Longarm and the War Clouds by Tabor Evans

end, behind a picket fence in badly need of fresh paint.
    â€œBrandy, eh?”
    Longarm heaved his travel-weary bones out of the chair and went inside his borrowed quarters. Sure enough, a bottle of brandy sat on the small pine desk opposite the bunk bed. Not just any brandy, either. Spanish brandy.
    Longarm popped the cork, sniffed.
    Expensive stuff. Nothing he’d ever tasted equaled his favored Tom Moore, but he wouldn’t turn down a bottle of Spanish brandy. The corporal had provided a goblet.
    Longarm filled the glass to the brim and spilled a little when thunder peeled, giving him a start. He corked the bottle and started to remove his string tie as he peered out one of the room’s two windows curtained with what appeared old cavalry tunics. Nothing went to waste on a remote cavalry outpost.
    The swollen purple clouds were nearly straight over the parade ground, dragging along a pale curtain of rain. As lightning flashed wickedly against the purple, anvil-shaped mass, thunder cracked sharply. Raindrops flecked against the sashed window.
    The desert rain tempered Longarm’s dread of the grim situation at hand. There was nothing quite as refreshing as rain in the desert—especially rain in the middle of an especially hot desert summer. And he had a hot bath and a bottle of brandy to go along with it.
    He got undressed and tossed his clothes onto the hide-bottom chair behind the desk, dropping his hat down on top of the pile. He coiled his cartridge belt around his holstered six-shooter, set that on the chair, and dragged the chair near the tub, so the gun would be in easy reach in case he needed it. A lawman never knew.
    He set his glass of brandy, soap, and brush on the floor near the tub and climbed into the steaming water, groaning in delight as his extra layer of skin, which consisted of over a week’s worth of trail grime, began to soften. He sank all the way down in the water, dunking his head, and came up blowing.
    Immediately, he climbed to his feet, lathered the brush that the corporal had provided, and began scrubbing in earnest to the storm’s raucous symphony, with lightning flashing in the windows.
    When he’d scraped the crud off every inch of his big, brawny frame and even dug some chunks of dirty wax out of his ears, he lifted the one remaining bucket of water, provided for rinsing, above his head. He froze, looked at the rain-splattered window right of the door.
    He’d seen something move in a corner of it. Probably only a tumbleweed blowing past in the wind. He glanced at his pistol, comforted by the nearness of the trusty popper.
    He poured the remaining bucket of water over his head.
    He dropped the bucket suddenly and, while the rinse water was still dribbling off his shoulders and down his chest, he reached over and grabbed his .44. Clicking the hammer back and aiming at the window on the left side of the door in which he’d glimpsed a face peering in at him from the lower right corner, he yelled, “Come on in out of the rain before I drill your peeping eyes through the glass!”
    The face had disappeared. Standing naked in the tub, soaked hair pasted against his forehead and still dribbling water into his eyes, he blinked each eye in turn as he yelled, “Come in and face me like a man, you chicken-livered son of a bitch!”
    He had no idea the peeper’s intentions, but it was best to assume the worst.
    Nothing except the rain moved in either window. There was no sound except the hammering moisture against the walls and ceiling and windows.
    The door latch clicked. The door opened slowly on its rusty hinges. A young, redheaded woman looked in, looking sheepish. The nubs of her fine cheeks were touched with red.
    She walked into the room holding a closed umbrella down low by her side, and then ran her eyes, green as amethysts, up and down the brawny frame of the man before her and quirked her lips in a devilish smile.
    â€œWell, isn’t