Sundance 8

by John Benteen

  Sundance spent two days getting acquainted here, something like a sharp knife twisting in him when he saw these men renting out their women to the Texas cowboys who took them into the willow thickets. He slept in his bedroll at night, but even more lightly than as if on the open plains, for unlike a real Indian camp, theft was possible here, and murder for a few pennies, and besides, a starving dog might bite your face off. The people accepted him as Mandan Charlie, which was what he wanted, and he sized them up in turn.

  On the third day, he bought an extra horse for three dollars and crossed the Platte. There was plenty of game out here, but the Indians in the shantytown had lost the initiative even to go hunting. Without trouble, he killed two fat, tender does, brought them back to the mud-flat by the river, built a huge fire, let it burn to a bed of coals, and cooked both animals. Then he went through the quarter and told everyone, “I’ve had good hunting. Come and eat.”

  They swarmed, stripping the skeletons, cracking the bones, leaving nothing even for the dogs. By the time the feast was over, Sundance had found the two men he wanted. One was a half-breed white-Cheyenne whose father, a mountain man, had deserted his Indian wife when the son was three years old. Tall Tree was about Sundance’s age, his skin the same coppery color, and, surprisingly, his eyes just as blue. But his long fell of hair was a strange, dark red, proof that his father, too, had been blonde. He spoke and understood fair English and would not have been here if his wife had not become a drunkard. But he loved her deeply and had condemned himself to this living hell so she could have the whiskey without which she could not live.

  The other was a full blood Arapaho of the Baachinena, or Northern, band. Horse Running would sell his soul for whiskey and often sold his two wives, and yet Sundance sensed in him something of honor yet unsoiled; in his day, this man had been a mighty warrior. Moreover, he had a quick, penetrating intelligence, though the snakehead whiskey would one day erase it.

  Sundance killed another deer and invited the two to come and eat alone at a wikiup he built. For a long time, they talked generalities and sang: the beautiful song about the Turtle River, ancestral home of the Cheyennes, and the touching buffalo-hunting chant of the Arapaho:

  How bright is the moonlight!

  How bright is the moonlight!

  As I ride home tonight with my buffalo kill!

  As I ride home tonight with my buffalo kill!

  Finally, subtly, Sundance began his questioning. When he judged the time right, he revealed that he was no Mandan-Sioux, but a member of the Hmisis, the most important division of the Northern Cheyennes, and a Hotamitaniuw, or Dog Soldier. But he lied about his name. He told them to call him Man Hunting, which was also a name he had had among the Cheyenne, and then he told them that he had a feud with Lance Cavanaugh and had been instructed in a dream to kill the man and must know everything about him that they could tell him.

  He saw at once the surprise and fear that came into their eyes. It was Tall Tree, the half-breed, who said it. “You cannot kill that man. Nobody can kill him. He’s a devil.”

  “Perhaps I am, too.” Sundance smiled faintly.

  “Even a devil could not get to him to hurt him,” Horse Running said. “Look. He came here two years ago with many fighting men, bringing a huge herd of cattle. He spread them out along Lodge Pole Creek up above Cheyenne, and he sells some to the mines in Colorado, but he brings more in all the time, and so now do his friends. You have seen the herds.” He gestured. “And once,” he said, “I thought I would kill him, too. But I found out it is impossible.”

  “Why did you want to kill him?”

  “Because he hangs men,” Horse Running said. “He hangs Indians. Last year my brother was here in this place with us. We were very hungry, it was winter and we had to have some meat, my brother’s children were starving. We took our last cartridges and we went hunting, and we rode west and saw no buffalo, for Cavanaugh’s cattle had taken their range, and we found no deer. All we saw everywhere was wohaws, the white man’s beef. At last, we knew what we must do. We found an old cow with a leg the wolves had hamstrung; she would die soon anyhow. So we shot and butchered it, but we had bad luck. The sound of the shot brought Cavanaugh’s riders. They were on us before we knew what was happening, and he was with them, a big man with long hair on his face; I will never forget him. They chased us and they killed my brother’s horse, and I would have stayed with him and fought, but we had no more cartridges and he made me go on to protect his wife and children. And so Cavanaugh and his men took him.”

  Horse Running stared into the fire. “I circled back, saw it all, but there was nothing I could do. They had seen the butchered cow and they had my brother and I heard Cavanaugh say, ‘Hell, string him up and leave him hanging for a lesson to the others.’ They did not even give him time to pray or sing a death song. They threw a rope around his neck, over a cottonwood limb, and they pulled him up. He died bravely, but very slowly. He choked to death; it took a long time. While he kicked, the white men laughed and passed around a whiskey bottle. Then they rode off and left him there.”

  “You cut him down and took him home—”

  “No,” Horse Running said, not looking at Sundance. “My heart was no longer strong. I was afraid. I did not dare go near him for fear they would hang me too. He dangled there all winter until the crows and ravens had picked him clean.”

  “He was not the only one,” Tall Tree added. “Cavanaugh hangs any Indian he finds on his range. Last spring, there were five bodies swinging at one time that I know of.” He shrugged. “And who can stop him? Who cares about an Indian from the river bottoms of Oglalla or Cheyenne? Not even our own tribes care anymore.”

  Horse Running drew in a long breath. “All the same, my heart grew strong again. It seemed I could not live without taking my revenge. I went after Cavanaugh. I scouted his ranch, I trailed him like a wolf for days. I never had a chance at him. It was impossible.”

  “In what way?”

  “You must see his home,” Tall Tree said. “It is like a white man’s fort—a strong log palisade all around his headquarters, the big buildings inside with loopholes for fighting, that is what he has built, a white man’s fort, in case the tribes came and tried to push him off. But they have not come; they know if they did, the railroad would bring more soldiers to help him than they could fight.”

  “You cannot get to him in that place,” Horse Running put in. “No Indian could. They would kill an Indian before he had got to the big gates of it. And when he comes out, it is just as bad. Always, he rides with many men. Two go in front, and one of them is the man they call Rockford, that everybody around here knows. He has killed more men, white and red, than any other white man in this country. He is one of eight who ride with Cavanaugh everywhere he goes. The two in front, two on each flank, two behind, and he with his own guns, too. He always travels with such an army.”

  “Still, my dream says that I must kill him,” Sundance answered. “I must find a way.”

  “There is no way.” Horse Running’s voice was harsh. “Not for one man alone. Believe me, I have tried and I know. And in my time, before I came here, I was a warrior. I have counted my share of coups. I could not get him and not even you, a Dog Soldier, can do it. Not without a big war party of your own.” He paused. “Maybe you could go north, raise the Cheyennes, and come against him.”

  Before Sundance could speak, Tall Tree said sharply, “That’s impossible. It would be murder. We would have to go against all these cowboys and all the soldiers from Fort Russell would be there in an hour. Besides, a big war party of Northern Cheyenne would never get close through all the patrols from the Fort and through those cowboys.’’

  “Then maybe I must do it alone,” Sundance said.

  “Maybe. I don’t think you’ll have much luck.”

  “My dream tells me what to do.”

  Horse Running spat into the fire. “I think you had better have another dream,” he said.

  That ended t
he discussion. They sang the dying-fire-song taught to the Cheyennes by their legendary hero, Sweet Medicine, and the Arapaho going-to-sleep song and the two men left. Sundance smoked a marijuana cigarette, rolled up in his blankets, did some hard thinking, and went to sleep.

  ~*~

  Two days later, he was lying on his belly in some willow brush along a branch of Lodge Pole Creek, looking at Cavanaugh’s fort and realizing that everything the Indians had told him was true.

  Here, in the valley of the Lodgepole, not far from the railroad, a large knoll reared up, commanding the low ground all around, and on top it the peeled logs of the great palisade of Cavanaugh’s headquarters ranch were silver gray in first light. There was only one entrance, and that through two huge wooden gates made of thick square hewn logs, and on either side of this were watchtowers, small blockhouses, with men in them; and Sundance saw the flash of binocular lenses as they scanned the surrounding land at regular intervals. Occasionally he caught glimpses of the interior as the gates opened and closed: solid houses of thick logs, loopholed as the Indians had said.

  In addition, the land for miles around was crammed with cattle and gunmen, brought up from Texas for the big push to the Powder. Once, sifting through them, came a cavalry patrol from Fort D. A. Russell, not far away on the west side of Cheyenne. Horse Running and Tall Tree were right. Cavanaugh was as safe in there as a grizzly in its den. His position was impregnable.

  Nevertheless, Sundance waited. Cavanaugh could not stay inside forever. He was a man of affairs, with things to do in Cheyenne and Oglalla and elsewhere. Sooner or later he must come out.

  Sundance was lucky. He waited only four hours there in the willows, patient as a stalking cougar, before the big gates opened again and Cavanaugh appeared.

  But when he came, it was as the men in Oglalla had said: he rode surrounded by an Army.

  First, on the point, a pair of riders, and one of them Sundance recognized immediately as Rockford. It had to be, for he’d had a description of the man’s bulldog face with its smeared-back pug of nose, the deep-set, slightly slanted eyes, the long black hair that fell in a thick shag to the shoulders of his flannel shirt. Rockford rode with a rifle across his saddle, and there was a holstered Smith & Wesson on each hip, and he made Bisbee, in Abilene, look like a Sunday School teacher, for Cavanaugh could afford the best. Rockford was the best, and Sundance knew it immediately, with the instant recognition of one thorough professional for another. Rockford, he thought, would be something to take, something to go up against, and despite himself, he felt a little surge of eagerness, the curiosity of the gunman, a fatal competitiveness that even Jim Sundance had never quite been able to shake completely.

  But Rockford was only one. The man beside him was hardly lesser stuff, nor were the four men on the flanks or the two in the rearguard. And yet, hard as they were, riding in the center under their protection, Lance Cavanaugh seemed to dominate them all. Whatever else he might be, he was all man, all six-feet-four of him, with the great sloping shoulders and the heavy chest beneath the flannel shirt, the long lean legs encased in fringed leather chaps, big cow horn mustaches curling in the breeze, his rifle also across his saddle, his craggy face turning this way and that as he scanned the terrain. Once he looked directly toward where Sundance lay, and Sundance tensed: it seemed as if those eyes could pierce the brush and find his hiding place. But then Cavanaugh’s head turned and the men rode on, bound toward Cheyenne.

  When they were out of sight, Sundance scuttled back to his tethered horse unobserved and slowly and carefully followed them.

  They did not know it, but he flanked and trailed them all the way, as they jingled toward Cheyenne at a high lope along a well-cut wagon road. And, despite what Tall Tree and Running Horse had told him, there were a half dozen times when a good marksman at long range could have blasted Lance Cavanaugh’s tall, arrogant form from the saddle; and Sundance was a good marksman. But, always, the question was in the back of his head: what was the S & S Concern? Apparently Cavanaugh was the only one who knew, and it would do him no good to kill Cavanaugh and leave that question unanswered. No. Somehow he had to get Cavanaugh alone, and he had to make him talk, and there was not going to be anything easy about that.

  He was behind them when they reached the town, a clutter of buildings and railroad yards spread out on a dusty flat with mountains in the distance: the real gateway to Wyoming. He could remember, when, in his youth, the Cheyennes had hunted here. Now there were five thousand people swarming through the dusty streets, the railroad yards and smoking locomotives, soldiers, bullwhackers with their big freight wagons, and an added influx of Texas cowboys. The place boomed, with its deadfalls and brothels running around the clock, and nobody paid any attention to the shabby half-breed who followed Cavanaugh’s outfit into town.

  They were as careful here as out on the plains. A man like Cavanaugh made a lot of enemies, and he was not going to give any of them the edge. At no time, when the whole crew entered the big hotel across from the depot, was there an opening of any kind, nor when, two hours later, they emerged and mounted and rode out of town. Sundance remained behind, having seen all he needed to. For once, he was baffled, his mind wholly empty of ideas and a deep bitterness within him. But there was more than that, too; within him still flamed the hatred of Cavanaugh that had leaped up that night on the Kansas prairie after he had read the contents of the file. It was deeper now, since he had heard the stories of half-breeds and Indians hanged on sight for trespassing on what had once been Indian land and to which, even now, Cavanaugh could hold no formal title. Walking the streets of Cheyenne aimlessly, Sundance vowed that he would not give up. He would take Cavanaugh—and alive—and make him talk, and then he would know what to do about the S & S Concern. If he could only get Cavanaugh alone somehow, in his power, Cavanaugh would talk all right. Sundance had no doubt of that. He knew ways.

  ~*~

  Night fell, and Cheyenne really came alive, the streets resounding with the tinny rattle of honky-tonk music, piano and hurdy-gurdy, the deep voiced curses and laughter of drunken men, the shrill natter of the dance hall and whorehouse harpies who preyed on them. Still Sundance had no answer, and, sickening of the noise and glaring light, he left the main street and wandered down a dark alley behind a row of saloons. Presently, finding an upended keg, he sat down and rolled a cigarette, its tip a winking glow in the almost total blackness.

  Just as he tossed the butt away, he stiffened and his hand dropped instinctively to his gun. Somebody else was in this alley, somebody coming toward him soft-footed, if not quite soundlessly. Sundance was about to pull the Colt free of leather, and then, when she passed between two buildings, a random ray of light from the street in front showed her to him and he relaxed.

  She moved toward him unsteadily, as if very drunk, walking slowly as if quite tired, gingerly as if her feet hurt. Then she stopped and he realized that she had seen him.

  Now she moved toward him again. Her voice was coarse, roughened by cigarettes and whiskey, but she tried to make it seductive. “Hey, honey. You there, sweetheart. You want a little fun? Hey?”

  Sundance did not answer. She came on a little faster now, only a shape in blackness, and he knew she could not see more of him, but that did not matter. He was a man, a prospect, she knew that much, and she did not care about anything else. “A little fun, sweetie,” she went on thickly. “I’ll make you real happy. You ask ’em, Gloria knows all the tricks. Only four bits, anything you want.”

  She was so close he caught the foulness of her breath. Then a match flared, and he saw her, a woman too old and ugly to work the brothels and the dance halls, reduced to roaming back alleys and taking on anything to stay alive. With pity and revulsion, he said gruffly, “Me Injun.”

  She hesitated, then laughed brassily. “Okay, I like Injuns. Come on, Injun, four bits, I make you happier’n any squaw ever did.”

  He looked at her in the match glow. In her forties at the least, face webbed with
wrinkles, mouth gap-toothed, body shapeless as a sack of turnips. And, above it all, startlingly, a mass of fine, silky hair as yellow as his own before the blacking. Sundance stared at that hair, incredible on a woman of such age and mileage. And that was when the idea hit him and he knew how he would try to take Lance Cavanaugh. He stood up. “You got a place?”

  “A sort of one.” Relief was in her voice.

  “Then let’s go.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “It ain’t far. Come on.” And together they went down the alley.

  ~*~

  It was an abandoned cabin on the edge of town, dirt-floored, the chinking falling out from between the logs. It held only a rickety table with a chair and a filthy straw mattress in a corner, plus a window of empty bottles and a few cooking utensils. The smell made Sundance’s stomach roil as she lit a candle.

  In its light, she stared at him. “By God, even if you are an Injun, you’re some good-lookin’ man!” Coquettishly she touched that mass of yellow hair.

  Sundance reached in his pocket, took out a twenty-dollar gold piece and laid it beside the candle. “There you are, Gloria.”

  She gaped at it, eyes widening. “God Almighty, I ain’t got no change for that.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Sundance said. “It’s all yours. And another like it if you give me what I want.”

  Caught by the way his voice had changed, she blinked. “Forty dollars? Man, you can have anything—”

  Sundance picked up the candle. “Just stand still. I won’t burn you or hurt you in any way.” He held it close to her head, touched the hair. It was not as silky as it looked, felt brittle, but it was undeniably exactly the shade of his own without the disguise.

  She giggled nervously. “You like my hair? It’s my best feature, the boys always—”

  “What color was it in the beginning. Brown? Black?”