Longarm grimaced, and said that sounded sort of raw to him.
Lucy Wojensky shrugged and said it sounded raw to her as well. But she only worked for the bank. She had no say in such matters.
Longarm read on, noting one widely scattered homestead claim after another in range that was best left to grass and cows. He could almost picture the poor ragged greenhorns, struggling to make do on land they never should have even claimed for barley. He knew you could grow some greens and truck on an ash dump or mine tip, if you wanted to bust your hump with a hoe and more damned fertilizer than the crop would ever be worth. He saw that most who seemed to be hanging on were folks such as the late Rose Cassidy, who’d switched to livestock. You could pen lots of high-yield livestock on a quarter section, hauling in feed to help the critters get by. It took far more grass and forbs to graze stock on prairie the way you found it. Most cattle outfits figured at least five acres a cow, which didn’t allow for much of a herd on any homestead’s hundred and sixty acres.
As he shuffled on, dismissing one spread after another as too well occupied for Miss Medusa’s assumed skullduggery, Longarm came upon a proven claim, mortgaged for fencing and well drilling, owned and occupied by one Iktoweya Nash. He asked, and Lucy said, “I know her. Pleasant enough Osage squaw, the widow of an Indian trader who filed on a spring in a timbered draw when the Indians were resettled down to the south and old Jake Nash wasn’t up to moving again.”
“What do you raise in a timbered draw six miles from your bank?” Longarm asked thoughtfully.
The gal who worked for the bank said she had no idea, and asked why anyone should care what an old squaw did in any sort of draw as long as she made her mortgage payments.
Longarm said, “I ain’t sure how close Osage is to Lakota, but that name, Iktoweya, translates roughly as Spider Woman.”
Lucy asked why any white people should care what Indians wanted to name their daughters. Longarm didn’t have time to go into Waco McCord and his confusion about the Spider Woman. He politely but firmly escorted a now-confused Lucy Wojensky downstairs, and legged it over to the town livery as soon as he’d gotten shed of her. He didn’t have time to explain to Undersheriff Brennan either. He borrowed a Winchester yellowboy and fresh saddle to go with the blue roan gelding he hired for the night. Then he rode out across the rolling moonlit prairie to pay his respects to Spider Woman.
They were both surprised when Longarm opened the door of her soddy among the hackberry and cottonwood trees without knocking. For she surely hadn’t been expecting anybody as she hunkered bare-ass in her big copper bathtub near the fireplace, and he’d been expecting an old gal more like Osage Opal.
As the much younger and much prettier breed gal covered her soapy tits with her hands and called him names in her momma’s lingo, Longarm smiled reassuringly and said, “No, I ain’t. I’m what your duskier kin call a ceska maza. The metal I wear on my chest is federal. I don’t ride for the state of Kansas. So we’ll say no more about that copper still out in the trees if you’d like to answer some less personal questions.”
The beautiful breed reached for a towel, exposing one perky nipple as she demurely said she had no idea what he meant by a still.
As she rose from the suds like Venus from the foam, wrapping her tawny young charms in a Turkish towel too small by half, Longarm shut the door behind him and said, “Have it your way. Somebody else has been brewing and distilling minni peta just up the draw. I can see why they needed a deep-bore well once Kansas went dry. That new copper still must service many a thirsty cowboy, now that there’s no Indians for your late father to trade with.”
She stepped out of the tub defiantly, insisting, “Hear me, my parents are both dead. I am called Iktola. I am a Christian. I have done nothing, nothing the metal-wearers would be interested in.”
“Little Spider, eh?” He nodded. “You’ve no idea how little known you and this place seem to be in town. Have you been selling jars to Buster Crabtree, Corky Landon, or mayhaps another lady about your own age and with the same respect for the law?”
Little Spider moved over to the fireplace to hunker down and test a coffeepot on the coals as she shrugged her bare shoulders and said she knew lots of cowboys.
When she saw the way he was grinning down at her, she quickly added, “I only sell jars, the way my daddy always did. I knew Buster Crabtree. He just got killed in a gunfight over in Florence. I don’t remember any of those other names. I don’t have anything to do with Wasichu women. They think they are better than me. They are full of shit.”
Longarm asked, “Who told you Buster had been killed? It only happened last night a good ways off.”
She said, “A cowboy came by to buy a jar. I don’t know his name. He said Buster and another rider had gotten into it with a famous gunfighter and lost.”
Longarm moved closer, saying, “I know you don’t know me as well as you know your usual customers. But hear me, I am called Wasichu Wastey by many Lakota, and the great chief Mahpiua Luta calls me his takoza. We have to talk straight with one another. It is very important. You may be in great danger if you don’t go along with me!”
The beautiful gal sighed, said “Nunway,” and let her towel drop as she rose, stark naked, and moved over to take him by his free hand.
Longarm started to explain he hadn’t meant it that way. But as she led him toward a bunk bed in a far corner, he wondered why on earth a natural man would want to say anything as dumb as that.
So he didn’t say anything until he’d shucked his own duds to join her atop her bedding, and neither one of them was in a conversational mood for a spell. But once they’d come and she was pouring coffee for them, kneeling naked by the fire, Longarm propped himself up on one elbow to declare, “I mean somebody else was apt to treat you with a lot less consideration, Little Spider. I better start at the beginning about another gal we call Medusa Le Mat.”
It took them two mugs of coffee and a shared cheroot before he was certain his new-found friend followed his drift. She seemed mighty put out that Buster Crabtree might have set her up for a lonely death in her remote wooded draw. For she’d been the one who’d been hiding the rascal after he got out of prison.
She quickly added, “Hear me, I was not this friendly with him. He was paying cash and getting nothing but food and shelter. He tried to fuck me. When I said no, he bragged about a Wasichu girl who sucked.” Longarm nodded soberly and said, “French Barbara. He tried to gun me when he thought I was taking her name in vain. He never brought her or any other gals out this way?”
