that his wife kept getting more colored-looking as they both got older.
It wouldn’t have been polite to ask a lady with such a long Mexican name what Indian nation she might have hailed from way back when. That sweet-kissing expert on the subject had told him Na-dene were not as closely related to Comanche, Kiowa, and such as the Pueblos, who came in more than one breed. But although he’d noticed some Indians were taller, shorter, prettier, or uglier than others, he’d learned not to make snap judgments. Indians tended to intermarry more than white breeds, being less inclined to brag about family trees. Some Mexican had obviously found Miss Consuela pretty enough to marry up with, wherever she’d come from. She was still a handsome old gal, and she hadn’t learned such proud ways overnight. He decided she could have been a mission child. Before they’d been run off by the Mexican government, the Franciscan missionaries had done a tolerable job of turning Indian converts into fair imitations of regular Mexican farmers and artisans, which was why the Mexican government had put its foot down before Mexican politics could get even more complicated.
The lady of the house on a well-run Mexican rancho seldom had to give orders. Her willing workers had the mythical faithful darkies of the Dixie that never was beat by a furlong at anticipating wishes. So a pretty little thing with more white blood than his hostess had a big tray of tapas in front of Longarm in no time, with his choice of coffee or Madeira.
He allowed he’d go with the coffee, being too tired already for much wine. As she poured and served him, Consuela told him that, as he’d sort of suspected, she was the widow of an older grandee whose family had held this grant, close to twenty square sections, since way before that treaty of 1848. He didn’t care. But as he was working on a tapa filled with mushrooms he sure hoped were safe, she brought up the constant bickering about land grants in more recent years.
Since she’d asked, he explained. “It’s a matter of scale, ma’am. You know how much range it takes to raise stock in a land of a tad less rain, and I know from my own cow-herding days that you rancheros could use more because you raise stock Spanish-style. But the Homestead Act of ‘62 only allows an Anglo to claim a quarter section of land. That’s twice the size of many a prosperous Pennsylvania Dutchman’s farm, but a pitiful joke in cattle country.”
She protested that was hardly the fault of her and her local neighbors.
As he discovered a nicer tapa made with cheese, he washed it down with coffee, nodded, and said, “Nobody said it was, ma’am. The way Anglo cattlemen get around the restrictions of the Homestead Act is by claiming a prime spot for a home spread and grazing the unclaimed open range all around.”
She shrugged and asked who was stopping them from raising their own beef any way they wanted. Longarm replied, “You land-grant rancheros, ma’am, along with the Indian reserves, I mean. New Mexico and Arizona territories, save for the state of Nevada, have way more land tied up privately or as reserved federal land than most anywhere else. The price of beef has gone up back East, as I hope you’ve discovered to your own pleasure. But even as cattle barons like old John Chisum are trying to expand, they run into Indian reservations bigger than some Eastern states, or privately owned land grants big enough to be counties at least. Your modest holdings wouldn’t quite hold Manhattan Island, albeit Denver could fit in easy enough. But I can see how some new neighbor cut off from the river road by that much private property could feel vexed about the earlier administration’s generosity. The Homestead Act came way after that Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, you know.”
She looked so worried he quickly added, “The real pressure in Santa Fe is for taking back all that land we gave to the Indians, now that we’ve found some use for it. I just came down from Dulce, and nobody I met was wearing war paint. So it seems more likely the government shifting all those Jicarilla will free up a mess of open range any time now.”
She stared into the glowing embers of her fireplace, her own sloe eyes glowing back, as she murmured, “I know how most of your kind feel about the rights of Indians. I have, as you suggested, a new neighbor who would like to graze all the way to the river. He has taken me to court twice since my Carlos died a little over a year and a half ago. He and his Anglo lawyers keep trying to prove I am an Indian, rather than a Mexican protected by that treaty, and hence, that I have no rights to this land now!”
Longarm grimaced and said, “I’m certain he’d just love to take it off your hands, ma’am. But you were married lawfully to the holder of a land grant recognized by Guadalupe Hidalgo, right?”
She said, “Si, but alas, I was unable to give Carlos any children, and they say it was he, a blanco of pure Spanish blood, who held his family’s grant from the old Spanish Crown.”
Longarm polished off a pork-stuffed tapa and said, “I’m sure the court dismissed his plea because of the usual precedent’s, ma’am. You call a ruling based on what earlier courts have found a precedent. That was decided years ago, out California way, when some earlier California Spanish raised the question in reverse. Seems this Scotch sea captain married a land-grant heiress who up and died, leaving a Spanish land grant to a pure gringo.”
He sipped some coffee and added, “It was a federal court that held that inherited property was inherited property. They weren’t about to hand over all that land to distant Mexican relations. You have been fighting off this rascal in a federal court, right?”
She nodded. “My own lawyers explained that to me. You were right about my being probated as the rightful heir to this land. But now they have raised the issue of, well, my being born a Zuni. I was raised a Christian by converted parents, but alas, I am afraid I have pure Indian blood!”
Longarm shrugged. “That has to have impure blood of any sort beat. I got to ask you a mighty personal question if I’m to go on, ma’am. I ain’t asking for exact figures, but is it safe to say you were born the other side of 1848?”
She dimpled and said, “Of course I was, you flatterer. But what difference might my age make? An Indian is an Indian, no?”
He said, “No. Under Mexican laws, left over from the Spanish, a Spanish-speaking Christian who wore shoes and got a haircut now and again was a full citizen with all the rights of any other Spanish subject or law- abiding Mexican under the republic. You do pay taxes on this rancho, don’t you?”
She nodded, but said, “Those Anglo lawyers say that only proves how primitive I am, because Indians are not required to pay taxes on their lands under your laws. But my lawyers tell me they think I should go on paying my land taxes anyway.
Longarm nodded. “You’ve got the right lawyers, Miss Consuela. You and your folks living Christian, apart from other Zuni, if I know my Pueblo medicine men, means you were never listed as any sort of Indians by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, right?”
She nodded. “My parents were working for the parents of my poor Carlos when Mexico lost that war with your people. Nobody ever asked us what we were until most recently. But they say I am still an Indian and that the U.S. Constitution gives no rights to Indians. They showed me the paragraph, in black and white. I cried. It seemed
