Sundance 20

by Peter McCurtin

  No hurry now, Sundance thought. No hurry at all.

  Out on the dry lake the last of the slavers was running and falling and getting up again. He got up after falling again and looked back at Sundance. The slaver fell again and got up again. He raised a rifle to his shoulder. The barrel of the rifle wavered this way and that. The first shot echoed out across the lake, but the bullet didn’t even come close. Then with a wild, despairing scream the hunted man emptied the rifle as fast as he could work the lever. Bullets whined like hornets, but Sundance kept coming. Then it was time to get it over with. The slaver had dropped the rifle and was grabbing at his belt gun when Sundance shouldered the Winchester and shot him through the heart. The man fell without a sound. Sundance rode in close and shot him in the head. He knew it was a wasted bullet, but it was something he felt like doing.

  After thumbing a fresh cartridge into the rifle, he rode back to the edge of the lake. Now there was nothing to do but wait.

  Seven

  ‘They’ll eat the horses,’ Silvestra said on the way back across the desert. ‘The Pimas have never kept horses, not having any use for them, so they will eat those of the slavers. First, there will be a big feast,

  then the rest of the horse meat will be salted and stored away in a deep cave. Some of the meat will be dried in the sun, cut in strips and dried just like any other meat.’

  It all sounded good to Sundance. ‘And you left no doubt about the bodies?’ he asked the big Indian.

  ‘None at all. They were already stripping the bodies when we left. The clothes were to be burned and the bodies left out for the buzzards. Nineteen bodies at one time—the buzzards will think it is Christmas.’

  ‘And the guns?’

  ‘Thrown down a crack in the rocks. It goes down hundreds of feet. No one will ever find them. The saddles were burned along with the clothes.’

  Jorge said, ‘And the whips, I burned the whips myself. Some of the whips still had dried blood on them. What I don’t understand, Sundance, is why you’re taking all this trouble to hide the fact that nineteen slavers were killed while trying to enslave a whole Pima village. I myself think it is news that should be spread far and wide. My message would be—if nineteen men are killed at a peaceful Pima village—’

  ‘It wouldn’t work the way you want it to,’ Sundance said. ‘Don’t forget most of the slavers were whites and Mexicans. That makes a difference. It’s all right for the whites and Mexicans to kill Indians, but an Indian isn’t supposed to fight back, even in defense of his fife or his home. If the story got out the state would be up in arms. They would call it a Pima uprising because few people know who the Pimas are, or where they have their villages. They would send soldiers in from the coast and destroy them even more completely than the slavers.’

  ‘It’s hard to believe,’ Jorge said.

  ‘It’s true,’ Silvestra said. ‘Sundance speaks the truth. In time the story will get out somehow, and that will be good for the Pimas. By then the bones of the slavers will be bone dry, pounded to dust between stones, scattered to the wind. Nothing will remain except the rumor. It will make the Pimas stronger than if they had gone to war.’

  After days of traveling they were over the worst part of the journey back to Las Piedras. With no one pressing them from behind, they were able to travel at a better pace. This time they had taken along extra canteens and dried fruit given to them by the Pimas. In three days, if nothing happened, they would be in Las Piedras.

  It was night and they were camped in a hollow that protected them from the windblown dust. There was no longer any reason to go without a fire. On the fire a coffee pot, taken from one of the slavers, steamed in the cold night air. Silvestra crushed his hat and used it to take the coffee pot off its bed of coals. The coffee was Mexican—black and scalding hot.

  Jorge chuckled over the rim of his tin cup. ‘Bannerman is going to be surprised when he hears I’m back. He’ll be even more surprised when those twenty-one men of his don’t show up with a load of Pima slaves. I’ve just had a thought that worries me. Suppose he sends out another large party to look for the missing men. If he does that the Pimas will be as badly off as they were.’

  Sundance was waiting for the coffee to cool. He set down the cup and put more dead wood on the fire. ‘That was a big expedition even for Bannerman,’ he said. ‘Now he doesn’t have many men left, but even if he did have the men he wouldn’t send them out into the desert. Bannerman is too smart for that. Besides, don’t forget he used to be a brigadier and a pretty good one, I’m told. When those men fail to turn up, say in a week from now, he’ll know something is wrong. Being a killer and a thief he’ll probably figure that he’s been double-crossed by his own men. He’ll figure they have decided to go into business for themselves. Fifty or sixty Pima captives at four or five hundred a head, more if they take them south. Silvestra says in the haciendas north of Mexico City a healthy captive, fetches as much as a thousand dollars.’

  ‘Especially if the captive is a young girl, and pretty,’ Silvestra said. ‘In the fancy burdels of Mexico City a pretty Indian girl—and the women of the Pimas are comely girls—would easily fetch, as you say, the sum of one thousand dollars. I am speaking now of the burdels for rich men who fancy very young girls, even children. The keeper of such a burdel would get his investment back in less than a month. And I have heard stories of very young girls sold to women of a certain kind. There is a name for them, but I do not know what it is. Naturally, they too are rich. They will pay an even higher price if the girl is to their liking.’

  Sundance said, ‘All that will work in our favor, at least for a while. Bannerman will think his slavers have gone south with the Pima captives. He’ll be too busy trying to track them down to bother with us. A man like Bannerman never learns to take a loss. He’s vicious but above all he’s greedy. No matter how much money or power he gets, it will never be enough.’

  Jorge said, ‘You sound as if you think he will be around for a long time.’

  ‘No, it was just a way of speaking. Bannerman will never give up so the only way is to kill him. I don’t know yet how that can be done, but it is the only way. He is well guarded. Colonel Almirante is on his payroll and, through the colonel, he has the protection of the Mexican Army. If we don’t kill Bannerman, we can expect to die at some point. Not now because he’ll be too busy trying to track down his lost expedition. It will take time to do that, but Colonel Almirante will be of much service. Army posts to the south will be instructed to watch for a large party of heavily armed men with Indian captives. Then day by day word will come back to Bannerman—no slavers, no Indians. When enough reports like that get back to him he will know what really happened to his men. That’s why we have to use what time we have, and use it well.’

  ‘Do you have a plan?’ Jorge asked. He finished the last of the coffee in the pot.

  ‘No, not yet,’ Sundance answered. ‘But we better come up with something before Bannerman gets to the truth.’

  Jorge asked, ‘How do you think it’ll be when we get back to town? I’m supposed to be halfway to Morelos.’

  ‘We better stick together,’ Sundance said. ‘I figure Bannerman will be too busy to bother with you for a while. Unless I’m wrong you’ll be unfinished business, something that has to be taken care of but not right away. Anyway, he doesn’t have the men to spread around.’

  Jorge lay down and rolled himself in his blanket. His face was turned away from the others. ‘Do you think we’re going to win, Sundance?’ he asked. ‘Late at night I sometimes think of what’s waiting for me, what I have to face before too long. I don’t want to go but I can face it if I know we’re going to win.’

  Sundance never lied and he refused to lie now even if it meant comfort to a dying friend. ‘We have a good chance,’ he said. ‘All we can give this fight is our best.’

  Two weeks after leaving Las Piedras they were back there. At a waterhole five miles from town they washed off the dust of travel. They sluiced
water over the horses and let them rest for half a day. Fingering his stubbly face, Jorge said, ‘I think I’ll grow a beard. I don’t know if I’ll be able to hack off this growth of barbed wire.’ Jorge had washed his face and slicked back his long black hair. He used a wet bandanna to wipe the dust from his hat and boots. ‘How do I look?’ he asked Sundance.

  Sundance smiled. ‘Like you’ve been for a ride in the country.’

  ‘That’s it,’ Jorge said. ‘I’ve been on a picnic.’

  Jorge turned his horse over to Silvestra when they came to the place, a small canyon, where the wagon and wagon horse were hidden. The wagon horse had been left to graze on a long rope, cared for by one of Silvestra’s friends while they’d been away.

  After they hitched up the wagon, Jorge climbed up on the seat. ‘Here’s where I go back to being a lawyer,’ he said, and picked up the reins.

  ‘I’ll ride in ahead of you,’ Sundance said. ‘If there is going to be trouble for you, I’d like to know about it. Come on in if I don’t ride out to stop you. Silvestra, you ride along with Jorge.’ The big Indian nodded. ‘You watch yourself too.’

  It was about noon when Sundance rode into Las Piedras. It was hot and quiet except for the cries of the street vendors. It was close to siesta time and the town was drowsy. A hot wind blew dust against the walls of the houses. A troop of cavalry trotted through town, heading north.

  Sundance crossed the plaza, then rode the stallion down the narrow street to where Jorge had his quarters. Loungers in doorways gave him curious looks though some of them had seen him before. There was no sign of any of Bannerman’s men. Sundance hitched his horse to an iron ring in the wall and went up to Jorge’s rooms. The door was open and he went in. The neighbors had been there. The furniture, such as it was, had been taken away, and so had the cook-stove and all the pots and pans.

  It would be about an hour before Jorge got to town, so Sundance used the time to ask at the hotel if there had been any more telegraph messages from General Crook. ‘No, nothing,’ the proprietor said uneasily. ‘You have not been in your room, Señor Sundance. You have paid for your fine room, but you have not been in it. If a message had come from your friend, the general, I would not have known where to find you. And if one should come now?’

  Sundance told the hotel keeper where he could be found, then went to the store kept by the German on the plaza. ‘You are my best customer,’ the German said.

  Jorge and Silvestra came riding in at fifteen minutes after one. News that the trouble-making lawyer was back ran through the town; siesta was forgotten. Men from the cantinas pushed out onto the sidewalk to gape at the sickly, mescal-soaked attorney who had dared to stand up to Lucas Bannerman. Sundance had stabled his horse and was standing in the plaza when Jorge’s wagon came into sight. Silvestra rode beside the wagon, a few feet behind Jorge. Jorge was enjoying himself a little too well, Sundance thought, but maybe he had earned it.

  There was more than a little of the actor in Jorge, for as he passed Sundance he doffed his hat and said in a loud voice, ‘How are you, Señor Sundance, and how has this fair city been during my absence?’

  Sundance couldn’t help smiling. ‘Everybody missed you,’ he said.

  A little later Jorge was not so cheerful; in fact, he was in a murderous rage. He paced the room kicking empty bean cans out of his way. Sundance and Silvestra waited for him to finish his tirade. That took a while.

  ‘Those dogs!’ he raged. ‘To steal a man’s cook stove!’

  Sundance smiled at Silvestra. ‘What’s the difference, Jorge? You never cooked anything anyway. All right, you made coffee, if you want to call it that.’

  But his smile faded when he saw the sweat beading on Jorge’s face. A few hours earlier he had looked all right—almost healthy—but now his face was drained of color. His skin looked dead and his hands shook. The wild rage over the stolen stove was just part of it.

  Sundance unrolled blankets and spread them on the floor. ‘You have to lie down,’ he said. ‘You have to rest. Silvestra will stay and I will get you a drink.’

  Jorge wiped his face with his sleeve. ‘I don’t want a drink and I’ll soon get all the rest I need. The sickness attacks me and I go a little crazy. It doesn’t last. It never lasts.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool,’ Sundance said. ‘Lie down and rest. I’ll get a bed in here and you can sleep.’

  Jorge refused to listen. ‘I am not a woman to be pampered,’ he said. ‘I didn’t fail you out there in the desert, did I? You thought—you too, Silvestra—you thought you would have to carry me on your back. But you were wrong. Admit you were wrong.’

  Sundance said he was glad to be wrong. ‘Jorge, if you need a drink I will go for a bottle. If a drink will help I’ll get it for you.’

  Jorge shook his head wearily. His eyes were still bright with the sickness and would finally kill him, but now he was calmer. ‘No drink,’ he said. ‘I worked too hard on that cure to start drinking again. I’m all right, I can get along without the mescal. Bannerman said my brain was rotted by mescal, but I will show him how wrong he was.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Sundance said. ‘You feel well enough to talk about Bannerman? What we should do next?’

  ‘You mean: have I stopped acting like a crazy man?’

  ‘Something like that. We bought some time out there on that mesa. How much is anybody’s guess. You still haven’t given up the idea of using the law to beat him, have you?’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘That last day coming back you didn’t talk at all. You mind telling me what you have in mind?’

  Jorge smiled and began to unpack the law books they had brought up from the wagon. ‘Not tonight. In the morning I’ll be ready to talk about it. Tonight I have much reading to do.’

  ‘All right,’ Sundance said, ‘but we better keep a watch on Bannerman’s rancheria. Could be he’ll move against us sooner than we think. We have to be ready for anything he can throw at us. Silvestra can stay here with you while I scout the country.’

  The big Indian picked up his rifle. ‘No,’ he said in his formal way, ‘you stay here and I will scout the rancheria. I have done it many times and know all the ways to get in and out without being seen. I will keep watch and report back what I have seen. With your permission, Sundance, that is the best way to do it.’

  ‘He’s right,’ Jorge said, taking one of the law books from the stack on the floor. Silvestra was at the door.

  ‘How long will you be gone?’ Sundance asked him.

  ‘Maybe a few days.’

  Sundance said, ‘Watch yourself all the time you’re out there. Bannerman will be in a killing mood when he figures out what happened to his men.’

  After Silvestra left Sundance bolted the door and checked the twin loads in the Greener shotgun. ‘Wake me if you hear anything—anything at all,’ he told Jorge. ‘I’m going to sleep for a while.’

  The tall halfbreed stretched out on the floor and was instantly asleep. During the night we woke up several times, but it was nothing more than Jorge getting up to stretch his legs. By the time the first light slanted through the windows, the lawyer was still writing rapidly on long yellow sheets of legal paper. Sundance looked out at the street, but it was silent and empty except for a starved mongrel pawing at something in the gutter.

  Jorge continued to write furiously while Sundance opened a can of peaches and drank some of the juice. ‘I think it will work,’ he said, throwing down his pen. His pants were spattered with ink. ‘It has to work.’

  ‘What?’ Sundance speared a peach slice with the point of his knife.

  Jorge’s dark eyes were excited but no longer feverish. ‘I think I’ve found a way to put Bannerman out of the slaving business. When I was out there in the desert I remembered an old law that nobody remembers any more. I wasn’t sure I was right, so I didn’t say anything. Now I’m sure. Some of the south-western tribes were Mexican nationals before the Mexican War. After the war all Mexican citizens wh
o remained in the territory taken by the United States automatically became American citizens. That means many of the captives Bannerman has been taking are United States citizens. Don’t you understand?’

  ‘I know what you’re telling me,’ Sundance said.

  ‘No! No! Listen to me,’ Jorge said impatiently, pounding his fist on one of the law books. ‘If some of the Indian captives are American citizens, they are entitled to the same protection as any other American citizen. Maybe the Indians don’t know about this old law, or have forgotten it, but I will prove it to be a fact of law. I will go into the courts, I will go to the Governor of Sonora, to President Diaz if I have to.’

  Sundance said, ‘I thought you tried all that?’

  ‘Ah, but now it’s different. This time the American government is involved. I will go to Washington if I have to. How can they ignore it?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be easy,’ Sundance agreed. ‘Even if Bannerman is tied in with the Indian Ring, he’d find it hard to get away with kidnaping American citizens. Where will you start first?’ Sundance was heartened by the look in his old friend’s eyes. It would be good if Jorge could die knowing that his life had been worth something. Other dying men might have found that small comfort, but Sundance knew how Jorge felt about it.

  ‘Yes, the courts,’ Jorge answered, ‘and I will write a strongly-worded letter to the governor at the same time.’ Sundance asked what the provincial judge was like. ‘If Bannerman has him on his payroll, your legal arguments will run into a stone wall.’

  Jorge didn’t think so and explained why. ‘Judge Mendoza is a mean and miserable old man. But that doesn’t say that he isn’t honest. The biggest drawback is he’s so old. I don’t know how old, maybe eighty-five. He’s almost deaf so everything has to be presented in writing because he can’t hear. But, in the end, I think he is a good and fair judge. I never heard otherwise. Oratory means nothing to him—you have to write it out and it has to be as clear and simple as you can make it.’