Sundance 2

by John Benteen

  It was a slow business. He must be careful not to dislodge a single pebble and send it rattling down. At any moment, Jessup might turn, see him, fire a shot and blast him off the canyon wall.

  Sundance played it tight, examining every foot- and hand-hold before he moved. Jessup, Winchester ready, lay motionless, watching the woods.

  Then, from very far away, came a cry, cut off short, so low and short it might almost have been a marmot’s squeak. Sundance’s lips peeled back from his teeth. Cochise might be older, but he was faster.

  Jessup shifted uneasily, looked toward the other tower. “Gray?” he called softly. “Hey, Gray—”

  There was no answer. Jessup shifted restlessly. “Hey, Gray—”

  Sundance came up over the rim fast and hard, and without making a sound until a single pebble rolled and clicked. By that time, he was almost on Jessup. But the man whirled, threw up his gun, saw Sundance, recognized him. He opened his mouth to scream. Sundance rammed his left hand between the jaws and took the bite and shoved forward with his right and felt the knife slash deep in Jessup’s throat.

  He left it there, jerked his hand away, seized Jessup’s gun just before the man—convulsively—could fire, ripped it from nerveless hands, threw it aside, then gripped the knife again. But it was already over. Gagging, Jessup slid down the pile of rock.

  Sundance pulled free the blade, thrust it home again, this time through Jessup’s heart.

  That ended it. Jessup kicked, sent a few rocks clattering, was dead.

  Sundance looked at the body, recognized the belt Jessup wore: his gun, his knife, his ax. He seized the buckle, unlatched it. Lashed it on his own waist, strapping the cartridge belt above it. He left the poor Chiricahua knife in Jessup’s body, took out his own fourteen-inch-Bowie, hefted it, restored it to its sheath. Feeling stronger, better, he climbed the rimrock, made contact with Cochise.

  “It was so easy,” Cochise said. “Mine had already gone to sleep. He never even twitched.”

  “Mine was wide awake,” Sundance said. “It took a little longer.”

  They rode down the trail into the canyon. Cochise said, “My son, the hunting has been good so far. I think, come dusk, it will be even better.”

  “Where will they camp?”

  Cochise, leaning back in his antelope-hide saddle, gestured, as the Arabian slid down the canyon wall on its haunches.

  “Below there’s an opening in the forest, a clearing. Considering the time, the little light left, they’ll camp there. We always do when we come into Deer Canyon.”

  “Then they won’t,” Sundance said.

  Cochise jerked his head around. “Why not?”

  “It would be full of Apache sign. White-eyes would never camp in a place like that. Afraid the Indians might come back. They’ll go on, be in the woods below.”

  “Maybe,” Cochise said, not convinced. “We’ll see.”

  It seemed to take forever for their horses to reach the bottom of the canyon. On its floor, they had to halt, let them blow. Dusk swirled in the great canyon, an hour sooner than on the rim above, when they rode on.

  In the dim light, Cochise and Sundance looked at one another and grinned. Both were full now of the hunting spirit. Then Sundance reined in. “If they don’t camp in the clearing, where should we look for them?”

  “A creek runs through here. Further up it, there are great slabs of rock on either side, level and big enough for all of them to sleep on. My guess would be there.”

  Sundance swung down off Eagle. “Then let us wait.”

  Cochise stared at him, then also dismounted. “Yes. After all, there are thirteen of them and only two of us. Probably it would be better if we waited.”

  They ate jerky, pinole, a little mesquite-bean bread, in the shadow of the pines. Even in the canyon, they were at an altitude of nearly eight thousand feet. The wind was cold. Thinking of what lay ahead, neither felt it.

  Sundance leaned back against a pine bole, watched a sickle moon climb over the rimrock. Midnight, he guessed, then one o’clock. Cochise, older, a little fatigued by the day, dozed in a blanket.

  Sundance stood up, shook Cochise’s shoulder. “My father. It is time.”

  Cochise awakened. He rose, looked at the moon. “Yes,” he said, “well past midnight.”

  “An hour,” Sundance said.

  “Everyone is low, then,” said Cochise. “No man is at his best at that time. It is the time to strike, when the guards are tired.”

  “Yes,” Sundance said. He touched Cochise’s thick wrist. “Father.”

  “My son?”

  “Gannon, the leader, has a red beard. This I want from you: However it falls out, you are not to kill him, unless I am already dead. He is mine.”

  “You hate him so much?”

  “It is a thing between us,” Sundance said.

  “Then he’s yours. Let’s go.”

  They ran through the pines, rifles up. Presently, they reached the big clearing. Except for the tumble-down remnants of the old Apache wikiups, it was empty. They skirted it, went on, following the bank of the stream that brawled and tumbled coldly through the canyon.

  A hiss from Cochise stopped Sundance. He edged over to the Chiricahua.

  “Listen,” Cochise whispered. “We are near the other camping place. They will have guards out.”

  “I will deal with them,” Sundance said. He unslung the bow.

  Cochise grinned. “I was once pretty good with that myself. But I have used guns so long . . .” He touched Sundance on the shoulder. “Be careful. When you are ready, give the cry of the white owl.”

  “Yes,” Sundance said, and with an arrow nocked, he ran forward through the trees, keeping always to cover, a darker shadow among the shadows in the forest.

  Circling, he soon found the place: the creek roared down, foaming, between two giant slabs of rock on either bank, and he saw the dull glow of the dying embers of a campfire on the slab on his side. In the murk, that was all he could see. He faded back, searched for the guards.

  As he had expected, one squatted on the very edge of the slab, a gun across his knees. His head drooped low; he was half asleep.

  Sundance coursed through the trees, found the other. He was beyond the camp, upstream, sitting with his back against a pine. He was supposed to be watching the upstream side, but he had gone to sleep.

  Sundance’s lips peeled back in a feral grin. He moved soundlessly on moccasined feet across the pine straw. He pulled the Bowie knife and, when he was in position, dropped to his knees. His left hand clamped across a startled mouth; his right raised the knife and drove it home.

  He stood up, drifted back down the creek. The guard at the end of the rock slab still dozed. Sundance unslung the bow, slipped a buzzard-quill feathered arrow on the string, drew back until his thumb touched his cheekbone, aiming carefully in the tricky moon-silvered, pine-shadowed light. Then he loosed the shaft.

  The guard lurched sideways, without a sound, as the flint point drove through his skull. Sprawled grotesquely, he didn’t even kick.

  Sundance ran back through the forest.

  Cochise was a moving shadow in deeper blackness. “Now?” he whispered.

  “Now,” Sundance said.

  The old chief turned. Rifle high, bandolier full, he splashed out into the roaring stream. The icy water swirled around his knees; Sundance watched Cochise lest he be swept off his feet. But he never faltered, his moccasins gripping the slippery stones with certainty. Then he emerged on the far bank and, like a ghost, vanished into the pines.

  Silently, Sundance ran up the near bank, threw himself down where he could overlook the slab of rock stretching into the stream. Blanketed men were huddled blobs; across the creek, picketed horses, catching his scent, snorted. No one stirred. Sundance waited, rifle ready.

  Then he heard it; the sound of pounding hooves. Cochise had cut the picket rope, stampeded the mounts of Gannon’s men. Sundance laid aside his rifle, whipped an arrow from its quiver,
notched it to his bow. The frightened horses whinnied, and men came boiling up out of their blankets.

  Sundance unloosed the arrow; before it was on its way, he had another on the bowstring. A man scrambling to his knees cried out, fell back, as the first shaft went home. A second rolled in agony, an arrow through his belly up to the feathers. Then they were all on their feet, bringing up the guns never far from their sides. Sundance let go another arrow and another. One missed, the second slashed through the gun arm of a tall figure raising its rifle.

  Sundance smiled coldly as he put another arrow to the bow. Out there on the rock, the men were running aimlessly, like ants in a kicked-over hill. That was the beauty of the bow: no muzzle-flame, no sound. There was nothing they could shoot back at. Panic-stricken, they dived for cover, and a voice Sundance recognized yelled: “Injuns! Head fer th’ woods!”

  At that instant, Cochise opened up with his rifle from the far bank. As men scrambled for the wooded slope above, they toppled, fell. Others, seeing a target at last, turned, fired as they climbed the bank, shooting at Cochise’s muzzle flame. Their own gun flashes gave Sundance targets; his hand moved rhythmically, whipping arrows from the quiver. It was nothing for an experienced bowman to have three or four in the air simultaneously; he could aim and shoot them as fast as most men could fire a repeating rifle.

  But some went wild. The light was tricky and all his targets were in frantic motion, and now the quiver was getting lighter, almost empty. He slipped the bow on his shoulder, picked up the rifle. At that instant, he saw a lean figure leg across the rocks, vanish among the trees. He recognized it, and then he forgot the others, ran into darkness, chasing Gannon.

  No moonlight could penetrate the thickly interlocked heads of the great pines; in here, blackness was total. Sundance dodged between the tree trunks, headed toward the spot where Gannon had disappeared. Away from the creek, the ground sloped sharply upward; his legs labored as he climbed. After a few yards he halted, held his breath, cocked his head. He heard nothing except the steady, pumping drumroll of fire from Cochise’s weapon, and the sporadic uncertain return of it from what men were left down there.

  Sundance ran on, angling up the hill. He held his rifle ready, halted. There was no trace of Gannon.

  Sundance roared his name. “Gannon!” His voice rang through the woods, echoed from the cliffs dying, fading: “Gannon . . . Gannon . . . Gannnnoonnn ...”

  No sound, no answer. “Gannon!” he bellowed once more. “This is Sundance! You hear? Jim Sundance! Gannon, come out and fight!”

  He turned around, eyes searching the stygian woods. “What’s the matter, Gannon? You afraid of a halfbreed? You and me, we’re on the same side of the creek. And I’m alone over here. You won’t come out and fight, white man? Here I am. Here’s your target! All you got to do is shoot!” And he fired a shot straight up, his muzzle-flame a signal, and then he stepped wide aside; and in that instant the answering shot came, from up the hill, followed by two more. Sundance saw the orange tongues of gunflame, heard the whine of slugs.

  He grinned savagely, took cover behind a tree, and emptied his rifle at the place, a hundred yards up the hill, from which Gannon’s shots had come. He sprayed lead in a wide pattern, knowing Gannon would have rolled after firing.

  Nothing happened; from above there was no sound, no movement, no answering shot. Sundance shoved more rounds into his gun and slowly, carefully, began to climb the hill, sheltering behind the thick boles of pines as he went.

  He waited a moment behind one immense tree, then ran swiftly, soundlessly forward toward another. As he crossed the open space between, suddenly, from his right, a gun flamed, and lead ripped all around him as Gannon fired and fired and fired again, and Sundance pitched forward, hugging the pine needles. Then, as quickly as it had come, the fire pinched off; the woods were still again.

  Sundance drew in a deep breath, smiled tightly. Gannon was smart and Gannon was no coward. While Sundance had stalked him, he had stalked Sundance. And now he was over there to the right, not even certain, probably, whether he had fired at a man or a shadow. He would be crouched there, waiting, listening, maybe praying—if such men prayed—that Sundance would return his fire, give him a gunflash for target.

  Instead, Sundance laid the rifle aside. For what he intended to do now, it would only hamper him. He pulled the sixgun from its holster, laid it with the rifle. That was no bravado; he wanted nothing that would drag or catch when he began to crawl. He took the arrows from his quiver, clenched them in his hand so they would not click together, discarded the quiver. He cradled the bow in his arm. Then he snaked forward on his belly toward the source of Gannon’s shots.

  He made ten yards, waited, holding his breath, listening. Wind mourned in the pines overhead, but he paid no attention to it. Two minutes passed, three. Then he heard it, from not more than fifty feet ahead and to his left: a faint, metallic tick of sound. He knew what it was: a cartridge being rammed into the loading port of a Winchester.

  Sundance crawled on, teeth bared in a kind of snarl. The darkness was still absolute; down at the creek, all firing had ceased. But he had Gannon pin-pointed; now all he had to do was break Gannon’s nerve. He nocked an arrow, drew the bow, and loosed the shaft.

  Its point chunked loudly into a tree trunk somewhere near where Gannon should be hidden. When it hit, Sundance heard a gasp. He already had another arrow on the string; he let it go in the direction of the sound. He fired the third just after it, and notched the fourth and last, and held it, and then it happened. Gannon leaped to his feet, and now Sundance could see him as movement in the darkness, and suddenly, frantically, Gannon began to shoot. He whirled, with no idea from whence the arrows were coming, and he pumped the lever of his Winchester and sprayed bullets in a circle, and Sundance could hear him cursing. “Goddamn you, Sundance,” Gannon yelled, “come out and fight!” And Sundance lay flat until he heard the rifle snick on empty. And now he could see Gannon and sprang to his feet and pulled back the bowstring. “Gannon,” he said. “Over here. This is where it’s coming from.” Gannon whirled and reached for his Colt as Sundance loosed the arrow.

  It caught Gannon in the chest, sank to its feathers. The red-bearded man gave a strange, muffled cry, fell to his knees, tugging at the shaft, then rolled over on his side. Sundance drew the hatchet, ran to him with the weapon ready.

  But there was no need for it. He bent over Gannon, staring into a contorted face, able to discern pain-filled eyes. Gannon’s lips moved. “I thought the buzzards—”

  “No,” Sundance whispered, no mercy for Gannon in him. “It’s you they’ll eat, not me.

  “You damned halfbreed,” Gannon said faintly, in a voice full of hate. With that curse on his lips, he died.

  Sundance stood up, breathing hard, knees suddenly weak. Then he tensed, sensing rather than hearing someone coming up the hill behind him. Suddenly he bent, seized Gannon’s Colt, brought it up. Then he lowered it as he heard the soft mournful hoot of an owl.

  He answered it, and Cochise was there, panting from the climb. “My son, you’re all right?” He looked down at Gannon.

  “I am all right. He almost got me one time, but I got around him.”

  Cochise nodded, looking at the shaft protruding from Gannon’s chest. “For hunting men in darkness, the bow is always best.” He paused, looked down the hill. “The others—most of them are dead. A few escaped into the timber. On foot, they count for nothing. We must be watchful of them, but... I can send men after them later. They will be here. And what you sought—It is down there, in its bag. I cached it beneath some rocks before I came up here.”

  “Then I think it’s time to go,” said Sundance.

  “I think so, too.” He hesitated. “The hunting has been good tonight, and yet my heart is heavy. I am an old man now, and maybe when one is old, one has had enough of war. I no longer enjoy it as I did when I was young. Let us go and get your treasure and ride out of here and leave this place before daylight and th
e vultures come.”

  “Yes,” Sundance said. He worked back through the woods until he found his rifle and sixgun, Cochise bringing Gannon’s weapons. Then he and the Apache went down the hill together in darkness, both alert, to get the treasure from its hiding place.

  Chapter Ten

  The dancing and feasting had been going on for four days around the arbor made of scrub-oak and the sacred house built on a framework of mescal stalks. The coming-of-age ceremony of the young Apache women was one of the greatest festivals of the tribe, as big a thing, and as serious, as the Sun Dance and Medicine Lodge ceremony of the Plains Indians.

  Together, Sundance and Herta von Markau had watched it all: the blessing of the girls with sacred pollen by the medicine men and the godmothers of the maidens, the blessing of the tribe, in turn, by the girls, the dancing of the maidens, the ritual of the Medicine Basket. The basin in the mountains resounded day and night with drums and chanting and the click of deer-hoof rattles.

  The Austrian woman was impressed. “I think that it is a great thing to be an Apache girl.”

  “Women are powerful in the tribe, and honored,” Sundance told her. He had already explained the demands made on the girls of twelve, thirteen, fourteen, how they must drink only through reeds during the ceremony, must avoid water on their bodies, must not look at the sky or lose their tempers or laugh excessively, and how they must dance and dance to the point of exhaustion. “When a girl has been through all this, she knows she has earned her womanhood.”

  Now, though, it was late, and time for the dance of the Mountain Gods. This was the high point of the ceremony. A huge fire blazed in the center of the camp, before the sacred dwelling. Then a group of singers began an age-old chant: