Longarm braced a booted foot on the porch steps and chose his words carefully before he said, "Hear me, Wadzewipa, and tell your nephew I ride with the Taibo who want to buy that land, but not as one of those who will try to set the price."
The old woman softly replied, "We know who you are. The Ute were right to name you Saltu Ka Saltu. What is it you really want from Pocatello?"
Longarm gleinced at Dame Flora, sighed, and told her, "If I say I'm doing this partly for you, can you sort of forget the details of this conversation, ma'am?"
She said her kind didn't hold with idle gossip. So he turned back to the Indians and said, "I know better than to try and trade with you like a Chinook with stolen ponies. Tell Pocatello I offer this freely, as a good enemy in war and a brother in peace. Tell him my people want that land he is willing to sell them more than they may have told him. Tell him he could get at least twice as much silver if he can hold out until the crops are sprouting after the last snows."
Wadzewipa stared silently for a time before she sighed and said, "I think you know what you are talking about, my tua. Everyone knows how much Pocatello can buy for his people, with cold and hungry moons coming, for sixty thousand dollars."
"Four hundred thousand acres are worth more," Longarm told her.
She raised a frail hand to hush him, saying, "Pocatello is not going to sell them that much land. A good seventy-five thousand are important acres. The Taibo can have the rest. Do you think he could really get a hundred and twenty thousand dollars for, say, three hundred and twenty-five thousand acres?"
Longarm nodded and said, "Easy. They want that land more than Pocatello does, and twice what they've offered is still cheaper by far than even a modest war. All Pocatello has to remember is that they will be counting on the coming winter to weaken his resolve. The B.I.A. has to get you all through the winter alive, albeit without fancy trimmings. That's the law of the land. Come springtime, with him holding out for a halfway fair price . . ."
''Hai-hai-yee! Be quiet and let me tell them!" she cried with a delighted cackle. As she did so in their own lingo Dame Flora calmly asked Longarm, "What was the name of that Yankee chap who sided with the Indians against his own kind that time, Simon Girty?"
He smiled thinly and said, "You'd know better than me, since he was a British agent, ma'am. I ain't out to scalp or even slicker my side unfairly. Less than a million dollars for half that much well-watered land is a steal and you know it." j
She smiled demurely and replied, "I'm beginning to think ' you must have some Scottish blood in you, and canny Low-lander at that. But I still don't see why you've been so free \ with your business advice, Custis."
He told her to just wait. So she did, and after a lot of good-natured chatter old Wadzewipa smiled up at them to announce, "We think your words are wise and that your heart is as good as our Ute cousins and favorite enemies I say. My nephew wants to know if there is anything we can j doforjoM."
There was, but they couldn't. The old woman's fifty- or sixty-year-old nephew seemed to care as she translated. But j
neither he nor any of the other important Shoshoni could shed light on that fool smoke talk to the south, let alone missing spinster gals. Old Wadzewipa looked mighty weepy as she sadly told them, 'They know nothing, nothing, of any missing girls, and all our young men, all, are on the reservation. We told them not to do anything silly with people coming to give us so much silver. We did not know we could get even more if we held out a little longer. Pocatello says you have his word there will be no raiding, not even for chickens, until after he gets all that silver for his people!"
Lx)ngarm asked more questions anyway. While the old woman was translating. Dame Flora asked how much of the money anyone but old Pocatello was ever likely to see.
He said, "All of it. Indian politics ain't like our own. When an Indi£Ln leader robs his own people they never speak to him again, if he's awfully lucky. I don't think it would occur to a traditional, like Pocatello, to spend one dime on his personal comforts. You get to be a big chief by acting big."
She nodded soberly and decided, "Like the old Viking or Highland chiefs. I agree with you on bankers' hearts. It was the Sasunnach who introduced such customs to Caledonia the Wild."
Old Wadzewipa turned back to sort of sob, "They know nothing about those medicine wheels either. The Tukaduka who fashioned them are gone, all gone. I am ashamed to say it, but they know nothing about a dead woman either."
Lx)ng2irm nodded grimly and told her, "I never thought Indians sending smoke signals near a dead lady they knew about made sense to begin with. You mind if I ask you a more personal question. Miss Wadzewipa?"
She told him to go on. So he said, "Some others I met down by Zion were jawing about the famous Sacajawea of the Lewis and Clark expedition. They'd been told she might still be alive, living somewhere among her own people."
Wadzewipa sighed and said, "Sacajawea means nothing, nothing, in Ho."
Longarm nodded soberly and said, "Yes, ma'am. Bird Woman is what they called her in their reports to President Jefferson. They said she was a swell translator who spoke French and Indian tolerably, and Shoshoni, of course, more fluently."
Wadzewipa sighed and said, "I know the story of Bird Woman. Some say she died a long time ago, before all her children and others she loved."
He tried gently, "They say her real name was Boinaiv, and that she never died, Umbeah."
The old woman choked back a gasp of anguish and finally croaked, "I know what is in your heart, but please don't address me as your mother. I am nobody's mother, nobody's. My skookumchuka have all become ghosts and it is not good to mention the names of ghosts. This grass girl of whom you speak no longer walks the earth."
He persisted gently, "We wouldn't be talking about her at all if we knew for certain she was dead, ma'am. Might you know whatever became of her in later years?"
It was Dame Flora's turn to choke back gasps as the older woman murmured, in a matter-of-fact way, "She was passed around by men, as such women are, while they are young and pretty. After a time men left her alone and maybe she was of more use at councils, having known many men of many nations, and speaking many tongues. What did these people who were asking about the grass girl of so long ago want with her, if ever they found her?"
Longarm said, "They wanted her to go into a Wild West show with them, ma'am. They thought a heap of my kind would pay lots of money to see the bird woman who led Lewis and Clark clean across the continent in the Shining Times."
The old woman didn't answer. Beside him. Dame Flora murmured, "Custis, you don't really think . . ."
But he said, "I don't know what to think. What do you think, Miss Wadzewipa? Have you ever hankered to join a Wild West show, in case I meet up with those show folk again?"
The old woman laughed incredulously and said, "A'a/ That must be the one thing that's never happened to me, in a lifetime that has seen many happenings! Can't you just tell them Bird Woman is no more . . . my tuaT'
He nodded and said, "Sure I can, Umbeah. Everyone with a lick of sense knows Bird Woman lies buried over at Fort Union. So it's been nice talking with you all, but now this other lady and me better get on back to the agency before they come looking for us."
Reservation Indians didn't need to have such things explained to them. So the young kitchen helper simply said he'd show Longarm and Dame Flora how to get back. As they followed him Dame Flora explained she and her servants had already been assigned to guest rooms in an outbuilding near the headquarters building. So Longarm figured the agency would have worked such matters out with his own party by now, and added that he hoped they didn't expect him to double up with anyone who snored.