He made for the silvery surface of the Red River, more clearly visible through the streamside cottonwood and willows now, as the newspaper gal said, 'Everyone knows they were great warriors if forced to fight.'
To which Longarm could only reply with a laugh, 'Nobody ever had to force a Comanche, a Kiowa, an Arapaho, or South Cheyenne to fight down this way. All the plains nations, and the Comanche in particular, gloried in blood, slaughter, and horse thievery. I know they were more in the right than usual when they rose up against the buffalo hunters a few summers ago. The Indians had been cut down enough by cannon fire to go along with Washington on West Texas hunting grounds no bigger than a state or so back East. So those greedy hunters should have left them and what was left of the south herd alone. But the Indians could have saved themselves a heap of casualties in the end if they'd dealt with the trespassers less gruesomely.'
He waved his free hand expansively to the north and added, 'So that's why we've set up Indian Police wherever the Indians are halfways willing to enforce the B.I.A. regulations more constitutionally. It costs way less salary and resentment to swear in tribal members as uniformed federal lawmen than it might to post white military police at every agency. I've been asked to see just how well they've done so up around Fort Sill. You were saying they ain't been doing it so well?'
She nodded primly and replied, 'We were tipped off to brazen bribe demands by the Comanche Police. Apparently they can be paid to look the other way no matter what a white crook wants to do on Indian land, if the price is right. Or contrariwise, they might arrest you for singing improperly, just to shake you down!'
They were closer to the river now. Longarm pointed at the water just ahead and observed, 'The river runs too deep for our fording yonder. Let's ease upstream a ways. Indian Police don't have authority to arrest white men. They can prevent a felony in progress and turn white crooks over to the nearest white lawman. Otherwise, their orders are to report non-tribal evil-doers to their agent or somebody like me.'
She suggested, 'Maybe the whites they intercept on or about their reservation don't know that. Anyone with a badge and a gun can stick out his chest and bluff, whether he has the legal authority to act that way or not, right?'
Longarm spied a stretch of water that seemed to be simmering to a boil a furlong upstream and said, 'That stretch looks no more than stirrup deep. But let me go first anyways. Poorly trained or greedy lawmen of all complexions have been known to abuse their authority. Bluffing a paid-up Texican white man out of a bribe might not be as easy for an Indian. But like the old church song says, farther along we'll know more about it.'
He led the way cautiously down the crumbling bank. The paint he was riding entered the water gingerly, but didn't put up half the fuss the bay did until he'd dragged it into the shallow water a ways.
Godiva Weaver's roan was either better-natured or else it was smart enough to see the two ponies ahead of it weren't drowning. So they were all soon across the medium-wide and mighty shallow Red River of the South in no time.
As they rode up through the timber along the far bank, Godiva asked how far ahead the Kiowa Comanche reserve was, and when he told her they were on it, she allowed she'd expected a fence or at least some signs posted.
Longarm said, 'A lot of folks seem to. An Indian reserve ain't a prison camp, no matter how some Indians act. It's a tract of land set aside by the government for said Indians to live on, undisturbed and not disturbing nobody. It's usually the smaller reserves you'll find posted like private property. Everybody knows Texas is supposed to start just south of the Red River, and like I said, most Indians served by the Fort Sill agency would want to camp closer.'
She asked, 'Then what are those wigwams doing down that way?'
Longarm reined and stood up to stare soberly eastward along the riverside tree line. He could see all those cows still milling amid billows of trail dust, and atop a slight rise beyond the trail, there was surely a ring of the conical tents the Eastern gal had just misnamed.
He said, 'That's a tipi ring, Miss Weaver. A wigwam is the same thing made out of bark and mentioned by someone speaking Algonquin. Tipi seems to be a Sioux-Hokan word for lodge or dwelling, but all the plains nations who live in 'em seem to use tipi or something close. The question before the house ain't what they are but what they might be doing yonder. You just heard me say why I'd hardly expect a Kiowa or Comanche camp this far south.'
He unfastened his recently purchased and fully loaded Yellowboy and heeled his mount into a thoughtful walk as he mused aloud, 'The trail hands in charge of that herd seem perplexed too, seeing they don't seem able to move their cows past them Indians.'
As she gingerly followed, Godiva hauled her own saddle gun up to brace it across her upraised right thigh as she asked if this was really any of their business.
Longarm soberly replied, 'Ain't none of your beeswax, ma'am. I'm paid to be sort of nosey. So why don't you rein in here and leave it all to me?'
She said she was paid to be nosey too. But at least she hung back a couple of lengths as Longarm handed her the lead line of the pack pony and forged ahead.
He hadn't forged far when he made out about twenty riders, nine in literally half-ass blue uniforms with their bare tawny legs exposed, and eleven white men dressed more cow-camp. The bunch of them seemed to be arguing about something between a drawn-up chuck wagon and the tipi ring dominating the trail ahead from its rise. Far less formally dressed Indians were watching from up yonder. As Longarm rode in, he got out his badge and pinned it to the front of his vest.
As he'd hoped, that seemed to keep either side from shooting at him. As he got within easy shouting range, the gray-bearded trail boss seated on a buckskin pointed at a sort of haughty Indian Police rider and wailed, 'Praise the Lord the B.I.A. sent you to talk sense to these savages, Marshal! This fool Comanche thinks we have to pay him a dollar-a-head trail toll, and I got better than nine hundred head here!'
As Longarm joined them, the sergeant in charge of the longhaired but cav-hatted Indians looked downright surly until Longarm said, 'Quanah Parker and the combined tribal councils have set the price at a dollar for passage with grazing, and two bits an acre a season for just grazing. Lots of big cattle spreads charge more, and they have full permission from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. So I'm sorry as hell, but that's just the way it seems to be.'
The Indian sergeant beamed and said, 'I know who you are. We were told you were coming to talk to us about our blue shirts. I am Tuka Wa Pombi. I did not see why we needed a Taibo to tell us anything. But my heart soars to see they have not sent us a fool.'
The grizzled trail boss protested, 'The two of you are surely talking foolish about this herd me and the boys are
