Sundance 9

by John Benteen

  Whitewolf laughed, a soft sound of great amusement, as he raised his hands. “Don’t plug me, Jim. I was trying to prove something to you.”

  Sundance came toward him, still burning with anger. “Prove what?”

  “That I was as good as you. That a Crow could take a Cheyenne. Only, it looks like I was wrong. But I’m damned if I know how you sensed I was comin’. I didn’t make a sound, and I changed directions a half dozen times to keep the wind with me so your horse wouldn’t get my scent.” He shook his head, baffled. “I outsmarted the appaloosa, but it looks like I couldn’t outsmart you.”

  “You came within an ace of taking a bullet.” Sundance’s voice was harsh. “You might still get one if you don’t do more explaining.”

  “It’s simple. I followed you from Piedras Negras. Trailed you.”

  “You couldn’t have, not that fast. I covered my tracks.”

  Whitewolf grinned. “You think a Cheyenne couldn’t have followed you? What makes you think a Crow couldn’t?” Then he was serious. “It was tricky, but I did it all right. And then I stalked you—partly as a joke, partly to prove to you that I was as good as you and that you needed me.”

  “Needed you?”

  “Sure. I know what you’re up to, heard it in Eagle Pass. They hired you to get the Chester boys. That’s a tall order for one man alone; I figured you’d need some backing up but knew you wouldn’t take along anybody that couldn’t really cut it. So I thought if I could show you that I could get the drop on you—or would have if I’d toted a gun—you couldn’t say I wasn’t good enough.” He looked puzzled. “Damned if I know how you heard me. I’d swear I didn’t make a sound.”

  “You rattled a couple of canes of ocotillo.”

  “Damned if I did! I never touched a clump of—” He broke off. “Judas Priest! There was a pack rat gatherin’ stuff to build a nest. I was right up on it before it knew I was there and then it ran!” He made a wry face. “Man, you always go to war when you hear a lousy pack rat?”

  “In my business, I take no chances—especially not in this kind of country.” Sundance hesitated, then jerked the gun. “All right. Put your hands down. Then go get your gear and take off.”

  “No,” Whitewolf said. “I want to go with you to get the Chester boys.”

  Sundance’s mouth thinned. He could not help liking Whitewolf and even feeling a certain pity for him. And there was no doubt that he was a prime fighting man; his tracking Sundance and almost catching him unawares certified that he was a good man in the desert. All the same—“Sorry. I work alone.”

  “Damn it, you can’t go up against that bunch single-handed. Don’t you know about the Chesters?”

  “I know about them. And I’ll deal with ’em my own way.”

  “And get yourself killed. And how much help will you be to the tribes then?”

  Sundance’s lip quirked. “Since when did you start caring about the tribes? You chose the white man’s road.”

  Whitewolf was silent for a moment. Then he said, “And don’t you think I’ve lived to regret it? Here I am neither one thing or the other. And ... do I have to go through the rest of my life that way? I . . . hell, I’m no good at talking, it’s hard to say. But, you—You’re in the same boat. Only, you’ve got a purpose. It makes you different, you know who you are. I’ve been thinking a lot since I met up with you. After all, I was a Crow, born and bred until I was sixteen. Plenty Coups himself, the biggest warchief, was my godfather. Maybe the road I picked wasn’t so good. Maybe I owe the Indians something, and it’s time I started paying the debt.” His voice was soft, free of its usual bravado now. “I know you’ll get a lot of money if you bring in the Chesters. And I don’t want a penny of it, not if you use it to help the tribes. Now they’re on the reservations, if somebody don’t do something, crooked agents’ll steal ’em blind. If I could have a hand in putting a stop to that—” He paused, shrugged. “At first I thought you were a fool. But since night before last when you helped me out of that bar, I’ve begun to wonder just who is the fool.”

  Sundance looked searchingly at the handsome face on which the moonlight fell, and Whitewolf returned his gaze without the flicker of an eye. After a moment, Sundance let out a long breath. “It wouldn’t work,” he said. “Not unless you swore to take my orders, do exactly what I said.”

  Whitewolf s eyes flared. “That was what I figured on.”

  Sundance waited a moment more. Then he sheathed the Colt. “All right,” he said. “Go get your guns and horse.”

  Whitewolf had not eaten all day. When the Crow half-breed had returned with the things he had left behind to make his stalking easier, Sundance gave him tortillas and some jerky, and Whitewolf devoured them hungrily, sitting cross-legged by Sundance as the blond man opened the long bull hide pannier again. The Crow watched curiously, and his eyes lit when Sundance drew from the parfleche a short, recurved bow of juniper wood, lashed with sinew and tipped with buffalo horn. As Sundance ran his hand along the string made of dried sinew of the shoulder tendon of a bison bull, searching for defects, Whitewolf made a sound in his throat. “That’s a beauty.”

  Whitewolf laughed. “No Crow ever took a backseat to a Cheyenne when it came to using a bow like that. Hell, when I was fourteen, I drove an arrow clean through a runnin’ buffalo with one like that. And fighting—? I can kill a man at three hundred yards with one easy as I can with a rifle.” He leaned forward. “Let’s see your arrows.”

  Sundance took from the bag a quiver made of panther skin, tail still attached. It was stuffed with shafts. Whitewolf reached over, pulled one out, and whistled. “Good workmanship. But what the hell’s this? Stone arrowheads? You’re a hundred years behind the times. Everybody uses iron points now.”

  “Everybody but me,” Sundance said. “A stone point makes a hell of a wound and stops a man a whole lot quicker. I use a bow a lot in my work—no sound, no gun flash or powdersmoke. The stopping power’s important—important enough that I pay the old men extra to make them for me, or make ’em myself.”

  “I see.” Whitewolf ran his thumb along the beautifully worked arrow point. “Sharp as a razor. And those barbs—Yeah, I can see where a feller with one of those in him’s gonna lose all interest in the rest of the proceeding.” He looked at the bag. “I guess you still tote a medicine bundle.”

  “I do,” Sundance said.

  Whitewolf laughed softly. “So do I. A man would be a fool not to carry his luck with him.” He reached for the other pannier. “What’s in this one?”

  Sundance picked it up before he could touch it. “My shield.”

  Whitewolf’s brows arched. Then he nodded. “Yeah, it would be part of your medicine. Even if it won’t stop a bullet, it’s still sacred. Can I see yours?”

  Sundance shrugged, drew it out. Perfectly round, it was made of a layer of sun-dried buffalo bull neck hide, tough and strong enough to turn an arrow or a musket ball, though it would not stop modern fixed ammunition. On the bull hide had been laid a pad of grass, then the whole thing covered with antelope hide on which a Thunderbird was painted.

  Whitewolf was impressed. “A Thunderbird shield. That takes a long time to make and pray over. Very big medicine indeed.” Then, as Sundance held it up, he sucked in breath. “Scalps,” he said.

  “Yes,” Sundance said. There were six of them dangling from the shield. Whitewolf leaned closer.

  “Three black. Indian. But those other three … one red, one brown, one yeller.” He looked at Sundance keenly. “White men’s scalps.”

  “That’s right,” Sundance said.

  “And on your medicine shield. There’s a story behind that.”

  “They’re the last six scalps I ever took.” Sundance looked down the moon-silvered draw, remembering. “When I was less than twenty … My father was a trader. We went to Bent’s Old Fort to sell his skins. Then he and my mother headed back north toward the Cheyennes in a buckboard. I stayed at the fort to watch the horse races, caught up with ’em l
ater. Only ... they were dead.”

  “Damn,” Whitewolf breathed.

  “The sign was plain. I’d seen ’em at the fort. Three Pawnees and three drunken white men. The six of ’em hung around together, left right after my father did with his money. They must have caught up with ’em on the prairie. Killed and robbed him, then they …” He broke off. “My mother lived longer. They didn’t kill her until they were through with her.”

  Whitewolf said nothing.

  Sundance’s voice was toneless, flat. “I buried my parents, took up their trail. They split up, but I followed them, one by one. It took me a year to get them all.”

  Whitewolf let out a breath. “They didn’t die easy, did they?”

  Sundance kept on looking down the draw. Then he said harshly, “No. They didn’t. None of ’em.”

  He cased the shield again. “After that, I drifted. The Civil War started. I was kind of crazy. I fell in with bushwhackers, both sides, on the Kansas-Missouri border. It didn’t matter to me who I fought with, long as I fought. That’s where I really learned to use my guns. Then, after the war, when I sort of came out of it … The railroads were running west, I could see the Indians and the whites were gonna collide head-on. It seemed to me that it wasn’t necessary, that the land was big enough for both, that there were things each could learn from the other and—Damn it, I knew how the Indians felt. But I knew how the white men felt, too. All the poor bastards who had been at the bottom of the heap back East, their only chance of salvation land of their own. And one white man could make a living off a tenth what it took to support a buffalo-hunting Indian. I thought for a while that the Indians could show the white men how to harvest game and the things that grew wild and still leave some for seed, and the white men could show the tribes some things about living, too. Only they never stopped fighting long enough to show each other.”

  He spat. “For a while, I was the fair-haired boy with the Army generals. They needed my help and advice, and I made ’em pay through the nose for it. And I advised the Indians, too. I fell in with George Crook. You know about George Crook?”

  “Hell, yes, I know about him. The Crows were on his side at the Battle of the Rosebud last year. The only Army General they ever trusted.”

  “The only one who was as much Indian as any Indian. He was the one that put me in touch with the lobbyist in Washington. He wanted to see the tribes get a square deal, too. And all the money I’ve made as a fighting man has gone to finance that ever since. But it’s never enough. Not against the banks and railroads and gold mining interests and land promoters.”

  “And yet you keep on trying,” Whitewolf said softly.

  “What else is there to do? Not everybody in the East thinks the only good Indian is a dead Indian. There’s plenty of sentiment back there for a square deal for the tribes. And my man in Washington and my woman, Barbara Colfax—”

  “You have a woman, then.”

  “A hell of a woman,” Sundance said. “But we’re apart so much. After the Custer fight, I sent her East. I knew the wars were over, I didn’t want her to be hunted down like a she-wolf. Besides, she was more useful in Washington telling the Indian story, since she’d been adopted into the Cheyenne tribe, and—” He made a gesture. “She works for the tribes there. I work for them here.”

  “No,” Whitewolf said. “We work for them here.” His voice rose. “Listen, Sundance, I’m as much Indian as you and as much white man. I can use that bow and those arrows of yours every bit as good as you can, and I may be even faster with a gun. I trailed you across forty miles of desert when you were trying to cover your tracks. Anything you can do, I can do just as well. That includes working for the tribes, if you’ll only trust me.”

  Sundance looked at him. “The way you’ve laid it out, I’ve only got two choices. Either I trust you or I fight you. I don’t want to fight you, so I’ve got to trust you.”

  Whitewolf stared into the night. “I promise you,” he said, “you won’t be sorry. Now. What’s the deal on the Chester brothers?”

  Chapter Six

  It was a weird, lost land into which they rode. Endless flats of creosote shimmered in the sun; great piles of rock towered in nightmare shapes; deep arroyos, bone dry at this time of year, sliced the earth like gaping wounds. Alternating with these were occasional thorny jungles of chaparral and the occasional scrubby skeletons of what had once been great forests, cut over and over again. The only inhabitants were occasional goat herders, whose huts they swung wide around. And if Sundance had any doubt about Whitewolf’s desert craft, it soon vanished. When he chose to be, the Crow was like a ghost, soundless, almost invisible. In addition, he seemed to have a nose for water, able to find a spring or trickle in what seemed wholly arid wastes. Sundance knew now that it was indeed only by a fluke that he had surprised Whitewolf instead of Whitewolf surprising him, and as he thought about that, he sometimes felt a curious prickle of the spine. Ransome’s words came back: Has it occurred to you that one of these days you’ll come up against somebody younger and just as fast? Watching the ’breed in operation, he was glad that Whitewolf was on his side.

  On the afternoon of the second day, they pulled up in a wash shaded by mesquite and cat claw to rest their mounts. Whitewolf made a scout, came soundlessly back. “Over yonder,” he said, excitement suppressed in his voice. “A hell of a big mesa with somethin’ on top of it—and what looks like a village at the foot.”

  “How far?”

  “We could make it by nightfall.”

  “No,” Sundance said. “We’ll wait here and scout it after dark.” He followed Whitewolf to the head of the draw and they lay flat on oven-hot rocks. Sundance put a pair of binoculars to his eyes.

  It was going to be a tough place to crack. The officers of the Spanish Army of a century before had chosen their site for Fort Hell well.

  The thing of it was, there was no cover anywhere around it. The mesa rose abruptly from the flats, its walls barren, naked, marked only by a winding track that led to the village below. On the shimmering tabletop of land, its thick mud walls unbreached and solid, a strong new wooden gate in place, the old fortress squatted, with guard towers at each corner from which watchers could see anything that moved on the shelterless desert below. The village itself was a miserable huddle of scattered adobe huts in the shadow of the mesa, with one wooden building that was obviously the only store and cantina.

  “Man,” Whitewolf breathed. “Some hideout, eh?”

  Sundance nodded. “Everything they want. Including women from that pueblo, I’d guess.”

  “All the same, there ain’t but four of ’em. When it gets dark, we can move in, get over that wall somehow. Two to one ain’t such bad odds, not if we got surprise on our side.”

  “We don’t know what the odds are,” Sundance said tersely.

  “Hell, the two Chester brothers and their two understrappers—”

  “And maybe they’ve picked up some more. Maybe they’ve got men from that village on their side. We don’t move blind against ’em and get our tails in a crack. Tonight, I scout the setup—”

  “You mean we.”

  “I said I.” Sundance’s voice was hard.

  “You think I’m gonna let you go alone?”

  Sundance looked at him for a long moment. “I was figuring on going alone before you came along. I didn’t ask you to join up with me—but I told you that if you did, you took my orders. After dark, we’re gonna move out, find a place closer to the mesa to cache the horses and the gear, and you’re gonna stay there and watch ’em while I size up the situation. What we do next depends on what I find.”

  “And if they jump you while you’re up there—one man alone—”

  “Then I’ve got you in reserve,” Sundance said. “If I’m not back by morning, you’ll know they either killed or captured me. Then you’re free to do whatever you want—come after me or hightail it. But making the scout’s a job for one man only.”

  “Then let me do it
.”

  Sundance shook his head. “You don’t speak Spanish, do you?”

  “Just a little—border Spanish.”

  “The village has to be scouted, too. Somebody challenges you, you’d damned well better be able to answer in their own language. Besides, I may be able to pry some information out of the people in the village, depending on what the setup is. But you couldn’t. Nobody there’s likely to speak English.”

  “All the same—” Whitewolf made an angry, impatient gesture.

  Sundance only stared at him. “That’s the way it’s gonna be,” he said coldly.

  Whitewolf looked back for a moment; then, slowly, he nodded. “All right,” he said. “I made a promise and I’ll keep it. You’re the chief. And if they take you, don’t worry about me hightailing it. I’ll be coming after you, one way or another.”

  “That’s better,” Sundance said and turned to put his glasses on the mesa again.

  By nightfall, the binoculars had told him that the Chesters kept a stern guard. He had watched one man leave a tower, be replaced by another. The distance was too great to see their features, even through the glasses, but both were Anglos wearing Colts and carrying long-barreled Winchesters. And he saw another drama played out, too. After siesta, the little village had come alive again, with people on its dusty street. But then the gates of the fort had opened and two men had ridden out, down the trail along the mesa’s flank. When the people of the pueblo saw them coming, there was panic. The street was cleared again as the word spread, men, women, children scuttling for their huts, so that in a pair of minutes the place looked like a ghost town. Obviously, the inhabitants of Infierno were terrified of the American gunmen. Again the distance was too great for Sundance to see faces, but he could make out that one of the riders was tall and broad-shouldered; the other had a massive torso, but his stirrups had been shortened almost to jockey length to accommodate legs that were dwarflike. He knew those two had to be the Chester brothers. He watched them ride up to the store, and the tall one disappear inside while the short one waited, rifle across his saddle, looking up and down the street. Presently, the tall one emerged with a loaded gunny sack, swung up, and the two rode back to the fort.