Longarm and the Shoshoni silver

The old Mormon who ran the store had been doing his best to keep up with them. So he naturally asked if they were talking about new converts from the British Isles. When Dame Flora informed him they sure were, he told her, "This young jasper's right about that too. The Salt Lake Temple's written us to watch for such goings-on up at this end of the delta. Seems some kith or kin has gotten worried about an ugly young thing who got off the train at Ogden with a heap of cash and a lot of baggage. She'd told one of our own young ladies she'd met on the train about the big cattle baron she was on her way to marry up with. The sister she confided in said she had a lot of mighty queer notions about us Deseret folk."

Dame Flora anxiously questioned the old Mormon further while Longami lifted down a case of canned sardines. He knew they were going to have to bring some pack brutes over to tote all this shit in the end, but meanwhile it made sense to eat the damned apple one bite at a time.

He was only half listening, because he'd known the old Mormon was going to inform Dame Flora that, no, they hadn't seen missing spinster gals here in Zion. A missing

anything was by definition something nobody honest would have seen since it was first missed.

He had his own practical additions to his own supplies piled at one end of the counter by the time Dame Flora figured much the same and switched to buying her own much larger load. Longarm told them both he'd be right back to settle up with his own pack brute. He asked Dame Flora if she wanted him to haul old Angus and, say, a couple of her own pack brutes back with him. She dimpled at him a and said he was being awfully helpful. So he left her jawing about canned grub and lost, strayed, or stolen spinsters with the friendly old Mormon.

It only took him a few steps and a dozen drags on his smoke to make it back to the Overland station. But when he stepped inside to fetch Dame Flora's hired help, he found they'd been replaced near the potbellied stove by Buffalo Bill, Old Mother Hubbard, and maybe Pocahontas— or leastways, three odd-looking strangers dressed up like them.

On second glance the imposing white-haired gent in the white ten-gallon hat and matching fringed and beaded buckskins couldn't be the one and original William F. Cody, who'd only started acting so odd since he'd won. that medal for killing Yellow Hand and taken to giving lectures about his misspent youth on the vaudeville circuit. This version of the Old Frontiersman rose to shake and introduce his foolish-looking self as the original Shoshoni Sam, whom Longarm had doubtless heard of. He introduced the motherly and sensibly dressed woman in the loose duster and poke bonnet as his wife, the famous tightrope-walker and bareback-rider Madame Marvella. The younger sort of gypsy-looking brunette, in a tailored but beaded and fringy outfit of wine red deerskin, was supposed to be a famous Indian princess named Tupombi, Princess Tupombi of that Comanche nation he'd doubtless heard of as well.

Longarm didn't feel up to insulting anyone who hadn't insulted him first. So he allowed he'd naturally heard of all

of them, but that right now he was searching for some others who'd just been by that very stove. So Shoshoni Sam told him a gruff old Scotchman had told some scared little gal to go upstairs and pack something while he and a regular American went out back to see about their stock.

Longarm thanked him, explained that the sack of stuff on the floor was his, and picked it up as he added that old Angus and at least two pack brutes were needed by a lady down the way.

He was more bemused than annoyed when the Wild West apparition tagged along, confiding, "You may be just the man we've been hoping to meet up with. You did say you were a government man just now, did you not?"

Longarm agreed he'd introduced himself as Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long. So Shoshoni Sam said, "You must be the one they call Longarm. Us famous Westerners have to keep track of one another. I heard the government was up to something big with my Shoshoni blood brothers this fall. Might you be on your way up to Fort Hall?"

Longarm smiled crookedly and replied, "I might. Before we get even sillier, old son, hasn't anyone ever told you there's no such thing as a Comanche princess? The closest thing to royalty Indians had north of the Chihuahua Desert would have been the now-extinct Natchez Sun Clans, over by the Mississippi, and like I just said, they're extinct."

Shoshoni Sam said soothingly, "You know that and I know that, but what do the rubes care, and Tupombi really is Comanche. Part Comanche, I mean. Since confession may be good for the soul, I'll confess like a man that we're out here on the make for something big. No doubt you'll have heard of Phineas T. Bamum and his colored freak, Joice Heth, billed as the hundred-and-sixty-year-old wet nurse of George Washington?"