To which Longarm dryly replied, "Meant to live how, by whom? I've told you I've had this dumb conversation before. There's as many ways to live Indian as there is to live white-eyed. Some of your kind may go on living much the same, with trading-post luxuries thrown in. A Woodland Cree trapping furs the way his granddad did has a lot in common with any other fur trapper, save for mayhaps being better at it than some of us."

He tried some more chili and continued. "The Pueblo farm folks you poor misunderstood Apache used to raid may be better off these days. My kind savvies any halfway sensible-acting cuss with a permanent address and irrigated croplands marked by boundaries anyone of goodwill can agree on. Your Navaho cousins have even managed to switch from raiding to sheepherding with some success. Their blankets, clay pottery, and coin-silver jewelry command fair prices at the trading posts, and it ain't as if anyone's asking them to pay rent or taxes as they find newer ways to live like ... Indians, I reckon. I know they don't live like your kind or mine these days."

She curled her pretty lip and sneered, "Hear me, we real people no longer consider those sheepherding blanket salesmen N'de!"

He said, "That's all right. The folks we call Navaho call themselves Dend. They think your ways are sort of dumb too. Can't you see none of the warrior-way nations can go on acting the way they used to? n.o.body is pestering the Ojibwa as they go on gathering wild rice the same as ever. It's the swaggering horse thieves and buffalo hunters the Ojibway themselves named Nadowiesiu or Sioux that you see moping and weeping about the Shining Times they enjoyed at the expense of Ojibwa, p.a.w.nee, and others raising crops instead of hair."

She sulked. "Hear me, my people never took scalps before your people taught them that trick."

Longarm snorted. "I know, it says in the Good Book how them Romans scalped Jesus, and everybody knows the English scalped Joan of Arc and anyone else they didn't like. King Henry scalped at least two wives, and the Spanish Inquisition was scalping folks right and left years after other Spaniards had been exploring on this side of the main ocean.

Finish that coffee and wake up, girl. There's blame enough to go around. I'll allow some of our boys have been mean as h.e.l.l if you'll admit n.o.body ever named your kind Apache because they came by in a sled giving presents to good little boys and girls."

To her credit, she seemed to study some on what he'd just said as they finished their plates and he ordered more coffee and some tuna pie. You made tuna pie with candied cactus fruit, not fish. Kinipai said she liked tuna pie, and allowed that at least some of her own kind had been a tad unreasonable of late. He asked her again if she thought the Jicarilla would jump the reserve or go quietly when the time came for them to move down to that Tularosa Agency.

She shrugged the brown shoulders partly exposed by her new Mexican blouse and said, "I hope those fools who wanted to kill me fight the blue sleeves. It will serve them right to be butchered by the medicine guns some say the blue sleeves have now. Have you heard about those medicine guns that p.i.s.s bullets forever in a steady stream?"

Longarm nodded. "We call 'em Gatling guns. Custer was offered a battery of Gatlings to back his brag back in the summer of '76, but he was in too much of a hurry, or too proud. General Sherman will doubtless send mountain artillery into your Jicarilla mountain strongholds too, if push comes to shove. So if I was one of your chiefs I reckon I'd go along with old General Sherman."

She sighed. "That was why I was trying to chant another Night Way when they stopped me. The blue sleeves are too strong for us to fight.

Victorio and those others who came out this summer are all going to be killed without gaining anything, anything. General Sherman is the one who said the only good Indian was a dead Indian, right?"

Longarm said, "That was General Sheridan. But you won't find him and old Billy Sherman in too much disagreement if he finds himself fighting extra Apache this summer. Finish your pie and let's go find us a place to resume our own hostilities, you good little Indian!"

Chapter 7.

They made it to El Rancho Alvera by suppertime. It was just as well Kinipai had tasted more interesting Mexican food. For the tortillas and refritos whipped up by her former Jicarilla kinswoman had hardly any taste at all.

Despite the half-a.s.s Mexican ways of their hefty older hostess, she greeted them both like long-lost Jicarilla kin, and the two gals babbled like brooks at high water in the melodious but odd lingo they'd been raised to speak.

Other Indians had a.s.sured Longarm n.o.body who hadn't been raised Na-dene would ever speak the language past the baby-talk level. Almost all the tongues spoken by the rest of the folks on the North American continent followed an entirely contrary grammar and general view of the world. So it was not surprising how much a keen observer could follow while, say, two Dutchmen, Greeks, or Shoshoni were talking. For most folks spoke with similar facial expressions and hand gestures that helped if you could pick out one word in a dozen.

Na-dene wasn't built that way. To begin with, as Kinipai had attempted to explain, a slight change of sound could turn a changing woman into a white-painted woman. And they did that with all their words, turning one thing into another with, say, an m instead of an n, or even worse, by using more than one word to describe what a white man, or most other Indians, would consider the same blamed thing. So just as you learned to call a coyote ma'i, some fool Na-dene gal would giggle and tell you you should have said "atse hacke," and if you protested that that came out more like "first warrior" than "coyote," she'd look at you as if you'd just wet your jeans, and insist that everyone knew it meant coyote also.

In addition, their facial expressions and hand signals were just odd enough to make a stranger guess wrong about half the time. If the army ever had another war with the Apache, those Apache scouts working for the Signal Corps would doubtless come in handy. For n.o.body else could make an educated guess as to what in blue blazes the Apache had just yelled or signed down the line.

Ramon, the fat, easygoing Mexican married up with Kinipai's distant cousin, agreed that Apache gossip was a caution as he and Longarm jawed in Spanish over coffee and tobacco. Ramon seemed surprised that Longarm wasn't planning to stay the night, if not a month or more. But Longarm had no call to flash his badge and identification at anyone who hadn't asked to see either, and with good reason. So he let it go when Ramon said he'd heard a lot of Anglo gunhands seemed to be drifting in from all over down near La Mesa de los Viejos. When Longarm asked if anyone up this way had any notion what was going on down that way, the Mexican looked a tad uneasy and said he tried not to concern himself with matters that didn't concern him or his raza.

Longarm took advantage of a certain cooling off on the part of his host to say he had some riding to do and had best get it on down the road so he'd have a head start once the moon rose. Kinipai was the only one there who begged him to stay a while longer. She followed him outside so he could kiss her in the soft light of the gloaming and a.s.sure her he'd never in this world screw any other gal on this particular rancho should he ever pa.s.s this way again. He figured she was trying to make him feel possessive when she demurely mentioned that her Jicarilla kinswoman was out to fix her up with a vaquero who was three-quarters Indian. But it might have rubbed her the wrong way if he'd told her that sounded like her smartest move at the moment.

He went back over to the stable to find that, just as Ramon had promised, those two police ponies had been rubbed down, watered, and fed enough cracked corn to see them through the night and get them by for a day or more on such browse as he might find for them when he made day camp again.

But as he was saddling the paint, the tall drink of water in gray charro duds whom Longarm had already been introduced to as the segundo, or foreman of the spread, caught up with the slightly taller deputy to tell him he was wanted over at the casa grande.

Longarm nodded and let the segundo lead the way, aware how rude some might take his riding on and off the property without saying a word to El Patron in the flesh.

Don Heman Alvera y Moreno was a severely friendly old gent with a gray spade beard. He was seated on his veranda in a wicker chair and a clean but rumpled white linen suit. He waved Longarm to another seat across a small marble table piled with tapa snacks and a pitcher of iced punch and got right to the point. "They told me you had ridden in with an Apache, wearing a double-action with tailored grips. If you are searching for work as ... a man of action, I am prepared to pay five Yanqui dollars a day with private quarters and all you and your mujer Apache can eat."

Longarm smiled and accepted the tumbler of punch the older man poured for him as he said, "Miss Kinipai ain't my mujer, Don Heman. We met up along the trail from Dulce, and I escorted her this far to visit with her own kin, La Senora Robles. As for my needing a job, I find your offer right handsome. But I've already made other plans and, no offense, I'd like to make her down by La Mesa de los Viejos by morning."

The old ranchero exchanged glances with his segundo, who said he had to get back to his own ch.o.r.es and drifted off in the tricky sunset light.

Then Don Heman said sadly, "I might have guessed you were one of those hombres."

Longarm put his tumbler back on the table and mildly asked what those hombres were supposed to be up to.

The dignified old Mexican looked as awkward as his mestizo cowhand with the Apache woman had looked. He shrugged and softly replied, "Quien sabe? It is best to vote the straight party ticket and not question Anglo political developments in Santa Fe, no?"

Longarm said, "I thought the Santa Fe Ring had been broken up by your new governor, General Wallace."

The old-timer c.o.c.ked a bushy gray brow. "I am certain he can walk on water and raise the dead as well. They say he is an authority on La Biblia, and lesser miracles are more possible than breaking up that gang of ... Never mind. You and your friends have nothing to fear from a harmless old greaser who simply wishes to be left in peace on mostly rocky barren range, eh?"

Longarm thought, then made a decision. "There's always going to be at least a modest courthouse gang around any administration elected by mortal voters. But surely the clique of lawmen, lawyers, and judges over in Santa Fe can't be getting away with the sort of things the earlier bunch under Grant got away with. I heard even U. S. Grant put down his booze and ordered an investigation after the New Mexico Guard sided with land-grabbers out to evict old land-grant families such as your own. Grant had his faults as a president, but he did fight in a war that was ended by that Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo, which said-"

"I know how the treaty conceding my own land to me reads!" the old Mexican said sharply, before adding in a dryer tone, "I was here as an hombre about your age at the time. Es verdad I have not been called upon to defend my family's land grant in court since your miraculous Lew Wallace replaced our ... less formal Santa Fe machine. But those same guardsmen, along with federal troops, have taken sides in such discussions of land t.i.tle as that Lincoln County War to the southeast, no?"

Longarm said, "No. Wallace offered a blanket pardon to all the gunslicks on both sides and sent in the troops to make sure n.o.body started up again. I know some say the McSween side got the short end of that stick. Others say it was dumb to go on fighting after a whole new crew of lawmen had been appointed with orders to throw cold water on both growly dogs. Be that as it may, despite some hurt feelings, Wallace ended the Lincoln County War once and for all, with both sides sincerely sorry they'd ever started it. You say you've had the same sort of bully-boy tactics up this way, Don Heman?"

The ranchero shrugged. "I said n.o.body has tried to rob us with trumped-up charges that our t.i.tle to this grant is mythical and hence open to more blue-eye claimants under your Homestead Act of 1862.

Perhaps now the politicos who concern themselves with such matters are selling chances for to steal land from the Indians. You know, of course, how much of northern New Mexico is still Indian land and ...

For why am I telling this to an Anglo who is no doubt laughing at an ignorant greaser, eh?"

Longarm said he hardly ever called gents he was drinking punch with greasers. But he got the impression his words were falling on deaf ears. So he repeated what he'd said about getting it on down the road, and n.o.body tried to stop him when he rose, excused himself, and ambled back across the swept-dirt central yard to the 'dobe stable.

There, finding himself alone with the riding stock, he finished saddling the paint and led both horses out under the purple sky to mount up and ride back the way he and Kinipai had come. Not even a cur dog saw him off.

A man could get the impression folks just didn't trust him, with Apache in an uncertain mood close by in one direction, and canyons full of other Anglo strangers up to Lord only knows what down the other way.

The ponies were rested and the balmy night was just right for man or beast. So he started out at a mile-eating trot, which was more comfortable for his mount than himself. Cavalry and cowhands trotted more than fashionable dudes hunting foxes. That was why both cavalry and stock saddles came with stirrups slung low enough for a rider to stand in and let the saddle hammer thin air instead of his b.a.l.l.s while his pony bounced along at an easy trot.

He'd stocked up on more canned trail goods and tobacco earlier that day in Vado Seguro, so he had no call to ride back through the small trail town as he approached it some hours later by moonlight.

If there was one way for a stranger to be noticed in a small trail town, it would have to be riding in just as the card games and drinking had narrowed down to the regulars who'd known one another a spell. So Longarm circled the settlement through the hillside chaparral and rode on and then some, until he figured he was just south of where he and Kinipai had crossed the river much earlier.

He was already starting to feel wistful about the friendly little witch woman. But that wasn't why he reined in a furlong on. The paint he was riding was acting mighty odd under him.

Horseflesh wasn't made right for puking. A pony had to be sick as h.e.l.l to even try to vomit, and when it tried, the little it could get up came out through its nostrils, which was dangerous as well as disgusting.

Neither horses nor mules can breathe through their mouths. So what a man, a dog, or a cat would call a stuffed-up nose could be a fatal illness to a pony.

He reined off the riverside trail into stirrup-high rabbitbrush that for them horses to browse as he uncinched his borrowed stock saddle and put it aboard the buckskin, telling the paint he was sorry those Mexican kids back at Rancho Alvera had apparently allowed it to cool off too fast.

The paint just kept on retching, paying no attention to the brush that every critter that ate leaves seemed to admire. Then the buckskin lowered its head and started gagging too!

Longarm led them both back to the road afoot, intending to rest them both as the three of them strode along in the moonlight, with him mulling over all the plagues and dyspepsias horseflesh was heir to.

They had plagues, the same as hogs and humans, but it was as odd to see two ponies take sick at the same time, within minutes of one another, as it would be to see two kids come down with the whooping cough while you were reading them a bedtime story. None of the other riding stock he'd seen since getting off the train at the Dulce Agency had looked at all out of sorts. So what in thunder could have gotten into them?

The buckskin, the one he'd thought in better shape, suddenly snorted odd-smelling vomit out both nostrils, tried to breathe in some more, and failing that, went into convulsions at the other end of the reins Longarm was holding.

That added up to a whole lot of contorted horseflesh, bucking and kicking and flopping about on the trail like a big dusty trout he'd hauled out of the nearby Rio Chama. In the meantime the paint busted loose, and might have run off if it hadn't been running in a series of circles until it ran head-on into a trailside oak and wound up flopping on its side like the poor buckskin.