Longarm and the Shoshoni silver

Longarm said, "I'm still working on that. I thought Saltu was the proper word for stranger. Princess."

She explained, "Saltu is a word, not the word. Don't you call a Mexican a dago as well as a greaser?"

He cocked a brow and replied, "I get along with 'em best by referring to 'em as Mexicans. I take it Taibo is a tad worse than Saltu."

To which she demurely replied, "Of course. Didn't they tell you my mother's people were Penataka?" and he silently chalked that up as another point in her favor.

He had it on good authority that the Penataka or Honey Eaters were the biggest and hence most common Comanche clan. A show-off with a fair grasp of Indian lore might have been more tempted to claim membership in the smaller but more celebrated Kwahadi, who'd ridden to glory under Quanah at Adobe Walls and in other noisy shindigs.

He was commencing to feel she might be only half fake. Buffalo Bill was half fake these days, yet he really had killed Yellow Hand and all those buffalo before he'd taken to dressing so odd and bragging on things he'd never done.

Longarm took the reins of his roan from her with a grateful nod and lashed his rolled tweed coat behind his McClellan as he tersely brought her up to date on his recent misadventures. She followed afoot, leading her barebacked gray by the single line of her rawhide hackamore or bitless bridle. He'd already noted how Quill Indian she rode, despite the odd coloration of her eyes and deerskin duds. His bit-led roan commenced to fuss as he led it closer to the scent of fresh-spilled blood. He whacked its muzzle just enough to gain its undivided attention, and got them all a mite closer before he turned to ask the pretty breed, "Would you mind both brutes again just a minute or so? I see where my hat landed now, and we'll want this dead one lashed facedown across my saddle as well."

"Speak for yourself," she said in with a wrinkle of her tawny pug nose, adding, "He tried to kill you. Let him rot. I'll help you drag him further from the road if you're concerned about the few who may come this way before the carrion crows have had a good meal of bad Taibo."

He moved off through the deep grass to retrieve his

capsized Stetson and put it back on before he explained on the way back to her, "I'd like to have others look him over before the crows eat what's left of his fool face. I seem to have upset a white-trash clan back in Zion and this jasper and his sidekick made mention of someone they called Pappy, who seemed to want me dead. Personal. If this poor soul turns out to have been named Robbins, I can work out his pappy from there. Easy."

With the pretty breed minding the ponies he hunkered down to go through the dead man's duds, adding, "If nobody in Zion can identify him I'll have a bigger wonderment on my plate and . . . Hello, I see he took out a library card in San Antone one time. Outlaws do that a heap. But I doubt his name was really Miles Standish. Albeit his hat over yonder reads sort of Texas as well and . . . Yep, I sure want the folks in an Idaho county seat to look this cuss over before he starts to spoil."

She helped mostly by holding Longarm's Winchester and soothing both ponies as Longarm manhandled the still-limp body up over and facedown across his McClellan. As he was lashing the cadaver securely in place with latigo strips, she observed he seemed to have a knack for such gruesome tasks. To which he could only modesdy reply he'd had some practice.

She said, "I'll bet you have. You are the lawman my Ute cousins call Saltu Ka Saltu, aren't you?"

He shrugged and said, "I reckon. I arrested a mucky-muck with the B.I.A. who'd been held over from Grant's Indian Ring one time, and the Utes seemed to find that sort of astounding."

"The stranger who is not a stranger," she mused with a sort of Mona Lisa smile. "I can see why they were astounded. My father was Scotch-Irish, and a decent man, but you people fucked the Utes above and beyond the call of duty, after they'd helped you round up the Navajo back in the sixties."

Longarm winced and replied, "I wish you wouldn't say

anybody helped me personally round anybody up. That was Kit Carson they sent after wayward Navajo that time, and Carson himself complained to Washington when the B.I.A. under Grant let the Indian Ring get a few Ute leaders drunk and grabbed all that land out from under the whole nation. Do you reckon that gray of your own would be able to carry the both of us at a trot, Princess Tupombi?"

She said, "He'll have to, unless one of us means to ride atop a dead man or walk that far. I wish you'd stop calling me Princess, by the way. I'm not even the porivo my mother was. But no matter how often I try to explain that to Shoshoni Sam he keeps insisting nobody would understand what a porivo was and that princess seems close enough."

Longarm chuckled and took the reins so she could vault lightly up on her gray, to land astride as well as bareback, giving him quite a view of her long tawny legs.