"Evans, Tabor - Longarm 189 - Longarm and the Apache Plunder" - читать интересную книгу автора (Evans Tabor)

and Chiricahua. Yet the Great White Father, in his infinite wisdom,
wants me scouting the hornet's nest he just heaved a rock through. I
swear, the War Department must have dozens of congressmen's kids who
just made second lieutenant and want that pretty red-and-blue campaign
ribbon, even though so many Quill Indians have sued for peace. I
suppose you hadn't read about the BIA fixing to move the Jicarilla down
to Tularosa Canyon, eh?"

Vail shrugged. "Sure I read about it. I read everything. The powers
that be feel the army will have a better handle on the really
treacherous Mescalero Apache if they move 'em over to study war no more
with their Chiricahua allies at San Carlos, under tighter rein from Fort
Apache just next door."

When he saw he was getting no argument from Longarm about that, he
continued with a bemused frown. "Moving the Mescalero out of Tularosa
Canyon leaves an established BIA agency with nobody to agent for. So I
reckon that's why they're fixing to move the far smaller Jicarilla
nation south from that marginal mountain reserve and teach them real
farming in-"

"Bullshit!" Longarm said, scowling like hell. "It's a pure and simple
land grab! The Jicarilla gave us a hell of a fight, surrendered under
honorable terms, and were ceded barely more than a hundred square miles
of mountain scenery nobody else had any use for at the time. But
well-watered and half-timbered high country is still a far cry from the
desert scrub the Mescalero keep running away from because there's no way
even Na-dene could get by on hunting and food-gathering alone. That's
what the folks we call Treacherous Apache call themselves, Na-dene."

Vail snorted, "Don't tell your granny how to suck eggs, or offer an
ex-Texas Ranger lectures on Mister Lo, The Poor Indian. You won't get
no argument from this child if you want to pine the U.S. Army has enough
on its plate with Victorio and his bunch this summer. But you're wrong
if you think I'd fib about Indians to any deputy who's been riding for
me six or eight years. I don't know who told you the Mesa de los Viejos
is within thirty miles of the Jicarilla agency at Dulce by crow, but-"

"Now who's teaching whose granny to suck eggs?" Longarm said with a thin
smile. "It ain't as if New Mexico Territory is stuck to the back of the
moon. How many times have we been asked to help the new territorial
government clean up after the Santa Fe Ring left over from poor old
Grant and his political bandits?"

Vail sighed. "'Political bandit' is a redundancy. I told you I read a
heap. They call it a redundancy when you use two words to low-rate the
same thing. Calling a politician a bandit is as needless as calling a
woman of the town a whore, or an Apache an ornery Quill Indian. Man
will cure the clap and fly to the moon before he ever gets the banditry
out of politics. But speaking of bandits, I was trying to tell you