Longarm reluctantly let go of her and took a deliberate step backward. “I think I …”
Angelica laid a fingertip to his lips to silence him. She stood silent and motionless, looking at him, for long heartbeats.
Then she turned and ran away into the night.
The ghostly white dog stood at Longarm’s knee watching her nearly out of sight. Then it too burst into motion, racing after her.
Not until both the girl and the dog were long out of view did Longarm turn and make his way back down to the Crow camp and Tall Man’s lodge.
Chapter 27
To judge by the morning, there might not have been any rain to mar the weather in more than a month. Come morning the sky was purest blue and the horizon empty of clouds. Longarm gave Tall Man a rum crook. Giving the damn things away beat hell out of smoking them, but so far Tall Man hadn’t taken the bait and reciprocated by offering Longarm one of the cheroots he had lost to him in the horse race. Then Longarm lighted a crook for himself as well. Having the night to dry out hadn’t improved the taste of the ugly little cigars the least little bit.
“You will go to the soldiers now?” Tall Man asked.
“Soon,” Longarm said. “I have to stop and get the saddle off that horse I left in the creek yesterday. It’s bad enough I cost the man a horse. I don’t wanta leave him without a saddle too.”
“You will need a horse to ride. You will take my painted war pony.”
Longarm shook his head. “I can’t let you risk him, my friend. If somebody has it in for me, I don’t wanta take a chance on them shooting your best horse too. But I’d like to have the borrow of the chestnut again.” Longarm grinned. “He’s a slow sonuvabitch, but at least I know he won’t trip over himself and fall down.”
“Looks fast, though,” Tall Man said with great satisfaction.
Longarm laughed. “You find the chestnut if you like. I’ll go fetch the saddle an’ be back shortly.”
“Wait.” Tall Man called out to some of his warriors who were lounging nearby around the remains of the breakfast fires, and spoke to them at length. The men scattered, only to return moments later carrying an improbable assortment of muskets, battered old Spencer carbines, rusty muzzle-loaders, and even a couple of Henry repeating rifles. There was not a gun among them that Longarm would have felt safe pulling the trigger of, but the Crow seemed proud enough of their ragtag arsenal.
“We will go now,” Tall Man said. “Burned Pot will bring the horse to you.
“What’s this? You think I need an escort?”
“Does Longarm have magic to turn bullets from his flesh? No? I think you need an escort, yes.”
Longarm looked over toward the low ridge where the rifleman had been yesterday. And decided not to argue with his friend Tall Man.
The bunch of them, more than a dozen strong, walked through grass and wildflowers to the creek where the army horse lay dead half in the water and half out. Longarm and Tall Man and two of the Crow stopped there. The rest of the warriors continued on to the top of the ridge and beyond it. There would be no ambush today. Not, at least, from that direction.
At Tall Man’s command the two Crow stripped the tack off the horse and piled it on the creek bank to begin drying in the early morning sun.
“There is one more thing, I think,” Tall Man suggested.
“Uh-huh. Reckon there is at that.”
Tall Man took out his knife and motioned to the two warriors, who rolled the dead horse over onto its other side. There were two bullet holes marring the animal’s hide, one in the chest cavity—that would have been the slug that killed the horse—and the other in the rump. “This one,” Tall Man said, pointing to the wound in the animal’s butt. He knelt, unmindful of the cold water that swirled around his knees, and began cutting into the wound channel the bullet had made in its passage.
While Tall Man was busy hunting for a speck of lead inside half a ton of cold, decaying horseflesh, Longarm wandered downstream in search of his Stetson. It must have floated far or else someone else had already found it and picked it up this morning, because there was no sign of the hat. Dammit!
By the time Longarm returned to the site of yesterday’s ambush, Tall Man and most of his men were squatting around a small fire on the creek bank roasting strips of dark red meat. And the rump of the horse had been laid open much further than seemed necessary just for the removal of a bullet.
Not that Longarm had anything against eating horse meat. Hell, the animal hadn’t been anybody’s pet, least of all his. “Did you find it?” he asked.
Tall Man grunted and stood, handing over an only slightly distorted lump of gray lead.
“Fifty-seventy,” Longarm said.
“The Piegan carry this size ball,” Tall Man offered.
“So do a helluva lot of others. Including prob’ly half your warriors.” After the Springfield Armory converted to making the much more efficient and higher-quality .45-70 models, and the army had finally stopped distributing arms and ammunition in the old .50-70 caliber, there had been, literally, tens of thousands of the obsolete models to dispose of. Virtually every state and territorial militia in the country was now armed with the old guns. Thousands more were sold to the military forces—or perhaps as often to rebel groups—in foreign nations. And more tens of thousands were distributed to almost anyone who wanted them, whether homesteaders seeking to protect their farms or Indian tribes wanting breechloaders for the pursuit of buffalo. Or nowadays, for “hunting” and slaughtering from horseback the beef rations delivered to them on the hoof.
Anyway, it was not exactly a startling discovery to learn that yesterday’s shooter had been armed with a .50-70. Longarm would have been amazed, actually, if they’d found anything else.
But he’d wanted to know, regardless.
At some point while he’d been wandering downstream Burned Pot had brought the chestnut over from the horse herd, and someone had already saddled it with the things taken off the army horse.
Longarm shook hands with Tall Man and thanked the Crow warriors, then mounted the slow but pretty chestnut and reined it toward Camp Beloit.
Chapter 28
Longarm was downright proud of himself. He made it back to Camp Beloit without a guide, over a route he’d only traveled once before, and did it without ever getting lost. A trifle confused now and then, but never actually lost.
In fact he managed to home in on the place and make his approach a single valley away from the direct route. Which, under the circumstances, he considered to be a pretty fair performance.
The chestnut proved to be a first-class road horse, and the day was bright and warm and fair. Longarm found himself in a genuine good mood as he came down toward the ugly little army camp.
He saw a small hunting party on the ridge top to his left and waved to them, receiving a friendly wave in return. Indians, he thought, although he could not make out which tribe they belonged to. He did question their choice of a place from which to look for game. Surely they had to know how close the soldiers at Beloit were, and just as surely the presence of the soldiers would scare game away. Still, that was only an assumption. Perhaps those fellows up on the ridge knew something Longarm didn’t. Or then again, maybe it wasn’t game they were waiting for but some soldier who would sell them whiskey or other contraband. Fortunately for Longarm, it was not a problem that was his to worry about.
He rode on, and within a half hour reached Captain Wingate’s headquarters.
“Longarm. Welcome. Where is the horse … never mind, you can explain later. Get down, man. Come inside here. There is someone I want you to meet. Remember when that fellow said a civilian hired a rig for transportation out here? Do you remember that?” The officer laughed. He seemed quite excited about whatever this was. “Come inside now. Hurry.”