Then he thought back harder and decided, "That crazy old colored lady they call the Bee Witch! It has to be a lamp in a window she has facing the shore, and she was tied up right by the bank. So how do you feel about asking our damned way at least?"
He led the gelding after him through the riverside growth as the moon winked on and off through the scudding clouds above them. That rain had blown over and it seemed to be clearing up, if that was how you wanted to describe soggy footing and dripping leaves all about. So the moon had burst through to beam down on the rambling shanty out on that log raft as Longarm spotted the plank stretched ashore and politely called out, "Ahoy, yon houseboat! This here would be a mighty wet U.S. Deputy Custis Long, bearing neither warrants nor malice for anyone on board. Now it's your move."
He'd been expecting most any move than the one busting out of the shanty, wailing like a banshee and flapping what seemed to be big old buzzard wings at him as his mount spooked and fought the bit while Longarm stood his ground and just called, "Howdy, ma'am."
The raggedy black apparition moaned in a spooky voice, "Go away or I'll turn you into a toad and have you for my supper!"
Longarm chuckled indulgently and replied, "I thought it was frogs, or their legs leastways, some folks ate, ma'am. Far be it from me to call a lady a big fibber, but I'm more worried right now about catching my death in this wet outfit than I am about getting turned into a toad."
"Don't you think I can do it? Don't you know I'm the Bee Witch?" the spooky shadow cackled.
Longarm gently replied, "I heard your Santee admirers called you something more like Sapaweyah, ma'am," figuring that it might sound needlessly familiar to toss in that part about her being witko, or crazy. Indians looked on being crazy with more respect than white folks or, as in her case, colored folks. Some Indians, though not all of them, considered insanity a sign of at least a possible meeting with a wanigi, good or bad. No medicine man would go out on a limb and say for certain a raving lunatic was in good with the spirits, but on the other hand, it might be just as safe to treat such a confused and confusing person with respect.
This one waved her wings, or sticks threaded through shaggy black tatters, anyway, and desperately moaned, "Go away! I have spoken!"
That wasn't exactly the way an old colored lady, sane or insane, might have put it. So Longarm nodded and said, "Evening, Miss Matilda. You say the Bee Witch is feeling poorly tonight?"
The dark figure out on the raft let her fake wings drop and stood frozen in confusion, or perhaps fear, without answering. Longarm let it ride until he saw it would be up to him and gently said, "I ain't using wakan sapa, Miss Matilda. They told me your old boss lady had a younger orphan gal out this way helping out, and no offense, you talk more like an Indian lady than a colored lady, even trying to talk spooky. Would you like to talk more sensible now?"
She didn't answer, but it sounded as if she might be crying out there under that raggedy witch outfit. But Longarm insisted, "I told you I was federal law, and you seem to be afloat on a federal waterway instead of private property. So I could likely make it stick if I was to board you without a fussy search warrant."
He let that sink in before he added, "On the other hand, I told you true this pony and me are cold and wet. So would you like to talk a mite more sensible about that and give me less cause for suspecting you of Lord knows what?"
The small spooky figure sobbed, "I have done nothing wrong, nothing! If I show you where to shelter your horse and give you both food and water, will you keep my secret?"
Longarm almost asked what her secret was. Then he decided he'd cross that bridge after he made sure old Smokey wouldn't cool lame on him and the Kellgrens. So he said he didn't ride for the B.I.A. or anyone all that interested in bee culture, and that brought her ashore, showing more of her head in the moonlight as she murmured, "We can't keep our pony cart and burro aboard the raft. I'll show you where I pitched the tent this time."
Longarm followed her along the bank a ways to where, sure enough, an old army perimeter tent stood back in the sticker bush screened over with cut branches. The small gal had explained along the way how much safer she felt out on that raft after dark with all sorts of Wasichu moving up and down the river or that county road to the west.
It was far warmer inside the thick beeswax-dubbed canvas because a small burro had been in there, giving off dry heat through all that summer rain. It got easier to see in there after Longarm struck a match and lit an oil lantern hanging handy on the center pole. The two-wheeled cart she'd mentioned took up close to a third of the remaining space. But he saw the blue roan would have enough room if he tethered it next to the burro. Both brutes being geldings, they just nickered at one another while Longarm exchanged the bit and bridle for a more comfortable rope halter and peeled off the wet saddle and sopping blanket.
The gal said he could drape both over the side rails of that pony cart. So he did as he saw she was pouring cracked Corn in the elm-bark trough the two brutes were close enough to share. In the soft lantern light the head sticking out of the raggedy black costume she had on wasn't spooky at all. The fine bone structure under her tawny complexion and raven's-wing hair said she was at least part Wasichu. She hadn't painted the part in her braided hair Santee-style either. Dressed up more sensibly, with her hair pinned up more fashionably, she might have passed in town for a high-born Mexican gal had she wanted to. He was still working on why she wanted to be taken for a crazy old colored lady.
He never said so. He said he'd sure like to wipe old Smokey down with some dry sacking if they had any.
She nodded, and worked her way around the far side of the pony cart to fumble out some feed sacks and, better yet, a tattered but clean and dry horse blanket. Longarm wiped the blue roan as dry as he could manage while he told her she was an angel of mercy and asked if she'd like to tell him some more about the Bee Witch now.
She started to cry. He went on wiping until he saw no improvement for the effort, and then he fastened the horse blanket over the corn-munching critter and quietly suggested, "I met up with another beekeeper down to the Indian Territory a spell back, preserved in wax like a bug in amber. Of course, the slow learner he had working for him when he died naturally wasn't bright enough to just bury the poor old gent, or did you sink her in the river?"
The young breed gal wailed, "I did nothing at all to Sapaweyah Witko! Come with me and I will show you she is not aboard her house raft dead or alive. I don't know where she is. I have not seen her since the moon when the wolves run together."
Longarm frowned thoughtfully down at her and demanded, "Are you saying she's been missing since the other side of our New Year's Eve, Miss Matilda?"
The girl nodded. "She said she was going into New Ulm to tell her own people something on the talking wire. If you wish to call me by name, I am called Mato Takoza."
Longarm nodded soberly. "I stand corrected and I sure am wet. You wouldn't have a stove, or at least a peg to hang some of these wet duds on, aboard that house raft, would you, ma'am?"
She said she had both, and asked him to douse that lantern before he followed her outside. So he did. Neither his mount nor her burro seemed to care. As he followed her back along the same path Mato Takoza explained, or bragged, how her grandfather had been a war chief almost as important as Little Crow himself, before the blue sleeves had killed him in the fight at Birch Coulee. Longarm had already figured her name meant something like Grandchild of the Bear. It might not have been polite to point out none of the ranking chiefs the milita or regulars bragged on had been called Mato. It was possible he'd been a Big Bear, a Medicine Bear, or some other sort of Bear. It was even more likely he'd been an enlisted Santee remembered as more important by his kith and kin. Longarm had yet to meet anyone whose daddy had been killed as a Confederate private, the C.S.A. records being sort of scattered since the war, and Indian war records had been hampered by neither modesty nor words on paper.