Longarm on the Santee Killing Grounds (21 page)

Longarm wet a finger and drew an invisible chalk mark in the air between them as he said, "I'll give you that point, even though they say in town that Israel Bedford has a good rep."

Chambrun grumbled, "What's wrong with my rep? Has anybody said I steal from my neighbors or fail to pay my bills on time? It's all the fault of that Mark Twain, making Indian Joe the halfbreed the villain. I know what they say about us two-faced snakes in the grass, but was Simon Girty who led all those raids along the old frontier part Indian? Was Benedict Arnold or Judas part Indian?"

Longarm grimaced and said, "I just said I conceded that point. But they still expect me to make some arrests in connection with that hot paper, old son."

Chambrun shrugged and said, "Arrest Bedford then. He's the one who spent that treasury note in town for certain. It's my word against his that I handed him that particular treasury note and no other. But if you want to arrest me, on no more than a white man's sacred word, I reckon I'll just have to take my chances with the grand jury if it goes that far."

His wife said, in a less teasing tone, "We know none of the people we are ... fronting for would hold anybody up. It would only upset them, very much, if we told you who they were and let you bother them. If they knew anything, anything about stolen money, they would never pass it on to people of their own nation."

Then she crossed her arms and quietly added, "So hear me. I have spoken."

Longarm finished all but the dregs in his tin cup as he composed his words carefully. "I know nobody would knowingly pass on a recorded hundred-dollar treasury note if they knew about those lists of serial numbers, ma'am. But you've just now convinced me an innocent person could accept and pass one on in ignorant good faith. So can't you see how some perfectly respectable businessman of the Santee or part-Santee persuasion could have accepted some of that hot paper in trade, and might be able to tell me just who in thunder stuck him with it?"

The Indian woman didn't answer. Her husband rose from the table to say, "I reckon I have spoken too."

So Longarm shrugged, got to his own feet, and put his hat back on as he replied, "In that case there's nothing left for me to say but pilamiyeh, or is that pinamiyeh in Santee, and in either case I'll be back if your story don't hold water, hear?"

CHAPTER 17

The darkness had finished falling by the time Longarm mounted up to ride on, the bitter taste in his mouth only partly inspired by that dreadful coffee back yonder. The moon was up and out to shine bright, but a herd of big black clouds were stampeding across the sky from the southwest to make the night air taste like electric tingles felt and make the moonlight mighty tricky. But as he rode old Smokey downstream, Longarm could tell the road under them lay at a nine- or ten-degree grade, and they'd told him aboard that old steamboat how Chambrun had claimed high rocky ground instead of richer bottomlands up and down the river for the taking. For folks trying to live off the blanket like white settlers, they sure had some mighty odd ways, maybe left over from the vision-seeking notions of less advanced times. Indians were always camping way up in the middle of the air, and starving themselves on top of rock outcroppings, until a friendly wanigi took pity on them and sent a vision from the spirit world. Longarm had never heard of anyone having a vision in the warm comfort of a really swell campsite.

As they followed the gentle grade down to more sensible cropland, shifting shadows made everything to either side of the county road wriggle and writhe in the ghostly moonlight. Longarm had figured out as a kid why folks felt proddy moving past a graveyard when the moon was full and the hoot owls were feeling amorous. So he told old Smokey not to believe in ghosts, even if they were smack on the very warpath those Santee had come boiling down once the pot had boiled over up at the lower agency. Of course, they'd hit that military post on the far side of the river first, likely fording the Minnesota at some handy crossing and...

"That's it!" Longarm assured his mount as he chuckled and added aloud, "Old Chambrun was right. It might not be smart to assume a man can't think sensible as anyone else just because he's got some Indian blood!"

He reined in to light a cheroot as he expanded on his inspiration. It made just as much sense as he got his smoke going and shook out the match. It only stood to reason a well-funded breed, scouting earlier than the rest of his bunch for a good spot to claim, might see the advantages of a place along the river where they'd never build any steamboat landing but might surely build a bridge, or even a railroad trestle, once this valley commenced to fill in some more!

Longarm blew smoke at a sycamore making obscene gestures at them in the shifty light and told Smokey, "They call it the law of eminent domain when they want to run a railroad or bridge approach across your property. You got to let 'em. But they got to pay you a fair price, or as much as the land would be worth under, let's say, corn and taters. So if I had my homestead on the best bridge site for miles, I reckon I'd let them force me to sell the acres they needed at their price, and then I'd set my own price on what I had left, once I'd cut 'em up into building lots for the crossroads settlement you generally find where a serious river crossing intersects a county road!"

He heeled his borrowed mount to ride on. Then he suddenly reined in some more, and sure enough, those other riders he'd only thought might be echoes reined in themselves after they'd noticed he had.

He rode on at a comfortable lope, knowing for certain there were four or more riders about a quarter mile back. It got less easy to say for certain once there were more than three.

Longarm figured he could take up to half a dozen with his Winchester if he could surprise them from good cover. There were plenty of shifty-lit trees to his left, between the road and riverbanks. If he turned old Smokey loose to run on for some oats, as ponies were inclined to behave by nature... Shit, the gelding would doubtless head back to its familiar fodder and water at the Kellgren spread, meaning an empty saddle passing those other riders on the road to give them plenty of warning someone had dismounted up ahead to lay for them!

"I reckon we'd best stick together," Longarm told his loping blue roan as he hauled out his Winchester anyway with a hell of a night ride still ahead of them.

He knew the big gelding was made out of flesh and blood, like he was, and only a steam-driven machine, whether afloat or on wheels, was about to swallow that much distance in one gulp. So those others, who had to know that much, would likely wait until he took a trail break before they... what?

"Let's find out," Longarm growled as he neck-reined old Smokey off the road to burst into the second growth off to their left. The gelding didn't like it much, and it was tough on Longarm's knees without chaps as well. But he forced the blue roan through the springy jungle as far as a little moonlit cove, where he dismounted on the drier side and tethered Smokey to an alder, saying soothingly, "You got plenty of browse and all the water you can drink. So keep your voice low whilst I work back a ways with this saddle gun and see if I can find out what this is all about!"

Old Smokey didn't argue. Longarm found it far easier to move his own smaller frame through the tanglewood on foot. Closer to the sometimes-moonlit road he found a fallen sycamore with a swell clump of box elder sprouting just right to break up his own outline as he lay behind it in the grass with his Winchester propped across the mottled sycamore bark to cover the road.

Nothing happened. It felt as if the Ice Age had come and gone, to be replaced by the rise and fall of the Roman Empire at least. The moon was now overhead, but the night kept getting darker as those clouds got thicker, and he could only hope a night bird had just shit on his hat brim in passing, because otherwise it was starting to rain and he'd left his damned slicker by the river with his damned saddle on that damned gelding!

Another drop hit his left wrist, closer to the muzzle of his '73. There was nothing he could do about it. If it rained hard he'd get wet. If it didn't, he wouldn't. Those other riders doubtless had slickers handier on their damned saddles. They were likely back up that road a piece, putting them on. They'd be along directly, the dry and comfortable sons of bitches.

But still they didn't come, and now it was starting to really rain. Longarm lay there, getting soaked, as the raindrops pounded out yonder on the road as if intent on muffling the sounds of any approaching hoofbeats. He considered whether that could be what had inspired the mysterious riders on his trail to hold back. He knew that same rain made it tough for him to judge whether anyone else was out there in the dark or not. He doubted he'd want to ride in on anybody with his own loaded gun, not knowing just where the rascal was in shifting darkness with all but the loudest sounds drowned out.

It was even possible they'd never been after anybody to begin with, Longarm decided, as he went back over various conversations he'd had in recent memory.

He hadn't told anyone in New Ulm where he was headed or how he meant to get there. It hardly seemed likely anybody aboard that steamboat could have followed him on horseback. The Kellgrens had had the drop on him earlier and acted friendly as hell after he'd told them who he was and where he was headed. So why would any of their riders be trailing him?

He'd passed other spreads without stopping. But that didn't mean nobody had spotted a stranger riding by in broad daylight and gotten to fretting some. County folks living alone with all sorts of oddities on their consciences had given Longarm some anxious moments in the past. Just hearing a lawman was in his neck of the woods had been enough to set off that old prospector living in sin with his daughter up a canyon that time, poor old bastard.

But it was just as likely the Chambruns had been unsettled by his unexpected visit and personal questions. It was true they'd acted as civilized as he'd had any right to expect. But they'd had more than one boy back yonder big enough to pack a gun, and who but a total asshole would gun a lawman on his or her own property when the poor cuss had a good eight- or twelve-hour ride ahead of him on a damn-near-deserted county road?

"Meanwhile I'm as likely to die of a summer ague if I don't get out of this cold rain!" Longarm grumbled, even as he forced himself to just stay put and take some more while he counted to a hundred for at least the hundredth time.

Then he hauled in his gun muzzle and rose back to his soggy feet, knowing that even if they were still out there in the stormy darkness, they couldn't begin to guess where he might be in the dark.

He made his way back to his rain-soaked mount, untethering it but not remounting just yet as he said, "I'm sorry about this too, pard. I was spooked over Lord knows what, and whatever it was don't seem to be after us no more. So what say we get back to the road and move on at least as far as that Conway spread? Them colored nesters ain't on our list of suspects, like the Bedfords further on, so we'll ask for shelter there, all right?"

He started working their way through the dripping tanglewood. It wasn't easy. The saplings and sticker brush seemed even thicker in the direction he'd chosen. Then he spied light through the branches ahead and marveled, "We can't be that close to the Conway place or any other I remember from the pilothouse of the Moccasin Blossom."

Then he thought back harder and decided, "That crazy old colored lady they call the Bee Witch! It has to be a lamp in a window she has facing the shore, and she was tied up right by the bank. So how do you feel about asking our damned way at least?"

He led the gelding after him through the riverside growth as the moon winked on and off through the scudding clouds above them. That rain had blown over and it seemed to be clearing up, if that was how you wanted to describe soggy footing and dripping leaves all about. So the moon had burst through to beam down on the rambling shanty out on that log raft as Longarm spotted the plank stretched ashore and politely called out, "Ahoy, yon houseboat! This here would be a mighty wet U.S. Deputy Custis Long, bearing neither warrants nor malice for anyone on board. Now it's your move."

He'd been expecting most any move than the one busting out of the shanty, wailing like a banshee and flapping what seemed to be big old buzzard wings at him as his mount spooked and fought the bit while Longarm stood his ground and just called, "Howdy, ma'am."

The raggedy black apparition moaned in a spooky voice, "Go away or I'll turn you into a toad and have you for my supper!"

Longarm chuckled indulgently and replied, "I thought it was frogs, or their legs leastways, some folks ate, ma'am. Far be it from me to call a lady a big fibber, but I'm more worried right now about catching my death in this wet outfit than I am about getting turned into a toad."

"Don't you think I can do it? Don't you know I'm the Bee Witch?" the spooky shadow cackled.

Longarm gently replied, "I heard your Santee admirers called you something more like Sapaweyah, ma'am," figuring that it might sound needlessly familiar to toss in that part about her being witko, or crazy. Indians looked on being crazy with more respect than white folks or, as in her case, colored folks. Some Indians, though not all of them, considered insanity a sign of at least a possible meeting with a wanigi, good or bad. No medicine man would go out on a limb and say for certain a raving lunatic was in good with the spirits, but on the other hand, it might be just as safe to treat such a confused and confusing person with respect.