by Tabor Evans
The breed kid proved she could by doing so. But then she told him she didn't think any horned larks would be this far off their usual prairie range.
Longarm nodded and said, "That's why I chose such a signal. It's possible to hear grassland birds up here amid all this tanglewood, but unlikely enough to make for a handy code whistle. Horn-lark me once if you see those other riders doing anything. Whistle twice if they seem to be searching for us. Three whistles will mean they're getting warm. Now git! I don't know how much time we have to get set for whatever."
Matty nodded and scampered off through the dappled shade, a gun in each hand. Longarm took off his jacket and hung it on a thorny bow-wood branch, along with his hat. Then he got down on his belly to lizard through the sticker-brush with the Yellowboy cradled in his elbows until he had a clear field of fire down the far-from-clear northern slopes.
Putting himself in the boots or moccasins of someone trying to work his way up through all that tanglewood, he decided on the three best ways to creep. That wasn't saying some son of a bitch with a different view of this knoll couldn't plan an entirely different approach. But a man with fifteen rounds in an antiquated repeater had to start with some damned plan.
He levered a round into the hitherto empty chamber, and slid another round into the magazine, making that sixteen rounds to work with. He could only hope that would be enough.
He'd just told himself not to be such an old fuss when Minerva Cranston spotted his boot heels sticking out the other side of his thorny green tunnel and gasped, "Oh, there you are. Custis, I feel so helpless and I'm so scared! What's going on out there?"
He could only reply, "Nothing. As the morning warms up you don't hear half as much skittering. There's a red-tail circling off to the northeast above another wooded rise. That's about the size of it. Not even an interesting cloud to ponder, as far as the eye can see."
She got down on her hands and knees to crawl forward through the brush, catching her thinly clad rump in a thorn and bitching about it.
Longarm laughed, not unkindly, and observed, "That was the first thing they warned us about when I was a young and foolish recruit. Green troops always seem to know enough to keep their heads down. So a soldier's first wound, if it ain't fatal, is likely to be undignified. Lay flat in the dirt and sort of slither your hips as you walk on your elbows. Why do you want to move this deep in the brush to begin with?"
She worked her way up his left flank as she panted, "I told you. I'm scared skinny and you have that gun. And, as I tried to tell you earlier, there's a reason, if not an excuse, for the silly way I tend to behave when I'm upset. Don't you want to know why I was so... forward last night in that tipi?"
He didn't, but as he'd learned aboard many a stagecoach or steamboat, there was no stopping a woman once she'd decided to tell you the story of her life, and what the hell, that fool hawk wasn't up yonder to admire now.
Minerva said she'd been about Matty's age, feeling just as put upon, when she'd run off from her strict upbringing with a handsome drifter called Ace. She said she hadn't known he was a gambling man with a drinking problem until they wound up stranded in a fleabag hotel over in Dodge.
Reflecting that the childish Matty might be dumb enough to fall for a saddle tramp called Ace, Longarm gently asked how come he'd gotten the impression she'd first come west as an employee of the B.I.A.
Minerva answered simply, "I left a few things off my civil service application. How does a spinster qualify herself as a schoolteacher by declaring she finally left a depraved brute after he'd offered a night in bed with her as table stakes in Laredo?"
Longarm calmly asked who'd won.
She laughed bitterly and said, "I didn't wait to find out. The older and probably wiser gambler Ace propositioned wanted to hear I approved of the wager, as he put it, before he bet hard cash."
Her voice dropped almost to a whisper as she continued, half to herself. "They called him Baltimore, and I guess I never got to thank him properly. After I got hysterical, and they'd carried Ace across the street to the infirmary, Baltimore led me firmly but gently to the boat landing and put me on a riverboat bound for Brownsville. He gave me some money and told me he'd take care of everything there in Laredo. I guess he did. I never tried to find out. I knew Ace had only been pistol-whipped, and I was afraid that if he ever got me back in his power there might not be a Baltimore the next time."
Longarm nodded soberly and said, "I've heard similar tales from parlor-house gals who weren't so lucky. If I live to be a hundred I will never understand how nice gals from gentle homes manage to pass up all the nice young neighborhood gents in favor of some weak-chinned self-styled roughneck calling himself Ace, Duke, or Frenchy. I reckon a total stranger who needs a bath is more exciting than the boy next door, eh?"
Minerva sighed and said, "Ace smelled of larkspur lotion and put on a fresh shirt every day when we were in the money. There were times we were too broke for that. The gambling life means steak with champagne some nights, with beer and beans more often."
"Sounds mighty glamorous," Longarm muttered dryly.
Minerva said, "I liked it best when we were broke. That was when Ace seemed to pay the most attention to me. When we were in the money he stayed up half the night and came to bed too tired to... you know."
Longarm muttered, "I told you I'd heard the same story many, many times. A bum with nothing better to do is naturally going to spend way more time playing slap and tickle with his gal than a gent with a job to go to. Why are you telling me all this, Miss Minerva? You got away from the useless rascal just in time, didn't you?"
She answered simply, "No. Not all the way. There have naturally been other men since. Some of them fine men. What you'd describe as the boy next door. I haven't been able to feel anything for any of them. I think it's because I feel so... safe with them. I know you don't have any idea of what I'm talking about, but..."
"Aw, I ain't that ignorant," Longarm told her. "I check out books from the Denver Public Library when I'm low on pocket change near payday. I've read about them Vienna alienist doctors who worry about what folks are really thinking when they talk sort of loco en la cabeza. You're confounded about feeling hot around menfolk because a poor excuse for a man broke you in bass-akwards!"
She protested, "Custis, Ace and I never went in for anything all that perverse. We just made sweet love a lot when things seemed to be going bad for us. I remember this time in Cheyenne when Ace and I were waiting for a wired money order and couldn't show ourselves outside our hotel room for three whole days and nights."
"I said I followed your drift," Longarm told her, trying to ignore the way his privates had started to throb against the soil under him.
She said, "You're so understanding. I felt so silly this morning. But last night, alone in the dark with no other man to turn to as those memories of other tense nights came back unbidden."
Longarm grimaced and groaned, "I know you're feeling tense again. So am I. But it ain't the same. Your Ace might have been enough of a baby to grope for a nipple when he should have been working on a way out of a tight spot. But we ain't holed up in some rooming house to avoid our creditors, Miss Minerva."
She gasped, "What a horrid way to talk to a lady!"
So he said, "Act like a lady, or at least a grown woman, and I'll be proud to kiss your hand, or any other part of you, once we make it to Fort Sill alive."
He couldn't resist adding, "Fortunately, they have locks on the bedroom doors at the army guest hostel. So I won't be able to get at you once you're feeling less inspired."
She told him he was a brute. He said, "Never mind what I am and go see why Matty's tweeting like a horned lark getting eaten alive by red ants!"
Minerva gasped, "Dear Lord! Is that who all that chirping over to the east is coming from?"
Longarm said, "Never mind. I see them now. Just like I thought they might, they've circled through the brush below. Matty never fooled 'em with her lark whistles. We'll soon see w
hether they expected me to be covering this side with a Winchester!
CHAPTER 15
A long time crept by and the sun just kept rising in a sultry blue sky. Nothing else seemed to be happening. From time to time some shrubbery down the slope would sway as if a ripple of breeze was moving in the still summer air. Longarm was almost certain the rascals who'd surrounded them just out of rifle range were flashing rare glimpses of brown skin instead of blue shirt as they moved from one patch of deeper cover to another.
Longarm and Matty had the nervous Minerva dashing back and forth with messages from time to time. Although neither had all that much to report. Matty's story was that she'd barely spotted a distant party of what looked to be Kiowa, riding single-file, when they'd all reined in to dismount, lead their ponies off the trail, and commence to sneak all about.
When Longarm sent a message asking Matty which side they'd dismounted from, she didn't remember. Minerva asked what difference it made, and Longarm could only say, "None most likely. Even Indian Police would be inclined to mount or dismount Horse Indian style, from the off side."
"Off side?" asked the mighty green schoolmarm.
Longarm said, "That's the right-hand side of a pony. You mount it from the near or left side if you're a white rider. Being contrary or mayhaps self-taught, most Horse Nations get on and off the opposite way. It don't matter all that much. I'm fixing to be surprised as all get-out if these fake Black Legging Kiowa turn out to be Irishmen."
Prone beside him under the bow-wood, Minerva asked how he knew they were fake, adding that she couldn't see anybody down yonder.
Longarm replied, "That's about all I'm halfway sure about. Chief Necomi, Hawzitah, and those other elders run the real Black Leggings Lodge. Had they wanted any of us hurt by their outfit, they had us in their power last night. So why would the leaders of the real warrior lodge turn us loose with arms and trail supplies this morning if they meant us any harm?"
She pointed out, "Somebody in that band tried to poison us last night, didn't they?"
He nodded, but said, "That makes the Kiowa leaders look even more innocent. Like I said, they had us had they meant to really make us vanish from this earth, as Necomi suggested they might. He was only trying to scare the truth out of me about that earlier brush with those mystery riders. When the Kiowa-Apache backed my story we got to be pals again. I suspect that medicine man, Pawkigoopy, might have at least a part in all this confusion. On the other hand, he could just be a mean old Kiowa medicine man. None of them could have been all that happy about our whipping them and turning a once-proud nation into wards of the government. So it's possible Pawkigoopy or some other malcontent was just trying to murder us on his or her own!"
Minerva said he'd never know how cheerful that notion made her.
She asked how else those Indians down the slope could have known which way they'd gone unless someone in Necomi's band had told them.
Longarm said, "They tracked us. They tracked us good. Nobody could have told them we'd be cutting this way through these hills because I never told nobody."
He stared down through the shimmering silence thoughtfully as he added, "They must really want us bad. I sure wish I knew why."
Minerva stared pensively down at the dusty green tanglewood and wondered aloud whether anyone was still there.
Longarm flatly stated, "They're there. Like us, they're trying to decide their next move. Playing chess for keeps is tough enough when you've some notion what the other player might be thinking."
Minerva asked Longarm if he had any moves in mind.
Longarm glanced up at the cobalt-blue sky before he replied, "I ain't so sure about the only one I've come up with. If we yell for help it's likely to inspire an all-out attack before help could get here. I figure, just as they must figure, a daylight charge up steep slopes could cost 'em. Henceways, if we just sit tight up here, they ain't as likely to move in before sundown."
Minerva gulped but said, "I read somewhere that Indians seldom attack after dark."
Longarm grimaced and asked, "How often do you want 'em to? Captain Walker of the Texas Rangers recorded one time that Comanche hate to charge on horseback in total darkness, for reasons anyone ought to be able to see. Then some Eastern writer turned sensible cavalry tactics into Heap Big Medicine. Likely the same authority on Indians as the one who decided they prayed to a Great Spirit who presided over a half-baked Christian heaven called the Happy Hunting Ground."
The schoolmarm, who prided herself on her own study of Indian lore, demanded, "Well, don't they?"
Longarm said, "Sure they do, if they're Christian converts. A heap of 'em are, more than once, with Anglo-Protestant missionaries holding the mistaken notion they've saved the souls of pagans already taught a heap of tales from the Good Book by earlier Spanish or French church workers."
A blackjack oak trembled as if caressed by a mountain breeze. So Longarm muttered, "They're tethering their own ponies as if they mean to stay a spell. I wish I could at least guess their nation. Different Indians do use somewhat different tactics and-"
"Over there! By those big yellow flowers!" gasped Minerva, even as Longarm fired into the clump of sunflowers.
They heard somebody yip like a kicked pup. Then Longarm had pushed the schoolmarm one way and rolled the other as a fusillade of rifle balls shredded leaves where they'd just been.
Longarm fired thrice at the dirty cotton bolls of gunsmoke giving away positions down the slope, rolling over once each time he gave them some to shoot at. Then, figuring any marksman worth his salt had to guess he'd keep rolling the same way, he rolled back through his own shot-up positions, watching in vain for another target of opportunity until he found himself back in conversational range with the bewildered schoolmarm. He smiled reassuringly at her and told her to go tell Matty what had happened, see what Matty had to say, and get back to him.
She moaned, "Oh, Custis, I'm so scared, and so excited between my thighs that I fear I'm about to climax!"
He said, "It'll feel just as good on the run. Get moving! This is a goddamn gunfight, not a time to start screwing, girl!"
She blushed beet red and jumped up to run off through the dappled shade as, down near those sunflowers, he heard someone shouting something. It could have been "agua," which was Mexican for water. A cuss stretched out on a dusty slope with two hundred grains of.44-40 lead in him would doubtless want some. But an Indian asking another Indian for a drink of water in Spanish? Longarm was backing out of the natural bow-wood hedge row as Minerva rejoined him, flopping to her knees in the dust beside him with her straw-colored hair half undone. She gasped, "Matty said nobody seemed to be moving in from her side! Oh, Custis, I'm so hot!"
He had to laugh, although not unkindly, as he handed her his pocket derringer and placed her awkward thumb on the break lever, pressing it as they broke open the simple mechanism together. She protested she didn't know anything about guns. He just extracted the two live rounds, thumbed them back in place, and twisted the tiny brass weapon in shape to fire both as he dug out some spare rounds for her.
He said, "They don't know how much you might or might not know about guns. They won't know what you're firing, at whom, if you just blaze away and roll somewhere else every time you spot any motion."
She sobbed, "You're crazy. I couldn't hit the side of a barn if I was standing inside it! You can't run off and leave me to defend this side!"
He said, "I ain't going far, and I'll be back like a shot as soon as I hear you fire one round. I just heard one of 'em call for water in Spanish. Lord only knows what Mex outlaws could be up to this far north. But they might not know any more than you about Kiowa, Comanche, and such, no offense.
He saw she was just kneeling there. So he set his Winchester to one side and placed a gentle hand on each of her trembling shoulders with the intent of steering her back through that bow-wood screen.
She seemed to misread his intent. It sure felt silly to wrestle with a kissy schoolmarm as she t
ried to haul him down atop her with a derringer in one hand and fistful of ammunition in the other. But he was bigger and stronger, as well as more worried about their lives beyond the next five minutes. So he finally had her posted belly-down and aimed the right way.
This left him free to scoop up his Yellowboy and move over to the grounded saddles near their tethered mounts in the deeper shade.
Opening a packsaddle, Longarm broke out a kindling hatchet and a ground tarp before he got to work on some lower oak branches. He found some dry duff sprinkled with acorns, and even a few dry twigs. But he broke open a couple of.44-40 rounds to sprinkle eighty grains of gunpowder on his tinder before he piled the green lengths of oak wood atop it. He thumbed a match head aflame to light his small pile of piss-poor firewood. Then he ran over to where Matawnkiha Gordon was holding the fort with a pistol in each small tawny fist. When he asked Matty how she was doing, the Kiowa, Comanche, and Scotch-Irish gal said things had been quiet as a graveyard on her side, and asked him what all that shooting had been about on his side.
He brought her up to date in a few terse phrases, and asked, "Seeing you speak both Kiowa and Comanche, no offense, do you recall any word in either lingo that sounds like agua, the Spanish for water?"
Matty thought, then shook her head and said, "Uka means to eat in what you people call Comanche."
Longarm shook his head and said, "My ears ain't that far off, and even if they were, a man lying wounded on a dusty slope would surely want some water to drink before he demanded a ham sandwich."
Matty said she didn't see why Mexicans would want to dress up like Kiowa Black Leggings and carry on so oddly. Longarm told her he was still working on it, and ran back to see how his smudgy fire was doing.
It was smoldering a lot, with much more dense gray smoke than visible flames. He nodded in satisfaction, set the Winchester aside again, and used the ground tarp to send up a series of smoky dots and dashes. Then he scooped up his saddle gun and rejoined Minerva, just in time.