Sundance 15

by John Benteen

  Now the train was visible, trailing a plume of white smoke. Its whistle hooted again, loud and mournful.

  Ravenal doffed his hat. “Miss Baker, believe me, I know what you must have gone through with Jody. And I don’t blame you for wanting to shake North Platte dust from your pretty feet. Where are you bound for?”

  “Omaha.”

  “I think that’s an excellent destination, and I hope you find happiness there.” The train was chuffing into the station now. He turned to Sundance. “Jim, this has been a mess I never intended to get involved in. I’ll give Maynard a raking-over he won’t forget. And you still have my complete cooperation in anything you undertake. If you’re bound for McPherson, please convey my best regards to General Crook.”

  “I’ll do that,” Sundance said, as the train halted, hissing and spewing steam and smoke and cinders. “Now, I’d better see to getting Miss Baker on board, and then loading my horse.”

  “Good luck,” Ravenal said and put out his hand. After shaking it, Sundance turned away, picking up Claire’s suitcase. Almost immediately, he halted. Like every other man in the crowd, he stared goggle-eyed.

  The single passenger who disembarked was a woman, coppery red hair piled high on her head, beneath a hat of the latest fashion. Her beauty was stunning—huge green eyes, a cleanly chiseled profile, a skin so pale it seemed never to have felt the sun. Her carriage was imperious, as elegant as the clothes she wore, hugging a superb figure. A kind of hush fell over the crowd as, looking neither to one side nor the other, she watched the porter unload her baggage, then gestured to a waiting hack.

  Clair Baker also stared in awe. “Madge Benson,” she whispered.

  “Who’s Madge Benson?”

  “The biggest madam in Denver. She owns a house in New Julesburg, too, and she’s part owner of the Doves’ Nest here, where I worked. She comes to town about once a month.”

  “She’s a looker,” Sundance said. But by then, under the eyes of all the loafers, she had climbed into the carriage and driven off. “Let’s get you on the train,” he said. “The horse and I’ll ride in the baggage car as far as McPherson Station.”

  ~*~

  General Crook smiled wryly, sipping his drink in the commandant’s office which he had taken over at Fort McPherson. “Well, at least the boots helped.”

  “Twice,” Sundance said.

  “But so far you have made no real progress.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. The more I think about it, the more I keep remembering Maxton—Silent Enemy.” Sundance paced the room. “Only nobody ever seems to have seen anyone answering that description around North Platte. Not that that has anything to do with it—hell, he could live out on the plains like a lobo wolf and nobody would ever know he was there. But he would really have to be crazy to try it during this epidemic of rabies. Sooner or later he’d be bound to get bitten himself.”

  “All I know,” Crook said, “is that nobody here at the fort or in my department has ever heard of a man by those names or answering that description.”

  “And Ravenal,” Sundance said. “There’s something about him that doesn’t stack up, either. He’s a slick talker, and—”

  “And in my estimation, a good, reliable man,” Crook said. “One of those rare things these days, a reconstructed Rebel. Smart enough to know that if you can’t beat ’em, you join ’em. He may seem strange, but, my God—if you’d known how much he loved his wife and seen what that animal did to her ... put yourself in his place. You’d be strange, too, if someone did such a thing to Barbara.”

  “All the same, what the hell does he need all those bodyguards and muscle men for?”

  Crook smiled. “He has enemies, no doubt of that. He’s outslickered the Yankees at their own game—trading. You don’t bid successfully for as many government contracts as he has without getting people riled at you; and the fact that he’s an ex-Confederate soldier doesn’t help.” Crook sobered. “I can understand the bodyguards. Anyhow, he doesn’t tie in with what you’re here for. Except insofar as part of the bounty on the killer will come out of his pocket.”

  Sundance shrugged, picked up his glass and drained it.

  “Well, for the time being, let it rest. My next move’s to ride out and see the Cheyennes, get their side of the story. You say it’s Tall Calf’s band that’s borne the brunt of these killings.”

  “Right. And now they’ve all pulled out north, centered around the Red Cloud Agency on the headwaters of the White, above the Niobrara. Most of the Cheyennes have gathered in that district now; they’ll be hunting up in the unceded lands this summer—and they wanted to get clear of both the rabies epidemic and this mad dog killer. I just hope they’re not making medicine to hit the warpath. If they do, they’ll drag in the Teton Sioux, and there’ll be hell to pay.”

  “Well, I’ll find out soon,” Sundance said. “Tomorrow I strike out north. Maybe I can pick up some information about Silent Enemy from them—or from the Sioux.”

  Crook’s face went grave. “Just watch your hair. They’re as jumpy about anybody half white as the people in North Platte are about anybody half red. The reception you get may not be too pleasant.”

  Sundance’s mouth twisted. “When I can’t go home to my own people without being afraid, then the time will come to drop these buckskins, throw away my bow, and go to dry-farming.”

  “All the same, it’ll be a dangerous trip. Not just the Indians. The rabid animals.”

  Sundance shrugged.

  “Well,” he said, “I can’t help it. I have to risk it.”

  Chapter Four

  He rode northwest across a land that, once clear of the railroad, was a deserted vastness. Settlers had not yet begun to fill it up, and he encountered none of the usual wandering hunting parties of Indians. The biting sickness that had spread among the animals had made it a forbidden zone, a no-man’s-land. Twice he shot, with the rifle, from a safe distance, coyotes which were obviously infected with the disease. He made his camp and cooked his meals in the open, and he ate Army-issue food, not daring to kill and eat the game here. Then he would move on until at last he found a grove of cottonwoods in some stream bed, and there he would build a platform in a tree, where he could sleep without risk of being bitten in the night. As for the horse, there was nothing to do but let it take its chances on a picket rope near a fire. Each morning he would inspect it to see if it had taken even any minor wounds from a ferret, kit fox, badger or the like, but fortunately nothing attacked it. Presently, three days’ hard ride north of the Platte, he encountered a hunting party of half a dozen Brule Sioux, and then he relaxed, knowing he was out of the danger zone.

  He spoke the Lakota dialect as well as he did Cheyenne; his father had traded among and been respected by all the tribes from Canada to Mexico, and there were few Indian languages he could not get along in, few tribes that had not heard of him at least, if they did not know him well. The Burnt Thighs were glad to see him, reporting that the sickness had not reached this far and that the Shyela, the Cheyennes, were far north of the Red Cloud Agency on the river that bore their name. They had never heard of anyone answering the description of Silent Enemy, but the Cheyennes were aroused, as angry as a nest of yellow-jackets, by the wanton murder of many of their warriors by some unknown Wasichu, some white man, likely a Long-knife, a soldier. He ate their buffalo ribs and they drank his coffee; then he moved on, circling the agency and the Dakota badlands, and at last finding four bands of the tribe in camp on the upper South Fork of the Cheyenne River, in the lush country near the foothills of the Black Hills.

  It was like coming home; something moved within him at the sight of all those tipis in their concentric circles, of the big horse herds spread out up and down the stream. There was the smell of wood smoke and the incense perfume of burning sweet-grass, and for a little while, as he made reunion with the outlying guards and then rode on down into the valley, it was possible to believe that there were no railroads, no telegraph, no blue-clad soldiers, and
that nothing had changed since the old days. The only difference was that, as he entered camp, there was not the usual clamor of the dogs. The Cheyennes had killed them all and had not yet replaced them—and that was, for them, a great loss. Not only were the tribal dogs invaluable as guards, but as a source of food: fat young puppy was considered a real delicacy.

  His arrival caused much excitement and there were many greetings to be passed; it was a good two hours before he sat in the lodge of his old friend Tall Calf, with the peace and war chiefs of the four bands gathered in a circle. When they had smoked, Sundance got down to business.

  “All we know,” Tall Calf said, his rugged, weathered face grim beneath the graying hair, “was that they were our best warriors. And that, even riding alone, they could be taken by surprise is a thing to make you wonder. Yet some Long-knife, or some white man who’s been a Long-knife, did it. To speak honestly, Sundance, your name has been mentioned. You could have done it. You know all the Long-knife ways. But, of course, we knew it could not be you. You would not kill your own people. It had to be some white man.”

  He paused. “That, along with the biting sickness spreading across the land, has made all the People jumpy. There’s been talk that all of this coming at once is a punishment, that lately we’ve been too tame, too quiet, let ourselves be pushed around too much by the white men. The Sioux feel the same way, and if we join with them and our other allies—well, we could show the whites who really owns this country.”

  “You mean war, a big war.”

  “I mean that. And I can tell you, the next time we are on the North Platte and it happens, a lot of whites are going to lose their hair.”

  “A lot already have,” Sundance said, and told them about the murders.

  “Paugh!” Tall Calf snorted like an old bull buffalo. “Wind talk! We’ve not seen the bodies. It’s only lies, like all the rest, to cover up what they’ve done to us.” A murmur of assent went around the council.

  “I’ve seen the bodies—at least one.” Sundance told them about the murdered, mutilated deserter. The Indians listened with growing interest. “I tell you, it’s not wind talk. What it is, is somebody trying to set the People against the Long-knives and the Long-knives against the People. With Three-Stars in command on the Platte, there is still a chance for peace, a much better chance than there’s ever been before. That fool Custer has been called back East in disgrace with the Grandfather in Washington, and he was the worst of the Long-knife troublemakers. If you’ll give Crook half a chance, he’ll do his best for peace and to see that all the treaty terms are kept. But he needs time. Maybe there will be war. If it comes, I’ll not forget that I’m still a Dog Soldier. But peace will be much better. Now, I have a question. It’s the one I’ve ridden all this way to ask.”

  “Ask it,” Tall Calf said.

  “Do you remember five years ago at the Arrow Renewal Ceremony there was a member of the Shield Society—”

  “Silent Enemy.” Tall Calf’s mouth twisted. “The murderer who profaned the whole ceremony. Well, we dealt with him—”

  “Maybe not hard enough. You said a while ago that I was one man who could have murdered all those warriors. Well, he’s another. Like myself, he knows two ways of fighting—the Cheyenne, and the white. Unlike myself, he has a grudge against both sides, and a reason to kill people on both of them. I want to know if anyone’s ever seen or heard of him since then.”

  There was silence for a moment. Then Tall Calf shook his head. “Not since that day he left our camp, naked and beaten. He could have gone to another tribe and they would have taken him in, but he did not. He’s not among any of the tribes north of the Platte, or we’d have heard. Our guess is that he’s dead, and the wolves and coyotes have long since scattered his bones. No. In five years, there’s been no word of him. No one has seen him.”

  Sundance let out a breath. “Then I’ve had a long ride for nothing.”

  “Not for nothing.” Tall Calf stood up. “Because you can take back a message to your friend Three-Stars. You tell him that when the biting sickness among the animals is over and winter comes, we’ll be back down on the Platte—and if there are any more such killings, we’ll do to that town, North Platte, what we did to Julesburg. Remember?”

  Sundance remembered. Years before, the Cheyennes, in one fierce raid, had wiped the settlement of Julesburg off the map, burning every building. Since then, the whole town had been rebuilt in a new location. But it had been a shocking demonstration of the power of the Indians—and that power, like a coiled spring compressed ever tighter, still existed, was only waiting to be released. The Cheyennes—and the Sioux—had been shoved around, but they were still far from beaten.

  “I’ll tell him that. But it won’t be necessary. Whoever it is—Silent Enemy or someone else—will be dead long before then. Or I will.”

  Tall Calf looked at Sundance for a moment. His eyes glinted with sudden humor, and he smiled and laid a hand on the half-breed’s shoulder. “I don’t think it will be you,” he said. “Now, let’s call this council to an end and let the women feed us.”

  ~*~

  It was hard leaving the Cheyennes, but he had no time to waste, and he made the return journey south as quickly as possible, pushing the strong horse hard. On the way, there was a lot to think about—a lot of dead men killed slowly, horribly, and whether or not he was barking up the wrong tree. Maybe everyone else was right and he was wrong. Maybe Silent Enemy was long since dead, and it was some other maniac half-breed or even an old-time mountain man who knew the Indian style of fighting. More than that, Marsh Ravenal and the events in North Platte were tangled in his mind with the other problem; a whole lot did not ring true there. Anyhow, for the time being, there was only one thing to do—and he had to do it, no matter how great the danger. By the time be reached Fort McPherson again, his mind was made up to that.

  It was after sundown when the guards let him pass. As the tired horse plodded across the parade, it seemed to Sundance that a strange hush lay over the entire post. There was none of the usual sound of soldiers, after retreat, enjoying themselves riotously in the sutler’s store or loafing around the barracks, pitching horseshoes or staging wrestling matches for fun. A curious, silent depression hung over the place—and then, as he passed a long log building, the silence was broken by an eerie, screaming howl that made the horse prick its ears and snort and the short hair raise itself on the half-breed’s neck. It came again, that agonized, enraged, ululating wail, ending in a series of strange grunting rasps, and Sundance reined in his mount and swung down. That building was the hospital.

  The howling, not like anything animal or human he had ever heard before, continued as he entered. “Goddammit!” somebody yelled from a bed in the long ward, “can’t somebody shut him up? Why don’t somebody put a bullet between his eyes?”

  “At ease, Mercer,” a sharp voice roared, and as he entered the room full of beds, Sundance saw Dr. Schulz, the contract surgeon who carried the rank of captain, emerge from a smaller room at one end of the building. A powerful man in his mid-forties, the doctor himself looked pale and shaken. “There’s nothing I can do and you know it!” Schulz yelled at the whole ward. “Nothing anybody can do! Nature just has to take its course!” His voice was almost drowned by another of those terrible wails.

  “Sundance.” The doctor saw him then. “You’re back, eh?”

  “I’m back. What in God’s name—?” He jerked his head toward the door of the little room, as another howl ended in those rasping grunts.

  Schulz shook his head. “You want to know, eh? All right, come with me.” He grabbed Sundance’s arm, led him to that door, flung it open. The half-breed halted, staring.

  The man was strapped to the bed with a restraining sheet made from heavy canvas and double lashed. Nevertheless, his writhing body almost stretched the ropes as he tried to sit upright. His eyes bulged, his mouth drooled saliva, there was nothing human left in his face as he emitted another ululating scream.
Seeing the two men standing there, he redoubled his efforts to break the restraint, and Sundance heard the click of snapping teeth as the man bit empty air, like a dog or wolf. “God Almighty,” Sundance whispered.

  “There,” Schulz rasped. “Phelan—the first man bitten; a skunk got him in the face as he lay sleeping out on the prairie. That was weeks ago; now he’s in the last stages.” He looked at Sundance almost pleadingly. “Morphine has no effect on him whatsoever. He can’t eat, he can’t drink, and it’s dangerous for anyone to go near him; he’ll bite, exactly like a dog. Do the Indians have any cure?”

  “They have a cure,” Sundance said. He touched the knife at his belt. “This.”

  “Which I can’t use,” Schulz said bitterly. Phelan strained, howled, then made a senseless whimper in a throat nearly swollen shut. “I can’t put him out of his misery. I’ve sworn an oath to prolong his life, make him suffer every minute of it ... ” He rubbed his face. “I’ve seen men die in my lifetime, God knows, in just about every possible way. But to go like this—” He turned away and Sundance followed him from the room. Phelan’s howling was still loud and clear, even through the tightly closed door. “I’m sorry, men,” Schulz told the four soldiers in bed there. “You’ll just have to bear it. I can’t be much longer now.”

  Sundance thought of that mad wolf’s jaws closing on his boot. A few pounds more of pressure and he would have been inevitably condemned to the same terrible death. A shudder rippled down his spine. Then he straightened up as Crook entered the hospital.

  The General’s face was pale beneath its tan, but otherwise he seemed not to hear the dreadful wailing. There was something about the bearing of his tall, skinny frame that seemed to bring an air of reassurance into the ward. “Captain Schulz.” His voice was calm. “If you please, I should like to see you in your office. Jim, I’m glad you’re back. If you’ll wait a few minutes, I’ll be with you.”