Sundance 12

by John Benteen

  “I’ve heard that, too. And there’s a crazy story that most of it goes to some lawyer back east in Washington—to lobby for the Indians.”

  Sundance knew he was talking too much. It was the whiskey. He couldn’t handle whiskey, that was the Indian in his blood. Which was why two drinks were his limit: more than that and he got ugly; by the fourth or fifth drink he’d hand-wrestle a grizzly bear or shoot up a town. Now, having drained his glass a second time, he shook his head when MacLaurin tried to refill it.

  “That story’s right,” he said. “There’s a big, powerful lobby against the Indians. Somebody’s got to oppose it. Me, I’m the one. So I do have a lawyer back east.”

  “Which takes a lot of money. Okay. I don’t give a damn about Indians one way or the other. What I do give a damn about is Bootstrap and—this sniper.” MacLaurin paused. “Sundance, how would you like to make some money—a lot of money?”

  Sundance whirled, looked at him.

  “It’s already posted,” MacLaurin said. “Ten thousand dollars for the man who brings in the Big Fifty Sniper. I’ve put up some, other townspeople part, and the ranchers and the miners have contributed. So far, we might as well have spit into the wind. But ... the money’s there, if you want to try for it.”

  “Ten thousand,” Sundance said. He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “It’s not enough.”

  “My God!” MacLaurin sat up straight. “It’s a fortune!”

  “Maybe to a shirt-tail rancher or a barkeep. Not the way I figure things.” Excitement was beating high in Sundance now. He needed money for the lawyer, needed it bad. The Nez Percés, the Poncas, so many Western Indians dispossessed, and he’d been bound for Arizona on the rumor of a sheep and cattle war that might pay his kind of fee. But maybe he didn’t have to go to Arizona; maybe he could pick up what he needed here. “Make it twenty, MacLaurin,” he said, “and I’ll bring you the sniper’s head on a silver platter.”

  MacLaurin’s jaw sagged. “Twenty thousand dollars.”

  “That’s it. Take it or leave it. You pay me five to bind the deal, and there’ll be a written contract.” His mouth twisted. “One that’ll stand up in a court of law. I find that white men are damned forgetful sometimes when it comes to dealing with a half-breed. Twenty thousand, five down, and I’ll kill the sniper.”

  “Sundance, we don’t have that kind of money ...”

  “You can raise it,” Sundance said. “Town, ranchers, miners, they put up an extra thirty-three hundred apiece. Split it up and they’ll hardly feel it.”

  “Good God. We figured ten thousand would bring in every bounty hunter in the West—” MacLaurin rubbed his face. “Until you came along, we were gonna pay it to Wolf Hargitt for taking Billy Mercer. It was due just after the hanging.”

  Sundance stiffened. Now he knew why Wolf had been his instant enemy. Then he shrugged. “Suit yourself. Pay Wolf or call in your bounty hunters. You’ll get a bunch of gunfighters, yeah: Colt artists. A Colt that’s accurate at forty yards ain’t much against a big fifty at a thousand. And they’ll be white men, huntin’ him the white man’s way. If he’s an Indian, they’ll never catch him. Me, I’ll catch him no matter what he is.”

  MacLaurin’s face hardened. “How soon?”

  “Two weeks,” Sundance said. “If I don’t, you get back the five and all bets are off. We’ll put it in the contract.”

  MacLaurin leaned back in the chair, looking at Sundance with half-hooded eyes. “Two weeks,” he said. “My God, if in just two weeks a man could walk the streets, ride out or into Bootstrap without worrying about getting a Sharps slug through him ... If this town could just lead a normal life again ... It would be worth that kind of money. All right, Sundance. You stick around. I’ll have to call a meeting of the selectmen and the businessmen. I’ll do it right away. You’ll have your answer by sundown.”

  “And the money,” Sundance said.

  “And the money.”

  “And one more thing,” Sundance said. “I want Billy Mercer, that kid you were about to hang. Turn him loose in my custody.”

  MacLaurin bit his lip. “That I don’t know about.”

  “He’s not the sniper. That was proved this afternoon.”

  “Maybe not. But he could be the sniper’s accomplice. He did have those two unfired Big Fifty rounds in his pockets—illegal rounds. And don’t let his looks fool you. He may look like an angel, but he’s a damned hydrophobia skunk, and greased lightning with his guns. I told you before, he’s killed two men since he hit Bootstrap three months ago, one of ’em Wolf Hargitt’s brother. The other hombres were supposed to be fast, but neither of ’em had a chance against Billy. The kid’s got no friends, he’s a pure loner, and flat mean. What you want him for?”

  “Mainly,” Sundance said, “to show me where he claims to have found those cartridges up in the Skulls. That’s a place to start. Second thing is, if he is mixed up with the sniper somehow, he might drop some information. He owes me somethin’ for savin’ him today, and if he knows anything, I’ve got a better chance of gettin’ it out of him with just the two of us alone, out in the hills, after maybe I’ve won his confidence, than anybody has questioning him in a cell and threatening him with a rope. Anyhow, he’s a lead, and I’ve got to have him.”

  “Well, that’s something else to be cleared with the selectmen. All right, Sundance. I’m for taking up your proposition and I’ll push it hard. Write out your contract—” he shoved pen and paper across the desk “ —and go have yourself a drink and come back here before the sun goes down and you’ll have your answer.”

  Chapter Three

  The town was gripped by fear. You could almost smell it in the air, Sundance thought, stepping out of MacLaurin’s office a half hour later. He himself paused close in to the cover of the building, looking up and down the dusty street. It was nearly deserted, and the few people abroad hugged cover as they moved back and forth, and when they crossed the street almost ran. For, after all, the street led straight out into the desert, and the sniper with the Big Fifty could be anywhere out there, ready to kill again. To stand exposed in the center of the street was to make yourself the target in a shooting gallery.

  Sundance thoughtfully rolled a cigarette. He’d never run into a situation like this before, and was, he knew, biting off a big chunk if the townspeople accepted his contract. If they didn’t, he’d ride on, despite the ten thousand dollars posted on the sniper’s head. That in itself was big money, yeah, but not big enough to tempt him to waste time here, because he knew all about rewards. It was easy to offer them, but once you’d earned one, damned hard to wring it out of the people who’d put it up. They could always find some way to weasel out or delay payment for months or years—especially when the money was due a half-breed. White men, Sundance knew all too well, had a double standard of honor: one for dealing with each other, another when it came to dealing with Mexicans, Negroes, Indians or half-breeds. But his contract would take care of that: he’d written enough to know how to make them foolproof.

  Meanwhile, waiting for the town’s decision, it wouldn’t hurt to invest an hour or two in a little legwork. He smiled faintly, dragging on the cigarette. That would be time enough to tap a source of information denied to every white man in Bootstrap—the Paiute Indians.

  Until the coming of the white man forty years ago, this had been Paiute country; but, unlike their relatives, the Shoshone and the Comanche, the Paiutes were neither prosperous nor particularly warlike. Desert Indians, mostly without horses, they had eked out a hard existence in a barren country, living in the main off of small game, jackrabbits, the marsh hens abundant in the reeds of some of the area’s brackish lakes, rats, prairie dogs, sage hens, just about anything that moved, along with roots, berries and nuts. Preyed on by fiercer tribes, they’d had no chance to gain any wealth, any margin of survival, and they were one of the few bands of Indians better off after the arrival of the white man than before; he gave them work—and they were good, reliable w
orkers—and saw that they were fed. Every Nevada town in the Great Basin had its quota of Paiute population, and Bootstrap, as MacLaurin had said and Sundance had already seen, was no exception. Out beyond the white man’s town, they had a village of their own, a couple of dozen of the rough thatched reed huts they called karnees near a small, reed-fringed brackish pond. Although they had readily adopted white man’s ways and some of the whites had taken Paiute wives, they were still Indians—desert Indians—and they would know things about what was happening out there in the wastelands or in the mountains that white men never dreamed of.

  The Paiutes had been too poor for Sundance’s father to spend time with trading, and he had no ties to them, as he had to most other Western tribes, but he spoke Shoshone and Comanche fluently, plus some Bannock, which would, along with their knowledge of English, allow him to converse freely with them. Now he ground out his cigarette, worked his way down the street to the general store, and there he bought three five-pound cans of Arbuckle coffee and five pounds of cheap, hard sugar-candy. Armed with these presents in a gunny sack, always mindful of the threat of the sniper, he edged through town until he reached its end. Five hundred yards away, across the open, lay the Indian village. Seemingly it was deserted: the sniper had killed Paiutes, too, and they were not making targets of themselves.

  Sundance halted, surveying the distant flats. The light was ebbing, but still good enough for shooting. Taking a deep breath, he began to run, not swiftly, but at a jog, zigzagging every few steps, but careful not to follow any pattern in his zigzags, sometimes even halting, back-pedaling quickly before he went on, and, of course, hunched low to make a smaller target.

  Five hundred yards—an easy run, nothing at a walk; knowing that Big Fifty might be tracking him in the hands of a master marksman, it seemed to Sundance an eternity of exposure. But, belly knotted, every muscle tense, he made it, dodging in among the low, teepee-shaped thatched wikiups, heading for one a little larger, better-built in the center of the village, undoubtedly belonging to the head man.

  Squatting before its low entrance, he called out in Shoshone: “One comes. A friend comes.”

  For a moment nothing stirred within. Then a rustle: the reed door of the hut swung open. A round, coppery face beneath a shock of coal-black hair appeared, keen, black eyes raking over him. “Who comes?”

  “A friend. Sundance.”

  A long minute passed. “Are you Shoshone?”

  “Cheyenne.”

  A light of recognition flared in the dark eyes. “That one. Yes. I see, now: the yellow hair. Come into my lodge. My name is Crippled Hand. I am head man of these people.”

  Sundance entered the dim hut, rank with the smells of crowded bodies, grease, and smoke. In one corner sat a woman weaving weepah—the fiber of a kind of milkweed—into rope to be used for making nets to catch mud hens and rabbits. Rabbit skin blankets and white man’s blankets were spread here and there on the dirt floor. Two young, naked boys sat by their mother.

  Crippled Hand was short, bulky, hard-muscled, dressed in white man’s hickory shirt and Levis. “Sundance,” he said. “The big Cheyenne with yellow hair and gray eyes. Your name and many stories have traveled even this far. My lodge is honored.”

  “Presence in your lodge honors me. I’ve brought these few poor gifts for your people,” Sundance said, handing over the bag. He had no doubt its contents would be scrupulously divided: the Paiutes were noted for their honesty.

  The two boys were delighted with the hard candy, and so was their mother. Indians had a sweet tooth. Even Crippled Hand—he said the white men called him Charlie Crip—sucked on a piece with pleasure. His left hand, Sundance noted, was minus three fingers, the remaining nubbins all the same length. Sundance did not ask the origin of the injury, but judged it came from an encounter with a white man’s sawmill.

  Flies swarmed in the karnee. Sundance said, “My time is short; excuse my lack of ceremony. You know what happened today.”

  “Yes,” Crippled Hand answered simply. “And now you have declared war on the sniper.” He smiled. “If the white men pay you enough money.”

  Even Sundance was surprised. Crippled Hand’s smile widened. “One of our people cleans up the jail. He was there when you talked with the Boss White Man. It is good you ask for so much money. We know where you spend it and for what. Now, you want us to help you.”

  “If you will.”

  “The sniper has killed many of our people.” Crippled Hand gestured. “You see, we do not go outside in shooting light. Like prairie dogs, we stay in our holes the live-long day. Our women must cook before daylight or after dark, our children must play then, and we must go to work before the sun rises and come home after it goes down. We are becoming owls. Ask what you will: we will do what we can.”

  Sundance said, “I only want to know what you know.”

  Crippled Hand said, “We know much that I am sure the white men have not told you. We know this: that the sniper is not an Indian, he is a white man. And he does not live in Bootstrap, he is not one of the people here. He lives up in the Skulls, like a wild animal, and he never spends the night in the same place twice. You see, we do not sit idle while our people are killed. We have tracked him, too.”

  “Have you seen him?”

  “No. But he is a white man because of the way he walks, toes turned out; the way he builds his fires. He is big, very big, as large as you. He is a good man in the desert and the mountains, as good as any Indian, and his sign is covered well enough to fool the white man, but, of course, not us. Then there is also the matter of the woman.”

  Sundance sat up straight. “The woman?”

  “Yes. Sometimes there is a woman with him, sometimes not. There’s a big spring up in the Skulls, far back in a hard place to reach. He knows about it and so does the woman. Once we found their tracks there—bare feet in the sand. Some were old, some were fresh. They bathe there together. But she is not with him always. We think it is a woman from the town here. Probably she carries him supplies. Anyhow, she is white; we can tell from the way she walks. And we have found traces—she covers her trail nearly as well as any Indian—where she seems to have ridden in from Bootstrap or be riding out to Bootstrap.”

  Sundance said, “There can’t be a lot of white women in Bootstrap.”

  “Twenty, thirty, mostly married to the white men. Some in their bars. If, Sundance, you could find that woman, she would lead you to the sniper.”

  Sundance said, “You have no idea who she is?”

  Crippled Hand took out tobacco, began to roll a cigarette. “I have an idea. It is a strange thing, and one I cannot explain. But I have a very good idea who she is, and I will tell you. Because it is not something any Indian can get the truth of without getting into bad trouble. But you’re different. Maybe you can. And when you do, then I think she will take you to the sniper.”

  “Then tell me,” Sundance said.

  “Yes.” Crippled Hand put the cigarette into his mouth. “Well, I believe she—”

  There was a sharp, slapping sound. Crippled Hand straightened up, eyes widening. His chest turned suddenly bright crimson as an enormous hole opened in it. Something plucked at the fringe on Sundance’s sleeve, chopped through the karnee wall behind him. Then, blood pouring from his mouth. Crippled Hand fell forward.

  Sundance sat frozen for only half a second. “Down!” he screamed, even as his ears caught the distant thunder of the Sharps rifle. He threw himself across the hut, knocked the woman over, slammed the children flat, covered them with his big body.

  Willow framing, tule thatch, sprayed the interior of the hut. Two, three, four slugs ripped through the karnee, inches above Sundance’s prone body. Beneath him, the woman and the children cried out in fear.

  Then it was over, silence. The children whimpered, the woman under Sundance tried to fight free. “My man—”

  “Wait,” Sundance said fiercely. He held her down for five minutes more. He could hear shouting in the village
, but he knew no one would come, no one would venture out.

  Finally he rolled away. She came up, wailing, crawled to the grotesquely slumped body of Crippled Hand. There was, of course, nothing she could do. The huge bullet had slammed in between his shoulder blades, blown his heart to pieces, ripped a hole as big as Sundance’s hand in his chest in exit. The karnee was splattered with his blood and flesh.

  With Crippled Hand’s head in her lap, she sat there wailing. The children also began to wail, not crying, but in the ritual chant of grief and death, comprehending. No one came. Fear of that mad gunman was total in the village; only when dark came would Paiutes come to help the widow.

  Sundance sat there with her until the sun went down behind the Skulls. He said not a word: she would not understand, in her mindless grief, even if he had spoken. Indeed, when she looked at him, he could see hatred and fear in her eyes, and he did not blame her. It was he, his presence, that had brought destruction to her lodge, her life. And the hatred he already felt for that mad sniper was reinforced, hard and hot as molten steel within him. He knew now, contract or no, that he would not leave Bootstrap or the Skulls until he had the man who had pulled the trigger on that Big Fifty. He knew, also, that he would receive no more help from the Paiutes: the only favor he could do them was to stay as far away from them as possible. The sniper, whoever he was, had singled him out, had seen him cross that flat, had held his fire, then laced the karnee with lead in hope of getting Sundance. That he might also kill women and children made no difference to him.

  A mad dog, Sundance thought. And, like all mad dogs, he must be exterminated. As the Paiutes crowded into the lodge, he slipped out. Behind him, in the woman’s pocket, he left a hundred dollars in gold. There would be more when he brought in the killer.

  The Paiutes were glad to see him go. Numbly, he strode across the desert toward the town, masked by darkness. Somewhere in that town, he thought, there was a woman. And somehow he would find her, and when he did, he would make her lead him to the killer if he had to cut her into little pieces, bit by bit, with the Bowie on his hip to get the truth from her. The madman’s woman was no better than the madman and deserved the same treatment he would get …