charms in black lace as she explained, “Saguaros used to be people and still have spirits, don’t they?
You Saltu sometimes use the manlike saguaro for target practice, or even rope one and pull it over, for no reason. But Papago respect and honor them because they live longer than most grandmothers and give sweet red fruit for to eat or make wine, if you ask them politely.”
Longarm buttoned his shirt and nodded, saying, “I follow your drift. Sort of. What say we push on to see if your alive and kicking kin can fix this child up with some riding stock.”
They could, once you got them calmed down.
The almost childishly friendly Papago greeted Longarm as well as Rosalinda like long-lost kissing cousins they’d never expected to see alive again. They both were relieved of their bundles and escorted up a brush-choked canyon an outsider might have ridden past without even smelling a fair-sized but scattered encampment. The Papago were shy, as well as near-naked drifters.
Like their more settled Pima cousins, the Ho-or Uto-Aztec-speaking Papago might have been more famous and rated more chapters in the history books if they hadn’t been such neighborly sorts. For they had to be sharp to get by in such grim country, and nobody who’d ever made the mistake of messing with them ever called them cowards.
The Pima and Papago bands of the Sonora Desert were the only nations both the Na-dene, or Apache, and ferocious Yaqui, or Unreconstructed Aztec, had long since learned to leave the hell alone. For grim tales were still told of the time Chiricahua raiders from the far-away White Mountains had hit the shyly smiling Papago for fun and ponies.
The Papago had followed the Apache raiders all the way home, like shadows, to pick them off one by one along the trail and then go on terrorizing them and their families, on their home ground, by cutting throats in bed and stabbing the backs of those on the way to take a pee. Their upset Enemies, for that was what “Apache” meant in Ho, tried to make peace by howling into the darkness and leaving presents for the shadowy Papago lurking all about like slick old timber wolves. But the Papago just went on patiently killing the Apache raiders, then their women, their children, and their dogs, until nothing was left of them. Then all the Papago had gone home to do a little farming and a lot of hunting and gathering in their own stark country, where the Apache never bothered them again. Those few Mexicans or Anglos who knew anything at all about the secretive desert dwellers left them alone for much the same reason. There was no great profit in raiding such humble folk to start with, and once you did raid them, they’d follow you all the way home to Mexico or, hell, Chicago or Saint Lou, according to some old-timers who’d bothered to break bread with the little rascals.
Longarm had broken bread with them in the past, and in that odd way illiterate cultures had of spreading the word, he was known far and wide among various Ho-speaking nations as Saltu ka Saltu, or “the stranger who is no stranger.”
So Rosalinda’s maternal uncle and traditional guardian knew who Longarm was as soon as his sister’s child, and hence a woman of the same ancestry, introduced them in his smoky brush wickiup. It was just as well the older man, called Pogamogan, spoke fair Spanish. For Longarm knew they were being offered something to eat when the old Papago said something about duka, and everyone knew you said si for yes and ka for no. But after that the lingo got awesomely tough to follow.
It started to rain some more as Longarm told Pogamogan and some of the other elders his sad story, seated cross-legged with a gourd bowl of blue-corn, nopal, and chili mush in his lap. Being a woman, even if she was blood kin, Rosalinda and her older sister had naturally been sent off to eat and gossip somewhere else. Papago respected womankind, and never hit kids just for acting like kids. But they held it was as tough for men to talk around womankind as it was under a tree full of jaybirds.
When Longarm got to the part about being willing to sign a government IOU for the riding stock he needed to carry himself and the old Big Fifty after his prisoner and those other outlaws, Pogamogan’s basalt eyes filled with tears and he sobbed in Spanish, “You enter my camp with a kinswoman you have rescued from bandits, you accept food and shelter from me, and then you imply I am a poor shit who must be paid for mere mules?”
Longarm soberly replied, “I was wrong and I know it. But it is the custom of my own chief that I take nothing without offering to pay for it.”
Pogamogan snapped, “We are not agency people. We have never lived on your Great Father’s blanket and we do not beg for salt and matches as children beg for … how do you say penal in Saltu?”
Longarm thought and decided miel, the Spanish for honey, was what they were groping for.
The graying Papago shrugged his leathery shoulders and declared, “We agree on what is in my heart. I will give you all the ponies or mules you think you need. But how do you expect to catch up with all those bad Saltu on this side of the border? They have had all of this time to get away from you!”
Longarm swallowed a polite bite of mush, shook his head, and told Pogamogan, “I doubt they have more than a twelve-hour lead. Stubborn or desperate human beings can push themselves harder than anyone can get a pony or even a mule to move. They rode out of Growler Wash well after dark. Say they pushed on into the morning, and even allow they were smart as your niece about the weather. They’d have still had to hole up somewhere to let their riding stock recover. So even as we’re talking about ‘em, they’re bedded down in some cactus flat or chaparral patch as their ponies browse and laze, no?”
The man who knew this country better consulted with his fellow elders in their chanting way before he turned back to Longarm to say, “You may be right. They may be holed up halfway to the border. This heavy rain will have smoothed over their sign. Even if you cut their trail, they will be moving on by sundown. If they ride no faster than your blue sleeves on patrol, they will be south of the unguarded border before you could catch up with them.”
He glanced at the bandolier of cartridges across Longarm’s shirtfront and added with a sigh, “Perhaps this is just as well. By your own account, they overpowered you when you were wearing a six-shooter and carrying a double derringer. I think you would do well to leave them to the unsettled conditions in the even more dangerous desert to the south. We are desert dwellers and we would not go south of Organpipe Pass this summer. That Apache, raiding further east, has the Mexican federales out in force. So naturally the Yaqui are out on the warpath. Los federales simply can not ride past a pig, a chicken, or a pretty girl without molesting them.”
Longarm shrugged and replied, “I’ll cross that border when I come to it. Right now I’m planning on beelining along the foothills with a couple of good riding mules in hopes of heading those outlaws off at Organpipe Pass. You’re right about it being a waste of time if I scouted for sign after all this rain. I figure it’s going to rain some more before sundown. They have a woman as well as more delicate mounts under the canvas I’m hoping they’ve spread across some handy branches. I’m hoping they’re feeling as sure as you gents that they’ve gotten away clean, with more worries ahead than behind them.”
He got to work on his mush, knowing he was expected to clean the bowl if he knew what was good for him. Pogamogan chanted with others for a spell, then turned back to Longarm to say, “We have decided you really are a
