Longarm and the Unwritten Law (17 page)

When that didn't work he tried, "A list of riders signed up to draw government wages as nominal peace officers?"

It was the agent who brightened and said, "Oh, sure, I'm the one who pays them extra on allotment day. We have us a force of about two dozen so far."

Longarm frowned and observed, "That's hardly enough to patrol a reserve bigger than some eastern states!"

Tikano shrugged in resignation and explained, "We haven't been able to get many to join. The others laugh and refuse to obey when they see a Real Person dressed as a Saitu. Quanah says we are not to beat anyone just for laughing at us. We can only use force if we see them doing a really bad thing, but of course, nobody does anything bad when one of us is around."

He sipped more corn and continued. "In our Shining Times our old ones made laws. But they were not the laws the Great Father expects us to follow today. When young men were appointed to make everyone obey the rules that had to be obeyed, they were not the same lawmen every day. One group would be appointed to keep order during the hunts for Kutsu, I mean the Buffalo, while others would keep order in camp during the New Women dances. Nobody made others behave long enough to make a lot of people cross with him, and as I said, our old laws were not the new laws. In our Shining Times it was very important that a hunter who had hunted well would share his meat with others. Whether he slept with one woman, two women, or another man was between him and Taiowa, the one you Saitu call Holy Ghost. Our new police force would have more respect if we were allowed to take away the ponies of a man who refused to help a neighbor, instead of locking up the neighbor when he helped himself!"

Longarm finished his drink, silently declined another, and got out three smokes as he quietly said, "Nobody's asked me to write a Comanche civil or criminal code, praise the Lord. I'd best wait until Quanah returns before I set out to overhaul your whole setup. What can you tell me about them Black Leggings Kiowa, and how do you cotton to the notion of them working in cahoots with at least one dishonest Comanche patrol leader? That mysterious bunch wearing paint only hit us after I'd identified myself to old Tuka Wa Pombi and told him I'd soon be having this very conversation with you gents."

Sergeant Tikano didn't like it at all. He said, "There are other Kiowa closer, but the elder who keeps the puha bundles of their Black Leggings would be old Necomi, camped this time of the year a half day's ride to the northwest in the Wichita Hills. I'll send a rider over to see what he has to say for himself. But I don't think he will want to tell us much, whether he knows anything or not."

But Longarm said, "I'd as soon ride over for a word with him my ownself, seeing the Kiowa seem to resent you and your own riders and, no offense, I've been questioning witnesses longer."

The white agent protested, "Necomi won't tell you shit! He hates us white folks to a man, and lies to other Indians when the truth is in his favor!"

Longarm smiled thinly and replied, "That's what I meant about my being more experienced. Most of the suspects I question hate my guts and lie like rugs. But when you know how to deal the right questions to a poker-faced liar, it's surprising what you can get him to tell you."

Sergeant Tikano snorted impatiently. "The two of you are buzzing in my ear like flies above a pile of shit. Necomi doesn't speak a word of Saltu. Do you speak Kiowa, Great Saltu Lawman?"

Longarm grinned sheepishly and replied, "I talk sign well enough to get by."

The Indian said, "Hear me, if you ride alone into Necomi's tipi ring you will want to keep both hands free to slap leather at all times. Agent Jed speaks straight about Necomi. He looks down upon anyone who is not a Black Legging Warrior and saves up his hate, as the red ant saves up grasshopper legs, for you people! I don't think you want to ride over there right after putting three Black Leggings on the ground!"

Longarm got to his feet with a grimace to hand out the cheroots as he explained, "If I only had to do what I wanted to do, I'd be overpaid for pursuing wine, women, and song.

In the meanwhile I see no way to ask Quanah Parker what he wants me to do with his police force until he gets back, and by that time, I ought to be able to make it to the Wichita Hills and back, so..."

"If you ride in alone they will kill you and say you were never there," Sergeant Tikano told him with a scowl. Then he brightened and decided, "I don't think even Necomi would kill a woman of Quanah's own band, and you will need someone with you who can speak for you in Kiowa!"

Longarm struck a match to light up the three of them before it went out--that was considered good luck in cow camps--and asked, "A Kiowa lady belonging to your Comanche band?"

The Indian nodded and offered to explain along the way. Jed Conway blinked and demanded, "Hold on. You don't mean little Matty Gordon, do you?"

The Indian just shrugged, asked who else they had to trans late for Longarm, and led the tall deputy outside, pointing past the church and schoolhouse while explaining, "Yaduka Gordon is a halfbreed like our Quanah. He married a Kiowa woman called Aho when we used to feast with them after the fall hunts. They have a daughter he calls Matty because he speaks no Kiowa. Her Kiowa mother named her something as tongue-twisting as Matawnkiha because Kiowa talk funny. I think it means something like Growing Daughter in her mother's tongue. But it means nothing in our own."

They started walking as the Indian went on. "Growing up among Ho, the girl naturally speaks both her father and mother's tongues, along with your own. Quanah has made all our children go to the B.I.A. school so that none of you Saltu will be able to laugh at them or take any advantage of them in times to come."

Longarm nodded soberly and said, "Jeb Conway just allowed your chief was smart. Whatever happened to that colored army deserter he had blowing bugle calls for you all over by the Palo Duro that time?"

The erstwhile hostile shrugged and said, "I never saw him after the blue sleeves found our last good hideout. No Saltu were supposed to know about that secret canyon in the Texas Panhandle. Our Tonkawa enemies told your Star Chief Sherman where we hid among the berry trees in the depths of that big well-watered canyon."

Longarm was almost sorry he'd asked as the Indian went on. "They marched against us from every direction, with repeating rifles and breech-loading field guns. There was Star Chief Miles from Fort Dodge. Three Fingers Mackenzie marched up from Fort Concho with many soldiers. Many. Yellow Leaf Chief Price came at us out of New Mexico. Eagle Chiefs Davidson and Buell marched whole regiments at us out of Fort Sill and Fort Richardson. And you ask me what happened to one man?"

He pointed at an unpainted but neatly kept cabin and said, "That is where we are going. Hear me, those blue sleeves swarmed over us like red ants over a dead rabbit. They burned our lodges and destroyed all our winter food. They rounded up most of our ponies and then they shot them, shot them, until even the buzzards were too sick of dead meat to eat any more. Wherever we tried to make a stand they threw canister and exploding shells into us. Those of us who lived were the ones who ran away. Hear me, I admit this. We ran like rabbits run from Old Coyote, for the same reasons. It was Quanah who led us from the death trap of Palo Duro and made us feel like men again because he rode into Fort Sill ahead of us and told the blue sleeves we would right on forever if they didn't treat us right!"

That wasn't the way Longarm had heard it. But he didn't argue the point. It was just as likely the newspaper accounts of a discouraged and starving Comanche chief, pleading for his life and something to eat as they held him and his kin in the Fort Sill guardhouse for a spell, were a slight exaggeration as well. For either way, Quanah had gotten better terms for his followers, and himself, than many another hostile had managed in as tight a spot.

The harder row to hoe was going to be getting both sides to stick to them. Even the older kids had to have awful memories of blood and slaughter followed by sheer starvation on the run. Then there were all those white folks with bitter memories of Comanche war whoops and mutilated kith and kin. Sergeant Tikano broke in on his thoughts by calling out to the house as they crossed the swept dirt yard. An older gal in red Mother Hubbard, who might have been leaner and prettier sometime back, popped out the front door like a big old cuckoo-clock bird to fuss at them in their own chirpy lingo. The Indian lawman replied in English, "I think we should all speak Saltu, Umbea Aho. This is a friend of Quanah's. We call him Saltu Ka Saltu in our own tongue and Longarm in his own. We know your man is with Quanah to help him sell grazing rights. For some reason older pure-bloods make our old enemies scowl. We've come to talk to you about your daughter, Matty. Longarm has to ask old Necomi questions, and we thought Matty could help because she speaks Kiowa as well as Saltu."

The motherly Aho gasped, "My Matawnkiha is only Sixteen summers grown! She has been initiated into the Real Women's Lodge, but she has never lain with a man and Necomi's summer camp is far, very far. How can you expect a mother to send her only daughter off with this big Saltu? I don't care how you or Quanah feel about him. My Matawnkiha is too young for him!" As if to prove her point, they were joined in the dirt yard by a petite belle of any harvest dance, and as soon as she giggled up at him, Longarm had to concede her mother had a point. Matawnkiha or Matty Gordon looked more like a lovely twelve-year-old than the sixteen years she doubtless bragged upon. Her mixture of races made her look a tad more Border Mexican than Quill Indian. She had her shiny black hair bound with red ribbon and flung over one bare shoulder. The rest of her petite body was covered, sort of, by thin white flour sacking, stitched together as a shin-length summer shift and cinched around her tiny waist by a beadwork belt. Longarm knew that the beadwork was Kiowa because it tried for a floral design on that dark background. Comanche beadwork was almost always angular and abstract, to a stranger's eyes, against a white background.

But the kid's moccasins were traditional Comanche, too big for her tiny feet, with a bundle of buckskin thongs sprouting from the heels where a white rider might wear spurs.

Longarm knew she wasn't a Comanche raider out to blur his own trail by dragging thongs across his footprints. So it was safe to assume the little gal had her daddy's old slippers on.

Matawnkiha had obviously heard part of the conversation before coming out to join it. You could hear the pleading tone in her voice as she spoke to her mother in what had to be Kiowa. Longarm could pick up on a few words of the far-flung Uto-Aztec dialects such as Comanche, Shoshoni, or Ute. But it was small wonder the Kiowa had invented the sign lingo of the plains nations. Some said it was related to one of the several Pueblo dialects. But otherwise Kiowa seemed to be orphans.

Whether to be polite or just avoid cussing in Kiowa, the outraged Aho Gordon wailed in English, "Hear me! I never raised you to be just another play for the Taibo! Is that what you want? Is that why your father and I ate lean cow meat so you could go to that school and learn to read and write?"

Longarm started to assure the lady he wasn't a damned cradle-snatcher. But little Matawnkiha showed she'd been paying attention in class by bursting out in Kiowa some more, in a way that made her worried mother's jaw drop, even as you cou d see some of her resolve fading. Longarm quietly asked Sergeant Tikano what was going on. The Indian muttered, "How should I know? I told you why you'd need someone like her to get through to old Necomi. Why do you Saltu think all of us speak one tongue grunting like pigs?"

The younger Indian girl kicked off her dad's floppy moccasins and scampered off across the yard barefooted as her mother turned to them and said, "She has gone to see if the agency school teacher, Minerva Cranston, wants to ride with YOU."

Longarm frowned uncertainly and asked, "You have an agency schoolmarm who speaks Kiowa, ma'am?"

The erstwhile Kiowa woman snorted, "Of course not. She is Saltu. But my daughter and the other young people say she is very strict when school is open during the cooler moons. She will not allow the young men to pinch the girls or pull their hair, even when they laugh about it. So I don't think Minerva Cranston would let you screw Matawnkiha when the three of you made camp so far from me. I think we should go inside and have some coffee and fresh pastry now. My husband's father was a Saltu trader, and I only feel cross with Saltu who want to screw my daughter. Now that I don't think you can, I don't want to stab either one of you anymore."

She proved her good intent by taking them inside, seating them both at a table near her kitchen range, and serving huge mugs of coffee and big servings of what seemed to be pies stuffed with blackberries imbedded in beef hash. Sergeant Tikano was watching to see what Longarm would do about that. But Longarm had been invited inside by Horse Indians before, and decided their home cooking was best described as unusual instead of downright awful.

Her coffee was good. Longarm liked his coffee black. So that got around the common Indian notion that white flour was better than cream and sugar in their coffee. For that was really an acquired taste.

By the time they'd polished off the greasy pie and second cups of coffee the daughter of the house was back with a taller, far thinner, and far more severe-looking white gal. She didn't seem to find Longarm all that delightful either.

Minerva Cranston wore her mouse-colored hair in a bun. Her pale face was not really ugly but sort of plain. The wire-rimmed specs she had on sort of hid her best feature, a pair of intelligent-looking gray eyes. Longarm figured she'd been fixing to go riding. She'd put on a practical split skirt of suede leather and a hickory work shirt a size too big to tell a man what sort of tits she might have.