had told her how he'd been out Colorado way at the right time and close enough to the right place, but hadn't known beans about that payroll robbery and figured we'd just never tried to understand him.'
Longarm thought before he cautiously decided, 'We could likely stick her with aiding and abetting if she's admitted right out she knew she was hiding an owlhoot rider wanted by the federal law.'
The clerk nodded and said, 'The sheriff's already warned her not to go around making war talk about lawmen only doing their damned job. She said she has no idea why her Uncle Chief was tagging after you with her dear old dad's fancy Cleveland twelve-gauge. She said she was still sore at us, and at you in particular, but willing to concede it might've been a tragic misunderstanding. That's what some call it when Indians go bad, a tragic misunderstanding. Only us white boys are allowed to be just no damned good.'
Longarm didn't want to get into that. He shrugged and said something about letting Sheriff Tegner deal with his own constituents, and added, 'Like I said, I got to ride over to Sleepy Eye. With any luck I ought to be back this afternoon.'
The clerk glanced out the nearby grimy window and suggested, 'If I were you I'd take the train. It's still raining outside and we're talking about wet hours in the saddle versus minutes by rail.'
Longarm shook his head and replied, 'No, we ain't. I already looked at the timetable I picked up free off the railroad conductor who brought me here. You'd be right if I was only going one way. There's a westbound stopping here in New Ulm today, around ten, and like you said, the flag stop of Sleepy Eye ain't but a few minutes west by rail. But after that I'd be stuck in Sleepy Eye till after sundown if I missed today's eastbound coming through just short of noon.'
The clerk agreed it hardly seemed worth going to Sleepy Eye at all if a man didn't have several hours to visit there.
Longarm didn't know how long he might want to stay in that smaller railroad stop. He felt better about his means of transportation when, just as he was untethering his livery mount out front, the sun broke through and he declared, 'I'll be damned if I don't believe it could be fixing to clear up.'
Both his jeans and his saddle were still sopping wet, of course, and neither would dry as fast in contact as they might if he let the sun and wind get at them. So instead of mounting up as he'd meant to, he told the mare, 'There's a chance we got some answers to wires we sent earlier from here in New Ulm. So why don't we mosey on over afoot and sun-bake that saddle some?'
The buckskin didn't seem to care. Others stared at them from all sides as Longarm led his mount deliberately down the sunny side of the muddy street, although he was sure the more experienced riders they passed knew what he was doing.
A quartet of riders coming the other way deliberately crossed over as if to give him more room than he really needed. Longarm kept the brim of his Stetson low as he kept a wary eye on them from its shade. All four of them were cowhands at first glance, but Indians as soon as one looked closer. Full-bloods. One of them still wore his hair in braids, although none seemed to feel the need for feathers, beads, or other fringes you saw on some old boys living off the blanket. So it was safe to assume they weren't out to advertise their ancestry in a county where many a Wasichu family was still mourning kith or kin who'd gone under in the Great Sioux Scare.
The four full-bloods, who could have been Ojibwa as soon as one studied on it, passed on uneventfully, leaving Longarm to wonder if they could have been the Santee who'd been asking about him personally out at that raft the other night.
Longarm was as puzzled by them asking Mato Takoza in Santee. For the late Baptiste Youngwolf, or Uncle Chief, had either been Ojibwa or one hell of an actor in a part of the country where most everyone knew the enemy nations apart. You didn't have to be fluent in either lingo to tell 'Sioux' and 'Chippewa' apart. They were as unrelated as, say, Spanish and English, and sounded like they were, whether one could follow the drift or not.
Neither pretty little Mato Takoza nor her mysterious night lit callers had been speaking the Algonquin dialect a 'Chippewa scout' known to one and all as Baptiste Youngwolf would have spoken when talking to other...
'Hold on!' Longarm told the buckskin. 'An Ojibwa paid to scout the Santee for the army might have learned at least as much Sioux-Hokan as the rest of us, and a man who'd desert any outfit in time of war, in the company of white outlaws, might not take his membership in the nation of his birth too seriously!'
The mare didn't answer, so Longarm explained, 'A renegade scout of any nation could be riding with Santee who don't want to be Indians anymore. But damn it, that answer raises more questions than I can hear it answering!'
They trudged on, Longarm's wet duds starting to feel stickier as the sun warmed that rain to the temperature of sweat. He started to feel for a smoke, but decided to wait till his cheroots dried out all the way as well. They were almost to the Western Union near the depot by then, and who might that male and female be, coming out of the telegraph office and pretending so hard not to notice a tall man afoot with a buckskin mare at easy pistol range?
Longarm knew right off the young cuss he'd met the other night, out on the open range, had to be Gus Hansson, who'd bragged he rode for Miss Helga Runeberg. So the slightly older and far meaner-looking gal had to be the same Helga Runeberg who'd told everyone how sore she was at him for gunning her dear old Uncle Chief.
Longarm never broke stride as he just kept going the way he'd been going. So the two of them had to scurry some to mount the two cow ponies they'd tethered out front, still pretending not to notice him as he led the mare catty-corner across the muddy street.
Gus Hansson was blushing like a schoolmarm who'd been invited to elope with a whisky drummer. So Longarm assumed it was the gal who'd given the order to ignore a lawman she detested. Longarm was able to look her over all he liked as she pretended not to notice.
She was dressed for her business, which was raising stock, in an expensively tailored but practical outfit. The split skirts that let her ride astride were the only distinctly female notions to her dark gray outfit. Her dark hair matched her black pony.
Longarm had been expecting lighter features to go with her Swedish name. She wasn't as tall as either Swedish gal he'd met on friendlier terms in New Ulm. But Longarm knew some Swedes were naturally short and dark, just as some Spanish folks were tall and blond. The local folks who knew her better would have said so if she'd been a breed. Her profile was turned to him as they rode past him at a trot, her with her nose in the air, so he decided she just missed being pretty, although her whipcord-skirted rump, as he turned to boldly watch the two of them ride off, bounced shapely enough in her double-rigged roping saddle.
He chuckled, tethered the buckskin to the hitch rail they'd just been using, and moseyed on inside to see if
