Sundance 8
Page 13
He broke off, and there was silence in the room. Sherman blew a puff of cigar smoke, then went to the window and looked out, the stars on his shoulders glinting in the lamplight. After a moment he said, “Sundance, we’ll not argue with what you say. All right. What’s your price for silence?”
“I think you know that,” Sundance said quietly. “All you have to do is keep the treaties as they’re written. The ones guaranteeing Sioux territory—keep the miners out of it, out of the Black Hills. The ones guaranteeing everything north of the Platte to the Cheyennes and the Blackfeet and the others. There’ll be no cattle on the Powder River or anywhere else up there—you’ll see to that.”
Sherman was silent for a moment. “That may not be easy. There’s a lot of excitement in Wyoming right now. The disappearance of Lance Cavanaugh, that big prairie fire that stampeded all those cattle ... There’s talk that it was Indian doings and demands for retaliation.”
Sundance smiled coldly. “You’ve got your spies among the treaty tribes, I know. And not one word of evidence have you had that any of those tribes had anything to do with that. They were all north hunting buffalo.”
“All the same, it was likely Indians—”
“Cite me one Indian sign that was found. One feather, one unshod pony track, one war-whoop that was heard—”
“I will,” Sherman turned. “It was a blue-eyed Indian who took Lance Cavanaugh, abducted him from his home ranch.” His eyes bored into Sundance’s. “A blue-eyed Indian ...”
“In white man’s clothes and speaking English,” Sundance said coolly. “Not a real Indian, a renegade ... You can’t blame him on the tribes.”
“We know who to blame!” Sheridan burst out.
“Do you, now? Maybe you have some proof. All I know is that I have plenty. These documents will break you, gentlemen, and maybe even break the President ...”
Sherman chewed his cigar. Then he said quietly, “Yes, that’s true. All right, Sundance. Your terms are met. We’ll protect the treaty lands. We can’t keep all the miners out, but they enter at their own risk. As to the cattlemen, no matter how they squawk, we’ll turn their herds back. You have our promise—for a while.”
Sundance’s eyes narrowed. “A while?”
Sherman said, “Sundance, you’re no fool. You’ve won a battle, but you can’t win the war. It’s not the Army, not the Indian Ring, not even the President. It’s the American people. The land is there, Sundance, waiting, and the people want it. Thirty, forty thousand Indians ruling a country bigger than the eastern seaboard, producing nothing, consuming nothing except what they hunt and kill? And in the East, immigrants pouring in, looking for the streets paved with gold. They won’t find them, the Irish, the Italians, the Poles and Swedes and Germans and all the rest, but they don’t care, as long as they can take some land and hold it. Under the threat you’ve thrown at us, we can stave them off a while. But nobody can do it forever. It’s not us you’re fighting, Sundance; it’s history.”
“Then I’ll fight history.”
“You can’t.” Sherman paused. “One man can’t hold back the tide. It will have to engulf him sooner or later. Where and when, I can’t say, now. But somewhere out there, someday—who knows? On the Powder River or the Tongue or the Yellowstone; on the Milk or Tres Marias or the Big Horn or the Little Big Horn— Someday the tide will rise, wash over and—”
“Until then,” Sundance said harshly, “you keep your miners and your cattle and your God damned soldiers off of treaty lands. If you don’t, I’ll ruin you.”
“We know that,” Sherman said. “We’re no fools. We’ll hold it back as long as possible.” He went to the table, ground out his cigar. “General Sheridan? I think we have finished our business.”
“Yes,” Sheridan said. He and Sherman went to the door. There Sherman turned. “There’ll be no campaign this year and none next unless your tribes give us provocation, you have our word on that. Beyond that— who can say? Good day, Sundance.” Then they went out, closing the door behind themselves.
Jim Sundance stood there staring at it for a moment. He had won, yes, but it was true that he felt no sense of triumph. This was a battle without end. Still, a year’s grace, two, was better than none at all.
He owed himself a drink. Going to the table, he poured it. Tossing it off, he thought that anyhow his man in Washington had enough money to operate on for a while. Cavanaugh’s money, the reward for Sundance’s scalp.
And that, at least, would buy him some time for something besides the grim and endless warfare. With the Northern Cheyennes somewhere along the Yellowstone, a woman waited for him, and guns were being oiled and lances sharpened for the fall buffalo hunt. He poured another drink, went to the window, flung it open.
The reek of stockyards, the stench of cattle, poured in upon him. Sundance swallowed hard, shut the window again, and had his second drink. Then, hastily, he began to pack his gear, determined to take a train tonight, all at once very hungry for the sight of endless rolling plains, the smell of lodge fires, his woman’s body, and the clean wind blowing fresh and free as he rode into it with a good horse under him.
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