Sundance 6

by John Benteen

  “All right, Three Stars,” he said. “Tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll give it a try.”

  Crook’s face relaxed, his eyes shone, and his voice trembled a little with relief. “Thank you, Jim.”

  “Don’t thank me. You know why I’m doing it.” His voice roughened. “And I’ll warn you now. If in any way what I do backfires, if the Army betrays the Apaches again or breaks another promise to them then the next man who takes the bronco Apaches out just might be me. And if I ever do, God help anybody who comes after us!”

  Slowly, Crook nodded. “If such a thing should happen, that would be your privilege,” he said quietly. “What I want to do is keep it from happening.”

  “With that understood,” Sundance said, “let’s get down to business. You got any idea how I should go about this?”

  “Yes,” Crook said. “I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I think I have a plan.” And then he began to talk while Sundance listened, and it was late in the afternoon before he was through.

  Chapter Three

  Mining camps, Sundance thought, were all alike when they were booming: full of vultures. The scent of money drew them from every corner of the country. The miners themselves, who did the backbreaking work of wrenching the hidden wealth from hard rock, were tough enough; but the men and women who came to prey on them were tougher— gamblers, whores, pimps and gunfighters.

  Globe, in the high country next to the border of the vast San Carlos Reservation, was no exception to the rule. It was full of hardcases. In fact, there were more of them than usual, it seemed to Sundance as he rode down the main street of the little town. Not only were the mines around the town rich in silver and copper, there was the reservation itself. Sprawling over thousands of square miles, encompassing every sort of terrain Arizona had to offer, it was full of untapped, unexplored resources: fine rangeland, tall timber, maybe even a fortune in silver, copper and gold. Only one thing stood in the way of a new land rush into that great reserve: the Apaches. And now that, thanks to Geronimo, there was a chance of prying them loose, the drooling wolves had gathered.

  Sundance saw them on the street, or lounging on the porches of the saloons, gambling halls and stores: bearded, hard-eyed men wearing guns, stamped indelibly with the mark of violence. As he put Eagle, the big Appaloosa, down the center of the street, they looked back at him with guarded, curious eyes. They recognized one of their own kind in the tall, buckskinned, startling combination of white and Indian. The women spotted him, too—the painted harpies of the dancehalls and brothels, and he saw white faces peering over batwing doors or out of windows, felt the pressure of their eyes upon him. One or two called out from within the deadfalls, but he paid no attention to them. Instead, he rode straight to a squat log building that called itself a hotel.

  He was in luck; they had a room. Not much bigger than a closet, though, and it had been a long time since the bed sheets had been changed. Sundance paid the outrageous price in advance. Then he went back to the hitchrack where he’d tethered Eagle and unstrapped the saddle gear.

  There was a lot of it. In addition to his bedroll, two big panniers made of the thick hide of a buffalo bull were tied behind the cantle—one long and cylindrical, the other round and flat. Sundance lugged all that, plus his rifle, into the room, then turned the stallion into the corral behind the hotel and saw it was given a good feed of grain and hay. Then he went back to the little cubicle. He unrolled his blankets, spread them on the bed. Inside was stored a strange and colorful thing which he picked up, shook out carefully. When it was unfolded, it became a magnificent Cheyenne war bonnet of gleaming eagle feathers and beadwork and ermine. He held it up, looked at it with a kind of sad gravity. Each of those feathers he had earned the hard way in his days with the Cheyenne. War against the Blackfeet and Pawnee and Crow; horses stolen; enemies struck while still alive; enemies killed; even the killing of grizzlies more ferocious than any warrior—all those counted as coups for which the feathers had been awarded. Thus, each feather brought back its own memory of a time when the world had been limitless and fresh and free, of the era when the horse Indians ruled the plains.

  Sundance’s mouth twisted as he folded the bonnet carefully, wrapping it in a square of oilskin and storing it under the bed.

  After that Sundance sat down, picked up the long pannier, loosed its strings. He took from it a curved, unstrung bow of juniper, its ends tipped with notched buffalo horn. It was a weapon powerful enough to send an arrow three hundred yards or, at closer range, drive it clean through a charging bull— or a man. He was an expert with it. Now Sundance ran his fingers down its curves and along its string of woven sinew, found it sound and free from defect. Satisfied, he laid it aside and took out the quiver of arrows that went with it.

  The arrow-bag was made of panther skin, the long cattail still attached, and it was crammed with shafts feathered with the wing quills of buzzards, tipped with flint points that were barbed and long and razor sharp. For years, now, Indians had preferred steel arrowheads; so lately Sundance had to make his own heads of stone, painstakingly flaking each with a deer-antler tool. But, for a man in the fighting trade, the trouble was worth it. The advantage of a bow over a gun was that it made neither sound nor muzzle flash to betray its user’s hiding place. The stone points inflicted worse flesh wounds than the steel points, and had more shock and stopping power. Even now this ancient weapon, which was the first he’d ever learned to use, had its value in his business. Sundance was as careful with the bow and arrows as he was with his guns and ammunition.

  Sure that every shaft was straight and free of splits, he laid the arrows with the bow, then picked up the other bag—the round, flat one. When he had it open he withdrew his shield.

  It had been made a long time ago with much ceremony: a circle of tough bullhide stretched over a round frame of juniper, padded with grass, then covered with antelope skin and emblazoned with a Thunderbird emblem. Thunderbird shields were big medicine. This one, worn on the left arm, would stop an arrow or a musket ball, but was useless against modern ammunition. But that was not the point. The point was that it was sacred to a Cheyenne warrior in battle—it was his luck. And Sundance was Cheyenne enough to value it. When he held it up, the six scalps attached to its bottom dangled—three black tufts, the other three silky ... one brown, one red, one blond. For a moment, his face was like something chiseled from stone. Six long trails, all starting from the bodies of his murdered parents, he had followed to take these scalps.

  He put the shield back in the pannier. Then he stood up, stripped off his clothes, began to bathe himself with cold, mountain water from the big pitcher on the wash stand. If there was one thing a Cheyenne valued, it was his daily bath. The plains tribes had a tradition of bathing, even in the dead of winter. The stink of unwashed, white bodies common to every town was repellent to them.

  Naked, his body was an encyclopedia of scars. Like the feathers in his war bonnet, they were souvenirs of old fights: knife slashes, arrow blazes, bullet puckers. But the two largest scars, great masses of ugly tissue, were on his chest. Those had come from his first Sun Dance, the great religious ceremony of the tribe. He had just attained his manhood, done his dreaming, and part of the passage from childhood to warrior had been the self-sacrifice of the dance. They had slit the skin of each breast, run rawhide ropes through the slits; and, with a big buffalo skull tied to each rope, they had trailed behind him as he danced hour after hour. It had taken a long time and a lot of dancing before the rawhide had finally broken through his flesh and the ropes came free.

  After he’d washed, Sundance dressed in clean buckskin shirt and denim pants taken from his bedroll. Carefully, he cinched on his cartridge belts and weapons: gun, Bowie, hatchet. He drew the Colt, checked its loads, then returned it to its oiled holster. Then he pulled the Bowie—fourteen inches of razor-sharp steel, its hilt especially made to guard the user’s hand in close-in fighting. The few limbering passes he made with it were incredibly swif
t, and his hand was a blur when he sank it back in its beaded case. After that he hitched on the throwing axe, went out and locked the door, and strode through the tiny lobby to the street.

  It was late afternoon, and shadows were climbing up the mountains that ringed the town. The wooden sidewalk was full of noisy traffic—miners, riders from the outlying ranches, cavalrymen from the contingents stationed on the reservation; and, of course, the gamblers and pimps and shills who fattened off them. It was payday for the Army, and Globe would be howling tonight.

  Presently Sundance found the place he sought. Crook had chosen well, he told himself. It was a deadfall if he had ever seen one, made of adobe and bearing the sign: MOTHER LODE. From behind its swinging doors came the tinny jangle of a piano, the high-pitched laughter of women, the deep mumble of men’s voices and the clink of glasses. Sundance shoved through the doors, entered a long room dominated by a crowded bar. The place reeked of smoke, spilled whiskey, unwashed men and the cheap perfume of the half-dozen assorted girls and whores working the customers. All the tables were full, so he went to the bar and crowded in between two burly hard-rock men. Then he ordered a bottle and a glass. “Bourbon,” he told the hurrying barkeep. “Real bourbon. No snakehead stuff.”

  The man halted, staring at the coppery face. “Listen,” he began, “we don’t serve—” Then, either what he saw in Sundance’s eyes or the sight of the yellow hair made him break off. “All right,” he grunted. He turned, took a bottle and a glass from the bar, poured a drink. Sundance raised the glass to his mouth, sipped it. Then, suddenly, furiously, he threw the drink straight into the bartender’s face.

  “Damn you!” he roared, and instantly the place was quiet. “I told you bourbon! You think because I’m half Injun you can get away with serving me rot-gut?”

  The two miners edged away; the bartender stood there with jaw dropped, mopping his face with his apron.

  Sundance said, very loudly: “Bring me another bottle. And this time it better be the best whiskey in the house!”

  The man opened his mouth to protest. Sundance’s hand was on his gun butt. His eyes shuttled quickly to the mirror behind the bar, then to either side. Everyone was watching him, but nobody was buying chips. Good. That was exactly what he wanted.

  “The bourbon, friend,” he repeated coldly.

  The bartender, shaking, turned away, put out another bottle. Sundance stripped its seal with the nail of his left thumb, pulled the cork with his teeth, put the bottle neck in his mouth. His right hand was still on the gun. He threw back his head, drank long and deeply. Then he lowered the bottle

  “That’s better,” he snapped. “Next time, don’t try to cheat a man ’cause he’s got Injun blood in him, or you’ll think Geronimo’s got hold of you. Maybe it’s too bad he hasn’t already!”

  When he said that, the silence in the room was profound. Sundance looked around defiantly. He saw that a corner table had come vacant. Picking up both the bottle and the glass in his left hand, his right still close to the gun, he stalked over to it, raked out a chair with his foot, and sat down with his back against the wall. Then he slammed the bottle down on the table, looking around defiantly. The room remained absolutely silent, every eye fastened on him.

  Sundance grinned. “Well, what’s the matter with you scissorbills? Even the name Geronimo scares you, huh? Twenty Apache broncos got five thousand soldiers and every big, brave white man in the territory scared to death. Well, one of these days you might find yourselves shakin’ at another name. Sundance. Remember that—Jim Sundance! The day might come when you’ll hate it worse than you hate Geronimo!” He poured a big shot of whiskey, tossed it off. Then he sat there glaring at them, until one by one they turned away. Slowly, the silence was replaced by the muted murmuring of outraged voices. They had seen the way he wore his gun and the other weapons, and nobody wanted to make an issue of it.

  Now, he thought. Now comes the hard part. Already the two drinks were burning in his belly, one on top of the other, and his system craved more— and he was going to have to drink more. And yet, somehow, contrive to stay sober, or at least rational, until what had to happen happened.

  For him that would take some doing. There had been no exaggeration in his description of whiskey’s effects on him. It would take every ounce of will power and self control to sit there for the rest of the afternoon, drink steadily, and not yield in a blind rage to take the place apart—or get himself killed. But somehow he had to manage it.

  Sundance sat at the table a long time. Knowing a hardcase when they saw one, the customers gave him a wide berth. He did not rant at them anymore. They knew who he was now—that he was half Indian and that his sympathies were with Geronimo. That was all he had to establish.

  Once he managed to knock over the bottle and spill part of it; later, when that minor incident was forgotten, they would think he’d put that liquor in his belly. But he had a couple more drinks, too, and the appearance of being primed and ready to explode was no act; he was! After the third shot, a kind of red mist fogged his brain. By the fourth, he desired nothing more than combat. By sheer strength of will, though, he forced himself under control, waiting.

  Then, two hours after he’d entered the Mother Lode, it happened …

  When the swinging doors clashed, Sundance looked up, squinting. His heartbeat quickened as he saw the three men who had just entered, their images rippling through an alcoholic fog, but recognizable. He sat up straight, tensely, and laid both hands on the table before him.

  The newcomer in the lead of the trio paused just inside the door, sweeping the room with ice-blue eyes. He was white, six feet tall, in his mid-forties, built like something chopped out of hard wood with a dull axe, chest and shoulders massive beneath blue flannel shirt, legs like oaken pillars beneath tight jeans. His face was square, with a thick, dark mustache beneath a strong nose, his chin jutting like a piece of rock. He was unarmed, but the two Apache Indians who flanked him each had a Winchester cradled in their arms.

  Someone at the bar whispered a single word, audible in the hush that had fallen on the room. “Sieber.”

  Al Sieber, Chief of Apache scouts for the Department of Arizona, stood with booted feet planted wide apart, let those cold eyes come to rest on Sundance. His voice was guttural, tinged with a foreign accent. Sieber had come from Germany. “Martine,” he said. “Ki-e-ta. Stay here. Watch him.”

  Wordlessly, the Indians nodded. Chiricahuas, they wore cast-off Army clothes mixed with buckskin and dirty cotton, and their legs were encased in high Apache leggings. Short, barrel-chested, dark, they tilted their carbines forward in the general direction of the man at the table. Then Sieber came forward.

  “Sundance,” he said in his deep voice.

  “Hello, Sieber.” Sundance’s smile was like a wolf’s snarl, lips peeling back from white teeth.

  “What you doin’ in Arizona Territory? Crook warned you to stay away from here.”

  “But Crook don’t command here anymore.” The thickness of Sundance’s voice was genuine; he looked forward eagerly to what lay ahead.

  “It makes no difference,” Sieber growled, and every eye in the room was fastened on the two men. “Wherever you go, Injun trouble follows. And that we got enough of in Arizona Territory now!”

  “Too bad. But it ain’t my fault if Geronimo can run rings around the great Al Sieber. What’s the matter, Sieber? Your balls must be dryin’ up when twenty broncos can make a fool of you.”

  He heard, then, the indrawn breath of every man in the room; a great, expectant sigh. A kind of wild exultancy filled him, and he pressed it harder, this confrontation. “Anyhow, you’d starve to death if it wasn’t for Injun trouble, Sieber. After bein’ a general’s dog robber all your life, you don’t know how to do nothin’ else.” He laughed softly, contemptuously. “Don’t worry, though. I’ll see to it that business stays good for you.”

  Sieber’s square face flushed. “That’s enough, Sundance. I’m tellin’ you this one tim
e—no more. Don’t let the sun set on you in Globe. And don’t let nightfall tomorrow find you in Arizona!”

  “Well, now,” Sundance murmured. “You think you’re man enough to roust me?”

  “I’ll roust you,” Sieber said. His hand shot out, seized the bottle by its neck. “Ride.”

  Jim Sundance pushed back his chair. “Sieber, give me back that bottle.”

  Sieber stared at him a second, then laughed. He threw the bottle—hard. It crashed against the adobe wall, broke.

  “Ahh,” Sundance said, rising to full height. “You really want it, don’t you, Al?”

  “I want you out of Arizona. You know the Apaches too damned well. We don’t need you here stirrin’ up more bucks to jump the reservation. Either you ride, or—”

  “Or, what?” Sundance’s hand dropped to the butt of his gun.

  Sieber touched his own waist. “I’m not armed, Sundance.”

  “No, but your tame Apaches are. Go borrow a gun and—”

  “Slick,” Sieber said. “You ain’t got the nerve to meet me slick.”

  “Why.” Sundance grinned. He raised his hand. “Fists? Knuckle and skull? No holds barred? You think you can roust me that way, Sieber?” Then he reached for the buckle of his gun belt. “All right—”

  “Hold it!” A woman’s voice rang out loudly in the room, cold and confident. “Either one of you makes a move, I’ll scatter him all over the wall!”