Longarm and the Unwritten Law

by Tabor Evans

  Both gals at the table agreed they could go for some refreshing. But when he rose to go fetch three glasses, the colonel's lady, the plump Elvira Howard as she was called, got up to come along, saying he'd have trouble managing three glasses and that she'd been looking for an excuse to stretch her poor limbs.

  Longarm didn't care. They walked over to the refreshment stand, and he ignored the toy sandwiches since he'd just had supper. But as he'd hoped, the ruby-red punch smelled of rum. For while enlisted men were forbidden hard liquor on post by the Hayes Administration, rank had its privileges and rum punch was one of them.

  As he filled a glass and handed it to Elvira, she declared, for no good reason Longarm could see, "if I were kidnapped by Indians I'd kill myself before I'd let myself be ravaged and be forced to bear halfbreed babies like that white-trash Cynthia Ann Parker!"

  He filled two more glasses as he quietly observed, "The Parkers of North Texas were considered quality, Miss Elvira. They owned land and didn't owe back taxes. As for letting herself be ravaged, that ain't exactly the way Miss Cynthia Ann might have seen it. She'd been captured as a little girl and adopted by a Comanche lady who liked children. She'd spent eight or nine years growing up amongst 'em, and it was only after she'd been initiated as a full-grown Comanche woman that the distinguished war chief Peta Nocona courted her fair and proper, playing his nose flute at her and reciting all the wondrous coups he counted. It sounds like bragging to us, but Horse Indians seldom lie about their deeds or fiches."

  He put the ladle back in the punch bowl and picked up both glasses as he added, "Cynthia Ann could have said no. But I reckon she figured Peta Nocona was a good catch, considering. He married up with her as honorably as an Indian knows how. and by all accounts he never treated her mean. The couple had two sons, Quanah had a younger brother they usually call Pecos or Puma because his real name would be improper to say in mixed white company. Back around '60, just as the War Between the States was starting, the Rangers raided the Comanche for a change, and took back Cynthia Ann and a baby daughter called Topsannah. Her white kinfolks were happier about all this than she was. In less than five years little Topsannah had died, and the lonesome white captive who'd spent a quarter of a century as an Indian died soon after. Some say on purpose whilst others say she just pined away."

  As they headed back to the table Elvira quietly declared, "At least she had some fun out of life before time's cruel teeth caught up with her! I can't see Myself marrying even a handsome Indian, but I guess a Comanche camp would be more diverting than... My God, why can't the entertainment committee come up with something new once in a while!"

  Longarm didn't have to answer. They were already within earshot of the table. Longarm handed Godiva her punch and he and Elvira both sat down. As they did so they saw the conversation had drifted back to that shootout at the abandoned ruins. Ryan seemed to hold that his Kiowa had doubtless been out to make some point. He agreed they were harder to figure than the more progressive Comanche, but to his credit as an Indian agent, he held few Indians ever attacked for no reason at all.

  Colonel Howard, who sounded as if he'd been at some rum without the fruit juice and such, snorted, "Oh, no? What about that ornery old Kiowa devil called Satan? He was the one who stirred up all the troubles starting in '70, wasn't he?"

  Ryan gained more ground in Longarm's eyes by gently pointing out, "Big Satanta and crazy old Satank might have translated their names as White Bear and Sitting Bear. Neither one invited those white buffalo hunters to collect hides on hunting grounds ceded to the Indians in the Medicine Lodge Treaty of '67."

  But Longarm knew old broken treaties were as tedious to hash over as whether Adam or Eve had sinned the most. So he sipped some punch, finding it strong enough but way too sweet, and opined, "I've been ambushed on my way to an assigned chore before. I don't mean to boast, or imply Miss Godiva here ain't prettier than me, but somebody here at Fort Sill sent for me to smooth out some wrinkles in your Kiowa Comanche Police and-"

  "We don't have any Kiowa on the force," Ryan said quickly. "Under Quanah, the Comanche have drilled in corn and agreed to give beef instead of buffalo a try. But we haven't been able to recruit many Kiowa. They sneer and call other nations woman-hearted if they meet the bureau halfway. Then they cry like babies and demand government supplies because they won't give farming a chance and, big as it is, this reservation simply isn't big enough to feed substantial numbers on hunting and gathering alone!"

  Longarm nodded soberly and replied, "I just said that. I've been on other reserves where hold-outs begged for increased allotments and complained the Great Father was trying to murder them because their agent wanted to vaccinate their kids and teach them how to read and write. The old-timers ain't just stupid. They're afraid they'll lose their hold on their tribesfolk if they don't keep control of the older medicine, the traditional chants, and where the next meal might be coming from."

  Ryan nodded and said, "Quanah and the other Comanche leaders have managed to hold on to their authority and still get their kids vaccinated against the pox. Quanah's improved his own English, learned to read and write, and they say some of his white relations down Texas way have started to brag on him."

  Godiva Weaver said, "I can't wait to meet him now that I know he's neither as old nor as stern as he looks in those published tintypes." Then she caught Longarm's amused expression and quickly added with flushed cheeks, "To interview for my paper, I mean. Maybe he can tell us why those Kiowa attacked us."

  Longarm shrugged and said, "I thought I'd go ask the Kiowa at their own agency tomorrow."

  Ryan laughed incredulously and said, "You won't even get them to speak English to you, even though a lot of them know how!"

  Colonel Howard looked confused and declared, "You can't ride out to the Kiowa alone after they just tried to kill you. We can give you a cavalry escort, if you really think you can get anything out of the treacherous devils!"

  Longarm shook his head politely and replied, "Thanks all the same, Colonel, but it's been my experience you get even less out of sullen Indians when you make 'em feel proddy. We all know the elders are either in control of their young men or they ain't. If any Kiowa who's at all high on the totem pole gave orders to have me stopped before I got here, he'll know I got here. Sometimes silence can be golden when a lawman knows how to question a suspect."

  He took a sip of punch and added, "Any old-timer who's lost control of his young men might be way more willing to complain about it. Didn't General Sherman and Agent Haworth get a Kiowa chief to bear witness against Satanta and that medicine man, Mamanti, at the end of the buffalo war?"

  Ryan nodded soberly and said, "The chief was Kicking Bird, and he pointed out two dozen heap-bad Injuns to save the rest of his band at the end. Then Mamanti cast heap-big medicine, likely arsenic, and Kicking Bird kicked the bucket. The Kiowa are one of the few Horse Indian nations who go in for political assassination."

  Colonel Howard muttered, "Mean as hell. Sorry, ladies. Nobody can hold a candle to Comanche when it comes to blood and slaughter. They were a bigger nation, ranged further out from the mountains, and got into fights with Texicans first. So they perforce soon learned to fight more scientifically than anyone but, possibly, Cheyenne. Cheyenne got to digging trenches and reloading their own spent cartridges in the end. But before he saw the light, Quanah Parker led his boys as cleverly as if he'd gone to West Point. The Kiowa never progressed past dirty. Quick, sneaky raids and, as Mister Ryan just said, resorting to poison like red versions of the Borgias!"

  By this time it didn't feel any cooler, but it had gotten darker outside. So Elvira Howard interrupted the discussion of Indian warfare to gently but firmly tell her husband, "If the dancing is ever to get under way this evening, don't you think the colonel and his lady had better take the floor?"

  Colonel Howard didn't argue, but from the way he lurched to his own feet as his plump wife rose, he was one of those gents who held his rum better while sitting down.
>
  As the older couple moved out on the empty dance floor, Ryan said something to Godiva Weaver, and the next thing Longarm knew he was seated at the table alone. But he didn't care. Like most men, the tall deputy mostly danced as an excuse to grab on to a gal for the first time. He found it perfectly logical that few men really liked to dance with ladies they'd already slept with or never meant to. As the dance floor filled with swirling couples, he figured any gal left over along the walls would be somebody's wife, somebody's daughter, or mighty ugly. So, having finished the sickly punch and wanting a smoke, he got up and headed out to the downwind veranda.

  Nobody else seemed to care, and it was cooler and more peaceful out there in the semi-darkness as he smoked a cheroot and that louder dance music played in one ear while, off in the distance, someone was playing "Cotton-Eyed Joe" on a mouth organ. It sounded like that Running X rider who'd been serenading them along the trail north out of Texas. Harry Carver and his boys were likely sipping non-alcohol beer or soft cider down at the sutler's. Although as in the case of the rum punch inside, hard liquor could always find its way onto a post no matter what Lemonade Lucy Hayes got her husband, the President, to say.

  Longarm blew a thoughtful smoke ring as he pondered that notion. He knew how the Reed-Starr bunch over by Fort Smith ran stolen stock and moonshine in and out of the Cherokee Nation. But that shabby clan of trash whites and Cherokee breeds didn't act like Quill Indians, and went out of their way to be nice to the Indian Police.

  On the other hand, if Quanah Parker's Comanche Police were less willing to be bought off, and someone was worried about an experienced white lawman teaching them more than they already knew... That worked, up to a point. The point where things got tough to picture was where, in any direction, a Black Legging rider sporting feathers and paint loaded up on rotgut. Anyone running substantial amounts of liquor would be running it in for the troops. There were close to a thousand soldiers out here, all drawing at least thirteen dollars a month, and while Indians like to drink at least as much, they wouldn't have as much money to spend on such forbidden pleasures.

  Longarm blew another smoke ring and muttered, "Then what edge would anyone acting sullen in buckskin have over a friendly Indian, mayhaps with a job on the post, when it came to peddling moonshine to the thirsty peacetime army?"

  He became aware the dance music had stopped inside when some others came out on the veranda, not to join him but to cool off. He saw Godiva and old Ryan, speaking of buckskins, but they were down a ways and he had no call to pester them. Old Ryan was acting mighty attentive, and he'd likely told the newspaper gal already that he'd have his own quarters close at hand, doubtless more luxurious than a spartan room at that guest hostel.

  Godiva must have told the B.I.A. man she wanted some of that swell rum punch. For she was suddenly alone as Ryan ducked inside again.

  Longarm stayed where he was, and sure enough, the newspaper gal moved down along the railing to join him, saying, "Fred Ryan has just offered to wrangle me a seat on the B.I.A. mail ambulance bound for Fort Smith tomorrow morning."

  Longarm nodded and replied, "You told me down in Spanish Flats you were out to interview Quanah Parker. I reckon it's possible for you to catch up with him in Fort Smith. He's got to be out there in some direction. Meanwhile he's expected back here some time or the other."

  She sighed and said, "Fred told me You'd probably say something like that. I naturally didn't tell him about... our getting sort of silly on the trail. But he seemed to take it for granted that I was sort of... under your influence."

  "You no doubt straightened him out on that," said Longarm with a thin smile. It had been a statement rather than a question, but the honey blonde sighed and said, "It's not as if we'd made a lot of promises, Custis. We all say silly things when we're... excited. But we never agreed our... friendly feelings meant anything permanent, did we?"

  Longarm saw Fred Ryan down the veranda, looking confused with a glass of punch in each hand. He told Godiva, "Your ride to Fort Smith is looking for you. Do us both a favor and move it on down to meet him, honey. I follow your drift, and you have to be an elderly English fop to carry off those sophisticated scenes you womenfolk seem to get more out of."

  She started to say something else. Then she laughed, like a mean little kid, and turned away without another word. As he watched her flounce down the veranda to get her rum punch, and Lord only knows what else before the night was over, Longarm had to laugh at himself. For while one part of him was just as glad it had ended so carefree, another part of him couldn't help feeling a mite used and abused, the way a lot of gals had felt, no doubt, when the shoe had been on the other foot. As Longarm turned the other way, he spied the plump Elvira Howard just down the veranda rail, fanning herself fit to bust. As their eyes met he just nodded in passing. It would have been rude to ask a lady how much of that conversation she'd grasped. There wasn't a speck of doubt she'd been listening. Making his way around to the main entrance, Longarm went back in just long enough to get his hat. For as the dancers swirled inside the poorly ventilated club, the mingled smells of sweaty army blue wool and cloying perfume would have been a bitch if he'd anybody of his own to dance with. He knew any gal he started up with in the shantytown just off the post was as likely to get him in trouble as some officer's wife or daughter at the fool dance he'd just left. So he decided it might not kill him, just this once, to get on back to his hired room and turn in early alone, the way they kept telling him he ought to.

  CHAPTER 10

  Neither non-alcoholic beer nor soft cider was any more tempting than rum punch. But that familiar mouth organ slowed Longarm down as he might have passed the sutler's.

  Glancing through the swinging doors, he saw Harry Carver and some other Running X riders, mixed in with about as many troopers, quietly admiring the kid who was playing "La Palmona" now by the cold stove in the center of the combined shop and canteen.

  He went inside to join them, partly because it was still a bit short of his usual bedtime, but mostly because Billy Vail paid him to be nosey and everyone passing by an army post usually spent more than a few words of gossip at the sutler's.

  Nodding to Harry and the others he knew, Longarm strode on to the rear counter and asked the old geezer behind it for a fistful of his usual smokes and some waterproof matches, if they had them.

  The sutler was able to fill both orders and still give him change for his silver cartwheel. It would have been rude to ask right out if they sold anything harder than the soft drinks approved by Miss Lemonade Lucy. He figured he'd just order a beer, bitch about the way it tasted, and see what happened.

  He suspected it might not work when, pouring a tin cup of the suds that was not yet fermented and hence still sweet, the sutler asked him if he was by any chance that famous federal lawman everyone had been talking about earlier.

  Shooting a morose glance at the riders who'd likely been gossiping about him, Longarm allowed he was Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long.

  The beer tasted sort of tangy, as if there might have been a hint of alcohol somewhere among the suds, as the sutler nodded and said, "Just as well young Quirt McQueen and some soldiers blue went on out to Shanty Town for some real liquor, I reckon. I know the kid's all talk, but sometimes he don't know when to stop and-"

  "The little shit said he was after you, Longarm!" Harry Carver shouted as he rose to join them. "I told him you might be by to say adios. That's doubtless what inspired him to tear-ass off across the parade to scare folks in Shanty Town."

  Longarm frowned uncertainly as he sipped sweet suds and ran the handle through his brains in vain. When he said he had no memory of any feud with anyone called Quirt McQueen, the sutler explained, "He rides shotgun messenger aboard the mail ambulance as it runs from the Anadarko Agency to Fort Smith by way of here. He would have it known he killed a man in Dodge, whether anyone remembers him in Dodge or not."

  Longarm cocked a brow and softly remarked, "Dodge ain't all that far from Anadarko
now that you mention it."

  The sutler snorted, "That's what I meant. Quirt's staying here overnight, to ride on with the B.I.A. dispatches along with the mail in the morning. Somebody told them about that Indian trouble you-all had down to the south. Quirt said you'd likely thrown down on innocent Kiowa because he knew for a fact you were a four-flushing show-off."

  Harry Carver nodded and said, "He told us you'd bullied him and made him lick spit over in Dodge one time because he'd been a lot younger and everyone had told him you did wonders and ate cucumbers."

  Longarm put the rest of the insipid non-alcohol beer aside as he insisted, "I don't know anyone called Quirt McQueen or, hell, Quirt anything that makes a lick of sense."

  He lit one of his new cheroots to get rid of the sweet taste, and then he stated firmly, "It's not my habit to make anyone lick spit for no good reason. You say this sworn enemy I can't seem to recall is spending the night here at Fort Sill?"

  The sutler nodded, and made Longarm feel better by explaining the two-man ambulance crew would be bedding down across the way at the B.I.A. installation, assuming young Quirt didn't get lucky in Shanty Town. He made a wry face and added, "All but a few of the higher-priced whores on the far side of Flipper's Ditch were servicing the Tenth Cav until just a few weeks ago. But Quirt's a breed and he likely thinks any white gal is a step up from his sisters."

  Longarm dryly observed, "I take it you are neither an admirer nor afraid of this Quirt McQueen, Mister..."

  "Vernon, Ed Vernon, and you take it right." The sutler replied as he reached under the counter, adding, "I can't abide big-mouth gun waddies who never shoot off anything but their mouths! If I've told that kid once I've told him a dozen times not to make war talk around here if he's only looking for innocent merriment!"