by John Benteen
“They will be sent East. To the Quapaw Reservation in Indian Territory.”
“Is that a good land?”
Sundance was silent. It was a malaria-ridden pesthole, certain death to high country Indians like the Modocs, with no built-in resistance.
Captain Jack read his face. “Well,” he said bitterly. “Then I have done no good. All has been useless.” He spat on the floor. “Useless.”
He shook his head. “Once, before we killed the general, I wanted to bargain with the whites. I said we should come in, make peace. But there was a medicine man, the one the whites called Curly-Headed Doctor. He told everyone his magic would protect us, that no white would ever enter our stronghold. He called me an old woman and tried to give me old woman’s clothes to wear and— I should not have lost my temper. Well. I am sorry for what I have done. It was a mistake to have killed the General. But the people listened to Curly-Headed Doctor and it was what they wanted.”
“That’s past,” Sundance said. “I came to see if there is anything I can do.”
“Yes,” Jack said. “Yes, there is. I must talk swiftly.” Suddenly his face was serious, his eyes flared with intensity. “Listen carefully; no one here but you understands our language. You must go south, back to Tule Lake and to the lava beds. There, in the Cave of Ancient Pictures ... I am the only one who knows.”
“Knows what?”
“Where it is hidden. My father, Combutwaush, told me. Years ago, in the place the white men called Bloody Point, we attacked a wagon train, in revenge for the way the miners had killed our people and burned our camps. My father himself found it in a wagon—the gold.”
“Gold?” Sundance stiffened.
“Yes, a lot of it. Many thousands of dollars worth.”
“Kintpuash! Why didn’t you use it? Buy the land you needed!”
“Why should we buy our own land? Besides, how could we? It was stolen gold; if we had tried to use it, the white men, then, would have taken it from us. No, my father cached it there and told only me the secret, and nobody else has ever known. I used a little of it from time to time, very carefully, to buy the ammunition we hid in the lava before the war started, and it was my plan, when I talked to General Canby, to offer it to him if he would go away and leave us alone. But Curly-Headed Doctor, wanting to take power from me, forced my hand; I had to kill Canby instead. Now, I want that gold found, used for my people while they are in a strange land. Go to the lava beds, find the Cave of Ancient Pictures. Deep inside, there is a passage to the right, big enough for one man only. At the end of that, a pile of loose rock. Beneath that, the gold, in the metal boxes that the white men used for packing bread. Do you know the Cave of Ancient Pictures?”
“No,” Sundance said. “There are a hundred caves in those lava beds.”
“Yes. This one is two miles from the lake. It is very long and deep and its entrance is just a slit. If you will start from the shore of Tule Lake, look for the butte shaped like an ax-blade, and—”
The steel door clanged suddenly open. Then the captain of the guard was there with drawn gun. “Goddammit,” he rasped, “I told you two to talk English. All right, your time’s up!”
Sundance whirled, furious, but the captain jammed the muzzle of the Colt into his belly. Three carbines were trained on them by other troopers through the cell bars. “You heard me,” the captain rasped. “Out!”
“Wait,” Sundance said. “We’ll talk in English.”
“No! I said, out!”
Sundance stared into the captain’s eyes. “I’ll find it,” he said, in English.
“You’ll find what?” the captain snarled.
“Nothing,” Sundance said thinly. “Nothing.” He looked at Kintpuash. “Goodbye, my friend,” he said.
Kintpuash nodded. “Goodbye.” He turned away, as Sundance was herded out.
The cell door slammed with a hollow, final clang. “On your way, half-breed,” the captain snapped, gun still threatening Sundance. “It’s time to get ready for the hanging.”
Sundance said, “What’s your name?”
“That’s no concern of yours.”
“It might be, someday.”
The captain laughed shortly. He was nearly as tall as Sundance, dark-haired, with a black mustache. His face was burned the color of mahogany. “Nash,” he said. “Captain Bart Nash, U.S.A., and don’t you forget it, blanket-back. I’ve been fighting you gut-eaters for five years, now, and if you make a bad move, you won’t be the first buck I’ve killed. Now ... out!”
“Nash. Yes, I’ll remember that,” Sundance said quietly. “You can put up that gun. I’m going.” He turned toward the door.
Then, from behind him, Kintpuash’s voice rang out desperately, in Modoc dialect. “Sundance! One more thing! Look out for the last five! Don’t kill them and don’t let them kill you!”
“Shut up, you lousy red bastard!” a sergeant roared and slammed a carbine barrel against the bars.
Captain Jack’s laughter rose shrilly. “All right!” he yelled. “Shoot me, then!” And in Klamath, he called: “The last five, Sundance! Beware of them! But get the gold!” Then a wooden door that partitioned off the cellblock slammed shut. Sundance was shoved through the guardhouse office, out onto the parade ground. Nash stood in the doorway, gun trained on him, eyes like two jet marbles. “Half-breed, I don’t know what all that yammer was about. But I fought in those lava beds for six damn months, and I hate Modocs and I hate people who don’t hate Modocs. You understand? You stay clear of Fort Klamath. That yellow hair makes you easy to remember. Next time I have trouble with you, you won’t get off so light.”
Sundance looked at him. He’d had this kind of treatment from soldiers before, but there was an undertone, a kind of fury, in Nash’s voice and manner that was the bitterness of a man beaten in fair fight. Sundance turned away. Remembering what Captain Jack had said, he told himself he had a lot to think about.
Behind him, Nash’s voice was sardonic. “Enjoy the hanging, half-breed. It comes off in exactly one half hour.”
Sundance walked on.
Chapter Two
The name of the town was Hell, Yes! Affirmative as that sounded, the little place in the mountains just on the Oregon-California line wasn’t, Sundance judged, likely to last much longer. Another year or so and it would dry up and blow away, like so many of the other towns that flared to life around a small pocket of placer gold and vanished when that was worked out.
Meanwhile, it was a place to eat and rest the big appaloosa stallion. He held Eagle, the warhorse he’d got from the Nez Percé, to a tight-reined walk as he rode down the single street. After thirty-odd years of hard frontier life, he had a sixth sense as keen as any wolf’s, and he did not like this town. He did not like the look of it, nor its smell—rot, decay, and poverty—and he did not like the absence of traffic. Most of all, he did not like all the loafers who sat on the porches of the few buildings, mostly shuttered, a hard-bitten crew, all of them armed, watching him in an utter silence that had something hostile about it. Those men, cast up in this backwater, were bored and sullen; he could sense that in the way their gazes followed him.
Usually, he tried to avoid any trouble for which he was not being paid, and at another time he might have ridden straight on through this town and out the other end. But after this morning, he was in no mood to ride around trouble. If anybody here wanted any, Sundance thought, he’d be glad to give him all he could handle.
His mind went back to the spectacle at Fort Klamath. Promptly at ten, they’d been marched from the guardhouse, six of them. Captain Jack, Schonchin John, Black Jim, and Boston Charley, as the whites had named them. Then the last two, Barncho and Slolux. Six handcuffed men, surrounded by dozens of soldiers, lined up at the foot of the gallows.
They hanged Captain Jack first. Sundance, in the middle of a close-packed crowd, stood tensely as Kintpuash ascended the gallows. He walked up steadily, proudly, and Sundance’s thought flashed back over years. For a mo
nth each year, Nicholas Sundance, his father, had traded among the Klamaths, the Modocs, and the Shastas. Compared to the proud Cheyennes and Sioux of the high plains beyond the Rockies, they were poverty-stricken, lacking the great buffalo herds to make life easy for them. Still, they had had a certain pride that Nick Sundance had admired, and an easy friendliness he’d liked. Over that stretch of time, Sundance had come to know the Modocs well, had spent many a night in their wood and earthen lodges; and Kintpuash, a few years older than himself, had been kind to him, patiently teaching him Modoc and Klamath dialect, showing him the special way in which the Modocs lived, by patient hunting and gathering and a little farming. Even then, the Modocs had been more receptive to the white man’s way, had spoken more English, become more Christianized, than any other Indians Sundance had known. They were a gentle people, until, in retaliation for a raid by a wholly different tribe, the Shastas, the miners of California had set upon them and burned their villages, slaughtered women and children. Then they had shown how they could fight.
It was his friend who climbed the gallows steps, stood there by the noose, proud and unafraid, while the death song arose from the Indians in the stockade nearby. Kintpuash stared out over the crowd, and it seemed to Sundance that their eyes met. Then they hooded him, put the hangman’s noose around his neck. The trap was pulled; his body dropped; a cheer went up from the onlookers. Not far away, Sundance heard a well-dressed man say excitedly: “Lemme through! I got to go and claim his body! I’ve already contracted for it! Gonna pickle it in alcohol and put it on exhibition back East. I’ll make a fortune!”
Sundance bit his lip.
Then, in rapid succession, the next three: Boston Charley, Black Jim, Schonchin John. None faltered, none broke. After that, it was Barncho and Slolux’s turn. The two Modocs were led up the steps, the hangman’s noose was fitted around their necks. They were uncomprehending; they spoke so little English that Barncho had slept all through the trial on the courtroom floor under a table. Sundance, standing tensely, watched the nooses tightened. The same minister who had refused Kintpuash’s offer of twenty-five ponies said the last rites. Then General Davis mounted the steps of the gallows. He spoke to the hangman. Sundance stared as the nooses were unfastened. Barncho and Slolux looked wide-eyed, incredulously, at the dangling ropes. Then soldiers herded them down the steps again, and back across the parade to the guardhouse. Davis faced the crowd. His voice rang out, loud and firm.
“Gentlemen, you have just seen an example of the mercy of President Grant. There has been great agitation in Washington asking clemency for the murderers of General Canby. Yesterday, a message was received from the President. The death sentences of Barncho and Slolux have been commuted. Now their sentence is life imprisonment on Alcatraz. However, as you have just witnessed, the President specified that they not be advised of this act of mercy until the very last moment. Until five minutes ago, only I knew that they were not to be hanged. It is hoped that this will serve as an example, not only of the determination of the Government to punish murdering Indians, but to show mercy where such is warranted. There will be no more hangings.”
Davis turned, went down the steps. A groan of disappointment went up from the cheated crowd. “Wait’ll my newspaper hears about this!” somebody yelled furiously. Sundance only stood there, knees strangely weak, as the mob swirled about him. So he had managed to save two lives, anyhow. But that was a bitter victory, too. For an Indian, life imprisonment was worse than death.
Numbly and with a sickness deep in his belly, he finally turned away, strode through the dispersing crowd of ranchers and miners toward Post Headquarters. Entering the big, white-painted building, he confronted the thick-bodied adjutant. “I’ll have my gun now,” he rasped.
The soldier looked at him for a moment, not speaking.
“Didn’t you hear the general? The hanging’s over. Give me my weapons.” The adjutant opened a desk drawer, took out Sundance’s belt. He passed it over. “A lot of hardware there,” he said coolly. “You’d best be damned careful how you use it.”
Sundance did not answer, only strapped on the belt, whisked out the Colt, spun its cylinder as he checked its loads. Then he strode out, swung up on Eagle, the stallion, waiting at the rack outside. He whirled the big horse with unaccustomed shortness, touched its ribs with his heels. Eagle launched into a dead run, almost bowling over indignant stragglers from the crowd, who shouted in outrage. Sundance did not look back at them as he thundered out of Fort Klamath.
Now, a foul, black mood was still upon him as he looked for a bar in Hell, Yes! that had not been shuttered for lack of business. Presently, he saw it, a half dozen loafers on its porch, some whittling, a couple in utter idleness, and one, a big man in black shirt and pants, both stained and shiny with dirt, sitting on the porch’s edge cleaning an Army Colt that had been converted from cap and ball to .44 fixed loads. As he swung down, the man with the gun looked at him curiously from under thick, black brows. His eyes were slanted, yellowish, like a panther’s. He whirled the cylinder of the pistol and it made a dry click. Then he shoved it back in its holster. Stroking a stubble of black beard, he watched as Sundance looped Eagle’s reins loosely around the hitchrack. That single loop would make the well-trained horse stand; but if anybody tried to tamper with the gear on him—the Winchester in the saddle scabbard or the big buffalo-hide panniers slung on behind the Mexican saddle—he could jerk free in an instant. Then, God help whoever had laid a hand on him, for he was a one-man horse and trained for war, and those great hooves and thick jaws were deadly weapons.
Sundance hitched at the gunbelt, adjusting it; then he went up the steps, past the loafers, and into the saloon.
It wasn’t big: a bar, a few tables. At the far end, three men played poker—for matches; that was how poverty-stricken the town had become. The bartender drowsed over a copy of the Yreka newspaper. At the counter, Sundance rang a gold eagle under his nose to wake him up.
Dough-faced, unshaven and unwashed, the man jerked erect at the unfamiliar sound of money. “I want a bottle,” Sundance said. “Best Kentucky bourbon, no rotgut, you hear? Give me a bottle.”
The barkeep stared at the bleak, hawk like face, its dull red skin. For a moment, Sundance thought he would balk. Then—maybe it was the blond hair or what he saw in the hard, black eyes—he nodded, turned away, found a bottle of Old Crow, a glass, set both on the bar. Then he made change from a cigar box. Sundance counted it carefully; in this mood, he half hoped it was wrong. But it was correct, and he pocketed it, then took bottle and glass to a table.
He pulled out a chair with moccasined foot, sat down with back carefully to the wall, broke the bottle’s seal. Before he pulled the cork, he stared at the squat jug for a moment. Maybe this wasn’t smart. Usually, his limit was two small drinks. More than that, he got mean, too much more, he went crazy, killing crazy, fighting, smashing, crazy. That was the Indian in him; liquor was something he couldn’t handle.
Now, though, he didn’t give a damn. After this morning, something was wound up in him like a great coiled spring and getting tighter every minute. He’d had enough of the pussyfooting, pleading, begging, in Washington. He’d had enough of being shoved around by soldiers. He’d had enough, too, of seeing his friends die at the end of a hangman’s noose. So the hell with it. He poured and drank and poured again.
The swinging doors clattered. Sundance twisted his head, saw the loafers amble in, line up at the bar. The big man in the black clothes dominated them. Sundance saw in the mirror that he was being watched by those yellow eyes beneath the thick, black brows. Then the big man said, “Mort, a bottle. It don’t have to be fancy stuff. Put it on my credit.”
The bartender licked his lips. “Archie, I’d like to. But you know how big your bill is . . .”
Archie leaned forward. Sundance could see his face in the mirror, saw how fleshy lips peeled away from yellowed, snaggled teeth. The creases in Archie’s face were dark, as if dirt had settled in them and ne
ver been washed out. “Now, Mort,” said Archie, “you wouldn’t give me no trouble—”
The bar man’s face was pale. “I—I reckon your tab can stand another dollar.” He found a bottle, set it out. “Glasses fer everybody?
“Fer my friends here, yeah.” Archie took the bottle, pulled its cork with his teeth, poured a double shot, tossed it off, sighed, wiped his beard with the back of his hand. Then he slid the bottle down the bar. “Help yourself, boys, but don’t be greedy. Shoot it back to me.”
Sundance had another drink. He felt the whiskey strike home like a thunderbolt, loosening every nerve and muscle. Soon, he knew, the red mist would start seeping into his brain. He grinned, and a scar on his lean red cheek, sliced by an arrow long ago, made his mouth look like that of a snarling wolf.
Before the mist took him, he thought of what Captain Jack had said: Gold in the Cave of Ancient Pictures, thousands of dollars of it, looted from the emigrant train the Modocs had attacked. That much he understood, though how he would find the right cave in that hell’s terrain of pits and caves and trenches, he did not know. Still, he had a clue. A butte shaped like an ax-blade, the distance from the Tule Lake shoreline. Somehow he would find it. But, then— The last five. He heard again Kintpuash’s voice ringing out as the guardhouse door slammed shut. Who or what were the last five?
Somebody slid the bottle back down the bar to Archie. Archie poured, drank again, coughed, and poured once more. “Well,” he said loudly, “they hung a lot of Injuns up at Klamath today. Good riddance to the bastards, that’s what I say. Shoulda hung ‘em all.”
“You was there and seen it,” a man said, “right?”
“I sure was. Watched ‘em kick and jerk and beg and blubber.”
Sundance drained his glass, set it down. “Nobody,” he said quietly, “begged and blubbered.”