Longarm and the Shoshoni silver

To which she rather smugly replied, "Don't be silly. You are not a real person, as pretty as you are. My mother's people sneak up on your kind. It's not supposed to work the other way around."

He lowered the hammer of his Winchester, but swept the horizon around them with his thoughtful eyes as he muttered, "I reckon you never heard tell of Roger's Rangers, clean back in the French and Indian Wars, or Sullivan hitting those Mohawk towns like a row of dominoes on orders from General Washington. Some of our own boys talk as overconfidently about riders from back East too, forgetting where the steeplechase and thoroughbred racing was invented."

He stepped around her pony for a better view of the dying signal fire. He'd been right about them burning mostly grass with a couple of cow chips to keep it going. There was little more than a pile of smoldering gray ash now. The chalky limestone rocks laid out all across the rise were at least as interesting. Some were out of place or half hidden by weeds, but one could still make out the wheel-like pattern, about twenty yards across, as if a monstrous stone wagon

had busted down up here one time.

When he asked if she knew what it meant, Tupombi shook her braided head and said, "No. I have seen puha like this on the other side of the Shining Mountains, but they were not made by my mother's people. So I don't know what they mean."

When he mused aloud about medicine wheels he'd seen himself, in the company of other Horse Indians who couldn't say who'd made them or why, Tupombi suggested, "You'd better get up on this horse with me. There is a smell of rain in the air and we are far from shelter over this way."

He sniffed the freshening breeze and allowed she could be right, despite the way old Tanapah still shone. Then he sniffed some more and told her, "Hold the thought. There's somebody dead around here."

Tupombi looked away, murmuring, "I was hoping you might not notice. Maybe it's just an old coyote. In any case this is a. puha place and it's bad puha to bother anything that's been dead that long!"

He started walking into the breeze, searching for the source of the stink as he insisted, "I'm paid to pester dead folk who've died mysteriously and that's no critter lying dead just upwind. It only takes one war to teach one's nose the difference and . . . Yonder."

Tupombi rode no closer as Lx)ngarm stalked over to a pile of dried brush wedged against the wind between two clumps of greener soap weed. When he got there he saw someone had kicked a few bushels of dirt over the remains as well. But the dry, almost constant winds had exposed two withered feet, clad in black silk stockings, and a more horrible sight at the other end, where most of the moldering head lay exposed.

There was no way to say whether the woman had been young or old. What was left of her maggot-eaten face was just plain ugly. Her hair, a sort of mousy brown, was still pinned neatly atop her skull. A glint of gold caught his eye, even as he was trying not to puke. So he dropped to one knee beside the rotting remains to gingerly move some weed stems aside

and gently finger the little heart-shaped locket the dead woman had been wearing under a summer-weight bodice of fake black silk. Real silk wouldn't have tattered so soon. Longarm got a good grip on the evidence and said, "I'm sorry, ma'am. But nobody is ever going to identify you on your looks alone, no offense, and they seem to have overlooked this personal item someone who knew you in life might recall."

He gave a good yank. The gold-washed chain of mild steel was a good deal more solid than the soggy cartilage of her spinal column. So he had to say he was sorry again when her head fell off.

He rose to his feet, letting the still-solid chain dangle as he opened the tiny heart. There were tiny tintypes inside of a silly-looking young gent and a plain young gal with her hair piled the same way. Heading back to where Tupombi still sat her pony, Longarm called out, "I think I just found one of the missing Scotch spinster gals. If you'd like to carry me back to where I left my own mount, we'll rejoin the others and see about a waterproof tarp to wrap her in."

Tupombi looked startled and asked why. He said, "Because she's dead and starting to fall apart, of course. I ain't being all that sentimental, albeit her own kith and kin would doubtless want her buried Christian rather than scattered across open range. I want some doc to look her over and see if he can figure out how she wound up so disgusting when all she came looking for was a Mormon husband."

Tupombi asked, "Does it really matter how those Shoshoni might have killed her?"