“Good God, I can’t understand it!”
“That makes two of us. But I made a promise not to leave here until I caught the son of a bitch. So I’ll likely write Marshal Vail a letter in a week or so.”
“I don’t envy you. Where are you staying tonight, the agency?”
“Nope. Figured to bed down here in town after I ask around some more.”
“You’re welcome to stay at my place,” Chadwick offered. “I stay up late and I’ve got a spare room you can use.”
“That’s neighborly of you, but no thanks. It’s early, yet, and while I’m asking questions about this job I’m on, I might get lucky and meet somebody prettier than you. No offense, of course.”
Chadwick laughed and said, “Stay away from Madam Kate’s. They say a couple of her gals give more than tail. The doc’s been treating one of ‘em for the clap, and he says there ain’t no real cure.”
Longarm thanked him for the warning and left. He went to get his chestnut and mounted up, then sat there, fishing out a cheroot, as he pondered his next move.
He knew he didn’t have a next move. He was chasing himself around in circles to avoid another sparring match with Nan Durler. He rode slowly along the street toward the end of town where Roping Sally’s spread had been. The spread was still there, just outside of town, of course, but somehow he didn’t feel like it was there anymore. Had he really ever spent that wild night, just up ahead where the lights of Switchback faded into blackness? It seemed as if it had never happened, now. The poor woman was hardly cold in her grave and he remembered her as if he had known her long ago, before the War. You’ve got nothing to feel guilty about, he told himself firmly. What was done was done and the only duty he owed Sally was to find her killer. He was only feeling fretful because someone had made a fool of him. It seemed like everyone in Montana had him figured for a fool and it was getting tedious.
He rode on into the darkness toward Sally’s, running the whole thing through his head again, once more stumbling over the impossibilities of this whole infernal case. He slowed his mount, knowing he really didn’t want to pass the dark, empty cabin where he’d slept with what he now remembered as a beheaded horror. Maybe he’d just hunker down on the prairie someplace. “Damn it!” he swore. “There’s a feather bed and a warm breakfast waiting for you out there. And you’ve done nothing to be ashamed of!”
He reined in and swung his mount’s head toward the west, his mind made up to ride back to the agency and brazen it out. As he turned, something sounding like bird wings, big bird wings, fluttered past his head and snatched off his Stetson!
Longarm threw himself to one side, grabbing for his saddle gun as he heard the thing coming through the darkness again! He rolled out of the saddle and landed in the roadside ditch as it flew over him, flapping.
The chestnut had been spooked by the sound, too, and ran off a few yards, snorting nervously, as Longarm crouched in the grassy ditch with his rifle at port, ready for anything.
But nothing happened. He stayed frozen and silent as he strained his ears. He stayed that way for a very long time. For though the moon was rising now, it was still nearly pitch-black around him and that thing had swooped at him like a diving eagle who’d known where it was going!
Could it have been an owl? Too big. No owl he’d ever heard had flapped as loud and mean as that. For that matter, he couldn’t remember ever running into an eagle that size! He’d been attacked by an eagle as a kid, trying to collect some eggs for some foolish kid’s reason, and the sound of its angrily flapping wings had been a pale imitation of whatever had just snatched off his hat!
He was still wondering about it when the moon pushed an edge above the horizon and he could see the pale streak of the road better. The road was empty. The overgrazed weeds lay ghostly gray around him for at least a hundred yards, and there was nothing there to see.
After a while, he rose slowly to his feet and walked over to his hat, where it lay in the road. He examined it for talon marks, and finding none, put it on. Then he clucked soothingly to the chestnut and caught the reins. The horse was still nervous, but he soothed it and remounted. He kept the saddle gun across his thighs as he resumed his way west toward the agency.
It took him a while to get there, this time. The rising moon kept telling him he was alone as he slowly rode across the prairie, straining his ears for the sound of those mysterious wingbeats. But, though there was nothing to see and not a sound to be heard out on the lonely range, he kept swinging around to look behind him.
Longarm spent the morning at the fenced quarter-section, showing a bunch of Blackfoot kids how to twirl a throw-rope. By the time he saw that their interest was flagging a bit, he had two of them getting the knack of a passable butterfly and at least five who could drop a community loop over a fence post one out of three tries. He called a halt to the lesson. If he hadn’t gotten them at least curious about roping, by now, they weren’t like any other kids he’d ever met.
As he ambled back toward the agency buildings one of the older boys fell in beside him to say shyly, “The white man’s rope tricks are fun, but my father says the ways of the cowboy are not our ways.”
Longarm said, “I don’t mean any disrespect for your elders, Little Moon, but your daddy likely doesn’t know that the art of roping was invented by Indians. Us American hands learned roping from the Mexicans, who learned it from the Aztec, Chihuahua, and such.”
“You’re making fun of me! There were never Indian cowboys before you people came here!”
“Nope. No white cowboys, neither. The cowboy was born when the Spanish horsemen got together with the Indian hunters who roped deer and antelope, down Mexico way. The vaquero, buckaroo, or cowboy owes as much to the red man as the white. Down in the Indian Nation, there are some Cherokee and Osage cowboys few men could hold a candle to. Jesse Chisholm, who blazed the Chisholm Trail, was a Cherokee.”
“Oh, we know about the Five Civilized Tribes,” Little Moon said scornfully. “They are not real Indians. My father says they live like white men.”
“Your Daddy’s right about that point, Little Moon, but I doubt if the Cherokee would agree that they weren’t real Indians. In their day they were wild enough, and the Osage lifted their fair share of white folks’ hair in the Shining Times. All in all, though, the Five Tribes, Osage, and such Comanche as have taken to herding longhorns are living better than you Blackfoot, these days.”
The boy walked head-down, pondering, before he shrugged and said, “I don’t know. I think it was better in the Shining Times, hunting the buffalo and Utes.”
“Maybe,” Longarm concurred, “but those days are gone forever. As I see it, you’ve got two choices ahead of you, Little Moon. You can learn new ways for the new times coming, or you can sit out here on a government dole, feeling sorry for yourself while the rest of the world leaves you behind.”
“Wovoka says more Shining Times are coming. If all of us stood together we could go back to the old ways and-“
“Wovoka’s full of shit,” the deputy cut in. “I hope you won’t take it unfriendly, son, but you could gather every tribe in one place, armed and mounted, and one brigade of cavalry would be pleased as punch to wipe you out. What happened on the Little Big Horn was a fluke; old Custer only had about two hundred green troops with him. The army has new Gatling and Hotchkiss guns, now, too. So at best, that gives you three ways to go. You can learn to make your own money, or you can take the little money the B.I.A. might dole out as it sees fit, or you can just go crazy with the Ghost Dancers and die. Meanwhile, you might work on what I just showed you about roping. You’ve got to loosen up and remember to swing the loop twice to open it up before you throw. Your aim ain’t bad, but your throwing is too anxious.”