“No reason you shouldn’t try. Everybody in Montana’s looking for the ornery son of a bitch. What happened to your dragoons?”
“Reckon they’ve had enough exercise for now. The lieutenant said he was reconsidering his options. That’s what he calls drinking alone in his quarters. You aim to light that cigar or just gum it to death?”
“Been trying to quit smoking. What’s your pleasure?”
“I thought maybe we could throw in together. I been all over this country and you know what I’ve found? I ain’t found shit. You reckon this Wendigo’s really a haunt?”
Longarm shook his head. “I reckon we’re missing some simple trick. Whoever’s doing it isn’t completely crazy. The Wendigo’s had enough sense to lay low while half the territory’s out here looking for him. That leaves someone with a reason as well as some slick way of moving about.”
“Well, the heat’s dying down. You suspicion he’ll be doing it some more?” Jason asked.
“It’s not likely that he’ll suddenly get religion and just quit. I figure his play is spooking the Indians, which he’s done some. It’ll take some more spooking to make them jump the reservation, so, yeah, he’s likely planning his next move about now.”
“You reckon there’s a land grabber behind all this, Longarm?”
“That’s an obvious suspicion, but I can’t get it to wash. No way any of the local cattlemen could claim this land, even if the Indians light out and leave it empty.”
“How about a buried treasure, or a mineral claim, or such?”
“Studied on that, too. The Blackfoot are spread out thin here. A man slick enough to get in and out without being spotted could dig up half an acre easier than he could kill folks watching for him. As to minerals, they’ve been looked for. The prairie soil’s forty feet at the least to the nearest bedrock and it’s been surveyed by Uncle Sam. There’s some lignite coal beds to the north. Too deep to be worth mining and too poor to be worth burning, next to all that anthracite they have back East. Nope, there’s nothing here but grass and water, and like I said, no way a white man could beg, borrow, or steal rangeland. The Wendigo is after something, but I’ll be damned if I know what.”
Jason scratched his bearded jaw and said, “I hear there’s a pow-wow on the reservation tonight. You reckon the War Department might be interested?”
“You’re welcome to come along, Jason. I’m riding over with Rain Crow, my Blackfoot deputy. He says one of Wovoka’s Dream Singers is on the reservation. Rain Crow offered to run him off, but I said to leave the rascal be, for now.”
“Them Dream Singers are pretty nasty, but it’s your play. I’d go along if I thought there’d be some pretty squaws, but the old men will likely just be shaking rattles and talking sulky. So I’ll pass on your offer and get on back to the fort.”
As Jason turned to mount his bay, Longarm asked quietly, “Before you go, would you mind if I asked you a sort of unfriendly question?”
Jason swung around and stared back thoughtfully before he shrugged and said, “Ask away. I’ll let you know if I take it unfriendly.”
“Where were you the night of the three murders, Jason?”
The scout laughed and answered, “At the fort. Lucky I can prove it, ain’t it? I’ve seen how fast you can draw!”
“I had to ask. Didn’t mean anything by it.”
“I know you’re just doing your job, Longarm. Hell, I won’t even get pissed when you check my story at the fort. A man with nothing to hide has no call to get pissed, and, hell, you never mentioned my mother.”
They both laughed. Longarm relaxed the hold he’d had on the derringer in his right coat pocket.
Jason asked, “Hear any more about Johnny Hunts Alone? Or do you suspicion him and the Wendigo might be one and the same?”
“I’ll eat that apple a bite at a time. If they’re the same gent, I’ll catch ‘em both whenever I catch one. If they ain’t, I’ll catch ‘em separately. I’ve been asking about for a stranger with a limp. Nobody’s seen any.”
“Could be Johnny knows you’re here and just lit out to other parts. As I see it, his only reason for hiding out here would be because you didn’t know he could pass for an Indian. You get my drift?”
“Sure. Real Bear’s the only victim who could have identified him. You’re still breathing, too.”
“What’s that supposed to mean, Longarm?”
“If Johnny Hunts Alone killed Real Bear to keep from being given away, he’d have done better to go after a white man he’d hunted with than a mess of Indians and a gal who never knew him.”
“I see what your meaning is and I thank you for the warning. Anyone out to skin this hombre and take his head had best be good at it, though. I know the breed on sight and I can get riled as hell when folks start cutting off my head!”
Longarm rose to his feet as the scout got up, remounted, and rode away with a friendly wave. Longarm was about to go into the house, but Prudence Lee fluttered out, and whispered, “Don’t go in, they’re fighting.”
Longarm heard the sound of breaking crockery and a man’s voice raised in anger through the open doorway. He nodded and said, “Maybe we’d best go for a ride or something.”
“Oh, I’d like that. Calvin said something about riding out to an Indian ceremony, later. Could I go along?”
Longarm started to shake his head. Then he thought of his plan for enlivening the festivities and said, “It might prove interesting, at that, if a white gal was there watching.”
Fair was fair, though. So he said, “Miss Prudence, I’m going out with Rain Crow and some other Indian police to make some folks feel foolish. I don’t expect danger, but there’s likely to be some cussing.”
“Oh, it sounds exciting! Calvin said you were trying to expose the Ghost Dancers as frauds, and I’m very interested in Indian lore.”
“Yes ma’am. Some of such lore can tend to be a bit racy. You did say you were married once, didn’t you?”
“Heavens, do you expect an orgy?” Prudence asked breathlessly.
“Ain’t sure. I haven’t been to many Ghost Dances. If I let you come along, you’ve got to promise to sit there poker-faced and not say anything, no matter what.”
“I think I can manage that. If you’ll help me with my side-saddle
…”
“We’ll be taking the buckboard, ma’am. Indians don’t laugh at wheels the way they do at white ladies riding funny. I’ll be putting some bags of feed around the edges of the wagon bed. If I should say to, I’ll be obliged if you sort of flatten out behind ‘em while the lead flies.”
Chapter 11
It was sunset as the naked Ghost Dance missionary pranced up and down in front of the assembled Blackfoot elders gathered out on the prairie. His hair was long and stringy and his penis was painted red for some reason. He was about thirty years old and chanted in English as he waved the limp leather medicine shirt he held in one hand. His own Paiute dialect would have made no more sense to the Blackfoot than it would have to a white man, so as Longarm and the girl drove up to the edge of the crowd with Two Noses and Rain Crow at either side, they could understand his meaning as he pointed the gourd rattle in his other hand at them and shouted, “Behold, the white man comes with a woman and two of his Blackfoot hunting dogs. Do not listen to their words, my brothers. The whites are ignorant of the message of Wovoka!”
Longarm reined in at a discreet distance, ignoring the sullen muttering from the crowd as he nodded to the missionary and shouted back, “You just go ahead and have your say, old son. We’ve come in peace to learn, not to dispute religion with a man of the cloth—if we stretch cloth to include red paint, I mean.”
The missionary wiggled his hips, swinging his painted penis, but Prudence Lee didn’t blanch as he and even Longarm might have expected. She sat prim and straight on the buckboard seat, looking at him like he was a bug on a pin.