Longarm and the Shoshoni silver

Sandy sighed and explained, "It's not them, it's us. The white Easterners who run the Bureau of Indian Affairs split the Western Shoshoni into two nations because some bands boiled their vegetables and some preferred to bake them on hot coals. A bannock is a Scotch bread muffin. No so-called Bannock ever called his mother's grass seed and pine nut piki a bannock, but a lot of the early white fur trappers were Scots, so . . ."

Longarm laughed. "So much for some sinister Bannock conspiracy out to feed us Saltu to old Piamuhmpitz."

She laughed louder, but managed not to disturb the red and black puzzle she was putting together as she said, "You have spent an evening or more among Ho if they've been telling you their ghost stories. But we're Tai Bha Bhon, not Saltu, to the Ho we think of as Shoshoni."

He said, "Do tell? That's odd. I thought it was the Comanche as called us Tai Bha Bhon, or Taibo."

To which she replied with a sigh, "Same difference. I told you we split them and lump them with little rhyme or reason. The name Comanche derives from something like People Who Always Want to Fight. So we applied it to plains bands calling themselves Yamparika, Kutsueka, Nokoni, Tanima, Tenawa, and a dozen other things. The famous Chief Quanah Parker is really a Kwahadi, albeit

he'd agree he liked to fight all the time."

Longarm shrugged and said, "Not any more. Old Quanah's living as white as his white mamma's relations, since he got licked enough to calm him down. I had heard Comanche and Shoshoni started out as one nation in the Shining Times. But I got enough on my plate up Idaho way. So let's forget other breeds of Ho-speakers and I thank you for saving me a likely snipe hunt. Mayhaps those dudes just want an armed escort of old Indian fighters because, as you just said, a dude from back East lumps all of 'em together and couldn't tell a Paiute from a Moduc if his life depended on it, which, come to study on that, it could''

She agreed dudes could be silly, and added, "There, isn't this a lovely grave-gift bowl?" as she put in place the last small shard and wiped her hands on her smock.

He said it sure was, and started moving back around her work table to let himself out. She must have been able to tell he meant it—they always could—for she asked right out where he thought he was going after making up with a girl like that.

He hadn't known he had, but it would have been awfully dumb to say so. So he said, "It's almost quitting time and I doubt they'll be expecting me back at the federal building this late. So I thought I might mosey down to Romano's for some of them Eye-talian noodles they rustle up so tasty."

Sandy blushed, stared down at the grinning horror atop the table between them, and murmured, *That was where we had supper that first night you got so fresh, you fresh thing."

He nodded soberly and declared, "We could try the Golden Dragon a tad closer to Cherry Creek if you're still proddy about Romano's. Or, should push come to shove, I could likely survive dining alone this evening."

She stared up at him the way an experienced mouser regards a new gap in the baseboard while Longarm, in turn, sincerely pictured himself swirling spaghetti and sipping red ink by candlelight all by himself. For it was way easier to

bluff in a poker game. No man with a hard-on had ever been able to bluff any woman who'd ever seen one, and what the hell, the evening would still be young by the time he'd finished his Eye-talian almond cakes on his own.

Alexandria Henderson could see that in his amiable but independent eyes of gun-muzzle gray. For she gaily declared, "Romano's sounds fine, now that I've forgiven you for being so silly that time. But I'll have to go home and change first. Don't tell anyone, but I confess I'm only wearing my unmentionables under this heavy smock."

He agreed the weather had been warm for a Denver autumn, and asked if she'd like him to carry her on home or meet her someplace after she'd had time to gussy up.

She dimpled coyly and allowed it might save time if he escorted her to her nearby digs and waited out front while she hosed down and dressed herself up. He'd been hoping she'd say that. He didn't get upset when she sternly added that he'd better not get ideas, just because she'd been a big silly the last time she'd invited him in for a drink. A woman who wanted it couldn't bluff a grown man worth spit either.

So they never did wind up in any fancy restaurant that evening, because the stem little gal seemed to feel a man who didn't get ideas on his own could use some inspiration.

As he helped her lock up and walked her down to her quarters on Lincoln Street, Sandy somehow steered their conversation, more than once, to the topic of screwing positions.

She called it anthropology because it seemed less sassy when you used scientific-sounding words to describe what less cultivated folk were said to do.