“My husband stepped outside and spoke to someone. A greeting. I could hear but not well. He did not speak a name. Only the greeting. He knew this person. I heard no answer. A moment more I heard my husband’s water splash. He was an old man and no longer had a strong stream when he pissed. When he was young he could piss with the force of a bull buffalo. This night I heard the splash of his piss on the ground soft and long. And then there was another sound. Like that of an unripe melon in July being broken on a flat stone. You know the sound I mean?”
Longarm nodded again.
“I heard my husband fall. His water was not splashing no more. Never more. He fell. I heard him. He did not cry out, did not moan. The Crow intruder killed him with a war club. Dashed his brains out like those of a puppy killed for the pot. My husband fell to the ground in the mud of his own piss, and the Crow killer went away.”
“Did you hear this, um, Crow killer leave?”
“You mean did he run away so that I could hear his footsteps? No. I heard only what I told to you already.”
“And you didn’t see who it was that killed my friend John Jumps-the-Creek?”
“I did not have to see the killer, Long Arm. My husband knew only one man among the Crow. Only one who could have come so near to him in the night. That one is the one they call Tall Man, who is the leader of their vile people.”
“I see,” Longarm said. “But you didn’t actually see …
“I did not.”
Longarm thought about that for a time. He sighed. Dammit, a man is not given so many friends in his lifetime that he can afford to lose any. And now he had already lost one, and there was a strong possibility he might well lose another. First John Jumps-the-Creek. Perhaps Tall Man next. Both thoughts were lousy ones.
“Thank you for your help, Grandmother.”
“There is no need for thanks between us. You would do whatever I ask of you, as I will do whatever you need of me. That is the way it has always been between us.”
“Yes,” Longarm agreed. “So it has. Before I forget, Grandmother.
“Yes?”
“A little while ago, when I mentioned Cloud Talker, you thought it amusing that I would call him shaman of your great people. But Cloud Talker himself claims to be shaman here. Is this not so, Grandmother?”
“Cloud Talker speaks of himself as shaman, that is so. There is another, more powerful, who would be shaman. And others still who would ask the people to follow them as leaders at council and in times of war. Not all the people look to Cloud Talker to lead them. Not in council, not even as shaman.”
Politics, Longarm thought. It’s everywhere, even in a Piegan camp in the middle of nowhere. He swallowed the last of the water he’d been given and stood, smiling. When he went to say his goodbyes, though, Bad Tooth held up a hand in restraint as she listened to something Juanita Maria was telling her.
“Yes,” she said. “Juanita Maria reminds me. I told you how my husband was killed. What I said to you was true. It is also true that it was Juanita Maria who found his body and not I. I went back to sleep after I heard the things I heard. You must understand that I did not know at the time what the noises meant. I thought only that my husband walked off to talk to whoever it was he saw in the night. It was later, no one knows how long, that Juanita Maria got up and went outside. Her bladder is weak with age too, you see. She went outside to piss, and it was she who found our husband lying dead on the ground with the dogs standing watch over his body. It was she who began the death chant that woke the rest of us. But Juanita Maria did not see the killer either. Our husband’s body was cold and growing stiff by the time she found him. Is all this of help to you, Long Arm?”
“You’ve both been wonderful, Bad Tooth, Juanita Maria. You are very much of help to me. I hope I will have time later to visit with you again, Grandmothers. I have always enjoyed your kindness.”
“You are always welcome, Long Arm, in our hearts as well as our lodges.”
“Thank you.”
“Hurry now or you will be wet.”
He looked to the sky again. The clouds to the west were taller now and much closer, but he was sure it would not rain again. Certainly not today. He said his goodbyes and started hiking south again toward Cloud Talker’s lodge and the horse Longarm had left there.
Chapter 23
Longarm hunched his shoulders and gritted his teeth. He was pissed off. He was unhappy. Mostly he was soaked through to the skin.
The borrowed horse and its borrowed saddle did not have a slicker attached, and so he was riding now in a gray torrent of vicious rain and had nothing but the brim of his hat to ward off the barrels of rain that were being dumped on him every step of the way.
The rain had come up out of nowhere, sweeping across the prairie like an immense dark wall, lifting dust where the first icy drops struck dry soil and pushing that sharp, peculiar, ozone rain-scent ahead of it.
Now, minutes later, Longarm felt like he’d been thrown into a creek with all his clothes on. He would not have been any wetter if so. Could not have been.
And to make matters worse, the horse did not like the rain any better than Longarm did. It was becoming nervous, dancing and jumping and getting increasingly spooked. He had to ride on a tight rein and worry that the stupid creature might take a tumble as the muddy footing became more and more slippery.
Off to his left he could see the cluster of buildings that were the agency headquarters. A quartet of tribal police were gathered at the base of the flagpole trying to untangle the halyard there so they could get the flag out of the weather, and he could see some others enjoying the protection of the porch overhang, no doubt stationed there in comfort so they could offer encouragement and advice to those who were by the flagpole in the downpour.
