Tabor Evans Read Online Free Page A

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