the luck of the draw from time to time."
Then he was moving west through other bare alders along the east-west wooded draw. It wasn't easy. Where alders grew at a\\ they tended to grow like giant porcupine quills a human body had a time fitting between. That was doubtless why some called such thicket's "alder hells," and back home in the wetter slopes of West-by-God-Virginia, alder hells got big enough and thick enough to trap and kill a lost stranger much the way a sundew plant could trap and kill an unwary hover fly. But out this way in dried country the springy broom-handle trees didn't slow him down that much, and he began to miss the hell out of them as soon as they petered out to leave him moving along a damned old sandy wash with his Winchester at port arms, chambered and cocked.
He hadn't gotten near enough west when even that meager cover petered out on him and he had to belly-flop and crawl up a damned old grassy rise, aiming for the half-ass cover of some rabbit bush and soap weed along the crest above him.
He took off his hat and risked a look-see between two clumps. He saw that he and McBride had been right about the source of all that smoke talk. Nobody seemed to be smoke-talking just then, but he could make out the fainter shimmer of rising smoke nobody had tossed wet grass on yet. He couldn't say whether that meant a pause in the conversation or whether the conversation was over. Before he could work out the best way to work around to the far side from where he lay, he saw someone else already had. A trim red figure on a spunky gray pony was tearing along the skyline fit to bust with a free hand upraised in the High Plains peace sign. Tupombi was too far out for him to hail. But he could hear her distant squawks as she charged the wispy column of blue smoke, and he surmised from all those "Kaf" sounds she was requesting somebody hold their damned fire.
Hoping to draw at least some of the fire his own way, since he knew he was way out of range, Longarm broke cover to wave his hat and yell pleas and curses at all concerned.
Tupombi spied him and be saw her wave back. But she never reined in until she'd made it to the very rise that smoke was coming from. When Longarm saw she was still alive, staring all about as she sat her reined-in pony that close to the smoke column, he muttered, "Aw, shit." and headed over to join her there.
It took a spell, crossing more than one grassy draw afoot, and then they were close enough to converse. So he called out, without breaking stride, "Thanks a heap. I was out to catch 'em, not spook 'em all the way back to the Snake River. What got into you, girl?"
She called back archly, "You, my big strong skookumchuk. I did not want them to kill you. That was what I was shouting just now."
He trudged on up to her, muttering, "I wish you hadn't. I was trying to sneak up on 'em."
To which she rather smugly replied, "Don't be silly. You are not a real person, as pretty as you are. My mother's people sneak up on your kind. It's not supposed to work the other way around."
He lowered the hammer of his Winchester, but swept the horizon around them with his thoughtful eyes as he muttered, "I reckon you never heard tell of Roger's Rangers, clean back in the French and Indian Wars, or Sullivan hitting those Mohawk towns like a row of dominoes on orders from General Washington. Some of our own boys talk as overconfidently about riders from back East too, forgetting where the steeplechase and thoroughbred racing was invented."
He stepped around her pony for a better view of the dying signal fire. He'd been right about them burning mostly grass with a couple of cow chips to keep it going. There was little more than a pile of smoldering gray ash now. The chalky limestone rocks laid out all across the rise were at least as interesting. Some were out of place or half hidden by weeds, but one could still make out the wheel-like pattern, about twenty yards across, as if a monstrous stone wagon
had busted down up here one time.
When he asked if she knew what it meant, Tupombi shook her braided head and said, "No. I have seen puha like this on the other side of the Shining Mountains, but they were not made by my mother's people. So I don't know what they mean."
When he mused aloud about medicine wheels he'd seen himself, in the company of other Horse Indians who couldn't say who'd made them or why, Tupombi suggested, "You'd better get up on this horse with me. There is a smell of rain in the air and we are far from shelter over this way."
He sniffed the freshening breeze and allowed she could be right, despite the way old Tanapah still shone. Then he sniffed some more and told her, "Hold the thought. There's somebody dead around here."
Tupombi looked away, murmuring, "I was hoping you might not notice. Maybe it's just an old coyote. In any case this is a. puha place and it's bad puha to bother anything that's been dead that long!"
He started walking into the breeze, searching for the source of the stink as he insisted, "I'm paid to pester dead folk who've died mysteriously and that's no critter lying dead just upwind. It only takes one war to teach one's nose the difference and . . . Yonder."
Tupombi rode no closer as Lx)ngarm stalked over to a pile of dried brush wedged against the wind between two clumps of greener soap weed. When he got there he saw someone had kicked a few bushels of dirt over the remains as well. But the dry, almost constant winds had exposed two withered feet, clad in black silk stockings, and a more horrible sight at the other end, where most of the moldering head lay exposed.
There was no way to say whether the woman had been young or old. What was left of her maggot-eaten face was just plain ugly. Her hair, a sort of mousy brown, was still pinned neatly atop her skull. A glint of gold caught his eye, even as he was trying not to puke. So he dropped to one knee beside the rotting remains to gingerly move some weed stems aside
and gently finger the little heart-shaped locket the dead woman had been wearing under a summer-weight bodice of fake black silk. Real silk wouldn't have tattered so soon. Longarm got a good grip on the evidence and said, "I'm sorry, ma'am. But nobody is ever going to identify you on your looks alone, no offense, and they seem to have overlooked this personal item someone who knew you in life might recall."
He gave a good yank. The gold-washed chain of mild steel was a good deal more solid than the soggy cartilage of her spinal column. So he had to say he was sorry again when her head fell off.
He rose to his feet, letting the still-solid chain dangle as he opened the tiny heart. There were tiny tintypes inside of a silly-looking young gent and a plain young gal with her hair piled the same way. Heading back to where Tupombi still sat her pony, Longarm called out, "I think I just found one of the missing Scotch spinster gals. If you'd like to carry me back to where I left my own mount, we'll rejoin the others and see about a waterproof tarp to wrap her in."
Tupombi looked startled and asked why. He said, "Because she's dead and starting to fall apart, of course. I ain't being all that sentimental, albeit her own kith and kin would doubtless want her buried Christian rather than scattered across open range. I want some doc to look her over and see if he can figure out how she wound up so disgusting when all she came looking for was a Mormon husband."
Tupombi asked, "Does it really matter how those Shoshoni might have killed her?"
He answered, "I'm still working on who might have killed her. I doubt the ones sending smoke signals from nearby did it. I figure she's been dead close to a month. It's hard to say exactly when a body's been covered over and then exposed for unknown intervals. At any rate, them old boys you just chased away from here with all that yelling couldn't have laid out yonder medicine wheel either. So they might not have known anything about her at all."
The pretty Comanche breed smiled radiantly down at him as she said, "I see why the Utes call you Saltu Ka Saltu, Custis. I would hate to have you after me if I had done something bad. But I know you would never say bad things about me if I was innocent, whether I was Ho or Taibo."