Longarm - Longarm and the Apache Plunder Part 4

He was willing. Most men would have been. But he suggested they do it dog-style this time, so he could keep an eye on that smoke-talk from an upright kneeling position just in case.

She thought that was a grand notion, and gave him back his lit cheroot as she rolled over on her hands and knees. So he gripped the smoke between his grinning teeth and got a good grip on Kinipai's bare brown hips to pound her hard from behind in the cool ridgetop breeze.

Meanwhile, off to the west, others were whipping wet blankets or deerskins on and off smoldering piles of green brush to dot the blue sky with white puffs.

He knew it would only upset the gal he was dog-styling if he told her there were three sets of smoke signals now. It unsettled him enough as he tried to read their meaning. The new smoke was rising more to the south, not too close, but in line with the very direction he'd been planning on heading as soon as it seemed safe to move out.

As she arched her spine to take him deeper, Kinipai moaned, "Hear me! I don't want them to kill you too. I think you should make a run for the Chama Valley alone. I do not think they would attack you if they saw you were not helping a condemned witch!"

To which Longarm could only reply, "Neither do I. But we get out of this together or n.o.body gets out at all, you pretty little thing."

Chapter 5.

They spent the day smoking, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g, eating canned beans and tomato preserves, but mostly talking. Longarm wound up learning more about Jicarilla medicine ways, or witchcraft, than he'd have ever bothered looking up in any library. But he listened tight because you just never knew when some bit of useless information could come in handy.

Kinipai confirmed what he'd already thought about the Jicarilla being as close to Navaho as the other official Apache nations. The Mexicans to begin with, and the Anglos coming afterwards, had accepted the Pueblo cla.s.sification of Na-dene-speaking strangers who'd never known they were different nations. "Apache" came from the Pueblo word for any sort of enemy. The Jicarilla qualified as Apache by hunting and raiding a tad closer to the Zuni and Tanoan pueblos down the east slopes of the Continental Divide. "Navaho"or "Navajo," the Mexican term came from the Pueblo word for a cornfield, Navaho. But none of the Na-dene involved gave a d.a.m.n. The ones who were an inconvenient distance away for raiding corncribs had gotten captives to show them how to grow their own. The so-called Navaho had raided with almost as much glee until Kit Carson and the U.S. Cavalry, with some field artillery tagging along, had shown them the error of their ways back in '67. The Jicarilla had gone on raising h.e.l.l as late as '73, making them Apache raiders instead of the domesticated Navaho. But Kinipai seemed to talk the same way about the same spirits as a friendly Navaho gal he'd met up with a spell back over in the Four Corners country. But when he allowed he'd heard that the Chiji, as they called Chiricahua, worshipped White-Painted Woman instead of the Navahos' Changing Woman, the condemned witch laughed and told him his kind wrote things down silly.

She explained, or tried to, that neither term was exactly what an Indian meant in evoking the friendly Holy One known to them as Asdza Nadle'he, or Asdza Nadle'che.

When he said both names sounded much the same to him, she smiled and said, "The Chiji speak with a different ... accent? When white eyes with pencils come to put down the names of the Holy Ones on paper, my people try, but the words do not come out the same in English. I wish I could explain this better, but I can't, even though I have been taught both ways of speaking."

Longarm nodded. "I follow your drift. Sort of. A French Canadian once a.s.sured me the worst thing you can call somebody in French is a camel, a critter with a hump on its back and an evil disposition. But try as she might, and speaking English almost as good as me, she just couldn't say why it was dirtier to call a Frenchman a camel than, say, a dog or pig.

She said those were insults too. But nothing to compare with 'camel.'"

Kinipai nodded. "When one of my people is so cross that killing would not be enough, he may say, 'Yil tsa hockali!' And if anyone has one shred of honor, they must kill him for cursing them that dirty. Yet there is no way to translate the curse into English, Spanish, or even Zuni. You have to be N'd and think N'de to understand the terrible thing that's been said about you."

He nodded. "Son of a b.i.t.c.h loses a lot of its bite in Spanish too. We were talking about Changing Woman?"

She said, "Asdza Nadle'he, or Asdza Nadle'che, is the mother of the Hero Twins who killed all those evil spirits, and sees that all things change as they should change, from birth to death. Her name can be written down in English as Changing Woman or White-Painted Woman if you change one sound a little. Our tongue is not easy for others to learn. Your tongue is as simple as baby talk. A pony is always called a pony, whether someone is riding it or not, whether it is in sight or off on the range somewhere. Do you wonder that sometimes we have a hard time explaining why we have to fight your people, whether you can see why we are cross with you or not?"

He had to admit his own kind had managed to get mighty cross with others speaking the same lingo. But that war he'd run off to once was water under the bridge now too. So along about noon, seeing those smoke signals didn't seem to be rising to the west anymore, he got dressed and carried the nose bags and his Winchester back down to the creek.

n.o.body bothered him as he filled them and lugged them back upslope to the tethered ponies, while wishing they were mules. For though it wasn't too hot and dry that afternoon, horseflesh still needed far more water than either human beings or mules did.

As he was putting the nose bags back on the two ponies, Kinipai came over bare-a.s.s to tell him it seemed dumb to take such chances. She said both brutes were N'de ponies who didn't get watered as often as the fat pets of his kind.

He said, "I've an extra shirt in my saddlebags. We'd best see how it fits you if I'm not to spend the whole fool day with a hard-on. As to fat pet ponies, I'll tell you a dirty little secret of the U.S. Cav if you promise not to tell your treacherous Apache pals."

As she said with a sigh, she had no friends among her own people, Longarm moved over to the grounded roping saddle to rustle up that pale blue workshirt, saying, "All that guff about n.o.ble Indian steeds in those Street and Smith dime novels by Ned Buntline is off the mark by a country mile. Us white eyes don't worry about stud books, horseshoes, and proper care because we're stupid. We invented horsebackriding, long before the first Indian ever saw the first horse on this side of the main ocean."

He handed her the shirt, and Kinipai put it on, saying, "Oh, this is so pretty, it is blue as the hair of Turquoise Woman. But hear me, I still say our ponies are tougher than your ponies!"

He showed her how to b.u.t.ton up as he dryly observed, "Let's hope we can keep your boys from tangling on horseback with those troopers at Fort Marcy, then. Your boys can hide amid the rimrocks just fine on their glorified billy goats. But no Indian pony can outrun a real horse on open ground. Do you know how many Pony Express riders the Indians ever caught up with between Omaha and Sacramento? None. Not a single sissy, oat-fed pony. The company lost one rider, arrowed in the back as he rode through an ambush. But his pony, and the mail, got through. It was the transcontinental telegraph that finished off the Pony Express.

This Jicarilla riding stock I got off your agency police would make an army remount sergeant cry, but they're in better shape than your average gra.s.s-fed Indian pony. So if we baby 'em just a tad more, they might just save our lives in a running gunfight. You do know how to shoot a pistol, don't you?"

She sniffed and said of course. So he got out the double derringer he usually packed in his more formal tweed vest and unsnapped it from his watch chain, saying, "We'll have to figure some way for you to pack this. I know; we can use one of my spare socks as a sash, and you'll not only show less a.s.s in that shirt when the wind blows, but you'll have a handy place to pack a gun. Mind you don't lose it, and expect it to kick like a mule if you really have to fire it."

She seemed more delighted by that kind offer than by the magical blue shirt. He cinched her up, and when they found they could improvise a sort of holster from one toe and the hole in the sock's heel, he issued her some spare cartridges and showed her how to reload the simple two-shot belly gun.

Then, seeing how friendly all this had made her feel, they both took off all their duds to get friendlier on that blanket for quite a spell.

They even managed some sleep, taking turns on guard. And then it was dark again and they ate more canned grub, watered their ponies and grazed them a mite nearer that creek, and mounted up to move on.

They followed the mostly north-and-south grain of the mountains, and made good time by moonlight. When the sun rose again they were south of Stinking Lake, after circling the fair-sized and not-all-that-smelly body of water in the wee small hours, when the Jicarilla camped around it had been trying to sleep and not listen to the owls all around.

Kinipai, being more educated than most of her kith and kin, was only scared, rather than terrified, whenever a screech owl cut loose in the timber they were riding through. Owl was one of the totems of Mister Death. When he asked Kinipai if she'd ever really heard any owl calling out somebody's name, she demurely replied, "Of course not. Only the person Owl is calling can hear Owl p.r.o.nouncing his or her name. If I'd ever heard Owl calling my name, we wouldn't be talking about Owl like this. I'd be dead and you'd be talking to my chindi!"

Then she a.s.sured him that if ever she met up with him as a haunt she'd try to remember they'd been pals. She didn't know whether chindi gals got to spare old pals or not. She said she'd never been one or talked to one. He had to agree a chindi might not talk or think like a real live gal.

An owl who wouldn't quit as the sky pearled ever lighter led Longarm to a swell campsite in blackjack oaks on a rocky rise. But Kinipai didn't cotton to their avian neighbors at all.

The owl kept screeching because it had holed up for the day close to a crow rookery, and the crows were mobbing it with some mighty noisy remarks of their own. But when he explained the natural noises to the Jicarilla gal, she said Crow was almost as wicked a spirit as Owl. She naturally meant the "were-crow" ogre of her nation's religion. She knew the big black birds mobbing that real owl were only critters. But she said they still gave her the creeps as he insisted on making camp under nearby trees.

He told her that was the reason they were doing it. He figured none of her own folk would want to poke around close to owl or crows without an urgent reason, and he'd been careful about the path they'd been riding over slickrock and gravel.

By the time they'd tended the ponies and spread his bedroll upwind between two boulders, that owl had given up and flapped off to a quieter neighborhood with the crows calling insults after it. Longarm opened one of their last cans of beans as he asked an expert on the subject what she'd think if she heard an owl hooting in broad daylight with no crows as an excuse.

Her sloe eyes widened as she stammered, "I would run away, as fast as I was able, before I heard it call my name! Everyone knows only Real Owl could behave in a way Changing Woman hadn't meant all living things to act. Why are we talking about the Holy Ones? Don't you want to ravage me anymore?"

Longarm chuckled and said, "Let's eat first. I can give a fair imitation of an owl. You know how country boys fool around as they're growing up around critters. So what you're saying is that if I hooted at some Jicarilla heading this way to gather acorns or-"

"n.o.body gathers the acorns of this sort of oak," she said with a wry expression. "They are bitter, bitter."

He said, "I know. Try some of these beans. My point is that I'd as soon not hurt or even swap harmless shots with any already peed-off Jicarilla during the current political crisis."

She dug into the beans with two fingers and handed the can back as he continued. "I don't want either of us getting killed by them, either.

So any edge I can come up with might prove useful."

She washed down her beans with canteen water, and pointed out it was his grand notion to play tag with her people inside the reservation line.

He nodded and said, "I know where we are. Wasn't planning on a longer stay. We're almost due west of that mesa on the far side of the Rio Chama. One beeline after dark ought to see us there. I ain't sure you're socially presentable to the Mex settlers along the bottomlands between, no offense. It ain't that you look more Indian than a heap of Mestizo Mexicans, now that we've washed your pretty face. But I wish we had more seemly duds for you to wear. I'll allow that shirt of mine fits your bitty figure like a nightgown, but you still show a heap of leg on or off a pony. I wish I knew somebody in the Chama Valley well enough for a late-night visit and the loan of a more Mexican-looking outfit for you."

She scooped more beans from the can in turn as she thought hard and finally said, "I have a distant kinswoman who married a Nakaih she met off the reservation one time. It is the custom of our people to live near the bride's mother. But this one's mother would have nothing to do with a son-in-law who was not a real person, and for some reason he didn't wish to dwell among N'de either. So they now live on a Nakaih rancho, where he works as a herder of the owner's cows."

Longarm washed down the last of their slim breakfast with the same canteen, and got out a smoke to share as he asked whether Kinipai's kinswoman was likely to know she was a condemned witch.

She said she doubted it, since that N'de gal who'd married a Mexican had converted to the Papist Way and been written off as a lost soul by both her kin and the BIA. Indians who drew BIA allotments had to be numbered and listed on government rolls. Indians who went wild again after applying for BIA handouts were listed as renegades. But Indians who simply gave up acting either way and preferred to live as natural as anyone else were simply crossed off, as if they'd died.

As Longarm lit their cheroot the pretty Jicarilla allowed she'd hoped to enjoy a smoke with him afterward.

He told her, "We got a whole twelve hours or more to kill up here. It's best to study on other notions while you've got them on your mind.

Might you know where this rancho your long-lost relation lives on might be?"

She said, "I've never been there, of course. But somebody told us it was too close to those old Anasazi ruins for comfort. I think they said they branded their cattle with a drawing of one of those big straw hats Nakaih wear. But it was upside down, like so."

He watched as she traced a fingernail in the dust between her upraised bare feet. He said, "That could be meant as a simplified sombero upside down, or a chongo-horned cow's head, right side up. Mexican brands are more artistic than our own."

She said that was the best she could do.

He said, "It has to be one or the other, and I speak enough Mexican to ask once we get down where it's safer to talk to folks on open range.