Sundance 9

by John Benteen

  Sundance looked at him for a full ten seconds without speaking, trying to mask the emotions that roiled within him. Anger, contempt, yes—but there was something else. For years, he had used all his strength, every ounce of energy, in behalf of the tribes. He was tired, damned tired. There were times when discouragement rode him like a great black vulture perched on his shoulder, digging in its claws. On top of that, he did miss Barbara. Ran-some could not truly guess how tempting the prospect was: to quit, to leave, to marry Barbara, hang up his guns, stop fighting.

  But, of course, it was impossible. Beaten, no longer with strength to make war or win better terms, the Indians needed him more than ever. The complexities of government policies were too much for their chiefs to deal with. Only a man like himself, with the soul of an Indian and the brain and education of a white man, could do it for them.

  Sundance let out a long breath. “All right, Mr. Ransome. Here’s my word. Go to hell!” Then, coldly, he turned away and strode to the door.

  Ransome’s voice halted him with his hand on the knob. “Sundance!”

  Slowly Jim Sundance turned. Ransome was on his feet, and the last vestige of fear was gone from his face, replaced by anger.

  “What is it?” Sundance asked.

  “Maybe you’d better think again before you go out that door.” Ransome came around the desk. “Do you know something? You’re not getting any younger. How old are you, thirty-eight? You may be fast with that knife of yours, and with a gun. But I’ve heard that gunfighters are like boxers. By the time a prizefighter’s your age, any good young man can take him.”

  His smile was devoid of humor. “Has it occurred to you that one of these days you’ll come up against somebody younger and just as fast, and that maybe you might be a clock tick slower. They tell me there are a lot of good young gunmen in Texas, Sundance. And most of them are for hire. Think about it. Exile’s a lot pleasanter than sudden death. And one way or the other, the people I represent are determined to end your interference in Indian affairs.”

  Sundance looked at him steadily. There was no longer any regret, any temptation. He was almost grateful to Ransome for making it so easy for him. He laughed softly. “All right, Ransome. Everything you say is true.” His face went savage. “But any time you find a wolf, cut him loose—and I’ll take my chances.” Then he turned, went out, closing the door firmly behind him, leaving Ransome standing there in the middle of the room, mouth a thin, harsh line.

  Chapter Two

  At the hitch rack on the street, a young appaloosa stallion, roan-spotted, long-legged, strong and deep-chested, waited patiently. For years, Sundance had ridden a stud just like this one. But Ransome had spoken truly; Sundance had been at the battle on the Little Big Horn; there had indeed been an Indian with blond hair on that ridge, and that Indian had been the last thing George Custer had ever seen in this world. But the fight had not been without cost to him; the stallion, Eagle, had been killed. This young stud bearing the same name was, like his predecessor, a Nez Percé horse; no tribe bred mounts like Chief Joseph’s people, and Sundance had traveled far to find him. Now, he unlatched young Eagle’s reins, stood for a moment rubbing the stud’s topknot as it nuzzled its head against him.

  They called San Antonio the Cowboy Capital, for it was the jumping off place of the great trail herds that poured northward out of Texas for the Kansas railroad towns. It was a rough town, and all sorts of vultures flocked to it, among them plenty of men who made their livings with their guns. If Ransome needed fighting men to send against him, he’d have no trouble finding the cream of the crop in San An-tone.

  And that Ransome would send men against him, Sundance had no doubt. The Indian Ring was playing for high stakes—countless millions of dollars. Only Sundance stood between them and unlimited license to steal. For money like that, they’d play rough, and play for keeps.

  Sundance checked the Winchester in his saddle scabbard, loosened it. Then he inspected the fastenings of the two big bull hide panniers slung across the stallion’s rump behind the cantle of the Mexican saddle. After that, he swung up on the horse from the right, the Indian side, and reined the stud around. The ride to Eagle Pass was a long one, and there were plenty of cutbanks and chaparral jungles along the way. He had not survived nearly four decades of life west of the Mississippi by taking unnecessary chances. From here to Eagle Pass, he would watch his flanks and back trail carefully.

  Drawing the rifle, he laid it across the pommel in front of him. Then, touching the appaloosa with moccasined heels, he put it into a gallop, rode fast past the Alamo and out of San Antonio, then west toward the Rio Grande.

  He camped that night in a mesquite thicket well off the road, and he was alert for more reasons than one. The brush swarmed with long-horned cattle, and although most of them were as wild and man-shy as deer, there was always the chance of an old rogue bull—and such a creature was as dangerous to a dismounted man as any grizzly. Building a small fire before dark, he cooked a simple meal, then extinguished the blaze before night fell. He rolled up in his blankets, his rifle cradled in his arm’s crook, his other weapons draped around the horn of the saddle he used for a pillow, and the appaloosa stallion picketed nearby to serve as watchdog. In the half year that he’d had the horse, he’d trained it carefully; it was a one-man animal, ready to use its teeth and hooves in his defense; and its keen senses of smell and hearing would provide early warning of any danger.

  Before he slept, he lay for a while, listening to the howl of coyotes, the occasional bawl of a steer. Overhead, the sky was clear, peppered with an incredible grandeur of stars. It was a time for remembering; and the memories that crowded in on him now were recollections of things that would never be again: the exciting, busy atmosphere of a big Cheyenne camp on the buffalo range; the thrill of running buffalo; the wild freedom of thousands of square miles of magnificent country uninhabited save for Indians and wild game. All these things he could remember; all of them he had fought hard to save, and all were gone. Sickness and combat had reduced the Cheyennes by two thirds, and the Army watched to see that they no longer camped on their old hunting grounds, now sliced by railroads, scabbed with the towns and farms and ranches of white settlers and prospectors’ diggings; and anyhow, the buffalo were gone, wiped out by hide hunters. Even as he lay here, the Nez Percés under Thunder-Rolling-in-the-Mountains, whom white men called Chief Joseph, forced off their land in Idaho, were battling their way toward Canada in a long, painful running fight; and everything within him cried out to go and join it. But one more gun would not help them, and the Army was strong enough to seal their fate. No, it was more important to use his strength and weapons to try to insure a fair deal for them when they finally gave up.

  And so he would go on to Eagle Pass. The stopover at San Antonio had been bad medicine, but there was no doubt that a gun job waited for him in the little town along the Rio. The letter from the president of the bank there had made that clear.

  Sundance had an almost animal knack of putting all worry, regret, and apprehension of the future from his mind when he chose to. Now he did that, rolled over, slept.

  He was up before sunrise, the big stallion pounding along the road to Eagle Pass with strength and freshness, hooves devouring the ground. He still carried his Winchester across his saddle bow, and he rode straight up, totally alert. He had not forgotten Mark Ransome’s threat, and he knew it would have been safer to have cut cross-country. But it would have been longer. For miles on either side of the narrow, dusty wagon track, the country was grown up in cruel, thorned chaparral—thickets of mesquite and prickly pear that would have slowed him down and maybe done injury to the horse, still unused to the brush of the Southwest.

  For the first five miles, he saw nothing to alarm him, not so much as a roadrunner. The brush along one edge of the road gave way to open country, dotted with creosote and cactus, studded with boulders and rock outcroppings. In the clear morning air, he could see a long way, noted that the road ran s
traight another half mile, then bent sharply in a turn. He slowed the horse. It was never a good idea to go around such a bend hell-bent-for-election; you never knew what you might run into.

  And then, as if to verify his judgment, the shooting started.

  It came in a quick splatter of gunfire, the sharp, staccato bark of rifles, the deep cough of sixgun. Sundance jerked Eagle up so sharply the stallion reared; almost simultaneously, around the bend, there was the scream of a wounded horse.

  With the stallion tight-reined, Sundance sat for a pair of seconds. Two Winchesters and a Colt. He swung the horse, rode back in the direction from which he’d come, saw a notch in the wall of brush, put his mount into it. There he slid down, tied the horse. He had to know what was going on around that bend. Crouching, he slithered into the chaparral.

  Thorns clawed at his buckskin shirt, raked the tough denim pants, as he squirmed through a jungle of mesquite and cactus. He paid them no attention, careful only to protect eyes and hands. Despite the thickness of the brush, he made no sound at all, taking his time while the shooting continued unabated. Across the neck of the curve, the sound of guns was very close; his nostrils caught the taint of powdersmoke. He lay flat on his belly, crawled on. He neared the road’s edge again, and, selecting a clump of prickly pear, snaked up behind it and peered out from beside it, not over it. What he saw made his lips move soundlessly in an oath.

  Across the road and twenty yards from its edge, the horse lay dead near a clump of boulders. Forted in the rock burst, one man was hunkered low, frantically cramming shells into his sixgun. But there was no let-up in the rifle fire, and lead screamed and whined off the big rock that protected him.

  The revolver loaded, he raised his head. Sundance saw the flash of white teeth in a savage grin in the midst of a coppery face. Coolly disregarding the fusillade that turned his rock fort into a hornet’s nest, he changed position to get a better field of fire, and that was when Sundance saw that he wore a buckskin shirt much like his own. Even at that distance, he could tell the man was a half-breed. He knew what had happened and how the fellow had got in such a fix and what he had to do about it. His lips curled back from his own teeth in a snarl that would have done credit to a hungry wolf, and he edged back into the brush. The rifle hampered him now and was useless for his purposes, and so he left it behind as he crawled like a gigantic snake through the thorns and drew the Colt and the Bowie instead.

  With the gun in one hand, knife in the other, he did not have far to go. Two minutes, three of patient wriggling, and he saw the outline of the first one through a lacy pattern of mesquite leaves. The man lay flat on his belly in the chaparral on Sundance’s side of the road; dressed in leather jacket and heavy batwing chaps, he pumped lead from a Winchester as fast as he could work the lever.

  Sundance waited a moment, listened for the sound of the other rifle. It was farther on, maybe ten yards past the man he could see; and the thickness of the brush made the second marksman invisible. Sundance’s snarl widened. This first one, he decided, he wanted alive. The second one, he would kill.

  He edged toward the gunman’s covert. Unaware of him, the man kept firing. The sound of his rifle covered the faint scrape of thorns against Sundance’s clothing. Then the rifle’s hammer clicked down on an empty chamber. Sundance froze. He would have to wait.

  The man rolled on his side, his back to Sundance. “Hey, Bushrod. Got to reload. Keep the bastard pinned!”

  “Right!” the answer came, and the other Winchester rattled on. The man Sundance watched thumbed cartridges from an open box beside him, shoved them in the Winchester’s loading gate. Presently, he was finished. “I’m ready, Bushrod!” he bellowed.

  “Right! Your turn, Clancy! I gotta load up myself!” The other gun ceased firing, and Clancy took aim and began to shoot again.

  Sundance wiggled on, his movement once more masked by gunfire. He was almost close enough to touch Clancy’s spurred boot heel. But he wanted to be closer than that. He kept his head down as he eased on—not only for concealment, but because the man behind the rocks across the road was damned good with a Colt and his slugs were coming close.

  Sundance was in position, lay almost side by side with Clancy. If the man had rolled over, he would have stared straight into Sundance’s face. Sundance eased the Colt forward through a tangle of mesquite branches, raised it high. Mercilessly, he brought it down with tremendous force on Clancy’s head.

  Clancy’s hat absorbed some of the blow, but not much. Sundance felt the solid impact of steel on bone jar his arm. Clancy’s body stiffened; his head dropped, the gun rolled from his hands. Bushrod went on shooting for a round or two. Then he became aware that Clancy had ceased fire. “Hey, Clance!” he bellowed from ten yards away. “He didn’t get you, did he?”

  Sundance eased back into the brush.

  “Goddammit, Clancy—” There was a threshing of branches, heavy breathing, muttered curses. “Clance, answer…”

  Sundance saw Bushrod. He was crawling on his belly toward Clancy, swearing at the thorns as they gouged at him. His face was round and shagged with short red beard, his nose had been broken more than once. A hardcase, all right, and his rifle was at the ready, thrust out in front of him, as he snaked toward his companion. Meanwhile, the shooting from across the road had ceased; probably the man over there was reloading.

  Sundance lay motionless except for the thumb that eared back the hammer on his Colt. Bushrod’s head broke through the screen of mesquite; his eyes widened as he saw Clancy’s limp body. “Clancy! Dammit, brother—” Bushrod wriggled on swiftly, and half his body was free of brush, in the little opening where Clancy lay. Bushrod reared up a little, lifting his rifle.

  Then he saw Sundance, who had the Colt pointed squarely at him.

  Bushrod’s mouth dropped open, made a gaping hole in the scrag of beard. But he was quick, and in the same instant he brought up the rifle.

  Sundance pulled the trigger.

  His Colt thundered; the heavy slug caught Bushrod squarely in the head. What its impact did to his skull was ghastly, and the bullet’s force wrenched his whole body around and sprawled it across Clancy’s legs. Clancy stirred slightly, groaned. Sundance edged into the opening behind him, quickly seized his rifle, threw it into the brush, shucked the Colt from Clancy’s holster and sent it after the long gun. Then he threw Bushrod’s Winchester after both. At that moment, the man across the road began to shoot again, and Sundance dropped just as a slug clipped brush above his ear.

  As Clancy stirred once more, Sundance hit him again with the Colt’s barrel. After that, sure that Clancy would be out for time enough, he crawled swiftly back through the brush. It took him half as long to make the spot where he had tethered Eagle as it had to stalk the pair of gunmen. But he did not free the horse. Instead, he edged warily to the border of the brush, looked out.

  The road was empty save for a tumbleweed shoved along by the breeze. Sundance jumped out of the chaparral, ran across it and into the rocks on the other side. Then he began his second stalk.

  This one was easier than the first in that he had no thorns to cope with, but it was more dangerous because the cover was worse. He went quickly until he reached the bend, but after that he used every ounce of caution of which he was capable. Scuttling from rock to rock, boulder to boulder like a chuckawalla, taking advantage of every scrap of cover, he worked around and behind the other man in the buckskin shirt. Presently, he was on the slope above him and looking down into the rock fortress which sheltered him. Had he wanted to, he could have killed the man with a single shot from the rifle he had reclaimed.

  Instead, he watched him. Yes, a half-breed, no doubt of that. Swarthy, but not wholly Indian in color, and his hair was not worn in braids, but cut fairly short and neatly, though it was dark as a raven’s wing. The buckskin shirt was old and greasy and most of its fringe was gone; through holes in it, Sundance could see a blue work shirt beneath.

  As he looked on, the man in the rocks, p
uzzled by the sudden and continuing silence across the road, got to his knees. He wore a cartridge belt that was almost empty, and the holster on it was thonged down like Sundance’s own. Instead of moccasins, he wore the high-heeled boots and spurs of a range rider, and his legs were encased in leather chaps decorated with silver conchos. A black Stetson with a snakeskin band lay on the ground beside him.

  As Sundance watched, he picked up the hat. Carefully, holding its brim in his left hand, his Colt ready in the right, he poked the sombrero out from behind the rock, trying to draw fire. When none came, he laid down the hat.

  What he did told Sundance he was no amateur. A greenhorn would have sprung up immediately, curiosity overcoming common sense, and maybe run full into a wall of lead, as the ambushers, having tricked him with their silence, took their target. But this one took an interval to roll and light a cigarette, and it was plain that he was going to wait until he had smoked it before he made any move; he was an experienced professional. He never lowered his gun, and his head swiveled constantly, watching his flanks and rear in case the silence meant they were trying to get around behind him.

  Sundance had waited long enough, learned all he was going to learn from here. He hunkered down behind his rock. “You, down there!” he shouted. “Hold your—”

  Before the words left his mouth, the man had spun around, and, with a fantastic sense of hearing, had spotted the one rock on that boulder-strewn slope from which that voice had come. He jerked up the Colt, fired, and lead whined off the boulder’s front. In the same instant, the man rolled sideways behind another rock that would give him shelter from the rear.

  “Hold your fire!” Sundance bellowed as the echo of that single shot died. “Dammit, I’m your friend! I’ve taken care of those two bushwhackers for you!”

  “The hell you have!” the answer came. “You think I’ll fall for that?”