Longarm and the War Clouds (4 page)

Magpie leaped to the floor, cleaned the bloody blade off on the front of the dead man's wool vest, and returned it to her belt sheath.

The five other customers, still on the floor between Longarm and the third dead man and Magpie, peered over their respective tables with wary amazement at the Apache girl with the dead-eye bowie-knife aim.

Magpie strode between Longarm and her father, heading for the batwings and saying something in her guttural tongue over her shoulder. She went out, the batwings clacking behind her.

Longarm turned to War Cloud. “What'd she say?”

“Magpie said she is tired of white men and their smelly cities and that she was happy to send that white man to the spirit world with one hell of a headache.” The Apache laughed. “I told you she was somethin'.”

Longarm looked at Dunbar scowling red-faced over the top of his bar. The apron appraised the blood-spattered room and then turned his angry glare on the federal lawman. “Custis, you're damn close to getting yourself barred from the premises!”

Longarm smoothed Dunbar's feathers by assuring him that he'd see to it that the saloon owner would be promptly and thoroughly reimbursed for damages. He told one of the two street cops who came running at the sound of the shots that he'd explain later.

Of course, the Denver Police force all knew Longarm. A man who'd been bushwhacked as many times as Longarm had in their fair city carried quite a reputation that likely wouldn't have set so well on the overworked, underpaid local badge toters if they didn't also know that he was Chief Marshal Billy Vail's senior-most deputy who had sent a long list of bad men to either cold, dark graves or the nearly as cold and dark federal prison.

Of course, the whole dustup had been instigated by the bushwhackers, and Dunbar would tell the bluecoats that, anyway, so Longarm's signature on a brief affidavit would tidy everything up in no time. The matter would be settled before the men were sent home for burial or planted in Denver's pauper cemetery.

Despite the interruption, Longarm and the War Clouds were only fifteen minutes late as they headed for their meeting with Billy Vail, who was so accustomed to Longarm being late anyway that he likely would have had a heart stroke if the rangy deputy had been prompt on so fair and sunny a midsummer morning.

On the short stroll to the Federal Building from the Black Cat, they were met with quite a few dubious stares. Most folks in Denver probably had never seen an Apache before, and they likely hadn't spied so obvious a pair of Indians—one a beautiful Indian princess—walking the cinder-paved sidewalks in a month of Sundays.

Young boys hocking newspapers on street corners; drivers of hansom cabs, ranch wagons, and beer wagons; suited businessmen heading for their shops; office girls scurrying to work in their summer-weight frocks; even stray dogs hunting mice or food scraps around boardwalks—all strained their necks to watch the unlikely threesome pass and then head on up the Federal Building's broad, stone steps.

The trio headed through the cavern-like halls, Longarm sucking a cold cheroot, War Cloud father and daughter for the most part staring straight ahead. War Cloud himself paused to shake hands with a couple of other deputy marshals who'd worked with the Coyotero when he'd been a tracker on the government payroll.

Longarm pushed through the heavy wooden, glass-paned door marked simply
U.S. MARSHAL
and stepped to one side to hold the door wide for his guests. Billy Vail's prissy secretary, Henry, glanced over his narrow shoulder as his long, pale hands continued to tap away on his infernally loud typewriting machine that he loved so much, and said with his customarily droll air, “You're late again, Deputy Lo—”

The clattering stopped abruptly as Henry's bespectacled eyes found the Apaches. Chief Marshal Billy Vail's personal secretary leaped out of his chair as though his pants had suddenly caught fire and twirled around, eyes snapping wide. His gaze flicked between his two Apache guests before returning to War Cloud, and then a crimson flush rose in his cheeks, and he said with no small relief, “Mr. War Cloud!”

“What'd you think, Henry?” Longarm asked. “We were under attack?”

“Well, it's just been . . . so . . . long since . . .”

War Cloud laughed and stepped forward, shoving a big, brown paw across the young man's immaculate desk and saying, “Ain't no mister in it now any more than there ever was, Henry, but just the same, it's nice to see you again.”

“Nice to see you, too, War Cloud,” Henry said, shaking the Indian's hand. His eyes returned to the girl standing back against the door and near the hat tree onto which Longarm had tossed his hat. “And . . . this is . . .?”

Longarm grinned as Henry's normally coolly dismissive gaze raked the girl up and down and sideways. Longarm had always suspected the lad might have been a Nancy-boy, but now, seeing Henry's face mottle red and his eyes nearly pop out of his head at the vision of the Apache princess before him, Longarm thought he'd have to revise his estimation.

War Cloud introduced his daughter to Henry, but while the lad leaned over his desk to extend his hand toward Magpie, the girl merely stood back by the door, regarding him with her cool disdain, arms crossed on her breasts.

“Oh,” Henry said, awkwardly lowering his hand.

“She ain't much of a hand shaker,” War Cloud explained. “Most Apaches ain't. I been around white men long enough to understand the gesture, but most Apaches would fall down laughing if you extended your hand to 'em. Magpie—she just ignores such ceremony, but she don't mean nothin' personal by it.”

The frosted-glass door flanking the other side of the secretary's desk suddenly opened, and Billy Vail stepped out to say, “I thought I heard familiar voices out here. War Cloud—welcome back!”

The frumpy, balding chief marshal, customarily attired in a wrinkled white shirt and brown wool vest with dangling watch chain, strode out to give the Apache's hand a brisk shake. “Glad you could make it,” Vail said. “I wasn't sure you received my message—I know how you never were one to reply to a telegram, so I was just keeping my fingers crossed.”

Since War Cloud didn't know how to read or write, he pretty much just ignored all situations in which either activity was required. If you sent him a telegram, you'd never know he got it until you saw him again.

He said, “Nice to see you again, Chief. Yeah, I got it, and I was glad. I was waitin' on an excuse for me an' Magpie to head west again. I'm afraid Chicago an' them other cities back East—they just aren't for this old redskin.”

“Daughter?” Billy was staring at Magpie, the skin above the bridge of his nose wrinkling. “Say, I heard about you havin' a daughter, War Cloud. That's right—she's why you left the service. Say . . . that's some girl you got there, mister . . .”

“Don't try to shake her hand, Chief,” Longarm advised, standing back by the hat tree near the Apache princess. “She might crack a bone or two.”

Billy nodded as he continued to study the girl, obviously impressed by her, as any male—even a chubby, balding, long-married, middle-aged one—would be. The chief marshal sighed and glanced between Longarm and War Cloud, “Well, I'm glad you two ran into each other—or did you just get here at the same time?”

“Oh, no, Chief,” Longarm said. “We sorta ran into each other last night.
Late
last night. In my flat over on the raggedy side of Cherry Creek. Good thing ole War Cloud still remembered where it was.” The deputy's tone was ironic.

War Cloud grinned. Longarm thought he heard Magpie give a snort. A barely audible snort but a snort just the same though she didn't look at him.

“Okay—well, anyway,” the chief marshal said, obviously a little confused but seeing no point in having the matter clarified, which was just fine with Longarm. The chief marshal clearly had more important things on his plate. “Why don't you two come on into my office, and I'll give you the one-two-three. Nasty business down in your home country, War Cloud. That's why I was hoping you'd come.”

“Had a feelin' that was why, Chief.”

As Billy turned to walk into his office, he glanced over his shoulder. Magpie was walking toward him, a few steps behind Longarm. “She might as well stay out here with Henry,” Vail said. “She wouldn't have no interest in hearin' about this mess.”

“She might as well hear about it, Chief,” War Cloud said, holding the door open. “She'll be comin' with me an' Custis. Me an' Magpie are heading home and, besides, I taught Magpie to be every bit the tracker her old man is. She is, too. And her eyes are sharp as an eagle's.”

“She's right good with a bowie knife, too, Chief,” Longarm wryly interjected, not bothering to explain the matter of the three dead men over at the Black Cat Saloon.

Billy looked at the girl once more, speculatively, nodding. “You don't say. Well, all right. I have only one chair, but you fellas can sit on the floor.”

Vail chuckled at that as he walked on into his office. But when they were all inside, Magpie ignored Longarm's gesture for her to sit in the chair and sat on the floor, her back against the door, arms crossed on her breasts. War Cloud shrugged, then grinned as he himself took the chair.

Longarm stood against the room's outside wall, arms crossed on his chest, one boot cocked over the other, the cold cigar still angling from his mouth. He wasn't sure why, but he suddenly had a bad feeling about what his next assignment was going to be. It was probably because he'd learned he'd be heading into the searing Arizona heat at high summer.

That was like heading to hell with the fires still burning.

Also, his old friend War Cloud had been called in special. That likely meant Apache trouble. And Apache trouble was usually the worst kind of trouble of all.

Yes, he had a bad, bad feeling . . .

Chief Marshal Billy Vail regarded Magpie skeptically where she squatted against his door, and then he plopped his two hundred pudgy pounds down into his high-backed leather chair.

He reached for a handkerchief and blew his nose. “Nothing worse than a cold in the summer.” He looked at War Cloud sitting straight across from him in the chair, and then at Longarm standing against the wall. “Looks like old times—don't it, fellas?”

War Cloud slapped his arms down on the arms of the chair. “Feels good to be back, Chief.”

“Any chance you'll stay on? We can still use good trackers, War Cloud.”

“Nah. I want to take my girl back to Arizona, try my hand at ranching the white man's way. None of that reservation living for me. I want to raise wild horses and sell them to the cavalry for remounts. That would be a good life for both of us.”

War Cloud was one of the few Apaches who'd been given written amnesty from President Johnson, excepting him and his daughter from being confined to a reservation. The request had been made by General Crook, who'd found War Cloud's help “extraordinary and invaluable” while leading thirty other Apache scouts during the Tonto Basin campaign against the Tonto Apaches in the ‘70s. It was also Crook who had recommended War Cloud to be employed by the U.S. marshals as a professional scout and tracker.

“Sounds like a good idea.” Vail glanced at the window beside Longarm through which the rumble of morning foot and horse traffic was emanating, as well as the clanging of train bells and the panting of locomotives from down at Union Station. “This city keeps getting louder and stinkier every day. I'm of a mind to join you.”

The chief marshal waved his hand in front of his face, dismissing the subject. “Anyway, we'd best move on to the business at hand. Your train will be pullin' out in a couple hours.”

Vail plucked a manila envelope off one of many large stacks hiding his cluttered desk and tossed it onto the corner nearest Longarm. “The report's in there but you can't take it with you, Custis. You're gonna have to read it here and digest the information in it before you go.”

“Sounds serious, Chief,” Longarm said, scratching a match to life on a corner of the desk near the file. “You wanna give us the rundown?”

“It's ugly business. If I was either one of you fellas, I wouldn't wanna have no part in it. Custis, you got no choice, but War Cloud, of course you do. But I hope you'll take the assignment just the same. I need you on this one. Need you bad, as it concerns a part of the country you know like the back of your hand.”

Longarm blew a plume of smoke at the far wall and said, “Billy, you're makin' me right curious. Could you spit it all out for us so me an' War Cloud can stop guessin'.”

Vail leaned forward and blew his nose. He cursed under his breath, swiped the handkerchief across his red, raw nose once more, and then leaned back in his chair. “The trouble concerns Fort McHenry down in Arizona. I know you both know where it is—especially you, War Cloud, since you were chief of the Coyotero scouts back there during the '70s.”

War Cloud nodded, frowning gravely.

“And you likely know the Mescalero scout, Black Twisted Pine.”

“Of course. We were partners, Black Twisted Pine and me despite that our tribes—the Coyoteros and the Mescaleros—were once blood enemies.”

“Black Twisted was working with the scouts at Fort McHenry, which isn't much these days since the Apache problem has been dwindling except for old Geronimo himself and a few other bands that don't cotton to the reservation life—which I can fully understand. Rotten damn system, if you ask me, and I know you wouldn't argue the point, War Cloud.”

War Cloud said nothing. His dark eyes said exactly what he thought about the federal government confining his people to reservations and trying to turn the hunter-gatherer natives into farmers, and even sending a good many to reservations as far away as Florida and Oklahoma. It was true that he'd hunted down many of his own, but only those Apaches he considered blood enemies, and only because he'd known that the end was coming for all Apaches, and he'd wanted to end the fighting.

Also, being Apache, he'd been born a warrior. And warring had really been all he'd ever known.

“Fort McHenry is still there along Wild Horse Creek, between the Chiricahua Mountains and the Dragoons, protecting the ranchers and miners in that neck of the desert. The commanding officer there is one Major Anson Belcher. His wife is Lucille Belcher. Lucille
McPherson
Belcher.”

Vail stopped and regarded each man in turn, as though waiting for their reaction to the name. Longarm glanced at War Cloud and shrugged. War Cloud hiked a shoulder, as well.

“The name supposed to mean somethin' to us, Chief?” Longarm asked.

“I thought it would ring a bell, since McPherson is the name of the territorial governor of Arizona. Everett McPherson.”

“All right,” Longarm said, growing more and more impatient with his boss's slow, meandering way of telling him what his assignment was going to be. Billy was usually much more direct than this. That he wasn't being as straightforward now caused his senior deputy vague apprehension.

It meant that the trouble down Arizona way was either especially complicated or especially dangerous. Most likely, both.

“I don't understand what this has to do with my old partner, Black Twisted Pine.” War Cloud, normally one of the most patient people Longarm had ever known, was apparently growing as impatient with the chief marshal's slow spiel as Longarm was.

“I don't know if you've seen Black Twisted Pine recently, War Cloud,” Vail said, “but I assume you haven't. He was wounded a little over a year ago in a skirmish with some of Geronimo's band. A war lance shattered his knee. He can still use it, I'm told, but for his own safety he was temporarily taken out of the scouting service.

“They kept him on active duty by making him a striker, a personal assistant, to Mrs. Lucy Belcher, in the home she of course shared with Major Belcher. To make my long story a little shorter, she and Black Twisted Pine appeared to have struck up a romance—one that culminated in the two running off together to Mexico.”

Longarm looked at War Cloud. He'd always known when War Cloud was astonished because the scout's dark eyes grew a little larger, and his lips parted slightly. Both those things were happening now in the Indian's broad face. As for Magpie, she simply sat with her back against the door, arms extended straight across her upraised knees.

She was staring at the floor between her and Vail's desk. She might have been meditating, but Longarm had a feeling she'd been taking in everything that Vail had said. Like most traditional Apaches, she rarely betrayed her inner reaction to anything.

Longarm said, “Where'd they go, Billy?”

“Into the Shadow Montañas—a little range just south of the border. They're an extension of the Chiricahuas but on the other side of the line.”

“A sacred range to the Chiricahuas,” War Cloud said. He glanced over his right shoulder to speak in Apache to his daughter, who again did not react to what she heard. Turning his head forward again, War Cloud translated: “The People of the Turtle Heart.”

Vail blew his nose. He sighed as though weary of the cold and his sore, red nose, and flopped back in his chair, making a sour face. “This is serious trouble, gentlemen. Governor McPherson is a proud man, and a hater of the Apache. Lucy's husband, Major Belcher, was cut from the same cloth. Both soldiered during the Little Misunderstanding Between the States. Both come from wealthy Yankee families.

“Major Belcher has been cuckolded, made to look the fool in front of all his men, and he's understandably furious. He's wanting to send American soldiers across the border after his wife and Black Twisted Pine, and both he and his father-in-law have requested that he be given War Department permission to do just that. The permission wasn't granted, and so far both Belcher and McPherson have restrained themselves. They know that to send soldiers into sacred Apache territory—a small band of whom are still living up there in them mountains—could very well fan the flames of the Apache Wars, have them raging back to the level they were at in the late sixties.

“Besides, the Mexicans are damn protective of their border these days, since a gang of desperadoes—deserters from the American cavalry—have been on the loose down there, raiding mines and robbing trains an' such. These days, no American soldier is allowed across the border. However, in the weeks since those two—Black Twisted Pine and Mrs. Belcher—ran off together, the U.S. Marshals Service was brought in.

“And you two gentlemen, and only you, have been granted permission from President Johnson himself to scuttle on across the border and to do everything you can to
quietly
, without the Mexicans learning about it and without ruffling the feathers of those bronco Apaches living up there in the Shadow Montañas, run down Mrs. Belcher, and bring her back to Fort McHenry.

“Kicking and screaming, if you have to. She has to be brought back to her husband and her father at all costs. This is a great embarrassment to two important men. If she's not brought back, I'm afraid those two men are going to take the bull by the horns, and we're gonna have another major Indian war on our hands.”

Longarm took a couple of pensive puffs off his cigar. “Can't they transfer Belcher out of there, Boss? Bring in a new commanding officer?”

“They tried that. Didn't try very hard, though, I don't think. Both Belcher and Governor McPherson have friends in high places, don't you know, and none of his senior officers have pushed very hard to have him transferred. I've heard before that McPherson's wife is a not-too-distant relation to the president. So if the eastern press got wind of this, it would be more than just Belcher and McPherson embarrassed by it. I've no doubt that the president himself wants Mrs. Belcher returned to the major as soon as possible.”

Vail sniffed. “So, there you have it, Gentlemen. Henry has travel vouchers all typed out and waiting. You'll be heading south on the one o'clock flier. You'll pick up remounts at Fort Dryer in New Mexico, and ride to Fort McHenry. I'm allowing a little over a week for travel. In this heat, you'll probably wanna travel mostly at night, but I'll leave that up to you. You been through this before.”

Vail studied War Cloud. “What's your answer, my friend? Will you take the job? You know that country like the back of your hand, since you scouted it for years. None of the scouts at the fort knows the border country well at all. If anyone can track them two lovebirds down quickly and quietly, without ruffling the Apaches' feather, you can. I'm offering two dollars and fifty cents a day plus traveling expenses.”

War Cloud nodded gravely. “I knew before me and Magpie left Chicago I'd be taking the job, Chief. Even before I knew what the job was about. I knew you would not call me back into the service without good reason. But now, knowing what the job entails—Black Twisted Pine is my adopted brother, and I do not wish to see him hurt—I'll go. And I promise I'll do everything I can to bring the woman back to the major . . . as long as I am not expected to kill my Chiricahua brother, Black Twisted Pine.”

“The reason I'm sending you, my friend, is so that can be avoided. Being the man's ex-scouting partner, you're the one man who has a chance to convince him that no matter how strongly he feels about Mrs. Belcher, he has to release her—for his and her own good and for the good of his own people.”

Vail glanced at Longarm. “The job of you two men is to bring Mrs. Belcher back to her husband—preferably before the eastern press gets wind of it and embarrasses not only the major and the governor, but the president himself.”

Longarm said, “What if this Mrs. Belcher don't wanna go back to her husband, Chief?”

Vail dipped his chin and gave his senior deputy a stern, commanding look. “You flash them big brown eyes of yours and change the lady's mind. If you don't bring her back, someone else likely will—and then there'll be hell to pave and no hot pitch!”

“All right, all right.”

“Oh, by the way.” Vail sniffed and looked sheepish. “If you fellas get caught by the Mexicans over there, or if you run into trouble with the Apaches, don't expect any help. 'Cause you won't get it. Those are orders from the president himself.”