thought I was about to invest in a railroad stock manipulation. That's what they call crooking widows, orphans, and wise-ass Indians, railroad stock manipulations.'
She proved how dumb and innocent she really was by demanding more details. 'Why would anyone survey a railroad right of way if they didn't mean to build a railroad?'
He kissed her some more and replied, 'To sucker folks into buying railroad stock, of course. The one and original Jay Gould assures me the whole thing's pie in the sky. They have railroad trestles enough down to New Ulm and up by Franklin. Nobody needs a third line between. So they ain't really fixing to build one.'
She wailed, 'Oh, hinhey! Now you Wasichu have really done it to us! Even when we play by your own rules you screw us, screw us, screw us!'
Longarm said, 'Later, after I get my second wind. Meanwhile, I've told you what's really going on so's you can come out on top for a change. Jay Gould assures me the clever flimflam has some time to go as they sell more watered railroad stock at ever higher prices, thanks to carefully placed secret tips about secret surveys and such. Meanwhile, even homestead claims clouding title to future townsites must be worth something to the greedy speculators who've just started to hear about that swell new railroad line.'
She nibbled his earlobe pensively as she pondered a mite before deciding, 'But my Ina Tatowiyeh Wachipi's high and rocky claim will be worthless, worthless, once no river crossing is ever developed up her way!'
Longarm said, 'Tell your aunt to sell such rights to the claim as they have for whatever they can get. Then tell them to buy stock in that feeder line the Bee Witch was surveying for.'
'You said the stock was worthless, worthless!' she shouted.
Longarm hushed her with a kiss on the lips and told her, 'You have to learn to pay attention if you're out to flimflam folks as slick-talking as mine. I said that railroad stock was watered pie in the sky. Stock is only worthless when nobody else wants to buy it from a poor ignorant redskin, who bought it earlier, before us wise-money boys heard about that trestle across the Minnesota, cutting hours off the regular railroading east or west.'
This time she got it. She laughed incredulously and said, 'Hear me, my ina and her friends have a lot of money to invest. What if we bought as much of that railroad stock as we could this month, and sold it for as much as we could get for it next month?'
He said, 'Jay Gould tells me he figures to dump his own investment at the end of this month. I wouldn't hold on to any a day longer than that. For what goes up must come down, fast, when it has nothing but hot air lifting it anywheres to begin with.'
She said she understood, and loved him so much for being so nice to her and her people that she wanted to give him a French lesson.
He said, 'Before you find it tough to talk with your mouth full, I want you to be nice to me in another way. We both know I had to take your word about that conversation you had in Santee the other night.'
She nodded and said, 'I told you what those strange riders asked about you. Are you suggesting I knew them better than I told you I did, Wasichu Wastey?'
He said, 'The thought had crossed my mind. A man tends to get sort of suspicious after he's been trailed by Indians for a spell, no offense. But if I take your word you weren't flim-flamming me about some pals who only wanted to know how you were doing with the sucker, let's try and slice it a couple of other ways. To begin with, that was really Santee the bunch of you were speaking, right?'
She shrugged her bare shoulders, making her tawny breasts move in an interesting manner against his bare chest as she replied, 'It was a Nakota dialect at least. I'm not sure it was pure Santee. The stranger I spoke to could have been from some distant band.'
'Or an Ojibwa who'd gotten fluent enough in Santee to talk to the folks he was scouting,' Longarm decided. Then he asked how sure she was all four or five of them had been any sort of Indian.
She started to tell him she just knew. Then she stopped. 'Hear me, it was dark, and while I thought I heard two voices, it could have been one trickster, But why do you think one Indian with Wasichu friends would want me to think them a band of Indians?'
Longarm replied, 'You just suggested he was a trickster. Which means that I can account for one assimilated Ojibwa, riding with some cowhands off the same spread, better than I can account for a whole Indian band neither you nor your Santee pals would know about.'
He told her as much as he knew about the late Baptiste Youngwolf or Uncle Chief as she made good on her offer to French him hard some more. She couldn't comment all that much with her mouth full, but as soon as they were going at it in a more conversational manner dog-style, Mato Takoza said, 'Iyoptey wanagi! I love it this way! But hear me, I don't think you want to ride on to ask that Helga Runeberg more than you already know about her pet Ojibwa.'
Longarm clasped the breed's firm tawny hips to aim it up her right as he muttered, 'I know I don't want to. But I got to. She allowed she was sore as hell at me, but she never let her boys shoot it out with me over in Sleepy Eye when they had the chance.'
Mato Takoza arched her spine and moaned, 'Deeper! As deep as you can go! For Wakanna only knows when I'll ever find another man like you after that Wasichuweynh Witko gets another crack at you on her own land, with nobody else there to sing of the way you died!'
CHAPTER 26
Longarm had felt no call to sound foolish or show off, and he was almost certain he'd eliminated Mato Takoza and her Santee pals by the time they kissed for the last time the next morning. On the other hand, he felt no call to lay out all his future plans for her whether she was in cahoots with the ones he was really after or not.
So he was mildly chagrined when Wabasha Chambrun and a son in his teens overtook him on the road near the Bedford homestead to volunteer some backup. The burly breed reminded Longarm he'd ridden with the Ninth Cav in his day. 'My wife's niece just told us about you going up alone against all them Runeberg riders. She told us how you took the time to rustle us up them swell stock market tips too. My oldest boy, Kangi Ska here, can hit a prairie dog's head at four hundred yards with that Big Fifty he begged to bring along.'
Longarm sighed. 'I reckon her heart was in the right place. I wasn't fixing to go up against at least seventeen guns alone, gents. I told your county sheriff and his own boys to meet up with me at Israel Bedford's this morning. Riding in on a sod-walled home spread in the dark can be injurious to one's health, and I wanted to talk to Miss Mato Takoza first, to make double sure my process of eliminating made sense. That's what you call it when you
