Longarm shook his head and said, "They might have bought 'em. You can buy such livery, from a maid's uniform to an officer's full kit, in any fair-sized city, east or west. Indians acting on their own would be more likely to just steal new duds, no offense, Hawzitah."
The old whitewashed Kiowa smiled and replied, "A fighting man takes what a fighting man needs. I count coup on all the good things I have stolen from your kind. But I think I see what you mean. Those forked tongues have cheated many people of much money. They may not have the courage to just kill Indian Police and strip them. They may just buy those blue uniforms and black Spanish hats they were wearing when our younger brothers bought their own ponies back from them."
Longarm suggested, "Their leader might not have cottoned to all that much attention from the real Indian Police. As it's commencing to shape up, the gang's been taking advantage of how thin everyone's spread out, with less than five thousand folks, red and white, hither and yon across an area the size of, say, Connecticut."
Hawzitah asked what a Connecticut was, adding that it sounded like a Cheyenne word.
Longarm said, "I think it means something like a long river in the Algonquin lingo, which your Cheyenne pals speak. All it means to us is the name of a state back East about the size of this reserve. As long as we're discussing such matters, are you certain you've never heard anyone who paints himself call anything an agua? I took it for a wounded Mex requesting some water. But you're the expert on local vocabularies, Chief."
Hawzitah shook his whitewashed head and said, "Not Kiowa, Comanche, or Kiowa-Apache. Not Arapaho. Not Cheyenne. I can't speak of Wichita. We killed all the Wichita that didn't run away. We never had many powwows with the tattood root grubbers!"
Longarm thought about this. It made no sense to go about it in such a sneaky way if you were a left-over Wichita trying to reclaim the old homestead. But the mysterious riders hadn't made a whole lot of sense no matter what they thought they were up to, and the younger so-called Pawnee Picts had stopped tattooing themselves of late. He'd hold the thought until he had the chance to ask some Caddo speaker whether they had an Indian word that sounded like the Spanish word for water.
He told Hawzitah, "I got a reason for asking a religious question. Might you know any Horse Nation that buries its dead in the ground instead of leaving them up in the sky?"
The traditional Kiowa made a wry face and said, "The agents tell us we should bury our dead, as if they were food scraps we wanted the worms instead of the winds to dispose of. Some of our people who died in the guardhouse at Fort Sill or the B.I.A. hospital in Anadarko have been buried your disgusting way. I have told my sons that should ever you people treat me that way, they must dig me up in the dark of the moon and leave me high on a windy rise, up in the sky, to let clean winds blow me away."
The old Kiowa made a wry face and asked, "Why are we talking about my sky burial? When a man has seen more than sixty summers he is not greatly cheered by such talk!"
Longarm said, "Wasn't talking about your healthy body, pard. Talking about at least a half-dozen dead strangers nobody's seen hide nor hair of since. Don't it seem to you a body buried in an unmarked grave under thick sod would attract less notice than a traditional cuss spread out on a fourposter eight or ten feet off the ground?"
Hawzitah shrugged and said he couldn't answer for crazy two-hearts.
A younger Kiowa with his face painted solid yellow and the rest of him covered with red polka dots came through the trees to shout something at old Hawzitah.
The whitewashed leader told Longarm, "My young men had spotted dust, a lot of dust, on the prairie flats to the southeast. It is coming this way, lined up with this smoke you keep playing with. I think it must be that column from Fort Sill. Don't you?"
Longarm nodded and said, "Them other riders must be long gone with no intention of investigating this smoke. They knew what I was up to before you boys run them off."
He glanced down at the two gals and added, "We could save us all a heap of wasted time if we saddled up and rode on down to meet 'em."
Minerva protested, "What if those fake Indian Police are hiding in the bushes between us?"
Longarm started to dismiss this as a stupid question. Then he muttered, "Out of the mouthes of babes, when you're dealing with the great unknown. Could you and your young men escort us down off these timbered slopes, Chief?"
Hawzitah thought, nodded, and said, "It would be grand if we met those forked-tongued Wichita or Mexicans in our own hills! But your words about blue sleeves and war paint sounded wise. I think we will just ride with you as far as the open prairie between here and all those blue sleeves!"
So that was how they worked it. Longarm piled a last armful of green oak branches on his smoky fire before he helped the two gals get the four ponies ready to go. No Horse Indian was about to help anyone else with his or her own ponies. Then, mounted on Gray Skies, Longarm led the way directly on down through the high chaparral of the sun-baked southern slopes toward what surely seemed the rising dust of a fair-sized cavalry column.
Along the way, he got in a few more words for the real Indian Police, explaining once more to Hawzitah how his own young men could track down and count coup on sneaks such as the ones they'd just brushed with. He told the older man how those Apache Police had won medals, big shiny ones, for saving the life of their agent, John Clum, in a fight with renegades. He told the Kiowa leader how the great Lakota war chief, Red Cloud, had encouraged young men to join the so-called Sioux Tribal Police. He said, "Cochise met us halfway and died prosperous in bed. Red Cloud and Quanah Parker have both been making honest money on the side, without cutting their hair or joining the Women's Christian Temperence Movement."
Hawzitah answered dubiously, "I have heard all this. Maybe it is true. I will think about it."
Then he said, "Today I am painted for fighting in the old way. So I think this is about as far as my young men and I should ride with you!"
Longarm felt no call to argue against common sense. So they split up amid some cottonwoods where a draw fanned out across the rolling prairie, and Longarm led just the two gals toward that mustard haze of trail dust betwixt them and Fort Sill.
They saved the platoon led by a callow second john at least an hour and change by meeting them miles short of the hills. The patrol leader answered to Second Lieutenant Standish, and he naturally wanted to ride on and see if they could cut the trail of those fake Indian Police. He allowed the army had been getting reports about the rascals from all over. It usually took folks a day or so to figure out they'd been taken, after they'd paid off peace officers who were said to be paid by the B.I.A.
Longarm shook his head and pointed out, "Kiowa who know this range better, no offense, assure me the rascals have made it over to the post road by now. They could just as easily be headed for Fort Sill as Anadarko by now. So why don't we all just see if we can make the fort by supper-time? I promised to bring these ladies back, and by now the little one's momma ought to be having a fit!"
Standish, to his credit, thought before he asked, "Wouldn't it be awfully stupid to ride into an army post in fake uniforms after a firefight with a federal lawman?"
Longarm nodded but said, "Be even dumber to ride that way to the B.I.A.'s main agency at Anadarko. A white soldier might be slower to spy a fake resident of this reserve than a rider for the real Indian Police."
Standish nodded grudgingly, but said, "If I was one of those crooks I think I'd put on my cowboy outfit!"
Longarm smiled thinly and said, "I suspicion they dress more like Indians just traipsing about. Down where Cache Creek runs into the Red River they seem to have had some of the outfit in uniform, with at least a dozen more pretendin' to be quill dependents in a nearby tipi ring. Thinking back, with my eyes half-shut as I try to picture that setup, I ain't dead certain that what I took for women and kids had to really be women and kids. What do you call them Lakota boys who dress up and even walk like weyas? That's what Lakota call their women, by the way. Don't never call a Lakota weya a squaw."
Standish promised he wouldn't and said, "I've heard of those Sioux fairies. I find Indians sort of confusing. You think that could be what we're up against down this way?"
Longarm chuckled dryly and said, "My point is that it's easy for anyone to look like anything at a distance. It wasn't long after I talked sense to what I took for Indian Police that what I took for Kiowa in feathers and paint tried to keep me and a newspaper gal from going on to ask possibly embarrassing questions."
He rode on a bit further with his eyes shut all the way. Then he opened them with a nod and said, "That tipi circle down by the Red River wasn't set up traditionally. It was set up the way you or me might set up a tipi ring, with all the doorways facing one another as if they were seated around a table."
Standish squinted into the distance as if he too was picturing an imaginary Indian camp. "Looked about right to me," he decided.
Longarm said, "Me too, just passing by. Both of us are white men, not Horse Indians housewives. I'm commencing to doubt the bunch I met to the south were real Horse Indians. Such riders, even if they left their womenfolk behind, would be inclined to pitch a traditional camp, with every tipi open to the sunrise, not some Cuffier and Ives notion of an Indian village green!"
As they rode on the young officer, new to both the army and the West, but not to pictures of Indian camps, observed, "We have more than a few tents pitched downright sloppy along Flipper's Ditch around the fort, Deputy Long. Now that you've brought it up, I can't recall just which way any doorway might be pointed."
Longarm made a wry face and said, "I was talking about traditional Indians. Dispirited drunks and broken old men pimping for their wives and daughters might pitch a tipi upside down for all it matters."
Standish nodded, then asked, "Who's to say that's not the sort of reservation trash you've run up against then?"
Longarm said, "Me. They've come after me in particular more than once. They've come at me too brave, or desperate to be beggars or even pimps. After that, we know they swindled some Kiowa pretty slick, and tried to slicker that Running X outfit out of serious money. That sass who calls himself Black Sheep had me half convinced he was a real lawman, and you may have noticed the real badge I showed you back there where we first met."
Standish shot a thoughtful glance at the late afternoon sky. "In sum we have a band of clever desperados out here somewhere," he said. "I sure hope we can make Fort Sill before that storm blows in from the south!"
Longarm stared up at the darkening sky until he spotted silently flickering lightning deep in the badly bruised clouds. "We're a good three hours from the fort and less than an hour from that gullywasher headed our way," he said, "I know I ain't in command of this column. But if I was I'd circle the ponies and pitch me some of those swell army pup tents you all ought to be packing!"
Standish said, "Don't be ridiculous! We're only six or eight miles from the fort. We could make it in less than an hour and a half if we loped our mounts a good part of the time!"
"Through a gullywasher?" Longarm marveled. "They give no prizes for killing your ponies and catching pneumonia out our way. If I was in command I'd camp on high ground and let the gathering storm blow over before I rode on."
Standish let a little steel creep into his voice as he quietly replied, "You're not in command, Deputy Long. My orders from Colonel Howard were to investigate those distant smoke signals and report back to him as soon as I knew what they might mean. You've been kind enough to save us part of the trip. But meanwhile my commanding officer is waiting, probably with everyone on the post braced for an Indian raid. So I'll not waste a whole night out here in the dark just to keep from getting wet!"
He must have meant it. He raised his free arm and waved his men foreward, calling out, "In column of twos, slow gallop, ho!"
Longarm sidestepped Gray Skies, and waved down Minerva and the young breed gal leading the pack brute as the soldiers blue lit out at a lope as if anxious to meet up with that storm from the south.
Matawnkiha Gordon said, "I know. It's going to be raining fire and salt by the time we can hope to make camp!"
But the kid was good and so, with Longarm's experienced help, they had a canvas half-shelter facing a good fire with its back to the rain as the afternoon sky turned twilight dark and proceeded to sweep the rolling short grass all around with silvery sheets of summer rain.
They'd tethered the four ponies to some rabbit brush on the downwind side of their rise. They'd piled their saddles at either end of their flapping lean-to. That kept some of the swirling wet drafts at bay. They'd spread their bedding on the grass before it had managed to get wet. So they enjoyed a cold but reasonably dry supper as they huddled side by side in the gathering dusk with the storm showing no signs of letting up.
Minerva asked if they thought those soldiers had made it to the fort by this time. Longarm said he doubted it, and Matty said it would serve them right if they all drowned. Eating pork and beans from a can, she declared, "You Saltu are always in such a hurry to go nowhere. The three of us are as warm and dry as anyone can hope to be when Waigon spreads his wings. That gold bar chief was stupid. Stupid!"