Hawzitah answered dubiously, "I have heard all this. Maybe it is true. I will think about it."
Then he said, "Today I am painted for fighting in the old way. So I think this is about as far as my young men and I should ride with you!"
Longarm felt no call to argue against common sense. So they split up amid some cottonwoods where a draw fanned out across the rolling prairie, and Longarm led just the two gals toward that mustard haze of trail dust betwixt them and Fort Sill.
They saved the platoon led by a callow second john at least an hour and change by meeting them miles short of the hills. The patrol leader answered to Second Lieutenant Standish, and he naturally wanted to ride on and see if they could cut the trail of those fake Indian Police. He allowed the army had been getting reports about the rascals from all over. It usually took folks a day or so to figure out they'd been taken, after they'd paid off peace officers who were said to be paid by the B.I.A.
Longarm shook his head and pointed out, "Kiowa who know this range better, no offense, assure me the rascals have made it over to the post road by now. They could just as easily be headed for Fort Sill as Anadarko by now. So why don't we all just see if we can make the fort by supper-time? I promised to bring these ladies back, and by now the little one's momma ought to be having a fit!"
Standish, to his credit, thought before he asked, "Wouldn't it be awfully stupid to ride into an army post in fake uniforms after a firefight with a federal lawman?"
Longarm nodded but said, "Be even dumber to ride that way to the B.I.A.'s main agency at Anadarko. A white soldier might be slower to spy a fake resident of this reserve than a rider for the real Indian Police."
Standish nodded grudgingly, but said, "If I was one of those crooks I think I'd put on my cowboy outfit!"
Longarm smiled thinly and said, "I suspicion they dress more like Indians just traipsing about. Down where Cache Creek runs into the Red River they seem to have had some of the outfit in uniform, with at least a dozen more pretendin' to be quill dependents in a nearby tipi ring. Thinking back, with my eyes half-shut as I try to picture that setup, I ain't dead certain that what I took for women and kids had to really be women and kids. What do you call them Lakota boys who dress up and even walk like weyas? That's what Lakota call their women, by the way. Don't never call a Lakota weya a squaw."
Standish promised he wouldn't and said, "I've heard of those Sioux fairies. I find Indians sort of confusing. You think that could be what we're up against down this way?"
Longarm chuckled dryly and said, "My point is that it's easy for anyone to look like anything at a distance. It wasn't long after I talked sense to what I took for Indian Police that what I took for Kiowa in feathers and paint tried to keep me and a newspaper gal from going on to ask possibly embarrassing questions."
He rode on a bit further with his eyes shut all the way. Then he opened them with a nod and said, "That tipi circle down by the Red River wasn't set up traditionally. It was set up the way you or me might set up a tipi ring, with all the doorways facing one another as if they were seated around a table."
Standish squinted into the distance as if he too was picturing an imaginary Indian camp. "Looked about right to me," he decided.
Longarm said, "Me too, just passing by. Both of us are white men, not Horse Indians housewives. I'm commencing to doubt the bunch I met to the south were real Horse Indians. Such riders, even if they left their womenfolk behind, would be inclined to pitch a traditional camp, with every tipi open to the sunrise, not some Cuffier and Ives notion of an Indian village green!"
As they rode on the young officer, new to both the army and the West, but not to pictures of Indian camps, observed, "We have more than a few tents pitched downright sloppy along Flipper's Ditch around the fort, Deputy Long. Now that you've brought it up, I can't recall just which way any doorway might be pointed."
Longarm made a wry face and said, "I was talking about traditional Indians. Dispirited drunks and broken old men pimping for their wives and daughters might pitch a tipi upside down for all it matters."
Standish nodded, then asked, "Who's to say that's not the sort of reservation trash you've run up against then?"
Longarm said, "Me. They've come after me in particular more than once. They've come at me too brave, or desperate to be beggars or even pimps. After that, we know they swindled some Kiowa pretty slick, and tried to slicker that Running X outfit out of serious money. That sass who calls himself Black Sheep had me half convinced he was a real lawman, and you may have noticed the real badge I showed you back there where we first met."
Standish shot a thoughtful glance at the late afternoon sky. "In sum we have a band of clever desperados out here somewhere," he said. "I sure hope we can make Fort Sill before that storm blows in from the south!"
Longarm stared up at the darkening sky until he spotted silently flickering lightning deep in the badly bruised clouds. "We're a good three hours from the fort and less than an hour from that gullywasher headed our way," he said, "I know I ain't in command of this column. But if I was I'd circle the ponies and pitch me some of those swell army pup tents you all ought to be packing!"
Standish said, "Don't be ridiculous! We're only six or eight miles from the fort. We could make it in less than an hour and a half if we loped our mounts a good part of the time!"
"Through a gullywasher?" Longarm marveled. "They give no prizes for killing your ponies and catching pneumonia out our way. If I was in command I'd camp on high ground and let the gathering storm blow over before I rode on."
Standish let a little steel creep into his voice as he quietly replied, "You're not in command, Deputy Long. My orders from Colonel Howard were to investigate those distant smoke signals and report back to him as soon as I knew what they might mean. You've been kind enough to save us part of the trip. But meanwhile my commanding officer is waiting, probably with everyone on the post braced for an Indian raid. So I'll not waste a whole night out here in the dark just to keep from getting wet!"
He must have meant it. He raised his free arm and waved his men foreward, calling out, "In column of twos, slow gallop, ho!"
Longarm sidestepped Gray Skies, and waved down Minerva and the young breed gal leading the pack brute as the soldiers blue lit out at a lope as if anxious to meet up with that storm from the south.
Matawnkiha Gordon said, "I know. It's going to be raining fire and salt by the time we can hope to make camp!"
But the kid was good and so, with Longarm's experienced help, they had a canvas half-shelter facing a good fire with its back to the rain as the afternoon sky turned twilight dark and proceeded to sweep the rolling short grass all around with silvery sheets of summer rain.
They'd tethered the four ponies to some rabbit brush on the downwind side of their rise. They'd piled their saddles at either end of their flapping lean-to. That kept some of the swirling wet drafts at bay. They'd spread their bedding on the grass before it had managed to get wet. So they enjoyed a cold but reasonably dry supper as they huddled side by side in the gathering dusk with the storm showing no signs of letting up.
Minerva asked if they thought those soldiers had made it to the fort by this time. Longarm said he doubted it, and Matty said it would serve them right if they all drowned. Eating pork and beans from a can, she declared, "You Saltu are always in such a hurry to go nowhere. The three of us are as warm and dry as anyone can hope to be when Waigon spreads his wings. That gold bar chief was stupid. Stupid!"