Longarm grimaced and said, "I had to. A renegade outlaw was hiding out with that band. I've never counted coup on any men I've had to kill, young, old, red, or white. Gents who drive railroad locomotives get grease and soot all over 'em. Gents who ride for the law have to kill somebody now and again. You have to take the good with the bad in any line of work. I wonder if that mysterious stranger in a white panama suit could be holed up in another hotel room, across from the entrance to my own lobby."
Sue said, "I don't know. I have not met many men who could count coup but I don't want to. I used to get so tired of listening to my father and brothers boasting about all the wonders they'd performed before they turned into fat reservation drunks with nothing better to do but brag and brag and brag!"
Longarm didn't answer as he led the way back to the stairwell. He knew what she meant. He'd been invited to supper in a tipi more than once. Neither heroism nor modesty were the same to most Indian nations as they were to whites. Horse Indians such as the Lakota counted coup for acts of what might seem cowardly cruelty to a white man, or took chances that struck whites as downright loco en la cabeza because it seemed most admirable to do something astonishing as all get-out than to worry about the final results. So young men in search of a rep were inclined to do the most outlandish things they could come up with as they rode into battle, from snatching a baby from its momma's arms and smashing it against a tree to closing in on a full-grown armed enemy and just slapping his face to ride off, laughing.
As the two of them made it down to the top hallway, Sue told him she had a passkey to every room in the place. He allowed rooms that overlooked the entrance to the Pilgrim were most interesting to him at the moment. So she suggested they start at the far end and work their way closer to directly across from his own hotel.
He agreed and they did, skipping more than one because, she said, she knew the folk who were inside, snoring or giggling, as the case might have been. Longarm told her the boys back home should have let her go hunting with them, adding, "I follow your drift about anyone aiming to do me dirt having to hole up in an officially empty room. You'd have known right off if any cuss in a white linen suit and planter's hat was checked in here open and above-board, right?"
She unlocked one of the last chances, standing aside as Longarm covered the doorway with his Winchester, and said, "There is nobody like that staying here. But you got all the way upstairs without them seeing you down at the desk."
The room was empty as well as small. He still moved across it to peer out through the lace curtains. He grimaced and moved back to Sue, saying, "Clear shot. But mayhaps clearer from the next one, on the corner of the building, right?"
She shrugged and said, "It would be. But there is nobody there at this hour. The whore who rents that suite by the week is due back any minute. Her story is very funny. Every afternoon she goes up the street to make love to a banker in his office. The bank closes for the day at three. The banker goes home for supper at six after a hard day at his office. I know this because men count coup on things like that as well. The whore who spends her nights alone next door never told me. She is not a bad person, for a wasichuweya."
Longarm said, "I'll take your word for that. I'd still like to see whether there's anybody else in there right now. It ain't quite suppertime, and if you know she spends her late afternoons at the bank, a sneak brassy enough to declare I sent him to fetch a wire addressed to me might know it by way of the same sources, see?"
She did. She said she didn't like doing it. But it only took them a minute to sneak into the perfumed chambers next door and make sure the gal who'd stunk 'em up had no visitors or trespassers.
As Longarm turned back from the window, the young Indian gal was holding up a mighty realistic dildo carved from ivory, albeit hardly from life, unless there really was a natural man, somewhere in this world, with fourteen inches.
Sue waved the big ivory dick like a fan as she asked him what he thought it might be.
He smiled thinly and replied, "If you ain't never seen the real thing, it might be just as well to leave you in blissful ignorance."
She calmly replied, "Oh, I can see it's supposed to be some man's cock, and I've heard you Wasichu have big cocks, but do you really think even a whore with the winyanshan of an old pte could fuck a thing this big?"
He said, "Put it back where you found it. The gal who lives here likely counts coup with it for visitors. I mind this one old gal with burro, down Mexico way, but that's a whole 'nother story and I don't want to be caught by anybody in here."
They ducked outside and locked up. Longarm wistfully said, "So much for this hotel. I hope I can recruit me such a friendly guide with her own passkeys, next one over."
Sue said, "You can't. I can. They pay Indian help even less next door. So their upstairs maid doesn't speak enough English and you don't speak enough Lakota to get along this well with her. But I told you I was through, up here. Why don't we sneak down the back stairs and see what we can do next door?"
That was the best offer he'd had so far, and it went smooth as silk because it was just before quitting time, with the halls in all the neighborhood as empty as they tended to get.
Sue led him out to the alley and around to another back entrance. They went down to the cellar, and Sue knocked on a door until a young but ugly Lakota gal peered out, sleepy or drunk, to mutter, "Anigni ktey, wincincala! Hehetchey!"
Sue was cussing back while Longarm was figuring out the sleepy-eyed gal had told them to go to hell because she was through for the day, albeit anigni ktey translated literally more like "Evil she-spirit take you, someplace awful."
Whatever she said back to the sullen thing, Sue soon had custody of another key ring by the time her cousin or whatever slammed the door in their faces and went back to bed or whoever.
Sue led Longarm and his Winchester up the back stairs only the hotel staff was supposed to use. That didn't mean he shouldn't keep a round in the chamber, of course. But they made it to the top floor without incident and, this time, started with a room almost directly across from the entrance to the Pilgrim.
Sue told him her pal in the cellar had said none of the top floor rooms were in hire that evening. That left them a seven-door chore with a heart-stopping moment for each and every damned doorknob.
Longarm moved over to the window, which was half open because of the season, and glanced casually down at the street as it commenced to fill with quitting-time traffic. Then he gasped and moved back from the curtains as he spied a planter's hat coming out of the Pilgrim with a rumpled white panama suit under it.
As the Indian chambermaid joined him closer to the curtains and asked what was wrong, he pointed down at the outstanding figure in the crowd to declare, "That sure as shooting looks like a tinhorn called Deacon Knox that I know from Nebraska. But I'm missing some pieces, here. Deacon Knox was a card cheat and a con man, not any hired killer, the last time I looked and... thunderation, he's ducked around the damned corner, and I have to get down there before he gets away for good!"
It was the born food-gatherer who pointed out, "Hear me, rabbits run in circles, but fast. Too fast to chase, once they are out of sight. But if you wait they may circle back again, ohan?"
He started to object, nodded, and said, "When you're right you're right. All this time I've been pussyfooting around up here, he's been laying for me down yonder, in my very own lobby!"