hollow shell against an all-out attack in total darkness, do you?'
Longarm said, 'Nope. But it's barely high noon, and that leaves us nigh eight hours to figure something out.'
She brightened and said, 'You mean you do see a way out for us, other than a running gunfight against odds or digging in to be dug out like cornered clams?'
He chuckled at the droll picture and replied, 'Nope. I only said I had around eight hours to study on it. I agree with you on the only two choices we seem to have, Miss Godiva.'
CHAPTER 8
By late afternoon the interior of their roofless shell was an oven, and Godiva had removed her travel duster to reveal a sweat-stained frock of brown paisley cotton. She'd set her veiled hat aside as well, but left her hair pinned up to let her neck sweat all it wanted. Longarm had been right about her hair being a dark shade of honey, and if she looked a mite more mature without that veil, she was still on the brighter side of thirty. Some kindly old philosopher had once remarked, doubtless in French, that a woman was ripest just before she commenced to wrinkle.
He didn't see what good that was likely to do either of them as he stood at a window space in his shirtsleeves, sweating like a pig as he soberly stared through the shimmering heat waves at nothing much.
They'd long since told one another the stories of their lives, and he was starting to feel testy every time she asked him if he'd come up with any answers yet.
When it came, like most good answers, the answer was childishly simple. They heard a distant mouth organ wailing a plaintive tune about pretty quadroons, and Godiva gasped, 'Good heavens, you don't think that's some Kiowa playing like that, do you?'
Longarm drew his six-gun and fired all five shots in the wheel at the cloudless sky above. So her ears were still ringing as he explained, 'Time, tide, and trail herds wait no man. But at least that Running X outfit won't ride into any ambush.'
Godiva clapped her hands and said she'd forgotten about that trail drive they'd forged on ahead from. Longarm went on reloading as he replied, 'I hadn't. But I never expected them to make such good time.'
The mouth organ music had faded away. Longarm climbed up on a sod sill to stick his head over the top of the south wall. Sure enough, he could just make out the gray canvas top of that chuck wagon against a settling haze of trail dust. So he called down to Godiva, 'They've paused to consider their options about half a mile back along the trail.'
He dropped down beside her to add, 'No sense offering my head up yonder for target practice, now that I have everybody placed.'
She glanced at the three sweaty but saddle-free ponies across the one grassy room as she asked whether he thought they ought to try running a blue streak for those nice Texican cowboys.
Longarm shook his head and replied, 'Just said I didn't want to present them with tempting targets. I don't know about the younger riders with him, but that trail boss is an old-timer who knows he's on Kiowa Comanche range. Having heard way more shots than any jackrabbit hunter would let fly, he'll likely bunch his cows in that cottonwood we passed through just before we spied this soddy. Then he'll have his best riders scout ahead until they spot this soddy. By that time those Indians will have made up their minds whether they want to stand and fight or slip away discreetly. Don't ask me which choice is more likely. Next to Kiowa, Comanche and even South Cheyenne can be paragons of sweet reason. That buffalo war that got so many Comanche killed was started by Kiowa taking the bit in their teeth and challenging the whole U.S. Army to a stand-up fight on open prairie.'
Godiva started to say she'd heard the poor Indians had been provoked into that suicidal uprising of the early 1870s by nasty white men. But recent events had given her a new perspective on at least some Indians. So she held the thought for now.
A million years went by. Then, through the rising heat shimmers, Longarm spied a Texan on foot with his own saddle gun at port atop that same rise the Black Leggings riders had been on earlier. So he let fly a cattle call and stepped out in the open, waving his hat until the cowhand spotted him and waved back.
Nobody ever figured out how those three dead bodies out back had managed to vanish in broad daylight. But by the time they had it all scouted safe around the soddy, the only Indian sign for miles seemed to be one feather and a whole lot of horse apples. The trail boss had to agree with Longarm that sometimes birds just flying over had been known to drop a feather that signified nothing much.
By now the sun was getting low, and old Harry Carver, as the trail boss introduced himself more formally, decided the timbered banks of Cache Creek, just to the east, were as handy a night campsite as he was likely to find. So Longarm and Godiva saddled their ponies and rode there with Carver and the four riders he'd chosen to scout ahead with.
That chuck wagon had crawfished down off the skyline along with the cows, of course. They'd wound up in the brushy draw that ran north and south in line with the drier trail. By this time the cook and his helper had rustled up a supper of sourdough bisquits, mesquite-smoked ham, and black-eyed peas.
Everyone had time to tend their riding stock first, and to her credit and despite her prissy sidesaddle, Godiva Weaver knew how to settle her mount in for the night, although she borrowed some oats from Longarm to do so. She said she hadn't been planning on the way to Fort Sill being so far.
Longarm didn't tell her you always had to figure on an easy ride stretching out some. For he could see she'd already learned that.
As the sun went down and the crickets started chirping in the trees and brush all around, they were seated side by side on an old fallen log, eating from tin plates and sipping coffee from clay mugs while, somewhere in the gathering dusk, that plaintive mouth organ began to moan about Aura Lee. Longarm nodded at the tailgate of the chuck wagon across the clearing and observed, 'They're about to serve the last of the coffee, Miss Godiva. I'd be proud to fetch you another mug, if you'd like.'
She shook her hatless head and replied, 'I'm afraid I'll be too wound up to sleep tonight as it is. So much has happened all in one day, and I'm just now starting to relax. You did say it was safe to relax now, didn't you? It's so peaceful down here with all this company, and I've always loved this twilight time of the day.'
Longarm glanced up at the gloaming sky through the cottonwood branches and replied, 'Everybody seems to. This English traveling man who'd spent time in East India told me one time the Hindu folks call this time of day the Hour of Cow Dust, and I had to agree that sounds sort of poetical too, albeit I don't see why it ought to.'
