lonely—lonely—in the ashen world of the dead because the grayness stretches out in many directions, forever, and one can never make it seem less empty!”
Longarm smiled thinly and said, “All in all I’d as soon take my chances with the limbo land the Papists tell of. I still got to get on over to that mesa and, seeing I got two ponies, is there anywheres I can drop you off where you might be safer?”
She sighed and said, “I have no place to go. I have nothing. The very clothes I wore this morning have been declared ahidahagash and burned to nothingness. I suppose I had better go on with you to take my chances with the chindi of the Old Ones. They could hardly be any crueler than my own people will be if they ever catch me!”
In good times or bad it was best to travel at night and hole up by day in Apacheria, lest neighbors six or eight miles off gossip about your every move. So they watered the ponies good at a wider creek a ways down the eastern slope, and made day camp atop a pinyon-covered ridge beyond. For it was best to hole up on high ground, away from natural campsites, in Apacheria.
Pinyon was pine that grew about the size and shape of crab-apple trees, and offered fair cover and shade. Kinipai agreed that the many chewed-up scattered cones they saw meant none of her own folks harvested pine nuts along this ridge that often.
She was the one who spotted smoke-talk as Longarm was tethering the ponies deeper among the trees, with canteen water and cracked corn in their feed bags. Being Na-dene, she didn’t call out to him. She joined him and the riding stock, silent as a shadow wrapped in a cream-and-black striped Hudson Bay. He’d been noticing for quite some time she had a pretty little face, by the standards of either race. For while different sorts admired somewhat different marks of beauty, everyone found regular features and a healthy young appearance pleasing.
She was letting some of her other charms show, now that her bare body had warmed up enough to feel a tad stuffy under that thick wool blanket. Jicarilla were more modest than Paiute, but not as worried as their Navaho cousins about unavoidable flashes of flesh.
He lost considerable interest in that one perky nipple when she calmly told him, “They already know I got away in the dark. They do not know about you helping me yet. If you mount up again and ride like the wind you may get away. If they catch you with me I don’t think they will be as worried about your chindi. I’m afraid they will kill you faster on the spot.”
As he followed her back through the trees, Longarm smiled dryly and said, “You’re afraid? I’ve seen the carved-up remains of old boys your hackis had killed about as sudden as they felt like. But I reckon we’d best stick together for now, seeing you’ve got on my best blanket.”
They were near the western edge of their pine-needle screen by then. So Kinipai pointed that way and told him to see for himself as she dropped the big blanket to the pinyon duff, revealing every bare inch of her short, finn, tawny body. He decided she’d likely wind up fat by the time she was thirty, but she sure curved swell at the moment. Then he saw she’d been asking him to look at the far-off puffs of white smoke hanging over the higher ridges to the west.
It wasn’t true, as some whites thought, that Indians sent a sort of Morse code in smoke. To begin with, few Quill Indians knew how to read or write in any alphabet. Moreover, they didn’t want strangers reading their mail. So they worked it more like white military men who agreed beforehand on passwords and countersigns. So many puffs in a row meant one thing or another that could change as the situation called for. Knowing this, Longarm wasn’t too surprised when he asked Kinipai just what that smoke-talk said, and she told him she wasn’t in that thick with the hacki, or warrior society, of her own nation.
He stared thoughtfully at the meaningless, drifting smoke puffs for a time. Then she hissed and said, “Over that way, to the north!”
He said, “I noticed,” as they both stared in total ignorance at far more distant smoke rising from a higher crest in the morning sunlight.
He finally said, “When I cut you loose, that bare gravel betwixt the rocks had already been churned up by your prancing feet. After that, we both moved across green grass that’d had time to gather a new dusting of dew and spring backup by now.”
She protested, “Those agency police ponies are shod. They will have left hoofprints, many hoofprints.”
He nodded but said, “Not too near that cleft they’d left you in. And would you be tracking down even Indian lawmen if you’d just put a witch to death? How do you know they are chasing you? Mayhaps they’re trying to get away. I don’t know about you, but I’d be scared skinny if I tied up a wicked witch on an ant pile and came back the next morning to find her gone and the ants in dreadful shape!”
It didn’t work. The frightened young gal threw herself against Longarm to bury her face in the front of his shirt and bawl, “I am not a wicked witch! I have no bishi to protect us, I have nothing—nothing—not even the medicine stones handed down from my poor old uncle, and how much bishi did he ever really have if that snake he was dancing with could kill him with just one bite?”
Longarm held her soothingly. It seemed only natural to pat such a pretty bare buttock as he replied, “I’m sure it was a big snake, knowing how modest your medicine men act. I told you we’d get you some more duds to wear. And those scared folks who took you for the real thing ain’t likely to assume you’ve lost any powers you ever had, seeing they failed as full-fledged way-chanters to kill one pretty little thing.”
She sniffed and said, “Thank you. I think you are pretty too. I wish we weren’t going to die so soon. To purify myself for that Night Way I had to avoid womanly pleasures, even with my own hand, for four whole nights. Last night was the fifth and I was rubbing—rubbing—as I sat that pony bareback with its spine teasing me but never quite enough!”
Longarm got a better grip on her bare behind and snuggled her a bit closer as he replied in a desperately casual tone that he hadn’t been getting any since leaving Denver.
So the next thing they knew they were down on that blanket, spread on springy pine needles, with her on top and bouncing up and down like a delighted kid on a merry-go-round while he was still shucking out of his duds. Like many an Indian or Mexican gal used to sleeping on floor pallets, Kinipai bounced with her haunches, with bare heels braced to either side of his hips as she braced her little palms against his hairy chest to slither up and down his beanpole in a delightful but sort of teasing way. So once he had his torso as bare as her own, with his jeans
