The breed kid had innocently verified what others suspected about Chambrun having a Santee woman, whatever in thunder he claimed to be. The kid had called her a Nakotawiyeh, or woman of the allies, as close as it worked out in Wasichu. But he hadn't argued when a friendly stranger referred to her as a member of her own particular Santee nation.
Longarm ignored the yard dog and other raggedy kids who seemed so interested as he rode past their soddy. He had meant his remark about their chimney smoke a tad sardonically. For few white nesters could afford that much of a fire just for a summer supper, and Indians were inclined to burn less than a third as much fuel, left to their usual habits. But he knew that a prosperous wiyeh, living "Fat Cow" because her man was so successful, could be inclined to build such a fire as it drove everyone out of her tipi with their eyes burning so she could modestly brag on the way her man had been spoiling her.
He rode past the next fenced-in spread he came upon, knowing grown folks fibbed more to the law than their kids might and that suppertime was a rude time to come calling in any case.
The summer sun set later that far north than it might in some other parts. But the sky to the west was a crimson memory of the day, and the wishing star was winking down at him from the east when he saw a lamp lighting up a quarter mile ahead. As he slowed old Smokey to a thoughtful walk, he was sure that dark cluster down the road had to be the Chambrun place and that at least the lady of the house was a full-blood from a fighting nation.
Longarm had read that same crap about Sioux being afraid to fight after dark because the Great Spirit might not be able to find their ghosts if they were killed. Old Ned Buntline said Calamity Jane had ridden with the Seventh Cav as well. But the simple truth about the fighting tactics of the Horse Nations was that nobody with a lick of sense, red or white, ever ordered a full cav charge after dark because it simply smarted to ride into a solid object at full gallop.
After that, wakan Tanka (or Wakanda) translated more like Great Medicine or Big Mystery than Great Spirit, which would have been Wanigi Tanka if any old-time medicine man thought he knew who was running his own world. Nobody was supposed to come looking for your four ghosts when you got killed. Some of you went looking for your enemies to haunt them, which was why they maimed your corpse to cripple your ghost, while another part of you went to live with Old Woman in her lodge beneath the Northern Lights. Longarm agreed with his Indian pals that it might be more fun to roam with those other ghostly parts of your dead self in what some translated as the Happy Hunting Ground, although no Indian thought his ghost would have to hunt very hard, where it was never too hot, never too cold, you always felt as if you'd just eaten, and all you had to do was ride forever on a fast immortal pony.
Meanwhile, back here in the living world, dusk was considered a swell time to raid an enemy, and knowing this, most Quill Indians could be more proddy about sudden bumps in the dark than a stranger riding at them in broad daylight. So Longarm reined in a furlong out and drew his.44-40 to peg a shot at that wishing star.
As he sat his stationary mount reloading, that lamp winked out in the window of the soddy in the middle distance.
A long time later a cautious voice called out, "Who's there and what might you want?"
Longarm called back, "I'd be Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long, and I'd like a few words with Mister Wabasha Chambrun. I fired that shot lest you take me for a thief in the night."
The man in the darkened doorway of the soddy called for him to come on in in that case. But nobody struck a light inside before Longarm had dismounted in the dooryard and was tethering his mount to their hitching rail in plain view. That lamp inside was relit as he approached the front door, hands polite and Winchester still in its saddle boot for anyone to plainly see.
Wabasha Chambrun, after all that talk, turned out to look mighty unremarkable in his checked shirt and bib overalls. He could have passed for a fairly clean-cut Mexican in town, if he'd said that was what he was.
The same could not be said for the moon-faced old gal over in a corner near that lamp. Nobody but Buffalo Bill wore fringed buckskin in the summer when they didn't have to. But her blue print Mother Hubbard didn't disguise her long slick braids or the red line she'd painted along the part of her greased black hair. It wasn't true a full-blood always kept a poker face. Her smoldering sloe eyes were driving mental splinters into him where it really hurt a man as her husband said something to her in her own lingo.
She muttered, "Ohiney!" and turned her back on them as Longarm noticed that the four half-grown kids peering through a doorway at him seemed a tad less Indian and not quite as sore at him. "You got here too late for supper," Chambrun told Longarm, "and I know better than to offer you any of her choke-cherry lard dessert. But I told her to put the coffee on and she will, in a while, if she knows what's good for her. I ain't talking Santee to her to be rude. Tatowiyeh Wachipi's a good old girl in many ways, but she refuses to even try and learn Wasichu."
Longarm almost asked if Tatowiyeh Wachipi might not translate as something like Dancing Antelope Gal. Then he wondered why he'd want to ask a dumb question like that. Chambrun already knew what his woman's name meant in her lingo, and it was often surprising to hear what people might have to say when they didn't think you knew a word they were saying.
As his sullen woman cussed some more and threw a length of pitch-pine in the firebox of their cast-iron corner range, Chambrun waved Longarm to a seat at the table in the middle of their main room cum kitchen. As Longarm removed his hat and sat down, the somewhat older and burlier breed said easily, "I know why you've come. But just as I've told everyone else, I can prove I was right here in Brown County when they robbed that government office over in Fort Collins!"
Longarm nodded amiably and replied, "Nobody thinks you took part in the holdup itself. You'd know better than the rest of us how you came by that hundred-dollar treasury note you gave Israel Bedford in exchange for that riding stock."
Chambrun shook his head and said, "I came by it as honestly as Neighbor Bedford. I sold some stock of my own for cash to yet another farmer whose name was Tom, Dick, or mayhaps Harry."
"Might we be talking about dairy stock?" asked Longarm innocently.
Chambrun, caught off base, nodded before he decided it might be smarter to say, "We don't milk any cows on this spread. That's one of your customs none of us have ever bothered to learn, so I reckon you'd as soon have you coffee black than creamed our way, with flour?"
Longarm said he always drank his coffee straight. Then he took a breath, held it so his voice would come out dead level, and told the breed dead level, "I know at least one part-Santee family who keeps some dairy stock and milks 'em, just before supper and doubtless once before breakfast whether they're creaming their coffee or just selling the produce to Wasichu. I was never told they bought a fine Jersey purebred off you, Mister Chambrun. I was told they'd been given a helping hand from a generous... aunt?"
Chambrun sat down across from Longarm with a confused whoosh of wordless breath. Longarm leaned back and didn't press him. Sometimes the fibs you gave them time to make up could reveal as much as half truths you slapped out of a worried mouth.