The way the Utes were acting inside the makeshift palisade around the mine opening, they might’ve been willing to take guard shifts themselves. The flimsy structure could have been pushed down by any self-respecting six-year-old, and while Longarm watched, two young women came out through the gate—unchallenged, and in fact barely noticed by the guards—and helped themselves to fresh water from the stream below the Crane mine.
This was ... Longarm scratched his ear and frowned ... he wasn’t sure what this was. But what it wasn’t was anything close to what he might’ve expected to see here.
After everything he’d been told in town about the people hating and fearing the Ute tribe, well, this scene just wasn’t natural.
Aggie had actually been worried about mobs of townspeople slaughtering the Indians if the writ were served? Boring them to death seemed more likely from what Longarm could see here.
There was only one way to get any explanations. Longarm
stood and walked down in plain sight of the people below.
It was the Indian cardplayer who noticed his approach and pointed it out to the guard, who seemed to be his enemy only when it came to gin rummy.
“Aw, hell. Are you the deputy marshal from Denver?” the guard asked.
“Uh, huh.”
“Bud, Reece, Anthony? Dammit, Bud, wake up there. And you boys come outta the shack now. The deputy is here.”
“Who are you?” Longarm asked.
The man grinned and extended his hand. “Brad Crannock, Deputy. I’m Chief Bevvy’s second in command. Nice to meet you.”
“Brad, I swear I’m getting more confused all the time. I was expecting to be met with bullets here and have to fight my way in to free the Utes. Now you’re acting like we all been playing some kinda damn game.”
“Not a game, Deputy. But not so serious as we’d been told neither. I mean, hell, once we got acquainted with Wind’s people it turned out that, shit, they wasn’t wanting to scalp nobody.”
“Wind?” Longarm asked.
“Sure. The headman of the Utes here, Man Who Breaks Wind.”
Longarm chuckled. Breaks Wind. That must be Aggie’s Bray Swind, misunderstood when one of the Utes had been trying to speak English. Longarm kinda liked the real name better than Aggie’s term anyhow. “Go ahead,” he said. “Sorry I interrupted you.”
“Okay,” Crannock said, picking up where he’d left off. “By the time we got comfortable enough around the Utes to figure that out, all this court stuff was already going on. And then we learned that you federal boys didn’t want it stopped and—”
“Whoa!” Longarm barked. “Now you stop right there.” He glanced around. The other guards had come over to join them now, and they were surrounded by placid, well-fed
Ute Indians as well. “What was it you just said, mister?” “About what?”
“About the federal government wanting this shit t’ continue, that’s what.”
“Well, of course I said that. I mean, it’s true. Right?” “Wrong.”
Crannock frowned. “But we were told real plain, Deputy, that the U.S. government wanted this to play all the way. So there’d be a, uh, precedent, they call it. That’s when all the courts have to rule some particular way because some other court has already—”
“I know what a precedent is,” Longarm injected.
“Okay. Well, that’s what we’re working out here is, a precedent. Hell, it was your idea, not ours. Once we saw how things really were, well, we didn’t want to keep Wind and his folks no more. But we was told you didn’t want ’em turned loose for a while yet. Not till there was time for that Nebraska writ to be tested on appeal. And that you were only gonna go through the motions of serving the thing until then, so we should pretend to not cooperate with you. We all agreed to go along with it. Wind an’ his people been camping out here, more or less, and we been setting around looking like guards in case somebody official came by and—” ‘The Indians’ own lawyer let you get away with something like that?” Longarm blurted out. He found it a little hard to accept that Aggie could have been playacting her part of the deception all this time.
“Oh, we couldn’t let Miz Able find out. She’s a prissy kinda bitch and not always very understanding about things. She wouldn’t have gone along with it at all. Anyway, I got to say that it couldn’t of come at a better time far as we’re concerned. We got all we can pray over trying to solve the train robbery, you know, and—”
“Forget the train robbery,” Longarm said. “Who the hell told you a stupid think like that about the court precedents and appeals and shit?”
Brad Crannock gave Longarm a puzzled look. Then he commenced to talking.
“Are you sure?”
“Dammit, Boo, you oughta know better than to ask that question of a lawman. Ain’t no peace officer ever been sure of anything. Nor allowed t’ be,” Longarm said. “It’s only courts that have the privilege of being sure. But I’m sure enough that I’m willing to make the arrests and let a court sort out the right from the wrong of it.”
“I’m not so sure about the jurisdiction, Long. After all—”
“That part I am sure of. Don’t you worry ’bout that. I can claim all kinds of jurisdiction here. Might have to lay some strange charges down, but there’s reason enough. It will stick.”
“If you say so.” The Snowshoe chief of police didn’t sound particularly happy, though, in spite of the mission Longarm had enlisted him and his people to take a hand in.
But then very few people enjoy being subjected to daylong hikes in the mountains.
Longarm stepped the pace up and moved along at a steady clip, leaving a string of disgruntled Snowshoe men behind, all of them deputized twice over, first on behalf of the town and now under federal authority.
Of course Longarm was sure, though.
He’d been confused as hell to begin with. But no longer. Not since he’d had a chance to talk with old Man Who Breaks Wind.
The Ute headman hadn’t had but a few words of English— the usual assortment of whoa, haw, gee, hello fuck you—but
there was a young warrior-to-be who used to attend Sunday school with the Meeker family who had a fair grasp of the language. He was a bright kid, smiling and agreeable. He was quick to point out that he hadn’t killed anyone during the recent unpleasantness at the agency. After all, killing was wrong. He’d learned that in Sunday school. On the other hand, one of the things he was most proud of was that he personally had raped more white women than any other Ute he knew of. It was a distinction that he believed conveyed a certain amount of honor and dignity. Longarm had had to remind himself that that was water over the dam. Military and civil authority alike had exacted all the punishments that would ever be required.
Fortunately, Longarm’s interests lay in what the old headman could tell him and not in the things the youngster wanted to brag about.
The Utes were more than willing to leave the vicinity of Snowshoe now, and thus alleviate any of the fears that had been stirred up by Ellis Farmer in his newspaper or by anyone else by way of whisperings and innuendo.
After all, the band had been on their way out of the mountains when they’d seen those peculiar white men and first gotten into trouble.