Longarm said, 'Not hardly. I got a lot of wrist, and old ladies call you names when you ride a pony into town foaming pink.'
Kellgren said it was up to the rider to decide such matters, and told his boys to saddle Smokey up for their guest. As they were doing so, with the big blue roan objecting some, Longarm asked Kellgren more about his neighbors to the south, since he'd have to pass more than one on his way to the Chambrun spread.
The big Swede shrugged and said, 'We get along. It's best to stay on neighborly terms. Whether they sneak some beef on you or not, it makes it easier to deal with them when the time comes to buy them out.'
'You've been planning that far ahead?' asked Longarm thoughtfully.
Kellgren sounded as if his conscience was clear when he replied, 'You have to, if you expect to leave this world better off than you came into it. I know the government was anxious to fill all this wide-open space with somebody that pays more taxes than buffalo or buffalo-hunting redskins. But we all know four out of five homesteaders fail, even when they're white folks who know what they're doing. The trashy halfbreeds and colored folks down the river as far as the Bedford freehold can't know what they're doing. They don't even listen when a well-meant white neighbor tries to tell them what they're doing all wrong!'
'What are they doing all wrong, and ain't any of them white?' asked Longarm with a puzzled frown.
Kellgren shook his leonine head and said, 'Nope. All but those colored Conways down the other side of Chambrun seem to be breeds or poor-white squawmen married to kin of that full-blooded Chambrun woman, Miss Tatokee Something. Sometimes she's supposed to be this and other times she's supposed to be that. But Miss Matilda, who fetches and carries for the Bee Witch, says she's a full-blood Santee, and Miss Matilda ought to know, being part Santee in her own right.'
'You all know this so-called Bee Witch?' Longarm asked.
Kellgren said, 'Sure. She's not really a witch. Just an odd old colored woman who keeps bees. She acts sort of wild and crazy when mean kids tease her. But the honey she sells is so clean and clear my Frederika serves it straight from the jar. We mostly deal with her helper, Miss Matilda, a young breed gal who gets around better. Like I said, she's the one who says the Chambrun squaw's a full-blood Santee, no matter what the government said about moving them all out to the Dakota Territory.'
Longarm somehow doubted even a part Santee would have called any other woman a squaw. But by now they had old Smokey saddled and bridled. In the meantime, it wasn't getting a lick earlier. So Longarm asked no further questions about the neighbors to the south, and just made certain he had that New Ulm livery right as he mounted up and rode out, with the sun agreeing with his pocket watch it would soon be suppertime.
But there were a few hours of daylight left as he rode the big blue roan down the county road, admiring the view as well as the easy gait of the long-limbed gelding. To his left, between the road and river, second- and third- growth bottomland hardwood grew so thick in places you hardly knew the water was there. Most such trees grew back from the stump as circles of saplings around the ghost of the original full-grown alder, cottonwood, willow, or whatever. All that gathering of free firewood since the Santee had been run out had made for a genuine jungle in summertime and doubtless good brush shelter for critters the rest of the year. Off to his right, as the prairie rolled higher, whether as slopes or rocky bluffs, such trees as still grew either marched in file down scattered watercourses, or circled up like a wagon camp atop otherwise bare grassy rises, with a cow peeking out from such cover every now and again. Longarm knew that when this had still been an Indian reserve the trees had grown far thicker, with real woodlands sometimes reaching clean to the river banks in some stretches. For unlike their buffalo-running cousins further west, or perhaps the way those cousins had started out before they'd met Tashunka, or Horse, the Santee had lived far more like their Ojibwa enemies, on the bounty of their original woodlands around the Great Sweet Waters, where Hiawatha had met his Santee sweetheart, Miss Minnihaha. Woodland Indians could be hell on trees with useful bark, such as birch or elm, but they liked to choose dried-out deadwood for fires, and had less call than white folks to chop down green and still-growing timber. Someone had sure cut a heap of it since the Santee had been run out back in '63. Neither the Kellgrens nor the neighbors he'd said were at least part Indian would have had much call to log this seriously so far from their own woodpiles. It seemed as likely the more valuable red oak, rock maple, basswood, and such on the drier slopes had been cut and rafted downstream for fun and profit before many homesteads had been filed upstream from New Ulm after the land had been thrown open to white folks.
A harried lark was cussing about it from a bobwire fence and the shadows were getting longer when he overtook a raggedy kid driving a dairy cow on foot, likely homeward bound, along the far side of that fence with soft words and a big stick. Longarm reined in to stand in the stirrups and peer down the road ahead as he called out, 'Evening, cowboy. That your homestead a furlong on with that smoke plume waving at us in the breeze?'
The kid called back, 'I may not have me a pony to ride, mister. But that don't give you no call to mock me.'
Longarm laughed lightly and replied, 'Mocking was never what I intended. Anyone can see you're a boy in command of a cow. And as for you having a pony or not, any Mex matador can tell you it's a heap braver to mess with a cow afoot than mounted up. That particular cow looks pure Jersey as well. You'd never get that matador to mess with a Jersey in the bull ring. How come you're so brave?'
The kid replied, less pissed, 'Got no choice. They sent me to fetch old Napin Gleska when she didn't come in to get milked with the others. You were right about her being a purebred. We got us a whole dozen milkers of the very best.'
'Brand-new four-strand fence I see there too,' Longarm noted in an admiring tone. 'Your folks must be doing mighty well.'
The kid whacked the milch cow's tawny rump with his stick as he shook his head and explained. 'Ina Tatowiyeh Wachipi gave Pa all the money we needed to prove this claim. She's the one who's rich, and she don't sit on her money like an old broody hen expecting to hatch it neither! She's a real Nakotawiyeh! Not a stingy old Wasichu lady!'
Longarm nodded as if he understood everything they were talking about. 'Others have told me Wabasha Chambrun's fine wife was a true-heart. Santee Nakota, right?'
The kid sounded smug as he stuck out his skinny chest to declare, 'Just like my real ina. It ain't my fault I'm only half Nakota. They'd have never let us claim this land back if my ina hadn't married up with a Wasichu like you.'
Then he jabbed the Jersey under her tail with his stick and shouted, 'Hokahey, you lazy cow! Iyoptey niyeh or I'll never get any supper tonight!'
Longarm could see the kid was busy. So he said so and rode on, digesting the little he'd learned as he repeated their few words in his head. Others had told him the Chambruns weren't the only odd newcomers who'd filed homestead claims up here on what had once been the Santee Reserve. He'd meant what he'd said to that kid back
