Longarm and the Shoshoni silver

bouncing back his way from all that damned glass, while the cluster of folks he saw gathered around one of the cannons guarding the capitol steps didn't seem to be loading it up to fire on anyone. Colorado kept those big guns her volunteers had carried west from the war shined bright as gold, and tourists were always admiring hell out of them.

Passing safely by the cannon's mouth and glancing back as he crossed over to the state museum beyond, Longarm saw he didn't have anyone following him wearing any sort of hat. So he swung a tad wide of the regular entrance steps to enter by way of a more humble basement service door. Then he scouted up a side door barred to the general public and saying so, in gilt letters. He opened it and, as he'd hoped he might, caught Doctor Alexandria Henderson with a naked Indian.

The naked Indian on the deal table between them was one of those mummified cliff dwellers prospectors kept bringing back from the other side of Durango, and on second glance, old Sandy was really working on the baked clay pots they'd likely buried the cliff dweller with. Nobody knew why. The folks called Anasazi in Nadene, or Hohokam in Ho, had all been dried like figs before the first white folks, or even modem red ones, had shown up in the canyonlands to the southwest.

Sandy Henderson was a modem redhead with a passion to match on the rare occasions she let a man see her with all that red hair down and the rest of her out of that clean but spotted denim smock. Her lab smelled of fish glue at the moment and before Longarm could ask how come, the pretty little thing flashed her big aquamarine eyes at him wamingly to declare, "Don't you dare come around on this side, and leave that door open behind you, Custis Long! I'm having enough trouble with this new pottery style, and even if I wasn't I'd be awfully cross with you!"

He left the door open, since she'd asked, and if it riled her it would serve her right. He ticked his hat brim at her and tried to sound serious as your average deacon as he

said, "I don't blame you a bit. Miss Sandy. I told you last summer I was a tumbleweed cuss with an uncertain future. I'm here today on a mission for the U.S. Government."

To which she replied with an involuntary blush, 'That's what you said the last time, and by the way it was last springtime, not last summer. You told me you wanted me to examine a Pawnee shield cover and the next thing i knew you were. ., examining me on top of that very shield cover, and ... By the way, was I right about it being Pawnee workmanship?"

He had to smile, although politely, as he nodded and assured her they'd both guessed right that time. So she asked, "What have you got to show me this time, and I swear I'll scream if you take it out with that damned door wide open!"

He shut the door behind him with a boot heel, saying, "Life's too short to spend it arguing with ladies. I didn't bring any Indian stuff with me this time. Miss Sandy. I came to pick your brains about folks who mostly call themselves Ho. I got to go over by the Fort Hall Agency with some B.I.A. gents who seem more worried than the rest of us about the Indians they'll be meeting up with. As I understand it, they got a mixed bag of what Washington describes as Bannock and Shoshoni living at Fort Hall under Chief Pocatello."

Sandy nodded and said, "White Feather. He's all right. Probably smarter than Red Cloud and certainly smarter than Sitting Bull when it comes to dealing with the Bureau of Indian Affairs."

He nodded and said, "Old Washakie, The Rattle, seems to have his Wind River Shoshoni under control, east of the divide. But they say he was mighty vexed when the B.I.A. shoved a whole heap of Northern Arapaho down his throat, or leastways, on his reservation."

Sandy agreed Indian Affairs was in the habit of mixing oil and water. When she asked what events at Fort Washakie might have to do with his mission to Fort Hall,

he explained, "Pocatello seems to have been put in charge of some leftover Bannock as well as his closer kin. I was wondering whether the Bannock know that, and as long as we're on the subject, would someone please tell me how to tell a Bannock from a Shoshoni?"

He risked edging around the dead cliff dweller for a clearer view of her skilled and pretty fingers as he added, 'i mean, I have swapped shots and smoked weeds with both breeds and I'll milk a diamondback bare-handed if I can see any difference. They both hunt and fight on painted ponies. They both speak the same lingo, admire the same spirits, and describe themselves by the same sort of snaky wiggle in sign talk."