Longarm had to think that one over. Eventually, frowning, he shook his head. “Nope, that don’t ring no bells with me.”
“What about John Jumps-the-Creek?”
“Old Johnny Jumper? Sure, I know him. Sort of a shaman with a band of Piegan over in the Marias River country.”
“That’s the man all right, but his people are not in the Marias River country any longer. They are here at this agency now.”
“Really?” Longarm shrugged and took another swallow of the whiskey. Funny thing, but each bite tasted better than the last one had. Damn stuff was aging and improving even as he drank it. But then whiskey fairly often showed that same tendency, he’d noticed.
“So are Tall Man’s band of Crow,” Wingate mentioned.
Longarm had started raising his glass for another sample, sort of by way of experiment to see if his theory was holding up. On that news, however, his hand stopped in midair as if suddenly frozen in place. “John Jumps-the- Creek’s band of Bloods an’ the Crow cooped up on one piece of ground, Colonel? Has somebody lost his fucking mind?”
“It’s possible,” Wingate conceded. “I … had already begun to think that it was poor judgment to put them together. Perhaps you can tell me why?”
“My God, man, you don’t know?”
“Deputy, I am not an expert in Indian affairs. To tell you the truth, I am not even experienced as a field commander. I am a staff officer. A damned good one if I do say so myself. But my area of expertise has to do with logistics planning. That is something that I do very well indeed. Well enough to have earned me that brevet promotion during the war even though I was rarely close enough to the battle lines to hear the cannon fire. Then afterward I was given administrative duties in New Orleans and, more recently, in Washington City. Last summer, for God knows what reason … certainly I never understood it … I was transferred out here. I had to go find a map just to locate Dakota Territory. I’d always had the impression Dakota was somewhere in the vicinity of Arkansas. Not that I was sure of where to find Arkansas either, actually. So if you could explain to me just why these two bands of Indians mistrust one another … I mean, really, they are all Indians, are they not? All sort of, well, brothers, so to speak?”
“They’re all Indians, that’s true enough. But a lot of folks seem to have the idea that one Indian is pretty much like another except for maybe a few differences in the way they dress or whatever.”
“Yes, that has always been my impression.”
“It’s common enough,” Longarm said, “but a helluva distance from the truth. Most Americans think being an Indian is like being American, and while some Americans are from Ohio and others are from Vermont, they’re all Americans together. And the Indians are called by these different tribe names, but are like they’re from different states.”
“Exactly,” Wingate said.
“Colonel, saying a Crow is the same as an Apache because they’re both Indians is like saying an Irishman is the same as a Chinaman just because they both have black hair.”
“I don’t get it.”
“One tribe of Indians is about as different from the others as one European nation is different from another. Some of the tribes have alliances, it’s true. And some even have a sort of kinship. The Piegans, for instance, are related to the Blackfoot. It would make some kinda sense to put Piegans an’ Blackfeet together at one agency. They can understand each other when they talk, and they aren’t so likely to fight. Nothing real serious, anyhow. But putting Piegans an’ Crow together is like mixing charcoal an’ saltpeter. You know what that does, don’t you?”
“Of course. Those are two of the primary ingredients in gunpowder.”
“An’ that’s my point. I mean, Colonel, pretty much all the tribes except the Blackfeet hate the Piegan. The Sioux get along most of the time with the Cheyenne and the Arapaho. The Snakes hate everybody except the Pah-Ute, an’ the Utes hate most everybody. And your friends the Crow? Far as I can tell, Colonel, there isn’t any tribe that doesn’t hate the Crow. Christ, even the Comanche will put up with the Kiowa sometimes. But the Crow? Every other tribe wants to take Crow scalps.”
“These Indian tribes would actually fight with one another?” Wingate asked.
Longarm smiled. He couldn’t help it. “Colonel, you really are a babe in the woods out here. These Indian tribes do practically nothing but fight. An’ until we came along and gave them all a common enemy to hate, all they had to fight against was each other. Could be we’ll turn out to be the salvation of the Indian race by giving them all a single purpose, by bringing them together against us or something. It will take time before anybody will know about that. But in the meantime, their whole history has been one of constant warfare. That’s all their warriors do. Or want to do. They fight. Us, each other, whoever’s handy.”
“So if the Crow and the Piegan become angry with each other …”
“They’ll fight. Sure as hell, Colonel, they’ll go to war.”
“I hope,” Wingate said, “you can prevent that from happening here.”
“Pardon me?”
“I have reason to believe, deputy, that Tall Man’s Crows and the Piegan of Cloud Talker may soon declare war on each other. Unless you can stop them.”
Longarm set his whiskey aside and leaned closer to hear the rest of this.
Chapter 11
Longarm and Captain Wingate topped a small rise some dozen miles north of Camp Beloit, the morning sun giving off a pale, watery light through a filter of light clouds that extended from one horizon to the next. They were mounted on horses, Longarm’s a small-boned chestnut that belonged to the battalion adjutant. Neither Longarm nor Wingate thought it appropriate for Longarm to make his appearance at so potentially critical a meeting while sitting a mule’s scrawny back.
