by John Benteen
Sundance did not blame her. Steelman and his Raiders had mutilated them in the worst, most vindictive Indian style. Sobbing, she looked away. “Your people?” he asked.
“My father and brother,” she managed, and then her words were lost in her retching.
“Okay, hold it up,” Dillon said. “Oakes, pull Sundance down and lash him to that wagon wheel.”
“Come on, Injun. I heard what you said about me bein’ stove up. I’ll show you how stove up I am.” Oakes dragged Sundance off the horse. Surprisingly powerful, he shoved him through the char of the wagon, pinned him up against the wheel.
“Tie arms and legs both. Spread his legs out, one to a spoke,” Dillon commanded. Sitting at an angle where he still had a clear field of fire, he kept his Colt trained on Sundance while Oakes did that. Finally the gray-haired, gimpy man straightened up. Sundance was firmly bound, wrists lashed to one spoke, legs spread and lashed to others. “Now,” Dillon said. “If that wheel’ll roll, turn it over.” Oakes laughed. “A pleasure.” He leaned against the wheel on its canted axle among the charred ruins of the wagon. Grunting, he managed to give it a full half-turn. As it revolved, so did Sundance, and when Oakes quit, he was head-down, hair almost in the ashes, blood running to his head.
“All right,” Dillon said. “Oakes, you do what you want to with the girl, but don’t take over fifteen minutes. That’s about how long it’ll take me to shoot Sundance apart piece by piece. Startin’ with the tenderest part, right there between his laigs. When you get through with her, cut her throat and hack her up to make it look like Injuns did it.”
“No,” the girl whimpered as Oakes pulled her from her horse. “Please.”
“Hush,” Oakes rasped. “It won’t do no good to yell.”
Dillon swung down, facing Sundance. Vision blurred, the half-breed could barely see him. But now, he knew, with Dillon’s attention on him and Oakes preoccupied with the girl, was his last and only chance to play his single trump card.
“Okay,” Dillon said, and the gun clicked back to full-cock. “You got any prayers, say ’em now.”
Growing dizzy, Sundance found breath somehow. Then he yelled a single Cheyenne word.
It was the one Eagle had been waiting for ever since he’d seen the other men slap his master around. A one-man horse, trained Indian style for war and hunting, but standing fast until that command released him. Until now, there’d been no fair chance, but—“Charge!” Sundance had yelled in Cheyenne, and like an enormous guard dog, Eagle responded instantly.
His scream of rage, his battle cry, was like a trumpet’s blast. Six-gun lined on Sundance, Dillon froze for a startled second, then whirled, eyes widening, jaw dropping, as he saw the big stallion charging for him, ears laid back, teeth bared. He shouted something, pulled the trigger of his Colt. But he was too late. Eagle already had him. Even as the gun went off, the horse slammed into him full tilt. The big head moved, snake-like. Dillon screamed as Eagle’s teeth clamped in his left shoulder. Then the stud was rearing, pawing, and the six-gun fell from Dillon’s hand as Eagle shook him like a child might shake a rag doll. The stud tossed his head and Dillon went flying, and Oakes, whirling, had jumped away from the girl, his own gun coming up, and Sundance yelled again, but Eagle had already pivoted. He charged straight for Oakes and Oakes fired and missed, rattled by the sight of more than half a ton of screaming, avenging fury. Then Oakes’s nerve broke, and absurdly, he tried to run. He had hardly taken two painful, gimpy steps before Eagle smashed into him. Oakes went down, and Eagle trumpeted again, reared and turned. Oakes let out a single muffled cry as big, iron shod hooves pile-drivered down. There was a dull popping sound, like that of a pumpkin dropped on hard ground, and Eagle reared again and turned and kicked out with hind feet at the bloody bundle on the ground. Then Sundance’s last, feeble yell checked him. Shivering and snorting, back arched, neck bowed, mouth foaming, he pranced back and forth.
“Get out of his way,” Sundance managed to call. “Ruth ... stand aside until he calms down.”
She did, scrambling awkwardly, hands still bound behind her back. Eagle whinnied, and gradually quieted down. Sundance, hung head downward as he was, had no range of vision, and in a minute or two, he knew, he would be losing consciousness.
“Ruth,” he called, and his own voice seemed to come from far away. “Ruth, you’ve got to help me. Come here.”
She scrambled toward him. “The wheel,” Sundance gasped. “Lean against the wheel. See if you can turn it. Got to get ... my head up.”
“I’ll try.” She put her back against the wheel, but she was barefooted and the coals around it were still hot, and she cried out in pain and could get no leverage. She jumped away. “Sundance, I can’t.”
Eagle, he thought. There had to be some way to hitch Eagle to the wheel. The rope on his saddle horn. If Ruth could just ...
But she could not, of course. Her hands were tied and Eagle probably wouldn’t let her near him anyhow. Sundance felt consciousness about to flicker out. And so, he thought, Dillon had won after all. He and Ruth would both die here, he strapped to the wheel, she alone with bound hands and burned feet.
He saw the world through a red haze turning purple. His head rang strangely. If he could only think. But his mind would not work, and his head was full of curious noises. Almost like human voices whooping, shouting. Almost like the cries of charging Sioux.
And then Ruth screamed. Eagle snorted, whinnied eagerly. “Sundance,” the girl cried. “Oh, God, it’s Indians—” Through that red haze he saw her turn and try to run and fall and lie still, exhausted, terrified. Then there was blood pounding in his ears—or was it the drum of hoof beats? Where was he anyhow? He had forgotten. Something about General Crook. Then, before him, beaded moccasins, a pair of coppery naked shins. Hands on his body. Voices in a language he understood. And then, just as they cut the ropes and pulled him off the wheel, the world went black.
Chapter Six
The big Appaloosa stallion stood ground-reined, motionless as a rock. When Sundance awakened, he found that they had laid him in the shade the horse’s massive body cast. Opening his eyes, he propped himself up on his elbows and found himself looking into a face even more coppery than his own, burnt almost black by the sun. Cleanly chiseled, handsome, it split into a white-toothed grin. “We-wong-ya-wah-che-pe,” it said. “Sundance.”
Sundance drew in a breath. “Tah-shon-ka weet-ko,” he whispered. “Crazy Horse. Ho-ko-lah. Hello, friend.”
The great war chief of the Oglala Sioux straightened up. “Are you all right?” He gave Sundance a hand as the half-breed scrambled to his feet, head clear now.
“I’m all right.” Sundance looked around. Nearly a dozen Sioux warriors, naked save for loincloths and moccasins, stood near their horses. Another half-dozen prowled around the burnt wagon and the corpses. It all came back to Sundance in a rush then. “The woman—”
“There.” Crazy Horse, young, tall, muscular, painted for hunting, not for war, gestured. Down at the creek, Ruth Norman was washing dirt and ashes from her face and arms, two more braves guarding her. “Now—” Crazy Horse swept out an arm. “Suppose you tell us what this is all about. Day before yesterday, we intercepted these whites trying to come into our reserve. Like a lot of others, they had the idea they could talk us into letting them settle there. And like most of the others, we turned them back. They were peaceful people, gave us no argument, so we promised that if they left, they’d not be harmed. But I decided to scout south and see if there were any more like them on the way, and maybe kill some meat at the same time. Then we heard shooting far off, and we rode fast toward it, but on the way we found this—the dead men, the burnt wagon, you tied upside down to the wagon wheel, the woman still alive, and the man in silly buckskins still alive as well—though it looks like your stud came near tearing his left arm off.”
“Dillon? He’s still alive?”
Crazy Horse pointed to a sprawled figure on the grass. “For the present. Shal
l we kill him?”
“No.” Then Sundance was overwhelmed with urgency. Warren, his troopers, the Grand Duke! “Crazy Horse, listen. There’s no time to explain right now. I need your help. It’s something important to the Sioux. How far’s your village camped from here?”
“Two days’ ride.”
“The girl, that wounded man. Send them there. Don’t let anyone harm them, but don’t let that man escape. Two men, three, ought to be enough to take them. The rest, including you, I need to ride with me.”
“Ride where?”
“To that shooting you heard. It’s not far. Five or six miles. There’s no time to waste. Will you do it?”
“For you, of course. Will there be fighting?”
“Sooner or later.”
“Against red men or white?”
“White,” snapped Sundance.
“Then good,” grinned Crazy Horse, and he whirled and snapped orders. Sundance ran to Dillon’s nearby horse and slipped the rifle from the saddle boot. A brave handed him Dillon’s pistol at Crazy Horse’s command and he thrust it into his holster. “Ruth!” He strode to the creek. The girl looked at him blankly, shock in her eyes.
“You’re going to be all right. These Sioux are friendly. They’re going to take you to their camp. They won’t harm you. Don’t try to fight them, don’t try to run. They’re taking Dillon too, as my prisoner. I’ll be back to you soon. Do you understand?”
She nodded slowly. “I’ll do as you say.”
“Good.” Sundance swung up on Eagle. That girl, he thought, had guts. Then he spun the big stallion, touched it with his heels. “Hoka-hey!” he shouted. “Let’s go!” With Crazy Horse at his stirrup, the other warriors strung out behind on spotted ponies, Sundance rode.
Even before he saw the smoke roiling up far ahead, he knew what they would find. Warren and three troopers stood not a chance in hell against three times their number of Steelman’s Raiders. All the same there was sickness in his belly when, on a hillcrest, he reined in, saw the two burning wagons down there, the blue dots on the prairie that were corpses.
“Isan hanska!” Crazy Horse exclaimed. “Long Knives!” He turned to Sundance. “What were soldiers doing here?”
“Let’s ride down,” said Sundance tautly. “Read the sign. Then I’ll explain.”
The sign was clear to read, as plain to Sundance and the Sioux as printed text. Steelman’s men had hit from both flanks, catching Warren and his troopers in a deadly vise. The horse soldiers had put up one hell of a fight, and the Raiders had not escaped unscathed; there were two dead horses and signs of bodies having been dragged. But the odds had simply been too long.
The troopers had not been mutilated. Warren had. Empty shells glittered in the grass around his half-naked body, riddled with half a dozen bullets, studded with arrows painted in the Sioux way. He had been scalped, and his genitals had been cut off and crammed in his mouth. His right hand still held an empty Colt, his left a saber. He had, until the last, obviously fought like a lion.
All the livestock, of course, was gone. And the wagons would have been looted of every scrap of value before they were burned.
Shurka, the Russian cook, who in obedience to his master had come so far to die in a strange land, lay face down near a burnt wagon, a bullet hole in his skull, two arrows between his shoulder blades.
Crazy Horse examined him, and straightened up, eyes glittering. He and Sundance had known one another since they were boys assigned to tend the horse herd, still too young for their name-dreaming. Sundance had no better friend among the Sioux, save, perhaps, for Sitting Bull of the Hunkpapa band, who was his godfather. But Crazy Horse’s face now was grim and taut, his eyes hard. “Now, my friend,” he said coldly, “I think you had better start talking.”
“Yes,” Sundance said. Steelman’s Raiders had an hour’s start. That was not important; an hour or a day made no difference. Hot pursuit, pitched battle, was not the answer. Sundance could have mounted an overwhelming Sioux attack against them, but they had Andre as a hostage, and they would surely kill him if he tried that. No, he would have to find some other way. Meanwhile, he would need the cooperation of the Sioux, and Crazy Horse, hard as it would be for him to comprehend, must know everything.
With the others gathered around, Sundance told them. They had never heard of Russia, had never seen the ocean, though they knew it existed, and in Sundance’s explanation the Russians became a great tribe, the Czar its principal chief, Grand Duke Andre a highly respected war chief. He talked of war and peace between the tribes, and Andre’s love of hunting, which they could understand.
“But why here?” Crazy Horse demanded. “This is our hunting grounds. The Wasichu, the whites, have plenty of land to hunt on. Look at what they took from us, from the Shyela, the Cheyennes; from all the other Ik-ceun.” That meant “common people,” their term for every Indian who was not a Sioux. “Why should Three-Stars send him here to hunt?”
Crazy Horse was no fool, and he would not rest until he had an explanation. So, voluntarily, Sundance told him about Andre’s yearning for the white buffalo.
“Chess-dee,” Crazy Horse snapped. “Shit! Who does he think he is? And you? What made you think even you could make us consent to a thing like that? If he had killed the pte-wakan, the sacred buffalo, we would have killed him—very slowly. And you too, I think, friend or not. That buffalo was sent us by the Great Spirit, Wakan-Tonka. It is our luck! Should we let someone kill our luck? Sundance, how could you even think of such a thing?”
“I had no idea of letting him kill the sacred buffalo. That’s why I was along, to make sure in the end that he never got the chance to do it.”
“Well,” said Crazy Horse, “if these bad white men have him he cannot do it, and there’s an end to it.”
“It’s not an end to it,” Sundance said. “I’ve got to save him.”
“He’s a fool, and our enemy. If you’re wise and our friend, you’ll forget him.”
“Crazy Horse, you don’t understand. Look, do you see what he’s done? Steelman’s killed men, white men, Long Knives. And he’s made it look as if the Sioux did it. He did that to throw Three-Stars off the track while he got Andre to a safe place. The Long Knives and the White Father will think the Sioux have Andre. They will start a war with you to get him back, to keep from having a bigger war with the big tribe called Russia. And it will be a different war from any before, because they will bring in all their soldiers. If you lose, they will take what’s left of your hunting grounds and kill your men and put your women and children on a reservation!”
Crazy Horse said, “Maybe. And maybe a war wouldn’t be so bad. We’ve got the white buffalo, and while we have him, nobody’s going to beat us. And we’re pretty tired of the Wasichu and the way they keep the treaty—you know that. They promised us goods and didn’t deliver. They promised to keep white men out and white men keep coming in. They are nibbling at us like a coyote nibbles at a wounded calf while it is still alive, but they will find we are no calf. We are full grown bulls with horns.”
“All right,” said Sundance. “I still have to get Andre back from Steelman’s Raiders. When I do I’ll take him to Laramie and you’ll never see him again. But it’s not a job for a big war party. I’ll have to steal him back. If you would give me two good men, they and I could hit the trail and—”
“No,” said Crazy Horse.
“All right,” Sundance said after a moment. “Then I’ll follow them alone.”
“You’ll not do that, either,” Crazy Horse said. “You’ll come with us, back to the main camp. What you’ve said is too hard for me to understand. It touches not just the Oglala, but all the Teton Sioux. This is not something for me or you to decide alone. You say it is a matter of peace or of a great war trail. This is something for the council of all the bands, and only one man can explain it all, and that man is you. You do nothing until you’ve spoken in the council and the council gives permission.”
Sundance stared a
t him, impatience rising. “Don’t you understand? There’s no time. That may take a week, two weeks! By then the trail will be stone cold! Steelman may have the Duke in Canada or even Mexico! Or something may happen to Andre! I’ve got to take the trail right now!”
The face of Crazy Horse was like something hewn from stone. “I said no. Sundance, you are my friend, I think. But you are half Wasichu, too, and you have served as guide to Wasichus who came into our land without permission to kill our sacred buffalo. I would hate to have to kill you. But you know that if it comes to that, I will. And, warrior that you are, you cannot stand against me and a dozen Oglala braves.”
“Crazy Horse—”
“No. You come with us, and we will have a council. Otherwise ... ” He hesitated. “I am your friend, but there are men here who do not know you. You mean nothing to them. I will give them orders and ride away for a little while. And that will be the end of it—which is what I don’t want.”
Sundance looked into the black eyes of his good friend. He read there the resolve, knew Crazy Horse’s thinking, the dilemma that was gripping him. And he knew too that Crazy Horse would do exactly what he said.
Sundance let out a long breath and nodded. “All right. This is Sioux land, and Sioux wishes must be respected. I’ll go back with you and speak at Council. But will you give me one warrior to carry a message to Three-Stars?”
“No. Not till the council approves.”
Sundance’s heart sank. But there was no help for it. And he could not blame the Sioux. They had been used and cheated and betrayed too many times, and were suspicious of everything connected with white men, even him. That was the hell of being a half-breed. Neither race ever, when the chips were down, trusted you completely. You were neither one thing nor the other, and you could not fit in completely anywhere. Which was why so many half-breeds drank themselves to death or turned rogue. Well he had done neither so far, and he would not do either. He said, “All right. Then will you help me bury the white dead in the white man’s way?”