Rumford asked how, in that case, he was supposed to meet with Pocatello and his sub-chiefs to talk about real estate. Shoogan shook his head and said, 'Tomorrow, maybe, after you and all your friends have had time to bathe and change your clothes as guests of the agency. Hear me, you will want to get some sleep, a lot of sleep, before you meet with our tribal council in the morning, if it doesn't rain. Every powamu there will want to make a speech, a long speech, and you will be expected to listen respectfully to every word, even though most of them don't speak a word of Taibo."
For some reason, that didn't seem to cheer up the gents from back East worth mentioning. Longarm kept his own council amid all the confusing jabber until they'd all reined in out front of the main agency building, where the Shoshoni-Bannock agent and other whites were lined up along the veranda to greet them. More than one face in the crowd looked familiar, and Lx)ngarm was glad. But he waited till he and the Indian Police were leading Westmore over to the nearby lockup before he asked Shoogan when Dame Flora and her two servants had made it in.
The Shoshoni said, "Yesterday, on lathered ponies. They said they had seen smoke talk and felt afrsiid. The flame-haired woman who has such a high opinion of herself told us they were looking for Taibo women who came far, far, to marry Mormons. This was a stupid place to look for such stupid women, if you ask me. We told her we didn't know anything about it. She said everyone she talks to keeps telling her that. I am glad I don't have such a woman. I would have to beat her all the time if I ever wanted to eat. All she does is talk, talk, talk about other stupid women nobody knows."
Westmore wanted to talk some more as Longarm handed him a couple of smokes, warned him he'd best make them last, and said he'd let him know, later, where the powers that be might want him delivered to stand trial and for what. When Westmore intimated he might be able to suggest some angles on that dead lady Lx)ngarm had found near the medicine ring,
Longarm told him it was a mite late and that he meant to ask some Indians.
He wasn't surprised when, stepping back outside with Shoogan, he learned the Agaiduka Shoshoni didn't know much more than he did about those mysterious stone circles. Shoogan said he'd heard a mysterious people called the Tukaduka had laid out medicine wheels for mysterious reasons, back before Spider Woman had led the first Ho into this world from somewhere more mysterious.
As he started to untether his hired paint from the hitching rail out front, Longarm paused thoughtfully and said, "One of those crooks you said you'd store in that springhouse for us answered to Duke and spoke Ho fluently. So run that Tukaduka by me again, pard."
Shoogan shrugged and said, 'Tukaduka just means sheep-eaters. I don't know why our old ones called the ones who were here before us sheep-eaters, but they did."
Longarm decided, "Somebody must have noticed 'em eating sheep, likely wild bighorn sheep if we're talking about way back when. And ancient folks who nailed enough mountain sheep to matter with no more than bows and arrows would rate my admiration as well. So might tuka or duka mean what?"
Shoogan said, ^'Tuka means sheep. Duka means those who eat. What are we talking about?"
Longarm shrugged and replied, "Likely nothing. Old Duke did eat lots of grub. But even if that was how he got his nickname, I can't connect him up with any Tukaduka medicine wheel, and I doubt lost tribes were sending smoke signals down that way in any case."
He mounted up, resisting the impulse to ask a Shoshoni whether the ancient Tukaduka might have practiced human sacrifice, the way the Pawnee had before they'd given it up without being asked. A lawman who asked questions for a living learned not to ask them of folk who couldn't know the answers.
He rode the short distance back to the main agency building, and dismounted near the roan he'd left there with other tethered ponies. He switched saddles out there in the gathering darkness in case he wanted to head out soon aboard a fresher mount. Then he mounted the plank steps and strode on into the good-sized main hall, where he found his own dudes flustering around Dame Flora MacSorley by the baronial stone fireplace where a pitch-pine fire was acting sort of frisky this evening as well.
Senator Rumford called him over and introduced him to both the Scotch lady he already knew and a far homelier middle-aged Indian agent of the male persuasion. When Longarm explained where he'd just been, the agent suggested he head on back to the dining room and tell the squaws to rustle him a late snack, explaining, "You just missed a simple but hearty serving of planked salmon and home fries with serviceberry pie."
Longarm said he'd do that. He didn't feel up to explaining why he'd had to finish his chores first to an asshole who called his own Shoshoni women squaws, as if they'd been Arapaho. Dudes such as Dame Flora and the senator had excuses for not bothering with any Indian lingo. But you'd think a cuss getting paid to look after Shoshoni would learn at least a few simple words.
As Longarm strode off, the senator called something about a big powwow with Pocatello in the morning. Longarm didn't care. He was more surprised, and not too happy about it, when the auburn-haired Dame Flora chased him clean out of the room, saying, "Wait for me. They just told me you found the remains of a white woman."
He said, "Sent her in to the county seat for the coroner to do something with her. I was fixing to mention her to you later, on a less uncertain stomach. Whether she was one of your missing gals or not, she wasn't a topic I'd want to take up over a meal."
But Dame Flora had already eaten, or maybe had had time to get more interested in the topic. So she tagged right along,
insisting they'd told her about that infernal locket. So as they entered the smaller dining room, where a couple of Shoshoni pias were clearing the long table by lamplight, Longarm got out the small gold-washed locket to hand over to the pretty but sort of pesky Dame Flora.
One of the Indian gals came over, hesitantly, as if to see what they wanted. Longarm tried to tell her in English, and when that didn't work he patted his belly and tried, ''Duka. Me ka duka this evening, ma'am."
It worked. She brightened, blew Shoshoni bubbles at him, and commenced to lead him off with her as Dame Flora suddenly sobbed, "Oc/i, cha 'n'eiU But it is! It was poor little Una Munro you found murdered and scalped by Indians down the trail, and we three must have ridden right past her remains!"
He tagged after the Shoshoni gal, with the Scotch gal after him, as he explained, "She hadn't been scalped, or even stripped now that you mention it, and we found her half buried a good ways off the trail, ma'am. Never would have found her at all had not I been scouting others who might or might not have been the ones who put her there."
By then they were back in the darker, steamier kitchen, where the waitress gal was sort of chanting in Ho at an older and far fatter gal who shot Longarm a dirty look and finally managed to convey, in words he couldn't quite follow and hand signs he knew better, that she was willing to rustle him up some grub if he didn't expect cheese with his pie, Taiowa damn it.
He signed back that coffee and sandwiches would be fine with him as Dame Flora kept pestering him about rotting corpses. He led her over to a comer where they'd be out of the way as he told her "I don't know why any Indians would murder an unarmed immigrant gal and not even take her pretty locket. She could have lost her shoes most anywhere. I don't see how Shoshoni sending smoke signals that close to where she lay could have known she was there. I might not have, had the wind been blowing another way. Most folks
who've hidden a body a good ways off on open range try not to attract attention to it. Soon as I wrap myself around some coffee and grub I mean to go ask some Shoshoni about those Shoshoni smoke signals."