The older Indian snorted, "You call these empty plains and wooded hills without many deer land? Hear me, in Palo Duro Canyon, over by the Shining Mountains, buffalo, deer, even elk grazed among the soapberry trees while our ponies grew fat on grass that stayed green all summer!" Longarm smiled thinly and said, "You should have seen Dixie before the war, or the emerald fields of Erin before the potato blight. But if we can stick to what you have here, Quanah's getting a dollar a head off trail herds passing through and leasing grazing rights at six cents an acre a month. You're right about it being bleaker here than over in that Indian Eden. But one cow needs at least five acres to graze, so add it up."
As the Indian tried to, Longarm said, "No offense, but as both Quanah and Red Cloud must have noticed, Texas trail hands are more likely to take a man in uniform for a peace officer than a raiding hostile. After that, having regular police gets around the problem of a mixed bag of folks on a big reserve who may not know every bare-chested cuss who yells at them by name."
He lifted the entrance flap as he quietly added, "The Cherokee, Chickasa, Choctaw, and such have had Indian Police and private property for a good while now."
He didn't listen as the older man behind him muttered darkly about Cherokee not being Real People anymore. He was more interested in the two frightened faces staring at him in the dim interior of the guest, or perhaps confinement, tipi.
A smudgy little cow-chip fire was burning on the sand in the center. Old buffalo robes and some cleaner-looking blankets had been spread around the circle of twenty-two poles. There was no sign of their own bedding, saddles, or that damned old saddle gun. As he hunkered down across from the small breed and pallid schoolmarm, Matawnkiha said "We're hungry."
Longarm told her their hosts, or captors, had said something about feeding them, and added, "It seems we're stuck here for at least the night. They may have been trying to scare me into making a break for it. I told 'em I'd told the Comanche Police we were headed over this way. I don't reckon they'd want to hurt any of us close to home."
Minerva Cranston said, "I'm afraid I'm going to be sick. I don't mind the smell of tallow, and linseed oil's not so bad, but mix them together and ... Never mind. Why do you think they're behaving toward us in such a confusing way, Custis?"
Longarm sniffed uncertainly. "Got to cut down on my smoking. Now that you mention it, I do suspicion somebody wiped some of that army issue tent dubbing over these old greased hides. Reckon buffalo tallow is tougher to come by these days."
She insisted, "You haven't answered my question, Custis."
He shrugged and replied, "Don't have a good answer. I keep telling folks how dumb it can be to guess at easy answers when you just don't know. They might be behaving so confused because we've confused them. They might be trying to figure how they want to cover up something they know all about."
He asked the ladies if they cared if he smoked. When neither told him not to, and Matty said she wanted one, he handed her a cheroot, lit his own as well, and brought them up to date on his conversation with the elders of the Black Leggings Lodge.
When he'd finished, Matty said she was still hungry. Then she said something that sounded dirty in Kiowa as she stared past Longarm at the round entryway behind him.
Longarm turned to see a grinning kid of eight or nine peeking in at them. The kid said something in Kiowa that made Matty laugh in spite of herself. She explained, "I asked the fresh thing what he wanted, and he asked when are we going to take off all our duds and get dirty. He says he's never watched folks like you and Miss Minerva do it."
The schoolmarm sighed and said, "I used to admire the way Indians disciplined their children without corporal punishment. After some time among them I'm not so sure."
Matty wound up to tell the little shit what a shit she thought he was. But Longarm had a better idea. He fished out some pocket change as he told Matty what he wanted her to ask of the unsupervised brat. She did, but after he'd tossed the kid a nickel and he'd scampered off in the gathering dusk, she told him he'd just seen the last of both the kid and his money.
Then she added, "They told us before you got here that Necomi had said to feed us. It's after dark and my mother's people are used to early suppers. Do you think some big pig has helped himself to meals meant for us?"
Minerva sighed. "That tallow's kept the linseed oil dubbing from drying out all the way. I don't think you're supposed to put linseed oil on leather to begin with. I don't care if they ever feed us. Do you think someone would shoot me if I went outside to throw up?"
Longarm got out another cheroot, lit it from the tip of the one he was smoking, and when she silently refused it, threw it on the cow-chip fire between them to stink the place differently, saying, "A nose that delicate must be a heavy cross to bear, Miss Minerva. I said I could make out that army dubbing once you brought it up, and I agree it don't smell like roses, but there's worse smells than that in this imperfect world. How did you ever get by back East in a city running on horsepower and cooking with soft coal?"
She sighed and replied, "Why did you think I applied for this job out West? You're so right about it being a cross to bear. Like a lot of myopic souls, I seem to have developed my sense of smell beyond a comfortable level. How I wish things were the other way, with my eyes this keen and my nose not so delicate."
He didn't have any call to mention that eagle-eyed gal he'd met in Montana who spotted cracks in every ceiling, spots on every rug, and called a man a liar when he swore he'd shaved that same day. He asked Matty what she knew about the old rascals holding up their supper so long.
The little Kiowa breed only knew the bunch over this way by rep. She said Necomi was considered a true-heart, in a stubborn old-time way. She'd heard old Hawzitah didn't count all the coup he was said to be entitled to. She said his fellow Kiowa considered him an odd cuss in other ways. He was always asking questions, curious as a young kid about what everyone was up to, even the blue sleeves over at the fort. When the black blue sleeves had been there, he'd asked them all sorts of questions about what it felt like to live like a Saltu without being a real Saltu. Matty said she didn't see why anyone would want to ask such stupid questions, and that even the black blue sleeves had laughed and called Hawzitah the Kiowa Professor.
She said the medicine man, Pawkigoopy, acted crazy and had some of her elders scared of him. She couldn't say why. Nodding at her white teacher across from Longarm, she said, "I don't think I would like to be saved and dunked in water. But Umbea Mary seems to be a friendlier spirit than Piamumpitz, who eats little children when they play outside at night!"
Longarm said he didn't think it was too late for that kid to be out fooling around, and asked her to tell them more about the spooky medicine man.
She said, "I don't live over this way. All I know is what I hear when some of her old friends come to visit my Kiowa mamma. I've heard them say it's not a good idea to ask Fawkigoopy to chant over you or your children when bad spirits get into them. They say he asks for presents afterwards, or for the younger mothers of sick babies to sleep with him. They say the men would beat him for behaving that way if they were not so afraid of his tu-puha."
Minerva had been trying to learn the Comanche dialect since she'd been teaching their kids, and so she moved her lips in thoughtful silence and then murmured aloud, "Black medicine? Would that be anything like black magic?"
Longarm nodded and said, "Different nations call it puha, wakan, matu, and so on, but we translate it as medicine because that's about as close as we can get to a sort of mishmash of cure-all and luck on demand. Decent Indians ain't supposed to use it to hurt instead of help. But I reckon a warrior with strong medicine guiding his arrows could be said to be hexing the poor cuss he's aiming at. Comanche and other Ho speakers such as Hopi or Shoshoni hate what we'd call witchcraft and can't abide it in a medicine man. But these Kiowa have a rep for admiring a good malediction chanted in unison. So I reckon you might call a spiteful cuss like Pawkigoopy as much a sorcerer as a medicine man."