“But I thought …”
Bad Tooth and Juanita Maria conferred; then they led Longarm to the fire pit outside the lodge where Juanita Maria stayed. “Sit. We will talk for a while, before the rain begins again.”
Longarm looked at the sky. There were a few puffy clouds building to the west, but they presented no threat. The sky directly overhead was all buttermilk and blue. He doubted it would rain again all week long judging from the look of things at the moment. He did not presume to correct the old women, though. That would have been rude.
“Would you like coffee to drink?” Bad Tooth asked. “I can make some from the present you gave to me.” A moment later, after some quick translating, she added, “Juanita Maria would sweeten your coffee with the sugar you brought.”
“No, thanks. Those things are for you, not for you to serve me with.”
“You would like water to drink?”
“I would like water, yes.” He wanted them to be able to do something for him. That would demonstrate their hospitality. And their usefulness. He suspected both were of importance to the women.
Juanita Maria hurried away to fetch a gourd of cool water for him, and Bad Tooth disappeared long enough to find a walnut-sized chunk of pemmican for their guest. Longarm saw the pemmican and felt his stomach churn. When properly made, pemmican would last for years without spoiling. Which seemed a helluva shame. The stuff, made of pulverized berries mixed with tallow and other ingredients best left unknown, looked and tasted like goat shit allowed to turn rancid. Well, tasted like he imagined rancid goat shit would taste. Except maybe not quite that good.
He accepted the pemmican, smiled broadly, and bit off a mouthful. Yeah, it was properly made pemmican, all right. Wonderful stuff.
A sip of the water wouldn’t wash the taste away. He thought about munching a handful of dirt, or possibly some horse apples, but that would have been rude. He settled for finishing off the pemmican quickly so as not to have to endure it any longer than necessary and then lighting a cheroot to cover the flavor with something infinitely better.
Juanita Maria and Bad Tooth graciously accepted his last cheroot—he’d thought he had more than enough when he left Deadwood, dammit, but with the race yesterday and now this—and broke it in two pieces so they could share the slender cigar. Longarm held a match for them and lighted his own. “May I ask you something?”
“Long Arm can ask anything. Are we not the grandmothers of this good friend?”
“You are,” he agreed, solemnly puffing on his cheroot and sending a wreath of pale smoke into a quickening breeze. “If it would not be too painful, Grandmother, please tell me how my friend died.”
“Our husband was murdered by the Crow. The Crow are not to be trusted, you know.”
“Yes, but do you know which man of the Crow murdered John Jumps-the-Creek?”
Bad Tooth and Juanita Maria conferred again. Then Bad Tooth shook her head. “It was night. Very late. We were asleep in our beds. I heard my husband stir. I saw him rise from his bed. He was growing old, Long Arm. He had to rise several times each night to go out and empty his bladder. You know how this is.”
Longarm nodded.
“I saw him rise. No one called to him. No one woke him in the night. I am sure of this, Long Arm. Juanita Maria has no more hearing than she has teeth, but my ears are as good now as when I was a girl. If someone called to my husband in the night, I would have heard it as well. He woke with the need to piss as he always did, and he got up and he went outside into the night. I saw him go. He put a blanket over his shoulders and he went out of our lodge.” She sighed, the memories seeming to overtake her for a moment, and paused to bring Juanita Maria up to date on what was being said.
“My husband stepped outside and spoke to someone. A greeting. I could hear but not well. He did not speak a name. Only the greeting. He knew this person. I heard no answer. A moment more I heard my husband’s water splash. He was an old man and no longer had a strong stream when he pissed. When he was young he could piss with the force of a bull buffalo. This night I heard the splash of his piss on the ground soft and long. And then there was another sound. Like that of an unripe melon in July being broken on a flat stone. You know the sound I mean?”
Longarm nodded again.
“I heard my husband fall. His water was not splashing no more. Never more. He fell. I heard him. He did not cry out, did not moan. The Crow intruder killed him with a war club. Dashed his brains out like those of a puppy killed for the pot. My husband fell to the ground in the mud of his own piss, and the Crow killer went away.”
“Did you hear this, um, Crow killer leave?”
“You mean did he run away so that I could hear his footsteps? No. I heard only what I told to you already.”
“And you didn’t see who it was that killed my friend John Jumps-the-Creek?”
“I did not have to see the killer, Long Arm. My husband knew only one man among the Crow. Only one who could have come so near to him in the night. That one is the one they call Tall Man, who is the leader of their vile people.”
“I see,” Longarm said. “But you didn’t actually see …
“I did not.”
Longarm thought about that for a time. He sighed. Dammit, a man is not given so many friends in his lifetime that he can afford to lose any. And now he had already lost one, and there was a strong possibility he might well lose another. First John Jumps-the-Creek. Perhaps Tall Man next. Both thoughts were lousy ones.
“Thank you for your help, Grandmother.”
“There is no need for thanks between us. You would do whatever I ask of you, as I will do whatever you need of me. That is the way it has always been between us.”
“Yes,” Longarm agreed. “So it has. Before I forget, Grandmother.
“Yes?”
“A little while ago, when I mentioned Cloud Talker, you thought it amusing that I would call him shaman of your great people. But Cloud Talker himself claims to be shaman here. Is this not so, Grandmother?”
“Cloud Talker speaks of himself as shaman, that is so. There is another, more powerful, who would be shaman. And others still who would ask the people to follow them as leaders at council and in times of war. Not all the people look to Cloud Talker to lead them. Not in council, not even as shaman.”
Politics, Longarm thought. It’s everywhere, even in a Piegan camp in the middle of nowhere. He swallowed the last of the water he’d been given and stood, smiling. When he went to say his goodbyes, though, Bad Tooth held up a hand in restraint as she listened to something Juanita Maria was telling her.
“Yes,” she said. “Juanita Maria reminds me. I told you how my husband was killed. What I said to you was true. It is also true that it was Juanita Maria who found his body and not I. I went back to sleep after I heard the things I heard. You must understand that I did not know at the time what the noises meant. I thought only that my husband walked off to talk to whoever it was he saw in the night. It was later, no one knows how long, that Juanita Maria got up and went outside. Her bladder is weak with age too, you see. She went outside to piss, and it was she who found our husband lying dead on the ground with the dogs standing watch over his body. It was she who began the death chant that woke the rest of us. But Juanita Maria did not see the killer either. Our husband’s body was cold and growing stiff by the time she found him. Is all this of help to you, Long Arm?”
“You’ve both been wonderful, Bad Tooth, Juanita Maria. You are very much of help to me. I hope I will have time later to visit with you again, Grandmothers. I have always enjoyed your kindness.”
“You are always welcome, Long Arm, in our hearts as well as our lodges.”
“Thank you.”
“Hurry now or you will be wet.”
He looked to the sky again. The clouds to the west were taller now and much closer, but he was sure it would not rain again. Certainly not today. He said his goodbyes and started hiking south again toward Cloud Talker’s lodge and the horse Longarm had left there.