He reined in and stood in the stirrups to stare back the way they'd just come as he continued. "What the Indians call their Shining Times was one of those golden boom times, like the beaver trade or the New England whaling industry before Drake's oil wells back in Penn State. Mister Lo got the horse and fanned out across these plains as a wondrous new species after the white man and the horse got to these shores and multiplied some. They figure 1700 as the earliest date you'd have noticed any substantial numbers of Indians on horseback, and the buffalo were already in trouble. They were butchering 'em fast as they knew how before they had the horse, let alone the guns they admire just as much as we do."
She insisted, "There are still far more white men and they have killed far more buffalo."
He nodded soberly and said, "That's the way things work. If it was the other way, or if just Mister Lo and his horse and gun had been left to shoot the buffalo off, he'd have managed. Or it would have looked as if he'd managed. A spell back I was riding herd on these ancient bone professors up around the headwaters of the Green River. They told me these swamping giant lizards called dinosaurs had roamed out this way long before either us or any buffalo. And yet there they all lay, dead for a coon's age. So what do you reckon wiped them out?"
Godiva laughed incredulously and demanded, "How should I know? Some ancient species of animals have simply gone extinct. Everybody knows that."
Longarm settled back in his saddle as he replied, "I know mankind has been trying to wipe out the coyote, the rat, and even the bitty housefly for as long as anyone remembers. So there must be more to this extinguishing business than meets the eye. The coyote and more'n one breed of deer have been holding up swell under the same hunting pressure. So it might be something else we've been doing. Both red and white old-timers have told me the buffalo used to migrate like geese, north or south from the Canadian Peace River to the Rio Grande, as the grazing got better or worse. But now there's a north herd and a south herd, both dwindling, staying north or south of the Union Pacific's main line east and west. Must make it tough for a buffalo momma to raise her calf when it gets too cold, or too dry, on what still looks like a sea of grass to us."
Then he casually handed her the pack pony's lead and told her, "I'd like you to ride ahead for a spell. The trail ahead is plain as day. So you can't lead us too far astray."
She took the lead from him, but naturally asked how come. He told her, "May not be nothing, but I'd best bring up the rear with this old Yellowboy for now. Can't tell whether it's a kid from that tipi ring, an innocent traveler on the same trail, or something worse. But he, she, or it is raising just enough dust to make out from here, and every time we change pace, that dust does the same."
Godiva gasped, "Good Lord, you think we're being followed?"
To which Longarm could only reply, "That's about the size of it."
CHAPTER 7
The old sod house seemed to be melting like chocolate under the afternoon sun as it stood knee-deep in tawny grass atop a rise to the west of the trail. Before Godiva could ask, Longarm swung the bay he was now riding around her and softly called out, "Stay here whilst I scout it. If I'm riding into anything, drop that lead andride back to those Texas trail herders fast."
Then he moved on up the grassy slope to within easy pistol range of the apparently deserted soddy, covering its gaping doorway and unglazed window spaces with his Yellowboy. He reined in and dismounted near a rusted-out but handy seed-spreader moldering in the weeds and grass of many a summer. He tethered the bay mare to the rusty draw-bar and moved in zigzag on foot to dive through a window space instead of the doorway, roll upright on the grass growing in the roofless interior, and allow at a glance he had the one-room ten-by-twenty-foot interior to himself.
He went back outside the easier way and waved Godiva and the other two ponies in as he strode down to retrieve that bay. By the time he had, the newspaper gal had joined him. So he said, "There's nobody here but us chickens yet. We'd better hole up inside them bullet-proof walls until we see just who might be following us."
That made sense to her. As they got all three ponies inside the hollow shell, Godiva asked if he had any idea what it was doing there.
He'd had time to think about that. So he told her, "Any tell-tale trim or hardware was carried off by salvagers a spell back. These sod walls don't look halfways old enough for Spanish times. Without roof eaves to call their own, the only thing shedding the winter wet would be that thatch of dandelions and such topside. Indians pitch their tipi rings atop rises such as this one when the weather's hot and even a south breeze is better than nothing. But they camp down in timbered draws out of the wind in wintertime. Those Indians who live in houses nowadays usually pick a southeast slope, halfways down. The only folks who'd have perched a prairie home smack atop a rise like this would be white folks who had plenty of winter fuel to burn."
As he was watering the three ponies in one far corner, Godiva said she'd understood all the land around for miles to be an Indian reservation.
Longarm explained, "That's likely why the folks who squatted or homesteaded here moved on. We're well west of the original Indian Nation. This government-owned land was ceded to the Comanche and such after Quanah Parker brought 'em in and surrendered in the bitter spring of 1875. He and his raggedy little army of Comanche, Kiowa, Arapaho, and South Cheyenne had scared the army almost as much as the army had scared them with field artillery at Palo Duro Canyon. So once the cold and hungry but still armed and dangerous Indians had agreed to behave their fool selves betwixt the Washita and the Red River, the government would have cleared anyone else out."
Standing closer to the doorway, with her Spencer repeater held at port arms, Godiva quietly said, "Deputy Long, there seem to be some Indians coming."
Longarm made sure the three ponies were securely tethered as well as unsaddled, with plenty of watery oats in their nose bags, before he moved over to join her, thoughtfully levering a round into the chamber of his own saddle gun.
The quartet of Quill Indians sitting their ponies across the trail were bare-chested and had feathers and paint along with their braided hair and rawhide war shields. All but one had his legs encased in dark-fringed leggings. Longarm told the worried white girl beside him, "Kiowa. Black Leggings Society. That's something like the Lakota Dog Soldiers you may have heard tell of."
She hadn't. Lots of folks who gushed over noble savages didn't seem to know much about them. He said, "Suffice it to say the Black Leggings boys take whatever they may be up to sort of seriously. I'd like you to move across to a back window and let me know if you see anyone moving in on us from the far side. We'll know in a minute whether the ones already exposing their position mean to parley or charge across that trail at us. They're likely still trying to decide."
He was pleased to see how briskly she took up her position at one of the two rear windows, with her trim tailored duster and veiled hat somehow adding to her almost military bearing. But as she propped her elbow in an angle of the dry sod to train her old Spencer across the draw behind the abandoned homestead, she asked him in a puzzled tone, "Aren't the Kiowa supposed to be settled peacefully on this big reservation? Why on earth would they want to charge anybody?"
He held his Yellowboy more politely, muzzle down, as he stood exposed in the doorway, saying, "You just heard me tell you they looked undecided, ma'am. More than half the Indian trouble you've ever heard of was the result of one blamed side or the other making some thoughtless move the other side misunderstood. Them old boys across the way may be as confounded by the sight of us as we are by the odd way they're acting. This is the Kiowa Comanche Reserve, after all, and they may just be wondering what us Saltu are doing on it."