Tabor Evans (3 page)

"I knew it was one of them big towns in the East," Longarm said, nodding. "And this is your first trip to the West?"

"Yes. And I must say, my first impressions of it aren't very favorable."

"They'd have been a lot worse if I hadn't come along when I did," he reminded her. "That is, if you'd stayed alive to get any kind of impression."

Maidia shuddered. "Yes. I'm still having trouble believing all this is happening to me, though. I keep waiting to wake up and find myself at home in bed. It's been something of a nightmare."

"And pretty much your own fault," Longarm couldn't keep himself from replying. "But I can understand why you acted like you did. Back where you come from, there's people underfoot everyplace you turn, all of them living in the pocket of the fellow standing next to them. And a policeman on every corner to look after them and keep them safe."

"It's not quite that simplistic," Maidia said. For the first time since Longarm had seen her, she smiled. Her face changed completely.

She went on, "Perhaps we have come to depend too much on others for protection, though. We've gotten to look on it as automatic, something we buy and take for granted, instead of looking out for ourselves."

"Why'd you come out here, Miss Harkness?"

Longarm was frankly curious. He'd seen all kinds of people during the years he'd been trying to bring civilized behavior to the raw, untamed West, but the Harkness woman didn't fit any of the compartments others had filled.

She seemed surprised. "Why, to help, of course."

"Help who?"

"Those who need help the most. The Indians."

"I see." Longarm made a business of blowing the ash off his cheroot. "Did they ask you to come help them?"

"No, of course not. But other social workers have told me about their needs, and I decided that I'd be of more service to them than to the people I've been trying to help back home."

Longarm was puzzled. "I reckon you lost me around that last bend, Miss Harkness. Is that what you do for a living? Just go around helping people?"

"I suppose you could call it that. I'm a social worker, you see."

"That's just it," he frowned. "I don't see. Now, I guess my business is helping folks by keeping robbers and killers and such behind bars, but from the way you were talking a while ago, you're just as concerned about helping them as you are about trying to do something for the folks they take advantage of."

"Everybody has rights in life. Marshal Long, even the ones you call robbers and killers. After all, they're human beings too."

Longarm grinned wryly. "After some of the things I've run into, I might put up a pretty argument that a lot of them ain't what you'd call good examples of human beings."

"Nonsense. Why, you must remember the beautiful words Thomas Jefferson wrote in our Declaration of Independence: '... that all men are endowed with certain unalienable rights.'"

"Oh, I know about the Declaration, sure. Only I disremember its saying anything about a body having a right to rob and maim and kill."

"You're evading the issue, Marshal," she said severely. "Take the Indians. We've deprived a great many of them of their lives, and now we're depriving all of them of their liberty, by shutting them up on reservations like the ones here in the Indian Nation."

"Well, now I've been pretty much all over the reservations here in the Nation. I don't recall seeing any Indians shut up, except a few that's turned to thieving from their own people, and killing, and things like that."

"That's an old, feeble argument, Marshal. I've heard it before, many times. And I expect I'll hear it again and again, now that I'm out here in the West. Why, this country belonged to the Indians, and we took it away from them by force."

"I reckon there's something in what you say. We crowded the Indians so close together that we made whole armies where there were only small raiding parties before. George Custer wouldn't have found himself in such a pickle if it hadn't been for that. And there's plenty who have lied to them and stolen from them and sold them guns and whiskey and gotten filthy rich in the process, and ruined such lives as they had in what they're pleased to call the Shining Times. I've traded shots with Indians, white men, Mexicans, and even Chinese, and I've had some of them help me out when I was in a few tight spots, too. There's some Indians just as greedy and ornery as white folks can be, which is how they lost some of what they had. They took a lot of scalps and tortured a lot of their own people, way back when, over sharing what they'd staked out as their territory."

"Oh, I've heard that, too. Why should they share? The land was theirs."

"Land's not worth much to people unless it's used, ma'am."

Maidia was getting angry. "We spoil the land! We dig up the soil and cut down the trees and dam up the rivers and kill the animals. The Indians never did things like that!"

Longarm grinned. "You ever see a Comanche buffalo drive? Or a Ponca village after a Pawnee raid?" He hesitated, then added, "I never did see that last myself, but I talked to men who did."

"I'm not saying the Indians are perfect," Maidia retorted angrily. "But they certainly didn't despoil the land and destroy the forests the way we've done in the East, and the way people are beginning to do here in the West."

Longarm sat thoughtfully for a moment, then got up and walked over to the fire. He picked up one of the few remaining long branches that hadn't been reduced to firewood length, and began to pull the burning sticks out of the fire and stamp them under his boots, driving them into the dirt and extinguishing them.

Maidia watched him for a moment, her face showing her perplexity. Then she began to feel the bite of the night wind that the fire had kept her from noticing before.

"What on earth are you doing?" she asked. "You're putting out our fire, and I'm getting cold!" Longarm said with great seriousness, "Why, seeing as you're so dead set against the trees being cut up for firewood, Miss Harkness, I didn't want you to be embarrassed by sharing any of the heat we been getting from that tree."

"But we need the fire to be comfortable!" she protested. "If we didn't"--she stopped short and smiled. The smile became a laugh. She said, "All right, Marshal, you've made your point. But I think you exaggerated a little bit, just as I was doing."

Squatting down, Longarm began rebuilding the blaze. Over his shoulder, he said to her as he worked, "The world might be a prettier place if folks were all considerate to each other, but they ain't, and that's why I've got this here job of mine. I can't afford to ponder too much on the way things ought to be--I've got to enforce the law, which is about the way things are. And I do my best to enforce the hell out of it. Now, I don't know anything about you, except you're a nice-looking young lady, but I'd guess you went to school a lot, and didn't do much rubbing up against real people. And you sure don't know much about Indians. Or men, either."

"I'll admit I deserved the lesson," she replied soberly. "I made a very serious mistake in not going to somebody in Fort Smith and asking about those four men I hired. But the man at the livery stable where I went to find out about getting here to the Cherokee Nation seemed to know them, so I just assumed they were all right."

"Which wasn't a real smart thing to do," Longarm pointed out. He added hastily, "Meaning no offense, ma'am. But I'll see you safe back to Fort Smith, and you can catch a train there to take you back to Boston."

"I have no intention of going back to Boston," Maidia said firmly. "I came out here to work with the Indians, and that's what I intend to do. I appreciate your offer, Marshal Long, but I'll manage quite well on my own, I'm sure."

"You know I can't just ride off and leave you to look out for yourself," Longarm told her sternly. "Now, I'll tell you what. You backtrack with me a little ways tomorrow morning. There's a little place on the river called Webbers Falls, only eight or maybe ten miles from here. I'll find somebody dependable there to ride with you to wherever you're going."

"I have a letter of introduction to a Reverend Miller in some place called Choteau. I found it on the map; it's quite a distance north. There's an Indian school there, and I'm hoping to find a place teaching, to begin with."

"A while back, you said something about being a social worker," Longarm said. "Guess I don't rightly know just what that is."

"Generally, it's just being helpful to poor people and those who don't have an education. I'm qualified as a teacher, though, among other things."

"As long as you got a place waiting, that'll make me feel better. But how about my proposition, Miss Harkness? Will you go along to Webbers Falls with me, and let me pick out somebody to ride with you and see that you get to Choteau safe and sound?"

"Of course I will. I think it's very thoughtful of you to offer to help me." Maidia hesitated for a moment. "I'm afraid I owe you an apology, Marshal. I misjudged your actions earlier--not that I approve of them, you understand--but I'm beginning to see that the standards I've been judging things by can't always be applied to this part of the country."

"You don't need to apologize," Longarm assured her. "And meaning no offense again, you sound a lot smarter now than you did when you were ripping me up one side and down the other for what I done. But that's put behind us, I guess?"

"Yes, I guess it is," she agreed.

"Good. Now, if we're going to be comfortable tonight, I've got to look after some camp chores. The first one's to get rid of him." Longarm nodded at the corpse. "And then I'll see what I can rustle up in the way of some supper." Keeping her eyes off the body, Maidia said, "You do what's necessary. I don't know much about cooking over a campfire, but I'll help you as much as I can in getting dinner ready."

Longarm dragged the late Jasper to the grave that had been intended for Maidia Harkness. He went through the man's pockets before covering the grave, but found nothing in them that would help identify him, just a few dollars in silver, some crumpled currency, and the usual oddments: a jackknife, a sack of Bull Durham tobacco and cigarette papers, matches, a dollar discount token from a Fort Smith whorehouse, and a gold tooth that he speculated must have come from some past victim. He took off the dead man's gunbelt and carried it back to the fire.

"You generally carry a bandbox or something like that, don't you?"

Longarm asked Maidia.

"Of course."

Longarm handed her the pistol. "Here. Put this someplace handy when you get around to it. Later on, you can swap it for something a little more a lady's size."

Maidia pulled back. "A pistol? Oh, not- Why, I couldn't carry a weapon, Marshal. Even if I felt that I could bring myself to carry one, I don't know how to shoot it."

"You can learn. I can teach you all you need to know in ten minutes. The rest is just practicing."

"No, Marshal Long. I'm sure your intentions are good-"

"Now, you listen to me, Miss Harkness. It's like you said yourself a minute ago. What you're used to from back East don't cut the mustard out here. You ain't going to find a policeman on every streetcorner that you can look to for help When you need it. Coming right down to cases, you're apt to be in places where there's not even any streetcorners for a policeman to stand on. Now, you do what I tell you. Take this Colt and learn which end the bullets come out of."

Gingerly, Maidia extended her hand and took the weapon. She almost dropped it when Longarm let go of the gunbelt. "My goodness! It's a lot heavier than I thought it would be."

"Part of that's the belt and cartridges. But a gun's going to be heavy, got to be. I'll show you a little bit about it later on. Right now, we better get some grub together before both of us starve."

"I know there's supposed to be some food on the pack mule," Maidia said. "But I'm not sure what kind of food. I told you I'm not very good at camp cooking, but I'll do What I can to help you."

Rummaging in the packsaddle together, they found a large chunk of beef loin, a half-side of bacon, a dozen or so potatoes, and several big white onions. In small cloth bags, they discovered flour, sugar, black-eyed peas, ground coffee, salt and pepper. There were also a few cans of tomatoes and peaches, a battered frying pan, and a large tin coffeepot. A cylinder of tattered rags had at its core an unlabeled bottle. Longarm pulled the cork and sniffed.

"Whiskey," he told Maidia. "Either keg stuff, or out of a still on one of the whiskey ranches hereabout. Might be all right, might not be fit to drink. Well take it along and find out."

"At least we won't go to bed hungry," Maidia said, looking at the food they'd found. "If we can get it cooked."

"Oh, I can fix it so it's almost fit to eat," Longarm assured her. "Just don't look for anything fancy."

"I'm so hungry I could almost eat it raw," she replied. "But there ought to be some plates and cups."

"I got some tin plates in my saddlebag," he said, "but I only carry one cup. Can't seem to make room for two. But we'll get along all right. And there's water enough for coffee in my canteen. I'd bet there's a spring close by, but I don't aim to go looking for it in the dark. We might as well start supper. While it's cooking, I'll spread our bedrolls and rustle up a little wood for a breakfast fire."