just passed. Then he said, “Well, Lazy B, I sure hope the same folks who owned you own that windmill off to the west. For this day ain’t getting any shorter and they never sent me all this way to discuss the price of beef!”
As he headed for those winking blades, he knew he had to track down the queer-steer’s lawful owner and settle up. For shooting stock and leaving it to rot was as bad as stealing it, and there was nothing much lower than a cow thief.
Somebody from that more distant spread must have thought so too. For a trio of riders was coming to meet him as he bee-lined toward that one visible sign of their outfit. They reined in on a rise in a thoughtful manner, likely discussing his unexpectedly honest approach. He’d naturally put his Winchester back in its boot by this time.
As he neared them he saw the one in the middle was a gal, wearing a big white Stetson but seated sidesaddle on her white pony. The two men with her looked more like regular hands. One rode a buckskin and the other a cordovan with white stockings and blaze. All three of them were holding Winchesters across their saddles.
As he got within easy shouting distance, Longarm called out, “I’d be Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long and I just now shot a queer-steer branded Lazy B. Might it have been the property of anyone you all might know?”
The gal, somewhat softer-looking up close, called back in a hard enough tone, “That would have been Old Reb. We’ve been trying to catch him through three roundups now. We know what he was and why you done it. But you’d still best come with us and see what my athair has to say about all this.”
He said he had to get on to Sappa Crossing. She said it would still be there after he’d had some coffee and cake—or a running gunfight, should he make that choice. So he allowed coffee and cake sounded swell.
He doubted she’d really meant it as mean as it had sounded. The imperious snip was old enough to know you didn’t gun a federal lawman over a cow. But she was young enough, and pretty enough, to act a tad spoiled. The two hands riding with her shot sidelong glances at her, as if they were trained poodles anxious to please a stern mistress. As they all crested another wave in the sea of grass to spy rooftops and twin silos ahead, he tried once again to ask her what she figured her dead steer had been worth. She told him her athair would likely reward him for getting Old Reb before he killed someone on the wagon trace and got them sued. Then she repeated it was up to her athair and that Himself wouldn’t like it if a stranger snubbed their genuine Arbuckle Brand coffee and the finest pastry west of Saint Lou. She said her athair had taught their Chinese cook to bake cakes like Granny used to make, at the peril of his heathen life.
Longarm asked how much of range all about they owned fee simple.
The stockman’s daughter shrugged and said, “We graze what our cows can eat. I think Athair filed a government homestead claim on the homespread you see up ahead. After that we just let our thousand head or so graze the open range the buffalo and Mister Lo left fallow for us.”
He asked about the farming homesteaders north or south. One of her hands snorted, “That’ll be the day some clodhopper busts one acre of Lazy B sod!”
Then he looked away and swallowed hard as the gal in the white hat shot him a look Longarm couldn’t read. So he waited and, sure enough, the gal said innocently, “We only range this strip betwixt those corn and wheat growers. Say four miles wide by a dozen miles long, or twice the size of that island they’ve built New York City on top of. Even farm folks can see how dumb it would be to drill in crops this high and dry. So we never have any trouble with anyone.” One of her hands suddenly found something in the opposite direction worth a chuckle. So she demurely added, “No trouble worth mention, at any rate. When strangers start driving claim stakes within two miles, then Himself usually invites ‘em to supper and, over after-dinner malt liquor, explains the land claims allowed under Brehonic Law.”
Longarm had to think hard, and it was a good thing he took books on most everything home from the Denver Public Library, because up until then he’d never had much occasion to even say Brehonic Law.
When he did, he said, “No offense, ma’am, but if you’d be citing the ancient Celtic code of Ireland, Scotland, or Wales, American jurisprudence is based on Anglo-Norman Common Law.”
She said, “Everybody knows about that mistake. That’s why the laws made in Washington make so much trouble out our way. Athair says that in the good old days of Brian Boru and that warrior queen of the Picts, Banrigh Sgatha, there was no need to write down deeds or land titles. Land belonged to Himself who first drew water and burned wood on the spread.”
He asked if her daddy might be Scotch or Irish.
She said, “Neither. I’d be Iona MacSorley and my people hail from the Hebrides, where the Donald ruled as a king in his own right until the time of Columbus, when such things mattered less. My sheanairean were forced to leave their misty isles many years ago. But none of us have forsaken the old ways.”
He believed her. He’d met up with her kind before, and knew she’d been taught to speak English without the usual brogue because, where her folks hailed from, English was a whole new lingo that had to be learned entirely. He wasn’t up to arguing squatter’s rights under either Celtic or Anglo-Norman rules with a spoiled beauty. He knew a whole lot of feuding and fussing had resulted in the outlying parts of the British Isles as men of good faith on either side had tried to sort it out fairly. Different notions of right and wrong caused enough trouble this far west.
He couldn’t resist asking innocently whether her dear old daddy had noticed any Indians drawing water or lighting dried buffalo chips a few short seasons back.
She had no sense of humor, or no conscience about such matters. She replied without hesitation, “Clan lands are claimed by first use and held by right of the sword. You can look it up.”
He smiled thinly and quietly replied, “I don’t read Gaelic, but don’t you mean held up by the gun, Miss Iona?”
She shrugged and asked if anyone had pressed federal charges in regard to gunplay or the threat of the same.
He allowed her that point, and concentrated on controlling his two ponies as a yellow cur dog met them in the dooryard to snarl and snap as if he meant it. Iona MacSorley yelled at the mutt but it paid her no mind, driven to distraction by the totally strange stock invading its territory. So the sweet-faced gal simply swung her Winchester and shot it, just like that, without even sighting along the barrel.
It took Longarm longer to get his spooked mount back down from the sky. Once he had, she sweetly apologized for not warning him. She added he should have expected it, seeing the way that cu cuma had defied a kind mistress.
As they rode wide of the dead dog bleeding in the dust, the front door of the main house they were
