by John Benteen
In the shelter of the wall, Sundance pressed himself against the ground. He heard the horses snorting, milling in the corral. Forted up behind them, Chester was in an impregnable position, and the moment Sundance fired, he’d shoot back at the muzzle flame. There was only one thing to do. Edge forward in the shadow, get into the corral, hunt Joker Bob down there among the animals. Maybe he could bring it off, since the darkness was so total. Hell, he thought, he had to bring it off. Flat on his belly, gun ready, Sundance began to crawl toward the sound of the horses.
He had made no more than five feet when, with a noise like an exploding bomb, the roof of the headquarters building roared into orange flame, sun-dried timbers and thatch, likely fired by the furious villagers, going up like wax or coal oil, and suddenly turning night to day. Sundance froze, caught full in the yellow light, a perfect target.
And in that instant he could see the corral as perfectly as if the sun were at its zenith. Every feature, every detail stood out in exquisite clarity—and Joker Bob Chester, saddlebags over his shoulder, one gun in his hand, the other in its holster, was caught in the act of swinging up on the bare back of a big dun gelding.
Sundance leaped to his feet. Simultaneously, Chester was astride the horse. There was a clock tick when he and Sundance looked at one another. Chester laughed, then bent low, jabbed the horse with spurs. It streaked across the corral, straight for Sundance, and Chester fired as he came. The horse jumped, soaring up in a magnificent leap over the corral rails, landing without breaking gait, as Chester sought to ride Sundance down.
Time stopped as the bulk of the oncoming animal blotted out the whole orange-flaming world. He saw close up its flaring nostrils and iron-shod feet and, high above, Chester’s laughing face and down-pointed gun, and in a fraction of a second more the horse would smash him down. Instinctively, he pulled back the trigger, fired and fired again. The horse screamed as the slugs hit it, and then its shoulder slammed against Sundance as it veered and smashed him back against the corral bars. Then it ran two strides more and fell dead.
Before it dropped, Chester was already off it, nimble as a cat. He landed on both feet, whirled, brought up his gun. “Damn you!” he yelled, voice a shriek above the roar of flames, the shooting and tumult in the plaza. “How many lives have you got?” He fired. His bullet chopped Sundance’s flank, and he cocked and pulled the trigger again.
The hammer came down with a dry click; that gun was empty. Savagely, without pause, Chester threw it from him, and his other hand was already streaking to a holster. It was all done in blurred swiftness, but that clock tick of time was what Sundance needed. He had one bullet left in his gun and he had to make that good. Coolly, he recovered stance, braced his feet, raised the Colt and lined it, even as Chester’s other weapon cleared leather.
Both fired at once. But Chester’s shot was from the hip, wild, desperate; and Sundance’s was aimed carefully. Joker Bob’s slug ripped past Sundance’s shoulder. At the same time, Sundance’s bullet smashed into the other’s chest. Joker Bob, knocked back two paces, almost fell, then recovered. He stared at Sundance, and in the swirling firelight his fair hair was like a halo around his handsome face. He laughed, and slowly he raised his Colt and aimed it just as Sundance had, and as he brought it into line, Sundance tensed to jerk away; and then Bob’s laugh changed to a look of horror and his mouth sagged open and blood poured from it, and Bob’s gun hand came down with the Colt yet unfired, and Joker Bob Chester swayed and pitched face forward in the dust.
Sundance ran toward him, bent over him, picked up the Colt that had spilled from Bob’s left hand. Using the man’s own gun, he put a finishing shot for safety’s sake into Joker Bob Chester’s back. The body twitched under the impact, but it did not move.
Sundance stood there spraddle-legged above the corpse, breathing hard, trembling slightly. More buildings were burning, now; all of the fort that was flammable. The crowd in the plaza was screaming with triumph, and there was other screaming, too, of a different kind, that came from the overwhelmed Rurales. Then, above the tumult, came a sound even shriller and more bloodcurdling—the war whoop of an Absaroka.
Sundance threw back his head and answered it with the Cheyenne cry. Then he picked up the saddlebags that had fallen from Bob Chester’s shoulder and threw them over his own. They were very heavy, and there was no doubt about what they held. As Jesse Whitewolf loped around the end of the burning building, a huge grin on his smudged and bloody face and Sundance’s bow in his hand, Sundance’s empty quiver on his shoulder, Jim Sundance, lurching from exhaustion, the pain of wounds, and the weight of all that money, went to meet him.
Chapter Nine
“One hundred and fourteen thousand dollars,” Joe Tom Clinton murmured. He looked from the pile of money in the middle of the board table in the bank’s back room to Sundance. “You mean they didn’t spend no more than that?”
“They didn’t have a chance to,” Sundance said. “Where they holed up, there was nothing to spend it on. Most of what’s missing must have gone to Garcia and his Rurales for protection. I reckon some of it went to the other four gunnies that threw in with them.”
For a moment, the room was very quiet. Then Kearney, the banker, said, “Let’s have all this again—this incredible story. As I understand it, we’re implicated in the death of a whole squadron of Rurales. That could cause a lot of complications.”
Sundance leaned back in his chair, looked at the men around the table and lit the cigar Joe Tom Clinton had just given him. “I don’t see how,” he said. “But, all right; here’s what happened. I told you how Whitewolf threw in with me. When we got to Infierno, we found out that the Chesters had four more men than we counted on. We managed to set up an ambush and take care of those, but then the Rurales rode in and caught us.”
“And Whitewolf got away,” Clinton said.
“That’s right. The Chesters were fixing to rub me out when Whitewolf came back and took a hand.”
“Without guns?”
“He didn’t need guns.” Sundance grinned. “There was a bow and a quiver full of arrows on my horse. And he knew how to use ’em as well as any wild Crow—or Cheyenne, for that matter. So he had weapons—and God knows, he had guts. He came back just as quick as he could, right after dark, climbed that mesa, waited until the guards were all distracted by what the Chesters were trying to do to me. Then he threw my rope up, caught those spikes set in the wall, went right up. Took care of all four guards—the two Anglos named Abe and Deuce and two Rurales—with arrows. The beauty of arrows is they’re absolutely quiet. Then he broke up the Chesters’ party with more of the same, and I made my break. I got both Chesters, Little Coy and Joker Bob.”
“A hell of a job,” Joe Tom Clinton murmured, eyes shining with battle light. “One hell of a job.”
“It wasn’t any Sunday promenade, no,” Sundance grinned. Then he sobered. “We couldn’t have brought it off if it hadn’t been for Guiterrez. That was one brave man, and he was loved and admired by everybody in the village. When he made his sacrifice, it was an inspiration to all of ’em. As soon as the Rurales had left for the fort, the people of the village got together and decided they’d deal with Garcia and his men once and for all, no matter what it cost them. They got together what weapons they could and stormed the fort and wiped out that skunk’s nest. Burned what would burn, tore down everything else. Nobody will ever use it for a hideout again.”
“And we, they, all of us will be in bad trouble with the Mexican authorities,” Kearney said fearfully. “There’ll be blowback.”
Sundance shook his head. “Look at it this way. A whole patrol of Rurales has vanished from the face of the earth. The people of Infierno left no sign of them; even their horses are long gone; bad as they needed them, they drove them far into the chaparral and turned them loose. No questioning will ever get a word out of them as to what happened. And the next Rurales commandant will wonder—and he’ll step easy around those folks and stay off their neck
s.”
“I hope it works out that way. God knows, we won’t talk.” Kearney stood up. “Now, we come down to the matter of money. Obviously you’ve got over eleven thousand dollars coming to you.”
“Plus another fifteen for the Chesters and their understrappers.” Sundance smiled wryly. “I’m not charging you for the four extra ones; it wasn’t in my contract.”
“We wouldn’t pay you anyway,” Kearney said.
“Wait a minute,” Joe Tom said. “Maybe the bank wouldn’t, but I’ll personal put up five hundred each for those other four.”
“That goes to Whitewolf, then,” Sundance said. “I couldn’t have brought this off without him, and he hasn’t asked for a penny.”
“All right, to Whitewolf. When do we get to meet this young heller?”
“Wait a minute,” Kearney asked, “what about proof? Identification? We can’t just pay you fifteen thousand on your say so. How do we know you really killed those men?”
Sundance grinned. Unconsciously, he fingered the hatchet sheathed on his belt; Whitewolf had found his weapons in the headquarters building before it had been burned. And he remembered how, after the battle was over, Jesse had come to him and asked for the use of the ax. “Wait a minute,” Sundance said. He went to the door, stuck his head through. “Jesse,” he called, “bring it in.”
Almost immediately, Whitewolf strode through the doorway, dressed in clean range clothes bought that morning in Eagle Pass. Well out from his body, he carried a big gunny sack that obviously contained a heavy burden.
“Gentlemen,” Sundance said, disregarding the stench that suddenly filled the room, “meet Jesse Whitewolf. On the table, Jesse.”
Whitewolf’s teeth flashed in a smile. “Yeah,” he said, and raised the sack and dumped out its contents in the center of the board table.
“Judas H. Priest,” Joe Tom Clinton whispered, breaking the shocked silence. Kearney, who had stared wide-eyed at the four heads that rolled across the varnished top, suddenly turned away and vomited on the rug.
“Your proof,” Sundance said grimly. “We couldn’t haul four corpses all the way to Eagle Pass, and I’m afraid even these ain’t in the best of shape. But they’ll serve.” He looked from one to the other of them. “Gentlemen, I’ll have my money now.”
“Two thousand dollars,” Jesse Whitewolf whispered, leaning across the table in a cantina in Piedras Negras—not the one they had cleaned out. “Jim, I never had that much money in my life. And in a bank, too, where I can’t spend it, can’t wash it down the drain. With that much money, I’ve got a leg on a spread of my own. I can quit driftin’, settle down.”
“You could have had a cut of the other,” Sundance said. “You earned it.”
“No. No, you did right in sendin’ all of it to Washington. That’s where it ought to go, to the benefit of the tribes.” Whitewolf’s smile was almost shy. “It sort of clears my conscience as an Indian to know I’ve finally done something for my people.”
Sundance looked at him narrowly. “I’ll tell you, Jesse,” he said presently, “you could do a lot more.” He poured the second drink of tequila he was allowing himself. “You’ve proved that on this trip. I used to think I was one of a kind. But you’ve got me matched in every way—guns, arrows, and guts. Maybe overmatched.”
Whitewolf slowly rolled a cigarette. “You’re suggesting I throw in with you?”
“No. Because that way we’d have to split the proceeds of every job. Or jack up the price—and I always charge as much as the traffic’ll bear anyhow. But if you went out on your own, if there were two of us hiring out our guns, pulling down good money, and sending it on to Washington—Well, whatever good I’m doing now would be doubled. Those people there need every cent they can lay their hands on.”
Whitewolf nodded, lit the cigarette, looked at Sundance through the veil of smoke. “I appreciate the kind words.” He took out his sheath knife, a long-bladed Bowie, intently began to clean his nails with it. “It’s … something to think about. We’ll talk about it tonight.”
“Not tonight,” Sundance said.
Whitewolf looked at him obliquely, then grinned. “Oh. The señora. Doña Teresa. I see.”
“She deserves to know what happened. I promised her I’d tell her.”
“So you’ll be at Hacienda del Carmen tonight. Well, you’ll be coming back through tomorrow, huh? And then bound where?”
Sundance looked down at his tequila glass. “San Antonio.”
Whitewolf was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Ransome. He still there?”
“Yeah,” Sundance said. “I checked by wire. He’s still there.”
“Doesn’t give up easy. Waiting for you to come back to Texas, sic another wolf on you.”
Sundance’s face was like something carved from wood. “He won’t get the chance this time. I aim to deal with him once and for all. It’s another way of striking a blow at the Indian Ring—and if I don’t get Ransome, he’ll get me.”
“Absolutely. I don’t blame you. And, Jim—I’ll think about what you said. Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s my line of work—hiring out my gun.”
“We’ll talk about it in the morning,” Sundance said and got up. Then he stuck out his hand. “Jesse, I’m glad you dealt yourself in. Between us, we two half-breeds make one damned good Indian.”
Whitewolf took the hand and shook it vigorously. “But the Chesters found that out too late, huh?” He laughed, and when Sundance went out was still sitting at the table, cleaning his nails with the long-bladed knife.
Fresh after a night’s rest and a feed of grain, Eagle went smartly along the south road to Hacienda del Carmen. With the big horse moving smoothly beneath him, Sundance thought about Jesse Whitewolf. The Crow was young, in some ways still unseasoned, but he was indeed a tremendous fighting man, and if those talents could be added to Sundance’s own in behalf of the tribes, it could make all the difference in the world.
Give Ransome credit for this, Sundance thought: He was right about one thing; I’m not getting any younger. I can tell that by how much this job took out of me. Like Ransome said, sooner or later I’ll slow down and— It would be good if, when that day came, there were someone to fill his moccasins, see that the work in Washington did not collapse for lack of financing. Still, it was not an easy thing he was asking of Whitewolf. It was like asking a man to become a monk, take vows of poverty and lay his life on the line for his beliefs every day he lived. Few people had motivation or guts enough to do that; Whitewolf just might be one of that rare breed.
Ahead of him lay the hacienda. He put Whitewolf from his mind, the half-breed’s image usurped by that of Teresa Sanchez. Barbara Colfax was his woman, but she was a thousand miles away and gone a long, long time; and no matter how much she meant to him, when a man came out of the kind of hell he’d just been through, he needed a woman’s body and her touch and voice here and now. He needed Teresa Sanchez—at least for a little while.
When he pulled the bell, she answered the door herself, splendid in spotless white dress that hugged every curve and line. Her eyes widened at the sight of him. “You,” she whispered. “You have come back. And that means—”
“Yes,” Sundance said. “He’s dead.”
Teresa stood motionless for a few seconds. Then she let out a long, shuddering breath. “If it had to be one of you, I’m glad it was he. Come in.”
Sundance entered and she closed the door behind him. Then she moved into his arms. “Yes,” she whispered, flattening her breasts against his chest. “I am very glad it was Roberto who died, not you.”
He held her tightly, kissed her. Her mouth was open, carnal. When the kiss was over, he raised his head. “Do you want to hear about it?”
She shook her head. “No. No, I have wiped him from my mind.” Then she pulled away, smiling. “I think I should dismiss the servants. I believe we should have the house to ourselves tonight. Perhaps you would like to go to the other room and wait there for me.”
It was good to be back in a woman’s bedroom after the harshness of the desert, good to smell again the feminine perfume. Sundance sat down on the soft, resilient bed, took a tobacco bag and cigarette papers from his pocket. What he rolled was a cigarette of marijuana; he’d already had his quota of whiskey today with Whitewolf. The weed, which he’d learned to smoke from Mexicans, would relax him and heighten his desire without slowing down his reflexes. He allowed himself one such cigarette a day, and now was the time for this one.
It was just burning when Teresa returned to the room. She halted inside the door, sniffed, smiled. “Marijuana. Make me one, too.” As Sundance reached for the pouch again, she came toward the bed. “The servants are all gone. There is no one to report on what happens here tonight.”
Sundance licked the cigarette, lit it, passed it to her. She drew on it deeply, finally exhaled the smoke. Then she turned her back to him. “You will please handle these buttons? They are awkward.”
Sundance grinned. “I’ll handle ’em.” Carefully, he unfastened each one. When he had done so and the back of the dress fell open, Sundance saw that Teresa wore beneath it none of the complicated underwear of the time and region; there was only faintly olive-tinged flesh. She pulled the dress over her head and was naked; she turned, unashamed, to confront him, taking another long, deep drag on the cigarette. She was very beautiful, her breasts high and firm and their nipples fully erect, her belly sleek and curved, her hips flaring, her legs long. Her eyes shone as she inhaled the cigarette again, and then, slowly, she came to Sundance.
Very much later, she lay beside him, head cradled on his arm, the warmth of her body against his. She was awake, but she had been thoughtful and silent for a long time. “How long will you stay?” she asked finally.