"I'm Wesley Harlan," he said, loud enough for the whole half circle to hear. "I rode for Ransom Pike up until two weeks ago. I don't anymore. I'm married to Rides Far, the daughter of Strikes Twice, and I live in her lodge, and the man you're asking after is my brother Eli. He was never in Dakota in his life. He's been in this camp since the summer of '81, when he near drowned in the Yellowstone. He wrote me three letters from your agency that I never got. And he didn't shoot at anybody. He was shot. In the back, Mister Dorran. I've seen the hole."
There was a murmur along the line of men as those who had English passed his words to those who did not.
Dorran's face did not change, but his hands tightened on the saddle horn. "Married," he said.
"Two days ago."
"I've had no notice of any marriage."
"You've got notice now," said Rides Far. Her voice carried without being raised. "You may write it in your book. I am sure you have a book."
The agent looked at her for the first time, and Wes saw something pass over his face, quick as a fish turning in a pool: not anger, exactly, but the sudden alertness of a man who has found a card in the deck he did not put there.
"Very well," Dorran said. "Then the man Eli Harlan is a fugitive being harbored by a family that has been warned. I'll see him, please. Now."
"No," said Rides Far.
"I beg your pardon?"
"He is in my lodge. The lodge is mine. No man goes in without my word, and I do not give it." She turned to Long Ears and said something in Crow, rapid and low, and Wes saw the policeman's jaw tighten. Then she spoke to the other five policemen, one by one, using a word that he had learned meant relative, and one by one they looked at the ground.