As he shuffled on, dismissing one spread after another as too well occupied for Miss Medusa’s assumed skullduggery, Longarm came upon a proven claim, mortgaged for fencing and well drilling, owned and occupied by one Iktoweya Nash. He asked, and Lucy said, “I know her. Pleasant enough Osage squaw, the widow of an Indian trader who filed on a spring in a timbered draw when the Indians were resettled down to the south and old Jake Nash wasn’t up to moving again.”
“What do you raise in a timbered draw six miles from your bank?” Longarm asked thoughtfully.
The gal who worked for the bank said she had no idea, and asked why anyone should care what an old squaw did in any sort of draw as long as she made her mortgage payments.
Longarm said, “I ain’t sure how close Osage is to Lakota, but that name, Iktoweya, translates roughly as Spider Woman.”
Lucy asked why any white people should care what Indians wanted to name their daughters. Longarm didn’t have time to go into Waco McCord and his confusion about the Spider Woman. He politely but firmly escorted a now-confused Lucy Wojensky downstairs, and legged it over to the town livery as soon as he’d gotten shed of her. He didn’t have time to explain to Undersheriff Brennan either. He borrowed a Winchester yellowboy and fresh saddle to go with the blue roan gelding he hired for the night. Then he rode out across the rolling moonlit prairie to pay his respects to Spider Woman.
They were both surprised when Longarm opened the door of her soddy among the hackberry and cottonwood trees without knocking. For she surely hadn’t been expecting anybody as she hunkered bare-ass in her big copper bathtub near the fireplace, and he’d been expecting an old gal more like Osage Opal.
As the much younger and much prettier breed gal covered her soapy tits with her hands and called him names in her momma’s lingo, Longarm smiled reassuringly and said, “No, I ain’t. I’m what your duskier kin call a ceska maza. The metal I wear on my chest is federal. I don’t ride for the state of Kansas. So we’ll say no more about that copper still out in the trees if you’d like to answer some less personal questions.”
The beautiful breed reached for a towel, exposing one perky nipple as she demurely said she had no idea what he meant by a still.
As she rose from the suds like Venus from the foam, wrapping her tawny young charms in a Turkish towel too small by half, Longarm shut the door behind him and said, “Have it your way. Somebody else has been brewing and distilling minni peta just up the draw. I can see why they needed a deep-bore well once Kansas went dry. That new copper still must service many a thirsty cowboy, now that there’s no Indians for your late father to trade with.”
She stepped out of the tub defiantly, insisting, “Hear me, my parents are both dead. I am called Iktola. I am a Christian. I have done nothing, nothing the metal-wearers would be interested in.”
“Little Spider, eh?” He nodded. “You’ve no idea how little known you and this place seem to be in town. Have you been selling jars to Buster Crabtree, Corky Landon, or mayhaps another lady about your own age and with the same respect for the law?”
Little Spider moved over to the fireplace to hunker down and test a coffeepot on the coals as she shrugged her bare shoulders and said she knew lots of cowboys.
When she saw the way he was grinning down at her, she quickly added, “I only sell jars, the way my daddy always did. I knew Buster Crabtree. He just got killed in a gunfight over in Florence. I don’t remember any of those other names. I don’t have anything to do with Wasichu women. They think they are better than me. They are full of shit.”
Longarm asked, “Who told you Buster had been killed? It only happened last night a good ways off.”
She said, “A cowboy came by to buy a jar. I don’t know his name. He said Buster and another rider had gotten into it with a famous gunfighter and lost.”
Longarm moved closer, saying, “I know you don’t know me as well as you know your usual customers. But hear me, I am called Wasichu Wastey by many Lakota, and the great chief Mahpiua Luta calls me his takoza. We have to talk straight with one another. It is very important. You may be in great danger if you don’t go along with me!”
The beautiful gal sighed, said “Nunway,” and let her towel drop as she rose, stark naked, and moved over to take him by his free hand.
Longarm started to explain he hadn’t meant it that way. But as she led him toward a bunk bed in a far corner, he wondered why on earth a natural man would want to say anything as dumb as that.
So he didn’t say anything until he’d shucked his own duds to join her atop her bedding, and neither one of them was in a conversational mood for a spell. But once they’d come and she was pouring coffee for them, kneeling naked by the fire, Longarm propped himself up on one elbow to declare, “I mean somebody else was apt to treat you with a lot less consideration, Little Spider. I better start at the beginning about another gal we call Medusa Le Mat.”
It took them two mugs of coffee and a shared cheroot before he was certain his new-found friend followed his drift. She seemed mighty put out that Buster Crabtree might have set her up for a lonely death in her remote wooded draw. For she’d been the one who’d been hiding the rascal after he got out of prison.
She quickly added, “Hear me, I was not this friendly with him. He was paying cash and getting nothing but food and shelter. He tried to fuck me. When I said no, he bragged about a Wasichu girl who sucked.” Longarm nodded soberly and said, “French Barbara. He tried to gun me when he thought I was taking her name in vain. He never brought her or any other gals out this way?”
Little Spider said she’d already told him that. As she got back on the bunk with him, she said, “There are now at least one man and two women left. Do you think they are coming here to kill us tonight?”
Longarm snuggled her closer and assured her, “I’m taking you back to town with me. You’ll be safe in my hotel at government expense as a material witness until we get a better handle on Miss Medusa Le Mat and her gang.”
Little Spider snuggled closer and said, “Wastey! Can we do this some more at your hotel?”
He repressed a shudder and said, “Not too openly. We don’t want anybody else knowing we’re working together like this. I’d tell that lady undersheriff if it wasn’t for your firewater business. But all in all, what Kansas law don’t know can’t hurt you, ohan?”
Little Spider agreed she didn’t want to brag about screwing white boys either. So they screwed some more and rode back to the Junction in the wee small hours.
Longarm registered the breed gal as a material witness, swearing the room clerk to total secrecy, and only screwed her once in her new quarters before he had to get cleaned up and join Pat Brennan at her place for breakfast.
They were served alone in the kitchen by Pat’s older housekeeper. As they had ham and eggs, Pat wanted to know where he’d been all night. Glancing awkwardly at her housekeeper, Pat said she’d dropped by his hotel to … ask him about something.
Longarm chose his own words carefully as he replied, “I was out most of the night asking questions of my own. That old Nesbit place hasn’t been such a promising hideout for some time. I figured Miss Medusa Le Mat and her gang might have scouted some other hideout by now.”
Pat asked if he’d found any likely alternatives. Longarm washed down some ham and eggs with coffee and replied, “Found more than one possible. None for certain. Where’s your houseguest from the Nesbit place this morning, Pat?”
The undersheriff shrugged and said she hadn’t seen Maureen that morning. She asked her housekeeper if the feebleminded kid was lying slugabed upstairs.
The housekeeper said Maureen had left for an early Mass with some young swain.
Longarm and Pat exchanged thoughtful glances. It was Pat who asked, “Mass? With the only church in town Protestant? Well, we’ve all agreed the poor thing’s not too bright.”