Sundance 3

by John Benteen

  Fifty corralled wagons made a big ring, and the space inside was filled with a fury that outmatched anything Sundance had ever witnessed. Dozens of individual fights were going on, and lead and arrows whined and sang in deadly crisscross. White and red wrestled together and knife blades rose and fell. Sundance searched that turmoil, seeking one man, one man only, looking for that thick, bearlike figure. But there was no sign of Horne.

  A bullet slapped by his ear. He turned, saw a bearded hunter beneath a wagon, lining his rifle for a second shot. Sundance fired the Winchester from the hip, throwing himself sideways, missed; but so did the hunter. Both worked the levers of their guns, and Sundance was first to shoot again. The bearded face vanished in a burst of crimson.

  Sundance had no time to turn around. Suddenly an arm locked around his neck, and he was jerked backwards. “You damn red bastard!” a voice grated in his ear, and he saw the barrel of a clubbed six-gun coming down. He rolled his head, kicked up both feet, and the gun barrel struck his shoulder with paralyzing force. He seized it with his hand as his body came down, dragging the man who held him with him. They fell to the ground, the hunter underneath, arm still around Sundance’s throat, squeezing off all breath. While Sundance clung desperately to the gun barrel with his left hand, his right found his knife. He worked it from its sheath, stabbed blindly behind and under him, and there was a strange sound in his ear. All at once, the arm went slack. Sundance fought free, rolled, jerking the knife from flesh. As he came around, he struck with it again, deeply, finally, and the man who had taken him from behind lay still.

  Gagging, Sundance scrambled to his feet. He had dropped his rifle, did not bother even to look for it. He sheathed the knife, jerked his Colt from holster. He saw Crazy Horse locked in a struggle with a hunter who sought to get his gun barrel against the chief’s belly. Sundance ran up to the fighting pair, thrust the Colt’s barrel against the white man’s side and pulled the trigger. He did not even pause before he ran on.

  Now the struggle and turmoil was thinning, dying just a little. Sundance halted, sucked in a long breath, back against a wagon. There was no doubt now who was winning in that moonlit arena. His teeth bared in a grin of satisfaction. Now, if he could only find Horne, if only no one had beat him to the man.

  He saw it, that squat, bearlike figure. He caught just a glimpse of it as it dodged between two wagons, broke clear of the circle. He dropped to hands and knees, crawled beneath the wagon against which he leaned. Out there on the level, Horne ran with surprising swiftness for such a thick man. He carried a short-barreled weapon—the ten-gauge riot gun he had used to stave off Chessman back in Wichita. As Sundance came up on the outside of the wagon, Horne made a leap for the trailing jaw bridle of an Indian pony. The calico horse snorted, but Horne yanked its head around, fought his way to its back. It bucked once, but he stuck tight; when it came down, he reined it savagely, kicked it with his heels, and rode straight for the west wall of the valley, and Sundance knew where he was bound. He was headed for the Gatling gun, and with that ten-gauge and its eighteen buckshot, he had a chance of taking out all the half dozen Dog Soldiers around it with a single pull on those double triggers, if he got into position.

  Sundance grinned coldly, and the Blackfoot arrow scar on his cheek made that grin terrible. He ran to another riderless horse, for they were all around the wagon train, seized its jaw-rope. He hit its back without pausing, locked a heel around its withers, an arm around its neck.

  But Horne was riding hard, and his start was a long one. Not even Sundance could bring down a man on a running horse from the position in which he clung, with a pistol. Still, he thought, there was a chance of stopping Horne, making him turn, bringing him to combat. He waited until they were far enough from the turmoil at the wagons so his voice could be heard. Then, with every bit of lung power at his command, he bellowed: “Horne! It’s Jim Sundance behind you! I’m coming after you!”

  Horne jerked the horse to a skidding stop, whirled it around. His face was washed with moonlight as he stared at Sundance, thundering toward him behind the pony’s neck. Beneath his gray mustache, his mouth twisted in a grin, as he brought up the shotgun. “You!” he roared. “You bastard, you killed my boy! All right, let’s see if you can live through these blue whistlers!” And the right barrel of his shotgun spouted flame.

  At that distance, it was impossible for the scattershot to miss. Sundance’s horse screamed and fell, plowing forward as the blast of buckshot hit it in the flank. But Sundance had already jerked loose arm and foot, was on the ground behind it, and it took the full charge itself, shielding him. In the clear, as the pony hit the dirt, he ran a few steps, regained balance. He brought up the Colt, just as Horne, face twisted, swung around and lined the other barrel.

  If he missed with this one shot, Sundance knew, that was the end of it; he could not escape the nine buckshot in the left barrel. He sucked in breath, allowed himself a tick of time, a desperate, risky fraction of a second, to perfect his aim and then he pulled the trigger and threw himself face down.

  Lead screamed over him in a deadly rush. Sundance was on his feet again, up like a panther, the instant it had passed. Horne still sat his saddle, and he was fumbling in his shirt pocket, seeking another shell, the shotgun broken open. Sundance lined the Colt again, pulled the trigger.

  And nothing happened. The hammer came down with a dry click. He yanked it back again and shot again as Horne crammed a round in the shotgun’s breech, and still that dry sound, though there should have been a full cylinder. And then he knew. That damned mainspring; it had gone bad again!

  Horne grinned and snapped the shotgun closed and raised it. Sundance stood there helplessly: it was too far to throw either knife or axe, and there was no time anyhow; Horne had him cold and—

  Then Horne’s face changed. The shotgun barrel trembled, fell. The gun went off, its charge plowing into the dirt. And Horne sagged and then fell sideways, and as moonlight washed across his torso, Sundance saw the spreading blotch of red on his shirt-front where the single round from the Colt had driven Horne. Sundance’s first shot had hit him, but the bearlike man had kept on ’til now.

  Slowly, like a great tree cut and toppling, Horne pitched from the saddle. Sundance’s paralysis broke; he drew his knife, ran forward. But when he stood over Horne, he saw that there was no need for any weapon.

  Horne’s dulling eyes stared into his. A trickle of blood ran from the corner of Horne’s mouth as the man spoke thickly. “Christ,” Horne whispered, “if only ... I had never heard ... of Dakota Territory … ”

  Then he died.

  Sundance straightened up. Trembling, he turned away. Horne’s pony stood nearby; Sundance caught it, mounted. He turned it toward the wagon train. The shooting had died there, now; and suddenly the prairie was very still, save for the snapping and snarling of the undaunted coyotes and wolves over the carcasses of the buffalo that had brought Horne to his death.

  Sundance walked the horse toward the wagons. As he neared them, a mounted man jumped a gap between them, rode toward him, red body glistening with sweat and blood.

  “Horne’s dead,” Sundance said, as Crazy Horse drew near.

  The Sioux chief nodded. His face was grave as he looked toward the wagon train. “So are a lot of others, red and white,” he said.

  “Yes,” Sundance said, thinking there would be more, many more, before all this was ended, thanks to Custer. But there was no help for that now. He rode on, and Crazy Horse fell in beside him, neither feeling any triumph in the aftermath of battle. Besides, there was still much work to do.

  Chapter Nine

  He was not far from Bismarck, Eagle loping on with tireless stride. By this time, Sundance thought, there should be answers there to his second set of wires and messages.

  Ahead, the plains rolled on endlessly, the horizon a wire-thin line beneath a scalding sky. Then Sundance reined in the appaloosa. All at once, that great vacant rim of the world was alive with riders. Their blue u
niforms stood out boldly against the lighter color of the sky.

  Sundance held Eagle tight-checked. Two companies of cavalry: and no use to run, they had seen him. Well, let them come. He wore white man’s clothes again, white man’s weapons; was half-white and a citizen of the United States.

  They came, all right, pouring toward him in two columns. In their lead, a figure in a buckskin shirt detached itself, galloped on ahead. Yellow hair, so much like Sundance’s own, streamed from beneath the non-regulation sombrero with the turned-up brim. As he and Sundance neared each other, Custer reined in.

  “Sundance,” he said.

  “Hello, Colonel.”

  “General,” Custer said harshly.

  “That’s a big detachment you’ve got there, Colonel.” Sundance kept the rifle across his saddle bow not quite, but almost trained on Custer’s belly. “Where you bound for?”

  Custer’s mouth twisted. “The Black Hills.”

  Sundance smiled slowly. “The orders finally came through.”

  “They came,” Custer rasped. “It’s been made clear to me that if I don’t keep the miners out, that Indian-lover from Arizona will come up to replace me. Sundance, you’re responsible— By God, I’ve been humiliated at the hands of the War Department and the Indian Bureau and someday you’re going to pay—” He broke off. “On the other hand, if any harm’s come to Horne, I don’t think the public will take it lying down.”

  Sundance looked at him innocently. “Horne? Who’s he?”

  Custer’s face went blank. “Now, wait a minute. If you and the Sioux have—”

  “Horne,” Sundance said. “Oh, yes. Well, I’ll tell you, Custer. I’m pretty sure you won’t find Horne anywhere in Dakota Territory. I guess I was misinformed about his intentions.”

  “Sundance, if there’s been a massacre ... I want to know where Horne is. He’s left Wichita long ago, and he hasn’t been in contact with me.” He hit his saddle pommel. “I want to know about him!”

  “Then ask the Badlands, Colonel,” Sundance said gravely. “Ask the Paha Sapa, and the east wind, the Buffalo Wind. Maybe they’ll tell you where he is. Me, I wouldn’t know.”

  They stared at one another a moment. Then Custer made a sound in his throat, turned his horse, rode back to his command. They changed direction; a bugle sounded the gallop and they pounded westward along the horizon.

  Sundance watched that blue line vanish in roiling dust. When it was gone, he touched Eagle with his heels, rode on.

  He had told Custer the truth. Only the Badlands, the Paha Sapa and the Buffalo Wind knew the fate of Horne.

  Not a hunter had been left alive. The Sioux loaded the bodies in the wagons, hitched up the frightened teams. The wagon train rolled westward, loaded with buffalo hides and corpses, a hundred mounted men wiping out its trail with their horses’ hooves. Behind it, nothing remained in the valley save the scavenger-gnawed bones of many buffalo; even the spent brass from the Gatling gun and the fight inside the corral had been carefully picked up.

  The Black Hills streams were full of quicksand. Crazy Horse had shown regret as Sundance, with a lariat around the Gatling gun, had yanked it into a bed of the stuff and they stood on the bank, watching it vanish. But he nodded. “You’re right. We only have a little ammunition. And if we keep it to use against the Army, the Army will bring up three or four to use against us. Better not to provoke them. Better that it vanish now.”

  Then the bodies followed the Gatling gun. After that, the wagon train rolled on to the Badlands, its passage still erased by following horses. In a remote canyon, the wagons were burnt; every wheel rim, nut and bolt was retrieved, loaded in the one wagon left. That one was taken to the Cheyenne River, where it vanished with its load in another bed of quicksand. Behind, in the Badlands, the Buffalo Wind blew, scattering ashes.

  When it was all done, Horne might never have existed, save for the horses and mules, their brands altered, added to the Dakota herd, the guns that armed their warriors, the hundreds of buffalo robes that filled their teepees—and the fifteen thousand in gold in Sundance’s saddlebags. Horne’s payroll for his hunters; and when Sundance reached Bismarck, it would go east to Washington. To that extent, at least, the buffalo that Horne had slaughtered here and on the Kansas prairies were not wholly wasted.

  Let Custer look for Horne, Sundance thought. He would find nothing. And meanwhile, he himself would not let up on his efforts to have the yellow-haired colonel recalled and replaced by the one man who might really help the Indians—General Crook.

  As he rode on, Sundance thought about Sitting Bull’s parting words. They had ridden with him as he left the Dakota camp—the medicine man, Gall, Crazy Horse, and Rain-in-the-Face.

  “We wish you would not leave us,” Crazy Horse said.

  “I have things to do.”

  “Stay,” said Gall. “Stay and take a Sioux woman. I have seven wives and I will divorce the youngest and give her to you. She is excellent, in all respects.”

  “Thank you,” Sundance said, “but I already have a woman with the Cheyennes.” He thought of Barbara Colfax, Two Roads Woman, who, taken captive by the Cheyennes, had decided to remain with them, even though Sundance could have returned her to civilization. She was with them now, somewhere along the Platte, and suddenly he was lonesome for her.

  “Then bring her and come back,” said Rain-in-the-Face.

  Before Sundance could answer, Sitting Bull spoke. “Sundance will come back. The Cheyennes will come and join us, too. I have dreamed it.”

  They looked at him, as their ponies walked along.

  “We have won a single battle,” he went on, “but a bigger one lies ahead. And when it comes Sundance will be in it, and the Cheyennes, too. And there will be another man, a soldier, with yellow hair. He will come back. The Gods will see to that.”

  “I hope so,” Sundance said.

  Then, five miles farther on, they left him. He shook hands all around with them. Sitting Eagle, he watched them wheel their horses. “Hoka-hey!” yelled Crazy Horse, and they put their mounts into a run. Sundance watched them go—the leaders of the Sioux —until they were out of sight and only a faint swirl of dust remained. Then he had turned Eagle and ridden on.

  Presently he reached Bismarck. There he read the answers to his wires.

  APACHES HERE ARE QUIET STOP PULLING ALL STRINGS POSSIBLE FOR COMMAND DEPARTMENT OF THE PLATTE CROOK

  The second one said:

  THANKS FOR YOUR ESTIMATE OF SITUATION STOP CUSTER’S ORDERS TO PREVENT WHITE ENCROACHMENT OF TREATY TERRITORY ARE FIRM STOP MADE CLEAR TO HIM THAT FULL PERFORMANCE EXPECTED OR HE WILL BE TRANSFERRED

  SHERIDAN

  The third was from his man in Washington, the lobbyist.

  BLACK HILLS GOLD ANNOUNCEMENT LIKE A THUNDERBOLT HERE STOP ALREADY MUCH AGITATION TO REPUDIATE TREATY AND THROW DAKOTA TERRITORY OPEN TO SETTLEMENT STOP IF YOU CAN FURNISH MORE FUNDS POSSIBLE TO STAVE THIS OFF FOR PRESENT STOP FULLY FIFTY THOUSAND REQUIRED

  Sundance’s mouth thinned. Fifty thousand. Well, he had sent twenty-one thousand of that: what he had won in Wichita and Horne’s payroll. Almost thirty thousand more. A tall order.

  But he would fill it somehow. He had to; there was no way out.

  He bought a new Colt to replace the defective gun, and he took great pains to assure himself that this one was in perfect order. It had to be; it was the tool with which he would earn the necessary money.

  When he had done that, he wasted no time in Bismarck. He mounted Eagle, rode south along a trail that, by the time he reached the Niobrara, already swarmed with prospectors. There was nothing he could do to turn them back; that was Custer’s duty.

  And so he kept on riding toward Cheyenne country, eager to rejoin the tribe along the Cimarron.

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  If you’ve enjoyed this book , read more by John Benteen:

  SUNDANCE

  1. Overkill

  2. Dead Man’s Canyon

  CUTLER

  1. The Wolf Pack

  2. The Gun Hawks

  FARGO

  1. Fargo

  2. Panama Gold

  3. Alaska Steel