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though all his bones had turned to jelly, then slammed onto the table behind him with a loud, crunching thud.
    Lowering his Colt, Longarm turned to rake his gaze across War Cloud to Magpie, who still crouched about five feet back in the same crouch as when she’d whipped the savage blade out of its scabbard and sent it careening into the third man’s head. Her jaws were hard, lips pursed, eyes sharp. Her cheeks were beautifully flushed.
    Slowly, she straightened. Longarm stared at her, his lower jaw hanging.
    She glanced at him, glanced at her father. War Cloud gave her an approving nod. Magpie strode forward, weaving around the tables. She leaped catlike onto the table on which the third man lie, his arms and legs hanging over the sides, glassy eyes staring at the ceiling.
    She stared down at the dead man and then reached down to wrap both hands around the bowie knife’s stout horn handle. She set her left moccasin against the man’s chest and used it for leverage as, with a loud grunt, she pulled the blade out of the man’s skull. It made a wet grinding, sucking sound.
    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?”
    â€œMagpie 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!”

Chapter 5
    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