Longarm on the Santee Killing Grounds

by Tabor Evans

  The Kellgren kid who'd bragged on their herd chimed in. "Them bugs were still at it when we hauled in here back in '77. You never did see such hungry grasshoppers. They'd eat all the leaves off all them trees back yonder and grazed all the grass you see now, right down to the bare dirt. Mamma and the girls had to hang the laundry to dry indoors that first Summer, lest them greedy bugs chew holes in the sheets for the starch!"

  Longarm quietly observed he'd seen grasshopper plagues. They occurred about every seventh year between the Rockies and the Mississippi. The kid who'd bragged on their grazing told him cows were safer to raise than crops in grasshopper country. For in a pinch a hungry cow could graze on grasshoppers, and the grass grew back thick as ever once the plague had passed.

  The kid packing his saddle waved expansively to the north and said, "Both the Linderboms and Ericssons lost their newly planted orchards as well as cash crops by the time Pappa made 'em an offer. He paid 'em more than he really needed to, seeing they were our sort of folk. They were down to living on eggs, since chickens are the only stock that really thrives on grasshoppers alone."

  Longarm idly asked who they'd bought out to the south. The kid with the saddle innocently replied, "Oh, we got the Alden and Marvin spreads for next to nothing."

  Longarm didn't ask why. Anglo-Saxon country folks could be just as quick to take advantage of fool furriners.

  By now they were close enough to the two-story shingled-frame main house to make out the four full-grown and gaggle of smaller figures watching from the front veranda. As they got within earshot, the Kellgren kid who wasn't packing any load rode forward at a lope to doubtless gossip some about their unexpected visitor.

  So nobody asked to see his badge when they invited him to come on in and tell them all about it while he had some coffee and a slice or more of Momma's ostkaka.

  Gunnar Kellgren looked a lot like Santa Claus must have before he got fat and his full beard had gone from wheat-straw to snow-white. His old woman, Miss Frederika, was a big motherly gal in blond braids and flour-dusted pinafore who looked as if she still liked to screw when nobody was watching. The two of them spoke tolerable English, but a tad more singsong than their pure American kids.

  The cheerful kitchen of their stout frame house was painted in the pale sunny way most Scandinavians fancied, with everything that wasn't buttercup-yellow either mint-green or baby-blanket-blue. The coffee they served him at the yellow kitchen table was black as sin. The ominously named cake turned out to taste like cheese and cherries, only sweeter. As he enjoyed two whole slices Longarm told them more about his needs. Gunnar Kellgren said they'd be proud to lend the government a good mount, and that Longarm could just leave it in that livery near the landing in New Ulm when he was done with it. For his boys rode into town more often than their momma and the pastor of their church felt they ought to.

  When Longarm said he was on an expense account and offered to pay for the hire of their pony, the expansive Swede looked hurt and asked, "Do we look like barley growers, Deputy Long? We don't keep our cows in the house with us but there are plenty out back, along with many a draw filled with firewood and running water across both our lawful holdings and the open range we graze almost entirely our own selves."

  Longarm said he was sorry if he'd insulted anybody. Then, the free loan of that pony settled, he innocently asked who else might be sharing the open range off to the west.

  Kellgren sounded just as unworried when he answered, "Other cattle folk named Runeberg. They're all right. Pretty little Helga Runeberg has been running the outfit since her own daddy died. It's a shame she'd be a tad too old for Junior here. If our two families ever married up they'd leave a grand cattle empire to our grandchildren someday!"

  Longarm allowed he'd heard Helga Runeberg ran a mighty big outfit from her own spread along the Sleepy Eye. Then he added, "That would be better than a score of country miles to the southwest, wouldn't it?"

  Kellgren nodded casually and replied, "I said it would make a grand empire. Like ourselves, of course, Miss Helga only holds a section or so she has to pay taxes on. But none of the farm families moving in along either our river or Miss Helga's claim more than a half mile back from the roads to market. Field crops can't be driven down off the rises on its own hooves, and after that, this part of Minnesota is laid out just right for cattle folks and farm folks to live and let live."

  Longarm didn't need to be lectured on the advantages of drilling in spuds or grain on bottomland while grazing beef or dairy stock on the higher rolling prairie between river valleys. So he washed down the last of his second slice of ostkaka with the last of his coffee, and made a show of taking out his pocket watch to see how he was doing as to time.

  The burly cattleman took the obvious hint and rose from his side of the table, suggesting they go have a look at the riding stock. So Longarm picked up his McClellan from the kitchen corner and trailed after Kellgren and his older boys.

  All the ponies in the corral out back looked well fed and spunky. Longarm said so, and added that since they knew their own stock better than he did, he'd leave the choice to them.

  One of the kids wanted to lend Longarm a chestnut with four white stockings. But old Kellgren snorted and said, "The man said he wants to cover a good bit of ground, a lot of it after dark, not rope or cut, Junior."

  He pointed out a bigger blue roan and told Longarm, "You'd want old Smokey there. Sixteen hands at the shoulder to pack a man your size through thick and thin. There's only one thing, though. I see that bridle lashed to your saddle has a stock bit and Smokey is a lot of horse. Would you care for the loan of a meaner spade bit?"

  Longarm said, "Not hardly. I got a lot of wrist, and old ladies call you names when you ride a pony into town foaming pink."

  Kellgren said it was up to the rider to decide such matters, and told his boys to saddle Smokey up for their guest. As they were doing so, with the big blue roan objecting some, Longarm asked Kellgren more about his neighbors to the south, since he'd have to pass more than one on his way to the Chambrun spread.

  The big Swede shrugged and said, "We get along. It's best to stay on neighborly terms. Whether they sneak some beef on you or not, it makes it easier to deal with them when the time comes to buy them out."

  "You've been planning that far ahead?" asked Longarm thoughtfully.

  Kellgren sounded as if his conscience was clear when he replied, "You have to, if you expect to leave this world better off than you came into it. I know the government was anxious to fill all this wide-open space with somebody that pays more taxes than buffalo or buffalo-hunting redskins. But we all know four out of five homesteaders fail, even when they're white folks who know what they're doing. The trashy halfbreeds and colored folks down the river as far as the Bedford freehold can't know what they're doing. They don't even listen when a well-meant white neighbor tries to tell them what they're doing all wrong!"

  "What are they doing all wrong, and ain't any of them white?" asked Longarm with a puzzled frown.

  Kellgren shook his leonine head and said, "Nope. All but those colored Conways down the other side of Chambrun seem to be breeds or poor-white squawmen married to kin of that full-blooded Chambrun woman, Miss Tatokee Something. Sometimes she's supposed to be this and other times she's supposed to be that. But Miss Matilda, who fetches and carries for the Bee Witch, says she's a full-blood Santee, and Miss Matilda ought to know, being part Santee in her own right."

  "You all know this so-called Bee Witch?" Longarm asked.

  Kellgren said, "Sure. She's not really a witch. Just an odd old colored woman who keeps bees. She acts sort of wild and crazy when mean kids tease her. But the honey she sells is so clean and clear my Frederika serves it straight from the jar. We mostly deal with her helper, Miss Matilda, a young breed gal who gets around better. Like I said, she's the one who says the Chambrun squaw's a full-blood Santee, no matter what the government said about moving them all out to the Dakota Territory."

  Longarm
somehow doubted even a part Santee would have called any other woman a squaw. But by now they had old Smokey saddled and bridled. In the meantime, it wasn't getting a lick earlier. So Longarm asked no further questions about the neighbors to the south, and just made certain he had that New Ulm livery right as he mounted up and rode out, with the sun agreeing with his pocket watch it would soon be suppertime.

  But there were a few hours of daylight left as he rode the big blue roan down the county road, admiring the view as well as the easy gait of the long-limbed gelding. To his left, between the road and river, second- and third-growth bottomland hardwood grew so thick in places you hardly knew the water was there. Most such trees grew back from the stump as circles of saplings around the ghost of the original full-grown alder, cottonwood, willow, or whatever. All that gathering of free firewood since the Santee had been run out had made for a genuine jungle in summertime and doubtless good brush shelter for critters the rest of the year. Off to his right, as the prairie rolled higher, whether as slopes or rocky bluffs, such trees as still grew either marched in file down scattered watercourses, or circled up like a wagon camp atop otherwise bare grassy rises, with a cow peeking out from such cover every now and again. Longarm knew that when this had still been an Indian reserve the trees had grown far thicker, with real woodlands sometimes reaching clean to the river banks in some stretches. For unlike their buffalo-running cousins further west, or perhaps the way those cousins had started out before they'd met Tashunka, or Horse, the Santee had lived far more like their Ojibwa enemies, on the bounty of their original woodlands around the Great Sweet Waters, where Hiawatha had met his Santee sweetheart, Miss Minnihaha. Woodland Indians could be hell on trees with useful bark, such as birch or elm, but they liked to choose dried-out deadwood for fires, and had less call than white folks to chop down green and still-growing timber. Someone had sure cut a heap of it since the Santee had been run out back in '63. Neither the Kellgrens nor the neighbors he'd said were at least part Indian would have had much call to log this seriously so far from their own woodpiles. It seemed as likely the more valuable red oak, rock maple, basswood, and such on the drier slopes had been cut and rafted downstream for fun and profit before many homesteads had been filed upstream from New Ulm after the land had been thrown open to white folks.

  A harried lark was cussing about it from a bobwire fence and the shadows were getting longer when he overtook a raggedy kid driving a dairy cow on foot, likely homeward bound, along the far side of that fence with soft words and a big stick. Longarm reined in to stand in the stirrups and peer down the road ahead as he called out, "Evening, cowboy. That your homestead a furlong on with that smoke plume waving at us in the breeze?"

  The kid called back, "I may not have me a pony to ride, mister. But that don't give you no call to mock me."

  Longarm laughed lightly and replied, "Mocking was never what I intended. Anyone can see you're a boy in command of a cow. And as for you having a pony or not, any Mex matador can tell you it's a heap braver to mess with a cow afoot than mounted up. That particular cow looks pure Jersey as well. You'd never get that matador to mess with a Jersey in the bull ring. How come you're so brave?"

  The kid replied, less pissed, "Got no choice. They sent me to fetch old Napin Gleska when she didn't come in to get milked with the others. You were right about her being a purebred. We got us a whole dozen milkers of the very best."

  "Brand-new four-strand fence I see there too," Longarm noted in an admiring tone. "Your folks must be doing mighty well."

  The kid whacked the milch cow's tawny rump with his stick as he shook his head and explained. "Ina Tatowiyeh Wachipi gave Pa all the money we needed to prove this claim. She's the one who's rich, and she don't sit on her money like an old broody hen expecting to hatch it neither! She's a real Nakotawiyeh! Not a stingy old Wasichu lady!"

  Longarm nodded as if he understood everything they were talking about. "Others have told me Wabasha Chambrun's fine wife was a true-heart. Santee Nakota, right?"

  The kid sounded smug as he stuck out his skinny chest to declare, "Just like my real ina. It ain't my fault I'm only half Nakota. They'd have never let us claim this land back if my ina hadn't married up with a Wasichu like you."

  Then he jabbed the Jersey under her tail with his stick and shouted, "Hokahey, you lazy cow! Iyoptey niyeh or I'll never get any supper tonight!"

  Longarm could see the kid was busy. So he said so and rode on, digesting the little he'd learned as he repeated their few words in his head. Others had told him the Chambruns weren't the only odd newcomers who'd filed homestead claims up here on what had once been the Santee Reserve. He'd meant what he'd said to that kid back there about fancy dairy breeds and one more strand of new Glidden Brand bobwire than most nesters strung. The more eastern dialect the kid had larded his English with was close enough to the little Lakota Longarm knew, despite it's being a tad more guttural with the L sounds transposed to N, for Longarm to figure the kid had likely meant to call the Chambrun woman his aunt instead of his real mother. A lot of the nations used the same words for all the elders of their parents' generation. Tatowiyeh Chambrun, to keep it simple, could as easily be just a friendly older woman as true kin. Indians tended to be better friends and uglier enemies than some. So a full-blood married to a homesteader who had hundred-dollar treasury notes to spend would doubtless help out another full-blood gal married up with yet another nester.

  The breed kid had innocently verified what others suspected about Chambrun having a Santee woman, whatever in thunder he claimed to be. The kid had called her a Nakotawiyeh, or woman of the allies, as close as it worked out in Wasichu. But he hadn't argued when a friendly stranger referred to her as a member of her own particular Santee nation.

  Longarm ignored the yard dog and other raggedy kids who seemed so interested as he rode past their soddy. He had meant his remark about their chimney smoke a tad sardonically. For few white nesters could afford that much of a fire just for a summer supper, and Indians were inclined to burn less than a third as much fuel, left to their usual habits. But he knew that a prosperous wiyeh, living "Fat Cow" because her man was so successful, could be inclined to build such a fire as it drove everyone out of her tipi with their eyes burning so she could modestly brag on the way her man had been spoiling her.

  He rode past the next fenced-in spread he came upon, knowing grown folks fibbed more to the law than their kids might and that suppertime was a rude time to come calling in any case.

  The summer sun set later that far north than it might in some other parts. But the sky to the west was a crimson memory of the day, and the wishing star was winking down at him from the east when he saw a lamp lighting up a quarter mile ahead. As he slowed old Smokey to a thoughtful walk, he was sure that dark cluster down the road had to be the Chambrun place and that at least the lady of the house was a full-blood from a fighting nation.

  Longarm had read that same crap about Sioux being afraid to fight after dark because the Great Spirit might not be able to find their ghosts if they were killed. Old Ned Buntline said Calamity Jane had ridden with the Seventh Cav as well. But the simple truth about the fighting tactics of the Horse Nations was that nobody with a lick of sense, red or white, ever ordered a full cav charge after dark because it simply smarted to ride into a solid object at full gallop.

  After that, wakan Tanka (or Wakanda) translated more like Great Medicine or Big Mystery than Great Spirit, which would have been Wanigi Tanka if any old-time medicine man thought he knew who was running his own world. Nobody was supposed to come looking for your four ghosts when you got killed. Some of you went looking for your enemies to haunt them, which was why they maimed your corpse to cripple your ghost, while another part of you went to live with Old Woman in her lodge beneath the Northern Lights. Longarm agreed with his Indian pals that it might be more fun to roam with those other ghostly parts of your dead self in what some translated as the Happy Hunting Ground, although no Indian thought his ghost would ha
ve to hunt very hard, where it was never too hot, never too cold, you always felt as if you'd just eaten, and all you had to do was ride forever on a fast immortal pony.

  Meanwhile, back here in the living world, dusk was considered a swell time to raid an enemy, and knowing this, most Quill Indians could be more proddy about sudden bumps in the dark than a stranger riding at them in broad daylight. So Longarm reined in a furlong out and drew his.44-40 to peg a shot at that wishing star.

  As he sat his stationary mount reloading, that lamp winked out in the window of the soddy in the middle distance.

  A long time later a cautious voice called out, "Who's there and what might you want?"

  Longarm called back, "I'd be Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long, and I'd like a few words with Mister Wabasha Chambrun. I fired that shot lest you take me for a thief in the night."

  The man in the darkened doorway of the soddy called for him to come on in in that case. But nobody struck a light inside before Longarm had dismounted in the dooryard and was tethering his mount to their hitching rail in plain view. That lamp inside was relit as he approached the front door, hands polite and Winchester still in its saddle boot for anyone to plainly see.

  Wabasha Chambrun, after all that talk, turned out to look mighty unremarkable in his checked shirt and bib overalls. He could have passed for a fairly clean-cut Mexican in town, if he'd said that was what he was.

  The same could not be said for the moon-faced old gal over in a corner near that lamp. Nobody but Buffalo Bill wore fringed buckskin in the summer when they didn't have to. But her blue print Mother Hubbard didn't disguise her long slick braids or the red line she'd painted along the part of her greased black hair. It wasn't true a full-blood always kept a poker face. Her smoldering sloe eyes were driving mental splinters into him where it really hurt a man as her husband said something to her in her own lingo.