Longarm on the Santee Killing Grounds

by Tabor Evans

  As they followed the gentle grade down to more sensible cropland, shifting shadows made everything to either side of the county road wriggle and writhe in the ghostly moonlight. Longarm had figured out as a kid why folks felt proddy moving past a graveyard when the moon was full and the hoot owls were feeling amorous. So he told old Smokey not to believe in ghosts, even if they were smack on the very warpath those Santee had come boiling down once the pot had boiled over up at the lower agency. Of course, they'd hit that military post on the far side of the river first, likely fording the Minnesota at some handy crossing and...

  "That's it!" Longarm assured his mount as he chuckled and added aloud, "Old Chambrun was right. It might not be smart to assume a man can't think sensible as anyone else just because he's got some Indian blood!"

  He reined in to light a cheroot as he expanded on his inspiration. It made just as much sense as he got his smoke going and shook out the match. It only stood to reason a well-funded breed, scouting earlier than the rest of his bunch for a good spot to claim, might see the advantages of a place along the river where they'd never build any steamboat landing but might surely build a bridge, or even a railroad trestle, once this valley commenced to fill in some more!

  Longarm blew smoke at a sycamore making obscene gestures at them in the shifty light and told Smokey, "They call it the law of eminent domain when they want to run a railroad or bridge approach across your property. You got to let 'em. But they got to pay you a fair price, or as much as the land would be worth under, let's say, corn and taters. So if I had my homestead on the best bridge site for miles, I reckon I'd let them force me to sell the acres they needed at their price, and then I'd set my own price on what I had left, once I'd cut 'em up into building lots for the crossroads settlement you generally find where a serious river crossing intersects a county road!"

  He heeled his borrowed mount to ride on. Then he suddenly reined in some more, and sure enough, those other riders he'd only thought might be echoes reined in themselves after they'd noticed he had.

  He rode on at a comfortable lope, knowing for certain there were four or more riders about a quarter mile back. It got less easy to say for certain once there were more than three.

  Longarm figured he could take up to half a dozen with his Winchester if he could surprise them from good cover. There were plenty of shifty-lit trees to his left, between the road and riverbanks. If he turned old Smokey loose to run on for some oats, as ponies were inclined to behave by nature... Shit, the gelding would doubtless head back to its familiar fodder and water at the Kellgren spread, meaning an empty saddle passing those other riders on the road to give them plenty of warning someone had dismounted up ahead to lay for them!

  "I reckon we'd best stick together," Longarm told his loping blue roan as he hauled out his Winchester anyway with a hell of a night ride still ahead of them.

  He knew the big gelding was made out of flesh and blood, like he was, and only a steam-driven machine, whether afloat or on wheels, was about to swallow that much distance in one gulp. So those others, who had to know that much, would likely wait until he took a trail break before they... what?

  "Let's find out," Longarm growled as he neck-reined old Smokey off the road to burst into the second growth off to their left. The gelding didn't like it much, and it was tough on Longarm's knees without chaps as well. But he forced the blue roan through the springy jungle as far as a little moonlit cove, where he dismounted on the drier side and tethered Smokey to an alder, saying soothingly, "You got plenty of browse and all the water you can drink. So keep your voice low whilst I work back a ways with this saddle gun and see if I can find out what this is all about!"

  Old Smokey didn't argue. Longarm found it far easier to move his own smaller frame through the tanglewood on foot. Closer to the sometimes-moonlit road he found a fallen sycamore with a swell clump of box elder sprouting just right to break up his own outline as he lay behind it in the grass with his Winchester propped across the mottled sycamore bark to cover the road.

  Nothing happened. It felt as if the Ice Age had come and gone, to be replaced by the rise and fall of the Roman Empire at least. The moon was now overhead, but the night kept getting darker as those clouds got thicker, and he could only hope a night bird had just shit on his hat brim in passing, because otherwise it was starting to rain and he'd left his damned slicker by the river with his damned saddle on that damned gelding!

  Another drop hit his left wrist, closer to the muzzle of his '73. There was nothing he could do about it. If it rained hard he'd get wet. If it didn't, he wouldn't. Those other riders doubtless had slickers handier on their damned saddles. They were likely back up that road a piece, putting them on. They'd be along directly, the dry and comfortable sons of bitches.

  But still they didn't come, and now it was starting to really rain. Longarm lay there, getting soaked, as the raindrops pounded out yonder on the road as if intent on muffling the sounds of any approaching hoofbeats. He considered whether that could be what had inspired the mysterious riders on his trail to hold back. He knew that same rain made it tough for him to judge whether anyone else was out there in the dark or not. He doubted he'd want to ride in on anybody with his own loaded gun, not knowing just where the rascal was in shifting darkness with all but the loudest sounds drowned out.

  It was even possible they'd never been after anybody to begin with, Longarm decided, as he went back over various conversations he'd had in recent memory.

  He hadn't told anyone in New Ulm where he was headed or how he meant to get there. It hardly seemed likely anybody aboard that steamboat could have followed him on horseback. The Kellgrens had had the drop on him earlier and acted friendly as hell after he'd told them who he was and where he was headed. So why would any of their riders be trailing him?

  He'd passed other spreads without stopping. But that didn't mean nobody had spotted a stranger riding by in broad daylight and gotten to fretting some. County folks living alone with all sorts of oddities on their consciences had given Longarm some anxious moments in the past. Just hearing a lawman was in his neck of the woods had been enough to set off that old prospector living in sin with his daughter up a canyon that time, poor old bastard.

  But it was just as likely the Chambruns had been unsettled by his unexpected visit and personal questions. It was true they'd acted as civilized as he'd had any right to expect. But they'd had more than one boy back yonder big enough to pack a gun, and who but a total asshole would gun a lawman on his or her own property when the poor cuss had a good eight- or twelve-hour ride ahead of him on a damn-near-deserted county road?

  "Meanwhile I'm as likely to die of a summer ague if I don't get out of this cold rain!" Longarm grumbled, even as he forced himself to just stay put and take some more while he counted to a hundred for at least the hundredth time.

  Then he hauled in his gun muzzle and rose back to his soggy feet, knowing that even if they were still out there in the stormy darkness, they couldn't begin to guess where he might be in the dark.

  He made his way back to his rain-soaked mount, untethering it but not remounting just yet as he said, "I'm sorry about this too, pard. I was spooked over Lord knows what, and whatever it was don't seem to be after us no more. So what say we get back to the road and move on at least as far as that Conway spread? Them colored nesters ain't on our list of suspects, like the Bedfords further on, so we'll ask for shelter there, all right?"

  He started working their way through the dripping tanglewood. It wasn't easy. The saplings and sticker brush seemed even thicker in the direction he'd chosen. Then he spied light through the branches ahead and marveled, "We can't be that close to the Conway place or any other I remember from the pilothouse of the Moccasin Blossom."

  Then he thought back harder and decided, "That crazy old colored lady they call the Bee Witch! It has to be a lamp in a window she has facing the shore, and she was tied up right by the bank. So how do you feel about asking our damned way at least?
"

  He led the gelding after him through the riverside growth as the moon winked on and off through the scudding clouds above them. That rain had blown over and it seemed to be clearing up, if that was how you wanted to describe soggy footing and dripping leaves all about. So the moon had burst through to beam down on the rambling shanty out on that log raft as Longarm spotted the plank stretched ashore and politely called out, "Ahoy, yon houseboat! This here would be a mighty wet U.S. Deputy Custis Long, bearing neither warrants nor malice for anyone on board. Now it's your move."

  He'd been expecting most any move than the one busting out of the shanty, wailing like a banshee and flapping what seemed to be big old buzzard wings at him as his mount spooked and fought the bit while Longarm stood his ground and just called, "Howdy, ma'am."

  The raggedy black apparition moaned in a spooky voice, "Go away or I'll turn you into a toad and have you for my supper!"

  Longarm chuckled indulgently and replied, "I thought it was frogs, or their legs leastways, some folks ate, ma'am. Far be it from me to call a lady a big fibber, but I'm more worried right now about catching my death in this wet outfit than I am about getting turned into a toad."

  "Don't you think I can do it? Don't you know I'm the Bee Witch?" the spooky shadow cackled.

  Longarm gently replied, "I heard your Santee admirers called you something more like Sapaweyah, ma'am," figuring that it might sound needlessly familiar to toss in that part about her being witko, or crazy. Indians looked on being crazy with more respect than white folks or, as in her case, colored folks. Some Indians, though not all of them, considered insanity a sign of at least a possible meeting with a wanigi, good or bad. No medicine man would go out on a limb and say for certain a raving lunatic was in good with the spirits, but on the other hand, it might be just as safe to treat such a confused and confusing person with respect.

  This one waved her wings, or sticks threaded through shaggy black tatters, anyway, and desperately moaned, "Go away! I have spoken!"

  That wasn't exactly the way an old colored lady, sane or insane, might have put it. So Longarm nodded and said, "Evening, Miss Matilda. You say the Bee Witch is feeling poorly tonight?"

  The dark figure out on the raft let her fake wings drop and stood frozen in confusion, or perhaps fear, without answering. Longarm let it ride until he saw it would be up to him and gently said, "I ain't using wakan sapa, Miss Matilda. They told me your old boss lady had a younger orphan gal out this way helping out, and no offense, you talk more like an Indian lady than a colored lady, even trying to talk spooky. Would you like to talk more sensible now?"

  She didn't answer, but it sounded as if she might be crying out there under that raggedy witch outfit. But Longarm insisted, "I told you I was federal law, and you seem to be afloat on a federal waterway instead of private property. So I could likely make it stick if I was to board you without a fussy search warrant."

  He let that sink in before he added, "On the other hand, I told you true this pony and me are cold and wet. So would you like to talk a mite more sensible about that and give me less cause for suspecting you of Lord knows what?"

  The small spooky figure sobbed, "I have done nothing wrong, nothing! If I show you where to shelter your horse and give you both food and water, will you keep my secret?"

  Longarm almost asked what her secret was. Then he decided he'd cross that bridge after he made sure old Smokey wouldn't cool lame on him and the Kellgrens. So he said he didn't ride for the B.I.A. or anyone all that interested in bee culture, and that brought her ashore, showing more of her head in the moonlight as she murmured, "We can't keep our pony cart and burro aboard the raft. I'll show you where I pitched the tent this time."

  Longarm followed her along the bank a ways to where, sure enough, an old army perimeter tent stood back in the sticker bush screened over with cut branches. The small gal had explained along the way how much safer she felt out on that raft after dark with all sorts of Wasichu moving up and down the river or that county road to the west.

  It was far warmer inside the thick beeswax-dubbed canvas because a small burro had been in there, giving off dry heat through all that summer rain. It got easier to see in there after Longarm struck a match and lit an oil lantern hanging handy on the center pole. The two-wheeled cart she'd mentioned took up close to a third of the remaining space. But he saw the blue roan would have enough room if he tethered it next to the burro. Both brutes being geldings, they just nickered at one another while Longarm exchanged the bit and bridle for a more comfortable rope halter and peeled off the wet saddle and sopping blanket.

  The gal said he could drape both over the side rails of that pony cart. So he did as he saw she was pouring cracked Corn in the elm-bark trough the two brutes were close enough to share. In the soft lantern light the head sticking out of the raggedy black costume she had on wasn't spooky at all. The fine bone structure under her tawny complexion and raven's-wing hair said she was at least part Wasichu. She hadn't painted the part in her braided hair Santee-style either. Dressed up more sensibly, with her hair pinned up more fashionably, she might have passed in town for a high-born Mexican gal had she wanted to. He was still working on why she wanted to be taken for a crazy old colored lady.

  He never said so. He said he'd sure like to wipe old Smokey down with some dry sacking if they had any.

  She nodded, and worked her way around the far side of the pony cart to fumble out some feed sacks and, better yet, a tattered but clean and dry horse blanket. Longarm wiped the blue roan as dry as he could manage while he told her she was an angel of mercy and asked if she'd like to tell him some more about the Bee Witch now.

  She started to cry. He went on wiping until he saw no improvement for the effort, and then he fastened the horse blanket over the corn-munching critter and quietly suggested, "I met up with another beekeeper down to the Indian Territory a spell back, preserved in wax like a bug in amber. Of course, the slow learner he had working for him when he died naturally wasn't bright enough to just bury the poor old gent, or did you sink her in the river?"

  The young breed gal wailed, "I did nothing at all to Sapaweyah Witko! Come with me and I will show you she is not aboard her house raft dead or alive. I don't know where she is. I have not seen her since the moon when the wolves run together."

  Longarm frowned thoughtfully down at her and demanded, "Are you saying she's been missing since the other side of our New Year's Eve, Miss Matilda?"

  The girl nodded. "She said she was going into New Ulm to tell her own people something on the talking wire. If you wish to call me by name, I am called Mato Takoza."

  Longarm nodded soberly. "I stand corrected and I sure am wet. You wouldn't have a stove, or at least a peg to hang some of these wet duds on, aboard that house raft, would you, ma'am?"

  She said she had both, and asked him to douse that lantern before he followed her outside. So he did. Neither his mount nor her burro seemed to care. As he followed her back along the same path Mato Takoza explained, or bragged, how her grandfather had been a war chief almost as important as Little Crow himself, before the blue sleeves had killed him in the fight at Birch Coulee. Longarm had already figured her name meant something like Grandchild of the Bear. It might not have been polite to point out none of the ranking chiefs the milita or regulars bragged on had been called Mato. It was possible he'd been a Big Bear, a Medicine Bear, or some other sort of Bear. It was even more likely he'd been an enlisted Santee remembered as more important by his kith and kin. Longarm had yet to meet anyone whose daddy had been killed as a Confederate private, the C.S.A. records being sort of scattered since the war, and Indian war records had been hampered by neither modesty nor words on paper.

  He followed the proud Santee beauty across that springy plank and into the lopsided shingled structure that took up most of the raft.

  She'd left a candle lit inside. So he could see the front room was a work shed, smelling strongly of honey and devoted to the extraction gear and mason j
ars of her trade. Most of the jars seemed to be filled. When he commented, she said she'd been saving all the money she got in town from the Bee Witch's regular customers. She said she hadn't tried to drum up extra business on her own.

  When Longarm said he hadn't noticed all that many beehives in the woods, she explained she'd set out two score that spring, along the edge of the trees to the west, shaded by the trees from the hot noonday sun but offering her bees plenty of flowery foraging on the far side of that county road. Longarm was country enough to know she was talking straight when she said more kinds of flowers grew, in greater numbers, where Wasichu had messed with the original lay of the land. Her kind had set grass fires late in the season to keep their hunting grounds open and lush for the critters they ate. But even had they wanted more posies they'd have had to wait till white settlers brought a whole Noah's Ark of extra old country greenery such as alfalfa, chickory, clover, dandelions, and even that Kentucky bluegrass everybody thought as American as apple pie, which was Pennsylvania Dutch in the first place.

  The center of the surprisingly roomy shanty was taken up by a main room where, bless her heart, the pretty little thing had lit a combined cooking and heating stove against the damp chill. She seemed as anxious to show him the whole layout as he was to inspect it. He had to allow the two bedchambers opening into the far end of the main central room smelled too clean for her to be hiding a corpse on board.

  Mato Takoza sat Longarm at a plank table and rustled up a length of cotton line and a cheesebox of clothes pegs. She strung the line catty-corner across the top of the hot stove, from hooks screwed into the two-by-four framing just right, and told him to shuck his wet duds so she could dry them for him as she whipped up some fresh coffee and scrambled eggs.