Sundance 12

by John Benteen

  Once more Sundance glassed the wild and rugged country. Nothing ... He stroked the barrel of the Sharps. It was hot; so were the rocks all around him. He had built a reflector oven and put himself in its middle. But no help for that. Damn it, why didn’t Galax come? Why—? He slanted his gaze down the slope to the circled, sitting dead men. The light glinted on the coffee cup in the rigid hand of Horseshoe.

  And then, without warning, Horseshoe’s head exploded. Bone and brain made a gruesome spray, and Sundance said, “Ahhh!” The exclamation was drowned in the titanic thunder of the buffalo gun.

  He rolled, eyes scanning the mountain top ahead, saw nothing, twisted his head. The sound echoed and he could not tell from where it came. Another gun blast, and Reese’s body lurched forward, toppled grotesquely on its side. Sundance’s head and eyes moved frantically. And then, just as the gun went off a third time, he saw it, swirling in the clear, transparent air, the cloud of powder smoke from the strong black powder load a Big Fifty used.

  It roiled and hovered over a clutter of boulders on the same ridge a good eight hundred yards away, easily a thousand from the dead targets the gun had fired at. Smoothly, with no lost motion, Sundance went into action. He slammed the forked stick down in the pre-dug hole, laid the gun barrel in it for a rest. The vernier sight was flipped up, adjusted for the range. Sundance waited for the veil of smoke to clear.

  Then a gust of wind caught it, pushed it on. He could plainly see the rocks, now, like pebbles at this distance, but more than big enough to hide a man. The sniper with the Sharps was in their midst, but not a square inch of him was visible.

  That made no difference. Sundance aimed, fired.

  The Sharps kicked like a Missouri mule against his shoulder. Smoke obscured his vision for an instant as he worked the action, pitched the fired shell out, smoothly crammed a new one in. He could not tell where the bullet hit, nor hear its whine as it careened off of rock, but it had to have gone home somewhere in the boulders where the sniper lay. He aimed, fired again, and crammed in another round. Then he waited.

  There was a silence total and profound as the echoes of the shots clanged away and died in the mountain reaches. Sundance watched that nest of boulders. He had not seen the sniper crawl into it, but that had only been because his eyes had been elsewhere. It lay so, the rock-nest, on the high ground, that nobody could get out of it without his seeing. And so he had Galax trapped there, and the duel was ready to begin. The bait of the campfire smoke had brought the wolf to the trap, the bait of the corpses had betrayed his position, and from now on it would be pure marksmanship, combat skills, and—luck.

  The silence lingered. Sundance grinned wryly, imagining Galax’s astonishment as those rounds had slapped in around his head, like a challenge. He would recognize the sound of another Big Fifty, be looking, as Sundance had, for the smoke …

  And then he’d found it. Lead slammed into the rocks near the half-breed’s head, whined off with an ugly howling sound. The battle was joined, and Sundance body prone, legs spread, heels down, slammed another round into the boulders. He squinted his eyes against the drifting smoke. He waited.

  One, two, three—the marksman in the nest of boulders punched the rounds off with amazing speed and accuracy. His scope sight had picked out the details of Sundance’s hiding place, brought it up close, and he could even see the results of his shots. He spread the three rounds along the four-foot front of the rifle pit, and rock surged inward and lead screamed outward as the bullets hammered at the barricade. Sundance frowned. Galax had an awful lot of ammunition for a man so long alone in the hills, to be squandering it that way. Still, most buffalo hunters reloaded their own shells with a simple apparatus, and he might have brought a supply of black powder, lead, and Berdan primer caps up here in the mountains with him.

  Three minutes passed. The smoke around the sniper’s hiding place drifted clear. Then Sundance saw it, a patch of blue amidst the gray-brown of the rocks. Instantly, he fired.

  The tiny target, the marksman’s shirt or pants, vanished instantly. Sundance had no way of knowing whether he had scored a hit. Not even a scream could be heard at this range. He eased off his hat, slipped it on the stake used to drive the socket holes, raised it slowly, carefully.

  A Sharps slug whipped it off the stick, half its crown shot away. Sundance cursed. One chance and he had muffed it. A gust of wind not even noticeable here might have thrown the bullet off its course five, six, seven hundred yards beyond.

  All right, Sundance thought. Now it’s time to make it hot for you. And suddenly he turned into a shooting machine, aiming, firing, reloading, all in smooth, measured motions. Six, eight rounds he pumped off that way, lacing them straight into the rock nest. He fired not at any target, but at the slants and juts of rock, aiming deliberately at stone faces that would send lead ricocheting. He had the elevation over the sniper, who could not retaliate in the same way, and now, by God, he’d drive him out of there or let a glancing bullet kill him where he lay.

  It worked, then, and suddenly, as Sundance kept hosing rounds into the rocks, there was a flash of color, blue again, shirt and pants, and the body of a man spilled quickly over a boulder. The gun he held was like a stick at that distance. He fell behind the rock and disappeared. Sundance cursed, not knowing whether he had been hit or was trying to escape. With great breaths, he tried to blow the powder fog around his own position away, and he also fanned it with his hat. It cleared. Sundance waited, using his telescope to scan the boulders.

  He saw nothing. And he could do nothing but wait.

  Five minutes passed, ten. That had no meaning; the half-breed was not about to leave his shelter. The waiting game was one that two could play. Then he tensed, a flicker of motion catching his eye. Out there far, far along the ridge crest, a man got to his feet. Using cover cleverly, he had crawled that far; now, when he stood up, he was a full twelve hundred yards away, damned near a mile. In any other type of country he might not have been seen at all; here in this clear mountain air, he was not much bigger than an ant, but he was plainly visible—and then, arrogantly, defiantly, in full view, he was loping away, widening the range.

  Sundance saw then, with amazement, what he intended. From the ridge crest, almost two thousand yards, a solid mile at least, from where Sundance lay, a spire of eroded rock thrust up forty feet like a finger pointed to the sky. It was the only place on the entire line of the mountain where the sniper would have elevation enough to see Sundance and shoot down at him. Sundance had not used it for his own ambush for it was too far from the trap he had set, too naked of cover, its top level but not large enough for a man to stretch out there.

  Sundance cursed, lined the Sharps, fired— and, at that range, missed, for the sniper was zigzagging as he ran. He reloaded, lined the gun, took aim once more. But now the running man had nearly reached the pinnacle of rock. Sundance’s slug once more went wide.

  Galax, if that were who it was, had every reason for confidence now, as he slowed, halted at the pinnacle’s base, slung his own weapon. For anyone to hit him at that range, especially with iron sights, would be a miracle. Whereas he himself had a telescope and, once he gained the top of the spire, would have a clear field of fire at Sundance. It would be a fantastic shot even for a man with a scope sight, but clearly Galax was confident that once in place he could turn the tables, change the odds, and have Sundance at his mercy.

  And maybe he would, Sundance thought, belly knotting. With the telescope, his Juanita, which was as much a part of him as his own arms and legs, and his superb skill honed on the slaughter of literally thousands of living creatures, he might do it. Sundance rocked back in his shelter as Galax disappeared behind the column. Carefully, he adjusted the vernier sight for maximum range. He swabbed the barrel with water to clean and cool it. He bathed his own eyes with water, clearing them of dust, wiped away the moisture. Sliding home another round in the Big Fifty, he closed the breech. He did all this quickly, knowing it would take the sniper min
utes to reach the pinnacle’s top. He had time left to build a careful rest of rocks at his shelter’s front, adjust it to insure its steadiness. Lying prone, he checked the additional elevation this gave him: it was enough. He waited, eyes shielded from the glare, watching the pinnacle. He kept his body loose, lax, knowing that over taut muscles could cost him his aim—and thus his life. In his head he checked and double-checked his estimate of the range, the strong wind blowing across the ridge, now, raising swirling dust devils.

  And then it came—up there atop the pinnacle a flicker of motion, a tag of color. The sniper had reached the point, was crawling out. For a pair if seconds, no more, he would be exposed as he went up and over, from the side to the level.

  Yes, there it was—the torso of a man, clad in blue shirt, in full view for just an instant— at that range a target smaller than the eye of a squirrel in a high tree. Sundance took a deep breath, let it out. He brought the sight to bear, allowing for every factor, range, windage, the fact that he was shooting upward, bullet weight and powder load, and the sweet balance of the rifle seemed a part of himself as it swung into line. Then, when everything came together in his head, he gently squeezed the trigger.

  The Big Fifty roared, kicked back against his shoulder.

  There is a shooter’s instinct that tells him even before the bullet leaves the barrel whether he has scored or missed. Immediately Sundance was on his feet: he knew.

  And he saw it happen. Saw that toy figure lurch sideways convulsively. Saw it try to keep its grip, fail. Saw it swing out from the column and grab again and miss, and then, arms flailing fall, turning in mid-air. He even saw the puff of dust when it hit the ground, after a drop of forty feet. When that cleared, he saw it lying sprawled and motionless.

  Sundance’s mouth twisted in a wolfish grin. He had never made a shot like that before; likely he never would again. But one was all it took; and he did not pause for exultation. Already he was cramming a fresh round into the Sharps’ breech, jumping his rock barricade, running along the mountain crest. Instinctively, he kept the fallen man always in sight and was ready at any moment to go to cover.

  But the sprawled body did not move. Minutes later, when Sundance was only two hundred yards away, he halted, warily. But he could see now that the whole front of the once-blue shirt was a sodden mass of scarlet. After the combined shock of the big slug and the long drop, not even a grizzly or bull buffalo, if still alive, would have fight left in it.

  He loped on. And then he was standing over the fallen man, rifle pointed, and staring down into a face he had glimpsed only once, and that a full sixteen years before.

  But he recognized it, all right. And though the blood still welled from the wound in the shoulder just below the collarbone, and the man’s torso was oddly twisted, there was still life in the cold gray eyes staring upward at him—life and hatred, and amazement.

  “Galax,” Sundance said.

  The thin lips moved. “God damn you, Sundance,” Galax whispered. “You made that shot. Damn your soul, nobody could have made that shot … ” Blood poured from his mouth. “Except me,” he managed. He tried to rise, fell back. Beneath him, his Sharps, still slung, lay useless, its stock shattered by the impact. “Outshot me,” Galax said, in a voice of wonder. And then, as Sundance watched, he died.

  A moment passed while Sundance felt reaction, the morning’s tension passing from him. Jefferson Galax, killer of women and children, exterminator of the buffalo, murderer of Crippled Hand, stared sightless at the hard blue sky, and flies, coming from nowhere, crawled back and forth across his eyes.

  Sundance frowned. He should have felt tremendous satisfaction, but something had spoiled it and he did not know what. A loose end, not yet tied up, seemed dangling in his brain. He sought an answer, but it eluded him. Part of the tension, maybe, he told himself, and thought about what must be done next.

  He would need proof to collect the reward. Billy Mercer’s testimony, the shattered rifle— they were part of it, but there must be something else. Sundance knelt beside the corpse, seized its hair, and drew his belt-axe. Pulling on the hair, he raised the sharp-honed hatchet high and savagely brought it down.

  Chapter Eight

  Three hundred yards from the cleft of rocks, he halted and the shrill, gobbling triumphant cry of a Cheyenne Dog Soldier shattered the mountain silence.

  “Sundance?” Billy’s yell was high and thin, coming from the shelter.

  “It’s me!” he roared. “I’m coming in.” He loped forward, hung with gear, a grisly burden swinging from his hand. As he neared the entrance to the cleft, vultures rose from the bodies on the slope, wings beating heavily with a sound like rushing water. One, too gorged to take off, ran along the ground, vomited, then was airborne.

  Billy Mercer appeared in the cleft’s entrance, a leveled rifle in her hands. When she saw the half-breed, her taut body eased, she leaned the gun against the rock, ran forward. “Jim! Jim, you’re still alive! Thank God! I heard all the shooting.”

  And then she saw what he was carrying, stopped dead. “Oh, Christ,” she whispered.

  “I’m sorry,” Sundance said. “I couldn’t bring the whole body. I piled rocks over what was left. Billy, it can’t be helped, you’ve got to look at it for a minute. Is it Galax?”

  She stared, then turned away, face greenish. “Yes,” she said thickly. “It’s him. It’s Jeff.”

  Sundance guessed her feelings: she had once thought she loved this man, and he had made her feel, if only briefly, ecstasy. “Go inside, Billy,” he said gently. “And don’t come out again until I tell you.”

  She obeyed. Sundance entered the cleft, prowled through the rock rats’ gear until he found what he needed: a big canvas bag and their supply of salt. He went back outside. The vultures, bold, were swooping down again.

  Sundance’s hand moved, came up with his Colt. He fired four times, and as many of the big black birds dropped from the sky. Frightened, the others rose, circling high. Sundance reloaded and then went about what he had to do. It was not something he enjoyed, either, working the salt into the severed head of Jefferson Galax, but it was necessary if it were not to spoil and become unrecognizable in this heat. When he was finished, he stored the head in the canvas bag, dumped in the remainder of the salt around it, closed the bag tightly.

  There was other gruesome work to do. The vultures had already made things of horror out of the corpses Sundance had used for bait. He dragged them, one by one, up to the draw’s mouth, buried them as he had the others. Then he squandered a quarter of a canteen of water to scrub his hands.

  He brought the horses out of the cleft, let them crop what sparse foliage they could find. It seemed strange to walk around in broad daylight, erect, without fearing instant death from an unseen marksman. Still, he remained cautious. There could be other rock rats abroad.

  Billy, emerging into daylight, blinked, looked around, relieved that all the gruesome remains had been disposed of. Now Sundance told her in detail what had happened. When he had finished, she stared at the ground. “Well, he had it coming. I won’t mourn him. Jim, what do you aim to do now?”

  He shrugged. “Go back to Bootstrap. Turn in the head, claim the reward.”

  “And what about me?”

  Sundance looked at her, tipping back his hat. “Why, now the coast is clear for you to find the mine, stake your claim. Surely Galax never filed a legal claim … ”

  “No. But—” Her voice was bitter. “You make it sound a lot easier than it will be.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Look at it this way. Suppose it was a Paiute that had found that mine and tried to stake a claim on it. How long do you think white men would let him hold it?”

  Sundance was silent for a moment. “About as long as a snowball would last in hell,” he said finally.

  “Well, a woman doesn’t rank much higher than a Paiute,” she said bitterly. “I know where the mine is, yeah, I know how to stake the claim on it. But how long do you thin
k I’d be able to hold it against claim jumpers, rock rats like those you killed yesterday—all the silver-hungry wolves down there in Bootstrap and in every other town this side of the Rockies?”

  Before he could speak, she went on. “Sure, they don’t know I’m a woman. But they will when I file the claim. It’ll have to be filed under my right name or it won’t be legal. And then what? Oh, I can use pistols. But I can’t fight them all. And— This is crazy, the whole thing’s crazy. It’s supposed to be the moment I’ve been living for, my mother aimed my whole life toward. I’ve found the mine, the way’s clear to take it ... And yet, I’m not happy. I’m just scared. Scared sick.”

  Sundance looked at her a moment. Then, slowly, he nodded. What she had said was gospel. Finding the Lost Pistol was only half the battle. The other half would be in keeping it—and only a strong man could do that, not a girl raised in cow towns and mining camps, ignorant of legal matters, no matter how much like a man she bore herself, no matter how straight a shot she was. “All right, Billy,” he said. “Maybe I can help.”

  She straightened up, eyes widening. “Would you?”

  “If you trust me enough to let me. You’d have to show me the mine. I’d help you stake it out, properly and legally, file your claim the same way. And then I’ll help you sell it.”

  “Sell the Lost Pistol?”

  “There’s no other way you can handle it. If it’s as rich as you say it is, you can get a whopping price for it. Not as much as it might produce over a long period of time, but enough to make you rich and allow you to live like a lady—if that’s what you want—for the rest of your life.”

  “Live like a lady?” Billy’s eyes glistened with yearning. “I’ve never had a chance. If I only could, be what I really am—”