Longarm smiled crookedly and replied, "I might. Before we get even sillier, old son, hasn't anyone ever told you there's no such thing as a Comanche princess? The closest thing to royalty Indians had north of the Chihuahua Desert would have been the now-extinct Natchez Sun Clans, over by the Mississippi, and like I just said, they're extinct."
Shoshoni Sam said soothingly, "You know that and I know that, but what do the rubes care, and Tupombi really is Comanche. Part Comanche, I mean. Since confession may be good for the soul, I'll confess like a man that we're out here on the make for something big. No doubt you'll have heard of Phineas T. Bamum and his colored freak, Joice Heth, billed as the hundred-and-sixty-year-old wet nurse of George Washington?"
Longarm laughed lightly and said, "I have. She was a fake. The nurse died eight or ten years before I was bom, at about the age of seventy or eighty."
Shoshoni Sam nodded and said, "You're right. But what would you say if I told you we were on the trail of the one and original genuine Sacajawea, the lovely Shoshoni maiden who led Lewis and Clark to glory and the wide Pacific Ocean?"
Longarm laughed less politely and replied, "I'd say you were a gent with a wry sense of humor. I was raised not to call my elders damned fools. For openers, and with all due respect, Sacajawea may have been Shoshoni. But after that she was no maiden. She was a woman grown with a papoose on her back, and we're talking about an expedition that took place a good seventy-five years ago!"
Then he spotted Rhinegold just inside the doorway of the stable ahead, and called out to him, telling Shoshoni Sam he was just too busy with important chores to speculate on circus freaks. When that didn't get rid of the pest, he sighed and said, "I wasn't at the funeral, but they give the year of Miss Sacajawea's death as 1812 on her grave marker over at Fort Union, Montana Territory, if you'd like to look it up. I only remembered because we got into a second war with the English that same year and one of my uncles had to do something about that under Jackson at New Orleans."
Rhinegold came out to meet them, with old Angus glowering out like an ogre from the doorway. So Longarm told the guide about all the supplies to be loaded down the way at the store, and as soon as Rhinegold said he'd see to it, Longarm went on in, with a nod at old Angus, to put a halter and packsaddle on his own roan.
Shoshoni Sam was still waiting out front as Longarm led the pony from the stable. It was commencing to get tedious, and Longarm said so when the buckskin-clad pest fell in step beside him afoot to declare, "I know they say Sacajawea died soon after she led the Lewis and Clark Expedition. But that tombstone at Fort Union is as brazen a hoax as George Washington's old nanny. Fort Union was only built in 1829, and you can look that up. So answer me
how anyone by any name could have died there and been buried there in 1812?"
Longaim spied Dame Flora on the porch of the general store down the way and waved to her, telling Shoshoni Sam, "I don't have to. They've sent me out to hunt many an odd want in my time, but I'm pleased to report Miss Sacajawea ain't wanted nowhere, dead or alive."
As the two of them led the roan to the plank steps of the store Longarm felt obliged to present the freak-hunter to Dame Flora, unable to resist the chance to add, "He's searching for a missing lady as well, ma'am. A Shoshoni called Sacajawea. You might not have heard of her, being from Scotland and all, but should she turn up on the trail ahead try to make allowances for advanced years. I figure she'd be around a hundred or so by now."
Shoshoni Sam sounded serious as he insisted, "Princess Tupombi figures her younger than ninety-five, being she was in her teens as late as 1804, right?"
Dame Flora smiled uncertainly and replied, "If you say so, sir. How old might this FYincess Tupombi be?"
Longarm sighed and said, "No more than twenty-odd, if she's even an Indian, ma'am. I should have mentioned Shoshoni Sam here is a professional showman. Meanwhile, Rhinegold ought to be here any minute with your own stock. So if you'll excuse me, I'd best go in and settle up my own transactions."
He did. The old Mormon sold him some extra coffee and the same brand of cheroots at /wo-for-a-nickel. But when Longarm asked if they had any Maryland Rye under the counter, the older man shot him a stem look and warned him not to press his gentile luck just because they were north of the Utah line.
Then old Angus came in, looking even sterner, to pick up the bags and boxes Dame Flora had already paid for. So getting all of it out that one door and aboard three pack ponies was a bit awkward, although not really tough.
Longarm didn't care if they finished ahead of him. He
wasn't aiming to ride on before those other government men showed up. But he was starting to care about that. He'd have never bulled on this far ahead of them if he'd known they were poking up along the trail in wheelchairs.
There was almost as much confusion getting both his and Dame Flora's fresh supplies under cover again at the Overland stop. A couple more stable hands had come back from breakfasts at home and either helped or added to the bustle, depending on who was fussing at whom.
Longarm was content to leave his recent purchases lashed to his packsaddle in their tack room. All his really expensive possibles were stored with his McClellan saddle under lock and key up in his hired room. His badge, identification, six-gun, money, and smokes he carried with him as usual, where it wouldn't matter whether anyone else had a passkey or not. But old Angus seemed certain there was a Mormon plot to steal every packet of salt and all the waterproof matches Longarm had advised his boss lady to buy. So he had those stable hands hopping as Longarm, already finished and getting tired of watching, got his McClellan and Winchester down from his own room and saddled the paint to do some scouting.
As he was leading it around to the front, afoot, that pesky Shoshoni Sam was standing there, smoking a two-bit claro. Longarm said, "Nice stock you got in there, if that was your matched bays and dapple gray I just admired a couple of stalls down from this scrub paint."
The showy showman cocked a bushy white brow at Longarm's mount to reply, "Oh, I wouldn't call the poor brute a scrub. I'd say it was more a barb and Irish hunter cross with at least one cayuse grandsire. Princess Tupombi would be a better judge of such stock. You can hardly beat a Comanche when it comes to judging horseflesh, you know."
Longarm dryly answered, 'They do say that's the nation as first stole Spanish horseflesh way back when. Your tame Comanche looks a tad Irish too, come to study on it."
He forked himself aboard the paint before he added, "Now that we seem to have that settled, I got to get on down the road to see if I'll be wanting the hire of a room upstairs after the three o'clock check-out time they've posted on the inside of my door."
Shoshoni Sam said he didn't follow his drift. So Longarm hung around just long enough to say, "Back down the road a few hours' ride each way, while there's time. If I don't see any sign of the slowpokes I've been waiting on by noon or a tad later, I'll assume I'll still need that room tonight. Because even if they show up later this afternoon, at the rate they've been creeping, they'll surely want to bed down here for the night. This is about the last chance any of us will have for table meals and a lie-down under a real roof this side of Fort Hall."
Shoshoni Sam asked what sort of accommodations they might expect once they all got up to Fort Hall. Longarm said, "Not as fancy," and rode out. It would have taken too long to relate the history of Fort Hall to a buckskin-clad greenhorn, and in any case they'd all find out for themselves farther along.