Longarm had heard the saintly old missionary had come out to the Rockies after the war from the Great Lakes country, where he'd been first a mining man and then a preacher to the already Christian Chippewa, as most white folks called the Ojibwa. So the kindly old preacher's tips on Indian matters tended to be more accurate than some the government liked better. Dyer had fought hard to save the west-slope hunting grounds of the Ute, and both the B.I.A. and U.S. Army could have saved themselves some scalps if they'd paid more attention to Dyer's warnings about misunderstandings before the Meeker Massacre and the Milk River Ambush.
Dyer's earlier Indian followers, the Ojibwa back around Lake Superior, had been sworn enemies of the Santee and their kin. French folks had shortened and adopted the Ojibwa words for a son-of-bitching enemy. So later English-speaking settlers had felt no call to change the spelling from "Sioux." The Santee branch of the far-flung folks who preferred to call themselves Nakota, Dakota, or Lakota as one moved east to west, could be swell pals or vicious enemies, as the spirits moved them. Old Dyer, as well as Tyger, Flanders, and their mysterious pal called Chief, would have all been back yonder in Santee Country around the same time, whether preaching to Indians or swapping Confederate Gray for Union Blue to get out of a prisoner-of-war camp and strike a blow for the white race in general.
Longarm still managed not to read Billy Vail's mail before the older, shorter, and far stockier marshal grumped in on his restless stubby legs, smoking a shorter, stockier, and more pungent cigar, grabbed his own seat on the official side of the desk with his back to the window, and growled, "I heard. You made us look good and so I can't say I'm downright cross with you. But I swear I'm sometimes sure that if I asked you for a light you'd set the building afire! I sent you to guard that material witness for the prosecutor, not solve his case for him, and who told you to run off with the files on that more serious payroll robbery? I needed 'em to read more'n you needed 'em to wipe your ass with, damn it!"
Longarm smiled sheepishly. "Sorry, Boss. I didn't know you were working that case, and I was reading too. I'll buy that toasted cadaver hauled out of the Dugan rooming house as the real Brick Flanders, if you'll let me run over to Durango with a federal writ allowing me to open the so-called grave of the late Calvert Tyger."
Vail shook his bullet head. "I got a better place for you to head. But next week will do. My old woman told me all about that Sunday-Go in Eastern Park. For she's on the same entertainment committee as a certain young widow woman you've asked me not to mention by name."
"I don't mind missing that shindig as long as it's in the line of duty," Longarm said.
Vail chuckled. "What's in the line of duty, the Sunday-Go or a mighty long train ride back to southwest Minnesota?"
Longarm blinked. "That's far enough to get me out of a hair-pulling contest, I reckon. But whatever for? I told you when I got back from that last wild-goose chase to Rice County that neither Frank nor Jesse had been anywhere near Northfield since that big bank robbery and shootout back in the autumn of '76, and this more recent as well as more profitable robbery is hot! I mean that literally. For I somehow doubt all that paper money burned away in not one but two roominghouse fires."
He looked about in vain for an ashtray on his side of the desk, flicked ashes from his cheroot on the rug, and observed, "They say it's good for carpet mites. I'll believe the real leader of that gang died from smoking in bed after I see who's buried in his grave. It don't add up, Billy. Five or more outlaws light out with a government payroll, most of it in high-denomination treasury notes with their serial numbers on file. Then the only two gang members we know by name go up in smoke, bang, bang, and we know for a fact that last fire was deliberate!"
Vail sighed. "I wish you children wouldn't interrupt your elders. I don't want you wasting time over Durango way because it ain't as important who got buried, or even how he died, not only yonder but many a day ago. You track where the trail's still warm, old son, and one of those very treasury notes you mentioned turned up more recently at the Granger's Savings and Loans in New Ulm, not Northfield, Minnesota."
Vail leaned back in his seat and picked up Reverend Dyer's letter to wave at Longarm as he continued. "I don't think Frank or Jesse cashed it either. Even if New Ulm wasn't closer to the Dakota line, the son of a bitch who paid for his seed corn and a mess of hardware with a hundred-dollar treasury note has his local name and address on file with that merchant who broke such a whopping wonder of paper money for him. You can't bite a hundred-dollar note to test it, you know. So it's a wise notion to write down who came in with it, and he did."
Longarm nodded soberly. "I had to break a twenty-dollar silver certificate in a Chinese restaurant one time. It sure got noisy, and it was just as well I was packing my badge and identification."
Vail said, "It was a bank teller who spotted the serial number and told his superior, who naturally made some noise at the merchant who'd deposited it, until said merchant got out his books and could produce the homesteader and homestead claim number of the jasper I want you to move in on in your own discreet way. Both the townsmen who spotted the note and the sheriff's department of Brown County have been slicker than usual, contacting us instead of blundering in, thanks to that cautiously worded flyer we'd listed all of them serial numbers on. The homesteader who spent that stolen treasury note filed his claim under the name of Israel or Izzie Bedford. Claims to be a New Englander who rode with General Pope against Little Crow's Santee."
Longarm grimaced. "I caught him in a lie already. Long Trader Sibley, as the Indians called him, had already whipped the Santee good with his Minnesota Volunteers by the time Pope arrived with his limited-service regulars and paroled prisoners to mop up."
Vail shrugged. "Be that as it may, this letter from a preacher who was there at the time confirms there was indeed a New England shave-tail called Israel Bedford mopping up Indians in the dubious company of Galvanized Yankee noncoms called Calvert Tyger and Brick Flanders. Dyer can't say who the one called Chief might have been, if he was with them at the time or not. He says he still remembers Tyger because of the unusual name, and Brick Flanders came to mind as soon as he read my questions about red beards and glass eyes."
Longarm asked, "How come he remembers Lieutenant Bedford after all this time?"
Vail glanced down at the letter, but didn't quote directly from it as he explained. "It appears Dyer was doing some missionary work at Fort Ridgely, trying to save the souls of captured Santee. Some of the officers gave him a hard time, saying he was wasting salvation on already damned souls the army was fixing to hang. But whenever Lieutenant Bedford was the officer of the day, he let Dyer into the stockade to help the condemned Santee pray for forgiveness."
Longarm smiled thinly. "Must have worked for some of 'em. I understand they had close to four hundred Santee on charges of murder, rape, and worse. Abe Lincoln spoiled a heap of fun when he pardoned all but thirty-eight of 'em. Indians I know say at least thirty-seven of 'em were mean as hell by Indian standards."
He flicked more ash, ignoring Vail's warning frown as he went on. "This Israel Bedford sounds like a charitable cuss, and would a paid-up Union officer want all that much truck with Confederate renegades who stole Union officers' mounts to head out west along the owlhoot trail?"
Vail suggested, "That's one of the notions you might want to ask him about. I ain't ordering you to huff and puff his soddy down and haul him all the way back in irons. I only want you to ask him, in your usual sneaky way, where he got that purloined treasury note. It's possible he sold something in good faith to an old army pal or a new neighbor, who'd be the next one you'd want to question, discreet but on your toes, lest you wind up in a mysterious fire as well. Henry's got your travel orders out front, if you're in such a hurry to miss that Sunday-Go. So what are you waiting for, a fatherly pat on the head or a boot in the ass?"