by Tabor Evans
He was willing enough, till he got down to just his dank pants, soggy undershirt, and gunbelt. By this time she'd shed her raggedy black spook dress, and it was surprising how womanly a gal with such a young face could look in a thin cotton shift. She didn't have to hang her black rags to dry. As she pegged his to the clothesline she asked how come he was ashamed to take off his gun and pants. She said, "Hear me, you are much bigger than me and you can see I am wearing no gun under this flour sacking. Hang that gunbelt over the Winchester in the corner behind you, and we can have a lot of fun watching one another for false moves!"
He chuckled and replied, "You might suspect me of plotting other sorts of moves if I was to sit here in my birthday suit so close to anybody pretty as you, no offense."
She was too dusky for a blush to show in such dim light, but she fluttered her lashes and sounded a tad flustered as she stammered something about being just a halfbreed, sakes alive. Then she fetched him a blanket from another room, saying, "Wrap this around you if you're afraid I'll peek. But get out of those wet clothes if you don't want to catch a summer cough. It will get colder before it gets warmer here on the water."
He knew that was true. So he ducked into one of the bedrooms to strip down to his bare feet and come back out, wrapped in the dark blue blanket with his free hand holding his gun rig and boots as well as soggy duds. She took everything but his six-gun, saying his boots would dry safer if she stuffed them with newspaper and didn't stand them too close to her stove. He went and hung his gun rig on a nail above the Winchester he'd stood in the angle of some framing. He'd found it could be as educational to pretend you were completely disarmed as it could to pretend you didn't know a word of Spanish or Indian dialects. So the less said about the derringer under the blanket the better.
By this time she had everything hung and she'd rustled up the makings of that light supper she'd offered. As she put the pot on to boil, under his dangling duds, and greased a cast-iron spider for the eggs, Mato Takoza told Longarm more about herself.
She said she'd been a girl-child during the big Santee Scare of '62 and the long forced march to Crow Creek that had followed inevitably after that much bad blood between her two races.
Both her ma and pa had been breeds, raised Indian by pure-blood gals who'd been married up with Wasichu trappers while they'd been out this way. Mato Takoza's momma's clan had fought more and hence lost more under Little Crow. But later. out at the Crow Creek Agency, the young gal's daddy had taken to strong drink and wife-beatings in spite of, or maybe because of, never counting coup in the short but savage uprising. Mato Takoza was too smart to call it "The First Sioux War" the way some old soldiers and even civilian volunteers put it when they got to bragging.
She busted half a dozen eggs into her greased spider and got to scrambling them, along with some chopped-up wild onion grass, as she told him how her homesick momma had brought her back to the old Santee Agency at Redwood Falls, only to find Wasichu, many Wasichu, living there now. She sounded mighty steamed as she complained, "Hear me, my mother's people were not woodland creatures. We had learned long ago to build cabins and plant fruit orchards by watching you Wasichu. Out at Crow Creek they expected us to winter in tipis where the wolf wind howls across open prairie from the Moon of Many Colored Leaves to the Geese Nesting Moon. We had built nicer houses here than a lot of Wasichu, and now Wasichu had moved into them. All of them."
Longarm shrugged his bare shoulders under the blanket and resisted the obvious observation about the spoils of war. He knew they'd never admitted starting a war, and he didn't want her to lose the thread of her own story.
She didn't. She dished out the eggs on tin plates as she told him how she and her late momma had gotten by as hired help to homesteader housewives, since both had looked half-white and it had been easy enough to say they were friendlier "Chippewa" when no real Ojibwa were about to call them fibbers. After Mato Takoza's ma had died of the consumption or some other lung rot, she'd heard tell of the Bee Witch, a crazy old colored lady who lived free and easy up and down the river, and so, being less afraid of the white man's flies than some purebreds might have been, she'd tracked the Bee Witch down to ask her for a job.
It hadn't been easy. Mato Takoza had learned that spooky crow-flapping act from the old colored lady, who was more worried about being robbed or pestered than really witko. The Bee Witch had tried to scare the Santee breed off, and when that hadn't worked they'd got to talking enough so they could finally cut a deal.
Mato Takoza said the Bee Witch had been an easygoing boss, once she'd taught her young apprentice how to herd bees without getting stung too often. Mato Takoza said the older gal had been way more educated than she'd let on to strangers. As she motioned him to dig in and moved back to her stove to check the coffeepot, she told him how the old colored lady had read herself to sleep with big old books, and how she'd liked to sketch with pencil and ink on a drawing pad as she let her younger helper do most of the simple chores that went with a mighty carefree life.
Longarm said the old gal sounded as if she might have been a house slave in her younger days, explaining, "Most slave states had laws against teaching bond-servants to read or write, since they thought a little knowledge could be a dangerous thing after a slave called Nat Turner read a copy of the Declaration of Independence and thought he was included in that part about all men being created equal. But lots of easygoing slave-holders didn't mind, and even taught some of their people, as they called 'em, to read. For one thing, it made a house slave more valuable if he or she could read written instructions."
Mato Takoza said, "I wish I could read. Miss Jasmine, that was her real name, left heaps of books under her bed and it's been lonely, lonely, since she never came back from town last winter."
Longarm thought about that as he ate. He hadn't known he was this hungry, and her scrambled eggs with onion grass would have tasted swell if he hadn't been. Her coffee was grand too when she poured it to go with their dessert of only slightly stale fruit cake. When he asked if it was store-bought, she fluttered her lashes and modestly allowed she'd learned to cook Wasichu-style sometime back. She might have taken it wrong if he'd pointed out she was still Indian enough to know about onion grass. She might have learned that from some settler gal in any case. All country folks tended to learn what grew tasty, for free, wherever they might wind up. A heap of what folks back East took for old-fashioned American cooking had been invented by Indians.
In the meantime Billy Vail hadn't sent a senior deputy all this way to search for lost, strayed, or stolen colored ladies. But after his worried young hostess brought up that part about the telegraph office again, he said, "I'll ask if they recall your Miss Jasmine at the Western Union in New Ulm. I got to ask 'em about other folks who may or may not be getting wired money orders fairly regular, and how many colored ladies by any name do you reckon they've sent lots of wires for as well?"
As he washed down some fruit cake, Mato Takoza recalled the Bee Witch had once said she'd hailed from one of the Carolinas. Longarm assured her they'd remember her or not, no matter where she'd come from, adding, "Every railroad town has at least a few colored folks. But I'll be asking about someone they ain't used to seeing around town. How did she get into New Ulm to begin with, by the way? You run her in with that pony cart?"
Mato Takoza shook her head and explained the Bee Witch had her own riding pony, or had had one leastways. She'd already asked in town about the older woman's pony. Nobody in New Ulm had owned up to having seen it coming in or going out. Longarm agreed that had him stumped. He said, "An old colored lady in touch with kith or kin in other parts could be inspired by a sudden wire to hop a train without dropping a line to an illiterate, no offense. But she'd have had to leave that pony she rode to town with somebody."
"What if she fell in the river, or got murdered along the way?" the younger gal asked, owl-eyed.
Longarm shrugged and said, "Either way, we wind up with a leftover mount. A pony suddenly ride
rless for any reason would tend to run home to its familiar feed trough left to its druthers. So since it's been gone this long, it's safe to say somebody else has it, with or without the old lady's approval. What did this pony look like and was there anything at all unusual about its saddle or bridle?"
Mato Takoza said, "She rode bareback with a rope bridle, the Indian way. It was an Indian pony she'd traded for honey with one of your own kind who couldn't seem to break it your way. Miss Jasmine knew enough to mount an Indian pony from its right side. It stood about thirteen hands. It was a red and white paint with white mane and tail. It was pretty, and just the right size for a small woman too modest to sit it astride. She called it Mister Jefferson Davis. I don't know why."
Longarm said he did. He had no call to make a written note of a description so simple. As he'd told her, folks in town would remember or they wouldn't. He wasn't unkind enough to say his own boss hardly expected him to dig any deeper than a few routine questions when it hardly seemed likely anyone had paid for a jar of honey with a hundred-dollar treasury note.
That reminded him of more suspicious folks out this way and so, as she refilled his cup and allowed she didn't mind if he smoked, Longarm asked her what she knew about that other Santee lady, Tatowiyeh Wachipi Chambrun.
The younger and prettier Santee made a wry face and told him, "She says she is related to Wamni Tanka. Maybe she is. Or maybe she is long joking, the way my mother and I used to around Redwood Falls."
Longarm wasn't certain he followed her drift. As he rose to pad over to his dangling vest for a damp cheroot and those hopefully waterproof matches, he cautiously asked, "Might this long joke involve folks pretending to be what they ain't?"
She nodded innocently and said, "It is not hard for Absaroka to pass for their Oglala enemies, and a lot safer when they are outnumbered. At the Greasy Grass fight some of Custer's Absaroka scouts saved themselves by throwing off their blue coats and playing the long joke. Nobody knows why a band of Ree told everyone they were Pawnee for many years, many. But they did, and those two nations don't get along much better than Santee and Ojibwa!"
Longarm came back to the table and sat down to light up as he said he saw why they called it a long joke. She marveled at his waxy Mexican matches, and he said he had more he could leave her in his saddlebags. Then he asked what point there might be in a lady from another nation trying to pass herself off as Santee on the old Santee killing grounds.
When the admitted Santee looked puzzled, Longarm explained. "You just said you and your late momma had to say you were Chippewa to get around old grudges left over from all that bloodshed back in '62. So why would anyone who wasn't a true Santee brag on being a Santee in a neck of the woods where Santee still ain't all that popular?"
The Santee breed said she didn't know. Longarm said it made little sense to him either, but might be worth checking once he got back to New Ulm.
She asked when he meant to ride on. Longarm glanced at his hung-up duds and decided, "Not too sudden, at the rate that tweed's drying out despite your swell stove. It's already getting late and to tell the truth, I ain't too sure of my welcome once I do ride in, early or late. I don't suppose I could impose on you further by just bedding down out here for the night?"
She sucked in her breath and really looked flustered. He started to assure her he meant he'd noticed they had at least two beds in as many separate rooms. But then she came around to his side of the table to grab hold of his head by both ears and bury his face against her heaving marshmallow breasts, sobbing that she'd been so afraid he was never going to ask. So he just scooped her up and carried her in where he'd noticed the biggest bed. When she giggled and said her room was the one next door, he said he didn't care and just lowered her down to shuck his blanket, lift the hem of her shift, and lower his naked hips into the soft love saddle formed by her welcoming tawny thighs. When she giggled and asked him if he really thought he needed that derringer in his own fist, he shoved it under the head of their mattress and murmured, "Not hardly, but remind me to haul up that old plank and fetch both my saddle and six-gun back here once we've, ah, got more relaxed."
As she felt him entering her, Mato Takoza gasped, "Oh, hinhey! You call what you are doing to me relaxing? What do you and your Wasichu girls do for excitement? Not so fast yet! You're so hanska, and it has been many moons since the last time I did this with a boy much smaller, in every way!"
So Longarm slowed down and thrust less than he really wanted to, marveling at the surprising ripples of her almost too-tight but responsive love maw. It was her own idea to wrap her short muscular legs around his waist and hug him closer for some kissing she'd never learned off any Indian boys. Few regular Americans French-kissed with that much abandon as they tried to bust a man's spine with a leg-hug and literally sucked on his old organ-grinder with their smooth wet innards. So Longarm assumed she was warmed up enough for more serious action, and he knew he was right when she flung all her limbs to the four corners of the universe and war-whooped, "Hokahey! Iyoptey! Why are you holding back? Don't you like me, you big sissy?"
CHAPTER 18
The river water was warm enough, but the night air was chilly when they went for a moonlight swim to cool off their bare behinds. Longarm saw why Mato Takoza had suggested it when they wound up in a mighty interesting position with her hanging on to the edge of the raft facing away from him.
Then the moon ducked back behind the clouds and thunder rolled up and down the river, so they got out, dried off, and were huddled for warmth under the cover of the Bee Witch's bed by the time heavy rain was pounding on the shingles above their entwined bodies.
It warmed them up fine. But it was tough to fall asleep in a bed neither was used to after all that coffee. So after they'd shared a cheroot and talked about the missing Bee Witch some more, Longarm lit the reading lamp on the old gal's bed table while her naked student beekeeper rolled across him to rummage out some of the expensive tomes the so-called crazy lady had kept under her bed.
Longarm doubted any lunatic would have spent much time with such dry but educational reading material. There were books on geology, civil engineering, and such, along with an atlas and a folder of even more detailed survey maps put out by the government. Longarm sat up in bed with his cheroot gripped between his teeth as he looked over a large-scale contour chart of just Brown County, Minnesota, and a few square miles of other counties that fit into the space left over on the rectangular chart. Mato Takoza snuggled her naked charms closer as she confided, "Miss Jasmine liked that drawing. She used to thumbtack it to her drawing board and trace it on this funny stuff that might have been very thin flour sacking or maybe wax paper. When I asked, she got cross with me. So I never asked anymore."
Longarm lightly rubbed the fingertip of his free hand over the stiff manila paper as he murmured, "Draftsman's tracing silk. Costly and won't bear careless handling. The slick sizing over the mesh of fairy-dust weaving is meant to hold and to cherish traced lines, drops of spit, or moist fingerprints. So that might explain why she didn't even want an illiterate reading over her shoulder, no offense, but what in thunder would an old colored beekeeper be doing with contour maps and tracing silk?"
"Making her own maps?" the breed gal suggested innocently.
Longarm hugged her closer and said, "Bless you, my child, and as soon as I can get it up again I aim to kiss you. But let me have my arm back right now. I need both hands to investigate this further."
She sat up long enough for him to haul that arm out from behind her bare shoulders, but as she grasped what he was doing she protested, "Don't get that paper all dirty! Miss Jasmine will be angry, angry!"
Longarm went right on rubbing tobacco ash all over the survey map with gentle fingertips as he said soothingly, "It'll all brush away in the end. In the meantime this is an old trick we use when we find paper somebody's written or traced something else on top of."
As the pretty breed watched in wonder, the tobacco ash, blacker where it stuc
k in the grooves left in the thick paper by a heavier hand wielding something sharp, proceeded to draw lines across parts of Brown County where no government surveyor ever had. Indians made pretty fair maps on their own. So even though she didn't know how to read or write, Mato Takoza was able to follow the drift of the missing Bee Witch when the hitherto invisible line reached the Minnesota the two of them had just been swimming in.
"That line crosses the river just above the driftwood jam this raft is moored below!" she decided.
Longarm soberly replied, "I noticed. Whether your Bee Witch had another wagon trace or a railroad in mind, she figured it ought to cross the river up by the Chambrun place."
He took a drag on the cheroot to produce more ash before he went on. "I'd have to agree with her if somebody asked me to survey yet another trestle site. These contour lines show higher ground to either side of the river, meaning a mid-stream span high enough for the bitty steamboats up this way to sneak their stacks under."
He rubbed in more ash as he mused, "Any engineer worth his salt could figure that much out in bed with his true love and this public knowledge. Did your Miss Jasmine ever drill holes in the ground as she barged her beehives up and down the banks?"
Mota Takoza started to say no. Then she thought and decided, "Hear me, it would be rude to follow anyone into the trees when they took along a shovel and a mail-order catalogue. Everyone digs at least a little hole to squat over if they intend to camp more than a night in the same spot."
"Unless they crap in a handy river," Longarm objected. He didn't ask how often she'd done that. Her sudden silence spoke louder than words. He just said, "Either way, you wouldn't have to dig far to be sure there's as much granite under the Chambrun claim as more local folks keep saying. When you plant foundations for a trestle you want to make sure they don't shift. Foundations planted in granite bedrock ain't about to shift, even on the flood plain of a somewhat whimsical river, so, yep, Chambrun knew what he was about when he up and claimed that high, dry quarter section. Or should I say his Santee wife and her secret pals picked it for him? Did your Miss Jasmine ever go over to borrow a cup of sugar or mayhaps sell a jar of honey at the Chambrun place, kitten?"
