if you called him a Mick, come to study on it.
Mason didn't know anything more about the news tip inspiring a mighty suspicious newspaper gal to leap off a train out West and accuse Longarm of attempted rape. The Ranger had smoked enough of the cheroot to excuse himself by saying he had to get on back and report why he hadn't arrested or shot anybody that morning. As he let himself out, Longarm reached for his own stovepipes, saying, 'Hold on. I got me at least two days on the open range to Fort Sill and as you can see, I ain't even dressed right for that much riding. Where would I go if I want blue denim, a Winchester, and a couple of ponies with the gear and grub to get me there and back?'
Mason asked if he was buying or hiring. When Longarm allowed he meant to just hire the riding stock and their harness, along with a Texas toper and packsaddle, the Ranger suggested a general store down the street to the north, with a livery that wouldn't cheat him directly across the way. So Longarm rose, they shook on it, and the Ranger left him to his own devices.
Longarm strapped on his six-gun and went down the hall in his shirtsleeves to take a good leak and wash the sleep gum from his eyes. He needed a shave, but his soap and razor were still up in that Denver baggage room, if he was lucky. So he let that go for now, went back to his room to put on the rest of his outfit, and went downstairs for a late breakfast.
As he consumed it in the back booth of a nearly deserted chili joint, he read Henry's typed-up onionskins casually a third time. Then he dropped them in a trash barrel out front as he was leaving. There'd been nothing all that secretive or hard to remember, and it was getting tedious to tote that dumb manila envelope all over.
He found the livery Clovis Mason had suggested, and evoked the Ranger's name to see if they'd treat him as a customer who might know which end of a pony the shit fell out of.
The old weatherbeaten geezer who led him out back to the corral acted sensibly enough until they'd agreed on a couple of aging but still serviceable cow ponies, a paint and a bay, both mares, and got down to brass tacks about money.
The old hostler wanted four bits a day for the hire of both the mares and the riding and packing gear Longarm would need to get him up to Fort Sill and back. That sounded reasonable. So did the old-timer's asking for a deposit against the loss of anything he hired out. But Longarm didn't think he was reasonable when he asked for a deposit of the full market price, and then some, for, say, two fine cutting horses and a spanking-new roping saddle silver- mounted.
Longarm snorted in disgust and said, 'I was only aiming to ride them old plugs a week or so. Nobody said nothing about my proposing either should take my name and bear my children. I'll deposit, say, a hundred in cash for the whole shebang, and that's only on account I doubt I'll have to forfeit any of it.'
The hostler naturally protested that the bridles and saddles alone would cost better than a hundred dollars to replace, and so it went until they'd settled on a deposit both found outrageous and Longarm was free to walk the two mares across to that general store, with the stock saddle cinched atop the paint and the bay stuck, for now, with packing.
He went inside to discover that, sure enough, they sold almost anything a man or beast might require out on the open range in the late summer months.
He bought some vulcanized water bags and a sack of oats for the ponies, knowing there'd be plenty of sun- cured but fairly nourishing grama to graze along the way.
He bought extra smokes and a few days' worth of canned grub for himself. It hurt to spring for a new Winchester when he knew he had an almost new one strapped to his McClellan in that baggage room up Denver way. So he bought a couple of boxes of Remington.44-40 that fit his revolver as well, and let the saddle gun go for the time being. He bought some new denim jeans, along with a razor, soap, and such. His hickory shirt and tweed vest would get him by after sundown this far south in summertime. But he figured he'd better pick up a vulcanized poncho along with the minimal bedding he might need for a night or so in the middle of nowhere much.
Once he and the shop clerk had loaded all his purchases aboard the two horses, Longarm led them on up the street until, as he'd hoped, he spied a pawnshop.
He was coming out of it a few minutes later with an older but well-kept Winchester Yellowboy, the original model with its receiver cast brass instead of machined steel. Most Indians and some cowboys still favored the Yellowboy over newer models because its rust-proof receiver made up for its loading a tad slower in a setting where a gun might be tougher to strip, clean, and oil very often. The Yellowboy, like the Henry all Winchesters were based on, would shoot as fast as any other saddle gun when fast shooting was called for.
Longarm was lashing the antique weapon to his hired saddle by its stock-ring when a familiar figure in a tan travel duster and veiled hat paused on the nearby walk and declared in a self-possessed tone that she believed that she owed him an apology.
Longarm finished what he'd been doing, tipped his hat to the lady, and told her he was pleased to see she' been talking to Ranger Mason, but that no apology was called for. As he joined her in the shade on the walk, he decided that her hair was a dark shade of honey under that veil and her eyes were hazel. He said, 'I can see how it must have looked to a lady on her own late at night, Miss Weaver.'
She smiled under her veil and replied, 'I see I wasn't the only one talking to Ranger Mason this morning. I really do feel foolish, and grateful, now that I know you really did save me from the pest back in Amarillo. Ranger Mason tells me you're on government business, bound for the Kiowa Comanche Reservation just to the north.'
Longarm nodded, since it wasn't a secret mission, but explained, 'I ain't sure you could say it was just to the north, ma'am. I know the reserve of which we speak starts officially at the Red River, a fairly easy ride from here. But whilst the Red River forms a south boundary to the lands set aside for all those Indian nations, the ones I'm out to visit will be way closer to Fort Sill, a good forty miles or a hard day in the saddle north of the river.'
She said, 'That's what everyone keeps telling me. I have to see old Chief Quanah of the Kiowa Comanche. Will you take me with you?'
Longarm laughed incredulously. It wouldn't have been polite to ask a reporter for a pesky paper why anyone with a lick of sense might want to. He just said, 'Quanah ain't much older than me. Folks take him for older because he's sort of weatherbeaten and he started so young it seems he's been whooping it up for ages. He ain't the chief of the Kiowa or even all the Comanche. He led the Kwahadi or one division Of the Comanche Army during the Buffalo War. He seems to speak for more of them now because he's half white and speaks good English.'
She said she'd heard as much, and had a lot of questions to ask the big chief. So he gently told her, 'He might not be up at Fort Sill right now, Miss Weaver. I just read some B.I.A. dispatches. They say Quanah's on a sort of inspection trip of the older nations that were sort of civilized somewhat sooner. It reminds me of those trips Peter the Great took to other parts of Europe when he set out to civilize Russia.'
