Longarm and the War Clouds (2 page)

“Don't do anything I wouldn't do,” he told Longarm, grinning around the cigar.

Longarm led Cynthia quietly up the outside steps of the house, careful not to make any loud noises. Longarm's landlady was persnickety, snoopy, and a light sleeper. “Tomcatting on the premises” was against the rules—a rule she'd made up soon after the federal lawman had moved in several years ago.

He and Cynthia had no sooner gotten inside and closed the door than she removed the cape. There she stood before him, her pale skin glistening in the light angling through the curtained windows. Her earrings sparkled. Her breasts looked like two giant mounds of vanilla ice cream pushing up out of the dress's silk corset, just waiting to be devoured.

Longarm got a lamp burning on his dresser, one corner of which he'd propped on a small plank after its leg had broken off. His bed wasn't made, and there were several old newspapers and empty bottles and dirty dishes strewn about the room's single table and elsewhere.

Cynthia didn't seem to mind. In fact, as he unbuttoned her dress and peeled the straps down her arms from behind, she said, “I love how it smells in here.”

He chuckled. He thought she was joking.

“No, I do. It smells like cigars and leather and sweat. Like a man.”

“One who can't afford a maid.”

As Longarm peeled the dress down to her waist and ran his hands around to her front and cupped her breasts that were still ensconced in a whalebone corset, she waggled her fanny against his groin.

“Mhmmm,” she said. “You like me.”

Longarm slid her hair back with his nose and sniffed her neck. “Uh-huhh.”

She groaned as he poked his tongue in her ear.

“We'd best get you out of this iron maiden,” he said, pulling at the corset. “How in Christ . . . ?”

“You've taken it off me before, Custis. You can do it again.”

There was a series of buttons and hooks and straps in back that had always given him pause. Fortunately, his raging lust clarified things, and he was peeling the corset open like a cracked walnut and tossing it across the room inside of five minutes.

Cynthia swooned back against him.

Longarm reached around her and slid his hands up her smooth, flat belly to her breasts, which were bare now and all his. He cupped the firm orbs in his hands. Her nipples had already pebbled but now he could feel them standing up against his palms as he massaged her and nuzzled her neck.

At the same time, she continued to grind her bottom against his hips until his raging hard-on, confined by his balbriggans and whipcord trousers, ached.

“Let's get me out of my stockings and panties, and then your turn,” Cynthia said, wrestling away from him to sit on the bed and extending a long, pale leg.

Longarm knelt before her and removed the garter belt and panties. Then off came both silk stockings. He leaned forward and shoved his face against the tuft of silky black hair between the tops of her thighs, and worked the tip of his nose between the folds of pink flesh.

Cynthia leaned back on her arms. She threw her head back and groaned at the ceiling as he ran the tip of his nose against the petal-soft flesh and her clit, which he could feel growing warmer and warmer and more rigid.

Finally, Longarm stood and began unbuttoning his shirt. As he did, the girl rose to a sitting position on the edge of the bed, and, smiling up at him devilishly, her earrings and blue eyes and white teeth sparkling in the light of the lamp, she began unbuttoning his fly.

When he'd gotten his coat, vest, four-in-hand tie, and shirt off and stood before her bare-chested, she opened his pants and was reaching inside the fly of his summer-weight longhandles. She continued to smile up at him playfully, and when she wrapped her slim hand around his cock, she closed her upper teeth down on her bottom lip.

“Got it,” she said.

She gently slid it out of his balbriggan fly until it was standing nearly straight up before him, angling the swollen mushroom head back against his belly button.

“Nice,” Cynthia cooed. “Oh, gosh . . . so very nice.”

She leaned forward and stuck out her tongue. She touched its tip to the swollen head and swirled it gently, slowly.

Longarm drew a breath and leaned his weight back on the low heels of his cavalry stovepipes. Her tongue made his entire cock and his balls tingle. She continued to swirl her tongue against the end of his cock, looking up at him with her erotic gaze before she pulled her head back for a second and then rose a little higher and closed her mouth over the head.

Cynthia's mouth was warm and wet.

Longarm could feel her tongue caressing the underside of his shaft as she slowly slid her mouth down toward his groin. When she was halfway to his belly, she slid her mouth back off of him and smacked her lips.

Rising from the bed, she shoved him down onto it, and, kneeling naked before him, her pale breasts with their distended nipples jostling—she was wearing only the diamond earrings now—she pulled off each of his boots in turn.

She helped him out of his pants and balbriggans. And when all of his clothes were on the floor around her, she placed her hands on his thighs, leaned forward, grabbed his cock around its base with her right hand, and pumped him gently. After a time, she dropped her mouth down over him and started sucking tenderly at first while holding his cock steady with one hand and cupping his balls with the other.

After about five excruciating minutes of working him over grandly with her lips and tongue, and swallowing him a few times, gagging on the bulbous head, she bobbed her head up and down quickly. She worked him into a raging lather of silently screaming passion.

Longarm leaned back, stretched his arms and legs out, and released a hot geyser of seed into Cynthia's mouth and down her throat. She groaned and moaned and gagged, holding her mouth down stubbornly. He could feel her throat spasming against him as he continued to violently spend himself.

Some of his seed pearled on the tip of her nose.

When he'd finally stopped bucking and grunting against her, causing the bed to squawk, she lifted her mouth and gasped, rubbing the back of a pale hand across her mouth and nose. Her face was flushed, eyes glazed with tears.

“God, Custis!” she said, “I thought I was gonna drown!”

Longarm could only gasp as he lay there, catching his breath and staring at the ceiling, feeling as though an ore dray had dropped a load of rocks on his chest.

Cynthia rose and walked over to the dresser to pour a glass of water. When she returned, she was carrying a bottle of Tom Moore rye and two water glasses. Longarm sat up as she knelt between his legs again, and she poured them each a drink.

This was how it usually went. She'd suck him, releasing the fervor and torment of his initial lust, and then they'd have a drink together and flirt and snuggle and fondle each other while he recovered. Then they'd get down to the real business, which they got down to about fifteen minutes after his French lesson and after they'd finished their drinks.

She pulled the covers back, drew one of the pillows down beneath her hips, and pointed her beautiful ass in the air. As he scuttled up on his knees between her legs, she reached behind her, wrapped her hand around his cock, and squeezed it several times. When it was rock hard, she lowered her hands to the bed and arched her back, wagging her ass.

“Give it to me, Custis. Every inch of that beautiful ax handle! Every beautiful . . .
ahhh, gawd
!”

“You asked for it.”

“Oh, God. Oh, God.”

“Shhh. My landlady, darlin'.”

“I'll try,” Cynthia said throatily, grinding her forehead into the mattress as he hammered against her butt, chomping a cold cigar. “But . . . oh, fuck, Custis . . . oh,
ohhhh-ahhhh . . . 
!”

She buried her face in the sheets as he continued grinding away, ramming his cock in and out of her as he held her hips firmly in his large, brown hands.

When she came the first time, she did her best to muffle her love screams, though Longarm was certain that if the old bat downstairs were awake, she'd heard something. She probably wouldn't know what.

The second time he fucked the beautiful heiress, from the missionary position, he had to clamp a pillow over her head when she crested her passion, or she likely would not have only awakened his landlady but everyone else in the house as well as the entire neighborhood down to the stockyards.

Someone might have screamed for the Denver Police.

The lovers had a drink together, sitting up against the wall at the head of the bed, their limbs glued together by sweat. Longarm smoked his cigar. Cynthia took a couple of puffs and coughed, exhaling. They talked drowsily, and when he'd finished his drink and his cigar and was about to nod off, she crawled on top of him, kissed his cock alive once more.

He groaned his objection, but then she fucked him slowly, delicious with her large, firm breasts, raking her jutting nipples against his balls. What little seed he had left jetted across her tits and dribbled down her cleavage. She rolled onto her back and massaged it into her belly.

Later, Cynthia gave them each a cool, leisurely sponge bath, and then she dressed quietly, kissed him good-bye, turned out the lamp, and left.

Lying belly up and naked on the bed, Longarm was only dimly aware of the clomps of Olafsson's Percheron receding into the distance before he drifted into a deep, pleasantly exhausted sleep.

He had no idea how much time had passed before something grabbed his toe. Still asleep, he tried to pull his foot away, but whoever had ahold of his toe would not release it. He must have been dreaming.

He opened his eyes and lifted his head.

He gasped when he saw the two Indians standing at the foot of his bed.

Still ensconced in the warm, clinging wool of his slumber, a warning voice in Longarm's ear shouted,
“Attack!”

Semi-consciously, he was somewhere down in the Arizona or New Mexico desert and his current mission had run him up against a band of savage Apaches. He flung his right hand toward where he'd coiled his shell belt and holstered Colt Frontier .44, well within easy reach, but neither the gun nor the holster was there.

His hand slapped down on rumpled, slightly damp cotton sheets.

And then the wool of sleep lifted enough that he remembered where he was.

Heart still thudding, he turned to stare down over the long length of his muscular, naked body toward the two Indians still standing there—a man and a young woman. The man was slender, with a rough-hewn, craggy, brick-red face and hawk nose framed by long, black hair liberally stitched with gray. He wore a black, bullet-crowned hat and suspenders over a red calico shirt.

The girl couldn't have been much over twenty, and ravishing—an Apache version of Cynthia Larimer. She wore a shirt much like the man's under a doeskin dress. She wore her long, raven-black hair in braids bound with hawk feathers and rawhide. Her hair glistened with what Longarm, who'd frequented Apache country often, knew to be bear grease.

The man was grinning down at Longarm delightedly, brown eyes reflecting the dawn light pushing through a near window.

“Wait,” Longarm grunted, fisting sleep from his eyes and rising to his elbows.
“War Cloud?”

The Indian chuckled, showing large, off-white teeth between his thick, brown lips. Longarm looked at the Indian girl standing beside his old Indian friend, and he pulled a twisted sheet corner over his exposed crotch.

“What in
hell
?”

War Cloud chuckled. “Get your duds on, Custis—we got a trail to dust!”

“Huh?” Again, Longarm looked at the girl with sexily somber, near-black eyes standing to War Cloud's right.

War Cloud wrapped a proud arm around her shoulders. “Longarm, meet my daughter, Magpie. Magpie, meet my good friend Custis P. Long, the famous deputy United States marshal known as Longarm.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Longarm said skeptically.

The girl just stared at him.

Longarm said, “How in the hell . . . ?” He looked at the door flanking the Coyotero Apache father and daughter. They must have come in when Cynthia left, leaving the door unlocked. “How long you been here?”

“Since early last evening. We let ourselves in.”

“How?”

War Cloud grinned again proudly, squeezing the girl whose head came up to his shoulder. “Magpie's a sorceress. Some even call her a witch!” He whispered that last.

Longarm's mind was spinning. His sleep-drawn features acquired another incredulous cast as he said, “You mean . . . you been here . . .
all night . . . ?
”

“Yeah, we were sittin' in your kitchen over yonder,” War Cloud said, jerking his head back toward the doorway flanking Longarm's dresser. “When you and the lady came in, Magpie thought we should say somethin', but you two seemed to be havin' such a good time an' all”—War Cloud grinned again, widely enough to show a couple of missing back teeth—“that I didn't have the heart to interrupt. We just sat at your kitchen table, Magpie an' me, and ate some jerky and biscuits we had along for the trip. Woulda made coffee, but I didn't find nothin' food-wise but some moldy bread in there.”

As Longarm managed to wrap his mind around that War Cloud and his daughter had been in his flat since well before and then well after Longarm and Cynthia had arrived, his lower jaw slowly sagged toward his naked chest. “You mean . . . you heard . . . ?”

“Oh, and
saw
,” War Cloud said. “I couldn't help but sneak a peek a time or two. Boy, you an' that purty white lady were really goin' at it, Custis! You still got it—don't you, you old dog!”

Jaw hanging, Longarm just gaped at War Cloud, sliding his shocked, horrified gaze between the old Apache scout and his daughter.

“I do apologize, Custis. I know it weren't officially right. And between bouts I thought we should say somethin', but you two seemed to be havin' so much fun even when you weren't throwin' the blocks to each other, I figured it was a special night, and it was best if me an' Magpie just held our tongues and waited you out.”

The Apache shook his head again and grinned. “Boy, you two were sure goin' at it. I gotta tell you, old pal—I was impressed.”

War Cloud winked.

Longarm's cheeks and ears were scalding as he glanced at War Cloud's daughter. “Oh, don't worry about Magpie. I figured it was high time she learned about the ways of men an' women. I didn't quite know how I was gonna tell it to her—never been good with that sort of thing, and of course it's all up to me since her ma died so long ago—so I reckon I got you and that Cynthia lady to thank for clearing it all up for her.”

A little color rose in Magpie's tan cheeks, but her exotically beautiful features otherwise remained implacable. War Cloud chuckled.

“Hope you still have some strength left. Sounds like you an' me an' Magpie will be foggin' the trail for Arizona soon.”

Longarm's embarrassment was so keen that he couldn't hear much more of what the man was saying above the ringing in his ears. He looked around, wanting to rise, but then he looked at his all-but-naked body sprawled in the bed, and then at the girl, and said, “Uh . . . War Cloud—I reckon it don't matter much, since Magpie already done heard an' seen pretty much everything, but would you two mind headin' back out into the kitchen while I dress? Then maybe you can fill me in about what in the hell you're doin' here, and what all this is about—the three of us headin' to Arizona together . . .”

Honestly, he wasn't sure that his old friend hadn't gone doughy in his thinker box. The last he'd heard, War Cloud had been traveling around the country with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show. Longarm hadn't seen the man in a good ten years. And now old War Cloud shows up in Longarm's living quarters at the rooming house . . . with his
daughter
 . . . in the middle of the
night
while Longarm's burying his piston in the princess of Denver!

Longarm crawled out of bed and splashed water in the bowl atop his washstand. He glanced toward the doorway beyond which War Cloud was apparently now sitting at Longarm's kitchen table with Magpie. Longarm shook his head and only vaguely noted the gradual diminishment of the burn of embarrassment in his cheeks and ears.

When he'd bathed, he dressed in his customary working gear—chambray shirt, fawn-colored vest, skintight whipcord trousers, and brown wool frock coat. He set his snuff-brown, low-crowned, flat-brimmed hat on his head, bit the tip off a three-for-a-nickel cheroot, and said through the kitchen door, “All right—I'm decent enough, I reckon, War Cloud. I bet you and Magpie are hungry. What do you say we go out and rustle us up some huevos rancheros?”

 • • • 

Longarm led the War Clouds down the outside steps of his flat, and in the milky dawn light he saw that father and daughter were both armed to the teeth.

War Cloud himself wore two old Army Model .44s for the cross draw high on his hips and two cartridge belts. A bowie knife jutted from one of the mule-eared cavalry boots that was similar in style to Longarm's own. Over one shoulder he carried an ancient pair of saddlebags to which a flea-bitten bedroll was strapped. In his free hand, he carried the same kind of Spencer repeater he'd carried when he was scouting bronco Apaches for the army about ten to fifteen years ago, when Longarm had known him last.

Hell, it was probably the very same, old, single-shot, breech-loading long gun he'd used while scouting.

In the better light outside, Longarm saw that Magpie was even more comely than Longarm had at first thought. Her bust was high and full, belly flat and firm, hips nicely curved, her legs long and muscular beneath the doeskin skirt she wore to the tops of her deerskin moccasins, the high tops of which were folded down in the tradition of her people. There were several beaded designs on her dress, the hem of which was outlined with colored porcupine quills. Between the hem of the dress and the tops of her boots was an alluring two inches of bare, dark tan skin.

She, too, was armed for war . . . or at least a battle. She wore a .44 top-break Schofield in a holster high on her left hip and a light cartridge belt. On her opposite hip she wore a bone-handled bowie knife in a beaded sheath. She did not carry a rifle but held over her left shoulder a pair of saddlebags and blanket roll.

Longarm flagged down a coal wagon—he'd caught rides downtown with most of the coal and firewood haulers, at one time or another—and as he and his guests sat down on the open tailgate and the wagon lurched forward, War Cloud leaned toward Longarm and said, “My daughter, Magpie—she's a purty one, eh, Custis?”

War Cloud had been amongst white men so long that he spoke with only a barely detectable accent.

“About as comely a girl as I've seen, I reckon, War Cloud.” Custis cupped a match to the cheroot dangling from between his teeth.

“Tread carefully around her.”

Longarm glanced skeptically at his old friend, who sat to his left, Magpie on War Cloud's other side. They dangled their legs over the cobblestones as the Percherons in the coal wagon's traces clomped along in the quiet early morning. “Well, I did see she's damn near as well armed as you are.”

War Cloud shook his head. “Like Magpie herself, her mother, Seven Stars in the Sky, was a sorceress. You remember how she hated white men?”

Longarm did remember, and he nodded. Seven Stars had died from smallpox about a year after Longarm had first met War Cloud, down in Arizona Territory, when War Cloud had been chief of Apache scouts at Fort McHenry.

“Before Seven Stars died, she cast a spell to protect her daughter from the White Eyes.”

Longarm glanced around his old friend to look at the man's daughter sitting the tailgate stiffly, staring straight ahead at the tree-lined street sliding out from beneath the lurching, swaying wagon. “A spell?”

“A spell, that's right.” War Cloud glanced furtively at his daughter and then leaned closer to Longarm and pitched his voice softly. “Any white man who tries to fuck her—his cock will swell up, turn black, and fall off.”

“Oh, a spell, eh?” Longarm glanced once more at the man's beautiful daughter and gave a wry snort. “Well, thanks for tellin' me, War Cloud. I do appreciate it.”

War Cloud winked. “That's what friends are for, Custis.”

They got off on the corner of Colfax and Seventh Avenue, right in the heart of the downtown of the sprawling old cow town, just as the sun was splintering above the eastern plains and spreading a gold-bronze shine across the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains rising about fifteen miles to the west. It was still cool and fresh, but it being August, it would heat up fast.

It wasn't as dry here as it was where War Cloud hailed from originally, in the Southwest, but it was dry enough for Longarm, who this time of the year, when his nose and eyes turned dry as desert dust, always yearned for the silky air of his own home of West-by-God Virginia.

Longarm's habit was to breakfast on the free lunch counter at the Black Cat Saloon, which was in spitting distance of the Federal Building, which wouldn't open until eight o'clock. He was eager as hell to find out from Billy Vail, whom he was due to see at eight o'clock sharp, just what War Cloud's visit, apparently instigated by Billy himself, was all about.

But until then he'd catch up with his old pal War Cloud, ogle his pretty daughter, try to forget about what the girl's eyes and ears had taken in the night before, and enjoy a cold, refreshing beer with a Tom Moore chaser.