Longarm and the Unwritten Law (31 page)

The experienced war paint enthusiast put his fingers to his hairline as he grinned in a surprisingly boyish manner and said, "Another had a red half-moon down his forehead from his hair, with both cheeks solid red. That looked Kiowa. A Kiowa woman paints her face that way when her man rides off to war and she wants him to come back alive."

After they'd all chuckled at the picture, Longarm said, "They must have copied designs from some picture book. We've about agreed no Horse Indian ever called water agua."

Agent Conway cocked a brow and asked, "You sure you don't mean mauga, pard?"

Longarm thought back before he decided, "Might have been mauga as easily as agua. Why do you ask?"

Conway sounded sure as he replied, "Mauga means dead in Pawnee. I rode with Pawnee Bill and his Pawnee Scouts one summer, during the Sioux wars. Every time they nailed a Sioux, or vice versa, them Pawnee said the one on the ground was mauga."

Longarm and the two Comanche speakers exchanged glances. Quanah suggested, "They say the Wichita and Caddo are related to Pawnee, but would even a Caddo be dumb enough to paint himself like a Kiowa girl?"

Longarm smiled thinly and said, "I know a Cherokee who might. Were any of them mysterious cadavers tattood Wichita-style, Chief?"

Quanah Parker said, "I don't think so. You have to understand the bodies were muddy and starting to turn funny colors under all the mud and war paint. I don't think the younger Wichita have tattood their bodies as much since they rode northeast to join the Pawnee. People laugh at you when you act different on purpose."

Agent Conway suggested they all go inside and have a sit-down over coffee and cake. But Quanah said he had to get back to those cows his boys were herding up the Cache Creek Trail.

Longarm said, "Hold on, Chief. I got places to go as well. So why don't you tell me why you sent for me by name in the first place?"

Quanah grinned like a mean little kid and said, "I think you have already done what I was going to ask you how to do. We were having the same trouble as they've had up around Fort Reno, with some few Arapaho willing to be Indian Police while the Cheyenne call them woman-hearts or worse. I haven't been asking my father's people to put up with this civilization shit because I've forgotten the old ways. They have to learn new ways because the old ways keep getting them killed. I tell them they can all be blown away by field artillery, live as animals in a zoo while they tell themselves they are still proud warriors, or learn how it is that even your twelve-year-old boys can leave home and support themselves with no B.I.A. to feed and clothe them."

Longarm nodded soberly and said, "I expect gents like you to get the vote before most white women or colored men. But I know what you mean about some unreconstructed Hors Indians holding out. I talked to your Kiowa pals about acting more progressive. I doubt I made any impression, though."

Quanah Parker said, "You're wrong. Some of Hawzitah's young men have said they would like to hear more about becoming Indian Police. If we get any Kiowa into those neat blue uniforms, with extra money to spend at the trading posts..."

"I get the picture," Longarm said. "If that's all you wanted from me, like I said, I got my own row to hoe. Got to get my ass somewhere's else before that column comes back from Anadarko. You gents know as much as me about those mystery riders, who could be long gone for all I know. So let me ride back to the fort for my saddlebags, and I'll ride down the Cache Creek Trail with you, Chief."

But Quanah said, "If I wait that long there won't be much riding for me. By now that herd should be just over the horizon to the south. I want to rejoin my drovers and make sure they have the beef bedded down well east of here before sundown. It makes a mess when I try to distribute beef too close to this settlement. Some people would rather just shoot a cow and cut it up on the spot than drive it home."

Longarm allowed he'd been there when B.I.A. beef on the hoof had been divided up. He squinted up at the sun and added, "No sense in me sleeping along the trail when I don't have to. I've hired a bed under a roof at the fort. Riding alone from an early start I could likely make it to another before nightfall by loping some. Got me a mess of wires back and forth to consider in any case."

So they all shook on it, and Longarm said he'd let them know if he got any helpful answers to some of the questions he'd sent earlier about those mysterious riders.

He loped back to Fort Sill, considered reining in out front of the B.I.A. liaison office, and had a better idea. He dismounted in front of the army Signal Corps installation, went inside, and asked for the gent in charge.

When the skinny gray sergeant in the front office said that was him, Longarm introduced himself and explained his problem.

The army man chuckled, said he'd heard that Cherokee clerk just down the walk was a sissy, and agreed to contact anyone Longarm was waiting to hear from, provided he'd write it all down.

Longarm accepted the yellow writing tablet and block-printed each address and query on a separate sheet. He lettered a longer progress report for Billy Vail, but didn't say when he'd be leaving. Vail would know his own travel instructions and nobody else needed to. Asking a total stranger not to show these sheets of foolscap to a Homagy who might offer money to see them would be stretching one's luck.

He offered to send the considerable dots and dashes himself. But the sergeant said his own telegraphers could use the practice. So Longarm blocked out a few more queries as long as he was at it, and said he'd be back after supper-time to pick up any replies.

He led the spent pony on a shortcut to the stable across the now dry and solid parade. A stable hand who met him just outside to take the reins handed him a small white envelope, saying, "Compliments of the colonel's lady. They told her at the hostel you'd ridden off post, sir."

Longarm took the envelope with a nod of thanks and said, I ain't no damn officer you have to salute and sir, pard."

He tore open the envelope to discover he'd been invited to supper on officers' row. So, checking the sun against his pocket watch, he saw he just had time to make himself more presentable.

He took a bath at the hostel while he was at it, and showed UP at the Howard house before sundown, as he'd been invited, with a clean shirt and shoestring tie, his rumpled tobacco brown tweed suit, and a good splashing of bay rum. He'd picked the prairie primroses out back of the stable. Fortunately, the kind with white blossoms grew later in the summer than the pink evening primrose.

The plump Elvira Howard opened the door to him herself, wearing a paisley print dress a size too skinny for her, along with a heap of jasmine scent and, he suspected, a fresh henna rinse.

She took his hat and the flowers with a happy coo, as if she'd never seen a vacant lot overgrown with prairie primrose, and led him in to the dining room, where two places had been set at their damask-covered table. She cooed some more when he helped her into her seat. Being the colonel's lady, she was likely surprised by good manners. Then she rang a small brass bell as Longarm was sitting his own self down, and a young corporal in a fresh-pressed blue uniform came out of the kitchen and hit a brace as if he expected her to make him recite all twelve general orders.

She told him serve the first course instead.

This turned out to be cold potato and onion soup that she called a "vicious wash." He had to agree that no matter what you called it, it seemed just right for such a warm summer evening.

After the cold soup was cleared away, they had cooled-down roast chicken in a nest of iced salad greens. Then they got down to business with steak and mashed potatoes. Elvira said she hoped he'd forgive her for such a simple meal, but she had this weight problem and the regimental surgeon had suggested she and the colonel cut down.

Longarm gravely replied two servings of spuds seemed enough for one supper, and so she had them served a modest dessert of strawberry shortcake under whipped cream.

After that his hefty hostess suggested they have their demitasses with Napoleon in the drawing room. So that's where they went. Nobody named Napoleon was waiting there to drink with them. They called the fancy brandy that went with the fancy coffee Napoleon.

She told him it was jake with her if he smoked while he was at it. But he allowed the coffee and brandy would do him as he waited for her to get down to brass tacks.

It took her a spell. They had to jaw about her husband and that cavalry column off to the north, and he told her about his conversation with Quanah Parker while the shadows lengthened and nobody came in to light any lamps. He was about to offer to do it when the plump redhead took a deep breath and suddenly blurted out, "What were you doing over there with Spike Wilson's place, Custis?"

He blinked in surprise, then told her honestly enough, "I went to Shanty Town to have it out with young Quirt McQueen. That's where they told me I'd find him. I did. But he was more willing to fight with me behind my back than face to face. So I just told him to get off this reservation, and I reckon he has by now."

Elvira Howard insisted, "You wound up in Spike's back room with her, for some time."

Longarm shrugged and explained, "She was curious about me too. She said she'd been expecting more of the notorious Quirt McQueen. I never asked her who she paid off over here at the fort. So she never told me, if that's what this is all about."

The plump Elvira paled enough to notice, despite the tricky light, but said, "I don't know what you're talking about. Are you suggesting those white trash on the far side of Flipper's Ditch pay someone here at this post to look the other way?"

Longarm sighed and said, "I ain't suggesting nothing, ma'am. I just told you I never asked Miss Spike about purely War Department beeswax. I was sent here to help the B.I.A. and Quanah Parker set up the Indian Police a tad better. Running into those mystery riders your husband is out hunting was extra cheese on my pie plate. I ain't interested in anything else that might be going on in these parts, and as a matter of fact, I'll be on my way before your husband or any other officer Miss Spike might know could possibly get back. I'm only booked into that hostel down the way for one more night, and thanks to you, I'm ahead of the game at the officers' mess. I'll be riding on just after they serve breakfast in the morning."

She placed a thoughtful hand on his tweed pants and softly asked if he'd like to have breakfast there with her.

Longarm stared at her incredulously in the gathering dusk, gulped, and said, "it ain't nice to treat animals cruelly, Miss Elvira. You've no idea how tempting that offer sounds, but..."

"Our enlisted help will be leaving for their barracks any minute," she said, moving her hand up his thigh as she crooned, "Nobody else need ever know, and we have so much to talk about, Custis."

He grabbed her soft wrist, wryly aware how it felt when a gal stopped him that way, as he protested, "I'd know, ma'am, and as fair of face and form as I find you, I don't hold with adulterating married ladies."

She chuckled and softly sang:

Some folk say I am a knave. Some folk say I can't behave. Now I jack off on her grave, With my old organ-grinder!

Longarm told her flatly, "I never sang that song to you the other night, Miss Elvira."

To which she demurely replied, "I know who you did sing it to. She said you were hung like a horse and energetic but gentle. It's been some time since a man like that rode off on me to get shot off his horse in the hills of Tennessee."

Longarm could barely see her now as he quietly replied, "I was at a Tennessee crossroads called Shiloh one time. I'm sorry about your beau getting killed in the war, ma'am. But you did wind up with Colonel Howard, and like I said, I don't mess with married ladies."

She snapped, "Who did you think you were with the other night just after the dance at the club, Little Red Riding Hood? She was the wife of the regimental Romeo who got caught with yet another wife just down the hall!"

Longarm had to total the score in his head before he laughed and said, "You mean that was the poor innocent victim you talked the colonel into posting to Fort Douglas with her rogue of a husband?"

Elvira Howard sniffed, "My Morgan runs his regiment. I run everything else around here. But Spike told you all this, didn't she?"

Longarm laughed and insisted, "Honest Injun, she never did. Can't you get it through your pretty head I just don't care about that, ma'am?"

She sniffed, "I know how pretty my head is. There was a time, before boredom and the sands of time weighed me down a bit. Or might it simply be that you can't afford to be compromised by a woman you may have to testify against in federal court? Our mutual friend on her way west to Fort Douglas said you were hardly this prim with her the other night!"

Longarm started to explain the obvious as he felt himself getting hard in spite of himself. Anyone with a lick of sense could see what a difference it made when you knew for certain a gal was married up with a gent you knew to howdy. She was likely just out to make sure he'd be in no position to bear witness against her, the wicked old thing.

Then she had her hand on it and marveled, "Oh, my, is all this for little old me?"

So he decided he was damned if he did and damned if he didn't as he reeled her in for a friendly howdy, seeing she was already hauling his raging erection out into the cool shades of evening.