by Tabor Evans
“Better than this poor son of a bitch.”
“You better come over and look at this, brother,” said War Cloud.
“What’s that?”
“We’re rich men, Custis.”
Chapter 8
Longarm saw a faint glow in the rocks off to his right, in the direction from which War Cloud’s voice had come. Leaving the dead man where he lay on the cholla, he made his way across the shoulder of the slope until he was looking down into a hollow cut in the rock-strewn hillside.
In the hollow, by the low fire burning there with a coffeepot sitting inside the stone ring and on a flat rock to stay warm, War Cloud stood, looking up at Longarm. The Indian’s lined face was creased with one of his devilish grins.
He held his Spencer repeater out and down, indicating the pair of saddlebags near the fire. Longarm knew what he’d find inside the bags even before he skipped rocks down into the hollow and flipped one of the flaps back. He stared down into the pouch stuffed with packets of banded greenbacks and cream-colored burlap sacks. Longarm plucked one of the small sacks up out of the pouch. Coins clinked inside. He hefted it in his hand.
“Gold, I’d say.”
“We could head for Frisco, brother,” War Cloud said. “I hear the women are pretty there.” He grinned again, betraying the fact he was joshing. Longarm had never known a more honest or honorable man than War Cloud.
“Must be several thousand dollars in these bags,” Longarm said, glancing into the other pouch. “That’d buy a lot of whiskey and women, all right.”
“A holdup,” War Cloud said. “We almost run up on a pack of curly wolves, Custis. Probably thought we were part of some posse after them.”
Longarm nodded. “We’ll take the money along to . . .”
He let his voice trail off as the clacking of hooves rose just south of his and War Cloud’s position, and lower. He and the Apache scout walked over to stand on the lip of the cut through which the trail threaded.
Magpie was coming along the trail on her buckskin, trailing War Cloud’s grulla and Longarm’s dun by the horses’ reins. She held one of her revolvers in the same hand in which she held her own reins and brought the buckskin to a sudden halt when her wary gaze found her father and Longarm standing over her.
War Cloud told the girl in Apache that all was well and for her to bring the horses over to where the outlaws’ three mounts were picketed in some mesquites farther down the slope. Then Longarm and War Cloud started to turn back to the campfire. They both stopped and turned back to the cut at the same time, neither saying anything as they stood quietly, pricking their ears.
From farther off along the trail, on the other side of the cut through the razorback ridge, the clamor of many hooves rose. A good-sized band of riders was heading toward the cut.
Longarm and War Cloud shared a look.
The Indian said, “More curly wolves, maybe, eh?”
“Maybe. Or the posse after them.” Longarm started leaping boulders as he dropped down into the cut. “Only one way to find out.”
He leaped from the last boulder to the trail. War Cloud followed him down. The two men jogged back along the cut through the ridge, the high walls rising around them to block out the moon and the stars. Ahead, the rataplan of the oncoming riders grew quickly.
War Cloud and Longarm did not have to speak to know the other’s intentions. They’d worked together enough in the past and, while belonging to separate races, were cut enough from the same cloth to know instinctively how to work together without a lot of chinning about it.
As they left the cut and walked out onto the flat, Longarm moved off the trail’s left side while War Cloud slipped off to the right. Longarm dropped down behind a twisted mesquite, and doffed his hat to make his shadow smaller. The pearl light of dawn was beginning to leech into the sky, making both him and War Cloud easier to see. On the other side of the trail, War Cloud crouched behind a boulder, holding his Spencer repeater up high across his chest.
The drumming of the riders’ hooves continued. Staring along his back trail, Longarm saw the shifting shadows as the group drew closer. Even with the gradually intensifying dawn light, it was impossible to see how many riders were along the trail. They were a shifting, gray-purple mass as they approached Longarm and War Cloud, and the cut just beyond.
Longarm didn’t so much as see or hear as he sensed movement behind him. He glanced over his left shoulder to see Magpie move stealthily off the trail, to pass behind him and drop down behind another mesquite to his left. The girl hadn’t made a sound. She had not looked at Longarm as she slipped away from the trail, and she did not look at him now.
An odd one, that girl. But while she rarely made eye contact with Longarm, he sensed that she was keeping an eye on him, just the same . . .
Puzzling.
Longarm gave his attention to the trail. He frowned. The clomping of the hooves had stopped about sixty yards away. He could see the clumped riders as a vague, purple mass. The group had probably heard the gunfire. Whoever they were, they were wisely wary.
As the sun continued to rise toward the horizon and more light bled into the eastern sky, he could make out what he thought was gold trim on the blue hat of the lead rider. Also, farther back in the group what appeared to be a guidon buffeted gently.
A company flag?
Longarm glanced at War Cloud. The scout glanced back at him. Silently, they agreed to hold their positions.
Voices sounded in conferring tones. Then one of the group separated from the others and came on ahead on what appeared an army bay. The lone rider came on slowly, hooves thudding softly in the well-churned dust of the trail. When Longarm made out the sergeant’s chevrons on the sleeves of the soldier’s blue tunic, the lawman rose to stand beside the mesquite while War Cloud and Magpie held their positions.
“That’s far enough, Sergeant,” Longarm said.
The soldier reined his bay up sharply about twenty yards back along the trail. The man’s startled horse sidestepped and blew, rippling its withers and shaking its head.
The man in the saddle was burly. He wore a leather-billed forage hat and suspenders over his blue cavalry tunic.
The lawman could see the man’s eyes flash wildly beneath the brim of his cap. Just as the sergeant began to lower the carbine he’d been holding barrel up on a stout thigh, Longarm said, “Easy, soldier. I’m a deputy United States marshal. The men you’re after are dead and the loot is secure.”
Longarm set his rifle on his shoulder, making no quick movements in case the sergeant was trigger-happy, and stepped out onto the trail. “If it’s them you’re after, I mean,” he added.
The sergeant looked at him askance and flexed his yellow-gloved hand around the neck of his army-issue Spencer repeater. “We’re after three yellow-bellied scalawags, true enough,” the man said in a deep, slightly raspy voice. “But how do I know you ain’t . . . ?”
“Is that ole Tom Fitzpatrick I hear bellyachin’ up there on that army bay, Custis?” War Cloud stepped out onto the trail, his own Spencer repeater resting on his shoulder.
Longarm glanced at the scout, who looked up at the sergeant, white teeth showing between his parted, upswept lips.
“Well, jumpin’ Jehoshaphat,” sputtered the sergeant, who appeared to be in his late thirties, early forties. “If it ain’t that old dog eater, War Cloud his own mangy self!”
The sergeant hipped around in his saddle and bellowed at the group behind him, “Come on in, Captain! It’s all clear—got us a federal lawman and an old friend here!”
The sergeant reached forward to shove his carbine into its saddle boot and then crawled heavily out of the saddle. He walked up to War Cloud, grinning broadly, and pumping the Indian’s outstretched hand. “Good to see you, kid. What in the hell brings you back to this next of the woods, and how in the hell did you run down them curly wol
ves for us? Two days ago they robbed the stage out of Tombstone, an’ we finally cut their trail yesterday afternoon.”
Fitzpatrick’s eyes widened. He shifted his gaze between Longarm and War Cloud, and then pointed at both men, saying, “Oh, wait a minute. By thunder, I bet you’re both here to . . .” He let his voice trail off, and then, as the rest of his patrol rode on up behind him, he shielded his mouth with his left hand as he whispered, “Not to speak of it in front of the enlisted men. Just the captain.”
The sergeant shook his head darkly, emphasizing that the subject shouldn’t be blabbered out.
“What do we have here, Sergeant?” asked the lead rider, a rangy, mustached young man with captain’s bars on the shoulders of his dark blue uniform blouse.
He frowned beneath the brim of his blue kepi whose left side brim was pinned up against the crown. There were seven other soldiers, including the guidon bearer, riding behind him. All the bays were sweat-silvered and dusty and weary-looking. They’d obviously been pushed hard for many miles.
Fitzpatrick said, “Captain Gavin Kilroy, this here rock worshiper is my old friend, War Cloud. Apache scout. You and the rest of these men wouldn’t remember him, as you wasn’t stationed at Fort McHenry when he was, but he served about as heroically as any soldier I’ve ever known.”
The sergeant turned to Longarm, and his gaze became uncertain. “And this here man is a federal deputy marshal.”
“Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis P. Long, at your service, Captain,” Longarm said, reaching up to shake the hand of the young officer. “I, too, am a friend of War Cloud’s. Friend and colleague. We worked together several times back when he was tracking for the U.S. marshals. We were heading for McHenry on official business when we were bushwhacked . . . by the very three stage robbers you boys are after, I understand.”
Most folks would have given War Cloud two or three skeptical looks. Not the young captain. There was probably a whole stable of Apache scouts at Fort McHenry, there being no more valuable tool for tracking Apaches than other Apaches.
“Pleased to meet both you gentlemen,” he said. “Are you sure you got the men we’re aft . . . ?”
The captain let his voice trail off when Magpie stepped soundlessly onto the trail behind Longarm and her father. The girl stood with her moccasins spread, thumbs hooked behind her shell belt, staring with that typically skeptical glower.
The sergeant and the captain had both jerked slightly with starts and touched their guns. But now the captain, scrutinizing the girl though he probably couldn’t see much of her in the misty near-dawn light, said, “And who is this?”
War Cloud introduced his daughter.
Fitzpatrick said in shock, “That . . . that there full-growed miss is your little Magpie?”
“She sure is,” War Cloud crowed.
“Why, last time I seen her—and it wasn’t all that long ago—she was only hock-high to a deer tick! Look at her now!”
Fitzpatrick stepped forward, eyes bright with an older man’s joy at seeing a child again he hadn’t seen in years. Magpie’s face remained hard as sand-scoured granite, long, dark eyes reflecting the growing light.
“Hey there, you little tadpole—you remember me? Why, sure you do. You were probably six, seven years old last time I . . .”
Fitzpatrick stopped, frowned, as the girl said something in Coyotero to her father, almost barking the guttural words, before swinging around and taking long strides along the cut toward where they’d left the stolen money and the horses.
“Don’t mind her, Sergeant,” Longarm said. “That’s practically a bear hug compared to the greeting I got from the girl!”
Chapter 9
“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 h
ostiles. 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.”