Part 18 (1/2)
She said, ”Right now I've got Apache pestering me. I knew from the beginning that that stupidity with the Jicarilla was going to cause more Indian trouble. Those fools down in Santa Fe never thought ahead as they were pulling strings to move the Jicarilla. I told you what the wise-money boys told me about the Bureau of Land Management freezing all that Indian land, and now we're stuck with upset Indians, at a time the army can't spare us any help with them!”
Longarm c.o.c.ked a brow and cautiously asked, ”You've been recruiting gunhands to fight Indians, ma'am?”
She shrugged her bare shoulders and replied, ”Somebody has to. I just told you the army seems too busy. General Sherman says he just can't spare the troops to chase horse thieves when Victorio and his four hundred total savages are running wild down south.”
She took a drag on her cigar before adding primly, ”I prefer to call you boys my' Regulators,' not my hired guns. I can a.s.sure you all it's perfectly lawful, Henry. I've cleared it with both Santa Fe and our county sheriff up Ensenada way. So how's about it?”
Longarm exchanged glances with Poison Welles, as if he thought the blowhard knew his a.s.s from his elbow, then turned back to Queen Kirby to demand, ”What's the bounty per Apache head, ma'am?”
She met his gaze unflinchingly and said, ”I knew you were my kind of gun, Henry. A hundred dollars on each dead buck and fifty for a squaw or kid. We don't take prisoners. Any Apache who messes with me will learn I'm not a fool government you can fight with one day and tap for a handout the next.”
Longarm nodded soberly and said, ”I follow your drift, ma'am. I've often wondered why Uncle Sam fights 'em in the summer and feeds 'em through the winter, myself. But ain't we likely to get in trouble with said government, slaughtering wards of said government without a hunting license?”
Queen Kirby shrugged and said, ”h.e.l.l, I'm only asking you to shoot the red devils for me. n.o.body's asking you to sleep with them or buy them any drinks.”
Poison Welles chimed in. ”White folks got the same right as anyone else to defend themselves, and it's the Apache, not us, as started it!”
Longarm didn't feel like debating that point. He'd warned Indians more than once not to give his own kind the excuse to fight them if they weren't ready to start their own industrial revolution.
He said, ”Well, like Wes here says, I'd never get up to Chama to see about that other job alone at a time like this. So I reckon you just hired another gun, Miss Queen.”
She said, ”Good. Go home and get your Winchester. Then saddle up any mount in my livery and be ready to ride. I've heard those Apache are holed up around La Mesa de los Viejos and I want you to lead the patrol, Henry. For I know you're a killer and I want those d.a.m.ned Apache killed, right down to the last papoose!”
Chapter 15.
Longarm didn't intend to kill anyone he didn't have to. But a reservation-jumping Jicarilla could offer mighty persuasive arguments for killing him wherever you might meet him off his reservation. So Longarm was not too upset to find that one canyon deserted once he'd led, or at least rode out ahead of, Queen Kirby's score and a half of ”Regulators.”
The riders he'd spotted the night before had been camped among some barely noticeable ruins. The ”Old Ones” of La Mesa de los Viejos had either dwelt there mighty far back, or built their cliff dwellings and canyon-bottom pueblos mighty carelessly.
They'd all dismounted to scout for sign amid the squares or circles of freestone. So Longarm was counting flies on some horse apples by what might have been a kiva, filled in and almost totally erased by the rare floodwaters of many a year, when the famous badman Poison Welles came over to join him, holding a fresh but empty tin can.
Poison said, as if he knew, ”Canned salmon. No Apache ever brung this from his agency. Reservation trading posts don't stock any sort of canned fish for Apache.”
Longarm took the can and sniffed it, saying, ”Been open and empty a spell. Might have been whites up this way ahead of 'em. I heard in town that some kid had seen a mess of white strangers over by this mesa a spell back. You hear anything about that, Poison?”
Welles shrugged and replied, ”No white boys up this way right now. No Indians neither. But wouldn't you say them t.u.r.ds at our feet were dropped by a white man's horse?”
Longarm nodded and said, ”I was just admiring the oat husks. The flies say the pony was here about two days back. The Pueblos never named them Apache because they steal from one another.”
Poison Welles said, ”I follow your drift, but they raided that white outfit last night, not two days ago.”
Longarm made a mental note to be careful with Poison Welles in spite of that bad first impression. The West was full of pests who seemed half bulls.h.i.+t and half real. Old Bill Cody had started to grow his hair shoulder-length and wear fringed white buckskins like some of those sissy boys who stayed in camp with the women. But it was still a fact that he had shot all those buffalo, and had fought it out blade-to-blade with Yellow Hand of the Cheyenne Nation.
Wesley Jones, another bulls.h.i.+t artist, came over to ask what was going on. Longarm said, ”Mixed signals. Red or white campers this far up the canyon. I'd go with white if I didn't have good reason to, ah ...
suspect a good-sized war party rode out of this very canyon just last night.”
Jones said, ”d.a.m.ned gravel makes it hard to track any breed at all, not to say which way or when, Hank. What inspired you to say Apache in particular were up this way last night?”
Longarm reminded himself that c.o.c.keyed Jack McCall had been taken for a harmless blowhard till he'd really gone and gunned Wild Bill in the Number Ten Saloon. Then he chose his words carefully and told them both, ”I can't say I saw them with my own two eyes. But don't it stand to reason? Why would any white boys with a lick of sense be way out here in this dry canyon during an Apache scare when they could be safely drinking rotgut or, h.e.l.l, sipping cider over by the river in Camino Viejo?”