Longarm and the Shoshoni silver

Senator Rumford called him over and introduced him to both the Scotch lady he already knew and a far homelier middle-aged Indian agent of the male persuasion. When Longarm explained where he'd just been, the agent suggested he head on back to the dining room and tell the squaws to rustle him a late snack, explaining, "You just missed a simple but hearty serving of planked salmon and home fries with serviceberry pie."

Longarm said he'd do that. He didn't feel up to explaining why he'd had to finish his chores first to an asshole who called his own Shoshoni women squaws, as if they'd been Arapaho. Dudes such as Dame Flora and the senator had excuses for not bothering with any Indian lingo. But you'd think a cuss getting paid to look after Shoshoni would learn at least a few simple words.

As Longarm strode off, the senator called something about a big powwow with Pocatello in the morning. Longarm didn't care. He was more surprised, and not too happy about it, when the auburn-haired Dame Flora chased him clean out of the room, saying, "Wait for me. They just told me you found the remains of a white woman."

He said, "Sent her in to the county seat for the coroner to do something with her. I was fixing to mention her to you later, on a less uncertain stomach. Whether she was one of your missing gals or not, she wasn't a topic I'd want to take up over a meal."

But Dame Flora had already eaten, or maybe had had time to get more interested in the topic. So she tagged right along,

insisting they'd told her about that infernal locket. So as they entered the smaller dining room, where a couple of Shoshoni pias were clearing the long table by lamplight, Longarm got out the small gold-washed locket to hand over to the pretty but sort of pesky Dame Flora.

One of the Indian gals came over, hesitantly, as if to see what they wanted. Longarm tried to tell her in English, and when that didn't work he patted his belly and tried, ''Duka. Me ka duka this evening, ma'am."

It worked. She brightened, blew Shoshoni bubbles at him, and commenced to lead him off with her as Dame Flora suddenly sobbed, "Oc/i, cha 'n'eiU But it is! It was poor little Una Munro you found murdered and scalped by Indians down the trail, and we three must have ridden right past her remains!"

He tagged after the Shoshoni gal, with the Scotch gal after him, as he explained, "She hadn't been scalped, or even stripped now that you mention it, and we found her half buried a good ways off the trail, ma'am. Never would have found her at all had not I been scouting others who might or might not have been the ones who put her there."

By then they were back in the darker, steamier kitchen, where the waitress gal was sort of chanting in Ho at an older and far fatter gal who shot Longarm a dirty look and finally managed to convey, in words he couldn't quite follow and hand signs he knew better, that she was willing to rustle him up some grub if he didn't expect cheese with his pie, Taiowa damn it.

He signed back that coffee and sandwiches would be fine with him as Dame Flora kept pestering him about rotting corpses. He led her over to a comer where they'd be out of the way as he told her "I don't know why any Indians would murder an unarmed immigrant gal and not even take her pretty locket. She could have lost her shoes most anywhere. I don't see how Shoshoni sending smoke signals that close to where she lay could have known she was there. I might not have, had the wind been blowing another way. Most folks

who've hidden a body a good ways off on open range try not to attract attention to it. Soon as I wrap myself around some coffee and grub I mean to go ask some Shoshoni about those Shoshoni smoke signals."

She asked what made him so certain they'd been Shoshoni. The fat old gal was coming their way with a mug of coffee and a plate piled high with com piki and salmon sandwiches. So Longarm told the Scotch gal, "Because Bannock don't ride that far south and Paiute are afraid to come that far north. Now hush and let me talk to this Shoshoni lady."

They both seemed mildly surprised when Longarm thanked the fat gal by extending both hands, palms down, and sweeping them low like some fool pagan praying to some idol. Then he set the mug and sandwiches aside on a comer of her cast-iron range, to leave both hands free as he tried to ask directions to the lodge of her Chief Pocatello. It wasn't easy, and he had a time following her directions once she seemed to follow his drift.

It helped him as well as Dame Flora if he repeated the meanings of each sign in English. So when the fat gal raised her pudgy hand, fingers spread, and pivoted it on her wrist he muttered, "Wants to ask a question." He told her to go ahead and ask, with his own fist near his mouth, fingers opening and closing.