Longarm and the War Clouds (10 page)

Longarm glanced at War Cloud.

War Cloud frowned. The protective father was not pleased by the girl's ministrations. “He'll be all right,” the scout groused at his daughter. “Hell, he's cut himself worse shaving.”

“Thanks, brother,” Longarm said with an ironic smile.

Magpie spat out a small stream of Coyotero at her father. It had an angry, chastising ring to it.

War Cloud flushed and glanced away, cowed.

Magpie lifted her head and shook back her hair as she removed her loosely tied blue neckerchief. She spat some more Apache, telling Longarm something about stopping the bleeding until they could get to fresh water, and wrapped her neckerchief around his arm, covering both holes.

He watched her small, brown hands firmly but gently tie the neckerchief around his arm. He looked at her brown cheek behind the shifting curtain of her hair that she now let hang loosely about her shoulders, a style she'd started the day after she'd caught Longarm and Leslie McPherson fucking in the wagon shed at Fort McHenry.

The girl finished tying the neckerchief and glanced at the lawman. She caught him staring at her. She blinked, held his gaze, and then rose and walked away.

Longarm glanced at War Cloud. The scout gave him a dark look. Longarm gave a wry chuckle. He looked around cautiously. Judging by the long-angling shadows, he figured it was around four in the afternoon.

“We'd best get to the horses, ride for another hour or so, then find a place to camp.”

“Sure you can ride, Custis?”

Longarm gained his feet. The pain was intense, but he'd suffered worse. He'd live. Once they found their horses he'd take a couple shots of rye or a belt of Major Belcher's brandy.

“I can ride,” he said and strode off to fetch his rifle and revolver.

War Cloud gave the Chiricahua a savage kick to his backside and yelled in the brave's own tongue, “Dirty Chiricahua dog, get to your feet or I'll gut-shoot you and leave you here to the pumas!”

While Longarm and War Cloud were following their prisoner and the girl back toward where they'd left their horses, War Cloud sidled up to Longarm and said into his ear, “Remember what I said earlier?”

“About what?”

“About the curse my wife put on any white man who tries to make time with Magpie . . . ?”

“Oh, that one,” Longarm growled. “How could I forget?”

War Cloud gave him an ominous grin.

Despite the warning, Longarm allowed himself a glance at the girl's perfectly shaped rump causing her doeskin dress to sway enticingly ahead of him.

Horses were fearful but relatively stupid beasts, so their fear didn't often carry them far. That was why Longarm and the War Clouds had a mercifully short ways to walk in running them down. They also found the Apaches' horses and appropriated one for the brave.

The trio and their gagged and bound captive continued riding along the old Indian trail they'd been following since entering the range. All three allies scoured the terrain around them every step of the way.

They rode higher and higher into the Shadow Montañas, and after cresting one of several ridges stippled with the flora of the high desert, the peak they were heading for rose into spectacular view straight ahead of them, vaulting back against the southeastern sky. And with the sun angling down in the west, behind the riders, the flame-shaped monolith showed why the name of Blood Mountain had been hung on it. Late in the day the setting sun made the chunk of ancient black granite and hardened volcanic lava fairly glow the crimson of fresh blood.

It was quite a sight jutting there beyond several more rocky, pine-carpeted ridges, and though Longarm guessed they were still a good day's away from it, the lens-clear light cast in vibrant relief its scalelike pocks, fissures, thumbs, cornices—all tapering to a peak resembling a giant, deftly crafted arrowhead.

When the sun was nearly down, Longarm reined up beside the trail, at the edge of fragrant pines growing amongst the rubble of spewed lava boulders, and reached back with his right hand to fish his field glasses out of his saddlebags. He grumbled against the pain in his wounded arm, cursing himself again for not having counted his shots, and held the field glasses up to his face.

“They are still there, brother,” War Cloud said. “Seen 'em from atop the last ridge.”

Longarm cursed.

For the past three days, he and War Cloud had been aware of two shadowers. At least, he thought there were two. They'd remained far enough behind Longarm's party that the lawman had never gotten a clear view of them. Thus, he had no idea who they were. They could have been banditos they'd picked up after they'd crossed the border into Mexico, or they could have been a couple of riders whom Major Belcher had sent to follow Longarm and the War Clouds out from Fort McHenry.

The lawman thought the latter possibility the most likely. Banditos would either have accosted their quarry by now or lost interest and disappeared from their trail.

“I think we'd best find out who they were before we get any closer to Blood Mountain and Black Twisted Pine,” Longarm said, returning the glasses to their case. “Let's hole up here, go without a fire. Maybe they'll ride up on us.”

They looked around for a place to camp. Magpie found a spring running out from the base of a stony dike and dribbling off into a freshet curling amongst the pines. Being high and well sheltered by boulders and tall trees, it was a good place to camp.

They tended their horses and the brave's pinto mustang first and then arranged their gear in a sandy area at the base of the dike, the freshet running down the slope nearby. War Cloud tied the prisoner securely with rope to a tree, and the young brave sat, coldly staring.

Longarm sat on a rock ledge jutting from the dike. He set his saddlebags and canteen down beside him and took a long drink of water, cutting through the dryness in his throat.

When he'd corked the canteen and fished a bottle out of his saddlebags, needing another couple of shots to dull the pain in his arm, Magpie walked over and grabbed the bottle out of his hand.

“Hey!” Longarm said.

She spat some Chiricahua at him, and then set the bottle on a rock by his saddlebags and began untying the bandage around his arm.

“She says to make sure there is enough for cleaning the wound,” War Cloud said. He was sitting cross-legged on the far side of their little, bowl-shaped camp, taking apart his rifle and cleaning each part with an oily rag. “She acts like she's your mother or something.”

He chewed out several sentences to his daughter in their language. Magpie ignored him. She unbuttoned Longarm's shirtsleeve and then sat with his hand in her lap, gently cleaning his arm with the whiskey.

Longarm sat gritting his teeth at the infernal sting in each of the holes in his arm. If she was aware of the pain she was causing him, the girl didn't let on. She continued to very slowly, methodically, and gently clean the dried and jellied blood away from each hole—it was a clean flesh wound—with the bandage soaked in whiskey.

When she had his arm clean, she scurried off up a near slope and came back with a handful of what appeared plant root and pine needles. War Cloud sat watching his daughter in mute frustration as he continued to thoroughly clean his rifle. Magpie placed the root powder and pine needles in a fresh, whiskey-soaked bandage, and wrapped the bandage tightly around the lawman's wounded arm.

When she was finished, she spoke to him in Chiricahua, and War Cloud translated:

“You are to keep the arm as still as possible tonight, to let the medicine do its work, keep the wounds from festering. By tomorrow, you will be good as new. But if you think this means we're getting married or anything, you're badly mistaken, White Eyes. You make a play for me, that donkey cock of yours will swell up, turn as black as an old dog turd, and fall off!”

War Cloud snickered devilishly as he reassembled his rifle. Magpie turned to her father, scowling.

Longarm snorted and popped the cork on his bottle of Tom Moore. There was still a goodly portion of the elixir left. He took several pulls and was glad to feel some relief in the burning of his arm.

An owl hooted in the far distance. It was a forlorn-sounding cry in the dusky silence. Longarm stared tensely in the direction from which it had come. War Cloud gazed in the same direction, sliding the loading tube out of the rear stock of his Spencer repeater and hastily filling it with fresh .56-caliber rounds from his shell belt.

It might have really been an owl. But Longarm didn't think so. Obviously, War Cloud didn't, either. And neither did their Chiricahua captive.

The brave sat back against the pine to which he was tied, slanting his eyes in a menacing, knowing smile.

“None of us best sleep too deep tonight, brother,” War Cloud advised.

“Hell,” Longarm said, feeling the short hairs rise across the back of his neck, “I never sleep a wink in ‘Pache country.”

 • • • 

Longarm took the second watch while War Cloud and Magpie relaxed, maybe dozing occasionally, in their fireless hollow amongst the rocks and pines.

The lawman's arm ached. He didn't want to get drunk and nod off, but he kept his traveling flask in the pocket of his frock coat, taking a modest, medicinal sip every now and then.

He walked slowly around the camp, navigating by the light of a sickle moon and the stars that were clear and sharp at this high elevation. It was cool here, too, and his breath plumed thinly as he breathed.

Despite the brandy, his senses were knife-edged. That was due to the raking fear any white man felt in Apache country. If he and the War Clouds were captured alive, they'd likely pray to die. No one could inflict more grisly horror on a man's . . . and a young woman's . . . body than an Apache. Especially when their victims had been trespassing on said Apaches' sacred ground.

That was a transgression that piss-burned Apaches like no other. Fortunately, it was said there weren't many Chiricahuas remaining in the Shadow Montañas, that the sect that followed the witch-god religion, or whatever the Apaches called it, had all but died off.

Of course, Longarm and the War Clouds had no right to be here. But they'd been assigned to this secret mission to bring Mrs. Belcher back to her husband and forestall a possible flare-up of the war with the Chiricahuas—not mention avoid a dustup with Mexico—so they had good reason to be here. Or good enough for Longarm. He had a job to do, and he was going to do it.

What he'd do if Mrs. Belcher didn't want to return to her husband, he had no idea. There was no point in thinking about that yet. Best to walk the trail one step at a time . . .

Longarm stood between two tall pines, staring toward the large, black silhouette of Blood Mountain glistening in the moonlight like polished obsidian. He twisted around and sat down quickly, doffing his hat to make himself a smaller shadow. He held the Winchester low so that the light wouldn't reflect off the barrel.

Beneath the quiet rasp of his own breathing, he'd heard something. It came again. The thud of a hoof. Followed by another.

The sounds faded and then rose again and became more regular. Apaches?

As if in answer to the lawman's question there was the ring of iron on stone. That meant at least one of the horses was shod. Apaches didn't shoe their horses. The riders coming along the same trail that Longarm and the War Clouds had been traveling were either gringos or Mexicans. Most likely, they were the same two who had been following Longarm's party for the past few days.

The lawman's heart increased its beat.

Slowly, he rose and made his way very slowly and quietly down the slope toward the trail. The thuds of the slowly approaching riders continued to grow.

When he reached the trail, he hunkered down between a piñon and a boulder. He doffed his hat again and edged a look around the boulder and along the trail meandering through the brush and rocks, rising and falling gently—a chalky pale thread in the darkness.

Two jostling shadows moved toward him. They were riding single file. The first rider was small and dark. The one he glimpsed behind the first appeared fair. Starlight twinkled off bridle chains and bits. Now he could hear their horses breathing and the squawk of saddle leather.

When they were twenty yards away from him, Longarm stepped out into the trail, glowering. He'd seen the long, red hair on the second rider.

Keeping his voice low but pitched with fury, he said, “What in God's name do you two think you're doing out here?”

Both horses jerked with starts. The first one on which rode Major Belcher's housekeeper, Blue Feather, turned sideways, shaking its head. The second horse came on at a frightened trot and stopped slightly ahead of the first horse when Leslie McPherson sawed back on the reins.

“Christ!” she rasped, more startled than her horse. “Longarm, is that
you . . .
I hope . . . ?”

Blue Feather had reached into the scabbard strapped to her saddle and withdrew a Winchester carbine. She held it across her saddlebows, her wide, dark eyes sharply reflecting the starlight.

“You're damn lucky it's me!”

Longarm strode up between the two women and their blowing horses, shifting his angry gaze from one to the other. Leslie wore black denims and a denim jacket over a pearl blouse, a tan slouch hat on her head. Blue Feather wore buckskin breeches and a calico blouse with a blue bandanna on her head, knotted behind.

“I had to come, Longarm,” Leslie said. “I knew I was taking a hell of a chance, but when Blue Feather told me she knew this country, I . . .”

“Two women riding alone in Apache country is insane. You're damn lucky you're still alive. We ran into a pack of 'em only a few hours ago.”

Leslie looked at his arm. “Are you hurt?”

“Not bad but my point is you could be in their camp about now, and they could . . .” He saw no reason to continue the thought. “Ah, Christ. Get off those mounts and we'll lead 'em back to our camp. Now that you're here, you're here, and we have to figure out what to do with you.”

The women dismounted and followed Longarm off the trail and up the rise through the boulders and pines.

As they approached the camp, Longarm quietly hailed War Cloud, whom he found standing with his rifle aimed atop a boulder snag. The scout had no doubt heard the riders before they'd even reached Longarm. Magpie was crouched behind a ponderosa, but now she stepped out and tilted her head to one side, peering incredulously at their unexpected guests.

War Cloud whistled and depressed his Spencer's heavy hammer. “Whoo-ee,” the scout said softly. “That sure wasn't a good idea, Miss Leslie.” He spoke to Blue Feather in her own tongue. The young Apache woman kept her features as expressionless, ignoring him.

Longarm fumed as he led the women to where his and the War Clouds' horses were tied in the heavy brush. As if he didn't have enough trouble—now he had two more women to worry about!