Longarm on the Santee Killing Grounds (18 page)

The purser suggested, "Mayhaps they're planning on a mining operation instead of cattle or wheat?"

Longarm didn't feel the call to chew that bone. He knew the old Santee reserve had been surveyed for minerals of any value before the B.I.A. had offered it to them in exchange for their original woodlands closer to the Great Lakes. The most valuable thing this corner of Minnesota had to offer was dirt, rich prairie dirt that grew crops better where it lay deepest, and surely even an illiterate would be likely to look over any land he meant to file a homestead claim on before he ever signed his X. So what in thunder might have made the oddly prosperous Wabasha Chambrun feel he just had to homestead a quarter section with rocks sticking out of it and no decent boat landing on the nearby river?

When he voiced his puzzlement, the skipper just shrugged and told him, "You just said at least some Indians don't think the way we do. The Santee could have kept all the land you see off to the west if they'd only behaved halfway sensible. The B.I.A. had built trading posts and even schools and dispensaries for 'em, at two different agencies, so's they wouldn't have to travel too far. Old Little Crow and the other chiefs got to live in fine frame houses, just like us white folks, only better. They paid no rent and got their roofs fixed free when they leaked. So what did they do, just because they had to wait a little longer for their government handouts in wartime, in the middle of summer after a good spring hunt, for Gawd's sake?"

The purser explained, "We were working together on an earlier and slower steamboat called the Saint Anthony at the time. We were the ones hauling army supplies up to Fort Ridgely after Little Crow and his warriors tried in vain to take it, the poor ragged assholes!"

The skipper snorted, "Flowers in their hair, for Gawd's sake. Hit all along the river treacherous and dirty, with most of the first whites killed the poor fools who'd thought they were on good terms with the Indians."

The purser grumbled, "Trying to be on good terms, you mean. The two-faced redskins got the first white settlers they killed into a friendly shooting match, then attacked the poor simps once their guns were empty and it was the Santee's turn to shoot!"

The skipper growled, "They slaughtered four hundred whites the first day. More than half of 'em women and children. Fifty-odd whites near the downstream agency, who'd never trusted Sioux they knew better, got away to spread the alarm. Just in time. Scared settlers flocked in to Fort Ridgely on the far side of the river. Forty-eight of the soldiers had already been ambushed and scalped, leaving a garrison of thirty troopers to protect over two hundred scared-skinny civilians with no earthworks or even a stockade betwixt them and the so-called friendly Indians!"

Longarm could read, and had read some about the events that were so vivid to the older men after all those years. So he was the one who said, "By the time Little Crow worked up the nerve to attack Fort Ridgely, they'd been reinforced by another hundred or more real soldiers, along with some twenty-odd civilian volunteers who did have time to throw up some breastworks, and let's not forget the modest but ferocious field artillery pieces on hand. I read someplace the bursting shells killed lots of Santee."

The skipper grumbled, "You'll have read in other books how the only white killed three days later down by New Ulm was a young girl caught in the cross-fire too. But old-timers who were there make it thirty-six whites killed and most of New Ulm in ashes by the time the Sioux gave up. The whites gave up too, and stampeded down the river to Mankato, at the big bend, as soon as they dared break cover!"

The purser, who seemed to enjoy figuring numbers said, "Eight hundred or more whites killed outright, a hundred and seven whites captured, along with a hundred and sixty-odd breeds and friendlies who'd been treated just as rough by the time they were rescued. At least thirty thousand whites in all had been pushed off their homesteads, dead or alive, and they figure less than half the white gals raped ever owned up to it when they were taken back from the savage bastards!"

Longarm muttered he'd read there'd been some argument as to just how many of those hundreds of condemned ringleaders had deserved to hang or not. He knew what these old Minnesota white boys would have to say about the Episcopal missionary, Henry Whipple, who got Abe Lincoln to commute the sentences for all but the likes of a brave called Cut Nose, who bragged from the scaffold how he'd killed Wasichu men, women, and children until his arm got too tired to kill any more. Old Billy Vail hadn't sent him over this way to find out how folks felt about the long-gone Santee. Although he'd have to take that smoldering hatred into account as he tried to decide the guilt or innocence of an odd homesteader with what seemed at least a few Quill Indian in-laws.

CHAPTER 16

The Kellgren spread had its own steamboat landing, man-made but natural-looking at first glance. They'd graded the slope gentler than the river current would have, and then paved it with cobbles to keep it that way. The Moccasin Blossom didn't tie up there to put one man ashore. They simply nosed in as far as they could, and swung the gangplank the rest of the way so Longarm could run down it with his saddle and possibles on one shoulder and make it to dry ground with a squishy skip and jump. Some passengers who hadn't known he was aboard came out on deck to watch bemused. But nobody seemed excited about his getting off out there in what seemed the middle of nowhere.

The skipper had told Longarm he'd find the Kellgrens a tribe of amiable Vikings playing cowboys, with anyone who wanted to play Indian well advised to stay the hell away from them.

But in point of fact they didn't turn out that odd. Longarm had no sooner toted his McClellan over to that country road than he was met by a couple of kids in their teens on cow ponies almost as blond as they were. When they asked who he was and why he'd come, Longarm flashed his badge and explained his need for the hire of a horse.

They said he'd have to ask their elders over to the house, where he'd be just in time for coffee and cake if he didn't want to upset their mamma. One of them took the McClellan from Longarm's shoulder before he could slip the Winchester from its saddle boot. But as it turned out, they were just trying to be helpful.

When they broke through the last of the riverside timber and got to the country road, Longarm saw the three-strand fence on the far side extended well over the usual quarter mile in either direction. The mighty small town or mighty big homespread atop the rise ahead was at least a full furlong from the gate. Being afoot, Longarm politely opened and shut the gate for the two young riders. When he commented on the size of their spread on the way up to the white-trimmed cluster of housing and outbuilding, the one packing his saddle for him bragged on how big their old man preferred his surroundings. The kid said they'd come west from a regular-sized homestead in Wisconsin after making it pay but getting to feeling crowded. When Longarm mildly observed they seemed to have way more than a quarter section fenced out this way, the other kid bragged on the open range to the west they grazed as well. The one with Longarm's saddle explained, "Pappa paid cash for already proven claims, half a dozen in all. It was just after Custer and his boys got wiped out further west. Pappa read in the same papers how these more Indian-free parts were getting wiped out by grasshoppers. So he figured nesters who'd been grasshopper-broke might be willing to sell out cheap-"

The Kellgren kid who'd bragged on their herd chimed in. "Them bugs were still at it when we hauled in here back in '77. You never did see such hungry grasshoppers. They'd eat all the leaves off all them trees back yonder and grazed all the grass you see now, right down to the bare dirt. Mamma and the girls had to hang the laundry to dry indoors that first Summer, lest them greedy bugs chew holes in the sheets for the starch!"

Longarm quietly observed he'd seen grasshopper plagues. They occurred about every seventh year between the Rockies and the Mississippi. The kid who'd bragged on their grazing told him cows were safer to raise than crops in grasshopper country. For in a pinch a hungry cow could graze on grasshoppers, and the grass grew back thick as ever once the plague had passed.

The kid packing his saddle waved expansively to the north and said, "Both the Linderboms and Ericssons lost their newly planted orchards as well as cash crops by the time Pappa made 'em an offer. He paid 'em more than he really needed to, seeing they were our sort of folk. They were down to living on eggs, since chickens are the only stock that really thrives on grasshoppers alone."

Longarm idly asked who they'd bought out to the south. The kid with the saddle innocently replied, "Oh, we got the Alden and Marvin spreads for next to nothing."

Longarm didn't ask why. Anglo-Saxon country folks could be just as quick to take advantage of fool furriners.

By now they were close enough to the two-story shingled-frame main house to make out the four full-grown and gaggle of smaller figures watching from the front veranda. As they got within earshot, the Kellgren kid who wasn't packing any load rode forward at a lope to doubtless gossip some about their unexpected visitor.

So nobody asked to see his badge when they invited him to come on in and tell them all about it while he had some coffee and a slice or more of Momma's ostkaka.

Gunnar Kellgren looked a lot like Santa Claus must have before he got fat and his full beard had gone from wheat-straw to snow-white. His old woman, Miss Frederika, was a big motherly gal in blond braids and flour-dusted pinafore who looked as if she still liked to screw when nobody was watching. The two of them spoke tolerable English, but a tad more singsong than their pure American kids.

The cheerful kitchen of their stout frame house was painted in the pale sunny way most Scandinavians fancied, with everything that wasn't buttercup-yellow either mint-green or baby-blanket-blue. The coffee they served him at the yellow kitchen table was black as sin. The ominously named cake turned out to taste like cheese and cherries, only sweeter. As he enjoyed two whole slices Longarm told them more about his needs. Gunnar Kellgren said they'd be proud to lend the government a good mount, and that Longarm could just leave it in that livery near the landing in New Ulm when he was done with it. For his boys rode into town more often than their momma and the pastor of their church felt they ought to.

When Longarm said he was on an expense account and offered to pay for the hire of their pony, the expansive Swede looked hurt and asked, "Do we look like barley growers, Deputy Long? We don't keep our cows in the house with us but there are plenty out back, along with many a draw filled with firewood and running water across both our lawful holdings and the open range we graze almost entirely our own selves."

Longarm said he was sorry if he'd insulted anybody. Then, the free loan of that pony settled, he innocently asked who else might be sharing the open range off to the west.

Kellgren sounded just as unworried when he answered, "Other cattle folk named Runeberg. They're all right. Pretty little Helga Runeberg has been running the outfit since her own daddy died. It's a shame she'd be a tad too old for Junior here. If our two families ever married up they'd leave a grand cattle empire to our grandchildren someday!"

Longarm allowed he'd heard Helga Runeberg ran a mighty big outfit from her own spread along the Sleepy Eye. Then he added, "That would be better than a score of country miles to the southwest, wouldn't it?"

Kellgren nodded casually and replied, "I said it would make a grand empire. Like ourselves, of course, Miss Helga only holds a section or so she has to pay taxes on. But none of the farm families moving in along either our river or Miss Helga's claim more than a half mile back from the roads to market. Field crops can't be driven down off the rises on its own hooves, and after that, this part of Minnesota is laid out just right for cattle folks and farm folks to live and let live."

Longarm didn't need to be lectured on the advantages of drilling in spuds or grain on bottomland while grazing beef or dairy stock on the higher rolling prairie between river valleys. So he washed down the last of his second slice of ostkaka with the last of his coffee, and made a show of taking out his pocket watch to see how he was doing as to time.

The burly cattleman took the obvious hint and rose from his side of the table, suggesting they go have a look at the riding stock. So Longarm picked up his McClellan from the kitchen corner and trailed after Kellgren and his older boys.

All the ponies in the corral out back looked well fed and spunky. Longarm said so, and added that since they knew their own stock better than he did, he'd leave the choice to them.

One of the kids wanted to lend Longarm a chestnut with four white stockings. But old Kellgren snorted and said, "The man said he wants to cover a good bit of ground, a lot of it after dark, not rope or cut, Junior."

He pointed out a bigger blue roan and told Longarm, "You'd want old Smokey there. Sixteen hands at the shoulder to pack a man your size through thick and thin. There's only one thing, though. I see that bridle lashed to your saddle has a stock bit and Smokey is a lot of horse. Would you care for the loan of a meaner spade bit?"

Longarm said, "Not hardly. I got a lot of wrist, and old ladies call you names when you ride a pony into town foaming pink."

Kellgren said it was up to the rider to decide such matters, and told his boys to saddle Smokey up for their guest. As they were doing so, with the big blue roan objecting some, Longarm asked Kellgren more about his neighbors to the south, since he'd have to pass more than one on his way to the Chambrun spread.