by Tabor Evans
She didn't turn, but had to ask, "Talk with both hands?"
He leaned the Yellowboy against the inside sods as he explained. "Sign talk. Hardly anyone speaks Kiowa. It ain't close to any other Horse Indian dialect. So it was the Kiowa themselves who invented the now universal sign lingo of the plains."
He stepped just outside the doorway, raising his right hand with trigger and middle finger pointed at the sky to signal friendly notions. Then he pivoted his upraised palm to say he had a question, pointed at them, and made the sign for calling before he cupped a hand to his ear, adding up to, "Question, you are called? I want to hear." Which was about as tight as sign lingo worked.
Behind him, Godiva Weaver called, "What's going on out there?"
To which he could only reply, "Nothing. They're staring smack at me but they don't seem to want to answer."
She suggested, "Maybe they're not Kiowa after all."
He shrugged and said, "Wouldn't matter if they was Arapaho, Caddo, or Shoshoni. All of 'em use the same sign lingo no matter how they talk. That's why sign lingo was invented to begin with. Think of how a nod, a head shake, or a stuck-out tongue meant the same things by different names to an Anglo, a Mex, or a Dutchman. Then lard on a mess of other such signals until... Kee-rist!"
Then he threw himself backward through the doorway as a rifle spanged in the distance to send a buffalo round humming like an enraged lead hornet through the space he'd just occupied.
Longarm rolled sideways to grab for his propped up Yellowboy as, behind him, Godiva Weaver cut loose a lot with that Spencer.
He didn't ask what she was firing at. He warned her not to waste any as he popped up in the corner of a front window space to prop his own rifle over the soggy sod sill.
He found no targets for his overloaded Yellowboy. The far side of the trail had been hastily vacated by the sons of bitches who'd replied so rudely to his request for a parley.
He moved over to the newspaper gal's position, saying, "Change places with me. You've only got two rounds in that Spencer now. So see if you can reload as you guard the empty slope."
Then he saw what she'd been aiming at out back, and whistled in sheer admiration as he made out the three bodies scattered in the tall dry grass. He didn't see anybody moving out yonder now. He still trained his own rifle on the view to the west as he told her flatly, "Three stopped with five rounds is what I'd call downright swell marksmanship, Miss Weaver. Where in thunder did you learn to shoot so fine?"
She answered simply, "I grew up on an army post. My father was stationed at Fort Marion after the Seminole had calmed down. It was awfully hot for most sports. So we spent a lot of time on the rifle range."
Longarm watched the scattered brown forms out back as he slowly concluded, "You surely must have. You either killed the three of 'em totally or scared 'em so bad they're afraid to draw breath now. Were they charging mounted or afoot?"
She demurely replied, "On horseback, of course. There were five of them. I'd have gotten them all if they'd been coming slower!"
He said he believed her, and asked how they were doing out front. She said, "Not a sign of life. They must have thought their main body could move in past a mere girl as they kept you distracted from that other side. But I guess they've learned their lesson, and I'll just bet that's the last we'll ever see of them!"
He said, "Don't bet next month's salary or your favorite hat on that, Miss Weaver. They're still out there. The leader who got 'em in this mess would never be able to show his face at a dance if he just cut and run. They have to stick around until dark, if only to see if they can recover their dead
He started to say something else. But he figured she had more than enough to worry about. So he held the thought.
It didn't work. A gal paid by a newspaper to think on her own two feet had gotten good at it. In a desperately casual tone she asked, "Is it true Plains Indians never attack at night, Deputy Long?"
To which he could only reply, "Never is an overconfident word, and my friends call me Custis, Miss Weaver."
She said, "In that case you'd better call me Godiva. For anyone can see you're the only friend I have for miles right now! What if we made a break for it just after dusk? I don't see how just the two of us could defend this hollow shell against an all-out attack in total darkness, do you?"
Longarm said, "Nope. But it's barely high noon, and that leaves us nigh eight hours to figure something out."
She brightened and said, "You mean you do see a way out for us, other than a running gunfight against odds or digging in to be dug out like cornered clams?"
He chuckled at the droll picture and replied, "Nope. I only said I had around eight hours to study on it. I agree with you on the only two choices we seem to have, Miss Godiva."
CHAPTER 8
By late afternoon the interior of their roofless shell was an oven, and Godiva had removed her travel duster to reveal a sweat-stained frock of brown paisley cotton. She'd set her veiled hat aside as well, but left her hair pinned up to let her neck sweat all it wanted. Longarm had been right about her hair being a dark shade of honey, and if she looked a mite more mature without that veil, she was still on the brighter side of thirty. Some kindly old philosopher had once remarked, doubtless in French, that a woman was ripest just before she commenced to wrinkle.
He didn't see what good that was likely to do either of them as he stood at a window space in his shirtsleeves, sweating like a pig as he soberly stared through the shimmering heat waves at nothing much.
They'd long since told one another the stories of their lives, and he was starting to feel testy every time she asked him if he'd come up with any answers yet.
When it came, like most good answers, the answer was childishly simple. They heard a distant mouth organ wailing a plaintive tune about pretty quadroons, and Godiva gasped, "Good heavens, you don't think that's some Kiowa playing like that, do you?"
Longarm drew his six-gun and fired all five shots in the wheel at the cloudless sky above. So her ears were still ringing as he explained, "Time, tide, and trail herds wait no man. But at least that Running X outfit won't ride into any ambush."
Godiva clapped her hands and said she'd forgotten about that trail drive they'd forged on ahead from. Longarm went on reloading as he replied, "I hadn't. But I never expected them to make such good time."
The mouth organ music had faded away. Longarm climbed up on a sod sill to stick his head over the top of the south wall. Sure enough, he could just make out the gray canvas top of that chuck wagon against a settling haze of trail dust. So he called down to Godiva, "They've paused to consider their options about half a mile back along the trail."
He dropped down beside her to add, "No sense offering my head up yonder for target practice, now that I have everybody placed."
She glanced at the three sweaty but saddle-free ponies across the one grassy room as she asked whether he thought they ought to try running a blue streak for those nice Texican cowboys.
Longarm shook his head and replied, "Just said I didn't want to present them with tempting targets. I don't know about the younger riders with him, but that trail boss is an old-timer who knows he's on Kiowa Comanche range. Having heard way more shots than any jackrabbit hunter would let fly, he'll likely bunch his cows in that cottonwood we passed through just before we spied this soddy. Then he'll have his best riders scout ahead until they spot this soddy. By that time those Indians will have made up their minds whether they want to stand and fight or slip away discreetly. Don't ask me which choice is more likely. Next to Kiowa, Comanche and even South Cheyenne can be paragons of sweet reason. That buffalo war that got so many Comanche killed was started by Kiowa taking the bit in their teeth and challenging the whole U.S. Army to a stand-up fight on open prairie."
Godiva started to say she'd heard the poor Indians had been provoked into that suicidal uprising of the early 1870s by nasty white men. But recent events had given her a new perspective on at least some Indians. So she
held the thought for now.
A million years went by. Then, through the rising heat shimmers, Longarm spied a Texan on foot with his own saddle gun at port atop that same rise the Black Leggings riders had been on earlier. So he let fly a cattle call and stepped out in the open, waving his hat until the cowhand spotted him and waved back.
Nobody ever figured out how those three dead bodies out back had managed to vanish in broad daylight. But by the time they had it all scouted safe around the soddy, the only Indian sign for miles seemed to be one feather and a whole lot of horse apples. The trail boss had to agree with Longarm that sometimes birds just flying over had been known to drop a feather that signified nothing much.
By now the sun was getting low, and old Harry Carver, as the trail boss introduced himself more formally, decided the timbered banks of Cache Creek, just to the east, were as handy a night campsite as he was likely to find. So Longarm and Godiva saddled their ponies and rode there with Carver and the four riders he'd chosen to scout ahead with.
That chuck wagon had crawfished down off the skyline along with the cows, of course. They'd wound up in the brushy draw that ran north and south in line with the drier trail. By this time the cook and his helper had rustled up a supper of sourdough bisquits, mesquite-smoked ham, and black-eyed peas.
Everyone had time to tend their riding stock first, and to her credit and despite her prissy sidesaddle, Godiva Weaver knew how to settle her mount in for the night, although she borrowed some oats from Longarm to do so. She said she hadn't been planning on the way to Fort Sill being so far.
Longarm didn't tell her you always had to figure on an easy ride stretching out some. For he could see she'd already learned that.
As the sun went down and the crickets started chirping in the trees and brush all around, they were seated side by side on an old fallen log, eating from tin plates and sipping coffee from clay mugs while, somewhere in the gathering dusk, that plaintive mouth organ began to moan about Aura Lee. Longarm nodded at the tailgate of the chuck wagon across the clearing and observed, "They're about to serve the last of the coffee, Miss Godiva. I'd be proud to fetch you another mug, if you'd like."
She shook her hatless head and replied, "I'm afraid I'll be too wound up to sleep tonight as it is. So much has happened all in one day, and I'm just now starting to relax. You did say it was safe to relax now, didn't you? It's so peaceful down here with all this company, and I've always loved this twilight time of the day."
Longarm glanced up at the gloaming sky through the cottonwood branches and replied, "Everybody seems to. This English traveling man who'd spent time in East India told me one time the Hindu folks call this time of day the Hour of Cow Dust, and I had to agree that sounds sort of poetical too, albeit I don't see why it ought to."
She nodded and said, "I do, now that all those longhorns have settled down amid the trees after a long hot day on the trail. The dust has just about settled now. But you can still smell just a hint of it as the cool shades of evening creep in all around us. Where am I supposed to sleep tonight, by the way?"
Longarm smiled thinly and said, "In those blankets lashed to your saddle, of course. I'd invite you to climb into my bedroll if I wanted my face slapped. Harry Carver ain't asked, but I'll have to offer to stand my own turn as night picket. Finish your grub and we'll see about finding some soft ground upslope to spread out our bedding."
She didn't argue, although she seemed a tad uneasy a few minutes later as Longarm indicated a shallow hollow between two trees as her best bet to get a sort of rugged night's rest. He noted her dubious look and said, "Forget anything you might have heard about piles of leaves. Dry leaves are dusty, don't really pad a hip bone worth mention, and they can keep you awake all night as they rustle every time you twitch. A couple of thicknesses of wool over bare dirt work way better."
She asked about the still-green leaves above that were ripe for easy plucking. He shook his head and told her, "Not as much padding as you'd think. Also, they draw bugs and stain your bedding. Half the trick of sleeping on the ground is sleeping on one side or the other with your knees drawn up. It's only where you grind a bone against the firm mattress that you wind up sore."
She dimpled and replied, "Thank you for not implying I was just a trifle mature across the hips. Where will you be reclining, on one side or the other, all this time?"
His own bedroll still across the arm that cradled his Yellowboy, Longarm pointed with his chin at another clear space a few paces off and said, "I was figuring on unrolling her yonder, past that clump of rabbit bush, unless you're worried it's too close for your own comfort, Miss Godiva."
She shook her head and softly replied, "It's a little far, as a matter of fact, should anything go boomp in the night around here. Isn't it funny how glades that appear so pretty in the glow of sunset can look sort of ominous after dark?"
He said, "The almanac says we'll get at least a half- moon later tonight. I'd best spread my own bedding before I go see when Harry wants me to stand guard."
It only took him a few seconds to unroll his own bedding at an angle on the wooded slope. But once he had, Godiva was already down atop her own blankets, moving her trim but soft-looking hips in an experimental way as she decided, "I see what you meant about bones."
Longarm just strode off down the slope, wishing woman wouldn't do that. He'd met that well-read and so-called sophisticated type of spinster gal before. You'd think independent single women who'd learned to talk like that suffragette leader Virginia Woodhull would know better than to talk bolder than they really meant to be around men. Miss Virginia Woodhull was always raving and ranting about the way men hurt women's feelings, as if men didn't have feelings themselves.
He found the trail boss jawing with some others around the small night fire near the chuck wagon. Carver seemed to think it was swell of a deputy marshal to bear his own share, like a dollar-a-day rider. When Longarm pointed out that he and Miss Weaver had been coffeed and beaned after their rescue from wild Indians, Carver allowed he could stand the first watch--along with three others, of course. So that was the way he spent the next four hours with his Yellowboy as the darkness fell and kept on falling. Neither the stars nor that moon the almanac had promised showed at all that night. For an overcast moved in from the west as the sun went down, and just kept coming, till the night air was downright clammy and Longarm was starting to worry about getting soaked to the skin before he could get to that vulcanized poncho atop his bedding.
But there was neither thunder nor enough back-wind to matter when, around a quarter to midnight, a gentle rain commenced to patter all around as he ghosted through the trees along his quarter of the far-flung picket. Carver had suggested, and they'd all agreed, it made the most sense for the dismounted picket guards to circle wider than the night riders holding the herd down in the draw. Any Indians out to lift stock, or hair, would be more inclined to creep in on the sounds of the mounted hand further down the slopes, whether they knew what he was making all that noise about or not.
Young Waco, the kid who played that mouth organ, had been replaced by a tenor of the Mexican persuasion who kept singing to the cows about a cielito lindo, or pretty little patch of sky, despite the way the real sky was acting.
The cows didn't care. You sang softly to a herd at night to keep them from spooking at more sinister night noises. It was only on a vaudeville stage, or maybe in town on a Saturday night, that anyone ever sang those whooping and hollering Wild West songs, lest they see the last of their herd stampeding over the far horizon.
The rain had soaked Longarm's shoulders downright uncomfortably by the time someone called his name and he was relieved by a cowhand smart enough to start out with a rain slicker. So he was peeling out of his wet shirt and vest as he moved downslope to his bedding with a rude remark about the weather. He tossed his wet hat atop the rainproof poncho, but hung on to his wet duds as he proceeded to slide into his roll.
Then he said, "What the blue blazes?" as God
iva Weaver gasped, "Oh, it's you. You startled me!"
Longarm said, "That makes two of us," as he slid on in beside her, noting how warm and damp it all felt at the same time. It was his bedding the two of them were under. So he felt no call to ask her permission.
She said, her breath warm on his wet face, "When it started to rain, I remembered you were smart enough to bring along a rainproof bedroll. I've stuffed both my own blankets and my silly self in here, and it still feels just a bit too firm under my poor tailbone, thank you very much."
Longarm could only mutter, "I noticed it was mighty warm in here. A mite crowded too. The only way the two of us are going to fit comfortably will call for you to let me stretch this one arm under you so's you can rest your head in the hollow of my shoulder."
She cooperated in the contortions it took to settle them, his peeled-off wet duds, and his shooting irons into a more or less comfortable position as the wind and rain picked up.
He said he was sure glad he'd made it back just in time to save himself from the cold shower he deserved.
Snuggled against him with the edge of the poncho pulled over both their heads, Godiva shyly confided, "Maybe we could both use a cold shower right now. I don't mean to pry, but where did you ever get all these muscles I can feel now that you've shed your clothes above the waist?"
Longarm shrugged the bare shoulder her head was resting on and replied, "Pure misfortune, I reckon. I'd have never worked half as hard growing up if I'd been born into wealth instead of a hard-scrabble patch of West-by-God-Virginia. Had I wound up alone in here, I'd have slid these damp jeans off my muscular hind end as well."
She laughed girlishly and demurely said, "Well, don't let me stop you, you big damp silly."