they put their minds to it. They said that in his wilder days Quanah had adopted a colored deserter, a bugler from the Tenth Cav, who'd taught the Comanche Warrior Lodge what all the bugle calls meant the soldiers were fixing to do next. On occasion the runaway bugle boy had confounded the hell out of army columns by tooting contrary orders at them.
Longarm spied a white church steeple ahead. He let Gray Skies trot faster, assuming the big gray had been out this way before and knew there was shade and water in the offing. Horses were neither smarter nor dumber than cows. They saw their world different. The way Comanche, or at least Quanah Parker, seemed to grasp the good and bad points of the Saltu path.
As he rode on toward the cluster of frame structures, whitewashed in the middle but with unpainted siding further out, Longarm reflected on other nations who spoke related dialects and tended to think of themselves as simply Ho, or Real People. As he did so he decided Quanah deserved some credit for speeding things along, but there was something about the bandy-legged and big-headed breed that made them quicker to catch on to new inventions than some others, red or white.
Those professors who studied ancient Indians all agreed the Uto-Aztec-speaking variety had originated as ragged-ass digger tribes in the Great Basin between the Rockies and the High Sierras. A mess of Desert Paiute still lived that way, if one wanted to call a steady diet of pine nuts and jackrabbit living.
Yet close kinsmen wandering south into the Pueblo country had seen the advantages of apartment houses and farming at a glance, and turned themselves overnight into Pueblos just as advanced as, say, the Zuni or Tanoan. They called themselves Hopi, and were easy to get along with as long as you didn't start anything.
Other poor raggedy bastards speaking the same lingo had gone on down to Mexico to turn into the highly civilized but mighty cruel Aztec as soon as they'd gotten the Toltec to show them how you really built a pueblo.
Some held there was a mean streak in all the related Ho nations. But Longarm wasn't so sure. He'd found Hopi decent enough and Papago downright gentle, for folks who'd licked the Chificahua more than once. So it was up for grabs whether the recent terrors of the Texas plains were going to take one fork in the trail or another.
It was those morose Kiowa he was most concerned about at the moment. So he heeled Gray Skies into a lope and tore into the Comanche agency to the delight of a heap of kids and dogs. The shaggy yellow dogs had long since learned not to actually bite as they snarled and snapped around a big gray's hooves. Gray Skies knew they were only funning as well. Longarm had never decided whether Indian kids missed by accident or on purpose as they tried to assassinate a visiting white man with bird arrows and horse apples. But he knew they seldom hit you. So he just kept riding for the flagpole in the center of things, and sure enough, a sign informed him the two-story frame house across from the church and school house was where he wanted to get started.
As he reined in, an older and skinnier white man came out on the porch while a middle-aged Indian lady in a print house dress shyly watched from the doorway.
As Longarm dismounted, the Indian agent barked something in the Comanche dialect and a kid who'd been winding up to throw a horse apple ran over, grinning, to take charge of Gray Skies for their distinguished guest. Longarm hung on to the Yellowboy saddle gun, having been a kid once himself.
As he joined the older couple on the porch, the agent said to call him Conway. He explained he already knew who Longarm was because the mail ambulance had just passed through and Fred Ryan had told them to expect him. He added, Fred said you and a newspaper lady with him had brushed with Black Legging Kiowa. Makes no sense, but come on in and we'll talk about it.'
He hadn't introduced the Indian woman. As they entered the combined front parlor and reception room, she seemed to be tearing out the back door, as if she was shy as hell or going somewhere else.
Longarm didn't comment. He knew some called gents like Conway 'squaw men,' while others considered them only practical. He'd just come from a government installation where white men stuck way out in Indian country were trying to get white women to go along with the unusual conditions.
Conway waved him to a seat on a hardwood bench designed not to stain too easily, and got a bottle from a filing cabinet as Longarm brought him up to date as tersely as he knew how. Conway poured two tumblers of clear corn liquor, and handed one to Longarm as he perched his own lean rump on a three-legged stool, saying, 'I just sent for Sergeant Tikano. He'd know better than me about them reservation police. Quanah left his own boys in command whilst he's gone.'
Longarm sipped gingerly at the moonshine, and asked the agent just where the chief might be, doing what.
Conway shrugged and replied, 'Try getting a straight answer out of a poker-faced breed who braids his hair and figures long division in his head. He said he was going across the headwaters of Wildhorse Creek to see about leasing some grazing rights to some kissing cousins on his mamma's side. I don't recall him ever telling his half- assed police to collect any passage or grazing fees for him.'
This turned out to be the simple truth when they were joined a few minutes later by a blue-uniformed Indian who'd have been a giant, if his arms and legs had been proportioned like those of a white man. A lot of Comanche seemed to be built that way. But Sergeant Tikano overdid it a mite with his barrel chest and big moon face.
Conway didn't pour the Indian a drink. Tikano simply went over to that filing cabinet and helped himself. Federal regulations forbade a white man to serve hard liquor to a ward of the government. But no lawman, red or white, was supposed to take a glass out of an Indian's fool hand.
Conway repeated what Longarm had said, in a rapid-fire mixture of English and Comanche, as the big Indian sat down on the bench next to their visitor. The sergeant took a solid swig, grimaced, and declared in no uncertain terms, 'No Kwahadi Comanche would call himself a sheep of any color. I think he was trying to have fun with you. A Kwahadi who spoke your Saltu tongue that well would have heard what your people mean by a black sheep.'
Longarm nodded and said, 'Makes sense. Might one of your police officers by any name be authorized to collect tribal fees for the rest of you?'
The Indian flatly answered, 'Chief Quanah takes the money from Saltu he does business with and puts it in a Texas bank to have litters. I don't know how this puha is sung, but it works well and Quanah buys good things with some of the money while the rest keeps breeding for us in that big iron box!'
Conway cut in. 'We've looked into Quanah's business dealings, and it sure beats all how sharp as well as honest that wily breed has got since last he lifted hair! He sort of plays both ends against the middle, now that he's been accepted by quality folk of both his momma and pappa's complexions.'
Longarm didn't want to get into how some Hopi had taken to oil lamps and buckboards without giving up their blue corn or Katchina religious notions. So he said, 'Be that as it may, I can see why your chief sent for me if
