would be proud to assist a federal man on a secret mission, and even suggested the best way for Longarm to board without that mysterious 'kid' noticing.
So just before they shoved off again, a tall figure sporting a crewman's billed cap and packing a big gunny sack on one shoulder moved up the gangplank with the purser and some of his other men.
Longarm might have chanced the gang not thinking to plant anyone aboard a steamboat long before he'd even thought of using it to get past them on the northbound county road. But when the purser said he'd be safer from prying eyes on the Texas deck than in the passenger salon, Longarm was quick to take him up on it. But he didn't get to shake and smoke with the bewhiskered older skipper in the pilothouse until after they'd backed out into the main current and swung the Moccasin Blossom's blunt bows up the main channel, such as it was. A steamboat skipper had too many other worries on his mind to stand at the wheel staring straight ahead. So once he'd warned his younger pilot to mind that slick to starboard they were already swinging wide of, he had the time to accept one of Longarm's cheroots and hear him out.
Once Longarm had tersely explained his desire to be put ashore where he could hire another pony and approach the Chambrun homestead from the unexpected upstream side, the skipper nodded and told him his best bet would be the Kellgren spread, a good-sized cattle operation just the other side of the county line.
When Longarm quietly replied that seemed a tad far, considering the hour, the skipper insisted, 'It's less'n twenty statute miles and we'll have you there in no time.'
Longarm smiled thinly. 'Wasn't worried about getting that far by steam power. Still have to get back by horse power, and like I said, that old sun ball's already halfway down the sky bowl. Don't you reckon any outfits further down this river could have even a mule they'd be willing to hire out?'
It was the purser, who got to gossip more with the locals, who horned in from the other side. 'Gunnar Kellgren and his outfit are all true-blue white. That's more than can be said for the trash along the west bank from the Bedford place up to the county line. I swear I don't know what's come over the Land Office, the way they let niggers and even Quill Indians file for whole quarter sections of those old Santee killing grounds!'
Longarm glanced out the glass to his left. He had to admire the rate at which the Moccasin Blossom was overtaking and passing willows, sycamores, and such along the chalky banks. Further out the land rose balder, with good-sized rises hither and yon in the near-to-far distance. He said he'd heard the Santee had held the west banks of the Minnesota from New Ulm to Big Stone Lake, close to two hundred miles upstream, before that ill-advised raid on that poultry farm.
The purser nodded. 'Their strip was ten miles wide as well, leaving the shiftless redskins nigh two thousand square miles of hunting grounds, after which they were allowed to join their Sioux cousins over in the Dakota for the twice yearly buffalo drives. They threw that all away for a basket of eggs and some scalps to brag on whilst they fried them!'
Longarm doubted they wanted to hear there might have been a little more than that to the Santee Rising of '62. He asked to hear some more about the new nesters moving onto the lost Santee reserve.
They were rounding a willow-covered sand bar now, so Longarm had to look sharp out ahead as the skipper grumbled, 'There's one of 'eM, tied up to that snag near the bank, the crazy old crone!'
When the sun-silvered jumble of planking and shingles suddenly resolved in Longarm's eyes, he saw it was a tumble-down shack perched atop a log raft someone had moored in the backwater formed by a mass of waterlogged driftwood along the west bank. As a raggedy jet-black figure came out on deck to flap crow-like sleeves at them and scream like a rabbit caught in a bobwire fence, the skipper dryly went on. 'That'd be the Bee Witch. Crazy old nigger gal. They say she keeps a young Santee breed in bondage, as if to make up for her own misspent youth as a slave.'
The purser objected mildly. 'They say that kid they call Sweet Sioux sells honey in town on her own. Paddles down to New Ulm in a painted canvas canoe about twice a month.'
The skipper shrugged and said, 'So I've heard. They still say the Bee Witch has some hold on the Indians. They call her something like witch in Sioux.'
Longarm thought, brightened, and said, 'Might that be more like witko, sir?'
The skipper decided, 'Close enough. Do you speak Sioux, Deputy?'
Longarm modestly replied, 'Not hardly. But from the little I have been exposed to, the Sioux-Hokan dialects ain't half as complicated as Na-Dene, or what you'd call Apache or Navajo. The folks who'd as soon call themselves Nakota, Dakota, Lakota, and such talk dialects with a heap of the same notions about vocabulary and grammar as we follow. So witko would come out as 'crazy,' not 'witch,' in Santee.'
As they passed the dark figure shaking her upraised black fists at them, Longarm smiled gently and remarked, 'She's sure acting witko, ain't she? Lord knows what a Navajo might call her. They don't abide by our notions of lingo at all. I mean, you ask a Santee or Omaha what his dog is, and he'll say right out it's his shunka. But a Navajo will want you to tell him exactly which of his dogs, doing what, to whom, you might be asking about. They got whole different words for a man's dog, a woman's dog, running, scratching, and so on, see?'
The skipper exchanged glances with his purser and replied, 'If you say so. When Indians want to talk to me, they'd best talk plain American if they know what's good for 'em. But I can see why Uncle Sam might send someone who speaks some Sioux to question old Wabasha Chambrun. Lord knows you don't get straight answers out of the shifty-eyed cuss in English!'
Longarm asked, 'You mean you know Chambrun personal?'
The skipper shrugged. 'We've delivered some heavy hardware to him now and again.'
As if to back his word, a distant sunflower windmill flashed a suddenly turning metal blade at them above the tree tops along the shore, and the skipper pointed the cheroot Longarm had given him and observed, 'There's the Chambrun spread now, off to the northwest on the far side of the county road. You can't see anything but the new windmill we delivered this spring from here.'
Longarm took a drag on his own smoke and let it all out before he observed, 'Well, the Land Office does expect a homesteader to make taxable improvements on his claim before it's his to have and to hold free and simple. But them patent windmills cost more than your average pony, don't they?'
The skipper nodded soberly. 'They do indeed and I follow your drift, now that you've told me about Chambrun paying for that riding stock with a hundred-dollar treasury note. I fear I'm simply not able to say how Chambrun paid for that patent windmill and all the other fancy trimmings we delivered there this spring. It was sent prepaid from Chicago Town. We just ran it up from the railroad back where you just came aboard. Hardly worth putting in.'
