Shoshoni Sam sighed and said, "You sound as bad as Madame Marvella. She's been pestering me to turn back ever since she heard about them smoke signals."
Longarm meant it when he quietly suggested, "You could do way worse than listen to the lady, Sam. The road ahead keeps getting rougher, with or without Indian trouble. I should have told you sooner that Fort Hall's just a dinky agency with few facilities for travelers."
"We can't turn back before we find out whether Sacajawea is still alive and willing to join up with us!" the older man shouted.
Longarm shrugged and said, "Seems to me she'd have joined up with someone, or at least written a book by now, if she felt so inclined and that ain't her buried up to Fort Union. I mean, all sorts of folks who've been west of the Big Muddy more than a week have written a heap of books and given heaps of lectures, dressed in snow-white beaded buckskins, whilst the one and original Sacajawea did see way more of the West, in its Shining Times, and they say she learned how to read and write, in English, French, and Lord knows how many Indian dialects."
He reached for an after-breakfast smoke, the new Mormon help being accommodating, as he elaborated. "We're talking about a woman who had access to President Thomas Jefferson in the flesh, and we know he was mighty interested in Indicui matters. So how come Sacajawea was never asked to jot down just a simple dictionary of the half-dozen Indian lingos Lewis and Clark agreed she was fluent in?"
Shoshoni Sam said he didn't know. Tupombi quietly suggested, "Maybe she didn't want to. It's bad puha to even
repeat some words in my mother's language. It couldn't be a good idea to freeze them forever, always, on paper."
Shoshoni Sam said that sounded like a mighty poor way to preserve any lingo. Longarm said, "I think I can explain. We ain't the only ones who think some words have more medicine than others."
The showman demanded an example. So Longarm looked away from the lady in their presence as he softly suggested, "You might try substituting shit for manure, in mixed company, if you'd like to see how some words hit harder than others meaning the same thing. Miss Tupombi here can correct me if I'm wrong, but I've also been told it's bad medicine to say anything about anyone you ever knew who might be dead."
Tupombi nodded soberly and said, '^Ayee, that is true. I can remember my poor mother as Laughing Dancer, because that was how we said her name in Taibo. But all four of her ghosts would be upset with me if I ever repeated her name in Ho!"
Longarm added, "Meaning there's a tendency to change such words as laughing or dancing to, say, amused or prancing. A pal of mine who studies Indians thinks they started out with no more than two or three distinct lingos. The hundreds recorded so idi are the combined results of changing words on purpose smd, like we just heard, not wanting to pin anything down on paper for keeps."
Tupombi nodded and said, "The Shoshoni ahead used to speak just the same as my mother's people. We can still understand one another clearly. But in the time since our bands first parted we've begun to sound a little different. I find it even harder to understand a Paiute, and I'm not sure the Chihuahua are real people at all."
Longarm assured her Chihu2ihua didn't think much of Comanche, and turned back to Shoshoni Sam to say, "There you go. Even if you did find an old lady who remembered Lewis and Clark, she'd likely refuse to say their names out loud and then where would you be?"
They were still arguing about it when Bishop Reynolds came in with a jovial-looking gentile in batwing chaps and a hat almost as floppy, whom he introduced as Greg Lukas, their county coroner when he wasn't raising beef or doctoring sick ponies. So Longarm took his leave of Tupombi and Shoshoni Sam to drift over by the town dump, where they were fixing to plant the second stranger Longarm had shot it out with so recently.
As the three of them walked the short distance Bishop Reynolds told Longarm he'd explained the gunplay as best he knew how. When Longarm commenced to give his own version, the coroner cut in with an easygoing, "I heard. Stands to reason a man has every right to gun a son of a bitch who's just shot the stuffings outten his goose-down mattress, even when he ain't a federal lawman."
When Longarm said he was glad to see they'd taken him at his word, Lukas chuckled dryly and said, "Oh, I reckon we had us some solid evidence as well. The bullets we dug outten your hired bedstead were all .45 caliber, as were the chambers of his two pearl-handled six-guns. Both his guns were empty when you caught up with him, by the way. But that's all right. You couldn't have known, and the slugs you put through him were all .44. We dug 'em out of the plaster earlier. So everything you told Deputy Reynolds here was in total agreement with the material evidence. I don't suppose you've figured out why either of 'em might have been after you?"
Longarm shook his head and truthfully replied, "I can't figure out who either of 'em could have been. Nobody from these parts has been able to identify either and I've searched my brain, more than once, for any wanted outlaws who describe at all the same."
Lukas indicated a path between two monstrous piles of rusting tin cans as he said, "We've taken photographs of both of 'em, for future reference. I'd still like you to have a last peek, by broad day, at the one you gunned last night in such murky light."
Longarm agreed that made sense. As the three of them came out the far side of the pass through the range of rusty cans, Longarm saw a couple of other gents, dressed cow, on their feet by a pile of fresh dirt near the center of a weed-grown and trash-iittered quarter acre. As they drew nearer he spied two feet, wearing no more than wool socks. The poor cuss he'd shot lay in just those socks, his pants, and his bloodstained shirt on the far side of the pile. The shallow grave they'd dug for him lay just beyond. Lukas called out, cheerfully, "Just hold the thought, boys. This lawman who kilt the rascal would like a last look at the same."
The grave-diggers stepped back. Longarm strode closer, paused, and stared soberly down at the Mona Lisa smile of a total stranger. He already knew the one called Pearly had been packing no identification at all, even fake. He looked to have been around twenty-five, or a tad older than the one he'd called Kid. When Longarm asked about that one, Lukas pointed with his chin at a slightly mounded bare patch, saying, "Already feeding the worms. They planted him late yesterday the way you arranged. He was already turning funny colors, I'm told, and the county can't afford embalming for drifters nobody cares about."
Longarm gazed about the disturbed and sort of disturbing plot as he couldn't help noting, "Bishop Reynolds here already told me that. I see you don't bother marking the graves neither?"
Lukas shrugged. "Why should we? We got a fair idea where we've planted someone recently, and nobody never comes to put no flowers on the graves. We got us regular Mormon and gentile churchyards here in Zion, Deputy Long. Nobody anyone ever gave a shit about winds up here in Potter's Field."
Longarm nodded. "Well, I can't say I was all too fond of this poor bastard, whoever he might have been. I sure would like photo prints of both of 'em before I leave, but as of right now, your guess is as good as mine."
Lukas nodded and one of his hired hands nudged the body with a boot heel to roll it, stiff as a plank, into its grave. It landed facedown. Longarm was just as glad when they commenced to kick and then scoop dirt in on top of the cadaver they were planting without even a muslin shroud. It helped some to reflect on how they'd have left him for the carrion crows had things turned out the way they'd planned the day before.
Walking back to town with the coroner and the others, Longarm casually asked just how many unmarked graves they could be talking about back yonder. Lukas thought before he answered. "Two dozen tops. Some before my time. You don't get many unclaimed dead folks in an out-of-the-way town like this, even though it is the county seat."