Instead of another shot, though, a man’s voice, not too far distant, shouted, “A varning it vas I give you, nesakonnley! I see you turn off from the train track and ride this vay! Now, I tell you to go back! You put your hands on my fence, then it don’t be the ground I shoot at next time! I kill you dead!”

  Frowning, Longarm tried to riddle out the strange accent that colored the man’s speech. Billy Vail had explained that there would be a lot of foreigners involved in the assignment that had brought Longarm to southern Kansas, but the chief marshal had been somewhat vague as to the country of their origin. The accent was one Longarm hadn’t encountered before, even though he’d run into representatives of most of the European nationalities that were part of the population of the West of the 1880s. It seemed to him sometimes that the whole damned world was moving into the wide-open, unsettled prairies and mountains on the sunset side of the Mississippi. There wasn’t much time for him to think about that at the moment, though. From the sound of the bushwhacker’s voice, the unknown man was edging up on him a little bit at a time.

  He called to the still-unseen rifleman, “You got me mixed up with somebody else, mister! My name ain’t Connolly. I’m Custis Long, a deputy U.S. marshal, and I ain’t a damned bit interested in your fence, except maybe to look at it!”

  “You say to me you don’t ride for Clem Hawkins?”

  “I never heard that name either, any more’n I know this fellow Connolly.”

  “Is not somebody, nesakonnley,” the stranger called back. “Is how you call a bad name. Bastard.” There was a brief silence, then the unknown assailant went on, “Maybe I make mistake, mister. I don’t shoot no more yet, but you prove to me you are vhat you say.”

  “I ain’t taking your word you won’t drop me if I show myself!” Longarm protested. “Anybody’d who’d drygulch a stranger ain’t much in my book for telling the truth!”

  “I do not make lies. I vill not shoot!” the man insisted.

  “Tell you what,” Longarm called. “You stand out in the open, where I can see you plain, and put your rifle on the ground. I’ll hold up my badge and you can take a look at it. Does that sound fair enough?”

  “Da. So I vill do.”

  Peering under the belly of his horse, Longarm got his first look at the stranger. The man stood with his empty hands outstretched, though the green thigh-high wheat sprouting up around him kept Longarm from seeing whether he’d really laid his gun on the ground, or whether he’d leaned it against his leg where he could grab it quickly. That wasn’t important to Custis Long. He knew he could get off two slugs from his own .44 Colt Model T before the bushwhacker could pick up a rifle and shoulder it. Just the same, he studied the other man for a long moment before offering himself as a target again.

  Except for his headgear, the stranger might have been any farmer or cowhand. He wore a denim jacket over a butternut shirt, and his jaws were heavily bearded, although his upper lip was shaved clean. His nose came down straight from thick, black brows and flared into a bulbous tip. His eyes were dark, his cheekbones high. It was what the other wore on his head that Longarm found strange. Instead of the usual wide-brimmed, high-crowned felt hat that almost every outdoorsman in the West wore winter and summer, the stranger was wearing a floppy, round cloth cap with a short, shiny bill.

  Satisfied that there was no chance he’d be beaten to the first shot if further gunplay ensued, Longarm stepped from the shelter of the roan’s rump and walked slowly toward the fence that ran between the two men. The other started equally slowly to meet him. Longarm casually pulled aside the flap of his long Prince Albert coat. The stranger spread his outstretched hands wider apart when he saw the Colt that Longarm wore butt-forward, high on his left hip, but Longarm was careful to keep his hands well away from the gun. He moved deliberately, taking his wallet from his inside breast pocket, and let the coat drape forward over the pistol as soon as he had the wallet out.

  Flipping open the wallet, he held it up so the man could see the deputy U.S. marshal’s badge pinned inside its fold. He said, “Now then. Unless you’ve got some reason why you’d be bashful about meeting up with the law, that ought to satisfy you.”

  “You said it is Long, your name?” the stranger frowned.

  “That’s right. Just like it says in the engraving on the badge.”

  “How am I knowing this? If it is not yours, the badge—”

  Exasperated, Longarm interrupted, “You’re the damnedest, most suspicious fellow I’ve met up with for a while. You act like you’re an owlhoot on the prod—which you could be, for all I know. Well, if you are, I’ll find out about it, and if you ain’t, then you’ll just have to take my word that me and the badge belong together.”

  Unexpectedly the man smiled, showing two rows of gleaming white teeth. “Now I believe you. If it vas you are not who you say, you vould this minute be trying to proof to me still more. Dobro. Me, I am Nicolai Belivev.”

  “Glad to make your acquaintance.” Longarm looked past Belivev for a house of some kind, but saw none. “You live around here close?”

  “There.” Belivev pointed to what looked like a hump in the ground on the far side of the wheatfield.

  “A soddy?”

  Nodding, Belivev replied, “Is vhat they are call, here. Next year, pri Bog shini, I build a real house on top of the ground, then ve don’t live no more like rabbit in hole.”

  “You been here long?”

  “Five years.” The man’s voice was proud. “This year, I come to be citizen of U.S.A.”

  “Mind telling me where you come from, Mr. Belivev? You throw out a lot of words I never heard before.”

  “From Russia ve come,” Belivev answered. Then, bitterly and with hatred in his tone, he continued, “Mother Russia! A mother like nobody needs!”

  “You said ‘we,’” Longarm frowned. “You mean there’re a lot of settlers around here from Russia?”

  “Da. Ve are many.” Belivev turned and waved his arm. Beyond the hump of the soddie, Longarm saw the mounds of other sod houses, as well as a few dwellings built from wood.

  “How’d it happen that all of you picked out Kansas?”

  “It vas from your railroad line, you see? They send men over to tell us they sell land for a few kopecks that ve pay each year, until the land, it belong to us.”

  “From what you said a minute ago, I got the idea you weren’t too sorry to leave Russia,” Longarm observed.

  “Da. Is true. Is not Mother Russia any more, like vhen our grandfathers go there from Germany long ago.” Belivev hesitated before adding, “Is not here like vhat the men from your railroad tell us it is being, maybe. Mr. Long, you are—” he hesitated, searching for a word— “law-bringer for the U.S. government, is true?”

  “I’m an officer who upholds the federal laws, if that’s what you’re asking me.”

  “Da. Is vhat. You tell me, then— Is lawful a man puts up a fence to guard his vheat vhile it grows, and other men cut it down so they can run it over with the feet from their cattle and horses?”

  “That ain’t exactly covered by federal law,” Longarm said. He fished a cheroot out of his vest pocket, flicked a matchhead with his thumbnail, and puffed the cigar into life. Then he went on, speaking slowly and thoughtfully. “Fence-cutting’s mostly covered by state laws, Mr. Belivev. Of course, here in Kansas they’ve got a law that makes trespassing on another man’s land illegal, but you’ve sure got a right to put up a fence to keep people from damaging your crops.”

  “Then vhy the men who raise cattle cut our fences down? And vhy the sheriff don’t make them stop vhen ve ask him to?”

  “There might be a lot of reasons.” Longarm saw no reason to tell Belivev that one of those reasons was probably responsible for his having been sent to Kansas in the first place.

  “Tell me them,” Belivev asked. Then, before Longarm could reply, he shook his head. “No. A better thing it vould be if you tell them to Mordka Danilov. He can more clear than me explain to the others vhy. Marshal Long, you vill go vith me to see Mordka, da?”

  “Well—” Longarm looked at the sun, beating down from the unclouded sky as it started its final slide to the west. The heat made a liar of the calendar, which said it was now autumn. He asked Belivev, “Just who is this Mordka fellow?”

  “Mordka Danilov is the elder of the Bratiya,” the Russian said. He explained, “In your language, Bratiya, it means Brethren. This is religion I speak about, our religion that causes us such trouble in Russia that ve move now to your country.”

  “Uh-huh. Sort of your pastor, you might say?”

  “Mordka guides us, he advises us. He does not preach at us.”

  “Oh. I see,” Longarm said, though he wondered at the distinction. He thought for a moment, then nodded. “All right. If you think it’ll help, I’ll talk to him. Where’s his house?”

  “If you vill come vith me, I take you there,” Belivev offered. “Is not far avay.”

  Longarm indicated the fence with its stretched wire strands studded by barbs. “How am I going to get my horse on the other side?”

  Belivev pointed to the hump that marked the sod house in which he lived. “The path to Mordka’s house goes that vay. If you ride around my fence, and I go across through the vheat, then ve get to my house at same time. From it, there is just little vay to Mordka’s.”

  Longarm nodded. Nicolai Belivev turned away, stooped to pick up the rifle he’d laid on the ground, and started trudging through the wheatfield without looking back. Longarm watched the Russian for a moment, then mounted and nudged the roan with his toe. Turning the animal, he rode parallel to the fence until it ended in a corner, then reined along it on a rough path toward the soddy. Before he got to the hump, Belivev came out without the rifle, and was waiting when he rode up. Longarm reined in.

  “Which way now?” he asked.

  Belivev said, “Ahead. Is not far. I valk by your horse and show you the vay.”

  With Longarm on horseback and Belivev on foot, conversation between them was impossible as the Russian led the way along the fenceline to a rambling crazy quilt of a house, a quarter of a mile distant. When his guide stopped and pointed to the house, Longarm dismounted.

  “Come,” Belivev said. “You can please explain to Mordka about the fences. Is better he tells us in our own language vhat he hears from you. Some of the Bratiya don’t know so much yashlkne Ameriska as like I do.”

  A tall, raw-boned woman, her head bound up in a scarf, opened the door to Belivev’s knock. She kept her pale blue eyes fixed on Longarm while she and Belivev exchanged a few words in their own tongue. Longarm heard the name “Mordka” repeated several times, but that was all he understood. After their parley ended, the woman stood aside and motioned for them to enter. Belivev almost pushed Longarm into the house.

  After the bright sunlight, the interior seemed dim, almost to the point of utter darkness. Like so many homesteaders’ dwellings, the house had few windows, and all of them were small because of the scarcity and high cost of glass. When Longarm’s eyes had adjusted to the lack of light, what he saw was an almost exact duplicate of the homes he’d seen elsewhere in places where settlements were just springing up.

  There was a table and three or four straight-backed chairs. A woodburning range stood in one corner of the room. On the walls, shelves held bags, cans, and wooden boxes. Cooking utensils were hung on nails behind the stove. A low bench held a bucket and a washbasin; a towel drooped from a nail over it. At the table, a man sat with a book open in front of him. For a moment the man did not raise his head, and Longarm followed the example of Belivev and the woman, who stood quietly, waiting.

  When the man closed his book and looked up, Longarm found himself the object of the scrutiny of a pair of the most piercing blue eyes he’d ever seen. They seemed to shine under bristling, snowy brows that matched the long, square-cut beard rippling down over the seated man’s chest. Though the beard was full, Longarm noticed that, like Belivev’s, this man’s upper lip was clean-shaven, revealing full, red lips outlined by deep creases that slanted down from a hawklike nose.

  “Nicolai,” the man said. His voice was deep and resonant.

  “Kum Mordka,” Belivev replied. “Ero gostya imya Long.”

  “Mr. Long.” Mordka Danilov nodded without rising or offering to shake hands. “Pazhalasta. I make you welcome to my house.” He said to the woman, “Marya. Sedalische. Sbteen.”

  Quickly she brought chairs for Longarm and Belivev, placing them at the table, with Longarm facing Danilov, and Belivev between them. The woman stepped to the stove and busied herself with the steaming kettle and thick, tall glasses. She carried the glasses to the table, set one in front of her husband, then served Longarm and Belivev.

  Mordka raised his glass. “To your good arrival, Mr. Long.”

  Longarm picked up his glass and, following the example of the other men, sipped the hot liquid. He recognized the flavor of honey, diluted by the hot water, and decided that a good tot of Maryland rye would have improved the brew.

  Setting his glass back on the table, Nicolai Belivev told their host, “Sodar Long ero priditi ohpravleny.”

  “Na zemstud?” the older man asked.

  “Nyet,” Belivev replied. “Centrovley.”

  Mordka Danilov frowned thoughtfully, looking at Longarm. He asked, “You come, as Nicolai says, from the central government, Mr. Long? From Washington?” His English was much better than Belivev’s.

  “Not Washington. Denver. That’s in Colorado. But I’m a federal officer, so I guess you could say I’m from Washington, in a manner of speaking. I’m a deputy U.S. Marshal, Mr. Danilov.”

  “Ah.” Mordka nodded. “You do not belong then to the ranchers, as the sheriff does?”

  “I don’t belong to anybody but myself,” Longarm said emphatically. “I’ve got a job that I do, seeing that the law’s upheld. That’s all I’m interested in. It doesn’t matter who breaks the law, I arrest him, whether it’s you or the sheriff or the richest rancher in the county.”

  “Why have you come here?” Danilov asked. “Who among us is breaking the law? Surely not the Bratiya?”

  “As far as I know right now, nobody’s broken any laws I’m obliged to enforce. My chief sent me down here to make sure there’s not any crookedness in the election that’s coming along.”

  Mordka smiled somewhat bitterly. “I see. You do not interest yourself in trespassers who cut fences and destroy crops, then?”

  “Not usually,” the deputy answered. “That’s the sheriff’s job.”

  “If he refuses to do his job, then can we turn to you for help?”

  Longarm wasn’t sure exactly how he wanted to answer a question of that kind. He took his time in replying, and chose his words carefully. “The law’s a pretty broad thing, Mr. Danilov. Federal officers are only supposed to handle cases where there’s been a federal law broken. There are times when we’ve got to step in, like when a local officer breaks a law or doesn’t do his job right. But it’s not real easy to set up rules in cases like that.”

  Danilov nodded thoughtfully. “You have not been here long, have you?”

  “I just got in last night. Right now, all I’m doing is sort of looking around.”

  “Nicolai has told you of the troubles we of the Bratiya are having?”

  “About all he’s told me so far is that you’re having a bad time.” Longarm decided it was time for him to take control of the questioning. “You and Mr. Belivev keep talking about this thing you call the Bratiya. Do you mind telling me exactly what it is?”

  “We have no secrets, if that’s what your question means,” Danilov replied. “In your language, Mr. Long, Bratiya means Brethren. It is our religion. It is each man’s personal freedom to choose his religion in this country, is it not?”

  “It sure is,” Longarm agreed. “Though I can’t say I’ve picked one out yet for myself.”

  “You will, someday,” Danilov said with a smile. “But if you are not a pious man, I can understand why you would be puzzled by our religion. Tell me, do you know of the Anabaptists? Have you ever heard of the Mennonites? The Amish, I think they are called in America.”

  “There were some Amish folks up north of where I grew up, I recall. I don’t guess I’ve heard about the others.”

  “They’re much the same, Mr. Long. I’ll try not to make my explanation too long and tiresome. The Mennonite beliefs were established three hundred years ago, Mr. Long, by a priest named Menno Simons, who found the rituals of the Roman Church too elaborate, too worldly. He began to preach only what is in the Bible itself—simple worship of God and Christ, without altars or incense or fancy robes. Menno Simons made many converts, who called themselves Mennonites. They renounced worldly trappings not mentioned in the Bible, and vowed to live in peace with all men. They put aside weapons and all acts of violence.”

  Longarm broke in, “Wait a minute. That doesn’t square up with Mr. Belivev taking a shot at me, telling me he’d shoot me if I put a hand on his fence.”

  “Be patient, please,” Danilov said. “I will try to make that clear later. Menno Simons began his preaching in the sixteenth century, by your calendar. Even before he died, though, in many of the countries where he made converts, the Roman and Protestant churches as well as the secular governments had begun to persecute those who had adopted Menno’s beliefs. His followers refused to serve in armies, or to take oaths in courts of law. The ancestors of our own people, those of us who now live here, were promised freedom to follow their own beliefs by the Tsarina of Russia, who came to be known as Catherine the Great. They migrated to Russia, most of them from Germany.” Mordka paused to sip his cooling honey mixture.