Longarm and the War Clouds (7 page)

Kilroy seemed to feel genuinely bad about the dustup in Major Belcher's office. He said it would probably be best if he put the major to bed and gave him time to sober up before they “visited” further. He assured the visitors that the incident in the office was out of character for the normally more restrained camp commander.

The poor man just had his neck up over his missing wife.

Kilroy arranged for Longarm and War Cloud to throw down in a vacant unmarried officers' quarters, the row of which sat beside the fort sutler's store that had a small, lean-to saloon attached. Through the major's adjutant, Corporal Carson, the captain arranged for Magpie to stay with one of the noncommissioned officer's families, though when War Cloud explained this to Magpie, the girl spat out in her guttural tongue that she'd rather sleep in a dry wash with bobcats.

With a tense smile, War Cloud assured the captain that his daughter was grateful for the amenities. Then he gave his strident young princess a blank, subtly commanding stare. While the girl was led away by the noncom's merry, full-hipped wife, Longarm and War Cloud followed Corporal Carson over to the row of unmarried officer's quarters.

War Cloud and Longarm had a quick drink and a short nap. War Cloud was out of sorts. He got up in the early afternoon and headed off to pay a visit to the three other Apache scouts stationed at McHenry.

He wanted to confer with them about Black Twisted Pine and to generally “get the lay of the land around here.” The corporal had informed him that the scouts' quarters were still back near the barn and stables, at the base of the tabletop mesa rising north of the parade ground.

Longarm himself wanted to consult with the scouts but knew that War Cloud would probably gather more information about the Apaches' point of view without a white man present. Especially a white federal lawman.

He bit off the end of a cigar and headed on out of the pent-up heat in his room to sit on a bench under the brush-roofed ramada facing the parade ground and smoke his cigar, sip from his bottle of Tom Moore, and gather some wool on the situation at hand.

The fort was quiet in the afternoon. The only sounds were a few soldiers talking in the saloon attached to the sutler's store to Longarm's right, the occasional whinny of a horse out in one of the corrals, and the rumble of thunder in a purple storm mass sliding over the northern mesa. The air shepherded along in front of the storm was cool and refreshing as it blew against Longarm's face.

It smelled of desert sage and rain.

Longarm closed his eyes and let the cool, fragrant wind brush against him as he smoked the cigar and registered beneath the growing rumble of the oncoming storm the thunder of discontent in his own mind.

What in hell were he and War Cloud doing down here, anyway? It was looking more and more like they'd been sent by the federal government to fetch a woman back to a pathetic lout of a husband. A man whom Longarm had witnessed banging a young Apache girl in his office.

To fetch the woman back, against her will, from the man she apparently really loved.

And the poor woman's husband wanted Longarm and War Cloud to haul Black Twisted Pine back to McHenry, as well, so that Belcher could punish the man in his own likely devious and savage way. Longarm had to assume that if Belcher got his hands on his cuckolder, he'd kill Black Twisted Pine.

His grim ruminations were mercifully cut short when he spied Corporal Carson leading a small troop of privates across the parade ground from the direction of the bathhouse. The corporal—a lanky, towheaded lad who seemed to perpetually be smiling—was carrying a copper bathtub while the two privates each carried two steaming buckets, wincing and grunting with the effort.

“A bath for you, sir—ordered by Major Belcher!” intoned Corporal Carson as he mounted the gallery, beaming.

Longarm flicked his cigar stub into the dirt as the privates followed the corporal into his room, their boots drumming on the dry puncheons. “Belcher? You mean Kilroy.”

The clank of the tub being set down inside issued from the open door. Presently, Carson stuck his head out to say, “No, sir. Apparently, the major sobered up and realized he'd made a mistake. He's been sort of off his feed since his wife left to visit her family back East.”

Carson had slightly emphasized that last sentence, and he gave Longarm an ironic wink. Apparently, that had been the explanation the enlisted men had been given for Mrs. Belcher's disappearance although, obviously, Carson knew the truth. As likely did the rest of the soldiers at Fort McHenry.

“I'm sure it was nothing personal,” Carson explained. “Anyway, he ordered a bath of hot water sent over from the bathhouse, so that you may bathe in private, sir. He also ordered me to invite you and War Cloud and the young . . . um . . . lady—Miss Magpie, wasn't it?—to his private residence for supper with him and Mrs. Belcher's sister, Miss Leslie, this evening at six o'clock. The major wants very much to give you a proper sendoff.”

“Well, I'll be,” Longarm said, wary of the major's intentions. He didn't trust the man any farther than he could throw him uphill against a Dakota twister. What the man had said while drunk this afternoon concerning the trouble at hand was probably much closer to the truth than anything he'd say sober this evening.

As the privates exited Longarm's quarters with their empty buckets and started walking back in the direction of the bathhouse, Corporal Carson said, “Can I inform the major you'll accept his offer?”

“Sure, why not?” Longarm said, shrugging. He had to eat somewhere. And he wouldn't mind meeting the major's sister-in-law, whom Kilroy had informed him was the major's wife's twin. At least he'd have a description of the gal he and War Cloud would be looking for.

“Wonderful! It's that house at the east end of the parade ground. Enjoy your bath, Marshal! I set a brush and some soap on the table, as well as a bottle of brandy compliments of the major!”

With that, the Corporal saluted out of habit. Longarm awkwardly returned the gesture from his chair and watched the corporal step down off the gallery and head across the parade ground. He was striding in the direction of the narrow, two-story house he'd pointed out—one of three plain, neat, shake-shingled dwellings that sat in a row at the parade ground's east end, behind a picket fence in badly need of fresh paint.

“Brandy, eh?”

Longarm heaved his travel-weary bones out of the chair and went inside his borrowed quarters. Sure enough, a bottle of brandy sat on the small pine desk opposite the bunk bed. Not just any brandy, either. Spanish brandy.

Longarm popped the cork, sniffed.

Expensive stuff. Nothing he'd ever tasted equaled his favored Tom Moore, but he wouldn't turn down a bottle of Spanish brandy. The corporal had provided a goblet.

Longarm filled the glass to the brim and spilled a little when thunder peeled, giving him a start. He corked the bottle and started to remove his string tie as he peered out one of the room's two windows curtained with what appeared old cavalry tunics. Nothing went to waste on a remote cavalry outpost.

The swollen purple clouds were nearly straight over the parade ground, dragging along a pale curtain of rain. As lightning flashed wickedly against the purple, anvil-shaped mass, thunder cracked sharply. Raindrops flecked against the sashed window.

The desert rain tempered Longarm's dread of the grim situation at hand. There was nothing quite as refreshing as rain in the desert—especially rain in the middle of an especially hot desert summer. And he had a hot bath and a bottle of brandy to go along with it.

He got undressed and tossed his clothes onto the hide-bottom chair behind the desk, dropping his hat down on top of the pile. He coiled his cartridge belt around his holstered six-shooter, set that on the chair, and dragged the chair near the tub, so the gun would be in easy reach in case he needed it. A lawman never knew.

He set his glass of brandy, soap, and brush on the floor near the tub and climbed into the steaming water, groaning in delight as his extra layer of skin, which consisted of over a week's worth of trail grime, began to soften. He sank all the way down in the water, dunking his head, and came up blowing.

Immediately, he climbed to his feet, lathered the brush that the corporal had provided, and began scrubbing in earnest to the storm's raucous symphony, with lightning flashing in the windows.

When he'd scraped the crud off every inch of his big, brawny frame and even dug some chunks of dirty wax out of his ears, he lifted the one remaining bucket of water, provided for rinsing, above his head. He froze, looked at the rain-splattered window right of the door.

He'd seen something move in a corner of it. Probably only a tumbleweed blowing past in the wind. He glanced at his pistol, comforted by the nearness of the trusty popper.

He poured the remaining bucket of water over his head.

He dropped the bucket suddenly and, while the rinse water was still dribbling off his shoulders and down his chest, he reached over and grabbed his .44. Clicking the hammer back and aiming at the window on the left side of the door in which he'd glimpsed a face peering in at him from the lower right corner, he yelled, “Come on in out of the rain before I drill your peeping eyes through the glass!”

The face had disappeared. Standing naked in the tub, soaked hair pasted against his forehead and still dribbling water into his eyes, he blinked each eye in turn as he yelled, “Come in and face me like a man, you chicken-livered son of a bitch!”

He had no idea the peeper's intentions, but it was best to assume the worst.

Nothing except the rain moved in either window. There was no sound except the hammering moisture against the walls and ceiling and windows.

The door latch clicked. The door opened slowly on its rusty hinges. A young, redheaded woman looked in, looking sheepish. The nubs of her fine cheeks were touched with red.

She walked into the room holding a closed umbrella down low by her side, and then ran her eyes, green as amethysts, up and down the brawny frame of the man before her and quirked her lips in a devilish smile.

“Well, isn't this embarrassing,” she said, chuckling naughtily. “I just got caught spying on a U.S. marshal taking a bath in the privacy of his own guest quarters. Well, well—congratulations, Leslie. You might just get court-martialed for this one.”

Longarm depressed his Colt's hammer and lowered the piece. He didn't bother covering himself. He'd been seen naked by enough women—and this one had already seen him naked through the window—that he was pretty much immune to it. Besides, she didn't seem to mind.

“Miss McPherson, I presume?”

She smiled saucily, showing pretty, white teeth between her perfect lips. Her green eyes glimmered alluringly with each lightning flash out the windows behind her. “Marshal Long, I presume?”

Her eyes flicked unabashedly to his cock before returning to his eyes. “Out of Denver's First District Court? One of the two men sent to rescue my sister from that red demon up in the Shadow Montañas?”

“One and the same,” Longarm said.

Since she was so free with her own gaze, he let his own eyes swallow her whole. Despite the umbrella, the rain had gotten to her. Her white blouse with its high neck, lace edges, and puffy sleeves, was pasted damply to her breasts, so that even through the blouse's cotton and the chemise beneath the blouse he could see the outline of the rich, round orbs.

As well as two pink nipples flattened against the material.

She was a tall girl, with light red hair falling in delicate, silky waves to her shoulders. Sausage curls hung down the sides of her face, brushing her long, fine jaws.

“Would you like a magnifying class?” the girl asked with more of a coquette's lighthearted jeering than honest admonishment. “You might see more that way.”

“I got a good imagination.”

“You must be conjuring something provocative.”

Longarm glanced down past his belly. His dong was beginning to answer to the tingling that the well-turned girl had inflicted on his loins.

His condition making him self-conscious, Longarm reached over to slide his revolver back into its holster, and then he lowered himself down into the tub and now-tepid water. “Were you lookin' for shelter from the storm, Miss McPherson?” He smiled at the pretty girl. “Or you needin' a bath?”

“Don't tempt me,” Miss McPherson said, turning to close the door and glancing over her shoulder at Longarm. “But actually, Marshal . . .”

“Since you've seen my birthday suit an' all, you might as well call me Longarm.”

“Longarm, eh?”

“You find somethin' funny about that?”

“Oh, not at all!”

She crossed her arms on her breasts and hiked a hip on the corner of the desk, to Longarm's left. From there she had a pretty good view into the tub. Her eyes were like fingers, toying with him, subtly arousing him. He was glad there were still enough soap bubbles to hide the affected organ.

“I don't find anything one bit funny about attractive men, Marshal Long.”

She glanced at the handful of three-for-a-nickel cheroots he'd laid out on the desk, and said, “Mind if I have one of your cigars here . . . Longarm?”

“Not if you'll light me one. Help yourself to the brandy, there, too. It's from your brother-in-law.”

“Yes, I heard you cold-cocked him.”

“You seem to approve, Miss McPherson.”

She was looking around for a glass and when she didn't find one, Longarm held up his. “My lap's as clean as your average cur's.”

“Thank you.”

She filled the glass, took a sip, and set the glass on the desk. “My brother-in-law has been needing a beating for a long time, Longarm. No one has seemed to be up to the task . . . until now. For that I applaud you. But to the reason I'm here . . .”

She stuck one of the cheroots between her pretty teeth and struck a match on the top of the table. She lit the one cheroot, blowing smoke around her lovely head, and then lit a second one. When she had the second one going, she gave it to Longarm, letting smoke trickle out her fine, long nostrils.

“Thanks,” Longarm said. He felt the cool dampness of her saliva on the cigar end, and it vaguely aroused him further. “And now to the reason you're here.”

She retook her position on a corner of the desk, one leg dangling. Despite the black skirt she wore to her ankles, he could tell that her legs were fine and long. He had a brief, imagined glimpse of them wrapped around his back, and winced at the pleasant burn in his lower belly.

She stared at him obliquely, and then the corners of her mouth rose slightly, as though she'd read his mind.

“Yes, to why I'm here.”

She puffed the cigar. She did not choke on the pungent smoke but turned her head and blew it out at the door. “I'd like you to ride out and fetch my sister back, Longarm. I'm sure she must have had a change of heart by now. She is a mercurial girl. But I want you to promise me that you won't force her to come if she doesn't want to. If she really wants to stay with Black Twisted Pine, she should be able to. Lucy should be able to do anything she wishes.”

Longarm leaned back in the tub.

“Here,” Leslie said, extending the glass of brandy to him.

He took the glass and threw back a third of it. He took one more sip. Then he gave the glass back to the young woman and took a drag off his cigar, blowing the smoke at the rain-splattered window.

“You have no doubt that your sister is in love with Black Twisted Pine?”

“Oh, I don't really know what to think. Maybe Lucy doesn't, either. She was always rather impetuous in matters of love. What I know, Longarm, is that her marriage is a bad one. The marriage was more or less arranged by our parents and Anson's parents. My father has business interests back East, and he's partners in several of those interests with Anson's father. In fact, my grandfather and great-grandfather were in concert with the grandfathers of Anson.”

“Old, rich families.”

“Yes.”

“How would they feel about Lucy staying with Black Twisted Pine?”

“How do you think Lucy would feel about being hauled back here . . . to Anson . . . against her will? How do you think that she would feel if Anson does as he wishes and kills Black Twisted Pine? If Anson has his way, that's exactly what he'll do, you know.”

Longarm rolled the cigar around between his teeth and sighed. He stared at the door, pensive. Lightning continued to flash in the windows but the thunder had become less loud. The brunt of the storm was passing.

“The major seems to have restrained himself so far,” Longarm said.

“Only because none of the scouts here at McHenry can lead him into the Shadow Montañas. None of these Apaches—they're Lipans—have been there before. Their work has mostly been done in New Mexico. I'm told that one of the few scouts who can lead a patrol into those mountains is your friend, War Cloud, one of the few Coyotero trackers still around.”

Longarm knew that was true. The Shadow Montañas were a sacred range, off-limits to all Apaches who hadn't gone through a sacred rite. That rite itself had rarely been practiced in the last twenty years, as the Apaches have had other, more important things on their mind. Namely, scouring the White Eyes from their homeland.

War Cloud was one of the few scouts—maybe the
only
scout still available to the U.S. Army—who could lead Longarm into that craggy, wild, mysterious range eighty miles south of the border. War Cloud had once fought the Mescaleros in those mountains, back when the two tribes were at war with one another. Back when they'd considered each other more of an enemy than the white man.

“If you don't think your sister should be forced to return,” Longarm asked Leslie, “what are you doing here?”

“I came because I'm very worried about her, and it seemed the logical place to come. I came here, also, to make sure that if she is returned, Anson doesn't harm her.”

“You think he would?”

“I know he would. He's a bastard. You've seen that for yourself. Lucy has told me that he's struck her more than a few times.”

“Ah, Jesus,” Longarm said. No man in his right mind would hit a woman. Especially not the woman he was married to, supposed to be in love with.

“Anson's been cuckolded,” Leslie continued. “He is a prideful man. And now, if you'll pardon my farm talk, Longarm, he is a very piss-burned cuckold. I don't doubt that he's capable of killing my sister.”

She sipped from the brandy glass, staring at Longarm over the brim. She swallowed and then slid off the desk and dropped to her knees beside the tub.

She handed him the glass and then, staring at him with dark eroticism, slipped her hand over the side of the tub and into the water. She found his cock that, during their serious conversation, was finally minding its own business.

When the girl wrapped her hand around it, however, it began sparking instantly to life.

Longarm winced as she fondled him under the water, sliding her face up close to his until he could feel the little puffs of her warm breath on his lips. Her own lips were perfectly shaped and cherry-pink.

“Miss Leslie, I don't mean nothin' by this,” Longarm said tightly as she continued to manipulate him, “but are you and your sister as alike in . . . uh . . . temperament as you are in looks?”

“No,” Leslie said softly, gazing into his eyes. “Lucy's a romantic. That's why it's such a tragedy she married such an uncouth goat as Anson Belcher. Me . . . I'm more practical.
Earthy.
”

Longarm's cock was now poking its swollen head above the water. She pumped it slowly, squeezing, running her hand over the top and down the other side.

“And if you bring my sister back and see that she is not harmed, Longarm, I'll show you just how practical I can be.”

Longarm was watching her hand. His blood was rising, heating up. Her hand was soft as silk.

“Practical, did you say?”

“Practical. In other words, I know how to reward a man for his efforts . . . in the most practical way known to him.”

She leaned closer, pressed her lips to his. She kissed him gently at first and then more hungrily, groaning softly and flicking her tongue into his mouth. At the same time, she pumped his cock faster.

Then, suddenly, she rose and smiled down at him.

“I'll see you at supper later, Longarm. It's been nice getting to know you.”

She swung around, grabbed her umbrella off the desk, and, just like that, she was gone.

“H-hey!” Longarm growled indignantly, staring down at his throbbing cock.

 • • • 

An hour later, flanked by War Cloud and Magpie, Longarm rapped the wooden knocker in the shape of a lion's head against the door of the Belcher residence. Longarm was a little surprised to see the Apache girl, Blue Feather, open the door.

She was dressed in a light blue Mother Hubbard dress, and she wore a matching ribbon in her black hair. To dress like a civilized white girl was doubtlessly one of the rules of the house. Longarm wondered how Belcher reconciled the civilized attire to banging the girl in his office. Apparently, one of her duties at Fort McHenry was to serve as the Belchers' maid.

“Come,” Blue Feather said, her features nearly as expressionless as Magpie's. There was a slight flush in her cherry-tan cheeks—likely from the embarrassment of knowing what Longarm and the other three visitors had witnessed earlier.

The girl turned and walked down the entryway, at the rear of which a narrow stairs rose to the second story, and into a door on the left. There was another door on the right from which the sound of a ticking clock issued.

Longarm looked through this doorway to see Leslie McPherson sitting in a carved walnut armchair near the small, brick fireplace, chin resting in the palm of one hand, a bored, sullen expression on her beauti-
ful face. She was shaking a crossed leg nervously.

She turned toward Longarm and arched a brow. “Long time no see, Marshal.”

Looking ravishing in a silk and taffeta gown of the same color as her eyes, her long, light red hair freshly brushed and glistening and partly secured behind her head in a chignon, she strode across the room and into the foyer. She wore a black silk choker adorned with an ivory cameo pin. She met Longarm's gaze and then glanced at War Cloud and Magpie.

Longarm cleared his throat. “War Cloud, Magpie, meet Miss Leslie McPherson. Miss McPherson is the sister of Mrs. Belcher.”

Leslie dipped her chin cordially and smiled warmly. “How do you both do?”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, ma'am,” War Cloud said, doffing his hat and then hanging it on a wall peg.

Leslie glanced at the doorway through which Blue Feather had disappeared. “My brother-in-law doesn't stand much on ceremony, I'm afraid. I believe dinner is ready without preamble. Shall we?” She gestured toward the door.

“You first,” Longarm said, pegging his snuff-brown Stetson.

As he followed Leslie into a small but well-appointed dining room, Leslie said over her shoulder just loudly enough for Longarm to hear. “Almost didn't recognize you dressed, Longarm. You clean up right well.”

Longarm's cheeks warmed. “Why, thank you, ma'am.”

“I hope I didn't injure anything earlier.”

“Oh, I'll be fine,” he said, stopping beside the girl as War Cloud and Magpie walked up to stand to his left.

A ten-foot, cloth-covered table lay before them. It had been all set up with plates, silverware, and water glasses. From behind a curtained doorway rose the clatter of pans and the squawk of a stove door.

“I'm sure we can sit anywhere,” Leslie said. “Longarm, why don't you take this end? I'll sit here. War Cloud, why don't you and Magpie sit there, to Longarm's left? Blue Feather will want to be close to the kitchen, and she'll want me to be as far away from it as possible.” Leslie chuckled. “Smart girl. I'd burn the water.”

Longarm looked around. “We're the only guests?”

“Yes,” Leslie said as Longarm held her chair out for her and sagged into it. “Anson decided that in light of everything it might be best if our conversation be private. He didn't even want me here, but . . .”

“Nonsense, my dear, Leslie,” the major said as he walked in from the foyer. “I simply didn't want to bore your pretty head with these somewhat rough-hewn affairs and trivial details.”

Longarm had heard the man's footsteps growing steadily as he'd marched down from the second story. Now, freshly scrubbed, his thick, longish hair combed wet, and wearing a crisp blue, gold-embroidered shell jacket over a white linen shirt with a string tie, Major Belcher stopped beside Leslie's chair and leaned down to place a kiss on his sister-in-law's left cheek.

She turned her face away and his lips grazed her jaw.

He rose, flushing slightly, scowling down before recovering and saying, “Welcome, Marshal Long. War Cloud. Miss Magpie.”

Longarm now saw the slight cut and swelling on Belcher's right cheek where Longarm had laid him out. It looked tender as hell.

Magpie, staring stonily across the table at Leslie, of course said nothing. War Cloud dipped his chin to the major and said, “Thanks for having us, Major.”

“I take it you've already met my beautiful and charming sister-in-law.”

Leslie rolled her eyes slightly. The major chuckled.

“Yes,” Longarm said, shooting an ironic glance at Leslie, “I've had the pleasure.”

“Wonderful. She's the spitting image of my wife. I'm sure that will be handy to know.”

“It will at that,” Longarm said.

War Cloud said, “We'll be off tomorrow. First thing.”

“I was hoping you would be. I'd like my wife back as soon as possible. You have a long, rough ride ahead. You'd best eat heartily,” the major said, glancing at Blue Feather entering the kitchen and carrying a large, cast-iron stew pot.

As she set the pot on the table near a basket of bread and a bowl of buttered peas, the major slacked into the chair at Longarm's opposite end of the table. Belcher rubbed his cheek as he said, “That's a strong right hook you have there, Marshal.” He flexed his jaw.