Longarm and the War Clouds (6 page)

“It would be best, Marshal Long,” said Captain Kilroy as they rode along in the early morning sunshine toward Fort McHenry, “if you keep the real reason you and War Cloud have come to McHenry under your hat.”

The captain's long-legged bay blew and twitched its ears to the right of Longarm, both men and War Cloud leading up the south-heading contingent.

“Could you chew that up a little finer for me, Captain? Sergeant Fitzpatrick mentioned it when we first met, but I find it hard to believe none of the enlisted men are aware of what happened.”

“Oh, there are plenty of rumors going around, of course, but I and the four other officers at McHenry have done our best to quash them. The men are not to speak of the . . . uh . . . the
incident.
You see, Major Belcher is somewhat thin-skinned on the subject, as I'm sure you can imagine anyone might be. Finding out that your wife was . . . is . . . carrying on . . .”

“With an Injun,” War Cloud finished the thought for the captain.

The scout rode on the other side of the captain from Longarm. Magpie rode behind her father, with Sergeant Fitzpatrick. The rest of the patrol followed from about thirty yards behind, well out of hearing, especially with the B Company guidon buffeting in the hot, dry breeze, and with the horses clomping and snorting in the growing desert heat.

A couple of the privates were trailing the three outlaws' dead horses, with the dead outlaws themselves strapped belly down across their saddles. Sergeant Fitzpatrick had the saddlebags containing the stage loot draped securely across his own horse's withers.

Kilroy glanced at War Cloud. “I'm sure that does indeed make it worse. Of course, it shouldn't—the color of a man's skin shouldn't matter—but we all know that it does. Especially out here, with the Apache Wars just now beginning to wind down. The major is a proud man. His wife has run off with an Apache scout. I don't think it's even completely sunk in yet what has happened. At first, he believed, or wanted to believe, that Black Twisted Pine had taken Mrs. Belcher against her will. But then, one of the other officer's wives informed Major Belcher that her fleeing with the Apache scout had been something that Mrs. Belcher had been planning for several weeks in advance. According to Mrs. Pritchard—that's Captain Dwayne Pritchard's wife—Mrs. Belcher had fallen quite deeply in love with Black Twisted Pine.”

“I'm sure that was something the major wanted to hear,” Longarm said, ironically, biting off the end of a three-for-a-nickel cheroot. “Hope he didn't kill the messenger.”

“I think it must have been something he suspected—deep down. I have it on good word from my own wife that Mrs. Pritchard shared the information with the major not to hurt him further but only because she didn't want him going after the couple and possibly killing Black Twisted Pine. She wanted the major to know that his wife had not been abducted.”

“Sounds like Mrs. Pritchard is sympathetic to Mrs. Belcher and Black Twisted Pine,” Longarm said, cupping a match to the end of his cheroot.

The captain nodded as he stared gravely along the trail. “She is, indeed.” He glanced at Longarm. “She thinks they should be left alone. She seems to believe that Lucy . . . er, Mrs. Belcher . . . will be happier in the Shadow Montañas with Black Twisted Pine than she has been with the major.”

The captain had said all this in a neutral tone. Aside from using the major's wife's first name, that was. It was hard to tell how the young officer really felt about all this—Major Belcher, Mrs. Belcher, Black Twisted Pine, and the latter two running off together. Since the group still had a few miles left to ride before they'd reach Fort McHenry, Longarm decided to do a little probing. He didn't know what information he might get out of the man that might help him to both track and understand his quarry.

“Tell me about Mrs. Belcher—will you, Captain?”

The captain sighed and looked around, brushing at a blackfly buzzing around his thick, black dragoon mustache that bore not a hint of gray. Longarm thought he was probably still in his middle twenties.

“What's to say about her? My wife and I have had dinner several times with the Belchers, as we all take turns having the other officers over to our separate quarters. Not much to do out here when we're not chasing hostiles. It's a lonely place.”

“But about Mrs. Belcher . . .” Longarm urged, frowning at the captain as he puffed his cigar. He was a little puzzled by the man's reluctance to talk about the woman.

“Mrs. Belcher is . . .” The captain stared straight ahead over his horse's ears as he swayed easily on his McClellan saddle. He seemed to be trying to find the exact words. “She is a beautiful painting of a delicate flower.”

The captain continued to stare off for a few seconds before turning to Longarm and then blushing, as though suddenly embarrassed. He glanced to his other side, at War Cloud, who was studying the captain with probably much the same, vaguely incredulous expression as Longarm.

Kilroy then glanced behind him, as though wondering if the sergeant or any of the other men had heard him, and then he turned forward again in his saddle.

“What I'm saying is, Marshal Long—Mrs. Belcher is a beautiful woman. It's no big secret. Everyone knows it's true.”

Longarm glanced across the captain's horse's bobbing head at War Cloud, who returned the look, slightly hiking his left shoulder.

“And the major . . . ?” Longarm asked.

“Well, I reckon you'll see for yourself soon,” Kilroy said as they followed the trail to the top of a low hill. Beyond, along the near side of a dry wash, lay the adobe-brick buildings, brush jacales, and cottonwood stables of Fort McHenry. “There it is now. You'll also be able to see for yourself just what Mrs. Belcher is like.”

Longarm arched a puzzled brow.

The captain glanced at Longarm, cocking an oblique grin. “Mrs. Belcher's twin sister, Leslie, is visiting. She came down from Prescott after her sister ran off, and she's been here ever since, waiting to receive Mrs. Belcher when she returns.”

As the horses started down the hill toward the sorry-looking fort nestled on a flat stretch of sage- and cactus-stippled ground, hemmed in all sides by rocky hills in addition to a tabletop mesa in the north, the young captain shook his head as though in appreciation for the images floating around just behind his eyes. “Spittin' image, Miss Leslie is. The spittin' image of her sister. They're twins, don't you know.”

“Twins,” Longarm said, half to himself. “No kiddin'.”

“She's staying with me and my wife. Wouldn't be right, of course, to have her rooming with the major without another woman around.”

“Of course not.”

At the bottom of the hill, Longarm's horse pricked its ears and gave a whinny. A couple of the other mounts beside him did the same, as they were probably smelling the fresh water and hay likely emanating from one of the large barns standing on the far side of the fort, where a small herd of cattle crazed the sparse brown grass. Longarm and the others followed the trail past a brush arbor guardhouse set up beneath a large cottonwood where two privates stood on guard duty.

Both privates stood at attention and saluted as Kilroy rode past, their incredulous gazes raking the strangers, eyes narrowing curiously at the girl who didn't so much as offer them a passing glance.

There was no stockade around McHenry, but Longarm could see a couple of Gatling guns set up on knolls around the side of the fort facing the wash from which any attack from one of the roaming bands of hostiles was most likely to come. The guns were tended by two soldiers each, sheltered from the unforgiving sun by lean-to tents that flapped in the wind and flashed in the sun.

The patrol stopped where the trail curved off to the west of the parade ground, near the sutler's store and the enlisted men's barracks.

Kilroy glanced at Longarm, “Shall we see the commander, Marshal? I'm sure you'd all like to freshen up, but Major Belcher has been rather antsy for you to get here . . . since he hasn't been allowed to go after his wife himself.”

“Why not?” Longarm said, swinging down from his saddle.

Out of habit, he shucked his Winchester from his saddle boot and set it on his arm. As War Cloud and Magpie dismounted, Longarm looked around at the mud-brick buildings surrounding the parade ground.

Morning drills were over; the parade ground itself was nearly vacant. It was a dry flat scored with the marks of thousands of boots and spurs. The flag standing in the center of it flapped and flashed in the wind and sun. One soldier in a battered tan kepi was pushing a wheelbarrow slowly around, stopping to shovel horseshit.

Soldiers, looking too young to be here, lounged around out front of the enlisted men's barracks, half out of uniform. They owned the weary, bored expressions of most of the other soldiers Longarm had seen stationed at remote outposts for months on end. When boredom and frustration didn't plague these men, the threat of bloody, possibly slow, excruciating death, often did.

“How's it feel to be back on an army outpost?” Longarm asked War Cloud, who stood beside the federal lawman, casting his gaze slowly around the buildings encircling the parade ground.

“It feels good. It feels like home. I wouldn't want to live here again permanent-like, Custis, but you know I am a warrior, like all Apaches. And being around other warriors feels like the right place for me.”

He glanced at Magpie standing off his right shoulder and asked the girl in Coyotero if she remembered the place. She looked around, pursed her lips, arched her brows, and hiked her shoulders with indifference.

It was an odd gesture for a young Apache woman, one that told Longarm that more of the White Eyes' culture had rubbed off on her than she probably would have admitted. Or maybe more than she was consciously aware of.

“Shall we, gentlemen . . . and . . . Miss Magpie?” Kilroy slung the saddlebags containing the stolen stagecoach money over his shoulder and gestured toward a low, brush-roofed adobe on the opposite side of the parade ground, sandwiched between the fort barber shop and the officers' and noncommissioned officers' barracks. The low shack bore a plank attached to a post near the steps leading up onto a narrow stoop, and the plank had the words
FORT COMMANDER
burned into it.

While a trooper led their horses off toward the stables at the rear of the camp, Captain Kilroy and the fort's visitors tramped across the parade ground, lifting little puffs of dust with every step. Longarm followed the captain up the gray wooden steps, flanked by War Cloud and Magpie. The captain knocked once on the half-open door, called, “Major Belcher, visitors to see you, sir.”

The captain received no reply, but he pushed the door wide and walked inside the office bearing a desk much too large for the small space. Longarm had heard the clattering from the porch, and it was louder now as he doffed his hat and walked into the room to stand beside the captain, on the other side of the commanding officer's messy desk. The desk was flanked by a large, framed map of southern Arizona Territory and northern Mexican Sonora.

The clattering continued to emanate through a door that stood six-inches open, behind and right of the commanding officer's desk. It sounded as though someone were pounding a hammer.

But then Longarm heard the guttural growls and groans and, being no stranger to such sounds himself, recognized them even before, canting his head slightly to one side, he peered into the room beyond the door.

It was a small bedroom. Longarm could see part of a bed and a dresser to the right of the bed's foot. A brown-skinned girl was leaning forward against the dresser, standing sideways to Longarm. She was completely naked. A yellow dress lay crumpled around her delicate, brown, bare feet.

The girl leaned into her outstretched arms, hand clasping the front side of the dresser. What was making the hammering sounds was the dresser being smacked against the wall as someone rammed the girl from behind. Her cherry-tan, brown-tipped breasts bounced sharply with each smashing thrust.

Longarm couldn't see the man fucking the girl. Only the girl herself.

As the man continued fucking her, she turned toward Longarm. Her chocolate-brown eyes flicked across the lawman and Captain Kilroy before she turned her head forward again and squeezed her eyes closed, wincing against the violent thrusts.

“Good Christ,” Kilroy muttered and walked around behind the desk. He held the door's latch with one hand, knocked on the door once with his other hand, and turned discreetly back toward Longarm. “Major—you have visitors,” the captain said, louder this time.

“Ah, hell!” grunted the man inside the room.

Kilroy pulled the door closed, sighed, and then, not meeting Longarm's or War Cloud's gaze—Magpie remained in the office's open doorway—walked back out from behind the desk.

The door opened a foot. A haggard, bearded face and one pale blue eye peered out the crack.
“Fuck!”
the man cried miserably and slammed the door.

From inside the room came thud slaps of bare feet stomping, stumbling around the room, making the floor beneath Longarm's boots quiver.

“That's Major Belcher?” Longarm asked Kilroy, his tone ironic.

“Yes, it's Major Belcher. He's not like this, Marshal. You have to understand.”

“He's heartsick.”

“Yes.” As though realizing how ridiculous his reply must have sounded, he glanced at Longarm sheepishly, flushing. “He's really not like this. For Christ's sake—the man's wife ran off with an Apache scout.”

Longarm glanced at War Cloud, who stood back by the door, near his daughter. Both the Indians were stone-faced. War Cloud met Longarm's glance and shrugged, a humorous light glinting in his right eye.

Behind the door, Belcher muttered under his breath as he stomped around, grunting and clearing his throat, apparently dressing.

“Go on—get out of here,” he growled loudly enough for Longarm to hear him through the door.

The door opened a couple of feet. The Apache girl stood in the opening. She wore a frilly yellow dress—obviously a young white woman's expensive party dress. Something she'd wear to a summer dance.

It looked ridiculous on the brown-skinned girl who owned the pretty but raw features of a full-blood Apache. The dress had no sleeves and only rose about halfway up her breasts. The girl's badly mussed, coarse, blue-black hair hung down past her shoulders. Strands stood out around her head like black wires.

“Go on, Blue Feather,” Kilroy said, tossing his arm toward the office door.

The girl drew the door open wider and hurried out, leaving the door partly open behind her. She scampered barefoot out from behind the desk and, keeping her head down, one hand clamped across her mouth, nearly ran past War Cloud and Magpie and outside.

Longarm heard her bare feet pad across the porch and then thump down onto the ground. Her running footsteps dwindling quickly into the distance.

Kilroy leaned toward Longarm and said under his breath, “Warm Springs Apache,” as though that explained something. “Orphan. Works on suds row, performs other . . . odd jobs around the fort.”

Suds row was where the laundry of the fort was washed by a small contingent of women who lived on or around the fort, including Native girls and noncommissioned officers' wives.

The door opened sharply and the man whom Longarm took to be Major Belcher stood in the opening, tucking his shirttails into his pants. “What was that, Captain?” He glared angrily, suspiciously.

Captain Kilroy regarded him dubiously. “I just mentioned that Blue Feather is a Warm Springs Apache, Anson. That's all.” He cleared his throat. “These are the men we've been waiting for—Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long and a man who apparently scouted here at McHenry some time ago—War Cloud. He's a Coyotero.”

Belcher studied the men critically. He was a large, handsome man around thirty, Longarm judged, though the lines around his eyes and soft waistline made him look older. His eyes were cold and arrogant.

He had thick, dark brown hair parted in the middle and hanging long over his ears, brushing the collar of his bib-front blue cavalry blouse. The whites of his blue eyes were a network of bright red lines. They were rheumy from drink. He seemed to have trouble focusing.

Lowering his gaze now with apparent chagrin—something told Longarm that it was not a common emotion for him—he buttoned his fly, slid his suspender up over his broad shoulders, and came on into the room.

“Warm Springs Apache, yes.” Belcher sagged into his swivel chair, which squawked and creaked beneath his weight. He lounged back negligently, wrists dangling over the chair's arms. “Blue Feather. Sorry, gentlemen—I don't reckon that looked too professional. But we're not all that fixed on form around here. What man doesn't have a dalliance once in a while?”

He glanced at first Longarm and then War Cloud. His eyes strayed to Magpie standing against the door, arms crossed on her breasts.

“Say, what we got there?”

“That's War Cloud's daughter,” Longarm said before War Cloud could say anything.

The lawman sensed the acrimony building in the Coyotero scout, and he didn't want to kick things off here at Fort McHenry on the wrong foot. He couldn't help adding, however, “Her father's right protective of the girl, though I've seen how she can handle herself right fine.”

Belcher let his half-drunk gaze linger on the girl for a few more seconds and, as though Longarm's words had taken a while to register, switched his gaze to the tall federal lawman standing between Kilroy and War Cloud. Belcher wrinkled the skin above the bridge of his nose.

“Don't talk crap to me, federal boy,” he said, lines of anger cutting across his pale forehead.

Longarm drew a short breath to stem the rising tide of his own anger. He kept his voice almost ridiculously mild as he said, “I wasn't talking crap to you, Major. I was simply telling you how it was, that's all.”

“You don't like me—I can see that already.”

“Anson,” Kilroy said.

“Shut up, Captain. Don't speak until you're spoken to.” The major rubbed a finger across the brass oak leaves on his left shoulder and then cast his bleary gaze at Longarm once more. “You don't think I should be . . . uh . . . entertaining at such a time, so you've already made up your mind about me. Isn't that it, Marshal Long?”

Longarm said nothing.

“You show me a soldier who doesn't entertain outside the marriage once in a while, and I'll show you a stuffed uniform who knows nothing about life in this neck of the woods. Just because I fuck an Apache washer girl once in a while to ease the nerves of commanding a fort out here in the high and rocky don't mean I don't love my wife and want her back. It don't mean that goddamn redskin had any right to cart her away from me in the middle of the fuckin' night!”

Uncharacteristically showing his emotion, War Cloud said, “I heard she wasn't carted away. She went willingly. My friend Black Twisted Pine wouldn't take a woman against her will. No Apache would. To do so would be to dishonor himself as well as his family!”

“Who told you she went
willingly
?” Kilroy slapped the desk.

Kilroy said defensively, “They would have found out sooner or later, Anson. They
needed
to know!”

Longarm said, “Hell, even Washington knows that. What Captain Kilroy told me wasn't news.”

Kilroy was sitting up straight in his chair now, glaring at the captain. “Don't call me by my first name, Captain. We're not having drinks and playing cards over at the sutler's store. We're on duty here.”

Kilroy drew a breath and looked at the floor. “I'm sorry . . . Major Belcher.”

The major glared at Longarm and then at War Cloud. He grabbed a pack of ready-made cigars off his desktop that was a mess of ledger books and duty rosters. The cigars were in a red foil package with
Season's Greetings
written in gold cursive script across the top. Beneath an oval picture of a beautiful woman in Egyptian headgear was the label
Anthony y Cleopatra: The Mildest Havana Cigar
.

A gift from last Christmas, Longarm surmised. Probably sent by one of the major's moneyed relatives from back East. One pack of many, most likely.

The major plucked a small, perfectly rolled, coffee-brown cigarillo from the pack. He scratched a match to life on the desktop, lit the cigarillo, and puffed smoke at his guests.

“I want her brought back to me, Marshal,” he sat back in his chair again. “I want them both brought back to me. I'll deal with Mrs. Belcher in my own way. I'll deal with that”—he glanced at War Cloud and quirked his mouth corners devilishly—“that
savage
in my own way, as well.”

Longarm glanced at War Cloud, ready to grab the scout if he needed to. He was relieved to see that War Cloud had a firm hold on himself. He merely lifted his chin slightly and scowled down his nose at the drunken major.

“That kind of an attitude ain't gonna get us anywhere,” Longarm said. “Our orders are to ride down south of the border, track your wife and Black Twisted Pine down, and convince Mrs. Belcher to come back up here to Fort McHenry with us. We're not on any assassination mission. As far as I've been told, and as far as what I read in the file on the way down here, Black Twisted Pine isn't bein' accused of a crime.”

“You look here, goddamnit, Marshal!” Belcher climbed out of his chair as quickly as he could in his inebriated state and flicked his cigar at Longarm. The cigarillo bounced off Longarm's vest and sparked to the floor at his boots.

Those sparks kindled a fire not too deep inside the federal lawman. He felt forking veins bulge in his forehead.

“I'm giving the orders around here! You see? I've minded my manners and followed the orders sent out from Washington not to track my wife and that dog eater into the Shadow Montañas. I've been waiting for you to do it. Now that you're here—that's exactly what you're gonna do. And you're gonna haul them both back to me. And if you don't, I'll ride out with every able-bodied man at this outpost . . . and a wagon outfitted with Gatling guns . . . and I'll do the job myself!”

Longarm drew a ragged breath. Grinding his back teeth together, he leaned forward over the major's desk and said in a calm, even voice that belied his fury, “You listen to me,
Major
Belcher. You're not giving the orders. Neither I nor War Cloud are under your command. We're here by order of the chief marshal of Denver's First District, and we answer to him and only to him.

“As far as I can tell, you're nothin' more than a drunk and lecher far too big for your britches. You probably don't deserve that woman of yours back in the first place. But just to keep the peace around here, that's what me and War Cloud are gonna do. Black Twisted Pine will be free to go his own way.”

Belcher had been staring up in raw, red-faced fury at the federal lawman. Suddenly, he leaped up out of his chair and ran around from behind it.

Kilroy got in front of him, blocking his way. “Anson, no!”

Kilroy got a resolute right fist to his jaw for his efforts. The captain grunted and flew back against the office's front wall, knocking a picture off a nail.

Belcher turned to Longarm, bringing a haymaker up from his heels. Ready for it, Longarm raised his left arm to shield his own face, and punched the major twice in the jaw and cheek with more force than was prudent. The way Longarm saw it, the man had had it coming back when he'd so rudely disposed of his cigar.

Belcher stumbled backward, arms flopping, eyelids fluttering. He was out before he hit the floor in front of the door behind which he'd been fucking the Apache girl.

“Ah, shit,” Longarm said, waving his aching fist in the air.

“Yeah, that didn't go too good, brother,” said War Cloud.

Magpie was peering over her father's shoulder at the fallen major.

Longarm helped Kilroy to his feet. Blood dribbled from the young captain's split lower lip.

“You all right, Captain?” Longarm asked the lad.

Kilroy nodded. “I think so.” He shook his head, staring down at the fort's unconscious commanding officer. “Well . . .” He gave a wry chuckle. “Welcome to Fort McHenry, gentlemen.”