Her Spanish hat hung down her back on a braided thong around her slender throat. Her Justin boots were cut sort of Border Mexican as well. That didn't mean she couldn't be fresh from the East. Thanks to Ned Buntline's dime novels, everybody knew, or thought they knew, the way folks were supposed to dress out this way.
He figured she was close to his own age, and he knew he'd been all over. So instead of asking her where she came from as they shook hands, he asked how come she wanted to go visit those Quill Kiowa. He felt he had to warn both ladies of the possible danger, pointing out he was only out to question the Kiowa about hostile Kiowa because he'd run into some.
He felt no call to mention other ladies once he'd told them more than one Black Legging had gone down.
Little Matawnkiha was already behind a curtain, changing into her own riding duds, as Minerva Cranston went into a dry dissertation on the book she was writing about Indians.
Longarm didn't care. He didn't cotton to the notion of riding into a possibly hostile camp with one female to worry about, let alone two! But since it seemed the only way he might get a thing out of the leader of the Black Leggings Lodge, all he could do was ask Sergeant Tikano about the internal riding stock this loco expedition was going to require.
CHAPTER 12
Ouachita, Washita, and Wichita were just different spellings for a nation that wasn't there anymore. Early white travelers had met up with them as tattood hoe farmers growing corn, beans, squash, and such on prairie bottomlands from the Arkansas River to the Red. Then less-settled wanderers had learned to chase buffalo, and everybody else, on horseback. So the surviving Wichita had run off to join their much more warlike Pawnee cousins up Nebraska way, where they'd become the Pawnee Picts, leaving a heap of handy place names for rivers, towns, and such where they'd lived much earlier.
The Wichita Mountains northwest of Fort Sill would have only been hardwood-timbered rises if they hadn't been surrounded by so much flatter prairie. But they offered summer shade and winter windbreaks at a fair distance from the well-meaning Kiowa agents up around Akota, and so Longarm wasn't surprised to see tipi smoke rising against the golden western sky as he, the two gals, and five ponies topped another grassy rise after one tedious afternoon in the saddle.
Little Matty, as both whites had taken to calling her, had turned out more childlike and bossy than expected. Minerva Cranston spoke no Kiowa, nor more than a few basic words of Comanche-Ho. So Longarm was able to follow the nasty comments and snide suggestions Matty was offering as the two of them rode a few lengths behind him. He could tell the prim-faced schoolmarm didn't want to be teased like that. So he refrained from telling either just how safe they were from a full-grown man, for Pete's sake.
As they got within a tough rifle shot of the ring of tipis on a rise, an old maniac in a crow feather cloak with his face painted red and black came tearing toward them on foot, followed by a mess of kids and dogs, to shake a turtle-shell rattle at them and sound off like a jackrabbit caught in a bobwire fence.
Matty heeled her pony up beside Longarm's army gray and calmly told him, "That's Pawkigoopy. He's telling us we'll all be struck down by his medicine and eaten by owls if we don't turn back."
She shouted at the crazy old coot in Kiowa, and as if some puppet master had quit jerking his strings, Pawkigoopy stopped shaking his rattle at them and asked in a conversational tone what his daughter wanted and why she was riding with enemies.
It took Matty a few minutes to explain all that to Longarm and Minerva Cranston, of course. First she told the medicine man what all of them were doing there, and then she told her white companions what he'd said after he'd said to follow him on in.
They did. The dogs snarled mean as hell and the kids said mean things as they approached the tipi ring, but nobody shot or threw a thing at them. That was how sore this particular band seemed to be.
Artists who sketched Indian villages for Currier & Ives or Street & Smith tended to picture them the way white folks might have pitched a circle of tents, with all the entryways facing inward around that big central bonfire. But that wasn't the way most Indians set things up when it was up to them.
To begin with, unless they were holding a ceremony or torturing captives, they had no call to put all that fuel and effort into any central fire at all. You wanted a thrifty fire of your own inside your tipi when it was cold, or just outside it when you were cooking a meal in warm weather.
Then you wanted your entryway facing east to catch the dawn sunlight and screen the interior from the hot afternoon sun, no matter where you'd pitched your tipi poles in the defensive circle. As they rode in he saw some of the Kiowa had lifted the south-facing rims of their tipi covers clear of the grass to suck in air at ground level and exhaust heat out the top, between the smoke.
There were eighteen such lodges in the ring, with the one at the twelve o'clock position to the north a tad bigger and painted in black and yellow tiger stripes on its southern half. As the medicine man told them to rein in, Longarm saw that the northern half of the big tipi was covered with coup signs, or what might have passed for that Egyptian picture writing. He'd already known from those horizontal stripes that something or somebody with a heap of medicine would be waiting for them inside.
They dismounted. Some kids in their teens came over to take charge of all five ponies, saddle or pack. Then an imposing figure in a full war bonnet and Hudson Bay blanket came out of the tiger-striped tipi to stare at them as if he was rehearsing for a career in front of cigar stores. It wasn't true that only blue eyes could stare cold as ice. The small sloe eyes staring out of that dried-apple face at Longarm looked as friendly as a hangman fixing to pull the lever.
Matty said that was Necomi, and started to introduce them to one another in Kiowa. But then the old chief snorted in disgust, and his English was just fine when he said, "Hear me, I am Necomi. I count coup for every eagle feather in this bonnet, and I will not have my words spoken to any damn enemy by any woman! Not even an old one like this other I find too skinny to screw!"
Longarm said, "Watch your mouth, Chief. These ladies are with me and mayhaps I count some coup as well."
Necomi stared long and hard before he said, "I know who you are. They told us you were coming, Longarm. Are you threatening me here in my own camp?"
Longarm calmly replied, "Ain't sure. Are you threatening me?"
The old Kiowa almost smiled. He managed not to, and said, "They told me you were crazy. Come inside while I decide whether I want to smoke with you or let the army and our agents wonder forever what could have happened to the three of YOU." He ducked inside. Longarm shrugged and started to follow the hospitable son of a bitch as, behind him, he heard Matty warn the schoolmarm, "No! That is a warrior society lodge and we are women!"
As the Kiowa kid had sounded mighty demanding, Longarm decided the two gals would be all right for now.
Inside, the air was murky with tobacco smoke, and while some of the last rays of sunset were shining through the rain-resistant, oil-soaked, and painted hides all around, it took him a few moments to make out the other old gents seated solemnly around the inward-slanting walls of their fair-sized meeting hall. Since it was high summer, they hadn't hung the usual hide curtain that made for a more vertical backdrop while it kept the drafts at bay. Thanks to all the smoke, they could use even more drafts about now.
Necomi indicated a seat for their guest on one corner of a big red blanket. As he took his own seat across from Longarm and out a piece from the others in the council circle, Necomi said, "If you have come to hear what is wrong with this agency, you have come to the right place. We are so angry we are weeping tears of blood, and if they don't start treating us better they will feel their own blood running down the sides of their heads! Hear me, I am Necomi. Two times I fought your people at Adobe Walls. Both times under our own great war chief, Satanta. Hear me, Quanah Parker was only a child when we fought Eagle Chief Carson and his big brass guns at Adobe Walls. If we let Quanah lead the second time, against those buffalo thieves, it was only because he brought the most warriors and that crazy medicine man who said nobody could hit us on open prairie with those telescope sights!"
Longarm was aware some of the others were whispering translations as he dryly observed, "They've brought out longer-ranging express rifles since. I ain't here to hear sad tales about lost battles. The defeated vets of the Army of Virginia will be proud to tell you how close they came to winning in many a trail-town saloon. But meanwhile, some more ambitious gents who once fought in butternut gray have gone on to become cattle barons, mining magnates, railroad builders, and such. When a man's licked fair and square, he can get back on his two feet and go on, or he can lay there whimpering for as long as he cares to, and nobody else will give a damn."
Necomi shook his head, an alarming sight with all those feathers aflutter, and protested, "We know about the war between the blue and gray sleeves. We thought it would be a good time to take to the warpath. We did not know Eagle Chief Carson would have Ute scouts and those big brass guns. We were not able to make peace the way the gray sleeves did when they could fight no more. They had been beaten by their own kind of people. All they had to do was stop fighting and go on living the same way they had always lived."
Longarm chuckled softly and warned, "Don't ever say that in Old Dixie. Nobody ever gets to go on living the way they always lived. The world keeps changing and, like that Na-dene spirit Changing Woman warns us all, the only folks that never have to change at all are the dead. Kit Carson used his field artillery on the Na-dene we call Navajo too. They never got the honorable terms Quanah Parker got for his allies. They were marched to Fort Sumner and taught to plant peach trees. Some of them learned to read and write whilst they were at it. After a few years and a lot of letters, the Eagle Chief Sherman and the Great Father in Washington allowed them to have their old hunting grounds back as their reserve, provided they gave up some of their old ways, such as raiding the Pueblo or Mexicans when they were low on supplies."
By now the sunset outside was shining through the greased hides as red as fresh blood. The Indians all around looked sort of spooky as Necomi protested, "Hear me! We agreed not to raid anybody after the B.I.A. said they would give us plenty of supplies to make up for the poor hunting on this reservation. But they never give us all that we need. Never! When our women have served up all they issued us and we ask for more, they say there is no more and we should not eat all they give us so soon!"
Longarm nodded soberly and said, "I've had that same argument when I came back for seconds with an empty mess kit. Gents who dole out government grub are like that, even when they ain't stealing any. I was trying to get to the point about the Navajo. Thanks to having all that time on their hands, the men have learned to hammer silver coins into conchos, rings, and such that sell for as much as those nice saddle blankets their womenfolk weave. They sell such goods for more money or swap 'em at their trading posts for nicer rations and play-pretties than the tax-collecting government is ever going to give any former friend or foe."
He let that sink in before he added, "Cochise led even wilder Na-dene in his day, and yet he died prosperous in bed, after he settled for terms he could live with and then sold firewood by the wagon load to the white-eyed settlers and silver miners in those parts."
"Cochise is dead. His son, Nana, rides with Victorio along the warrior's path tonight!" snapped the unrepentant Kiowa leader.
Longarm muttered, "Bullshit. There've been two Bronco Apache by the name of Nana so far. Neither one could claim Cochise as his sire. The elder son and heir of Cochise was named Taza. He was just as smart and tried to carry on the same way until he died of pneumonia on a visit to Washington. He was buried with full honors in the Congressional Cemetery. You and those lazy newspaper reporters who grab easy answers out of thin air must have found Nana easier to recall than Taza, being there's a sassy French novel called Nana on the stands right now. Cochise did have a younger boy called Naiche, but not Nana, and it's true he seems more sullen. If he's riding with Victorio tonight, he'll doubtless wind up dead as well. Did you gents know Quanah Parker just bought a whole herd of beef, without having to beg an extra dime off the B.I.A.?"
He let that sink in before he added in a desperately casual tone, "I reckon he means to share some of it with his Kiowa brothers, seeing he's such a big sissy. I'll tell him you all could use some extra grub over this way, once them two gals and I get back over yonder."
He couldn't tell whether it had worked or not. In the ruby red gloom the old chief grumbled, "You did not come all this way to tell us we should be good children of the Great Father. We knew about that herd Quanah said he would send for. Of course he intends to share with us. I only said he was not as important as you and your people seem to think he is. I never said he was not a Real Person!"
Another old Kiowa, almost invisible against the dark north wall of the big tipi, forgot his manners as he impatiently snapped in fair English, "Tell us why you came here, Longarm. Tell us what you want from us."
Longarm nodded soberly and told them. They listened mutely, and he couldn't read any expressions on their shadowy faces as he brought them all up to date on that brush with those other Kiowa. Once he had, he added, "I didn't count coup on the three we put on the ground. But I got a good look at them before their friends carried their bodies away. Their faces were painted half red, their beadwork was red or green with lighter flower designs. Their chests were bare, streaked with red, and their leggings were black leggings."