Necomi was smart enough to picture that. He swore mightily and rode closer, protesting, "This is not sensible! We could catch them if we really tried. But they will be far, very far, by the time the blue sleeves get here!"
As they closed to within conversational distance, Longarm nodded and said, "I know. If your young men were dressed as Indian Police, those mysterious rascals would never get away. But they're not. So now all we can do is wait here and explain all this confusion to the infernal army!"
CHAPTER 16
The morose Necomi didn't wait an hour for the hated cavalry. He headed for home with most of his followers. But the more progressive or more curious Hawzitah thought his two dozen painted warriors ought to practice their scouting. So they did. Longarm had to take their word when they reported no bodies after a thorough search out at least a mile in all directions. The knoll he'd chosen for a stand was surrounded by tanglewood-choked draws, timbered north slopes, and high chaparral most everywhere else. But once real Kiowa came back with signs as small as torn-off feathers, blood-spattered grass stems, and one brass uniform button, Longarm had to concede they'd have hardly overlooked a full-grown corpse out yonder.
He was stoking the smudge fire atop the knoll with fresh green branches, with the two gals hunkered nearby, when old Hawzitah came through the blackjacks again to report, "They were riding shod ponies. Many shod ponies that dropped blue sleeve sign. Those who paint themselves do not feed their ponies oat seeds for the birds to peck at. I think all of them, whether in blue sleeves or paint, were riding police ponies. By the time those other blue sleeves get here they will have made it east to the post road to Anadarko. Nobody will be able to pick out their sign from the other hoofprints on such a well-traveled trail, even if they forget to change their clothes!"
Longarm grimaced, stared thoughtfully down at the brass button in his left hand, and said, "I'm afraid you're right. This button tells me the ones in uniform may not be wearing government issue. The B.I.A. salvages cast-off army blue for the Indian Police. But some dress more spiffy. Agent Clum, over to the San Carlos Reserve, managed to get local settlers to outfit his Apache Police in spanking new blue tunics with their own pewter badges a spell back. I'll ask the Comanche Police sergeant I know whether this button looks like one he'd want his own boys to polish."
Minerva Cranston had been listening with interest. So she chimed in. "What good would that do you either way, Custis? We've all agreed those mysterious uniformed riders don't seem to be Comanche. There are no other Indian Police on this particular reserve. So it's obvious they begged, borrowed, or stole those uniforms somewhere else!"
Longarm shook his head and said, "They might have bought 'em. You can buy such livery, from a maid's uniform to an officer's full kit, in any fair-sized city, east or west. Indians acting on their own would be more likely to just steal new duds, no offense, Hawzitah."
The old whitewashed Kiowa smiled and replied, "A fighting man takes what a fighting man needs. I count coup on all the good things I have stolen from your kind. But I think I see what you mean. Those forked tongues have cheated many people of much money. They may not have the courage to just kill Indian Police and strip them. They may just buy those blue uniforms and black Spanish hats they were wearing when our younger brothers bought their own ponies back from them."
Longarm suggested, "Their leader might not have cottoned to all that much attention from the real Indian Police. As it's commencing to shape up, the gang's been taking advantage of how thin everyone's spread out, with less than five thousand folks, red and white, hither and yon across an area the size of, say, Connecticut."
Hawzitah asked what a Connecticut was, adding that it sounded like a Cheyenne word.
Longarm said, "I think it means something like a long river in the Algonquin lingo, which your Cheyenne pals speak. All it means to us is the name of a state back East about the size of this reserve. As long as we're discussing such matters, are you certain you've never heard anyone who paints himself call anything an agua? I took it for a wounded Mex requesting some water. But you're the expert on local vocabularies, Chief."
Hawzitah shook his whitewashed head and said, "Not Kiowa, Comanche, or Kiowa-Apache. Not Arapaho. Not Cheyenne. I can't speak of Wichita. We killed all the Wichita that didn't run away. We never had many powwows with the tattood root grubbers!"
Longarm thought about this. It made no sense to go about it in such a sneaky way if you were a left-over Wichita trying to reclaim the old homestead. But the mysterious riders hadn't made a whole lot of sense no matter what they thought they were up to, and the younger so-called Pawnee Picts had stopped tattooing themselves of late. He'd hold the thought until he had the chance to ask some Caddo speaker whether they had an Indian word that sounded like the Spanish word for water.
He told Hawzitah, "I got a reason for asking a religious question. Might you know any Horse Nation that buries its dead in the ground instead of leaving them up in the sky?"
The traditional Kiowa made a wry face and said, "The agents tell us we should bury our dead, as if they were food scraps we wanted the worms instead of the winds to dispose of. Some of our people who died in the guardhouse at Fort Sill or the B.I.A. hospital in Anadarko have been buried your disgusting way. I have told my sons that should ever you people treat me that way, they must dig me up in the dark of the moon and leave me high on a windy rise, up in the sky, to let clean winds blow me away."
The old Kiowa made a wry face and asked, "Why are we talking about my sky burial? When a man has seen more than sixty summers he is not greatly cheered by such talk!"
Longarm said, "Wasn't talking about your healthy body, pard. Talking about at least a half-dozen dead strangers nobody's seen hide nor hair of since. Don't it seem to you a body buried in an unmarked grave under thick sod would attract less notice than a traditional cuss spread out on a fourposter eight or ten feet off the ground?"
Hawzitah shrugged and said he couldn't answer for crazy two-hearts.
A younger Kiowa with his face painted solid yellow and the rest of him covered with red polka dots came through the trees to shout something at old Hawzitah.
The whitewashed leader told Longarm, "My young men had spotted dust, a lot of dust, on the prairie flats to the southeast. It is coming this way, lined up with this smoke you keep playing with. I think it must be that column from Fort Sill. Don't you?"
Longarm nodded and said, "Them other riders must be long gone with no intention of investigating this smoke. They knew what I was up to before you boys run them off."
He glanced down at the two gals and added, "We could save us all a heap of wasted time if we saddled up and rode on down to meet 'em."
Minerva protested, "What if those fake Indian Police are hiding in the bushes between us?"
Longarm started to dismiss this as a stupid question. Then he muttered, "Out of the mouthes of babes, when you're dealing with the great unknown. Could you and your young men escort us down off these timbered slopes, Chief?"
Hawzitah thought, nodded, and said, "It would be grand if we met those forked-tongued Wichita or Mexicans in our own hills! But your words about blue sleeves and war paint sounded wise. I think we will just ride with you as far as the open prairie between here and all those blue sleeves!"
So that was how they worked it. Longarm piled a last armful of green oak branches on his smoky fire before he helped the two gals get the four ponies ready to go. No Horse Indian was about to help anyone else with his or her own ponies. Then, mounted on Gray Skies, Longarm led the way directly on down through the high chaparral of the sun-baked southern slopes toward what surely seemed the rising dust of a fair-sized cavalry column.
Along the way, he got in a few more words for the real Indian Police, explaining once more to Hawzitah how his own young men could track down and count coup on sneaks such as the ones they'd just brushed with. He told the older man how those Apache Police had won medals, big shiny ones, for saving the life of their agent, John Clum, in a fight with renegades. He told the Kiowa leader how the great Lakota war chief, Red Cloud, had encouraged young men to join the so-called Sioux Tribal Police. He said, "Cochise met us halfway and died prosperous in bed. Red Cloud and Quanah Parker have both been making honest money on the side, without cutting their hair or joining the Women's Christian Temperence Movement."