She nodded and said, “Nine .40-caliber rounds in the wheel and a .66-caliber shotgun barrel thrown in for added conviction.”
Longarm smiled across the table at her. “You’ve seen such a horse pistol, Miss Iona?”
She replied, “In Heger’s window. On sale. I asked about it and you were right, picking up such ammunition would be a chore. The one Heger has for sale is converted to take brass .40-25 rounds now. I never asked about that shotgun backup. I lost interest as soon as they said I had to send so far for the special pistol rounds.”
Longarm was grateful for the chaw of marble cake in his mouth. For by the time he’d rinsed it down he saw there was no call to go into how a small-town gunsmith in remote parts had come by such an unusual gun. Horst Heger would know better than anyone, and it might be just as well if nobody else got to gossiping about it.
He made more small talk about the rising beef prices that year, quietly satisfied himself the Lazy B riders weren’t likely to bother either their wheat-growing or corn-growing neighbors in the immediate future, and allowed he’d love to stay but he had to get it on down the road.
Iona MacSorley announced she was riding into town with him. One got the impression she never asked anyone’s permission to do anything. Her gnomish father seemed to think it was a grand notion. Longarm had no right to forbid a grown woman the use of a public right-of-way to most anywhere she might want to follow it. So in no time at all she’d turned the coffee tray and crumbs over to the household help, and the two of them were cutting across the short grass at an angle because the gal said it would be shorter and she didn’t want to watch anyone skinning out Old Reb in any case. He’d already noticed, mounting up in the dooryard, how that dead dog had sort of evaporated into thin air. You had to sort of keep your eye on things if you expected them to be there the next time you looked.
Chapter 9
The settlement of Sappa Crossing was still about where he’d been expecting it, off to their southeast as they rode over the last of the Lazy B rises. As they angled down the long slope to the nearly dry creek bed, Longarm saw nobody had planted wheat on that sunnier slope facing into the hotter summer winds from the south. But the ever westward trend of the sodbuster was only getting started. So he asked the cow gal riding to his right what her daddy, or athair, meant to do when newcomers filed on his side of Sappa Creek, as was inevitable as death and taxes.
The stockman’s spoiled child seemed sincerely puzzled by such a question. She said, “They can’t. We graze all the open range between the Sappa and the south divide of the Cedar.”
Longarm nodded but said, “On public land, save for the few acres you hold lawful title to. Right now the land office would rather see longhorns than buffalo and buffalo-eating Indians out this way. But the Homestead Act of ‘62 was meant to make the West even more taxpaying. So we’re only talking a question of time.”
She shook her head stubbornly and insisted, “We can’t afford to let anyone crowd us closer. Athair was very understanding about those corn and barley growers to the north, and as you see, those Anabaptists down yonder know better than to plant winter wheat where you might get a warm sunny day in January. Nobody but a grasshopper-loving fool would claim any more of our natural duthas. Anyone can see it’s marginal short-grass range above the high-water mark!”
To which Longarm could only morosely reply, “If fools were not allowed to file homestead claims, you wouldn’t see half as many new wire and windmills out this way. There’s already been ugliness in other parts where folks following different traditions move on to recently vacated Indian lands. My job would be easier if everyone headed out this way from all over creation agreed the laws of These United States were the only ones that counted.”
She repeated, in a more American way, what her father had taught her about water, fire, swords, and such. It seemed tough to argue a lick of sense into anyone who considered Arapaho-Cheyenne home range a Hebredian duthas, to be held against all comers by some sort of half-ass highland clan. Longarm had read enough history books from that library to know how such old boys had made out against Redcoats and cannon under that prissy Prince Charlie just before the way more important French and Indian War on this side of the main ocean. But while he could have told her about all that, he knew she didn’t want to be told, so he didn’t tell her.
As they were fording the shallow braided creek to the west of the town—you could really cross the Sappa most anywhere—Longarm’s mind was naturally on more important matters. So he had to jerk his attention back to the perky little brunette when she suddenly announced she took a bath every Saturday night and rinsed her hair with larkspur lotion once a month whether she’d felt any nits in her hair or not.
Longarm smiled in some confusion, and assured her he hadn’t been about to tell a lady she’d struck him as unwashed or lousy.
Iona pouted. “I don’t think you’ve been thinking about me at all. You’ve been treating me like a bitty nighneag since first we met. I may be small for a woman grown, but I’m womanly enough where such things matter, and why haven’t you sparked at me even once?”
Longarm chuckled gently and truthfully replied, “It never occurred to me, Miss Iona. I don’t mean you ain’t good enough for me to spark with. It’s just that, like I told you before, I have a heap on my mind and you wouldn’t want to get my hopes up, seeing I won’t be around all that long.”
She blazed, “You are talking to me as if I was a little girl! A woman can tell when a man’s not interested in her as a woman, and I can’t say I like your attitude, you snooty thing!”
He said he was sure she was used to being sparked at. It would have been dirty, to both ladies concerned, if he’d told her why he doubted he could get it up again with a block and tackle after that last dry effort in that friendly Indian. So he just repeated what he’d already told her about more serious stuff, and she suddenly reined in and sobbed, “Och, as an sin thu! Go on about your airy-fairy business, and I’m off to buy some ribbon bows and mayhaps spark with some real men!”
Longarm had no call to argue as she cut away at a sharper angle, knowing the back ways of the trail town ahead much better. Being a stranger to Sappa Crossing, Longarm perforce rode on up to the main street. Aside from not wanting to get turned around in some blind alley, he didn’t want anyone spooking the town law with tales of an armed stranger poking around out back.
As he swung on to that wagon trace where it widened out to become the main street of a dinky trail town, he was mildly surprised, as he’d been the last time, by how natural Mennonites looked.
Unlike some Pennsylvania Dutch sects or even the English-speaking Mormons out Utah way, the Anabaptist farm folks from far-away prairie country seemed to belong out on the American prairies, like the new kinds of wheat and that one big species of tumbleweed they’d introduced from those back steps of Russia.
Even Indians who should have known better seemed to feel those big fat Russian tumbleweeds had always
