He'd had time to think about that. So he told her, "Any tell-tale trim or hardware was carried off by salvagers a spell back. These sod walls don't look halfways old enough for Spanish times. Without roof eaves to call their own, the only thing shedding the winter wet would be that thatch of dandelions and such topside. Indians pitch their tipi rings atop rises such as this one when the weather's hot and even a south breeze is better than nothing. But they camp down in timbered draws out of the wind in wintertime. Those Indians who live in houses nowadays usually pick a southeast slope, halfways down. The only folks who'd have perched a prairie home smack atop a rise like this would be white folks who had plenty of winter fuel to burn."
As he was watering the three ponies in one far corner, Godiva said she'd understood all the land around for miles to be an Indian reservation.
Longarm explained, "That's likely why the folks who squatted or homesteaded here moved on. We're well west of the original Indian Nation. This government-owned land was ceded to the Comanche and such after Quanah Parker brought 'em in and surrendered in the bitter spring of 1875. He and his raggedy little army of Comanche, Kiowa, Arapaho, and South Cheyenne had scared the army almost as much as the army had scared them with field artillery at Palo Duro Canyon. So once the cold and hungry but still armed and dangerous Indians had agreed to behave their fool selves betwixt the Washita and the Red River, the government would have cleared anyone else out."
Standing closer to the doorway, with her Spencer repeater held at port arms, Godiva quietly said, "Deputy Long, there seem to be some Indians coming."
Longarm made sure the three ponies were securely tethered as well as unsaddled, with plenty of watery oats in their nose bags, before he moved over to join her, thoughtfully levering a round into the chamber of his own saddle gun.
The quartet of Quill Indians sitting their ponies across the trail were bare-chested and had feathers and paint along with their braided hair and rawhide war shields. All but one had his legs encased in dark-fringed leggings. Longarm told the worried white girl beside him, "Kiowa. Black Leggings Society. That's something like the Lakota Dog Soldiers you may have heard tell of."
She hadn't. Lots of folks who gushed over noble savages didn't seem to know much about them. He said, "Suffice it to say the Black Leggings boys take whatever they may be up to sort of seriously. I'd like you to move across to a back window and let me know if you see anyone moving in on us from the far side. We'll know in a minute whether the ones already exposing their position mean to parley or charge across that trail at us. They're likely still trying to decide."
He was pleased to see how briskly she took up her position at one of the two rear windows, with her trim tailored duster and veiled hat somehow adding to her almost military bearing. But as she propped her elbow in an angle of the dry sod to train her old Spencer across the draw behind the abandoned homestead, she asked him in a puzzled tone, "Aren't the Kiowa supposed to be settled peacefully on this big reservation? Why on earth would they want to charge anybody?"
He held his Yellowboy more politely, muzzle down, as he stood exposed in the doorway, saying, "You just heard me tell you they looked undecided, ma'am. More than half the Indian trouble you've ever heard of was the result of one blamed side or the other making some thoughtless move the other side misunderstood. Them old boys across the way may be as confounded by the sight of us as we are by the odd way they're acting. This is the Kiowa Comanche Reserve, after all, and they may just be wondering what us Saltu are doing on it."
Then he smiled thinly and added, "At least, I hope they have us down as nothing worse than Saltu. See anybody out back?"
She replied, facing the other way, Lord love her, "Not a soul for at least a quarter of a mile, with no timber on the next ridge over. How long are we supposed to just stand here like this?"
Longarm answered, "As long as they seem to have us pent up in here with the odds on our side. They can see we're behind stout cover with repeating rifles. Whether they were there or not, they'll have heard of a place called Adobe Walls, an old trading post over to the Texas Panhandle, where charging white guns firing at you from cover turned out to be a bad move. Twice."
She said, "I read about those fights at Adobe Walls. In the first one Kit Carson and those army troopers had some cannon with them. In the second fight for Adobe Walls, the place was being held by a big party of professional hunters armed with scope-sighted rifles!"
Longarm said, "Same deal. The Indians outnumbered them way more than we're outnumbered, unless we haven't seen all them Black Leggings yet. There's no way four riders could make it down off yonder rise and as far as this doorway with me lobbing sixteen rifle rounds and five from my pistol at lem."
She showed how keen a reporter she was by demanding, "Don't you carry six bullets in that six-shooter, Deputy Long?"
He replied, "Not if you value your own toes, ma'am. It's best to grab for a double-action aimed down along your own leg with the hammer riding on an empty chamber. I got a double-shot derringer in my vest pocket, by the way. Would you like to borrow it till we see how this turns out?"
She said, "I don't see why. I've seven shots in this rifle."
Then she did see why, and soberly added, "I guess a hand pistol would be surer at the end. Is it true the best way is to suck on the barrel like a lollipop and just pull the trigger?"
He said, "I wouldn't know. I've never committed suicide yet." Then he got out his derringer, unhooked it from his watch chain, and tossed it in the grass near the hem of her travel duster as he added, "Don't blow your brains out just yet, ma'am. Seeing the boys across the way seem stuck for ideas, I'd best try to commence the parley. I have to lay this old Winchester aside to talk with both hands. So keep a sharp watch out back."
She didn't turn, but had to ask, "Talk with both hands?"
He leaned the Yellowboy against the inside sods as he explained. "Sign talk. Hardly anyone speaks Kiowa. It ain't close to any other Horse Indian dialect. So it was the Kiowa themselves who invented the now universal sign lingo of the plains."
He stepped just outside the doorway, raising his right hand with trigger and middle finger pointed at the sky to signal friendly notions. Then he pivoted his upraised palm to say he had a question, pointed at them, and made the sign for calling before he cupped a hand to his ear, adding up to, "Question, you are called? I want to hear." Which was about as tight as sign lingo worked.
Behind him, Godiva Weaver called, "What's going on out there?"
To which he could only reply, "Nothing. They're staring smack at me but they don't seem to want to answer."
She suggested, "Maybe they're not Kiowa after all."
He shrugged and said, "Wouldn't matter if they was Arapaho, Caddo, or Shoshoni. All of 'em use the same sign lingo no matter how they talk. That's why sign lingo was invented to begin with. Think of how a nod, a head shake, or a stuck-out tongue meant the same things by different names to an Anglo, a Mex, or a Dutchman. Then lard on a mess of other such signals until... Kee-rist!"
Then he threw himself backward through the doorway as a rifle spanged in the distance to send a buffalo round humming like an enraged lead hornet through the space he'd just occupied.
Longarm rolled sideways to grab for his propped up Yellowboy as, behind him, Godiva Weaver cut loose a lot with that Spencer.
He didn't ask what she was firing at. He warned her not to waste any as he popped up in the corner of a front window space to prop his own rifle over the soggy sod sill.
He found no targets for his overloaded Yellowboy. The far side of the trail had been hastily vacated by the sons of bitches who'd replied so rudely to his request for a parley.
He moved over to the newspaper gal's position, saying, "Change places with me. You've only got two rounds in that Spencer now. So see if you can reload as you guard the empty slope."
Then he saw what she'd been aiming at out back, and whistled in sheer admiration as he made out the three bodies scattered in the tall dry grass. He didn't see anybody moving out yonder now. He still trained his own rifle on the view to the west as he told her flatly, "Three stopped with five rounds is what I'd call downright swell marksmanship, Miss Weaver. Where in thunder did you learn to shoot so fine?"
She answered simply, "I grew up on an army post. My father was stationed at Fort Marion after the Seminole had calmed down. It was awfully hot for most sports. So we spent a lot of time on the rifle range."
Longarm watched the scattered brown forms out back as he slowly concluded, "You surely must have. You either killed the three of 'em totally or scared 'em so bad they're afraid to draw breath now. Were they charging mounted or afoot?"
She demurely replied, "On horseback, of course. There were five of them. I'd have gotten them all if they'd been coming slower!"
He said he believed her, and asked how they were doing out front. She said, "Not a sign of life. They must have thought their main body could move in past a mere girl as they kept you distracted from that other side. But I guess they've learned their lesson, and I'll just bet that's the last we'll ever see of them!"
He said, "Don't bet next month's salary or your favorite hat on that, Miss Weaver. They're still out there. The leader who got 'em in this mess would never be able to show his face at a dance if he just cut and run. They have to stick around until dark, if only to see if they can recover their dead
He started to say something else. But he figured she had more than enough to worry about. So he held the thought.
It didn't work. A gal paid by a newspaper to think on her own two feet had gotten good at it. In a desperately casual tone she asked, "Is it true Plains Indians never attack at night, Deputy Long?"
To which he could only reply, "Never is an overconfident word, and my friends call me Custis, Miss Weaver."
She said, "In that case you'd better call me Godiva. For anyone can see you're the only friend I have for miles right now! What if we made a break for it just after dusk? I don't see how just the two of us could defend this hollow shell against an all-out attack in total darkness, do you?"
Longarm said, "Nope. But it's barely high noon, and that leaves us nigh eight hours to figure something out."
She brightened and said, "You mean you do see a way out for us, other than a running gunfight against odds or digging in to be dug out like cornered clams?"
He chuckled at the droll picture and replied, "Nope. I only said I had around eight hours to study on it. I agree with you on the only two choices we seem to have, Miss Godiva."
CHAPTER 8
By late afternoon the interior of their roofless shell was an oven, and Godiva had removed her travel duster to reveal a sweat-stained frock of brown paisley cotton. She'd set her veiled hat aside as well, but left her hair pinned up to let her neck sweat all it wanted. Longarm had been right about her hair being a dark shade of honey, and if she looked a mite more mature without that veil, she was still on the brighter side of thirty. Some kindly old philosopher had once remarked, doubtless in French, that a woman was ripest just before she commenced to wrinkle.
He didn't see what good that was likely to do either of them as he stood at a window space in his shirtsleeves, sweating like a pig as he soberly stared through the shimmering heat waves at nothing much.
They'd long since told one another the stories of their lives, and he was starting to feel testy every time she asked him if he'd come up with any answers yet.
When it came, like most good answers, the answer was childishly simple. They heard a distant mouth organ wailing a plaintive tune about pretty quadroons, and Godiva gasped, "Good heavens, you don't think that's some Kiowa playing like that, do you?"
Longarm drew his six-gun and fired all five shots in the wheel at the cloudless sky above. So her ears were still ringing as he explained, "Time, tide, and trail herds wait no man. But at least that Running X outfit won't ride into any ambush."
Godiva clapped her hands and said she'd forgotten about that trail drive they'd forged on ahead from. Longarm went on reloading as he replied, "I hadn't. But I never expected them to make such good time."
The mouth organ music had faded away. Longarm climbed up on a sod sill to stick his head over the top of the south wall. Sure enough, he could just make out the gray canvas top of that chuck wagon against a settling haze of trail dust. So he called down to Godiva, "They've paused to consider their options about half a mile back along the trail."
He dropped down beside her to add, "No sense offering my head up yonder for target practice, now that I have everybody placed."
She glanced at the three sweaty but saddle-free ponies across the one grassy room as she asked whether he thought they ought to try running a blue streak for those nice Texican cowboys.
Longarm shook his head and replied, "Just said I didn't want to present them with tempting targets. I don't know about the younger riders with him, but that trail boss is an old-timer who knows he's on Kiowa Comanche range. Having heard way more shots than any jackrabbit hunter would let fly, he'll likely bunch his cows in that cottonwood we passed through just before we spied this soddy. Then he'll have his best riders scout ahead until they spot this soddy. By that time those Indians will have made up their minds whether they want to stand and fight or slip away discreetly. Don't ask me which choice is more likely. Next to Kiowa, Comanche and even South Cheyenne can be paragons of sweet reason. That buffalo war that got so many Comanche killed was started by Kiowa taking the bit in their teeth and challenging the whole U.S. Army to a stand-up fight on open prairie."