by John Benteen
“So do I,” Jim Sundance said.
“You see what I mean?” Hickok went on, reaching for the bottle. “That pipsqueak’s bad medicine all the way around. He’s gonna get his fool self killed someday, and maybe a lot of people with him. Used to be a general, he’s back to light-colonel, he’s jest itchin’ to get them stars back, and he don’t care how. Well, I’ll be damned if I’ll die to get ’em for him. Jim, have another drink.”
“One more,” Sundance said. “That’s all.”
“Hell, I just drew my pay—”
“No,” Sundance said. “One more’s my limit.” His mouth twisted. “In a way, Custer was right, Bill. There’s enough Cheyenne in me so that too much booze drives me wild. Two drinks; that’s my limit. Especially since I’ve got business in Ellsworth.”
Hickok’s brows went up. “What kind of business?”
Sundance shrugged. “Don’t know yet.” And he sipped his whiskey.
Chapter Two
The work train was parked on a siding south of town. Eagle, the big appaloosa stallion, had never encountered a locomotive before, and well trained as he was, he was terrified when the black, puffing monster blew its whistle. Sundance easily rode out nearly five minutes of furious bucking and, when the horse was winded, forced it up close to the engine. Eagle shivered all over, laid back his ears; the train whistle blew again, and he tried to buck once more. But Sundance conquered him that time, too. He spent quite a while getting Eagle used to the locomotive. It was, he knew, with a kind of coldness inside himself, something the horse would have to become accustomed to.
After a few more whistle blasts, the stallion, whose intelligence Sundance put above that of most men he’d met, got the idea. Then Sundance rode him down the line of flat cars to the different sort of car parked at the end. It was like a house on wheels, and he looked at it curiously before he dismounted, leaving the stallion ground-reined, certain that the lesson had soaked in now. Then he went up the steps at the back, knocked at the glass-paneled door at the rear of the car.
It was swung open by a black servant in a white jacket who looked at Sundance dubiously. “Yes?”
“I’m here to see Mr. Colfax,” Sundance said. And he told his name.
The man ran his eyes up and down the tall frame, better than six feet in height, taking in the buckskin shirt, the cartridge belt, the Colt, the moccasins. Then he said, “I’ll see—”
But before he could turn from the door, a voice behind him said, “Sundance? Is that Sundance?”
Jim Sundance pushed through the door. Inside, he halted. He had never been in a private car before. It was astonishingly like a house, with red velvet curtains on the window and red velvet drapes partitioning it off into rooms. The man who shoved through the drapes was in his shirtsleeves. Perhaps fifty, maybe a little more, he was beefy, red-faced, yet muscular. “That’ll be all, Roger,” he told the servant and thrust out his hand. “Mr. Sundance, come in. I’m George Colfax. You’re right on time.”
“I always try to be,” Sundance said.
“So do I. And in this case, time is of the essence. Sit down; sit down and have a drink.”
“Maybe some coffee,” Sundance said. “I’ve already had a drink.” He pulled out a chair at the table in the center of the car, but before he could seat himself, a woman’s voice said, from behind the drapes, “George?” Then she emerged.
Sundance stared at her.
She was perhaps half Colfax’s age, tall and statuesque with chestnut hair piled high atop her head. Her skin was ivory white, her eyes pale sea green, her nose short and straight, her mouth full and red. Her dress had been made to emphasize the full swell of rich, round breasts. She halted just past the curtains and looked at Sundance, first with surprise, then with something else. As her eyes moved up and down his lean, saddle-hardened body, they lit, became lambent. Then she said, “George, this is Mr. Sundance?”
“Yes,” Colfax said. “Sundance, my wife, Irene.”
Sundance took off his hat. “Mrs. Colfax.” He took her hand. Her eyes would not leave his, and presently he drew his hand away, since she seemed reluctant to free herself from his grasp. He thought that Colfax had himself something to handle.
“Sit down, Sundance,” Colfax said. “My dear, will you join us?”
“Yes, I think I’d like to,” Irene Colfax murmured. When they were all seated around the table, Colfax gave orders to the servant. He poured brandy for husband and wife, brought Sundance a cup of black coffee. Meanwhile, Colfax had laid a big manila envelope on the table before him. He took papers from it, glanced over them.
“Jim Sundance,” he said. “You guided General Sherman last year on his tour of the Division of the Missouri. That’s how I got your name. In my time of trouble, I turned to General Sherman for advice.”
Sundance nodded. “Sherman and I get along. He knows his job.”
“So, apparently, do you. Let me see if I have this right. Your father was an Englishman, a black sheep at home, but of good family. He came out here as what they called a free trader back in the beaver days, liked the way the Indians lived, married a Cheyenne chief’s daughter and was adopted into the tribe.”
“Sherman wrote you all that?”
“Yes. As I understand it, your father traded not only with the Cheyennes, but with the other tribes. In your youth, you lived with almost all of them, from the Apaches to the Sioux, learned their customs and how to speak their languages. It says here that you are a Cheyenne Dog Soldier in good standing.”
“What’s a Dog Soldier?” Irene Colfax asked curiously.
“They’re one of the fighting societies of the Cheyennes,” Sundance said. “I grew up with the tribe, fought with ’em against the Crows, the Shoshones. I was a Dog Soldier.” He turned to Colfax. “Listen, my past is my business. When I was open with Sherman I didn’t mean for him to spread it around.”
“It seems to be pretty general knowledge,” Colfax said. “And when I hire a man, I always want to know what his qualifications are. Sundance wasn’t your father’s real name.”
“No. His Indian one. He was the first white man to go through the Sun Dance ceremony—that’s the biggest religious ceremony of the Plains Tribes. They gave him the name, and—”
“And ever since, he and you have concealed the real name to spare the family in England.”
Sundance shifted impatiently. “Listen, Colfax, get to the point. You’ve got a job needs doing and you sent for me, and I’ve come a long way.”
“All right,” Colfax said. “Yes, I’ve got a job. One for a professional fighting man. But a particular kind of man. One who can go up against whites or Indians, either one, with their own weapons if necessary. Sherman says you can do that; he’s never seen a quicker, better shot with a gun, and he’s watched you demonstrate the Cheyenne weapons, bow and lance and the like. You seem qualified for the job. It’s a tough one, but you look tough enough to handle it.”
Sundance’s mouth twisted. “Suppose you tell me what it is. Then I’ll tell you whether I think I’m tough enough to handle it and what it’s going to cost you.”
Colfax nodded. “Very well, Mr. Sundance. I want you to get my daughter back from the Cheyennes. Along with the hundred thousand in gold she had when they took her.”
Sundance looked at him. “Your daughter?”
“Yes, Barbara Colfax.” The man’s voice trembled slightly. “My daughter by my first wife, God rest her soul.” He slid something across the table. “Here’s a daguerreotype of her.”
Sundance picked up the photograph on tin. Even that poor likeness showed the girl as young, very pretty, blond. He said, “How in the hell did the Indians take her?”
“I didn’t want to let her go,” Colfax said, “but she insisted. And Irene, here, backed her up, and so I ... I never should have given my consent, but somebody had to look after the gold—”
“Back up, start over,” Sundance said.
“Well, yes. I’m in banking, Mr. Sundance.
You know about banking?”
“I’ve got one account in St. Louis, another in New Orleans,” Sundance said dryly. “I’m not a total savage, Mr. Colfax.”
“I didn’t mean to imply . . . Anyhow, good. Then you can understand.” A note of boastfulness crept into his voice. “I’m a rich man, Sundance, a very rich man. I got that way by being able to see opportunity before anybody else, always beat the competition to the punch, that’s my motto.” He sipped his brandy. “The railroads are going west, soon they’ll cover this country. This one, the Southern Pacific, is headed straight for Santa Fe, and when it gets there, the whole Southwest will boom. Banks will be needed, and capital, and the banker who gets there first with the money can make that money grow. All the other bankers in the East are sitting on their haunches waiting for the railroad to be finished before they move. Not me. When the tracks get there, my bank’ll be waiting for ‘em. Anyhow, to sum it up, I sent, in secret, one hundred thousand dollars in gold by wagon train from the end of track when it was here at Ellsworth to Santa Fe. And my daughter went with it.”
Sundance frowned. “For God’s sake, man, you sent a girl over the Santa Fe Trail with the Indians thick as fleas?”
“I told you, she insisted on going. Barbara’s very strong-willed, and she was bored with New York, wanting adventure ... It was necessary to disguise the fact that all that gold was being shipped, and I had to have someone I could trust to watch it. We distributed it carefully in her trunks and suitcases, in false bottoms, and she was the only one who knew it was there.”
Sundance shook his head in disgust. “All the same—”
“Wait a minute. I didn’t let her go unprotected. I hired an escort for her. Have you ever heard of a man named Tod Brackman?”
Sundance sat up straight. “I’ve heard of him. He’s a damned good plainsman and tops with a gun.”
“He and ten men, all professionals. I hired them to go along with the wagon train, which was an ordinary bull train hauling freight. It was slower, but under the circumstances, I thought it would be better and safer than stagecoach.” His face warped itself with regret, grief. “I was wrong.”
“What happened?”
“All I know is what Brackman wrote me and what the Army reported after it had investigated.” His voice faltered. “Mr. Sundance, a strong force of Southern Cheyennes hit the wagon train at a place called Cimarron Springs. They wiped out all the freighters, all of Brackman’s men. Only he survived—and when he came to, he’d been scalped. Apparently they took him for dead. Anyhow, he managed, after a terrible journey, to make Fort Union, and a patrol went out and verified it all. They . . . found bodies. But my daughter’s was not among them, although I almost wish it had been. Apparently the Indians took her with them, along with her trunks and”—there was even more anguish on his face now—“my gold.”
Sundance let out a long breath. “If she’s been taken by the Cheyennes, she’ll be all right. They won’t torture her—”
“It wasn’t torture I was thinking of,” Colfax said bitterly.
“If she’s minded her manners and done what they told her to, she’ll be living the same way any other Cheyenne woman lives,” Sundance said. “Of course, if it’s been any length of time, somebody may have married her now.”
“That’s what I mean,” Colfax almost wailed.
Sundance grinned thinly. “Maybe there are worse things than being married to an Indian,” he said. Then he was sober. “Did you talk to Brackman in person?”
“No. He wrote me a full report; so did the Army commandant at Fort Union. Brackman doesn’t know whose band it was; all he knows is that it was a lot of Cheyennes. Almost a hundred warriors; all armed with rifles. They hit so suddenly there was no chance to fight back. He himself was knocked unconscious by a glancing bullet; when he came to, they had scalped him. He bandaged his head and set out on foot for help. He must have had an awful time before he ran into a cavalry patrol.”
“Where’s Brackman now?”
“He was in Santa Fe for a while; now he’s in Julesburg, Colorado. And there’s been no trace of my daughter. Or the gold.”
“I see.” Sundance took out a thin black cigar, clamped it between white teeth and lit it. “And you want me to get her back, along with the money.”
Colfax knotted his hands together. “You must, Mr. Sundance! Barbara’s very dear to me! And that gold belongs to me, it’s mine, I want it back, too! You bring my daughter and the gold back to me, I’ll pay you five thousand dollars!”
Sundance laughed. “Will you, now?”
Colfax’s face reddened. “Five thousand dollars is a substantial sum. I daresay it’s more than an ordinary Army scout makes in ten years!”
Sundance grinned. “I’m not an ordinary Army scout, Mr. Colfax. That’s why you sent for me. I’m a specialist in getting white captives back from the Indians. Or, for that matter, Indian captives back from the whites,”
Colfax blinked. “Wait a minute. You work for the Indians, too?”
“I work for anybody that pays me, as long as it’s a job I can do—and as long as it won’t make things worse. You know, your daughter’s not the only girl ever taken captive out here. It works two ways. Or don’t you have any idea how many Indian children have been taken by the whites?”
“All the same, to work against your own race—” Colfax broke off. Irene chuckled softly. Sundance looked at the man contemptuously.
“I’m as much Indian as white, Mr. Colfax. And as much white as Indian. It’s not an easy situation to be in sometimes—but it’s one of the reasons my price is so high.” Then he said crisply, “I’ll take your job, Mr. Colfax, but my terms are this: Ten thousand dollars to find your daughter and bring her back. And twenty percent of whatever gold I can bring back to you.”
Colfax and his wife both sat up straight, gaping. Colfax’s face turned pale, and he sputtered. “Ten thousand dollars?”
“You said you were a very rich man. Surely your daughter ought to be worth that much to you, whether you get the gold back or not.”
“I—” Colfax shook his head. “I—”
“Suit yourself,” Sundance said. He shoved back his chair. “Maybe you can find somebody else willing to ride in among the Cheyennes and buy back a woman. That’s another thing, Mr. Colfax. I’ll need expenses. It may take five hundred or a thousand in presents to get your daughter back.”
Colfax opened and closed his mouth. Sundance was on his feet. Colfax whispered: “Wait.”
He stood up. “It’s outrageous, but . . . but there isn’t anyone else. The Army tried and got nowhere. And Sherman says if you can’t do it, no one can. All right. I’ll agree to your terms. Ten thousand for Barbara’s return, twenty percent of whatever gold you bring in. But . . . how will you do it?”
“That’s my business,” Sundance said. “Fine. I’m glad we’re agreed. I’ll bring a contract around for you to sign in a little while.”
Colfax stared. “A contract?”
Sundance’s lips curled around the cigar. “You’re a businessman, Mr. Colfax. So am I. And I never take on a job for a white man without a contract. Indians I can count on to keep their word. But some whites have a tendency to forget what they agreed on after the job’s done unless they’ve got a contract to remind ‘em.” He took the cigar from his mouth. “When you sign it, you pay me five thousand in advance and another thousand for expenses. I’ll account for the expenses, and if there are no results, you get the advance back. Agreed?”
“Of all the impudence!” Colfax exploded.
Irene Colfax laughed softly, huskily. “I think, my dear, you’ve met your match. You might as well agree.”
Colfax, face mottled, looked from her to Sundance, who stood impassive. Then he let out a long breath. “Very well,” he grated. “Bring around your damned contract and I’ll sign it and give you a check.”
“Cash,” Sundance said. “Hard cash. As a banker, Mr. Colfax, you ought to know that places to cash a check are da
mned few and far between out here. Six thousand in gold, and I’ll be back with the papers before sundown.” He turned to the woman. “Good day, Mrs. Colfax.”
She stared back at him with radiant eyes. “Good day, Mr. Sundance,” she whispered. Sundance nodded to Colfax, put on his hat, turned, went out, and mounted the waiting Eagle.
Hickok still occupied his table in the saloon. Deep into the bottle, now, he was carefully incurious as Sundance, having bought pen, ink, and paper, wrote out the contract. Only once did he venture comment: “I swear, Jim, that it is mighty purty handwritin’. It looks like one of them steel engravin’s.”
“When I was a kid, my old man made me practice it every night,” Sundance said, without looking up.
“You’ve got book learnin’, then.”
“He taught me all he knew.” Sundance blotted the sheets of paper, glanced at them, folded them carefully. He stood up. “Thanks for the use of the table, Bill.”
“Shore, Jim.” Something in Hickok’s voice brought Sundance’s head around.
Wild Bill was leaning back in the chair. “Jim, you want to keep your eyes peeled. You made a couple of bad enemies this afternoon—Custer and that dog-robber of his. Especially the sergeant—he does Custer’s dirty work.”
“Thanks,” Sundance said. “I’ll watch out for him.”
“You better do that. He won’t use no gun on you, but he don’t need to. I’ve seen that big Irish scutter kill two men with his fists this past three months.”
Sundance tucked the papers in his pocket. “Civilians?”
“No. Soldiers. That Seventh Cavalry’s a real hell-outfit. Custer’s runnin’ their tails ragged, and if a feller doesn’t shape up, he’s liable to have to deal with O’Malley. Or get flogged. Or stuck in a hole in the ground that Custer dug to use fer a jail, and left there. Hell, that regiment had forty men go over the hill last week on account of that kinda treatment. Anyhow, O’Malley deals out the discipline with them fists. Remember if he should come at you, he’s a killer.”