grass-fed Indian pony. So if we baby ‘em just a tad more, they might just save our lives in a running gunfight. You do know how to shoot a pistol, don’t you?”
She sniffed and said of course. So he got out the double derringer he usually packed in his more formal tweed vest and unsnapped it from his watch chain, saying, “We’ll have to figure some way for you to pack this. I know; we can use one of my spare socks as a sash, and you’ll not only show less ass in that shirt when the wind blows, but you’ll have a handy place to pack a gun. Mind you don’t lose it, and expect it to kick like a mule if you really have to fire it.”
She seemed more delighted by that kind offer than by the magical blue shirt. He cinched her up, and when they found they could improvise a sort of holster from one toe and the hole in the sock’s heel, he issued her some spare cartridges and showed her how to reload the simple two-shot belly gun.
Then, seeing how friendly all this had made her feel, they both took off all their duds to get friendlier on that blanket for quite a spell. They even managed some sleep, taking turns on guard. And then it was dark again and they ate more canned grub, watered their ponies and grazed them a mite nearer that creek, and mounted up to move on.
They followed the mostly north-and-south grain of the mountains, and made good time by moonlight. When the sun rose again they were south of Stinking Lake, after circling the fair-sized and not-all-that-smelly body of water in the wee small hours, when the Jicarilla camped around it had been trying to sleep and not listen to the owls all around.
Kinipai, being more educated than most of her kith and kin, was only scared, rather than terrified, whenever a screech owl cut loose in the timber they were riding through. Owl was one of the totems of Mister Death. When he asked Kinipai if she’d ever really heard any owl calling out somebody’s name, she demurely replied, “Of course not. Only the person Owl is calling can hear Owl pronouncing his or her name. If I’d ever heard Owl calling my name, we wouldn’t be talking about Owl like this. I’d be dead and you’d be talking to my chindi!”
Then she assured him that if ever she met up with him as a haunt she’d try to remember they’d been pals. She didn’t know whether chindi gals got to spare old pals or not. She said she’d never been one or talked to one. He had to agree a chindi might not talk or think like a real live gal.
An owl who wouldn’t quit as the sky pearled ever lighter led Longarm to a swell campsite in blackjack oaks on a rocky rise. But Kinipai didn’t cotton to their avian neighbors at all.
The owl kept screeching because it had holed up for the day close to a crow rookery, and the crows were mobbing it with some mighty noisy remarks of their own. But when he explained the natural noises to the Jicarilla gal, she said Crow was almost as wicked a spirit as Owl. She naturally meant the “were-crow” ogre of her nation’s religion. She knew the big black birds mobbing that real owl were only critters. But she said they still gave her the creeps as he insisted on making camp under nearby trees.
He told her that was the reason they were doing it. He figured none of her own folk would want to poke around close to owl or crows without an urgent reason, and he’d been careful about the path they’d been riding over slickrock and gravel.
By the time they’d tended the ponies and spread his bedroll upwind between two boulders, that owl had given up and flapped off to a quieter neighborhood with the crows calling insults after it. Longarm opened one of their last cans of beans as he asked an expert on the subject what she’d think if she heard an owl hooting in broad daylight with no crows as an excuse.
Her sloe eyes widened as she stammered, “I would run away, as fast as I was able, before I heard it call my name! Everyone knows only Real Owl could behave in a way Changing Woman hadn’t meant all living things to act. Why are we talking about the Holy Ones? Don’t you want to ravage me anymore?”
Longarm chuckled and said, “Let’s eat first. I can give a fair imitation of an owl. You know how country boys fool around as they’re growing up around critters. So what you’re saying is that if I hooted at some Jicarilla heading this way to gather acorns or-“
“Nobody gathers the acorns of this sort of oak,” she said with a wry expression. “They are bitter, bitter.”
He said, “I know. Try some of these beans. My point is that I’d as soon not hurt or even swap harmless shots with any already peed-off Jicarilla during the current political crisis.”
She dug into the beans with two fingers and handed the can back as he continued. “I don’t want either of us getting killed by them, either. So any edge I can come up with might prove useful.”
She washed down her beans with canteen water, and pointed out it was his grand notion to play tag with her people inside the reservation line.
He nodded and said, “I know where we are. Wasn’t planning on a longer stay. We’re almost due west of that mesa on the far side of the Rio Chama. One beeline after dark ought to see us there. I ain’t sure you’re socially presentable to the Mex settlers along the bottomlands between, no offense. It ain’t that you look more Indian than a heap of Mestizo Mexicans, now that we’ve washed your pretty face. But I wish we had more seemly duds for you to wear. I’ll allow that shirt of mine fits your bitty figure like a nightgown, but you still show a heap of leg on or off a pony. I wish I knew somebody in the Chama Valley well enough for a late-night visit and the loan of a more Mexican-looking outfit for you.”
She scooped more beans from the can in turn as she thought hard and finally said, “I have a distant kinswoman who married a Nakaih she met off the reservation one time. It is the custom of our people to live near the bride’s mother. But this one’s mother would have nothing to do with a son-in-law who was not a real person, and for some reason he didn’t wish to dwell among N’de either. So they now live on a Nakaih rancho, where he works as a herder of the owner’s cows.”
Longarm washed down the last of their slim breakfast with the same canteen, and got out a smoke to share as he asked whether Kinipai’s kinswoman was likely to know she was a condemned witch.
She said she doubted it, since that N’de gal who’d married a Mexican had converted to the Papist Way and been written off as a lost soul by both her kin and the BIA. Indians who drew BIA allotments had to be numbered and listed on government rolls. Indians who went wild again after applying for BIA handouts were listed as renegades. But Indians who simply gave up acting either way and preferred to live as natural as anyone else were simply crossed off, as if they’d died.
As Longarm lit their cheroot the pretty Jicarilla allowed she’d hoped to enjoy a smoke with him afterward.
He told her, “We got a whole twelve hours or more to kill up here. It’s best to study on other notions while you’ve got them on your mind. Might you know where this rancho your long-lost relation lives on might be?”
