by Tabor Evans
Longarm got out another cheroot, lit it from the tip of the one he was smoking, and when she silently refused it, threw it on the cow-chip fire between them to stink the place differently, saying, "A nose that delicate must be a heavy cross to bear, Miss Minerva. I said I could make out that army dubbing once you brought it up, and I agree it don't smell like roses, but there's worse smells than that in this imperfect world. How did you ever get by back East in a city running on horsepower and cooking with soft coal?"
She sighed and replied, "Why did you think I applied for this job out West? You're so right about it being a cross to bear. Like a lot of myopic souls, I seem to have developed my sense of smell beyond a comfortable level. How I wish things were the other way, with my eyes this keen and my nose not so delicate."
He didn't have any call to mention that eagle-eyed gal he'd met in Montana who spotted cracks in every ceiling, spots on every rug, and called a man a liar when he swore he'd shaved that same day. He asked Matty what she knew about the old rascals holding up their supper so long.
The little Kiowa breed only knew the bunch over this way by rep. She said Necomi was considered a true-heart, in a stubborn old-time way. She'd heard old Hawzitah didn't count all the coup he was said to be entitled to. She said his fellow Kiowa considered him an odd cuss in other ways. He was always asking questions, curious as a young kid about what everyone was up to, even the blue sleeves over at the fort. When the black blue sleeves had been there, he'd asked them all sorts of questions about what it felt like to live like a Saltu without being a real Saltu. Matty said she didn't see why anyone would want to ask such stupid questions, and that even the black blue sleeves had laughed and called Hawzitah the Kiowa Professor.
She said the medicine man, Pawkigoopy, acted crazy and had some of her elders scared of him. She couldn't say why. Nodding at her white teacher across from Longarm, she said, "I don't think I would like to be saved and dunked in water. But Umbea Mary seems to be a friendlier spirit than Piamumpitz, who eats little children when they play outside at night!"
Longarm said he didn't think it was too late for that kid to be out fooling around, and asked her to tell them more about the spooky medicine man.
She said, "I don't live over this way. All I know is what I hear when some of her old friends come to visit my Kiowa mamma. I've heard them say it's not a good idea to ask Fawkigoopy to chant over you or your children when bad spirits get into them. They say he asks for presents afterwards, or for the younger mothers of sick babies to sleep with him. They say the men would beat him for behaving that way if they were not so afraid of his tu-puha."
Minerva had been trying to learn the Comanche dialect since she'd been teaching their kids, and so she moved her lips in thoughtful silence and then murmured aloud, "Black medicine? Would that be anything like black magic?"
Longarm nodded and said, "Different nations call it puha, wakan, matu, and so on, but we translate it as medicine because that's about as close as we can get to a sort of mishmash of cure-all and luck on demand. Decent Indians ain't supposed to use it to hurt instead of help. But I reckon a warrior with strong medicine guiding his arrows could be said to be hexing the poor cuss he's aiming at. Comanche and other Ho speakers such as Hopi or Shoshoni hate what we'd call witchcraft and can't abide it in a medicine man. But these Kiowa have a rep for admiring a good malediction chanted in unison. So I reckon you might call a spiteful cuss like Pawkigoopy as much a sorcerer as a medicine man."
That kid suddenly popped through the entry with the saddlebags Matty had said Longarm wanted. As Longarm handed over a couple of quarters, quantity being more impressive than face value, Matty asked him about that saddle gun. The kid said he'd only found their riding and packsaddles in a nearby tipi. He didn't know who had the Winchester Yellowboy right now. He said he hadn't tried to locate a big gray gelding because the night watch along the pony line whipped at kids and dogs with knotted thongs.
As the half-naked kid hunkered nearby to watch with interest, Longarm got out some canned provisions and began to open them with his pocket knife, explaining, "I brought along canned beans and tomato preserves because you can eat 'em warm or cold."
He opened an extra can of the sweetish tomato preserves so the helpful Kiowa kid could have some as well. A man just never knew when he might need a pal in such uncertain surroundings.
They consumed the beans, followed by the grease-cutting preserves, by handing the cans around and just slurping good.
Minerva said the lingering whiffs of linseed oil and stale greasy tallow didn't make her stomach churn as much now that she'd put something in it.
The Kiowa kid said his name was Pito, and asked if he could have the empty tin cans. Longarm said he could, even though Matty warned him he was being taken. Pito lit out, richer by fifty-five cents and some raw material for stamped conchos, with his already dirty face smeared with tomato preserves.
He hadn't been gone long when a couple of shy, or scared-looking, Kiowa gals came in with an iron pot and some trading post china bowls. As they dished out generous helpings of a sort of cracked corn and venison stew, Matty told Longarm and Minerva the Kiowa gals apologized for such a late supper. They said they'd had to start from scratch. Minerva murmured, "The poor things probably didn't eat that well themselves this evening. It smells delicious. I didn't know Plains Indians cooked with garlic."
Longarm had never heard they did. He raised the bowl he'd been served to his nose, sniffed hard, and quietly warned in English not to dig in just yet.
He waited until the two women had backed out before he grabbed the bowl from Matty's greedy young hands and snapped, "Spit that out, in the fire, so's there won't be any on view later."
The kid did as she was told but demanded, as her spat-out stew sizzled really strong fumes of what seemed to be garlic flavoring, what on earth was he fussing about.
The white gal across from Longarm said, "It smells delicious."
Longarm said, "It's supposed to. But that ain't garlic your keen sniffer picked out of the stronger flavorings, Miss Minerva. Kiowa use garlic about as often as Eye-talians cook with buffalo berries. But they do sell flypaper at most trading posts, and the arsenic you can boil out of the stick-em does smell more like garlic than anything any honest Kiowa cook would be stirring in!" The two gals stared thunderstruck at one another. Then Minerva gasped, "We have to make a run for it before they come back and find us alive! How long do you think we have, Custis?"
Longarm began to dig a hole in the sand with his pocket knife as he said, "Indefinitely. I doubt the one who's out to poison us will be anywhere near come morning. He, she, or it will be down at the far end of camp, waiting to hear from the others."
He saw they both looked scared as hell. So as he began to pour poisoned stew into the hole he soothed, "Don't you ladies see the bright side yet? If the elders wanted us dead they'd just have us taken out a ways and shot. So I'm betting someone who failed to get his own way at that council decided to murder us on his own."
Matty asked, "What if you're betting wrong?"
To which he could only reply in a conversational tone, "Oh, in that case we're as good as dead. I can't leave without the two of you, and I'll be switched with snakes if I can see a way for the three of us to slip out of camp and get far enough to matter."
Matty said, "Hear me, I have played nanipka with both Comanche and Kiowa and I have seldom been caught!"
Minerva murmured wistfully, "She means hide-and-go-seek."
Longarm said, "I know what she means, and seldom ain't enough when you're playing with bigger boys for keeps."
Matty insisted she could sneak really swell.
Minerva took a deep breath, sat up straighter, and told Longarm, "The two of you could probably make it without me. There's no sense in all three of us dying and... since I'm done for anyway..."
Longarm snorted, "Aw, stop carrying on like a gut-shot swan and pay more attention when someone's talking sense to you. When I allowed I could
be wrong about that bet, I wasn't saying it wasn't worth our blowing on the dice. There's a better than fifty-fifty chance if we sit tight. We're almost certain to be tracked down and killed if we try to make Fort Sill or anywhere else on foot."
Minerva Cranston still looked pale as a ghost as she tried to smile and managed, "Oh, in that case maybe we'd better just sit tight."
So that was what they tried their best to do. It wasn't easy.
CHAPTER 13
The Old Farmer's Almanac said summer nights averaged ten hours from dusk to dawn at that latitude. It only felt like a few thousand years when a body could neither sleep nor read in bed. They had no beds, and about a hundred years into the night that fire had died out and it was black as a bitch in there.
Both gals had somehow wound up snuggled against Longarm on either side as he reclined with his back propped high enough on his piled-up baggage for him to face the fainter black oval of the one entrance, gun in hand as he rested his weary wrist in his own crotch. On his right little Matty was softly blowing bubbles as she somehow managed to doze on and off. Minerva's straw-blond head rested lighter against his left shoulder until her occasional stifled sobs inspired him to wrap a soothing left arm around her trembling torso and point out that the longer the night dragged on the better their chances got. He said, "If the majority was in favor of killing us, they'd have made a play for it by now."
Her teeth chattered on her when she first tried to answer. Then she got them under control again and murmured, "I'm not this terrified of the Indians who don't want to kill us. I can't help thinking how easy it would be for the ones who spiked our supper with arsenic! Do you think they think we're alive or dead in here by now?"
To which he could only reply, "Don't know. So I can't say. We get a lot of crooks who can't resist coming back for a peek at the scene of their crime. But the smarter ones know better. I'm betting on old Pawkigoopy as the author of our woes. Kiowa medicine men are said to use more scientific curses than your average rattle-shaker. If it's him, he's likely been at such sneaky stuff long enough to stay clear and sit tight till somebody else finds his professed enemies laid out stiff by his visions. It's all right for a medicine man to have grim visions. Sitting Bull told everyone he'd had a vision of soldiers all covered with blood. But he never said he'd used poison or even chants on Custer and the Seventh Cav. They admire a prophet, but wizards make 'em proddy."
She didn't answer for a moment. She was probably considering what he'd just said, a rare trait in even a halfways pretty young gal. He knew he'd judged her right when she said, "It would be even more foolish for our secret enemy to fire bullets through these thin hide walls, wouldn't it?"
He patted her far shoulder and said, "Mighty foolish. He'd have no way to aim at anyone in particular, whilst for all he knew, he'd be giving his fool self away by attacking folks he'd already killed."
She asked, "Then why do you have that six-shooter in your lap?"
He chuckled and replied, "Ain't in my lap. Got the muzzle resting on the blanket under me. I meant what I said just now about nobody with a lick of sense creeping in on us tonight. I got my gun out for two simple reasons. I have the gun to work with, and this cruel world is afflicted with murderous fools."
She timidly asked how often he ran into them. He told her they were reasonably rare, but that his job required him to brush with more than his share. When she asked him to elaborate, he didn't want to brag on some of his wilder cases, but settled for explaining how he'd wound up over this way to begin with.
She sounded dubious as she asked him if he was sure he'd never even met that wayward wife of Attila Homagy.
He sighed and said, "That's what makes my situation so awkward. Nine out of ten folks, just hearing his wild accusations, tend to wonder if there ain't at least a spark to go with all that smoke. I can say I've never laid eyes on Magda Homagy until I'm blue in the face and no judge or jury will ever find that jealous maniac guilty if ever he manages to get the drop on me."
Minerva proved she was smart enough to teach school by whistling silently and saying, "But if you killed him, even if he drew first, everyone would say you were a home-wrecking killer!"
Longarm sighed and said, "My boss wants me to lie low over here in the Indian Territory whilst he tries to find out who Homagy can really thank for his lack of domestic bliss."
They both laughed as the same thought hit them at the same time. Matty stirred in her sleep and asked what was so funny. Longarm told her softly to go back to sleep as Minerva murmured, "This sure seems a fine way to lie low. How on earth does that child manage to sleep so soundly at a time like this?"
Longarm said, "She's likely tired. Her mother said she was sort of young and carefree. That's how we got you into this, I regret to say. As things turned out, I could have got in this much trouble with no help from either of you ladies."
Minerva sighed in weary agreement and murmured, "It sounded like such a lark when they asked me to chaperone the two of you, as if any of us are ever going to get the chance to be naughty again!"
He started to point out there'd be plenty of time to act as naughty as she cared to in times to come. Then he couldn't help wondering if she was trying to come. It would have been rude to ask a lady why she was moving and rustling like that in the dark. She must have been able to tell from his awkward silence what he suspected she was up to. For she suddenly stopped, sighed, and murmured, "I must be going crazy. My Aunt Ida said the little girl across the way went crazy because she couldn't leave herself alone until the right man came along."
Longarm thought it might sound cruel to agree with a lady who was already confounded enough. He quietly said, "There seems to be something about feeling hurt or scared that makes folks sort of, well... fidgety. Wounded soldiers are always proposing to their nurses, and there's some argument as to whether hanged men stiffen up so silly before or after they hit the end of the rope."
She softly asked, "Are you saying all this has made you feel more amorous than usual, Custis?"
He chuckled and said, "I always feel more amorous than usual. But I got to cover that doorway, no offense."
She stiffened and demanded, "Did you think for one moment I was suggesting anything improper, good sir? I was only asking a question, not extending an invitation!"
He tried to say he hadn't meant to sound dirty. But she'd already rolled away in the darkness to flop down on some piled buffalo robes, and after a suspenseful silence he could hear her breathing harder in time with the softer sounds of what seemed like a frisky puppy thumping its tail by the back door to be let out.
He was mighty tempted to just roll over and help her scratch what ailed her, but he didn't see how he could let little Matty's head fall that far without waking her.
That conjured up a really silly scene in Longarm's head. But he managed not to laugh out loud as he considered how the sassy little gal Minerva had come along to chaperone was really chaperoning her elders without half trying, or really knowing what was going on.
As he heard Minerva moaning in the darkness, "Custis, please!" he softly murmured, "You'll be sorry you ever said that once we get out of this fix alive. But no offense, this is about the last time or place I'd ever risk getting caught with my pants down!"
CHAPTER 14
Longarm hadn't been trying to doze off, but he saw he must have when he awoke with a start to see daylight in the entryway across from them and heard all sorts of commotion outside.
He eased Matty's drowsy head from his lap, and rolled over to holster his gun and stab the tipi cover with his knife. When he put an eye to the puncture he saw ponies swirling in a haze of dust in the center of the tipi ring. Minerva sat up on her pile of buffalo robes to ask what all the fuss was about.
Longarm replied, "Ain't certain. They've run all their riding stock inside the ring for safekeeping and never mind the mess. Some kids from another band might be out to have some fun. On the other hand they might really be worried about something."
A figure appeared in the entryway to call out in bad English that the man, not the women, was wanted at the Do-giagyaguat. So Longarm tossed the pocket knife near her, saying, "Open some more cans and don't eat or drink anything else before I get back, hear?"
Matty sat up, rubbing her eyes, to ask what they were supposed to do if he never came back. Longarm didn't offer any suggestions as he rolled to his feet and ducked outside. It would have sounded hard to point out it wouldn't really be his problem.
He followed his Kiowa guide through the swirling confusion, noting he didn't seem to be under guard as the Indians worked to get set for something ominous.
He found old Necomi and the other Kiowa elders out front of that bi painted tipi, along with five younger Indians dressed much the same with different beadwork. When he heard everybody talking in English he caught on. The visitors had to be Kiowa-Apache, allied or adopted and hence half-ass Kiowa who spoke another lingo entirely. He knew Na-dene, spoken by the so-called Apache, Navajo, and such, was as tough for either a white man or Indian as Arabic or Turkish might be for your average cowhand. You could ask a Comanche or a Lakota what a buffalo was, and while one would say tatanka and the other called it kutsu, they agreed to call the critter something. But Na-dene speakers would ask you whether you meant a buffalo off a ways or in plain sight, grazing, running, or hell, shitting.
Kiowa could only powwow with their little brothers in English or Sign, and Sign being slower, the meeting that morning was being conducted in the hated tongue of the blue sleeves.
Necomi told the head Kiowa-Apache, a scar-faced runt called Eskiminzin, to tell the damned government rider his sad story. So the runty Kiowa-Apache did. He said his own band ranged west of the Wichitas, as close to the reservation line as they could manage without making the Great Father angry. He said they'd been raided more than once by riders who'd sure as hell looked like Kiowa Black Leggings.