“I’ve ordered this man to be locked up, Longarm. You can take your prisoner any time you want him.”
“Thank you, Reverend.”
“As for this other business …”
“Yes, sir?”
“We still don’t know much about your murder, do we?”
Despite the seriousness of the moment—or what could have been a deadly seriousness anyway had Longarm not intervened in time—Reverend MacNall looked somewhat amused when he mentioned Longarm’s murder to the purported victim.
“I got to admit one thing to you,” Longarm said, his voice solemn.
“Yes?”
“I’m gonna be real disturbed if I find out that it’s true.” MacNall threw his head back and laughed openly, and Tall Man joined him.
Chapter 32
Another contingent of Piegan tribal police, three of them, brought in the body that was supposed to have been Longarm’s.
The reason for the confusion was cleared up as soon as the people gathered at the agency headquarters saw the dead man.
He was an Indian. No question about that. But he was wearing a tweed coat, an ancient and ragged thing, but one which at a distance would appear remarkably similar to Longarm’s normal clothing. And much more to the point, the dead man had been wearing Longarm’s flat-crowned, snuff-brown Stetson hat. The one that Longarm hadn’t been able to find after it floated downstream in the creek.
He did not now want the hat back. Not to wear again anyway, although it might still have some utilitarian value as evidence in a murder investigation.
The Stetson had been shot twice. Once off Longarm’s head, the second time while this dead Indian was wearing it. Now the hat had been crushed—probably stepped on by one or more horses would be Longarm’s guess—and was stiff with caked, dry blood and with other, even less pleasant-looking stuff.
The Indian who had been unfortunate enough to find the hat and wear it had been shot through the head by a large-caliber slug. Brain matter, darkening as it dried and hardened, was coated thick inside the crown of the expensive hat, and the fine beaver-fur felt was sodden with the man’s spilled blood.
No, Longarm would not want his hat back. Not after a dozen cleanings would he want to put the thing on his head again.
But the Stetson told him volumes about the fate of the Indian who’d been wearing it.
“Poor son of a bitch,” Longarm said. “Anybody know who he is?”
“He is not Crow,” Tall Man said.
“I’ve seen him before,” the Reverend MacNall said. “He’s Piegan. I don’t recall his name.”
“Short Tail Rabbit,” one of the policemen said. “He is one who wished to lead our people in council.”
“Yes, of course,” MacNall said. “I remember him now. Bright fellow and a good speaker. One of Cloud Talker’s opponents in the quest for control of the tribe.”
The policeman nodded.
“You know,” MacNall mused aloud, “my first thought was that Short Tail Rabbit was mistaken for our friend Longarm and killed by accident. But now..
It was an interesting theory anyway, Longarm thought. “Anybody know where Cloud Talker is?”
MacNall shook his head. Tall Man did not bother to answer. It was safe enough to assume that he would neither know nor care much about the whereabouts, or the well-being, of the Piegan leader. If, that is, Cloud Talker did indeed prove to be the leader of his people that he’d positioned himself to become.
“Anybody seen Cloud Talker today?” Longarm asked of no one in particular.
There were no responses. Apparently no one had.
“I think,” Longarm said, “I’d best go find him an’ have a talk with him. Any suggestions, anyone?”
“No,” the agent said, “but if you don’t mind, friend, I would like to send a police escort with you. Just, um, in case.”
“In case of exactly what, Reverend?”
MacNall shrugged. And elected not to elaborate, possibly because of the Indians who were listening in to the conversation.
The agent said something to the Piegan policeman who seemed to be in charge, and that officer nodded to the trio of police who had just brought in the body of Short Tail Rabbit. “These men will go with you, Longarm, and keep an eye on your back.”
“I appreciate that.” It occurred to Longarm that yesterday when he’d waved to that “hunting party” on the ridge top when he was riding into Camp Beloit, he might well have been waving to a band of hunters who were hunting him. It seemed more than merely possible that they were fooled into letting him pass because he was bareheaded at the time and riding a Crow pony. They might simply have failed to recognize him from afar, just as someone mistook Short Tail Rabbit for Deputy Marshal Custis Long.
Unless MacNall was right, and Short Tail Rabbit’s death was a deliberate attempt by Cloud Talker to eliminate a political rival.
