Longarm on the Santee Killing Grounds (16 page)

Longarm got out a couple of smokes as he mused, half to himself, "Two deputies riding out of the same federal district court as me describe about the same way. But I can't see Smiley and Dutch behaving so unprofessional. If my boss sent them all the way to New Ulm for a damn good reason, they'd have strode right into your sheriff's office to ask about me, knowing I'd have been there ahead of 'em if I was anywhere in this county."

He thought some more as he got both their cheroots going with a wax Mexican match. Then he shook out the light. "Well, since they seem to be looking for me, I'll let them worry about who they might be until they catch up with me and I can just ask. What I'm here about is voter registrations. To be specific, I'd like to know whether two different Brown County boys who seem to have handled the same suspicious money might be on your books as registered resident voters."

The older man proved he was worth what they paid him by nodding soberly and replying without hesitation, "I know who you mean and they are. Israel Bedford voted in the last election, here in Brown County. That Chambrun cuss just signed up this spring. We had to let him, even if he does look Sioux, because he packs a U.S. Army discharge, honorable, and other government documentation indicating he must be a white man, or at least a U.S. citizen."

Longarm raised a thoughtful brow. "Regular army discharge, or one of those certificates they give Indian scouts after a single campaign?"

The old-timer snorted in disgust. "I fought under Pope in the east and west, dad-blast your respect for your elders, and I guess I know an honorable discharge, U.S. Army, when I see one they gave somebody else. Chambrun says he did a postwar hitch with the Ninth Cav as a trooper, not a scout. Ain't the Ninth supposed to be one of those colored outfits? Chambrun don't look colored to me. He looks like a sonovabitching treacherous Sioux, and some old boys who know say they heard him talking to his woman in that very lingo one day here in town. Ain't that a bitch?"

Longarm blew a thoughtful smoke ring. "The complexion or conversational habits of a particular homesteader are none of my beeswax as long as he don't bust no federal laws they pay me to enforce. You say he had other official papers to show you when he was here to register to vote this fall?"

The clerk nodded. "His homesteading permit, from the Land Office. He had to offer some proof he had a legal address here in Brown County, didn't he?"

To which Longarm could only reply, "Reckon he did, and I reckon you just answered a whole lot of other questions I was fixing to ask about Wabasha Chambrun. Like I said, it's none of my beeswax how a homesteader who talks Santee to his wiyeh may or may not have convinced the War and Interior Departments he's more white than, say, Sitting Bull. If he holds a homestead claim he holds a homestead claim, meaning he does seem to have a permanent legal address, which leads to more interesting questions, such as which old boy, Bedford or Chambrun, would be hurt most by being unable to account for that hundred-dollar treasury note."

The county clerk showed he was up on county gossip by observing that he'd heard the mysterious bill they were talking about was good for its face value in silver specie. Longarm nodded grimly and replied, "That was doubtless why the robbers took it at gunpoint. I aim to ask Chambrun where he got it, then ask on back some more, till I meet up with somebody who just can't convince me he came by it innocently!"

They shook on it, and Longarm headed back to Ilsa Pedersson's to see if she'd loan Blaze out to him again. This time he meant to make straight for the Chambrun homestead, and the day was still young enough to make it well this side of sundown.

As he strode along the sunny side of the street an old colored woman with a wheelbarrow filled with garden truck came out of an alley to ask him if she'd make it to the river in time.

When he politely got out his pocket watch and asked in time for what, she explained she aimed to sell her swell fresh vegetables to the steamboat passengers headed on up the Minnesota to Montevideo. When she allowed the steamboat Would be putting into New Ulm around three that afternoon, he assured her she was way early. It might not have been kind to tell her how early. She likely didn't know how to read and write either. Longarm got along better than some of his kind with folks who still failed to grasp the Victorian concept that time was money. Recent slaves, perhaps because they'd been slaves, could usually grasp the notion something was fixing to happen this morning, this afternoon, or at least sometime today. Indians tended to get surly when you tried to pin them down to the exact week in a moon they'd agreed on earlier.

He figured the old colored lady might sell some of her produce by the landing, or at least sit in the shade, enjoying the change in her daily chores, for the next four hours or more. He wondered idly, as he strode on, whether Wabasha Chambrun and his family kept track of time the way he'd have had to in the army, or the way his wife had likely learned about such matters ... where?

Growing up Indian had gotten complicated since the first squaw men had married up with gals such as Miss Pocahontas. She hadn't been the first such gal who'd liked to dress up like a white lady and wound up treated to a Christian funeral. On the other hand, some old mountain men who'd settled down with Indian gals had wound up more Indian than some Indians, fluent as hell in the lingo of their in-laws and taking Wakan Tonka more seriously than they'd ever taken the Wasichu Good Book, and even fighting against their own kin on the side of their adopted race. So when you got right down to cases, there was just no saying how much Indian blood old Chambrun or even his Santee-speaking wife might really have. For it wouldn't be polite to ask a suspect to open wide so you could examine his teeth, and that wasn't foolproof proof in any case. That anthropology gal who studied Indian skulls had told Longarm there were even full-bloods who didn't have those concave backsides to their damned front teeth. There was no one thing that could prove or disprove more than a general impression. Defining an Indian from, say, a Swede was a lot like defining beauty. You could say at a glance whether a gal was pretty or ugly, but there was no exact line you could draw with all the pretty gals on one side and all the ugly on the other. That was doubtless why they said beauty was in the eye of the beholder, or how a cuss some saw as an Indian could file a homestead claim as an old soldier with an honorable discharge and never mind who he wanted to raise his family with.

Turning the corner near the Pedersson place, Longarm noticed two cow ponies, saddled with double-rigged ropers, tethered to a rose-covered picket fence in the sun when there was a thornless hitching post in the shade just a few yards down, closer to Ilsa Pedersson's front yard. Longarm glanced thoughtfully at the house the roses went with. He couldn't see any front door. The house faced another way entirely. So what were those two ponies doing there in a sort of uncomfortable limbo?

Longarm knew from his own romantic past that a gent paying a call on a lady with a rep to worry about might not want to tether a mount smack out front. On the other hand, he'd seldom come pussyfooting for some broad daylight slap-and-tickle aboard two ponies at once.

Moving catty-corner to the shady side, Longarm crawfished back to an alley entrance and did some serious pussyfooting of his own until he'd circled wide to approach Ilsa Pedersson's property on its blind side. He rolled over her plank fence, screened from the only window on that side by some white lilac, and moved in fast on his feet. He knew how tough it was to see out through that frosted glass since he'd been shaving on the far side of it. He hadn't thought at the time to see whether old Ilsa kept it locked or not. When he reached it, to find it level with his shoulders as he stood in yet another flower bed, he was able to slip the blade of his pocket knife under the sash and lever it up a crack.

As he did so he heard somebody else suck in their breath, too close for comfort, just on the other side. So he hunkered down and hugged the whitewashed siding as, sure enough, somebody inside tried to raise the same damned sash, muttering a puzzled remark about damned kids with sling shots.

The man inside gave up trying to raise the swollen wood sash as soon as he had it high enough to bend down and peer out the six-inch slit he'd managed, bawling, "I see you, you little shit! Cut it out or I'll tell you mamma on you, hear?"

Longarm didn't answer. He knew he was no little shit. So it seemed safe to say the cuss he'd startled with a sudden creak of window sash was just bluffing as he peered out at nothing much. Longarm's Stetson hat was just below his field of vision. Longarm knew he'd guessed right when the man inside snorted, "Kids ought to go to school all summer, damn their eyes!" and slammed the frosted glass shut again.

Longarm figured he'd been in there taking a leak. He had no idea who the proddy cuss might have been. Ilsa had said she peddled bobwire and other hardware from her house, But why would, say, a retail merchant or homesteader tether catty-corner across the way instead of smack out front?

"Didn't want us to notice he'd come calling," Longarm muttered as he moved along the shady side of the house. "It gets even spookier when you consider that second pony. It don't add up as a rival for a pretty widow gal's favors, and a man on more innocent beeswax wouldn't worry about nosy neighbors while calling on a business woman during business hours with a chaperon in tow!"

Longarm eased around a rear corner, gingerly rose for a cautious peek, and saw nobody was in Ilsa's corner pantry. Better yet, she'd opened the pantry window from inside to cool a couple of fresh baked pies on her broad sill.

They were talking in the kitchen. They seemed to be talking about him. For one male voice was saying, "Of course there's been no sign of that Denver boy out back. You'd have heard this here scattergun going off if he was within range of yonder back door. Get back up front and cover the front door like we agreed, you nervous ninny!"

Another male voice sort of whined, "I guess I got a right to feel nervous, knowing they're expecting just the two of us to take out a gunslick with his rep, and I still say I heard something outside when I was in the crapper just now!"

The one who appeared to be the boss, the one covering the most likely entrance with a shotgun, raised his voice a tad as he insisted, "Get back to your damn post and stay there till I tell you different, whether by word of mouth or gunshot. I swear I was a fool to let them saddle me with such an itchy greenhorn!"

Longarm worked faster, taking advantage of the noise as boot heels clumped sullenly off through the frame house. He slid the pies silently aside and eased his long frame over the sill as smoothly, and as noisily as a weasel slipping into a hen house. Then he was over by the pantry door, six-gun in his big right fist as he gingerly inched the door open just a crack. The first thing he saw, with a stiffled sigh of relief, was Ilsa Pedersson in a far corner, bound and gagged but seated upright in one of her kitchen chairs. He could tell by her scared staring eyes that she saw him as well. There was no way to tell her not to look his way with such an interested expression. So he was more chagrined than surprised when some cuss he couldn't see gruffly demanded, "What are you staring at like that, pretty lady?"

Longarm had little choice but to kick the door all the way open and blaze away as the startled jasper near the stove with that ten-gauge tried in vain to swing its muzzle up in time. For nobody with a pistol and a lick of sense tried to take a man with a ten-gauge alive in a close-quarters fight. So Longarm nailed him twice in the chest to sit him uncomfortably on the hot stove while he blew a hole in Ilsa's pressed-tin ceiling without really knowing what he might be aiming all that buckshot at. Then he just fell forward off his hot seat, too dead to notice his pants were on fire.

Longarm didn't care either. For sure enough, just as he'd spun into another corner, facing the hall door, it popped open to let a somewhat taller and younger gunslick enter, a Colt '74 in each fist as he yelled, "Hot damn! Did we get him?"

Longarm put three rounds in him and got out his derringer backup as he wearily replied, "Not yet," then moved in to see what he'd done to that one. The younger one lay across the threshold with his spurred boots in Ilsa's kitchen and the rest of him making a mess on her hall runner. As Longarm hunkered to feel for a pulse his victim croaked, "Is that you, Alabam?"

Longarm softly replied, "Yep. How did we know that lawman might be staying here?"

The dying stranger sighed and murmured, "Don't you remember? It was your grand notion to ask around town about that black pony with a white blaze. When the kid heard it was kept by a widow who lived all alone, you were the one who said it surely sounded like old Longarm's wet dream!"

Longarm smiled thinly and muttered, "They told us true about the horny rascal, didn't they? By the way, old son, who told us?"

There came no answer. Longarm felt the downed man's throat again and then, since the smoke was getting bad by now, he got back up to go pour a pitcher of what turned out to be fruit juice over the smoldering body spread out face-down by the stove. It sure smelled funny in the end. He threw open the back door as well as another window, and moved to cut Ilsa out of her pigging string bonds as he said, "Sorry about that dessert topping, honey. Thought it was water."

The widow gal, who'd been baking up a storm when they'd burst in on her, removed the wad of dishrag from her own mouth as she gasped, "I was afraid you'd never get to me, you brute! Let me up! I have to pee so bad my back teeth are floating!"