Longarm and the War Clouds Read Online Free PDF Page A

man here was a wildcat about to pounce. War Cloud said, “She doesn’t speak much English, Custis. And she doesn’t speak to white men, at all. Her mother’s blood, you understand.”
    War Cloud ordered the girl a beer, since she needed the beer to qualify for the free bread, meat, and cheese arranged on a large, round tray halfway down the bar, and a glass of water. When Longarm and his guests had all built sandwiches and were seated at a table near the front of the place, Longarm dumped his shot of rye into his beer, waited for the foam to subside, and took down a third of the morning elixir in three long swallows.
    The girl watched him critically. Longarm didn’t think the look was much about the drink. She’d been studying him critically, skeptically, as though she didn’t know what to think of him, all morning. But then, she seemed to study the other men in the saloon the same way.
    Critically, skeptically, as though she were vaguely suspicious of the intentions of each.
    Longarm set the glass back down on the table and tried to ignore her stare. He ran the back of his hand across his lips and longhorn mustache. “All right, now that my thinker box is oiled, maybe I can think straighter about the situation at hand. Any idea why you and Magpie are here, War Cloud?”
    â€œI have no idea, Custis,” War Cloud said, hunched over the table and devouring his sandwich like a coyote on a freshly killed rabbit. “I was hoping you would know.”
    Longarm shook his head as he bit into his own sandwich and glanced at Magpie, who was none-too-daintily eating her own meal while keeping her eyes locked on Longarm—when she wasn’t nervously scrutinizing the other men in the room, that was.
    Longarm swallowed and said, “I got back from an assignment three days ago. Billy Vail gave me a couple days to cool my heels . . . and, uh . . .”
    â€œEntertain that girl who moans so purty?” War Cloud grinned as he chewed.
    â€œYeah, somethin’ like that,” Longarm said, glancing at Magpie and feeling his cheeks burn again.
    The truth was, he’d been cavorting with Cynthia against his boss’s advice. Marshal Billy Vail thought that it was only a matter of time before the General and sweet Aunt May found out that his senior-most badge toter was “fucking that moneyed little debutante seven ways from sundown,” and Billy would be searching for a replacement for Longarm’s job—after the deputy’s funeral, of course.
    â€œI haven’t seen Billy in several days, but he sent a note to my flat over the weekend, ordering me not to be a minute late to his office this morning, so whatever it is, I reckon we’ll find out about it is in about a”—Longarm glanced at the Regulator clock over the bar—“half hour or thereabouts. He must have sent for you while I was out corralling rustlers up around the Wyoming line. When I got back, he was out with a head cold.”
    Longarm swallowed a bite of his sandwich and washed the bite down with a slug of his drink. “In the meantime, how’s Buffalo Bill been treating you, you old coyote?”
    War Cloud thought about that gravely while he chewed, hunkered over the thick sandwich he held in both his large, leathery dark hands. “To be honest with you, brother, I was glad to get Billy’s telegram. Starting to feel like one of Wild Bill’s monkeys. I’m a full-blood Coyotero, but Wild Bill kept making me play a Sioux with a full headdress. General Custer always guns me down at the end of our ‘battle.’
    â€œYou don’t know how tired I was getting of clutching my chest and falling over my horse and having to lay there with his boot on my belly while he makes a big, windy speech about how times are changing. That the Red Man’s time is over and now it’s time for the White Man to bring civilization to the New