Sundance 4

by John Benteen

  Sundance ran back to Eagle, unstrapped the panniers behind the stallion’s saddle. Then he prepared himself to confront the lava beds—and the Indians hidden within them.

  Thousands, maybe millions, of years before, the sick earth had vomited out its guts. Countless tons of fiery, molten rock had spewed from craters, cracks and vents, flowing like molasses into nightmare shapes, then cooled and hardened—almost a hundred square miles of great black rock pile, treeless, almost grassless, like the surface of another planet, unshaded under the merciless sun. It was such a forbidding, unnatural place that even professional soldiers had come close to mutiny rather than enter its strangeness under the guns of enemies, as if they were as much frightened by the fantastic terrain as by the Modocs who had made it their stronghold. Battle on the plains or in the mountains was one thing, but to fight in a place of such bleak and eerie strangeness was another. Hell with the fires out, they had called it; and that cindery wasteland fitted the description.

  And yet, to those who knew it, it was far from barren. There were stretches of open, grassy land between the lava flows and outcroppings, enough to support deer and antelope hidden from the guns of white men. There were jack rabbits, too, and snakes and rats, and all had been food for the Modocs during the war, as had the tules from the adjoining lake bed. And even when the soldiers had cut them off from the lake, they had found water in the depths of caves where seepage oozed up out of the earth, and in pools so far underground that they remained frozen all year around. People who knew the lava could live in it indefinitely; and as Sundance surveyed the great labyrinth of corridors, cuts, seams and hills that lay before him, he understood how five Indians could, with care, remain here for months undetected. After all, the Army had never really penetrated the lava beds; the Indians it had taken had all come out and surrendered when their ammunition was gone.

  Sundance, moving warily through on foot now, was a different man from the one who had entered. He still wore buckskin shirt and denim pants, but now the sombrero was gone, and from the crown of his yellow head dangled a couple of painted eagle feathers, worn loose and down in the sign of peace. The sixgun had been slipped into his saddlebags, and the Winchester was in its scabbard on the saddle. He wore the panther-skin arrow quiver, carried the bow, strung and ready, and on his left arm held the Thunderbird shield with its dangling scalps. That shield was important, now: crucial. It insured that even from a distance he could not be mistaken for a white rancher or a soldier: it was mark of the Indian and enough, he hoped, to make any ambushing Modoc hold his fire until there was a chance to talk.

  Eagle, reins looped over the horn, came reluctantly behind him as he padded forward on moccasins which would probably be cut to ribbons by the sharp edges of the lava before he was out of here. This was not a place for a man on horseback, but he could not leave the stallion behind. The horse slowed him, though, for its steel shoes found little purchase on the slippery rock, and there were a thousand, a million, holes and pores in the lava into which it could step and break a leg.

  Sundance had the general layout of this wilderness fast in his mind. To the west, shimmering in the distance, he could see the upthrust butte of lava where Captain Thomas of the artillery had been ambushed by the Modocs on a foray into the beds and more than twenty men, including their commander, had been wiped out. Almost due north of that, at the lake’s edge, was the old stronghold of the Modocs, the area they had provisioned, fortified and held until the Army managed to cut them off from the water of the lake. In the early days of the war, Curly-Headed Doctor, chief shaman of the band, had stretched a rope of tules around the entire stronghold, promising that his magic would balk any soldier from ever crossing it. By the time he’d been proved a fraud, it had been too late for the Modocs.

  East of the stronghold, at least five miles from where Sundance went into the lava, another butte thrust upward, and from here, its resemblance to an ax-head was plain. Sundance guided on it; no matter how he swung or circled, he always managed to point back toward it.

  Tireless and wary as a wolf, he traveled through forbidding outcroppings, twisted and wind-weathered shapes like the warped imaginings of a demented mind. He followed corridors of lava that locked and interlocked in a maze, snaking in every direction of the compass, black walls towering over him. He skirted deep craters and holes, circled great, black round piles. And always, he watched for any tatter of movement that might betray the presence of another human being and read the sign.

  There was plenty of it. He cut the trails of coyotes, rabbits, deer, an occasional lobo. He saw spent cartridges, their brass corroded, mute testimony to ferocious battles months before. Once, an old horseshoe; another time, a canteen with a bullet hole in it ... But he saw no fresh indication of Indians as he journeyed deeper into the badlands. That, however, did not mean they were not around. Likely even now they were watching him, for he must have entered the lava somewhere along the back trail they had taken after killing Roane’s beef animal. They would have been watching that trail, and almost undoubtedly they were watching him. But not even Sundance could spot them in a place like this.

  Presently, the lava ended; he emerged from a black ravine out onto a level flat between outcroppings. Here he could ride again, and moccasins already slashed by the edges of sharp obsidian chunks, he gratefully swung into the saddle. Now, he was in the heart of the lava beds, and Eagle carried him quickly a full two miles across the flat before he had to dismount and go on foot again.

  The sun was at zenith, and every bit of heat it threw down was absorbed by the black lava, then radiated up again. Even in October, it was like traveling across the cindery bed of a giant furnace, as Sundance made his way back into the black wilderness, Eagle following. But the ax-blade butte was closer now; no more than a mile away. He should reach it in three hours, maybe four; it took that long and longer to traverse a mile in here.

  The trench Sundance was following through the badlands dead-ended. He was hemmed in on either side by walls of coal-black rock; ahead rose a sheer upthrust offered enough purchase for his moccasined feet, but Eagle could not climb it. Sundance ground-reined the stallion, scrambled up the wall, his bow slung on his shoulder. He reached a crest that dominated the surrounding terrain, its top almost razor sharp. Its forward slope was a jumble of black rock, obsidian boulders, and overhanging shelves.

  From up here, he could see for miles. The ax-blade butte was not far away across the shimmering lava. Tule Lake glinted in the sun, its margins rimmed with green. Carefully, keeping eyes stationary but turning his head, he scanned that cindery expanse in the Indian style. Nothing moved; nothing at all.

  When Sundance was sure of that, he rolled over, started to slide back down into the trench. In that instant, it happened. Eagle snorted, reared, whirled, ears laid back. As Sundance slid down the wall, the big horse pawed the rock. And two Modocs appeared around a bend, short, squat men burnt almost black by the sun, dressed in a mixture of ragged white man’s clothes and ill-tanned buckskin—and holding rifles pointed straight at Sundance.

  Another second, and Eagle would have charged into those guns, as he had been trained to do unless ordered not to. Sundance’s quick Cheyenne command rang out in the trench, as he landed catlike at its bottom. The stallion snorted, held himself in check, trembling with the desire for battle. The two Indians looked at him warily. Then they moved forward, and Sundance raised his hands, knowing that the slightest threatening movement would mean his death.

  “Friends,” he said in Klamath. “I have come a long way in search of you.”

  For a minute that seemed endless, the Modocs stared at Sundance, faces dark and impassive as if carved from the lava itself. Sun glinted on their rifles, and on the brass cartridges in loops in the belts around their middles. Then Sundance heard a rattle on the lava wall above and behind him. There was the thump of a man landing in the trench. Suddenly a gun barrel bored hard into his back. A voice rasped in English: “Don’t move.”

 
Sundance smiled faintly. The third man had been right under his nose, under those outcroppings on the slope beyond the crest. They had maneuvered neatly, waiting to mousetrap him in this trench. Now one of two things was going to happen! Either they would kill him and leave his bones here to lie unfound for years, or they would parley. It was up to him to make them listen.

  He stood motionless, that gun muzzle grinding against the small of his spine, and spoke in the liquid Klamath dialect. “My name is Sundance, and I have come because Kintpuash asked me to. I have come to tell you how Kintpuash died, which was bravely, like a Modoc chief, and to bring you a message from him. I am not a Modoc, but I have lived with the Modocs and Kintpuash was my friend. I have come here to find you and to talk to you. I am Indian, too, Cheyenne.”

  When he had finished, the trench was silent again. Then, somewhere high overhead, a hawk gave its mewing call. Eagle snorted and pawed the rock, steel shod hoof clinking. Sundance murmured another command. Still, no Modoc spoke.

  Then, behind him, the voice said in English, “I think you lie. I think you’re from Roane.”

  “I am not.”

  “We saw you talkin’ to him. Saw you look where we killed the cow last night. You look Injun, colored Injun, dress Injun, but you got white man’s hair.” There was hatred in the tone, and the pressure of the gun barrel emphasized it.

  “If I were Roane’s man, do you think I’d have come in here alone?”

  “Oh, you’re a half-breed, all right. Kind the white men always hire to do their dirty work.”

  “You speak good English,” Sundance said. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Nehlo. The white men call me Jimmy. I learned to speak English in Yreka. I worked in a stable there. Then one day my boss kicked me once too often. I hit him with a singletree and laid him low and came back to the tribe.” Nehlo paused. “They took my wife after the war. She’s in the stockade at Fort Klamath.”

  “I tell you,” Sundance said, “I had nothing to do with that. I am Kintpuash’s friend; he and I played together when we were children. Don’t any of you remember the white trader named Sundance and the yellow-headed boy?”

  One of the two Modocs at the end of the trench spoke for the first time. “No. No one like that ever came to the Hot Creek band.”

  “The three of you are from Hot Creek, then?”

  “We were,” said Nehlo thinly. “When the war started, we wanted no part of it. We tried to get back on the reservation to keep out of it and be free. But the white men bragged that they were gonna kill us all. So we decided to come here and fight, not be killed like sheep. Kintpuash surrendered. I did not. Neither did Chachisi or Beneko, nor their women. I knew the whites well enough to know that if we did, they’d stretch our necks or ship us off to some damn hellhole. Better to stay here in our own country, die here if we gotta.”

  “You don’t have to,” Sundance said. “That’s why I’m here. I have to talk to you.”

  A brown arm reached around him, unlatched his belt, pulled away knife and ax. Then it yanked the bow from his shoulder, and next the quiver. When he was naked of weapons, Nehlo stepped around in front of Sundance, with the rifle leveled.

  He was taller than the other two, muscular, holding himself proudly. Black eyes glittered with hate and suspicion, and white teeth showed between lips peeled back in a snarl. Not over twenty-five, he was in his fighting prime. He looked at Sundance a good thirty seconds, raking eyes up and down the tall, buckskinned frame. The gun in his hand was steady as a rock. Then he spoke in Modoc. “Chachisi. Come here and put a blindfold on him while I keep him covered. Sundance, if you or that big horse make a wrong move, you’ll never leave this lava bed alive.”

  Sundance spoke again to Eagle, in Cheyenne. Then he said, “The horse will stand. So will I.”

  “You’d damned well better,” Nehlo grated in English, as Chachisi came up and an ill-smelling rag was tied tightly around Sundance’s eyes.

  “We’ll take him to camp and talk there, before the women. And his talk had better be sweet and good if he wants to keep on living.”

  As the crow flies, the journey could not have been over two miles. For the blindfolded Sundance, it was an eternity. Prodded from time to time by Nehlo’s gun, he stumbled and often fell on the rough lava. Each time, he was jerked roughly up by a strong hand on his collar. Otherwise, he got neither help nor guidance. By the time a hand seized the slack of his shirt front, hours later, and pulled him forward, he was exhausted, panting, and feet and knees were badly cut and bruised by the lava.

  Then he was suddenly out of the sun and in an almost icy coolness. “You can stand up now,” Nehlo snapped.

  Sundance lurched to his feet. A gun prodded him forward. The ground beneath his moccasins shelved downward steeply. The farther down the slope he went, the more dank and chilly the air became. Once, he thought he heard a faint trickle of water. Then Nehlo said, “Stop.”

  The blindfold was jerked from his eyes, while a gun muzzle punched his belly. For a moment, he saw nothing except a bright flare in utter darkness; then his vision cleared, and he sucked in a breath of surprise. He was standing in a huge, vaulted cavern, walls, floor and ceiling wholly of lava. The bright flare was a fire, its smoke drawn by a strange draft farther back into the cave. Two women sat beside the flame, neither over twenty. In shabby calico and rudely sewn cowhide, they looked at Sundance with curiosity and fear. But that was not what made Sundance catch his breath.

  Some ancient, unknown primitives, had used bright yellow pigment which, even after all these centuries, stood out brilliantly against the black of the cave walls on which it had been painted. On either side, as far as his eye could see, which was not much beyond the range of firelight, strange figures in strange regalia, capered among strange animals. They were the work of a master craftsman, a true artist, dead for hundreds of years. He had carefully carved the scenes in the lava itself, a labor that must have taken years, and then filled the carvings with the yellow paint. Sundance turned his head from side to side slowly, marveling, and he knew now where he was. This was the Cave of Ancient Pictures, and it was where the “last five,” the surviving Modocs, had made their camp.

  Beneko, the shortest Modoc with the shortest hair, spoke tersely to the women, explaining that they had taken this captive in the lava and that he desired to talk. Nehlo, meanwhile, kept Sundance covered, while Chachisi went to the fire, carved a slice of meat off a beef haunch roasting there. Chewing it, he came back to where Sundance stood, hands raised high and open.

  “All right,” Chachisi said, mouth full. “You want to talk, you talk.” He gestured with his rifle. “Sit.”

  Sundance dropped to the lava floor of the cave. The three Modocs, keeping their guns ready, hunkered in flat-heeled squats before him. Their black eyes themselves were like the muzzles of guns, round, unwinking. Then Nehlo said: “How did Kintpuash die? And what will become of my wife?”

  “Kintpuash died like a Modoc chief, I told you. He died bravely and well.” Sundance’s words came thickly from a dry mouth. They saw he was having trouble speaking, and Beneko spoke. One of the women came forward with a steer’s horn hollowed to serve as a cup and full of icy water. Sundance drank gratefully; then the words came faster, as the Indians leaned close to hear.

  Chapter Six

  Twenty minutes later, Nehlo arose from his squat, went to the fire, dipped water from a rawhide bucket with the same horn Sundance had drunk from. He took a couple of swallows, turned. “So I will never see my woman again,” he said with bitterness.

  Sundance looked at the tall, ragged form, mouth twisted with grief. “She was a good woman,” Nehlo went on. “I loved her very much. She would not have surrendered, but she thought I was dead out on the lava after one of the last fights. I was only wounded; but when Beneko found me, she was already gone, had given up. Now you say they’ll send her to some stinking hole in the East.”

  “You’ll see her again,” Sundance said. “If you listen to me.�
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  Nehlo came forward, squatted once more, rifle across his knees, not pointed at Sundance now. His eyes flared. “How?”

  “I tell you,” Sundance said. “You can’t stay here in the lava. You’ve killed too many of Roane’s cattle already. Sooner or later, he’ll find out you’re here. Then he and other white men will come and—”

  “Let them come!” Chachisi snapped. “We stood them off before!”

  “There were fifty, seventy-five of you then; I mean warriors. Now there are three. Don’t you understand? They’ll come at you with a hundred men, or bring in the Army, maybe five times that many. You can’t kill them all. They’ll wipe you out the way you kill a colony of desert rats.”

  Chachisi spat. “They won’t even find us. That’s why we came to the Cave of Ancient Pictures. It’s sacred, yes, and forbidden, but we can’t worry about things like that now. It’s impossible to see from the outside and— Let them come. Let them sweep the lava. We will hide here and they will never see us.”

  “Oh, yes, they will,” Sundance said. “They’ll starve you out. The war depleted the game here in the lava beds, you know that, otherwise you wouldn’t have taken the risk of going outside to kill Roane’s cattle. You’ve got to have those cattle to live. Once you’re shut off from them—and from the tules in the lake—you’re finished. You can live for a while on what’s left, rabbits, deer, snakes, rats, but you’ll have to leave this cave to hunt, and when you do, they’ll see you. Sooner or later, they’ll see you, and they’ll run you down and kill you.”

  The cave was silent for a moment.

  “Then let them kill us,” Nehlo said, presently. “By the Gods, we’ll at least die on our feet like warriors, not hanged like rabbits in a snare or penned up inside a fence like cattle.”