“Smart aleck, ain’t you?”
“Sometimes,” she agreed. “Sometimes, yes.”
“Smart enough to know that I’m taken with you?”
“Yes, Long Arm. I know that you are. I too feel the thing that is between us.”
“I don’t suppose …”
Angelica shook her head. “No, Long Arm. I am a virgin. I must remain a virgin. If I allow a man to have my body, the spirits will take back the gifts that were given to me. I will no longer be able to serve my people.”
He swallowed. Hard. There was something about this girl … “Pity,” he drawled.
“Yes. It is.” She touched his wrist again, and the sensation raced up his arm and down his spine. He shivered. And positively ached from wanting her.
Angelica turned her face away from him and stiffened. “Please, Long Arm. Do not do this to me.”
“Do?”
“The thing that you are thinking. I want it too. Help me, Long Arm. Please.”
He stood. He took her hand and lifted her gently to her feet.
He bent and tasted of her lips. Her breath was sweet and her lips soft as down and warm as sunshine. He felt a shudder run through her. “You,” he said.
“You,” she repeated.
He kissed her again. Again he felt the shuddering, jolting impact of it deep in her flesh. She trembled, and he realized that as much as she enjoyed his touch, she was truly, genuinely frightened now.
Longarm reluctantly let go of her and took a deliberate step backward. “I think I …”
Angelica laid a fingertip to his lips to silence him. She stood silent and motionless, looking at him, for long heartbeats.
Then she turned and ran away into the night.
The ghostly white dog stood at Longarm’s knee watching her nearly out of sight. Then it too burst into motion, racing after her.
Not until both the girl and the dog were long out of view did Longarm turn and make his way back down to the Crow camp and Tall Man’s lodge.
Chapter 27
To judge by the morning, there might not have been any rain to mar the weather in more than a month. Come morning the sky was purest blue and the horizon empty of clouds. Longarm gave Tall Man a rum crook. Giving the damn things away beat hell out of smoking them, but so far Tall Man hadn’t taken the bait and reciprocated by offering Longarm one of the cheroots he had lost to him in the horse race. Then Longarm lighted a crook for himself as well. Having the night to dry out hadn’t improved the taste of the ugly little cigars the least little bit.
“You will go to the soldiers now?” Tall Man asked.
“Soon,” Longarm said. “I have to stop and get the saddle off that horse I left in the creek yesterday. It’s bad enough I cost the man a horse. I don’t wanta leave him without a saddle too.”
“You will need a horse to ride. You will take my painted war pony.”
Longarm shook his head. “I can’t let you risk him, my friend. If somebody has it in for me, I don’t wanta take a chance on them shooting your best horse too. But I’d like to have the borrow of the chestnut again.” Longarm grinned. “He’s a slow sonuvabitch, but at least I know he won’t trip over himself and fall down.”
“Looks fast, though,” Tall Man said with great satisfaction.
Longarm laughed. “You find the chestnut if you like. I’ll go fetch the saddle an’ be back shortly.”
“Wait.” Tall Man called out to some of his warriors who were lounging nearby around the remains of the breakfast fires, and spoke to them at length. The men scattered, only to return moments later carrying an improbable assortment of muskets, battered old Spencer carbines, rusty muzzle-loaders, and even a couple of Henry repeating rifles. There was not a gun among them that Longarm would have felt safe pulling the trigger of, but the Crow seemed proud enough of their ragtag arsenal.
“We will go now,” Tall Man said. “Burned Pot will bring the horse to you.
“What’s this? You think I need an escort?”
“Does Longarm have magic to turn bullets from his flesh? No? I think you need an escort, yes.”
Longarm looked over toward the low ridge where the rifleman had been yesterday. And decided not to argue with his friend Tall Man.
The bunch of them, more than a dozen strong, walked through grass and wildflowers to the creek where the army horse lay dead half in the water and half out. Longarm and Tall Man and two of the Crow stopped there. The rest of the warriors continued on to the top of the ridge and beyond it. There would be no ambush today. Not, at least, from that direction.
At Tall Man’s command the two Crow stripped the tack off the horse and piled it on the creek bank to begin drying in the early morning sun.
“There is one more thing, I think,” Tall Man suggested.
“Uh-huh. Reckon there is at that.”
Tall Man took out his knife and motioned to the two warriors, who rolled the dead horse over onto its other side. There were two bullet holes marring the animal’s hide, one in the chest cavity—that would have been the slug
