@Sombrero@Monochromatic Rainbow"Moses Jones...Pinkerton..."
Watts rolled the words around in his mouth, like a fine claret or, on the other hand, a foul tasting morsel, his expression unchanging as he scrutinised the agent in even more careful detail. Did this goose-shit Pinkerton think he could take him, here, in his own office? By the look on his face, as dim as it seemed, the lawmaker and executor in Laredo decided that he probably did.
"Will, Mister Moses, as you can see we're havin' a little problem at the moment," spoke the sheriff matter-of-factly, walking unannounced straight past the shorter and slighter man, pointing on large finger out the window of his office at the gathering crowd - a varied assortment of the poor and the rich, the armed and the weaponless, Mexicans, Texans and others - a truly mingled plethora of willing killers.
"Now, if'n you wanna be helpful, git the Hell out there and organise that there posse; some German child gone got his family scalped, came screaming into town not long 'fore you got here. Go tell 'em who you are, the wrecks probably up north aways."
As if bored by the entire unfolding events, Hugo stretched his arms and then placed his hands back on his gunbelt, giving the Pinkerton Agent a sly half-smirk as he walked back to his desk. In one fluid motion he quite deliberately placed both booted feet onto his desk, his quick but beady eyes looking over his own feet as he spoke, "consider this your first assignment, assumin' you gonna want to take it, of course?"
************
Boy-With-Handsome-Face, or at least as he was called in English, let a thin smile show across his lips as the seemingly half-bred individual of the inquisitive pair spoke to him in that imported language. Through his not unattractive features showed a neat row of teeth, oddly white for a migratory culture with no organised dental care, and he lifted up one slender hand in a half salute and half wave from the back of his pinto. With exceptional economy of movement, he twisted the lance in his grip and placed the sharpened end firmly into the sandy riverbed next to him. A moment later and he slid from the back of his pony, leaving it to drink and wonder as it would for now.
Brother she called him...brother...yes, he was dressed as a man, and in the society of the Comanche - quite unlike that of the Lakota, Crow or Blackfoot, there was no place for those who did not feel the same in their own body. In the Crow, for example, a man who dressed as a woman was used as a focal point in their sundance, while in other tribes they were seen healers, or simply as any other. In the Comanche bands they were just seen as odd, including himself.
"
Shik'isn," he replied by way of greeting, using some of the limited Apache he knew, and assuming from her outward appearance alone that she would understand it as well, "it was..." his eyes looked about for a moment as his mind worked, "
indaa," he used the Apache word for 'white person', and pointed to the only completely non-native figure in the area, using sign language he gestured to himself and then to his face, "faces covered, dressed like
ndee but not
ndee."
Oh there
had been genuine Apache with them, no doubt of that, the scalping methods certainly suggesting as much - far too precise for any white impersonator to copy - but the group had been directed by a small band of whites, and that much he knew.
"They took the women, young and old, take them that way."
This time he pointed off into the distance, in a rather general direction it must be noted, too busy studying this woman who seemed both strong in body and quite easy on the eye. An interesting mingling of white and Indian blood, not something that a Comanche was unused to, his own people adopting many persons of every race into their bands for various reasons, but he had never seen one so perfectly 'balanced' before.
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