himself with no defense against Bill Vail's cigar. Once he did so, patting the cheroots in a breast pocket, she nodded, but headed for another part of the house with a remark about opening more windows.
Vail gazed fondly after her and remarked, 'She knew I smoked this brand the day we married up. Women and children are a lot like the Indians when it comes to counting on dreams of the future. But that gets us back to your mission to Fort Sill. The recently shot-up and calmed-down Comanche and their Kiowa allies have been moved off their old reservation in the Texas Panhandle and resettled around Fort Sill.'
'On what?' Longarm dryly asked as he got out a cheaper but much less vile smoke. 'I know Fort Reno, to the north, better. But I've passed through Fort Sill often enough to opine such timber and game as there might have once been has been cut down and shot off a heap.'
Vail let fly a thunderhead of swirling blue smoke and replied in a philosophical tone, 'Don't never ask the Bureau of Indian Affairs for nicer hunting grounds if you mean to lift white hair and then brag about it. The trouble only got serious after that Kiowa chief came in for a government handout and gloated to Agent Tatum that he'd wiped out a wagon train.'
Longarm hung some of his own tobacco smoke between them as he thought back, nodded, and said, 'I never figured out why poor old Satanta did that. Indians I know tell me that raid was led by his rival, Mamanti.'
Vail shrugged and declared, 'Don't matter. The war that resulted was the end of both of them, and we ain't got time for ancient history. Now that everyone's agreed on Quanah Parker as the heap big chief of the Comanche and spokesman for his orphaned Kiowa children, things have commenced to get more progressive. The Comanche have actually taken to drilling in corn crops and raising pony herds instead of raiding for 'em. The Kiowa and that half-ass bunch of stray Apache they've adopted are still trying to live their old free ways. That's what you call it when you sponge off employed neighbors and the self-supporting taxpayer, the old free ways.'
Longarm asked dubiously if any of the new developments around Fort Sill had anything to do with him and his trouble with Attila Homagy.
Vail said, 'It wouldn't have, if that fool Bohunk had kept a tighter rein on his wayward bride. But a few days back I got me this request from the B.I.A. Seems Chief Quanah Parker asked for you by name and-'
'Hold on!' Longarm cut in. 'I barely know Quanah Parker to howdy, and I've never messed with even one of his eight wives!'
Vail got to his feet with a weary smile. 'You got it ass backwards. Right now you're likely safer surrounded by Quill Indian husbands than the other kind. They asked to borrow you for a spell to help 'em smooth the rough spots of their new Indian Police out of Fort Sill. The army ain't so interested in training Indians for anything but scouting since Indian Affairs got transferred from the War to Interior Department. I was about to write back that our Justice Department has enough on its plate when that Attila jasper showed up with the avowed intent of blowing your balls off.'
Vail picked up a bulky manila envelope from the sideboard and turned back to Longarm. 'You'll find more about it in here, along with your travel orders and such. I had Henry type up copies of the shit from Fort Sill. Meanwhile, I sent Smiley and Dutch over to your hired quarters on the far side of the creek to fetch your Winchester, McClellan, and saddlebags packed for the field--if you know what's good for you. You'll find your stuff in the baggage room at Union Depot. Your claim check and train tickets are in this envelope.'
As he handed it to Longarm he continued. 'I've already told you I'm sending someone else to scout the cheating wives of Trinidad. I want you totally out of our hair at Fort Sill whilst we find out just what happened and do something about it. So what are you waiting for, a kiss good-bye?'
Longarm muttered he wasn't that sort of cuss, and so they settled for shaking hands and parting more or less friendly. Longarm was still a mite riled as he ambled back to Colfax to catch a horse-drawn streetcar. The notion of running off to join the Comanche Nation to avoid a fight with a mighty silly pest just didn't sit right, even though his common sense told him nobody important to him was fixing to call him a coward or even laugh at him. The pure fact that Attila Homagy was probably green as hell with a gun and surely misinformed about his wife's love life made him impossible to reason with and stupid for any real gunfighter to tangle with.
The streetcar carried him the mile and a quarter to Union Depot a tad sooner and not as sweaty as if he'd legged it all the way at that pace. As he entered the cavernous depths of the sooty red brick edifice, it took a short spell for his eyes to adjust from the bright sunlight out front. So he froze in mid stride and came close to going for his gun when an all-too-familiar voice near the tobacco stand let fly with, 'You didn't think I'd be slick enough to head anyone off here, did you, Deputy Smiley?'
Those last two words saved Attila Homagy from a pistol-whipping at the very least as Longarm stared thoughtfully down at the older man and paused to hear him out.
Homagy nodded at the envelope in Longarm's left hand. 'Some last-minute instructions from Marshal Vail, eh? I guess all of you had me down as just another dumb greenhorn. But I'll have everyone know that whether I was born in the Carpathians or not, I graduated from the eighth grade in Penn State!'
Longarm cautiously said, 'Anyone can see you're as smart as your average cuss, Mister Homagy.'
The mining man with the wayward wife said, 'Damned right. I found out where Longarm lived, and got there just in time to learn that you and another deputy had just left with his traveling gear, Deputy Smiley. I knew he'd be leaving town from here or that Overland Stage from in front of the Tremont House. So I came here first, telling them over at yonder baggage window that I was a pal of Deputy Long's, and what do you think I just found out?'
Longarm managed not to grin as he soberly replied, 'It's a sin to tell a lie, and they shouldn't have given out such privileged information. But I've worked that dodge and they usually do.'
Homagy looked so smug it would have been cruel to tell him he was full of it. So Longarm didn't as the older man crowed, 'They told me he means to catch that train to Kansas City in an hour or so. So guess who'll be here to see him off. the home-wrecking son of a bitch!'
Longarm sighed and said, 'Bragging right out that you mean to gun another man could be taken as criminal intent, Mister Homagy.'
The avowed assassin replied with a sly grin, 'Who said exactly what I'm going to do when I catch up with the man who made my poor little Magda bus him against her will? Go ahead and arrest me, if you think you can hold a man with simple justice on his side. Your Denver Police arrested me earlier, and had to let me go.'
Longarm was about to ask if bus was the Bohunk for what he surmised it had to be. But then they were joined by a Spanish-speaking streetwalker called Consuela, who sidled up to Longarm and said right out, 'Buentardes, El Brazo Largo. jA 'onde va?'
So it was safe to assume Attila Homagy spoke no Spanish. For the soiled dove's words would have translated
