Longarm nodded and said, "I know Fred Ryan rode the mail ambulance east. We waved to one another in passing. I'd be Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long, and I'm sure old Fred would be proud to let me use your telegraph key, seeing the army signal officer seems away on serious business as well."
The young breed rose warily to come over by the counter as he confessed to being Hino-Usdi Rogers of the Cherokee persuasion. When Longarm bluntly asked him what a Cherokee might be doing here in Kiowa-Comanche country, Rogers looked embarrassed and explained how Ryan had brought him along to a newer post after hiring him and training him at the Tahlequah Agency in the Cherokee Nation. Longarm didn't care. Ryan had obviously been with the B.I.A. longer than the Kiowa or Comanche had been with this agency.
Rogers opened a flap at one end of the counter, but warned Longarm, even as the far taller deputy stepped through it, that he wasn't half as fast with a telegraph key as the Signal Corps crew next door.
Longarm said, "I can send and receive Morse pretty good. Used to tap into enemy wires during the war. I hope you've some connection with the Western Union grid so's we can get off wires to Denver and such?"
The Cherokee breed ran fingers through his thick black hair and looked as if he'd been caught with them in a cookie jar as he told their visitor he wasn't sure. He said his boss, Fred Ryan, usually made the long-distance connections and let him do the more routine sending and receiving.
By this time he'd shown Longarm to a table in the rear where a telegraph key and some writing material waited under a shelf of wet-cell batteries. Before he sat down, Longarm casually asked if Rogers or the army had wired those orders for police uniforms from Saint Lou.
The breed kid brightened and said, "Oh, that was us. It was exciting to chat by wire with big-city folk. Agent Ryan patched us through to the Western Union office in Saint Louis, and then handed the task over to me. You see, he makes the important decisions while I keep the files in order, do the routine typing, and-"
"We got a young gent called Henry clerking our Denver office the same way," Longarm said. "You told me Ryan broke you in a spell back at the Cherokee Agency. Now I'd best contact the central Kiowa Comanche agency at Anadarko and see if they can shed any light on Colonel Howard's campaign plans."
They couldn't. No army messages were on the line at the moment, and it only took a few minutes for someone at the B.I.A. in Anadarko to hear their own key clicking and ask who in thunder wanted what.
It seemed nobody in Anadarko knew why Colonel Howard was headed their way in battalion strength. Longarm started to send something dumb about Attila Homagy. But he never did. With any luck the fool immigrant would never think to ask questions about telegraph messages, and even if he did, it was going to take him yet another full day to get back here, giving him at least two on the trail if everyone pushed hard.
Anadarko lay a tad farther away than the thirty miles a cavalry column averaged in a day's ride. Even if Howard got there well before sundown and Homagy heard right off, there was no way he'd be able to drive a jaded team directly back alone, at night, even if the army would let him. Longarm knew they wouldn't even let a lone civilian drive by day before they had a tighter grip on this current Indian scare. Colonel Howard never would have led that big a force out chasing after a few dozen at the most if he hadn't been taking the situation seriously.
Once he'd figured how much time he had to work with, Longarm made a few penciled notes to compose the longer message he had to send his Denver office.
Before he could, Hino-Usdi Rogers shyly marveled, "You surely send and receive good! You've a faster fist than Agent Ryan, and I can't keep up with him half the time!"
Longarm got out a brace of smokes as he explained, "The trick is not to think in dots and dashes. It takes a spell to think and then send dit-dit-dah-dit for the letter F. If you remember it sort of sounds like 'Get a haircut!' and move the key in time with the words, you've sent your letter F already."
The breed kid laughed, and asked if there were any other silly ways to bring Morse to mind. Longarm offered a couple that were sort of dirty, if effective. The young breed blushed like a gal, and declared he'd never forget the letter V sounded like "Stick it in deep!"
He blushed so girlishly and refused the offered smoke so primly that Longarm shot a thoughtful look at his thin white shirtfront. But although he'd met up with gals getting by in a man's world that way in the past, Hino-Usdi had no tits worth mentioning.
Lighting his own smoke, Longarm patched himself through to the main line, and after some argument with a Western Union section manager who didn't recognize his fist and required some bragging, Longarm got through to their Denver office and had them take down a long wire at day rates, collect, to be delivered to his home office.
He brought Billy Vail up to date on his situation so far, using as few words as possible but still spending many a nickel. Then he pointed out that Quanah Parker seemed to be off the reservation on other business, and that Homagy had tracked him this far after all, and asked his boss whether he was supposed to come on home or just have it out with the fool grudge-holder.
The Cherokee breed told him, admiringly, he hadn't been able to follow a quarter of those dots and dashes, even thinking dirty.
Longarm took a thoughtful drag on his cheroot and said, "It's sure to take them the better part of the next hour to get Marshal Vail's reply back to me. Whilst we wait, I may as well send some more, and whilst you're at it, could you dig out any files you have on those made-to-order uniforms you ordered for old Quanah?"
The kid said he could. So Longarm started sending shorter direct messages to other sub-agencies and other main agencies in the Osage, Choctaw, Creek, and Cherokee Nations.
By the time Rogers rejoined him with a file folder, Longarm was able to declare, "Fort Smith says a newspaper-reporting gal I know seems to be on a wild-goose chase. Quanah never went there to visit Parkers he ain't related to. They couldn't tell me just where the gal and old Fred Ryan spent the last few nights."
Rogers blushed like a gal again as he opened the file on the table by Longarm, saying all the business correspondence they'd handled for the busy Quanah Parker was somewhere among all those carbon onionskins.
Longarm was careful with his ashes as he leafed through the pile. The records showed the progressive chief had ordered, received, and paid cash for one gross of police uniforms, cut to the same pattern as those worn by the so-called Sioux Police. That jibed with what the sincerely sober Sergeant Tikano had told him.
Billy Vail had never sent him to look into the business dealings of Chief Quanah Parker himself. But seeing he had the files handy, and recalling what they said about that process of elimination, Longarm nosed around enough to see Quanah didn't have any of his uniformed police collecting fees or even recovery rewards from anyone.
Longarm made sure by asking the B.I.A. clerk what some of the obscure typing meant. Rogers said Quanah naturally reported tribal income to his own agent, Conway, who relayed it on up to Anadarko by way of the wire here in the liaison office. The breed added that the B.I.A. had felt little call to rein Quanah all that tight, seeing he had a rep among red and white folk for honest dealings and gave the B.I.A. a lot fewer problems than old sulks like Pawkigoopy or even Necomi.
Longarm saw by the wired bank statements how Quanah could afford new blue serge and brass buttons. Aside from leasing tribal grass to white neighbors, Quanah bought and sold riding stock on and off the reservation at a handsome profit. For being a product of both cultures, he knew which end of a pony the shit dropped out of. He'd already taught his Comanche wranglers to saddle-break stock to be mounted from the near side so cowhands could get more use out of them.
It got downright spooky when you got to the real-estate deals a man who could pass for Comanche or Texas Parker was capable of pulling off. For thanks to having been accepted by his late mother's kin all over North Texas, he was in a position to put on some pants and make a profit from any proven homestead he could get off some greenhorn cheap.
A mean thought crossed Longarm's mind when he came to that. But he'd have heard about any recent Comanche scares down the other side of the Red River. Meanwhile, two out of three homesteaders went bust with no help from anyone but the grasshoppers and fickle climate out this way. He noticed most of the part-time Indian's cropland deals had been just east of Longitude 100', where dry farming or dairy herds had more of a chance. He wondered who in thunder had ever taught a Comanche war chief you needed just over ten inches of rain before you dared to bust your sod. Poor Cynthia Ann Parker had only been nine when she'd had to learn more about weaving baskets and tanning hides than agriculture. One suspected that in spite of his long braids, old Quanah had to be another sneak who reads books when his pals weren't watching.
The papers he was reading inspired Longarm to send other questions to the outside world. When he contacted Anadarko again to see if they had anything on Colonel Howard's column yet, they wired back that the cav had stopped for a trail break at the dinky sub-agency at Elgin, meaning Howard was really taking his own good time and that he'd be lucky to make it up to Anadarko by sundown.
Then the main agency wired that they'd been getting other scattered reports, or complaints, after putting out their own wires about those mysterious riders.
Few had been hurt or seriously shaken down, but now that they all thought back, there had been some Indian Police chasing a bunch of Kiowa stock thieves, and as a matter of fact the Indian Police had been given food, fodder, and some travel expenses they said Quanah would repay, in his own good time, as they wandered the big reserve.
A more recent report from an Indian settlement along Beaver Creek, east of Fort Sill, said about a score of riders, dressed more like Saltu cowhands than either police or a warrior society, had skirted to the north a sunset back, despite the wind and rain they'd been riding through with night coming on.
Longarm grinned up at the Cherokee breed as he took the last of that down and said, "They're running for it. They knew the army had caught up with me and thought I knew more than I really do."
Hino-Usdi batted his lashes like an admiring schoolgal and asked what all that really meant.
Longarm replied, "From my very first words with that Sergeant Black Sheep they've been out to clean my plow, as if they suspected I suspected something the moment I laid eyes on them."
The Cherokee breed suggested, "What if that one who speaks such American English could be wanted by the law? Wouldn't he be afraid you might have recognized him? You did tell him you were a federal lawman, didn't you?"
Longarm nodded thoughtfully and said, "That only works partway. If we'd ever met before, I'd have really recognized him. That Ben Day process that allows you to print photographs on paper is too new for older wanted posters to enter the equation. And he'd know better than to front for the outfit if he was on any recent ones."
Rogers shrugged and said, "You did say they went right to war with you, didn't you?"
To which Longarm could only reply, "Damn it, kid, I just now said I didn't know why they were so scared of me. Suffice it to say, they were. They tried more than once to gun me out on the range. When that didn't work they just ran for it. Hold on. I want to wire some other Indian Police I know in Atoka."
As he started to, Rogers said, "That's way off this reserve."
Longarm said, "I know. Ed Vernon picks up his private liquor there. That's the best place for sneaks with Indian features, no offense, to board a railroad train. They'll expect me to wire Spanish Flats, but hardly another Indian agency by a handy railroad."
Rogers marveled, "It's no wonder they were afraid of you! They'll take ever so long to ride all those miles between here and Atoka, and your Choctaw friends will have plenty of time to set up an ambush!"
Longarm said, "Not if I don't wire them sometime today. I might as well get word to Fort Washita, halfways there, whilst I'm at it. Lord knows Colonel Howard wouldn't be able to head 'em off now, even if I could tell him which way they seemed to be headed!"
He got to work on the key, the cheroot gripped between his bared teeth as he glared unconsciously at the wall beyond. For no matter how surely he worded his messages, he still had no idea what he'd done to scare them clean off the Kiowa Comanche reserve!
He sent a few more messages to agencies along the 160mile route of the fugitives, assuming they weren't headed another way entirely. By the time he'd finished and lit another cheroot, Western Union was sending Billy Vail's reply to his earlier report. Their telegram delivery boy had made good time.
Vail told him Smiley and Dutch had been down to Trinidad and back with little additional light to shed on old Attila Homagy's domestic problems. Some neighbors said the pretty young Magda Homagy had run off with that same tall, dark, and handsome stranger. Vail had a dozen good guesses as to how Homagy could have learned, or guessed, which way his own chosen home-wrecker had flown. Longarm could think up more, starting with, "Say, did you see my pal Longarm passing through here just the other day?"
Vail agreed Fort Sill wasn't working out so well as a hideout, and flatly forbade a ride up to Anadarko. Sitting at his Denver desk, the sly old marshal had come to the same conclusions about Homagy and a buckboard on muddy lonesome roads. He ordered Longarm to give Quanah Parker another day to get back and state just what in thunder he'd had in mind before he wandered clean off the damned reservation. Vail said it sounded as if the army and B.I.A. had as good a grip on those fake police as any one man was likely to manage. So Longarm was to spread the word and do what he could, as long as he was there. Then, about the time Attila Homagy could possibly hear he'd just missed him yet again, and go tear-assing down to Spanish Flats, Vail wanted Longarm to return those first ponies near the depot,ride a train one stop east, and head for, say, Waco aboard another. Vail said they either had to find Homagy's runaway wife for him or Shoot him. He added he was working on a report about a tall tinhorn and a brassy blonde with a mighty thick accent up around Fort Collins.