Longarm suggested, 'Their leader might not have cottoned to all that much attention from the real Indian Police. As it's commencing to shape up, the gang's been taking advantage of how thin everyone's spread out, with less than five thousand folks, red and white, hither and yon across an area the size of, say, Connecticut.'
Hawzitah asked what a Connecticut was, adding that it sounded like a Cheyenne word.
Longarm said, 'I think it means something like a long river in the Algonquin lingo, which your Cheyenne pals speak. All it means to us is the name of a state back East about the size of this reserve. As long as we're discussing such matters, are you certain you've never heard anyone who paints himself call anything an agua? I took it for a wounded Mex requesting some water. But you're the expert on local vocabularies, Chief.'
Hawzitah shook his whitewashed head and said, 'Not Kiowa, Comanche, or Kiowa-Apache. Not Arapaho. Not Cheyenne. I can't speak of Wichita. We killed all the Wichita that didn't run away. We never had many powwows with the tattood root grubbers!'
Longarm thought about this. It made no sense to go about it in such a sneaky way if you were a left-over Wichita trying to reclaim the old homestead. But the mysterious riders hadn't made a whole lot of sense no matter what they thought they were up to, and the younger so-called Pawnee Picts had stopped tattooing themselves of late. He'd hold the thought until he had the chance to ask some Caddo speaker whether they had an Indian word that sounded like the Spanish word for water.
He told Hawzitah, 'I got a reason for asking a religious question. Might you know any Horse Nation that buries its dead in the ground instead of leaving them up in the sky?'
The traditional Kiowa made a wry face and said, 'The agents tell us we should bury our dead, as if they were food scraps we wanted the worms instead of the winds to dispose of. Some of our people who died in the guardhouse at Fort Sill or the B.I.A. hospital in Anadarko have been buried your disgusting way. I have told my sons that should ever you people treat me that way, they must dig me up in the dark of the moon and leave me high on a windy rise, up in the sky, to let clean winds blow me away.'
The old Kiowa made a wry face and asked, 'Why are we talking about my sky burial? When a man has seen more than sixty summers he is not greatly cheered by such talk!'
Longarm said, 'Wasn't talking about your healthy body, pard. Talking about at least a half-dozen dead strangers nobody's seen hide nor hair of since. Don't it seem to you a body buried in an unmarked grave under thick sod would attract less notice than a traditional cuss spread out on a fourposter eight or ten feet off the ground?'
Hawzitah shrugged and said he couldn't answer for crazy two-hearts.
A younger Kiowa with his face painted solid yellow and the rest of him covered with red polka dots came through the trees to shout something at old Hawzitah.
The whitewashed leader told Longarm, 'My young men had spotted dust, a lot of dust, on the prairie flats to the southeast. It is coming this way, lined up with this smoke you keep playing with. I think it must be that column from Fort Sill. Don't you?'
Longarm nodded and said, 'Them other riders must be long gone with no intention of investigating this smoke. They knew what I was up to before you boys run them off.'
He glanced down at the two gals and added, 'We could save us all a heap of wasted time if we saddled up and rode on down to meet 'em.'
Minerva protested, 'What if those fake Indian Police are hiding in the bushes between us?'
Longarm started to dismiss this as a stupid question. Then he muttered, 'Out of the mouthes of babes, when you're dealing with the great unknown. Could you and your young men escort us down off these timbered slopes, Chief?'
Hawzitah thought, nodded, and said, 'It would be grand if we met those forked-tongued Wichita or Mexicans in our own hills! But your words about blue sleeves and war paint sounded wise. I think we will just ride with you as far as the open prairie between here and all those blue sleeves!'
So that was how they worked it. Longarm piled a last armful of green oak branches on his smoky fire before he helped the two gals get the four ponies ready to go. No Horse Indian was about to help anyone else with his or her own ponies. Then, mounted on Gray Skies, Longarm led the way directly on down through the high chaparral of the sun-baked southern slopes toward what surely seemed the rising dust of a fair-sized cavalry column.
Along the way, he got in a few more words for the real Indian Police, explaining once more to Hawzitah how his own young men could track down and count coup on sneaks such as the ones they'd just brushed with. He told the older man how those Apache Police had won medals, big shiny ones, for saving the life of their agent, John Clum, in a fight with renegades. He told the Kiowa leader how the great Lakota war chief, Red Cloud, had encouraged young men to join the so-called Sioux Tribal Police. He said, 'Cochise met us halfway and died prosperous in bed. Red Cloud and Quanah Parker have both been making honest money on the side, without cutting their hair or joining the Women's Christian Temperence Movement.'
Hawzitah answered dubiously, 'I have heard all this. Maybe it is true. I will think about it.'
Then he said, 'Today I am painted for fighting in the old way. So I think this is about as far as my young men and I should ride with you!'
Longarm felt no call to argue against common sense. So they split up amid some cottonwoods where a draw fanned out across the rolling prairie, and Longarm led just the two gals toward that mustard haze of trail dust betwixt them and Fort Sill.
They saved the platoon led by a callow second john at least an hour and change by meeting them miles short of the hills. The patrol leader answered to Second Lieutenant Standish, and he naturally wanted to ride on and see if they could cut the trail of those fake Indian Police. He allowed the army had been getting reports about the rascals from all over. It usually took folks a day or so to figure out they'd been taken, after they'd paid off peace officers who were said to be paid by the B.I.A.
Longarm shook his head and pointed out, 'Kiowa who know this range better, no offense, assure me the rascals have made it over to the post road by now. They could just as easily be headed for Fort Sill as Anadarko by now. So why don't we all just see if we can make the fort by supper-time? I promised to bring these ladies back, and by now the little one's momma ought to be having a fit!'
Standish, to his credit, thought before he asked, 'Wouldn't it be awfully stupid to ride into an army post in fake uniforms after a firefight with a federal lawman?'
