Mordka appeared at Longarm’s elbow, watched him bite into a piroshki, and smiled. He said, “I am glad to see you enjoy our little zakuskis, Marshal.”

  “They’re plumb good, Mr. Danilov. Where’d you get the makings for all this stuff, in a place like Junction?”

  “You must have seen our little gardens. The women attend to them, while we men work in the wheat. After a rain, they go to the unplowed ground and gather mushrooms. Many of the seasonings, like dillweed, grow wild out on the prairie.”

  “Wasn’t it a lot of work for Mrs. Danilov to fix up a spread like this?”

  “No, no, she did not make them by herself, Tatiana helped, of course, and so did the wives of the other Brethren. We have learned to share with one another, you see.” Mordka looked around. “Ah. You must finish with the zakuskis soon, Marshal. It is time now for supper.”

  “Supper?” Longarm couldn’t hide his surprise. “I thought all this was supper.”

  “Zakuskis are only to start. Now, we sit down and eat soup with pelmeni, and golubtsi, and blinis, and to finish, we will have a bowl of gourievskaya kashka. Come. You must sit at my right hand; you are our honored guest.”

  Mordka led Longarm to the larger table. While the men had been munching on the appetizers, Marya and Tatiana had unobtrusively set out plates, knives, and forks on the cloth transferred from the zakuskis spread. Danilov took his place at the head of the rectangular table and motioned Longarm to sit at his right. As soon as they were seated, the women began filling bowls and platters from the pots that, almost unnoticed, had been kept warm on the kitchen range that stood in the far corner of the room. As though this was a signal for the other men to sit down, they began finding places, and the table was soon filled.

  Nicolai Belivev was sitting across from Longarm. He smiled when he saw Longarm inspecting the soup, which was a clear broth that had tiny bite-sized dumplings swimming in it. Belivev said, “Do not worry, Marshal. It is only good chicken soup, and the pelmeni are filled with the livers from the chickens.”

  Longarm took a spoonful of soup and chewed down on the dumpling that he’d carried to his mouth in the spoon. It was not flat and doughy-tasting like the dumplings he’d eaten before. The pelmeni turned out to be a thin shell of flaky dough, and the spiced ground-liver filling added a tang to the bland broth.

  Belivev had been watching. He smiled. “This is the first time for you to eat Russian-style, da?”

  “Yep. But I sure don’t aim to let it be the last.” Longarm looked at the heaped platters in the center of the table. “I don’t know what’s in all those plates, but I’ll bet they’re just as good as what I’ve already tasted.”

  “We do not eat so well each day, you understand,” Mordka told him. “But when we have a guest, we want him to enjoy our best.”

  “Well, it sure does you proud. These are about the finest little dumplings I’ve ever tasted.”

  “Tatiana made them. She has a good hand with pastry dough,” Mordka said. “But if you are wondering what is in the platters, I will tell you.” He pointed to them, one by one. “Here is golubtsi, chopped beef rolled up in cabbage leaves. Blinis, what you would call pancakes. In this small bowl is izra iz Baklajan, eggplant cooked with onion and tomatoes and green peppers and seasonings. And in the covered bowl is the dessert, gourievskaya kashka, made with ground wheat from last year’s crop and fruits from your airtight tins. We have not yet had time to plant fruit trees; we are too busy getting our houses finished and caring for our wheat.”

  “Eta pravlina,” the man sitting next to Longarm said. “It was no time for us to do such things yet. Next year it will be better.”

  “Next year is always better, Fedor,” Belivev remarked. “Next year I plant fruit trees, and I also build me for my wife a house. A salash, maybe, but is better the worst hut than to live in the ground, like mole or rabbit.”

  Fedor nodded. “Da. If from the wheat we get money enough, so do I build a house, too.”

  By now, the diners had eaten their soup, and all around the table, plates were being loaded from the serving platters. Encouraged by the soup, Longarm sampled the cabbage rolls, blinis, and eggplant, and found them as different as the soup from his daily fare, but as tasty as the dishes he’d enjoyed earlier. He refilled his plate, taking food from each of the platters. The others were concentrating on eating with the same degree of interest that he was, and conversation faded except for a word now and then complimenting the flavor of the golubtsi stuffing, or a request for a platter to be passed to someone who could not reach it.

  Longarm was satisfied long before the other guests had eaten their fill. He tried to protest when Mordka spooned a large serving of the fruit pudding onto his plate, but his host insisted that a meal was not finished without a helping of a sweet. Longarm tasted the odd-looking pudding somewhat gingerly; desserts, except for pie, were not among his favorite foods. He found that the mixture of coarsely cracked steamed wheat and pureed fruits, with just a touch of ginger and other spices, cleared his palate of the lingering taste of onion from the cabbage rolls and eggplant, and so he managed to put away the pudding without any trouble.

  At last the pace of the eating slowed down. A voice from the far end of the table broke the silence that had prevailed since the meal began.

  “Have you told yet the marshal Amirikanits, Mordka?”

  “Nyet,” Danilov answered. “Padazhditi nimnoga, Pavel. There is plenty of time for you to ask questions.”

  “If you gents want to start our talking while we finish eating, it’s all right with me,” Longarm offered. His ear was by now keenly enough attuned to the speech of the Brethren to let him recognize the reference to him as “the American marshal.” He rubbed a hand over his stomach and shook his head. “I’m all out of room to put anything more in me, anyway. I don’t recall when I’ve tucked away so much food in just one sitting.”

  “We will not talk yet,” Mordka said firmly. “First we will finish supper. He turned to Longarm. “I have seen you smoking your cigars, Marshal Long. Tobacco, we of the Brethren do not allow ourselves, but if you wish to smoke, it will not bother us.”

  “Well, thanks. I guess you men have all done better than I seem to be able to.” Longarm produced a cheroot from his vest pocket and lit it. “I try now and again to go without cigars, but I guess I ain’t got enough willpower or something.” He leaned back in his chair and puffed contentedly while the others finished clearing their plates.

  One by one, the diners pushed away from the table. Mordka looked at them and asked, “Vi gatovi?”

  A chorus of “Da” answered him. They stood up, and Danilov led them outside, saying, “We will enjoy the fresh night air, and it makes no difference where we have our discussion.”

  Though the evening air was balmy, there was a hint of oncoming autumn in the light breeze. In the blue-black sky the stars were diamond-bright, shining more brilliantly in the absence of a moon. There was silence for a few moments while deep breaths were taken and exhaled with sighs of repletion.

  Mordka Danilov began, “When I saw you earlier today, Marshal Long, I did not want to say too much on the street. Others might have overheard us, you understand. But you see now for yourself my second reason. It is time that you hear from more than one of us about what we fear might be coming to happen.”

  “Well, none of us did too much talking while we were eating,” Longarm said. “But I guess what you’re talking about is the fence-cuttings and crop-trompings. You men figure they’re going to get worse because you’re coming up to harvest time?”

  “We are still not so close as you think to reaping our crop,” one of them replied. In the darkness, Longarm couldn’t identify the speaker. The man went on, “It will not be until after the election that we will harvest our crop.”

  “November?” Longarm frowned. “Ain’t that awful late? This part of the country, you can pretty much count on a freeze and maybe some snow before then.”

  “Eta pravlina,” another voice said. “We have been here long enough to know the weather. Mordka, tell the Amirikanits of what you are saying to us before he got here.”

  “To understand what I will tell you, I must go back to the time before we came here,” Mordka began, his voice thoughtful. “You know why we must leave Russia, where our grandfathers and great-grandfathers had emigrated a hundred years before to escape from Germany, where it was happening to them what came to be our fate in Russia. Because we did not swear oaths or fight in the Tsar’s armies, the persecution started. Even so, we endured as long as we could. We did not want to do violent acts, to hurt or maim or kill.” He sighed. “But after so many years, when the Cossacks began to come in and ravage our homes, rape our women, and kill our young men, some of us agreed that we must defend ourselves. We could not stay in our church, so we became what you know us as the Bratiya, the Brethren. We bought guns and knives and learned how to use them.”

  “Can’t say I blame you a bit,” Longarm told the group. “A man ought not to have to do a lot of things, but if it’s do or die, he swallows his craw and does ’em.”

  “So,” Danilov continued, “we fought back, and we survived. Now, tell me, Marshal, have you ever heard of a man called Carl Schmidt?”

  “No. Can’t say as I have.”

  “You vould have no reason to,” Nicolai Belivev put in. “Ve came to know him because he is our great friend and benefactor.”

  “Most of Carl’s family came to America many years before we of the Brethren did,” Danilov explained. “They did not abandon our religion, or part of it, as we had to do. But some were in Russia yet, and through them Carl Schmidt learned how we were responding to the harshness of the new Tsar. He found a way to let us come here, through the railroad land. By his cleverness, most of us managed to bring with us a bit of gold, so we could get started here. And so it has been Carl who has helped us to sell our crop each year.”

  “Is in Russia not like here,” one of the men broke in. “We did not own land, you know, Marshal. We worked on one of the Tsar’s big estates—mantulit, we say—we eat the scrapings off his plate.”

  “What Tikhon means is that we plant and harvest, and for our work, we get to keep enough grain for living until next harvest, and if it is lucky, we get more to sell for other things we need.”

  “Sharecroppers!” Longarm exclaimed. “All you were doing was working for whatever bits the boss threw your way.”

  Mordka said, “We did not learn how grain is sold in America, you see. Why should we, when we had Carl to sell it for us? But now it is to say of what is the past.” He paused a moment, as though to collect his thoughts, then went on. “You see, the money we brought with us was not enough to last very long. We did not make a good harvest the first year after we settled here; the time was too little. The next years our wheat was good, and Carl sold it at good prices. But not good at all the last year. The rain was not enough and the wheat did not do well.”

  “It was a dry year all over,” Longarm said. “But you ought to’ve got a good price. Wheat goes up, just like anything does, when there ain’t enough to let everybody have all they want.”

  “We did not understand this then,” Mordka said. “So last year, the year of the small crop, a man came to us. Oren Stone, his name is. He looked at our wheat and he visited us, and offered to buy the whole crop, in the field. Carl was not here. He had gone back to Russia to help others emigrate. He had told us to reap our grain and store it until he got back. But we had very little money, Marshal. We took Stone’s offer, and he kept his word and paid us what he said he would, even before the harvest. And because we thought he was our friend, when he offered us papers to sign, promising that we would sell him this year’s crop, most of us signed them.”

  “Wait a minute,” Longarm broke in. “This fellow Stone. Did he set a price on your wheat before it was cut, or did he pay you the going figure when you made your harvest?”

  “Ah.” Mordka’s voice was sad. “That is what our friend Carl Schmidt asked us, when he got back and we told him of the sale we had made. You see, Marshal, we did not then know that men can make much money by speculating in your grain exchange in the town of Chicago.”

  “Which is what Stone was doing, I’ll bet,” Longarm said thoughtfully. “He was likely traveling as much territory as he could cover, buying up crops, and holding what he’d bought off the market. Then he’d catch a broker on the wheat pit in Chicago who’d made a short sale and couldn’t cover it, and gouge a top price out of him, because the broker had to deliver the wheat he’d sold.”

  “So Carl explained to us,” Danilov replied. “He said if we had waited until after harvest, we would have made many hundreds of dollars more than Stone gave us.”

  “And now Stone’s got an option—which is what I’d guess you signed—to buy this year’s crop,” Longarm said.

  “Yes. Tell us, Marshal Long, is this something that is lawful for Stone to do?”

  “As far as I know, there ain’t any law against it. Maybe there ought to be, but if a man wants to gamble on a business deal, he’s pretty much free to do it.”

  “Kak eta mozhna?” one of the Brethren asked. In the darkness, Longarm could not see his face.

  Danilov answered, “How is it possible, Tikhon? You remember how Carl explained it to us last year, don’t you? He told us how foolish we had been to sign away our crop, if you recall.”

  “Ya nipanimauy,” another of the men said, disgust in his tone.

  “You must understand, Pavel,” Danilov said patiently. “The man Stone goes around finding ignorant ones like us and cheating us of what we should have for our labor, like the aristokratiya.”

  “And I don’t see that there’s much you can do about it,” Longarm told the group. “There sure ain’t any way I know of that I can help you on something like this. It’s a legal business deal, as far as the law’s concerned.”

  “Perhaps if you would talk to Stone?” Mordka suggested.

  “Well, I wouldn’t mind talking to him for you, except I don’t know where I’d find him,” Longarm replied.

  “He is in Junction now,” Danilov said. “He has a railroad car of his own, and it was pulled into town today. Anatoly Yanishev came and told me he had seen the car arrive. I was on my way to talk with Stone when I saw you, Marshal Long. After you said you would meet with us tonight, I did not go to see him, though.”

  “You understand I can’t do much except ask him to let you off on those options you signed, Mr. Danilov? I can’t go beyond that.”

  “Perhaps if Stone thinks you are watching him, he will be afraid,” Danilov said hopefully.

  “Maybe,” Longarm replied, “but I doubt it. A man like him will know what he can and can’t do, where the law’s concerned.”

  “But you will see him?” Danilov urged.

  “Sure. I said I would. Now, then. Let’s talk about the reason why I’m here in Junction, which is the election.”

  “What is there to talk about?” Nicolai Belivev asked. “We of the Bratiya will vote for Fedor Petrovsky, here. That is all we can say, nyet?”

  “No it ain’t,” Longarm replied. “I went out and paid a little visit on Clem Hawkins today. I told him just what I aim to tell you now. I don’t intend to stand for any fighting or keeping people from voting, or letting anybody vote more than once.”

  “Marshal Long. We would not do any of those things,” Danilov protested. Then he added, “But the ranchers who favor Sheriff Grover, they might.”

  “I didn’t say you folks in the Brethren would get out of line, Mr. Danilov. I’m just telling you what I’m going to be watching for while the voting’s going on.”

  “We will be watching with you,” Nicolai Belivev said. “We do not trust Hawkins. We know he’s the one who encourages the cutting of our fences.”

  “I’m betting he ain’t the only one, Mr. Belivev,” Longarm told the Russian. “There ain’t a rancher anyplace who likes a fence chopping up range that used to be open.”

  “Not all the land to the ranchers belongs,” one of the other homesteaders said angrily. “Ve have some rights to keep our vheat from being spoiled, nyet?”

  “Sure you have,” Longarm agreed. “Especially if the sheriff doesn’t do anything when you complain to him.”

  “Sheriff Grover only listens to our complaints,” Danilov put in. “He does nothing to stop the fence-cutting. He is—”

  Whatever else Mordka had intended to say was lost. A rifle shot cracked from the darkness. One of the homesteaders spun around and dropped to the ground with a cry of pain.

  Chapter 6

  Longarm reacted instantly to the sniper’s shot. He’d been standing facing the house, with his back to the fields from which the shot came, and hadn’t seen the rifle’s muzzle flash, but before the echoes of the shot had died away he’d wheeled, drawing as he turned, and sent a pair of slugs winging in the general direction of the sniper.

  Distantly, a horse’s hooves drummed on the hard earth, and, in a matter of seconds, faded away to silence. Night shrouded the horse and rider. In the blackness there was no way by which the direction of the galloping horse could be traced. All Longarm could tell was that the sniper had made good his escape and that pursuit would be useless.

  Holstering his Colt, Longarm joined the homesteaders who had gathered around the fallen man and were bending over him. As Longarm moved, shadows blotted out the rectangle of yellow lamplight streaming from the doorway; Marya and Tatiana Danilov had crowded up to see what had happened.

  “Let’s get him inside,” Longarm said crisply. “Not much way we can tell how bad he’s hurt, out here in the dark.”

  “Of course you will bring him in!” Marya called from the doorway, then turned and, in rapid-fire Russian, rattled off a series of instructions to Tatiana.