Sundance 10

by John Benteen

  “Aye.” McLaughlin nodded dourly. “He and his followers have been settled on the Grand River, forty miles south of my agency. There, in that rough country, the old man lives with his two wives and all his children and many Hunkpapa; and there he’s set up a permanent big tent, like a revival meeting tent in the East, and the Ghost Dancing goes on and on.” He paused. “He doesn’t believe in the Ghost Dance. He believes in the old Indian gods, Wakan Tonka and all the rest. But he believes that he’s still strong enough to rally the Sioux and drive the white men out. And he just might be right. With this Ghost Dance for a lever, he could gather five, six thousand fighting men from across the Dakotas; and when those rose up the Cheyennes here and in Montana, the Blackfeet, the Southern Cheyennes and the Arapahos and Kiowas, maybe even the Comanches—They’d all rise up. There’d be fifteen, twenty, thirty-thousand Indian fighting men riding again in the west, armed with Winchesters and out for blood; maybe when the time came, the Apaches would even go again and rake the Southwest ... If there is a big Indian war, it will be led by Sitting Bull and by no other, since Crazy Horse is dead.”

  “But you let him go on Ghost Dancing,” Miles said. “You haven’t checked him. Why haven’t you arrested him?”

  “Because,” McLaughlin answered briskly, “the time isn’t right. Damn it, General, you don’t arrest the most influential Indian in the West while warriors can still ride! You wait until winter’s settled in and all the tribes are frozen, immobile. Then you make your move!”

  “Sir, I disagree,” Miles said bluntly.

  “I don’t care what you do. Use force against the Bull before winter comes, things will blow wide open.”

  “I understand that,” Miles said. “And that’s my point. Sitting Bull has to be taken care of, and quietly. He has to go under his own power, remove himself from the scene. That’s why I’ve authorized Bill Cody to bring him in.”

  McLaughlin gaped. “You ... what? Buffalo Bill?”

  Miles nodded. “Before I left Chicago. Cody came to me there, having left his Wild West Show in winter quarters in Germany. Cody and Sitting Bull are old friends; the Bull traveled with Cody in his show for nearly two years, you know. Cody’s going down to the Grand River with my authority and a wagonload of presents, and he’s going to talk Sitting Bull into joining his show again. Bull got a taste of the highlife before, he was the toast of the East and Europe. Cody’s feeling—and mine—is that he can be lured quietly away from the Dakotas and that once he’s gone, the whole war faction will collapse.”

  McLaughlin, face twisted with rage, struck the table. “Buffalo Bill Cody’s nothing but an old, drunken fraud!”

  Sundance sprang up. “McLaughlin, you’re a fool! Cody came out here when he was twelve years old, startin’ out as a bullwhacker’s flunky! He’s freighted, trapped, prospected, ridden Pony Express, and he had two years of combat in the Civil War. Afterwards, he meat-hunted for the railroads, and that’s when he got his name. Since then, he’s scouted for the Army, and he’s the best scout they ever had. He holds the honorary title of Chief of Scouts for the United States Army and the Congressional Medal of Honor. Cody may be a lot of things, but I’ve known him a long time and he’s no fraud. When he gives his word on a thing, he keeps it. He’s no gunslinger, but he’s one of the best shots and riders I’ve ever seen—”

  “And he’s killed a lot of Indians,” McLaughlin said. “Yellow Hand, for instance—a Cheyenne. The first scalp for Custer, Cody claimed—”

  “That’s war. Indians don’t worry about what’s done fair in war. Cody’s straight, and General Miles is damned smart. Sitting Bull knows and likes him. Cody can talk the Bull into going East and that’ll pull the fuse out of the bomb ...”

  McLaughlin’s eyes were like two gray pebbles. “Mr. Sundance. General Miles. I have run my reservation with a strong hand since I came out to it. I have a hundred thoroughly loyal Indian police. They are perfectly capable of arresting Sitting Bull when I give the command. I’ll repeat what I said before. Sitting Bull’s my responsibility and I’ll deal with him.”

  “You will not, sir!” Miles snapped. “I’ve authorized Cody to take Sitting Bull into custody!”

  “Then I’ll go to the President himself to countermand that order! I’ll deal with Sitting Bull in my own way—”

  Sundance said, “Don’t be a fool, McLaughlin. This is your chance to pull the rug out from under the Hunkpapa.”

  McLaughlin swung on him, opened his mouth. Before he could speak, Sundance said, “But you don’t want that, do you? It’d be a feather in your hat to deal with Sitting Bull. Make you a big man in the Bureau of Indian Affairs ...”

  “Gentlemen,” Miles said. “This controversy will accomplish nothing. The fact remains, Cody will be at Standing Rock or Fort Yates day after tomorrow at the latest. And, under my orders, he will deal with Sitting Bull. If we can feed the Indians extra beef and get rid of the Bull immediately, then I think this whole war movement among the Sioux will collapse.”

  “Right,” Sundance said quickly.

  McLaughlin shook his head. “I,” he said, “run Standing Rock. You understand? I, James McLaughlin, run that reservation, and it’s going to run my way, Army or no. Yeah, the Army wants to take over the administration of all Indian affairs, now it sees its chance. But Standing Rock stays in civilian hands, my hands, and I promise you now that Cody won’t take in Sitting Bull.”

  “That remains to be seen,” Miles said heavily. “Well, to sum up. Mr. Fain is to furnish five hundred head of cattle in two weeks to Pine Ridge. Cody is to talk to Sitting Bull. We are to ring in the Sioux from every side with soldiers, but these troops are under orders not to fire unless fired upon. We are not here to start a war, but to prevent one. Colonel Forsyth. Are those orders clear so far as the Seventh Cavalry is concerned?”

  “Clear sir,” Forsyth said grudgingly. “But I must say, sir, the Seventh still has a score to settle—”

  “All scores are settled,” Miles rasped. “The Seventh is to obey orders like any other regiment. Then ... I will remove my headquarters to Rapid City. General Brooke will stay here at Pine Ridge and command all troops in the field in the Dakotas ... Any questions?”

  “Yeah,” Sundance said. “When do I get my weapons back?”

  Miles grinned. “You, sir, and Mr. Hoffman may have your weapons back after a three hours cooling-off period. Come to Mr. Royer’s quarters then and you shall have your guns.”

  Fain stood up. “All right, General. This ends it where I’m concerned, I’ll have five hundred head here in two weeks at fifty-five a head. But if any other cattle from anybody else have set foot on this reservation, I’ll turn those steers around and raise such a stink in Washington an Injun war’ll be the least of your problems.” He stalked out, a tall old man in shotgun chaps, bit spurs jingling on his boot heels.

  There was a scraping back of chairs as everyone arose. Sundance waited until they had sifted out and only Miles and Brooke remained. “General,” he said.

  “Yes, Sundance.”

  “There was a time,” Sundance said evenly, “when I thought you were a stupid, pompous, arrogant old bastard.”

  Miles’ face flushed, and his brows went up.

  “But I’ve changed my mind. You’ve learned a lot in the past four years since we brought in Geronimo. Crook’s dead, and I thought Crook was the only general who understood anything about Indians but how to stomp them. That included you. But you’ve changed.”

  Miles looked at him, then shifted his eyes. He took a cigar from the breast pocket of his coat. “Sundance,” he said, “it’s hard to be a mule hitched to a race horse. Crook was a race horse, brilliant. He was an Indian himself, born one, somehow. Me ... all I ever pretended to be was a soldier. Not a scholar, like George Crook, not a born hunter and woods-runner like him. Just an ordinary, hard-slogging soldier ... ”

  He lit the cigar. “But maybe when Crook died, that dumped responsibility on me. And maybe a man grows up to responsibility.
Maybe when he holds in his hand the power of life or death over thousands of lives, he’d damned well better learn the difference between necessary wars and wars to build somebody’s reputation. My reputation is secure. I don’t need to kill more people, white or red, to build it. If I die tomorrow, my name will still be in the history books.”

  “Yeah,” Sundance said. “When a soldier reaches that point, I reckon he can go all out for peace. That don’t matter. What matters is this. I can’t bring cattle, not even free cattle, on Pine Ridge to feed the Sioux?”

  “That’s Royer’s decision ... and you heard Royer.”

  Sundance grinned. “I heard Royer. But suppose I was driving five hundred head past the reservation and they stampeded. Scattered in the breaks. Then every Indian would drop what he was doing and go on a cow hunt, like an old-time buffalo hunt. And be too busy hunting and eating beef to make war.”

  Miles looked at him blankly for a second, then grinned. “There’s a big gap between the reservations that’s open land, and you can drive all the beef across that gap you want to. And if you can’t control your herd and it runs on to reservation land, that’s your loss.”

  “Ain’t it,” Sundance said, and then added: “I’ll pick up my guns at Royer’s place in three hours. Goodbye, General.”

  Miles said: “Goodbye, Sundance. And ... be careful. I think you have enemies here.”

  “Yeah,” Sundance said. “I do.” Then he went out.

  Chapter Four

  Outside the agency, Sundance reached for the stallion’s reins. Then a voice halted him, saying his name, causing him to turn.

  “Sundance,” Hoffman said again.

  He stood there, a few yards behind the rack, tall, muscular, flat-crowned Texas hat tilted back, wind whipping his neckerchief. His big hands dangled by his chap-clad legs, but there were no guns there.

  Sundance threw the reins around the pole again and walked into the clear. “Hoffman.”

  “God damn you,” Hoffman said, “I told you not to run your mouth in that meeting.”

  Sundance said, “I didn’t hire out to take orders from you.”

  Hoffman’s mouth twisted. “You poor old bastard. How old are you, anyhow? Pushin’ fifty? You’re gettin’ senile. You don’t know where you stand or what’s good for you. Now. I’m givin’ you one more chance. Lay off. Lay off entirely. Raise your cattle and sell ’em to miners in Deadwood or Rapid City or Custer or wherever, we don’t care. But stay away from the reservations.”

  Sundance said, “Those are your orders?”

  “No, my prescription, like a sawbones. You want to stay alive, you’ll follow it.”

  Sundance grinned. “I’m Cheyenne born and bred. We follow our chief’s orders, no others.”

  Hoffman’s eyes flared, his mouth thinned. “I’m slick and so are you. No guns. But; you know, there’s another way—”

  “Yeah. Yeah, there is. One you’d like, being twenty years younger...”

  “You don’t want to try it, then? Knuckle and skull, no holds barred, gouge and stomp?” Hoffman’s big hands flexed. “There’s a place down behind the farm gear warehouse ...”

  Sundance felt a curious tingling through his body, an old eagerness. “You checked that out with Fain? He’s the man that pulls strings.”

  Hoffman’s tongue ran along his red, wet, lower lip. “I checked it out with Mr. Fain. It don’t matter how a man dies, as long as he’s dead.”

  Sundance looked around the open space before the Agency building. “I don’t see Fain.”

  “Naturally. He don’t know anything about this until it’s over.”

  “Then,” Sundance said, “it would be just you and me behind the warehouse?”

  “Who else do we need?”

  Sundance looked at Joe Bob Hoffman, surveyed the height and weight and reach of him and knew that all those measurements were equal to or better than his own. Plus Hoffman’s edge in years, because, after thirty, a man’s lungs and legs began to go; and Sundance was, indeed, past his middle forties; and Hoffman had that edge.

  But, on the other hand, Sundance had been fighting for a living while Hoffman was still peeing in his pants. And that counted for something. Sundance grinned.

  “Behind the warehouse,” he said. “It’s a nice, warm afternoon. Why not?”

  ~*~

  Together, as if they were the oldest and best of friends, Sundance and Hoffman walked wordlessly through the complex of agency buildings. Inside Sundance, there was kind of drunkenness, as if he had put down many glasses of good wine. He always felt that way before a fight. He imagined that Hoffman felt the same.

  Then the warehouse loomed over them, shielding them from public view. The two of them stopped and backed off and faced one another, and Hoffman began to unbutton his flannel shirt.

  As he did so, Sundance, still feeling that fine drunkenness of violence, whipped the Cheyenne shirt over his head, let it drop, stood there with muscle-banded red torso gleaming in the fading afternoon light. Despite the season, it was as warm as spring, and he thought of the prophecies of the medicine men he had talked to, that this would be an easy winter. If he lived through it, he told himself; but then he remembered Barbara, waiting for him at Thunderbird; and he knew he would do his damndest to come back to her.

  Hoffman shucked his own shirt. His body also rippled with muscle, crawled with black hair over pale skin. He looked Sundance up and down. “Scars,” he said. “A lot of scars. You been around.”

  “That’s right,” Sundance said. “Keep that in mind.” He raised his fists, falling into the lithe stance taught him by a prizefighter in Washington a year or two before. He’d done his share of unscientific fighting, but, fascinated by the prize ring, had made it a point on a trip East to work hard at learning the science of boxing. Maybe, just maybe, that knowledge would give him an edge with Hoffman that would offset his years.

  Hoffman looked at Sundance’s attitude, grinned. “One of them dancin’ men. Well, you’ll sing a different tune when I break your back. I don’t really aim to kill you, Sundance. Just fix you up so you can’t walk or ride horseback no more. And you won’t be the first—” And then he charged.

  When he came in, Sundance hit him.

  ~*~

  Slipping the blow through Hoffman’s untrained guard was easy. It caught Hoffman between the eyes and shook Sundance all the way back to his body and his balance with the impact. But it had no effect on Hoffman and slowed him not a bit. He lunged on in, as Sundance hit him in the belly, and wrapped big arms around the half-breed’s waist, simultaneously kneeing at Sundance’s groin, a maneuver Sundance fended off instinctively, blocking it with his thigh.

  But then he was crammed chest to chest against Hoffman’s body, with Hoffman’s iron-banded arms around him, and he pounded Hoffman in the kidneys, and Hoffman grunted and slammed down his head, butting Sundance’s. The impact was terrific, and light exploded behind Sundance’s eyes. It seemed an eternity later, but really must have been only a half second, when he came to, finding himself bent backward by Hoffman’s powerful arms, his ribs and spine about to collapse inward from that terrible pressure. Hoffman’s breath was hot and foul in his face, and Hoffman butted his head forward again, slammed his skull against Sundance’s, and the fight was almost over before it had begun.

  Sundance knew, as his mind swirled, that science would not help him, only brute strength and endurance—and maybe some hard lessons he had learned. He went slack and fell backwards, dragging Hoffman down with him, and that threw Hoffman off balance, and as they fell, locked together, he had his chance to get his knee in Hoffman’s groin. Hoffman grunted, eyes blurring with pain, and Sundance followed up by sinking his teeth in Hoffman’s ear. Hoffman yowled and let go of Sundance, raising his fists instinctively to strike downward with sledgehammer blows. That gave Sundance leeway, and he hit Hoffman on the side of the neck with the blade of his right hand. It was like chopping a hickory block, but Hoffman made a gagging sound, and this time Sun
dance brought up his own head and slammed his skull hard against Hoffman’s and Hoffman’s eyes glazed, and in that instant Sundance writhed, slipped out from beneath that heavy weight. He sprang to his feet, sucking air desperately, as Hoffman reeled to his knees. Sundance let him rise to full kneeling height, then slammed a knee beneath Hoffman’s chin and heard the man’s teeth click together.

  Hoffman sagged backwards, stretching out full length, and then rolled and came up, drooling blood from a bitten tongue. Sundance, winded, took that moment to suck in air; then as Hoffman was on his feet and charging, stood his ground. Hoffman came to him fast, and Sundance dropped low, aiming one crucial blow.

  It slid past Hoffman’s guard, connected. Sundance felt bone and cartilage crunch beneath his knuckles, then something warm sprayed over his arm. Hoffman gagged and staggered back, crushed nose streaming blood, and Sundance laughed happily. That was the most effective blow in any fight; nothing hurt worse or bled the most or demoralized an opponent more than a broken nose; he came in quickly, following up, took Hoffman’s sledgehammer blow on his shoulder, hit Hoffman again. But Hoffman was tough, roared, clubbed down with a fist. It caught Sundance on the temple. The world swam; he sank to his knees. As they touched the ground, Hoffman’s knee caught him beside the chin, stretched him out.

  He blinked, gasped, saw Hoffman’s booted foot, with its long Chihuahua spur, swinging toward him to kick consciousness and life from his skull. He got his hand up just in time, blocked the boot toe with his right, grabbed the spur with his left.

  Long shanked, it made a fine lever. Sundance used all his strength, twisting, and Hoffman lurched, then went down, face forward into the dust. Sundance’s rolled as Hoffman sprawled, then was on Hoffman’s back. He wrapped his hands in the man’s black hair, jerked Hoffman’s head back, then slammed it face forward into the hard dirt. Hoffman howled and bucked, but Sundance’s two hundred pounds on the base of his spine held him down. He jerked Hoffman’s head back again, slammed it down once more, and Hoffman’s writhing diminished. Sundance pulled the head back again, this time, hand entangled in the hair, almost to the neck’s breaking point.