the squaw’s old man does, it can get more serious. So you let ‘em flirt and shimmy all they want, and keep your seats till the entertainment’s over, hear?”
As he started to leave, Kim Stover asked, “Is this… fertility rite liable to be… improper?”
“You mean for a white lady to watch? No, ma’am. You’ll likely find it sort of dull, considering the message.”
He excused himself and walked a few yards toward the clustered outlines of the agency. Hungry Calf materialized to say, “The one in the red coat is standing around the ponies. Can my young men kill him?”
“No. Just have them watch him, without hindering him in any way. I want to know whatever he does, but he’s allowed to do it.”
“What if he steals ponies? Can we kill him then?”
“No. The Great White Father will pay you for anything he steals from my Ho brothers.”
“Hah! I think my brother is baiting some kind of trap! Can Agent Caldwell tell you the message he sent on the singing wire?”
“He doesn’t have to. I know.”
“Longarm has strong medicine. He knows everything. We know this to be true. When that other agent was cheating my people, none of us suspected it, for the man was cunning. Longarm’s medicine unmasked his trickery, even after his written words on paper fooled the other agents of the Great white Father. The red coat is a fool. We shall watch him, cat-eyed, through the night, until he does what Longarm knows he will.”
Longarm thanked his informant and went over to the agency, where he found Caldwell seated at a table with his vaguely pretty white wife. As Longarm remembered, her name was Portia.
Portia Caldwell remembered him, too. She literally hauled him inside and sat him in her vacated chair, across from her husband, and began to putter with her cast-iron stove, chatting like a magpie about fixing him something to go with his coffee.
Longarm grinned across the table at his host and said, “I’ll settle for maybe a slice of that apple cobbler you’re famous for, ma’am. What I came to ask about was the disposition of the remains I had packed in.”
Caldwell grimaced and said, “I might have known you’d want to talk about it at the table. Is it true the dead man was kin to Jesse James and wanted in Canada on a very ugly charge I’d as soon not repeat in front of my wife?”
“You read the sounds of the Mountie’s key as he was sending, huh? Who’d he wire, Washington or Fort MacLeod?”
“Both. He said he’d gotten his man, whatever that means.”
“It’s Mountie talk. You got the—you know—properly guarded?”
“Couple of Utes are keeping an eye on the shed it’s stored in. You don’t expect anyone to try and steal preserved evidence?”
Portia Caldwell shoved a big bowl of apple cobbler in front of Longarm, saying, “For heaven’s sake I know there’s a corpse in the smokehouse! I’m an army brat, not a shrinking violet. I saw my first body when my mother took me to visit my Daddy, three days after Gettysburg!”
Caldwell grimaced again and said, “she says the worst smell was when they burned the dead horses. Ain’t she something?”
“You’re lucky to have the right women for your job. The Shoshone try to steal any of your charges’ ponies, lately?”
“No, we’re having trouble with a few Apache bands to the south, as always, but I’d say the day of real Indian Wars is over, wouldn’t you?”
“Maybe. I filed a report from a breed informant a few months ago. If I was you, I’d keep an eye peeled for a wandering medicine man called Wava-something-or-other. They say he’s a Paiute dream-singer who has a new religion.”
“Paiute? Nobody’s ever had much trouble from that tribe. They maybe shot up a few wagon trains back in ‘49, but, hell, every young buck did that in them days just for the hell of it. Most of the fighting tribes despise the Paiute.”
