Longarm and the Shoshoni silver

Longarm nodded soberly and decided, "If he did, he was sure a bom actor. I think he went along with me on that stuff because he accepted it at face value, same as the rest of us. He was looking for no more than a crack at grabbing all that silver and running for it, through the mountains to the east he likely knew better than the rest of you gents, no offense. So we keep on getting back to other plotters, red, white, or rtoth."

Young Jeffries opined it seemed obvious Indians had killed that Scotch spinster over by the Indian medicine wheel. So Longarm had to ask if anyone there had ever heard of a Quill Indian placing proposals of marriage in your average Scotch newspaper.

They all agreed it was a poser. Then, since by then they were all wide awake and the sky to the east was pearling gray, they ate, broke camp, and were on their way, with the tarp-wrapped corpses lashed across their own saddles and Westmore being led aboard his pony with both hands cuffed behind his back.

When he protested he'd surely fall off and bust his neck if his pony burst into full gallop, Longarm suggested dryly he try not to gallop off anywhere.

Having left Zion so late the day before, they'd had to camp less than halfway to Fort Hall. So they had a full day's ride ahead of them. But the weather held just right for rapid progress as the country around kept getting safer-looking.

The stock moved frisky because the overnight storm had left a cool tang in the air and drinking water at most every trail break. The same gray skies that kept the sun from warming them up too much were an inspiration to take short breaks and push on, lest another early snow catch them out in the middle of nowhere.

As for the country, the swells all about got flatter and further apart as they rode ever closer to the Snake River Plains up ahead. Some rises overlooking the trail sprouted more evergreen timber than Longarm really cottoned to, so those had to be scouted before the mules packing so much temptation passed within rifle range. But at least they saw no more smoke signals, which was tougher for the surviving crook to explain, and led some others to mutter mean things about his veracity.

But they were too busy to question him enough to matter. Thanks to the shoot-out having left them short-handed, even the politicians from back East had to pitch in and help with the pack mules and saddle-swapping chores. But Longarm was glad to see they were good sports about it, and some of his more Western companions might have learned something as well. Older gents who'd gone into politics had all been younger gents doing something else in their time, and folks east and west had to know something about horses in a horse-drawn age. The sort of soft and sissy-looking Congressman Granger turned out to be a bom mule skinner, or at any rate a man who'd plowed a fair farrow behind his own daddy's mules as a boy.

Hence the long day on the trail passed without any noteworthy problems, and along about five, when they finally did see Indians on a rise ahead, Longarm told his companions

those hand-me-down army blues most of them had on meant they were Indian Police off some nearby agency. When Senator Rumford observed the only agency in those parts was the one at Fort Hall, Longarm said that was what he meant.

As the Shoshoni met them on the rise, an English-speaking Corporal Shoogan in command of the eight in uniform, the other dozen being free thinkers who'd just tagged along, told them they were a mite overdue as well as welcome. When Senator Rumford demanded to know how far they were from the Fort Hall Shoshoni-Bannock Reservation, the moon-faced Shoogan told him, "You've been on it for some time. We are still a great nation and all the hunting grounds you see around you, all, are still our hunting grounds. Even Little Big Eyes in Washington will tell you this is so."

Longarm explained the senator had meant the agency itself. So Shoogan pointed north and said. "This side of sundown, if you Taibo would like to cut this bullshit and ride."

They rode. The modem agency built more or less on the site of the original fortified trading post lay well their side of sundown, surrounding a tall sun-bleached flagstaff with the well-weathered Stars and Stripes still flapping in the last light of the day.

By this time Longarm had brought Corporal Shoogan up to date on his own problems. Shoogan told him they'd be proud to hold Westmore as long as need be in their swell jail and that, yes, they had a talking wire running east along the old wagon route, if Longarm could get one of the Taibo at the agency to work such a strange ahotey for him.