Sundance 8

by John Benteen

  “Why, I’m a natural blonde.”

  “Don’t lie to me if you want that other twenty.”

  She looked into his eyes, and the simper vanished. “You got blue eyes,” she whispered. “I never seen an Injun with blue eyes before.”

  “The hair—”

  “It was black,” she said, with fear suddenly in her voice. She backed away a step. “Before the gray come, it was black as your’n.”

  “How’d you get it that color? That’s what I want to know for the other twenty.”

  Gloria blinked. Afraid, she sat down suddenly on the bed. “I—I learned how to do it years ago in a whorehouse in New Orleans. They like blondes down there and the madam made me change it. I mean, a henna rinse jest turns it orange, but peroxide—”

  “What?”

  “Peroxide, doctors use it to clean wounds with and you can git it at any drugstore or a sawbones’ll sell it to you. That stuff, yonder,” and she pointed to a nearly full quart bottle on a shelf. “You put it on and lay out in the sun all day and it turns red, and then you do it one more time and it turns yeller. But you got to stay out in bright sun … ”

  “I’m buying that bottle,” Sundance said and took it from the shelf. He threw another twenty into her lap. She picked it up, stared at it wonderingly. “You mean—”

  “This is all I want,” Sundance said, and before she could speak again, he turned away with the bottle and went out the door.

  “Hey,” she called behind him, “you can’t drink that stuff—” But he was already running toward where he had left his horse.

  ~*~

  Although it was not far from Oglalla, they were safe here, the thirty men who sat around the big beds of coals still glowing and pungent with the smell of the venison roasted over them and the fat which had dripped and sizzled on them. Hills enfolded them, hills made barren, bleak, by alkali and erosion, a miniature badlands in the bluffs along the Platte, and there was no grass here for cattle. They had eaten well, all of them, and were full of meat, and they had drunk coffee and tea, but there had been no whiskey for them. When they had come to this place, one by one or two by two from Oglalla on their dilapidated ponies, some of them had been drunk. The worst ones had been sent back or dragged out into the hills to sleep it off. These men here, Sundance saw, were miserable enough, but they were the cream of the crop of that terrible jammed quarter of Oglalla along the river on the mud-flat. They were not too far gone to understand what he had told them, but whether they believed him, or, if they did, perceived the significance of what he said, he could not tell.

  He stood there before the fire, letting his eyes range over their faces, coppery in the flickering light. Scars and pockmarks, eyes dulled with despair and malnutrition, some with open running sores and others with the hacking cough of lung disease—they seemed unlikely material for an army, in their tattered, cast-off white man’s clothing mixed with a few pathetic remnants of fringed buckskin and high plains ornaments. But they were all he had.

  “And so there it is,” he finished in the English that all of them, no matter what their tribes, understood, supplemented with sign language. “That’s what the man, Cavanaugh, aims to do, he and all these other Texans. That’s why these cattle are all here. And if he carries out his plans, by the next winter-count, it will all be over. Then everything will belong to them, to Cavanaugh and the other whites, and the Long Knives. The Powder River Valley, the Yellowstone, the Judith Basin, the Black Hills, the Tongue, the Rosebud, the Big Horn and Little Big Horn, all the rivers, all the mountains, all the hunting grounds, Sioux, Cheyenne, Blackfeet, Crow, and all the rest—Your people will have lost them all. And there is no one to stop them—except you.”

  He broke off, and for a moment no one stirred, none of the thirty spoke, there was only the crackling of the embers. Then a tall form arose, Horse Running, the Arapaho.

  “The tribes will stop them,” he said. “If what you tell us is true, every tribe will rise up against them. The Cheyennes, the Lakotahs, all— They will chop the Long Knives down. They will not let the white ranchers take their land.”

  “They will try to stop them,” Sundance said. “But it will be the same old story. The Blackfeet will fight alone, and the Cheyennes and the others, they won’t join together, and the Long Knives will take each tribe one by one and outnumber and whip them separately. You, Horse Running. Your people would join with the Cheyennes. But you think they’d help the Blackfeet save their territory?”

  Horse Running shook his head. “You know better than that. The Arapaho would die before they’d help the Blackfeet. But the Cheyennes and Arapaho together are powerful enough to whip any army.”

  “If they can’t, the Lakotas will,” a pockmarked Oglalla cut in.

  “Listen,” Sundance said, “and think. You aren’t buffalo Indians any more, you’ve been here at Oglalla and at Cheyenne and you’ve seen the soldiers at Fort Russell. You’ve seen their cannon and their Gatling guns and the repeating rifles they’re getting now. And the railroad can bring the troops in by thousands from back east. I would expect such talk from buffalo Indians who didn’t know the white man, but not from you.” He paused. “If there is war, the tribes will win some battles, yes. But the way the white men make war, it will cost the lives not only of the braves who fight them, women and little children will die, too. When the tribes make war, they kill the men and adopt the women and the children they take prisoner. But the white men kill both, their cannons and their Gatling guns can’t tell the difference, even if they didn’t have orders to wipe out all the Indians, as if they were wolves.” His voice rose, “That’s what I’m trying to keep from happening, don’t you see? And the only way to do it is to get Cavanaugh, and the only way to do that is for you to help me.”

  He paused. “And that’s why I asked you to come and eat with me and hear what I have to say. I need fighting men. I need you.”

  Tall Tree arose, his eyes, as blue as Sundance’s own, glinting in the firelight. “Maybe we were fighting men once,” he said. “But look at us now.” His voice crackled with self-contempt. “Look at me, and at the others. You are wrong, Sundance. We’re not men at all. We’re dogs, crawling on our bellies to the white men for whiskey, letting them kick us and take our women in return. If we were fighting men, we’d have been dead long ago. The first white man who kicked us, the first who lay with our women—we would have taken their scalps and paid the price.” He spat into the fire. “You’re too late. We have lost our manhood. If you need help, go north to the buffalo range, where our brothers still have theirs.”

  “No,” Sundance said. “There isn’t time, and that would start the war I don’t want to happen.” He put his hands on his hips, raked his eyes over their faces. “Besides, I think you’re still men. I think that with guns in your hands and horses under you, you’re men enough to pay off those debts of kicks and abuse of your women. I think maybe you only need the chance.”

  His voice hardened. “I know there are some who’re hopeless, whom whiskey has made into old women. But I don’t think you’re old women. I think you’re still braves, Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho or Blackfoot or whatever tribe you came from. And I’m asking you to follow me like warriors.”

  Nobody spoke, and his heart sank. Maybe he had missed his guess. Maybe Tall Tree was right, and there was no more manhood left in them. Then Tall Tree broke the silence.

  “And if we do, even if we win—what then? We will have to run, or else they’ll hang us and what will happen to our families then?”

  Sundance said, “Going home isn’t running.”

  “Going home?” a Blackfoot echoed.

  “To your tribes.” Sundance’s voice rang like steel on steel. “I know, you say you are ashamed to face them. But if you fight this battle for them, you have back your manhood and no longer need be ashamed to face anyone. If we lose, you die like a brave—some of you will, anyhow. If we win, you can go home again to the buffalo range with your heads up and let the strong wi
nd and clean water wash that mud-flat stink off of you.”

  Again that silence. Then Horse Running said quietly, “That might be worth fighting for.”

  “If it isn’t,” Sundance said, “your sons and women are. Do you want your sons to grow up with the same stink? Do you want to see them kicked by white men? Do you want to sell your daughters to the cowboys to take into the bushes for a bottle?” His voice rose. “Fight with me, save the buffalo range, the hunting grounds where you belong. And when the fight is over, take your families there and join your tribes again.”

  As his words died, the wind freshened, blowing clean and cool down through the ravine in which they sat. The embers flared, sparks swirled upward, and somehow it was almost like a sign. In the firelight, Tall Tree’s eyes shone like a wolf’s. “Feel the wind!” he cried. “Draw it in your lungs! It comes from the north, from the buffalo range. It smells like grass and buffalo and lodge fire smoke! It does something to my heart, and it brings back dreams!” He raised his head. “Sundance! I don’t know about the others. But I want to go north again, I want to go home, with my woman and my son! Show me how to do it as a man and I will ride with you!”

  The sparks swirled higher in a spiral of thousands of tiny jewel like flecks of red. Horse Running’s voice was deep. “I still have a gun and remember how to use it. Where you ride, Sundance, this Arapaho will ride, too, and then go home to his own people—or to the Shadow Land!”

  The Blackfoot got up. “If it will save the hunting grounds,” he said, “then I will join even with the Cheyenne and the Arapaho. For if we lose them, then we will never have a place to go. Sundance, I’m with you ...” And then his words were drowned in other voices as men got to their feet. Someone had brought a drum, and suddenly it began to beat, deep and throaty. And now they were all up, that ragtag army of the damned and crowding in on Sundance, and something leaped within him. The greatest risk of all was his, but now at least there was a chance.

  He let the turmoil wear itself out, and then, long into the night he drilled them on what they were to do and how they were to do it when he sent them word. Before he was through, he was certain that Tall Tree and Horse Running understood, anyhow, and Kills-Easy, the Blackfoot. And they could lead the others.

  After he was finished, the drum sounded long into the night, and they danced, and then, near dawn, they rode back to Oglalla. But Jim Sundance headed up Lodgepole Creek, to stalk the most dangerous game he had ever hunted.

  Chapter Eight

  For three days he ranged Lance Cavanaugh’s land like a great lobo wolf, keeping always to cover, traveling constantly, leaving no tracks, questing, stalking, waiting for a chance at his quarry. So far, he’d had none, but he was not discouraged. Any kind of hunting took a lot of patience, and hunting man the most of all. Rockford was a range boss, and sooner or later he would have to ride out alone; and that was when Jim Sundance intended to take him.

  It was on the morning of the fourth day as he put the Cherokee horse along a thickly forested ridge above Lodgepole Creek that he heard the shots. Four or five deep coughs, they came from a good distance down the creek, and rising above them faintly was the sound of whooping, shouting, laughter, the noise of white men enjoying good sport. Sundance frowned and turned the horse. Not letting curiosity overpower his caution, he went carefully, with his own rifle ready, and after a half mile he tied the animal and scouted ahead on foot through the pines. Crawling on his belly to the grove’s edge, he stared into the creek bottom below.

  What was happening there was laid out like an open book, and as easy to read. Across the creek, on the flat, the carcass of a dead longhorn made a brindle blot. Not far from it, four men on horseback were gathered around something on the ground. Only when one of them moved could Sundance see that it was the body of a man, crippled, but still alive. In terror, it dragged itself over the grass like an injured insect, and Sundance fished in his pocket for a small brass telescope. Unfolded, it brought the crawling man into sharp focus as he put it to his eye, and he saw that this was an Indian dressed in tatters of white man’s clothing, a man with hair turned to silver. As he crawled, he left a trail of blood; he had been shot through both legs.

  And even as Sundance watched, the black haired man with the bulldog face turned his horse slightly so that Sundance could see his twisted grin. He said something to the men around him, lined a Smith & Wesson and pulled the trigger. The crippled Indian’s body jerked, one arm went slack, turning scarlet. Rockford laughed. Indomitably, the old Indian crawled on. The bow and arrows he had used to kill the cow in silence lay far behind him on the grass. He had been unwise to kill so openly, but likely he’d been desperate, starving. There was a quarter in Cheyenne like the one in Oglalla and he must be from there. Anyhow, he had been caught cold, and now Rockford was taking his time about shooting him to pieces.

  Sundance cursed and raised his rifle slightly, but his finger did not touch the trigger. Rockford had just fired again, and now the other arm went limp, and the old Indian lay helpless on the grass that turned red all around him. One of the Texans, as if he could not stomach this, snapped something at Rockford and turned his horse and galloped off. After a moment, another followed. There was nothing Sundance could do, wounded in all four members, blood pouring from him, the old man as good as dead already. And maybe, just maybe, Sundance thought, his death would buy something more important than a short span of living wholly crippled. Maybe, at least, he would be avenged. Sundance waited.

  Rockford fired again, emptying that gun, and the body twitched and still the old man was alive. Rockford drew his other pistol. Now, this had become too much for the stomach of the remaining rider. He swung his horse, gestured at the old man, lying there twitching, snapped something at Rockford. Rockford’s pug-nosed bulldog’s face turned even uglier. Whatever he said, it made the Texan furious. He jerked his mount around and spurred it hard, riding off after the others, leaving Rockford alone with his victim.

  Hands clenched around his rifle, Sundance waited.

  Rockford, grinning, fired two more careful shots. Each made the body jerk, and yet it lived. Then something leaped in Sundance. The old man raised his silvered head, his lips moved as he looked skyward, and Sundance knew that, in defiance, he sang his death song. The distance was too great for Sundance to hear, but he had seen now that the moccasins the old man wore were of Cheyenne design; this was a member of his own tribe. And he was dying like a Cheyenne should, like a Dog Soldier—

  Rockford fired a single shot.

  The old man’s face dissolved in a wash of scarlet. He fell back, mercifully dead at last.

  Sundance let out a long breath that was lost in the soughing of wind in pines and watched as Rockford, still grinning with self-satisfaction, jacked the empty shells from his guns and punched in new rounds. He sheathed the Smith & Wesson and spat. He turned in his saddle and looked back in the direction the others riders had taken. He spat again and rode on down the creek, alone.

  Sundance leaped up, ran through the pines, hit his saddle without touching stirrup. He put the horse along the ridge, keeping always to the cover of the forest and yet watching Rockford down below.

  There was still no chance: all that grazing land was covered with cattle, and there were too many riders. But there were other herds on the far side of this ridge, and maybe, just maybe, Rockford would swing this way sooner or later.

  An hour passed, two, and although Rockford was never out of sight, he stayed beyond Sundance’s reach. He rode out to the various bands of cattle, talked with the riders, gave his orders, did a range boss’s work—which in this case was demanding with more longhorns on this grass than it could properly support—and Sundance’s heart sank, but he would not give up. Ahead, the ridge sloped down, making a natural pass from one range to the other, and— He rode to the edge of the pines there and waited, looking down at the folded gap, marked with a dry wash and a trail. If he took Rockford at all, this would have to be the place, and it would hav
e to be quick. Now he had to gamble.

  He tied the horse inside the pines, took the rawhide lariat from its saddle, shook out a loop, not a large one. After careful reconnoitering, he left the woods and ran down the slope into the seam between the two hills. There was a shallow side branch of the dry wash that would give him cover, screened as it was with low brush, and from there he would have one chance and one chance only, if he were very lucky.

  He made it down the hill and into the gully without being seen so far as he knew. There he fell flat on his belly, judged the distance to the trail that ran at right angles to where he lay and not ten yards away. The riata was a sixty-foot Mexican type and should be long enough.

  Mercilessly, the sun beat down on him as he lay there behind the shallow cutback and the wall of brush, and flies crawled on him, and yet he did not move, it was as if he were a rock. But every sense was alert, tuned to highest pitch, throughout the hour that passed and that seemed a year.

  Then he bit his lip: up the trail there was a tick of sound, a steel horseshoe on rock. Someone was coming, and maybe, just maybe …

  Now he could hear the hoof beats of the walking horse, feel their vibrations, it seemed to him, in the ground. He raised his head slightly, risked a look, and his heart began to hammer. The long chance had paid off; the man called Rockford came, and he rode alone. Sundance’s fingers curled delicately around the rope.

  Now Rockford was almost even with him. The complete professional, he rode warily, even on his own range, head swiveling alertly, right hand near his gun. For an instant it seemed to Sundance that Rockford stared directly at him, and he lay motionless, face down, an easy target if Rockford saw him. But the horse moved on past, its pace steady and uninterrupted, and then Sundance acted.

  He was on his feet like a panther, loop shaken out. He gave it one spin and threw it straight for Rockford, thirty feet away, his back now toward Sundance. The small rawhide circle spread out beautifully, and it just cleared Rockford’s hat, and as it landed on his shoulders, Sundance pulled, hard, risking breaking Rockford’s neck.