Longarm on the Santee Killing Grounds

by Tabor Evans

  The Minnesota lawman decided, "You'd still have to admire a rebel raider a heap to name yourself after him, wouldn't you?"

  Longarm soberly replied, "That's about the size of it, and they've sent me to backtrack a gang of unreconstructed rebel admirers who've raided considerably, after starting out in these parts to begin with!"

  The deputy sheriff removed his hat to scratch his head as he sighed and said, "I'm missing something here. I know they all say Calvert Tyger, Brick Flanders, and them other Galvanized Yankees started out in these parts years ago. But didn't you say yourself both them crazy rascals are supposed to have been burnt up in rooming house fires?"

  Longarm nodded and said, "More than once in Tyger's case. On the other hand, the last I heard, Colonel John Singleton Mosby was still alive and full of piss and vinegar, no matter how dead this namesake at our feet seems to be right now." lisa Pedersson seemed awfully pensive when she finally came back out. Longarm didn't see why. He was the only one who knew for certain where she'd just been, and it wasn't as if he'd never noticed she had the usual entrances and exits down yonder.

  Some of her neighbors pitched in to help tidy up as the local law hauled the bodies off to be photographed and stored in a cool place in the hopes somebody might come forward to claim or at least hazard a guess as to who they might belong to.

  Longarm didn't think a widow gal living alone would want all her neighbors to know she liked it dog-style. So he made sure nobody else was listening when he offered to spring for a new hall runner and some ceiling tin. But she just got all flustered and ran up front again with her apron over her red face. So he figured, as soon as he had the chance to do so quietly, it might be best to slip his saddle and possibles off her property and over by the boat landing. For it was getting late to ride Blaze clean out to that Chambrun place to begin with, and there seemed to be at least one member of the gang left in New Ulm. The one that dying jasper had only named as "the kid" was not only out there somewhere, but had the added edge of being the only one who knew all the faces involved!

  CHAPTER 15

  The Minnesota got a mite tricky to navigate above, say, Mankato. But the little stern-wheel steamboat, Moccasin Blossom, carried some local freight and passengers every other day, and this turned out to be one of those days. And since two can keep a secret if one of them is dead, Longarm didn't tell anyone in town what he planned to do next. He found that same old colored lady over by the boat landing, and gave her four bits to smuggle his baggage on board, disguised as garden truck, once he'd had a sneaky conversation with the little tub's purser in the shade of a riverside sycamore.

  The purser was the officer in charge of who got to ride upstream with them or not. He allowed his skipper would be proud to assist a federal man on a secret mission, and even suggested the best way for Longarm to board without that mysterious "kid" noticing.

  So just before they shoved off again, a tall figure sporting a crewman's billed cap and packing a big gunny sack on one shoulder moved up the gangplank with the purser and some of his other men.

  Longarm might have chanced the gang not thinking to plant anyone aboard a steamboat long before he'd even thought of using it to get past them on the northbound county road. But when the purser said he'd be safer from prying eyes on the Texas deck than in the passenger salon, Longarm was quick to take him up on it. But he didn't get to shake and smoke with the bewhiskered older skipper in the pilothouse until after they'd backed out into the main current and swung the Moccasin Blossom's blunt bows up the main channel, such as it was. A steamboat skipper had too many other worries on his mind to stand at the wheel staring straight ahead. So once he'd warned his younger pilot to mind that slick to starboard they were already swinging wide of, he had the time to accept one of Longarm's cheroots and hear him out.

  Once Longarm had tersely explained his desire to be put ashore where he could hire another pony and approach the Chambrun homestead from the unexpected upstream side, the skipper nodded and told him his best bet would be the Kellgren spread, a good-sized cattle operation just the other side of the county line.

  When Longarm quietly replied that seemed a tad far, considering the hour, the skipper insisted, "It's less'n twenty statute miles and we'll have you there in no time."

  Longarm smiled thinly. "Wasn't worried about getting that far by steam power. Still have to get back by horse power, and like I said, that old sun ball's already halfway down the sky bowl. Don't you reckon any outfits further down this river could have even a mule they'd be willing to hire out?"

  It was the purser, who got to gossip more with the locals, who horned in from the other side. "Gunnar Kellgren and his outfit are all true-blue white. That's more than can be said for the trash along the west bank from the Bedford place up to the county line. I swear I don't know what's come over the Land Office, the way they let niggers and even Quill Indians file for whole quarter sections of those old Santee killing grounds!"

  Longarm glanced out the glass to his left. He had to admire the rate at which the Moccasin Blossom was overtaking and passing willows, sycamores, and such along the chalky banks. Further out the land rose balder, with good-sized rises hither and yon in the near-to-far distance. He said he'd heard the Santee had held the west banks of the Minnesota from New Ulm to Big Stone Lake, close to two hundred miles upstream, before that ill-advised raid on that poultry farm.

  The purser nodded. "Their strip was ten miles wide as well, leaving the shiftless redskins nigh two thousand square miles of hunting grounds, after which they were allowed to join their Sioux cousins over in the Dakota for the twice yearly buffalo drives. They threw that all away for a basket of eggs and some scalps to brag on whilst they fried them!"

  Longarm doubted they wanted to hear there might have been a little more than that to the Santee Rising of '62. He asked to hear some more about the new nesters moving onto the lost Santee reserve.

  They were rounding a willow-covered sand bar now, so Longarm had to look sharp out ahead as the skipper grumbled, "There's one of 'eM, tied up to that snag near the bank, the crazy old crone!"

  When the sun-silvered jumble of planking and shingles suddenly resolved in Longarm's eyes, he saw it was a tumble-down shack perched atop a log raft someone had moored in the backwater formed by a mass of waterlogged driftwood along the west bank. As a raggedy jet-black figure came out on deck to flap crow-like sleeves at them and scream like a rabbit caught in a bobwire fence, the skipper dryly went on. "That'd be the Bee Witch. Crazy old nigger gal. They say she keeps a young Santee breed in bondage, as if to make up for her own misspent youth as a slave."

  The purser objected mildly. "They say that kid they call Sweet Sioux sells honey in town on her own. Paddles down to New Ulm in a painted canvas canoe about twice a month."

  The skipper shrugged and said, "So I've heard. They still say the Bee Witch has some hold on the Indians. They call her something like witch in Sioux."

  Longarm thought, brightened, and said, "Might that be more like witko, sir?"

  The skipper decided, "Close enough. Do you speak Sioux, Deputy?"

  Longarm modestly replied, "Not hardly. But from the little I have been exposed to, the Sioux-Hokan dialects ain't half as complicated as Na-Dene, or what you'd call Apache or Navajo. The folks who'd as soon call themselves Nakota, Dakota, Lakota, and such talk dialects with a heap of the same notions about vocabulary and grammar as we follow. So witko would come out as 'crazy,' not 'witch,' in Santee."

  As they passed the dark figure shaking her upraised black fists at them, Longarm smiled gently and remarked, "She's sure acting witko, ain't she? Lord knows what a Navajo might call her. They don't abide by our notions of lingo at all. I mean, you ask a Santee or Omaha what his dog is, and he'll say right out it's his shunka. But a Navajo will want you to tell him exactly which of his dogs, doing what, to whom, you might be asking about. They got whole different words for a man's dog, a woman's dog, running, scratching, and so on, see?"

  The skipper
exchanged glances with his purser and replied, "If you say so. When Indians want to talk to me, they'd best talk plain American if they know what's good for 'em. But I can see why Uncle Sam might send someone who speaks some Sioux to question old Wabasha Chambrun. Lord knows you don't get straight answers out of the shifty-eyed cuss in English!"

  Longarm asked, "You mean you know Chambrun personal?"

  The skipper shrugged. "We've delivered some heavy hardware to him now and again."

  As if to back his word, a distant sunflower windmill flashed a suddenly turning metal blade at them above the tree tops along the shore, and the skipper pointed the cheroot Longarm had given him and observed, "There's the Chambrun spread now, off to the northwest on the far side of the county road. You can't see anything but the new windmill we delivered this spring from here."

  Longarm took a drag on his own smoke and let it all out before he observed, "Well, the Land Office does expect a homesteader to make taxable improvements on his claim before it's his to have and to hold free and simple. But them patent windmills cost more than your average pony, don't they?"

  The skipper nodded soberly. "They do indeed and I follow your drift, now that you've told me about Chambrun paying for that riding stock with a hundred-dollar treasury note. I fear I'm simply not able to say how Chambrun paid for that patent windmill and all the other fancy trimmings we delivered there this spring. It was sent prepaid from Chicago Town. We just ran it up from the railroad back where you just came aboard. Hardly worth putting in."

  The purser volunteered, "Rocks. Chambrun staked his claim along one of the worst places to put in along this already rocky enough old river. Ain't that just like an Indian? Even the other breeds and freed darkies in these parts know enough to consider river traffic as well as that muddy wagon trace along the damn bank."

  The skipper nodded. "Damned right. Even dumb Swedes who can't speak English consider the lay of the land before they file a homestead claim along a damned river. Land near a good landing site is sure to rise in value as this valley fills up over time."

  The purser said, "Lord, I sure wish I'd had the sense to file a claim across from that new railroad town called Fairfax! For nobody expects a man to waste time and effort plowing land where railroad and river traffic meet and grain elevators sprout like mushrooms!"

  They were already passing that distant windmill. As Longarm kept staring at it wistfully, considering how far back he'd have to track as this day grew ever shorter, the skipper said, "Chambrun and his brood of Lord knows how many little Indians will get to plow until they're old and gray back yonder. Some of the boys who helped them haul that windmill gear and bobwire rolls ashore say the land the fool breed has claimed isn't much less rocky as you get back from the river. They spotted more than one outcropping in the forty-odd acres cleared so far. So it's safe to say that when you see rocks poking up out of a field, the soil can't be all that deep anywhere else!"

  The purser suggested, "Mayhaps they're planning on a mining operation instead of cattle or wheat?"

  Longarm didn't feel the call to chew that bone. He knew the old Santee reserve had been surveyed for minerals of any value before the B.I.A. had offered it to them in exchange for their original woodlands closer to the Great Lakes. The most valuable thing this corner of Minnesota had to offer was dirt, rich prairie dirt that grew crops better where it lay deepest, and surely even an illiterate would be likely to look over any land he meant to file a homestead claim on before he ever signed his X. So what in thunder might have made the oddly prosperous Wabasha Chambrun feel he just had to homestead a quarter section with rocks sticking out of it and no decent boat landing on the nearby river?

  When he voiced his puzzlement, the skipper just shrugged and told him, "You just said at least some Indians don't think the way we do. The Santee could have kept all the land you see off to the west if they'd only behaved halfway sensible. The B.I.A. had built trading posts and even schools and dispensaries for 'em, at two different agencies, so's they wouldn't have to travel too far. Old Little Crow and the other chiefs got to live in fine frame houses, just like us white folks, only better. They paid no rent and got their roofs fixed free when they leaked. So what did they do, just because they had to wait a little longer for their government handouts in wartime, in the middle of summer after a good spring hunt, for Gawd's sake?"

  The purser explained, "We were working together on an earlier and slower steamboat called the Saint Anthony at the time. We were the ones hauling army supplies up to Fort Ridgely after Little Crow and his warriors tried in vain to take it, the poor ragged assholes!"

  The skipper snorted, "Flowers in their hair, for Gawd's sake. Hit all along the river treacherous and dirty, with most of the first whites killed the poor fools who'd thought they were on good terms with the Indians."

  The purser grumbled, "Trying to be on good terms, you mean. The two-faced redskins got the first white settlers they killed into a friendly shooting match, then attacked the poor simps once their guns were empty and it was the Santee's turn to shoot!"

  The skipper growled, "They slaughtered four hundred whites the first day. More than half of 'em women and children. Fifty-odd whites near the downstream agency, who'd never trusted Sioux they knew better, got away to spread the alarm. Just in time. Scared settlers flocked in to Fort Ridgely on the far side of the river. Forty-eight of the soldiers had already been ambushed and scalped, leaving a garrison of thirty troopers to protect over two hundred scared-skinny civilians with no earthworks or even a stockade betwixt them and the so-called friendly Indians!"

  Longarm could read, and had read some about the events that were so vivid to the older men after all those years. So he was the one who said, "By the time Little Crow worked up the nerve to attack Fort Ridgely, they'd been reinforced by another hundred or more real soldiers, along with some twenty-odd civilian volunteers who did have time to throw up some breastworks, and let's not forget the modest but ferocious field artillery pieces on hand. I read someplace the bursting shells killed lots of Santee."

  The skipper grumbled, "You'll have read in other books how the only white killed three days later down by New Ulm was a young girl caught in the cross-fire too. But old-timers who were there make it thirty-six whites killed and most of New Ulm in ashes by the time the Sioux gave up. The whites gave up too, and stampeded down the river to Mankato, at the big bend, as soon as they dared break cover!"

  The purser, who seemed to enjoy figuring numbers said, "Eight hundred or more whites killed outright, a hundred and seven whites captured, along with a hundred and sixty-odd breeds and friendlies who'd been treated just as rough by the time they were rescued. At least thirty thousand whites in all had been pushed off their homesteads, dead or alive, and they figure less than half the white gals raped ever owned up to it when they were taken back from the savage bastards!"

  Longarm muttered he'd read there'd been some argument as to just how many of those hundreds of condemned ringleaders had deserved to hang or not. He knew what these old Minnesota white boys would have to say about the Episcopal missionary, Henry Whipple, who got Abe Lincoln to commute the sentences for all but the likes of a brave called Cut Nose, who bragged from the scaffold how he'd killed Wasichu men, women, and children until his arm got too tired to kill any more. Old Billy Vail hadn't sent him over this way to find out how folks felt about the long-gone Santee. Although he'd have to take that smoldering hatred into account as he tried to decide the guilt or innocence of an odd homesteader with what seemed at least a few Quill Indian in-laws.

  CHAPTER 16

  The Kellgren spread had its own steamboat landing, man-made but natural-looking at first glance. They'd graded the slope gentler than the river current would have, and then paved it with cobbles to keep it that way. The Moccasin Blossom didn't tie up there to put one man ashore. They simply nosed in as far as they could, and swung the gangplank the rest of the way so Longarm could run down it with his saddle and possibles on one shoulder and make i
t to dry ground with a squishy skip and jump. Some passengers who hadn't known he was aboard came out on deck to watch bemused. But nobody seemed excited about his getting off out there in what seemed the middle of nowhere.

  The skipper had told Longarm he'd find the Kellgrens a tribe of amiable Vikings playing cowboys, with anyone who wanted to play Indian well advised to stay the hell away from them.

  But in point of fact they didn't turn out that odd. Longarm had no sooner toted his McClellan over to that country road than he was met by a couple of kids in their teens on cow ponies almost as blond as they were. When they asked who he was and why he'd come, Longarm flashed his badge and explained his need for the hire of a horse.

  They said he'd have to ask their elders over to the house, where he'd be just in time for coffee and cake if he didn't want to upset their mamma. One of them took the McClellan from Longarm's shoulder before he could slip the Winchester from its saddle boot. But as it turned out, they were just trying to be helpful.

  When they broke through the last of the riverside timber and got to the country road, Longarm saw the three-strand fence on the far side extended well over the usual quarter mile in either direction. The mighty small town or mighty big homespread atop the rise ahead was at least a full furlong from the gate. Being afoot, Longarm politely opened and shut the gate for the two young riders. When he commented on the size of their spread on the way up to the white-trimmed cluster of housing and outbuilding, the one packing his saddle for him bragged on how big their old man preferred his surroundings. The kid said they'd come west from a regular-sized homestead in Wisconsin after making it pay but getting to feeling crowded. When Longarm mildly observed they seemed to have way more than a quarter section fenced out this way, the other kid bragged on the open range to the west they grazed as well. The one with Longarm's saddle explained, "Pappa paid cash for already proven claims, half a dozen in all. It was just after Custer and his boys got wiped out further west. Pappa read in the same papers how these more Indian-free parts were getting wiped out by grasshoppers. So he figured nesters who'd been grasshopper-broke might be willing to sell out cheap-"