When Longarm saw the rascal was aiming at the moving grass tips above him he froze on his belly again, but gripped his Winchester by its warm muzzle to reach as far away as he could with the butt plate, and then rolled it through the grass in apparent agony as he wailed, "Oh, shit, I give! I
give! You got me bad and I need a doc!"
The one called Pearly bawled, "I'll give you one, you fucker! Are you still with us. Kid?"
Neither Longarm nor the one he'd just shot replied, of course, as Pearly shot the shit out of nothing much where Longarm had been rolling that butt plate about. He had it back in place against his right shoulder by the time Pearly let up, called again to his sidekick, and then wailed, "Aw, shit. Pappy ain't gonna like the way this turned out at all! Come on. Kid, quit funning me and say you only ducked, all right?"
Longarm just lay low.
Another million years later he heard hoofbeats, two ponies moving off on the far side of those aspen judging from the echoes all around.
Longarm still lay low. He'd played the same old Indian trick in his time. It was an old Indian trick because it had worked so many times.
The sun got high as it ever went and began to roll down the west slope of the clear autumn sky. Despite the altitude and his recent promise to that grasshopper, Longarm was really commencing to despise President Hayes and the reforms that called for damned old frock coats the damned sun could bake a man in as if he was a damned potato wrapped in damp adobe. For if it was true old U.S. Grant had been asleep at the switch while his crooked cronies had robbed him and the rest of the country blind, at least a federal deputy had been able to get by in no more than a shirt and vest back then, as long as he combed his damned hair now and again.
There was no safe way to roll out of his tweed coat without a grass stem or more giving away this new position. As if to prove that, he heard those damned ponies coming back, or leastways, he heard two ponies coming at a trot, sounding more as if they were on that dirt road just a few yards off. But Longarm never let on he might still be alive until he heard someone rein in and call out in a female voice, "Is
that you I see with one hand out on the roadway, Deputy Long?"
He stayed put but risked calling back, "Not hardly, ma'am. I suspicion you're looking at someone I just shot, and watch those aspen over to your left as you dismount on my side Indian-style."
The unseen gal laughed harshly and allowed she always did. So Longarm wasn't too surprised when he propped himself up on one elbow for a better look at the so-called Princess Tupombi. She was already demurely afoot in her garish cigar-store-Indian outfit, holding the leads of her dapple gray and his roan cayuse. He figured out why his saddle was aboard the roan instead of the paint before she called out, "Are you hurt? When your pony came back without you I thought it best to come looking for you with a less-jaded mount."
Nobody seemed to be shooting at either of them at the moment. So Longarm got gingerly to his feet and headed her way, calling a mite softer with a brighter smile, "That was mighty considerate of you with old Tanapah really feeling his oats this afternoon."
It didn't trip her up as planned. The pretty little thing gave a happy gasp and proceeded to give him what for in Ho, despite her big blue eyes and more Celtic than Comanche features.
Longarm laughed sheepishly and stopped her as he began to shuck his coat without letting go of his Winchester. "Hold your fire, ma'am. I know Tanapah is the sun father, that ayee means yes and ka means no. But after that I don't know much more Ho than any other Saltu."
She sighed and said, "My mother's people call your kind Taibo more often. Who's that Taibo sprawled in the grass over there?"
Longarm said, "I'm still working on that. I thought Saltu was the proper word for stranger. Princess."
She explained, "Saltu is a word, not the word. Don't you call a Mexican a dago as well as a greaser?"
He cocked a brow and replied, "I get along with 'em best by referring to 'em as Mexicans. I take it Taibo is a tad worse than Saltu."
To which she demurely replied, "Of course. Didn't they tell you my mother's people were Penataka?" and he silently chalked that up as another point in her favor.
He had it on good authority that the Penataka or Honey Eaters were the biggest and hence most common Comanche clan. A show-off with a fair grasp of Indian lore might have been more tempted to claim membership in the smaller but more celebrated Kwahadi, who'd ridden to glory under Quanah at Adobe Walls and in other noisy shindigs.
He was commencing to feel she might be only half fake. Buffalo Bill was half fake these days, yet he really had killed Yellow Hand and all those buffalo before he'd taken to dressing so odd and bragging on things he'd never done.
Longarm took the reins of his roan from her with a grateful nod and lashed his rolled tweed coat behind his McClellan as he tersely brought her up to date on his recent misadventures. She followed afoot, leading her barebacked gray by the single line of her rawhide hackamore or bitless bridle. He'd already noted how Quill Indian she rode, despite the odd coloration of her eyes and deerskin duds. His bit-led roan commenced to fuss as he led it closer to the scent of fresh-spilled blood. He whacked its muzzle just enough to gain its undivided attention, and got them all a mite closer before he turned to ask the pretty breed, "Would you mind both brutes again just a minute or so? I see where my hat landed now, and we'll want this dead one lashed facedown across my saddle as well."
"Speak for yourself," she said in with a wrinkle of her tawny pug nose, adding, "He tried to kill you. Let him rot. I'll help you drag him further from the road if you're concerned about the few who may come this way before the carrion crows have had a good meal of bad Taibo."
He moved off through the deep grass to retrieve his
capsized Stetson and put it back on before he explained on the way back to her, "I'd like to have others look him over before the crows eat what's left of his fool face. I seem to have upset a white-trash clan back in Zion and this jasper and his sidekick made mention of someone they called Pappy, who seemed to want me dead. Personal. If this poor soul turns out to have been named Robbins, I can work out his pappy from there. Easy."
With the pretty breed minding the ponies he hunkered down to go through the dead man's duds, adding, "If nobody in Zion can identify him I'll have a bigger wonderment on my plate and . . . Hello, I see he took out a library card in San Antone one time. Outlaws do that a heap. But I doubt his name was really Miles Standish. Albeit his hat over yonder reads sort of Texas as well and . . . Yep, I sure want the folks in an Idaho county seat to look this cuss over before he starts to spoil."
She helped mostly by holding Longarm's Winchester and soothing both ponies as Longarm manhandled the still-limp body up over and facedown across his McClellan. As he was lashing the cadaver securely in place with latigo strips, she observed he seemed to have a knack for such gruesome tasks. To which he could only modesdy reply he'd had some practice.
She said, "I'll bet you have. You are the lawman my Ute cousins call Saltu Ka Saltu, aren't you?"
He shrugged and said, "I reckon. I arrested a mucky-muck with the B.I.A. who'd been held over from Grant's Indian Ring one time, and the Utes seemed to find that sort of astounding."
"The stranger who is not a stranger," she mused with a sort of Mona Lisa smile. "I can see why they were astounded. My father was Scotch-Irish, and a decent man, but you people fucked the Utes above and beyond the call of duty, after they'd helped you round up the Navajo back in the sixties."
Longarm winced and replied, "I wish you wouldn't say
anybody helped me personally round anybody up. That was Kit Carson they sent after wayward Navajo that time, and Carson himself complained to Washington when the B.I.A. under Grant let the Indian Ring get a few Ute leaders drunk and grabbed all that land out from under the whole nation. Do you reckon that gray of your own would be able to carry the both of us at a trot, Princess Tupombi?"