“Now just back up and study what you’re saying, honey. Your father is a chief.”
“Perhaps, but if he’d been just another brave-“
“If? If? Hell, if the dog hadn’t stopped to pee he’d have caught the rabbit. Everything in life’s an ‘if,’ and we have to make do with the ifs the Good Lord gives us. Try ‘if’ another way and your mama never would have been taken by Blackfoot. Or you could have been born dead, or a boy, or some other Indian kid named Mary. You know what you’re doing, honey? You’re picking a fight with it—instead of living with all you got!”
“That’s easy for you to say. But if you’d been born a breed …”
“Well, I wasn’t born a breed. Or the Prince of Wales, either. I was born on a hard-scrabble farm to folks too poor to spit. I’d have settled for being a Hindu maharaja with elephants and dancing gals to play with, and my complexion could be damned. So don’t go cussing me for being white. It wasn’t my idea and it ain’t been all that easy.”
“What would you have done if you’d been born an Indian, or colored?”
“Can’t say. It never happened. I’d likely be another jasper, but I’d likely have managed to make do with what I was. Those ifs don’t give us much choice.”
“You’d have made a terrible Indian. You think too West Virginian.”
“Likely you’re right. Seems to me your own head’s screwed on funny, though. If you don’t like the name Two-Women, how come you almost got me shot by insisting on it over at that other hotel this evening?”
“It’s my name, the only name I have.”
“What’s wrong with your mother’s name, Witherspoon?”
“Those people rejected me. My father’s people accepted me, however grudgingly, as at least a half-person.” She shuddered as she added, “Not that I don’t have to put up with sly remarks on the reservation. Some of the older squaws got quite a laugh when my soldier boy deserted me as the cast-off squaw he must have considered me.”
“Gloria, I suspicion you fret too much over things. Your Daddy must think highly of you or he’d never have sent you on a mission for his tribe.”
She fondled him almost painfully, as she asked, “How am I as a lover? Am I really the best you’ve ever had?”
Longarm was only half-lying as he nodded and ran a hand over her moist flesh, assuring her, “I don’t like to brag, but I’ve been with some nice gals in my time and, yes, you are purely the best I’ve ever got next to.”
“Do you think you’ll always remember me as the best lay you ever had?”
“I’ll have to. Anything better would kill me, but what’s this about remembering? We’re just getting started.”
“No. After this night, you’ll never be able to touch me again.”
“I won’t? Well, sure, we’ll have to be careful once we’re near the reservation and all, but-“
“Never, she insisted, adding, “You can do it all you want tonight, if you’re man enough, but one night of love is all I give. To anyone. I suppose you think I owe you an explanation?”
He said, “No. I suspicioned it was too good for you to be really enjoying it. I heard about an actress back East who plays the same trick. She’s had men duelling over her, lowing out their own fool brains and beating on her door at all hours with flowers, books, and candy.”
The beautiful breed’s voice was downright nasty as she asked, cruelly, “Are you suggesting you’ll be different, Mr. Longarm?”
“oh, I’ll want you. I’ll likely remember this night as long as I live and some night, alone on the trail, I’ll do some hard wishing, most likely. But I don’t reckon I’ll play your game.”
“Pooh, you don’t even understand my reasons.”
“Sure I do. You’re a pretty little thing all eaten UP inside with hate for us menfolks. One fool man betrayed your love and now you reckon you can get back at us all by turning the tables. You’re playing love ‘em and leave ‘em ‘cause you got loved and left. Your revenge is to drag us poor old boys into bed and pleasure us crazy, leaving us with nothing but the memory of the best lay any man could ever dream of, and no way to ever get it again. I’ll allow it’s mean as hell, but it ain’t original.”
She sat up suddenly to snap, “I suppose, now, you’re going to try and say you lied before? I suppose you’re going to pretend it won’t bother you never to have me again.”
Longarm thought before he answered. He knew, now, that much of what he’d just enjoyed had been an act of curious cruelty.
He decided the hell with it. Real women were complicated enough and it wasn’t as if the supply was likely to run out.
She insisted, “Well, am I? Am I not the greatest lay you’ve ever had, or ever will have?”
He feigned a mournful sigh and said, “Yeah, I know when I’m whipped. If you don’t let me call on you this weekend I’ll likely wind up jerking off under your window. Can’t we make an exception, just this once?”
Her voice was triumphant as she chortled, “No. I swear by Manitou you’ll never sleep with me again. Two-Women has spoken!”
He rolled over as if to fall asleep. He figured it was the least a man could do, considering.
After a time, bored with her game, Gloria got softly out of bed and tiptoed back to her own room, the victor of her own grotesque game of revenge. Longarm got up and locked the door, muttering, “Thank God. I was afraid I’d never get any sleep tonight!”
Chapter 3
Longarm could see there was trouble long before he and Gloria reached the cluster of frame buildings in the rented buckboard he was driving. A huge crowd of Indians stood around the reservation agency across from the log trading Post the center had grown up around.
It was mid-afternoon as they arrived and the sun floated above the purple Rockies far to the west. The Blackfoot reservation occupied an expanse of rolling short-grass prairie fifty miles across, but the tracks of the Iron Horse crossed the reservation and they’d been able to get off and rent the buckboard at another town just over the horizon to the east.
Gloria sat primly at his side, less friendly than ever, having not quite managed to claim him as her latest victim the night before. Longarm had been too gallant to make the obvious remark about black widow spiders when he found her dressed and coldly formal at dawn.
An Indian ran over as Longarm reined in near the edge of the crowd, and shouted something to Gloria in the high, nasal dialect of her tribe. The girl blanched and gasped, “Oh, God, no!”
Then, before Longarm could ask her what was up, she was out of her seat and running through the crowd, who gave way with expressions of compassion for the pretty little breed.
Longarm shouted to anyone who’d listen, “What’s going on? Anyone here speak English?”
A short moon-faced man in faded denims and very tall black hat came over to say, “I am Yellow Leggings. When I was young I killed a soldier and took his horse with me to Canada. Heya! That was a good fight we had at Greasy Grass! Were you there?”
“No, I’m still wearing my hair. What’s all the fuss about?”
“I was a Dog Soldier. Now I am only a reservation policeman and they do not pay me on time. Wendigo has struck again. This time He-Who-Walks-the-Night-Winds took Real Bear. The people are very frightened.”
Longarm nodded, sweeping his gunmetal gaze over the silent, unblinking faces crowded around him. He turned back to Yellow Leggings. “Where’d it happen?”
“in his house. The almost-girl you rode in with lives there, too. I think it was a good thing she was not home last night. The Wendigo would have torn her apart, too.”
“Which house was his?”
“That one, north of the agency. The agent and some of the Indian police are in there now. I didn’t want to go inside. I am not afraid of man or beast, but I don’t like to be near spirit happenings. I told them I would wait out here and keep order.”