The colored homesteader rose from his barrel seat and pointed up the road as he called back, 'About an hour's ride, at the rate you've been riding, Cap'n. What have them Sioux folks done?'
To which Longarm called back, 'Ain't sure. Just want a few words with 'em for now. What makes you so sure they ain't French-Canadian and Osage breeds, like Chambrun says in town?'
The African-American called back, 'Can't say for sure what Neighbor Chambrun might be. He never stops to talk as he rides by on his pony. But some of our kids have met up with his kids along the river friendly enough, and they say their mamma is one of them Santee Sioux you white folks had so much trouble with back when I was raising crops for somebody else, God bless Mister Lincoln and all his soldiers blue!'
Longarm didn't even want to refight the Indian Wars, so he thanked the thankful freedman and rode on through the gathering dusk.
The cloudless sky went from salmon pink and purple to star-spangled black velvet with little ceremony, as skies tended to when they had no clouds up yonder to catch any lingering rays. Longarm knew a full moon would be rising most any time now. But in the meanwhile it was a good thing horses saw better in the dark than humans. For Longarm had to take it on trust that Blaze wasn't trotting over the edge of an awesome drop as they forged on.
He told his mount, 'You're doing fine. Just keep picking em up and cropping 'em down and there ought to be some sort of light in a window up ahead this early in the evening.'
He failed to see any, and he'd spent enough nights with Quill Indians to know they turned in early and rose with the sun, like a lot of country folks save for Mexicans.
He had to chuckle as he recalled that pretty Comanche down on the Staked Plains who'd said if there was one thing her kind and his had ever agreed on, it had to be that Mexicans were natural night owls next to real Americans, red or white. She'd screwed agreeably, too, now that he thought back. But why in thunder was a man thinking back to Texas when he was riding towards... what, Minnesota?
As the moon rose at last, pumpkin yellow above the tree tops to the east, there was still no sign of lamplight ahead, and Longarm told his mount, 'I ain't jerk-off hard. I'm piss hard. I usually get over horny dreaming as soon as I get up and piss too. So why am I just telling you all this when I got all this open country to just piss all over?'
The black pony didn't argue as Longarm reined to a halt and dismounted to suit actions to his words. But as he stood there unbuttoning with the reins in one hand, he detected distant hoofbeats and confided, 'It's a good thing we stopped for a piss call, Blaze. For I doubt I'd have heard them, or vice versa, at this range with your big feet distracting my delicate ears.'
He started to lead his mount off to the west through the tall grass afoot as he told the gelding, 'They're doubtless on innocent business, such as making it home in time for their own suppers. But they sure are coming this way hell-for-election, and mayhaps we ought to just get out of their way and see what happens next.'
He led his mount into the deeper shade of some thorn apple clustered around a blown-down or lightning-struck oak, and then took that leak, with a sigh of contentment, before he loosely tethered Blaze to an oak branch and broke out his saddle gun.
But even as he levered a round of.44-40 into the chamber of his Winchester '73 he muttered aloud, 'Billy Vail would surely frown on my drygulching innocent travelers. On the other hand, it's a big boo to challenge strangers in uncertain light when they sound that excited about something!'
So he just stood there, a silent shadowy form amid bigger shadows, as the mystery riders--there were four of them--tore past at a horse-killing flat run, not pausing to tell him where they were headed or even to glance his way. But as they thundered on, Longarm told his own mount, 'They want to be there sudden, but they can't be headed all that far. So the Chambrun place sounds about right.'
When Blaze failed to answer, Longarm continued. 'The question I'd like you to answer is whether they have such urgent business with old Wabasha Chambrun or... somebody else. So how many knew you and me were on our way to question him about that payroll robbery?'
The pony didn't answer. Longarm hadn't expected it to. Talking to yourself or other dumb brutes could organize your thoughts. But they said you were in trouble when you started to hear answers. So he undid his hasty half hitch and remounted, leaving his saddle gun thoughtfully primed and cocked across his thighs, as he walked Blaze back to the road, paused there a moment in thought, and then decided, 'As old George Armstrong Custer found out in broad daylight, it ain't smart to charge into a place you don't know, where you may be way outnumbered, whilst pussyfooting can get you killed even quicker.'
He swung the pony's head southeast, and heeled it back the way he'd just ridden, explaining, 'It's neither polite nor smart to drop in uninvited when you just don't know who might be there. We can't shoot first, the way Hickok did that time he gunned his own deputy like a trigger-happy asshole. But it can take fifty years off your life to shoot last when it ain't a pal after all. So why don't we skin this cat another way entire?'
He felt no call to explain further to a pal who couldn't answer and might not care. So he just rode back to that homestead, where a worried-looking colored kid was just heading out to the road aboard a mule. When he spotted Longarm about the same time he called out, 'My pap just told me to ride for town and tell the sheriff you might be dead, Cap'n! There was a bunch of hardcase white boys here just now, asking for you by name if you'd be Deputy Long!'
Longarm said, 'You'd best thank your pap for me and let me deal with 'em. Did they say what they wanted of me, or where they might be headed from here?'
The kid replied, 'Not in so many words, Cap'n. But they called you a mother, and Pap says he doubts they meant Mother Dear. When he allowed you'd just rode by, before they called you a mother, that is, one of 'em said they'd be able to get you as you came out of the Chambrun place if they hurried.'
Longarm asked if it had sounded as if they were pals of Wabasha Chambrun, enemies of Wabasha Chambrun, or just using him and his spread as a point of reference.
When the kid said he didn't know, Longarm told him to get back to his own kith and kin and, if possible, forget this whole conversation. When the kid said he followed his drift, Longarm added, 'I don't ask any man to burn himself trying to get my chestnuts out of the fire. You've done me a real service by telling me as much as you just did. If those others are smart enough to lean on any of you about the way I just backtracked, go on and tell them anything you need to tell them to keep from getting hurt, savvy?'
The kid nodded gravely, eyes wide in the moonlight, and said he surely did and assumed Longarm meant to ride in and tell the sheriff about all this himself.
