Indians as the one who decided they prayed to a Great Spirit who presided over a half-baked Christian heaven called the Happy Hunting Ground.'
The schoolmarm, who prided herself on her own study of Indian lore, demanded, 'Well, don't they?'
Longarm said, 'Sure they do, if they're Christian converts. A heap of 'em are, more than once, with Anglo- Protestant missionaries holding the mistaken notion they've saved the souls of pagans already taught a heap of tales from the Good Book by earlier Spanish or French church workers.'
A blackjack oak trembled as if caressed by a mountain breeze. So Longarm muttered, 'They're tethering their own ponies as if they mean to stay a spell. I wish I could at least guess their nation. Different Indians do use somewhat different tactics and-'
'Over there! By those big yellow flowers!' gasped Minerva, even as Longarm fired into the clump of sunflowers.
They heard somebody yip like a kicked pup. Then Longarm had pushed the schoolmarm one way and rolled the other as a fusillade of rifle balls shredded leaves where they'd just been.
Longarm fired thrice at the dirty cotton bolls of gunsmoke giving away positions down the slope, rolling over once each time he gave them some to shoot at. Then, figuring any marksman worth his salt had to guess he'd keep rolling the same way, he rolled back through his own shot-up positions, watching in vain for another target of opportunity until he found himself back in conversational range with the bewildered schoolmarm. He smiled reassuringly at her and told her to go tell Matty what had happened, see what Matty had to say, and get back to him.
She moaned, 'Oh, Custis, I'm so scared, and so excited between my thighs that I fear I'm about to climax!'
He said, 'It'll feel just as good on the run. Get moving! This is a goddamn gunfight, not a time to start screwing, girl!'
She blushed beet red and jumped up to run off through the dappled shade as, down near those sunflowers, he heard someone shouting something. It could have been 'agua,' which was Mexican for water. A cuss stretched out on a dusty slope with two hundred grains of.44-40 lead in him would doubtless want some. But an Indian asking another Indian for a drink of water in Spanish? Longarm was backing out of the natural bow-wood hedge row as Minerva rejoined him, flopping to her knees in the dust beside him with her straw-colored hair half undone. She gasped, 'Matty said nobody seemed to be moving in from her side! Oh, Custis, I'm so hot!'
He had to laugh, although not unkindly, as he handed her his pocket derringer and placed her awkward thumb on the break lever, pressing it as they broke open the simple mechanism together. She protested she didn't know anything about guns. He just extracted the two live rounds, thumbed them back in place, and twisted the tiny brass weapon in shape to fire both as he dug out some spare rounds for her.
He said, 'They don't know how much you might or might not know about guns. They won't know what you're firing, at whom, if you just blaze away and roll somewhere else every time you spot any motion.'
She sobbed, 'You're crazy. I couldn't hit the side of a barn if I was standing inside it! You can't run off and leave me to defend this side!'
He said, 'I ain't going far, and I'll be back like a shot as soon as I hear you fire one round. I just heard one of 'em call for water in Spanish. Lord only knows what Mex outlaws could be up to this far north. But they might not know any more than you about Kiowa, Comanche, and such, no offense.
He saw she was just kneeling there. So he set his Winchester to one side and placed a gentle hand on each of her trembling shoulders with the intent of steering her back through that bow-wood screen.
She seemed to misread his intent. It sure felt silly to wrestle with a kissy schoolmarm as she tried to haul him down atop her with a derringer in one hand and fistful of ammunition in the other. But he was bigger and stronger, as well as more worried about their lives beyond the next five minutes. So he finally had her posted belly-down and aimed the right way.
This left him free to scoop up his Yellowboy and move over to the grounded saddles near their tethered mounts in the deeper shade.
Opening a packsaddle, Longarm broke out a kindling hatchet and a ground tarp before he got to work on some lower oak branches. He found some dry duff sprinkled with acorns, and even a few dry twigs. But he broke open a couple of.44-40 rounds to sprinkle eighty grains of gunpowder on his tinder before he piled the green lengths of oak wood atop it. He thumbed a match head aflame to light his small pile of piss-poor firewood. Then he ran over to where Matawnkiha Gordon was holding the fort with a pistol in each small tawny fist. When he asked Matty how she was doing, the Kiowa, Comanche, and Scotch-Irish gal said things had been quiet as a graveyard on her side, and asked him what all that shooting had been about on his side.
He brought her up to date in a few terse phrases, and asked, 'Seeing you speak both Kiowa and Comanche, no offense, do you recall any word in either lingo that sounds like agua, the Spanish for water?'
Matty thought, then shook her head and said, 'Uka means to eat in what you people call Comanche.'
Longarm shook his head and said, 'My ears ain't that far off, and even if they were, a man lying wounded on a dusty slope would surely want some water to drink before he demanded a ham sandwich.'
Matty said she didn't see why Mexicans would want to dress up like Kiowa Black Leggings and carry on so oddly. Longarm told her he was still working on it, and ran back to see how his smudgy fire was doing.
It was smoldering a lot, with much more dense gray smoke than visible flames. He nodded in satisfaction, set the Winchester aside again, and used the ground tarp to send up a series of smoky dots and dashes. Then he scooped up his saddle gun and rejoined Minerva, just in time.
Those two shots he'd heard on his way to her side had been fired blind, with the beginner's luck and natural aim of a gal shooting at a frightening target with both eyes shut.
She'd hit the half-naked cuss in the thigh, and he was still crawling back down an open stretch when Longarm called out, Como no, cabron! Alte o te voy a mandur pal carajo!'
The swarthy bare-chested cuss in black leggings kept going, so Longarm shot him in the ass and he didn't move in any direction once he'd finished flopping down the slope a good ways.
Longarm got himself and Minerva well clear of his own gunsmoke as he muttered, 'I told him I'd send him on to Hell if he didn't stay put. Matty agrees with me that one of them was calling for water in Spanish before. So that
