Longarm and the War Clouds by Tabor Evans Page A

smashing thrust.

Chapter 10
    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.
    â€œGood 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.
    â€œAh, 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.
    â€œThat’s Major Belcher?” Longarm asked Kilroy, his tone ironic.
    â€œYes, it’s Major Belcher. He’s not like this, Marshal. You have to understand.”
    â€œHe’s heartsick.”
    â€œYes.” 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.
    â€œGo 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.
    â€œGo 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