Longarm and the Shoshoni silver

He managed not to pester their silent and almost invisible Indian guide until, somewhere in the night, they heard someone singing in a high-pitched but sleepy-sounding way. Then they saw faint lights ahead and their young guide called out. The singing stopped. Then a male voice called back in Ho, and the kid told Longarm and Dame Flora, "Pocatello makes you welcome if you come with good hearts and don't want to sell him anything."

Longarm said that sounded fair. So the kid yelled some more and then they headed on in. When she saw about a dozen blanket-wrapped forms seated cross-legged on the front porch of a log cabin, back-lit by an oil lamp on one windowsill. Dame Flora marveled, "Why, they seem to living in a real house, as if they were white people."

He said, "Yes, ma'am. It gets cold as a banker's heart up this way come January, so would you squat in a tipi you had to put up yourself when the government was willing to build you a fine cabin?"

She dimpled and said she understood. He told her to keep future comments to herself, lest folks feel she felt too good for them. He was pleased when she said she'd let him do all the talking.

But now they were close enough for the Indians on the porch to make them out as well. A bearlike figure wrapped in a cream and black-striped Hudson Bay blanket rose to a tad above average for a Ho, all Ho being shorter than your average lanky Lakota, and began a speech in a curious mishmash of English, Chinook, and Ho. Lx)ngarm gravely replied he'd been on fair terms with the late "Big Um" too, hoping they were talking about Brigham Young. Trying to introduce Dame Flora, even with sign thrown in, was a real bitch. Then a sort of sweet old female voice cut in to hush the chief and offer

to translate, in better English than Longarm was used to speaking.

Moving in closer, they saw she seemed to be someone's mummy, the Egyptian kind, wrapped in a real old-timey blanket made by wrapping thin strips of rabbit fur 2U'ound weepah cords and weaving them into a sort of thick fuzzy burlap. The old woman's long hair was whiter than Pocatello's blanket. She said she was called Wadzewipa, and when the young boy from the agency said she was a porivo, the old gal sighed and said, "I am no such thing. I am only a guest who came over the mountains from Fort Washakie to speak for my young nephew, Pocatello, and make sure the Taibo didn't cheat him."

Longarm braced a booted foot on the porch steps and chose his words carefully before he said, "Hear me, Wadzewipa, and tell your nephew I ride with the Taibo who want to buy that land, but not as one of those who will try to set the price."

The old woman softly replied, "We know who you are. The Ute were right to name you Saltu Ka Saltu. What is it you really want from Pocatello?"

Longarm gleinced at Dame Flora, sighed, and told her, "If I say I'm doing this partly for you, can you sort of forget the details of this conversation, ma'am?"

She said her kind didn't hold with idle gossip. So he turned back to the Indians and said, "I know better than to try and trade with you like a Chinook with stolen ponies. Tell Pocatello I offer this freely, as a good enemy in war and a brother in peace. Tell him my people want that land he is willing to sell them more than they may have told him. Tell him he could get at least twice as much silver if he can hold out until the crops are sprouting after the last snows."

Wadzewipa stared silently for a time before she sighed and said, "I think you know what you are talking about, my tua. Everyone knows how much Pocatello can buy for his people, with cold and hungry moons coming, for sixty thousand dollars."

"Four hundred thousand acres are worth more," Longarm told her.

She raised a frail hand to hush him, saying, "Pocatello is not going to sell them that much land. A good seventy-five thousand are important acres. The Taibo can have the rest. Do you think he could really get a hundred and twenty thousand dollars for, say, three hundred and twenty-five thousand acres?"

Longarm nodded and said, "Easy. They want that land more than Pocatello does, and twice what they've offered is still cheaper by far than even a modest war. All Pocatello has to remember is that they will be counting on the coming winter to weaken his resolve. The B.I.A. has to get you all through the winter alive, albeit without fancy trimmings. That's the law of the land. Come springtime, with him holding out for a halfway fair price . . ."

''Hai-hai-yee! Be quiet and let me tell them!" she cried with a delighted cackle. As she did so in their own lingo Dame Flora calmly asked Longarm, "What was the name of that Yankee chap who sided with the Indians against his own kind that time, Simon Girty?"

He smiled thinly and said, "You'd know better than me, since he was a British agent, ma'am. I ain't out to scalp or even slicker my side unfairly. Less than a million dollars for half that much well-watered land is a steal and you know it." j