“If I remember correctly, that tall lodge with the red and black buffalo design is Tall Man’s,” Longarm said.
“Is it? I don’t recall.”
You damn well should, Longarm grumbled silently to himself. In case you have to lead a charge against these people. Then it’ll be too late to wonder where you should focus your attack.
But that was none of his business, really. And apparently was well beyond L. Thompson Wingate’s command abilities too.
“Let’s go see what Tall Man has to say. Then we’ll ride on up the line an’ meet Cloud Talker next.” Longarm bumped his horse forward, and the supply officer—who seemed just about as completely out of his element here as a hog in a whorehouse—followed meekly along.
Tall Man grasped Longarm firmly by the upper arms in what was, for him, a warm embrace of welcome. “It has been too long, Longarm. You are well?”
“Yes. And you?”
“Two children since last we talked, but both girls.” He made a face, then brightened and shrugged. “Next year a boy. I am sure of it.”
“Yellow Flowers is carrying another child?” Longarm asked.
This time Tall Man grinned and puffed out his chest. “Not her, my friend. Yellow Flowers is a good woman and pretty, but she only gives me daughters. Now I have Yellow Flowers to prepare my food and keep my lodge but a new wife to make my sons.” His grin got bigger. “Fourteen years old, this wife, and a belly soft as mouse fur. Big belly now.” He laughed and held his hands in front of his own lean stomach as if cradling a cannonball. Or a kid. “A son. Yellow Flowers says so too.”
“I’m happy for you, Tall Man. You should be proud.”
“Yes, very.”
“So tell me, Tall Man. What is the trouble here that you would ask for me to come? You know I am always happy to visit with my friends the Crow, but it saddens me to think there may be a problem.”
Tall Man looked at Wingate, then took Longarm by the elbow and pointedly turned his back on the officer, leading Longarm away in the direction of the grazing horse herd.
After a few paces he whistled to attract the attention of a boy of ten or eleven, then spoke rapidly in his own tongue. The boy nodded and raced away.
“Yellow Flowers will prepare a meal for our guests. It will be ready soon.”
“You honor me.”
“It is my pleasure to honor a friend who would come far without knowing why he comes.”
“When you wish to tell me. Longarm suggested.
“Yes.” They paced along in silence for several minutes, hiking up a hillside that overlooked the camp in one direction and the pastured horses in another.
“We are few,” Tall Man said eventually.
“Yes.”
“Outnumbered by the Piegan five, six to one.”
“Yes.” It was an exaggeration, of course. But what the hell.
“If we were many … ah, well. Those days are past. Sickness has taken many of our people away. Others have gone to live as if white, wearing shoes and trousers and working for wages in the far cities.”
“Many?” Longarm asked.
“Too many. Our young people have become lazy. They do not want to rise up and fight the Piegan. Those of us who would fight are too few. And so we ask our friends to come and to speak for us against the lies of people who are not of our people.”
“Lies, Tall Man? What lies?”
“These Piegan, you know how they lie.” Longarm nodded solemnly. It was true. The Piegan did lie.
Damn near as much as the Crow.
“This time they say the Crow are murderers. They want to see a Crow hanged from a tree like a prairie chicken hung in the bush to age. They say if they do not have justice, they will break the pipe of friendship we gave to them when first we came here. They will break the pipe and they will kill all our people, even our children, and they will kill whatever of our women they do not want to use as their whores and their wood cutters.”
“I see.” Longarm handed Tall Man a cheroot, then struck a match to light his own smoke and Tall Man’s.
“If they come, we will fight, Longarm. We will die, but we will fight. They will kill us all, but the Piegan will know that the Crow are warriors still.”
“They would know,” Longarm agreed.
“We spoke in council. It would be better for our children to live so that there may always be Crow on the earth. It may be otherwise. But we would have you speak with those people. Your voice is our voice, Longarm. We know you will not betray us the way the men at the agency did.”
Longarm raised an eyebrow, but Tall Man either did not see or chose to pretend that he did not. “I see Yellow Flowers outside my lodge looking for us, Longarm. Come. See my new daughters and meet my new wife. We will talk more later.”
Longarm grunted an acknowledgment and followed his friend back the way they had come. He had no idea where Captain Wingate had gotten to, but apparently the blue-leg soldier was not invited to lunch. Later, Longarm figured. Time enough to look for him later.
Chapter 13
There was the sound of scuffling outside. Panting and grunting from great effort. Shuffle of feet and smack of flesh on flesh. Whatever it was, politeness dictated that Longarm ignore it. He tried, reaching into the stew pot for a chunk of pale, boiled meat that was probably, judging from the faintly sweetish flavor, young dog. It was good, actually, cooked together with yams and wild onions and some herbs and spices that he did not recognize but which tasted just fine in the combination Yellow Flowers had put together.
Outside, the grunts and now some muttering continued as at least two men and possibly more wrestled and strained.
“You honor me with a meal this fine,” Longarm said, directing his words to Tall Man, but knowing Yellow Flowers understood English quite as thoroughly as did her husband and knowing the older wife would be flattered. As for the younger wife … she was pure berries and cream. So fine there ought to be a law against screwing her on the grounds that such an act would contaminate an edible commodity. Tall Man obviously felt no such constraints, however, for the girl’s belly was as round as her eyes. She was five, maybe six months along, Longarm figured.
It would be just one hell of a shame if Longarm let things get out of hand here and some Piegan warrior decided to grab the girl—Longarm never had gotten a name for her—and knock her brains out with a war club. Hell of a shame; hell of a waste. No, sir, he couldn’t let that …
“Long Arm. Come out, Long Arm.” The voice was immediately followed by a loud grunt, the moist sound of meat hitting the ground, and something on the order of a cough, which Longarm took to mean somebody had had the wind knocked out of him out there. “Long Arm. Come.”
Longarm looked at Tall Man and motioned past the buffalo hide wall of the lodge. “Would you excuse me, friend?”
Tall Man nodded and rose first, thus giving his guest permission to leave.
Longarm sucked the last remnants of stew broth off his fingers and winked at Yellow Flowers, then ducked his head to pass through the low flap that served as the doorway for the lodge. He felt Tall Man’s presence close behind.
Outside he found two Crow warriors on the ground, one of them bleeding rather badly from a split lip, and a thick-bodied, swarthy Piegan in fringed leggings and breechclout standing over them.
“You are the one who is known as the Long Arm?” the Piegan asked.
“I am,” Longarm admitted.
“I am Cloud Talker, son of John Jumps-the-Creek.”
Which explained rather a lot. Including why a Piegan who Longarm never heard of before might have asked for Longarm to be assigned to whatever was going on here.
Longarm smiled. “Your father is a good man and a good friend, Cloud Talker. I look forward to sharing a meal and tobacco with him. It has been too long. Is he well? Is he here?”
“He is here, Long Arm, but my father is not well. He was murdered.” Cloud Talker’s arm rose and he aimed his forefinger into the face of Tall Man. “My father was murdered by this man and his people.”