by John Benteen
“A thousand dollars … ” Moore breathed the words, setting down the bottle. “Christ, a thousand dollars would clean me up, lift a load of granite from my shoulders. But—” A wariness came into his eyes. “Why would you lend me a thousand? You haven’t seen me for over ten years. And we never were that close. You haven’t gone into the twenty per cent business, have you?” He meant the loan sharks who preyed on enlisted men, lending money for twenty per cent a month’s interest. It was not unknown for officers to fall into their hands as well. “If I had a thousand dollars ... “ He wiped his face with his hand. “But I won’t pay any twenty per cent for it.”
“You won’t have to pay a penny of interest. In fact, maybe I’ll just make it a present, not a loan.”
Instantly now, Moore was alert, a mixture of suspicion and greed in his eyes as he leaned forward. “A bribe, you mean,” he said harshly. “Sundance, I’m not that drunk. You’re offering me a thousand dollar bribe. For what?”
“For something that means a lot to me and damned near nothing to you or anybody else in Arizona. I’m just trying to keep some Navajo Indians out of trouble that somebody else is stirring up for them. They’re off the reservation legally, hired out to herd sheep for a big operator. And there are a lot of people who don’t want to see sheep come in where he intends to bring ’em. He’s hired gunfighters to kill off the sheepherders. And they can’t fight back, because he’ll yell Indian uprising to the Army the minute they try to defend themselves.”
Moore said carefully, “There must be a little more to it than that. Suppose you tell me about it. All of it.”
Sundance looked at the man, wondering if he were trying to jack up the price. Then he made his decision. Leaving out the part about Garvey and his men, he told the captain frankly about McCaig and Delia’s scheme, Barkalow’s opposition, Strawn’s murder of the two herders.
“And so they’ve hired you to come in and clean up the mess,” Moore said thoughtfully. “And you’ve got nobody to help you but the Indians.”
“That’s the size of it. Hell, Moore, you’ve seen the Navajo reservation. It’s already overgrazed. Much more and it’ll be desert. Until the government enlarges it, the Indians have to do something. This is the only chance they’ve got. McCaig has figured it out for ’em and now it’s up to me and them to make it work. We want to do it peaceably, but Barkalow and Strawn won’t let us. The easiest way for them to pinch us off is yell to the Army about Navajo raiders and ...”
“And I’m in a position,” Moore said, chewing his cigar “to sit on any squawk they make. Everything has to clear through me before the Colonel sees it. And that’s worth a thousand dollars to you.”
“If any complaint Barkalow made just somehow got lost in channels, held up for thirty, sixty days ...”
“That’s all it would take?”
Sundance smiled tightly. “No more. By then, we’ll have won—or we’ll all be dead.”
Moore was silent for a moment. “Barkalow I’ve never heard of. McCaig I’ve met, and he’s a man I like. Strawn I’ve met, too, and he’s the sort that ought to have been exterminated a long time ago. I’ve seen the Navvie reservation, too, and it’s as you say. They do need an outlet for their surplus sheep, or there’ll be nothing left before long. Their flocks’ll die off and they’ll all starve. Still, it’s a long risk you’re asking me to take, Sundance. If the Colonel found out somehow—”
“And if he finds out about your gambling debts?”
Moore grinned bitterly. “There isn’t any inheritance. You know that, I know it, everybody does. I’d be cashiered. Any career I’ve got left in the Army would go down the drain.” Then he said decisively: “All right. Sixty days. No matter what post Barkalow makes his squawk to, I can cover it up for that long, guarantee no Army action. But ... I don’t take bribes.”
“Then I’ll make you a bet.” He thumbed a silver dollar from his pocket. “I’m gonna flip this coin. I’ll bet you a thousand dollars that when it hits on the table, it’ll land on its rim and stay that way.”
“Why,” Moore said, “if you want to throw away your money, I’ll take that bet. It balances on its rim, you win a thousand. It lands flat, you lose a thousand.”
“Right.” And he flipped the dollar. It spun shining in the lamplight, came down flat, heads up. “Well,” he said. “It looks like I just lost a thousand dollars.”
“So you did,” Moore said. “But maybe we’d better go outside in the dark before you pay off.”
Five
He put the stallion up a pine-clad hill, crested the rise, started down the rock-strewn reverse slope. Then they were there, the three men, materializing from the woods like ghosts, silent in their moccasins as fog. All three had guns trained on him, but when they recognized him, they lowered them. “Sundance,” Easy Dreamer said. “You’ve come back.”
“I’m back. Hello, Broken Gun, Mountain Cat.”
The other two Navajos nodded. “Everything’s been quiet,” Easy Dreamer said. “We did like you told us, pulled way back in the hills. I guess Barkalow and Strawn thought they’d scared us away. Anyhow, the white woman and Bible Man have been impatient, waiting for your coming. Bible Man was not sure you would return. I told him not to worry; that the man named Sundance never broke his word. Do you have news for us?”
“Good news, I think. I’ll tell it where all can hear. Lead me to the main camp.”
Mountain Cat disappeared into the pines, returned with ponies. They mounted and Easy Dreamer led the way into country even more broken than Sundance had already traversed. He found the two thousand sheep scattered out in a long, dirty white string at the bottom of a rough-walled canyon, through which flowed a stream. Only Navajos, Sundance thought, could have got sheep into such a place; only Navajos could get them out again.
Long before they reached the main camp, upstream of the flock, word had been passed by lookouts, and McCaig and Delia were waiting tensely by the wagons as Sundance and the three Indians loped up. Most of the other herders had come in, too. At the sight of Sundance, McCaig’s face lit, and so did Delia’s. “So you did come back,” the Scotsman said.
“I told you he would. Sundance, what’s the news?”
Dismounting from the stallion, he stretched stiff legs. “The news is, we’ve got about sixty days at the outside to clear Barkalow and his outfit out of the Basin without interference from the Army.”
Tersely, he told them what had taken place between Moore and himself. McCaig frowned. “Bribery. A nasty business.”
“No nastier than Coy Garvey and his men,” Delia cut in. “Who, incidentally, are all safely buried. Anyhow, this means—”
“Let’s tell all the Diné what it means,” Sundance said and made a signal for them to gather around. They did, hard men with all the fat long since burned off of them, their legs saddle-bowed, their clothes a strange mixture of white man’s and Indian garb, glinting here and there with turquoise and silver. Sundance sought command of his little-used Navajo, found it and addressed them.
“The time has come to fight,” he said, and a kind of sigh went through the group. One or two of the hard-bitten faces even broke into a grin. “These are your sheep, and the basin we take them to will be your range. But first we have to drive the white men off it. They must go—either alive or dead.”
“Dead is better,” Easy Dreamer growled. “They’ve already killed two of our people.” He raised his head. “But what about the Army? Won’t they stop us?”
“No. I’ve fixed it with the Army so that we have two moons to do what we have to do. Let’s hope it won’t take that long. Anyhow, it’s something we must do ourselves. There will be no white men hired to do it for us.”
“The People have not forgotten how to fight,” Mountain Cat said. “If it can be done without the Long-knives butting in, then we’ll do it. Haiiyaa! I have a thirsty knife! When do we start?”
“All in good time,” Sundance said. “First, you must ask Bible Man if he will let me
be the chief in this and give the orders. There cannot be two chiefs on a war party. And if I am the chief on this one, every man must do what I say, when I say it and without question.” He turned. “McCaig?”
The Scotsman’s face was grim. A man of strength, authority, himself, he hated, Sundance saw, to yield command to a stranger. For a moment he was silent.
Delia seemed to have followed the drift. “Andrew?”
McCaig bit his lip. “If you say yes. You’re the one who pays the bill, lass.”
“Then I say, yes. Anyhow, remember Coy Garvey. We’d all be dead now if not for Sundance.”
“Maybe, maybe not.” Then McCaig relaxed. In Navajo, he said, “It shall be as Sundance puts it. There will be only one chief, and it is he. From now on, you take orders from him.”
“Good,” said Easy Dreamer. “Well, we can leave a few men with the sheep, load our guns, move out.”
“Not so fast. You’ll stay here a couple of days more, anyhow. I need time to scout the basin. I’ve seen part of it, but not all of it. Before we go in, I want to know every blade of grass and tree down there. No one fights in another man’s territory unless he knows it well, or he’s beaten before he starts.”
“Of course. I’ll go with you,” Easy Dreamer said. “When do we leave?”
“Not we. I go alone.”
Easy Dreamer looked disappointed, then nodded. “As well, I guess. One man alone has no partner to worry about.”
“Tonight I rest. Tomorrow night I drop down across the rim. Only be patient for a few days more.”
McCaig said, “Delia and I know the Basin. We can save you a lot of trouble.”
“I need to see it all myself. She’s looked at it as a cowman’s wife, a woman; you have looked at it as a sheepman. Now I have to look at it as a fighting man. But if you’ve got a map, it would help.”
“I’ve got one. The Army made it when they fought the Tontos.”
“Then I’ll look it over when we eat,” Sundance said. “Now, everyone—” he addressed the Indians again “—get back to your flocks. Be patient. But make sure your guns are clean and your knives are sharp. It won’t be long, I promise you.” He picked up the stallion’s reins and mounted.
“Now where’re you going?” Delia asked.
Sundance grinned. “Up the river to take a bath. I’ve been traveling hard for the past three days and haven’t had a chance. And we Cheyennes like to bathe every day, if we can. It keeps us from smelling like white men.”
“Well, of all the—” Delia began, but Sundance had already touched the stallion with his heels and was galloping out of camp.
Up-canyon, he found a clear, deep pool well-shielded by brush and isolated from everything. He himself had no false modesty, but nakedness, he knew, offended Navajos; they were even prissier than whites in that regard. He stripped not only himself but cleared the stallion of all its gear, and the two of them plunged in together, savoring the cool, clean water on their skins. Anchored by one arm to a rock, he lay floating on his back, staring up at the arching sky, and then the horse snorted and suddenly something else splashed in the pool, something large. Sundance came up immediately, treading water, and stared. Swimming toward him with easy strokes was Delia Gannt, as naked as himself, her skin a glistening pale ivory. Nearing him, she seized the same rock, brought herself upright, green eyes glinting, red lips smiling, and black hair plastered to wet shoulders. Sundance’s eyes slid down to ripe breasts, wholly visible beneath the surface, their nipples large, pink, and hard. “What the hell—?”
Thumbing water from her eyes, she laughed. “The great gunfighter. And you didn’t even hear me come up, didn’t know I was here until I dived.”
“It wasn’t exactly what I was expecting,” he said wryly.
Delia laughed again. “No. I didn’t think so. But after all, it’s hard for me to get a chance to bathe, too. I was afraid if I didn’t get a swim pretty soon, I’d start to smell like a white man. So I decided to join you. After all, I’ve been married and Tom and I used to swim together all the time like this.” Something moved in her eyes and she put out a hand, touched the hard muscle of a sloping shoulder, a heavy bicep. “You are a man ... But so many scars ...”
“In my job, you collect ’em.”
“But these—” She indicated two great, ugly puckers on his chest, one above each nipple.
“The Sundance. It’s an important Cheyenne ritual. And part of becoming a warrior. They slit the skin there, slid in pegs of wood. There was a rawhide rope tied to each peg, and, at the other end, a heavy buffalo skull trailing on the ground. I danced until the skin broke and the ropes came free. It took over twelve hours.”
“Good heavens. And that’s how you got your name?”
“No, it’s how my father got his. He was the first white man the Cheyennes allowed to join the Sundance. He needed a new name in order not to embarrass his family back in England, and that was the one he took.”
A kind of shiver went over her naked body. “Savagery ...”
“Oh?” His brows lifted. “Why, McCaig worships a man who was nailed to a cross through his hands and feet and left to die there.”
She didn’t answer that, only moved her hands across his chest. Then she pushed herself closer to him. “Jim ...” Her lips were parted, eyes lambent. “Tom’s been dead so long, and ...”
The touch of her naked body against his was like an electric shock. “A long time for me, too. I’ve got a woman, but she’s in Washington and I haven’t seen her in six months ...”
“Then we both need the same thing, don’t we?” she whispered.
Sundance didn’t answer that, only brought his mouth down hard on hers. In the water, she strained against him, and her tongue was hungry, darting. His arousal was instant, complete. Her legs came up to encircle him as his arms went around her, and the entering of her was easy, natural. She kept one arm around the rock to anchor them as they made love there in the pool, slowly at first, then with hard, thrusting urgency that made her moan softly, mindlessly, then cry out.
That was the first time. The second was on a blanket she had brought, spread out in the concealment of the brush beside the gear he had offloaded from the stallion. Presently, both satiated, they broke apart, and Sundance picked up his war shirt, found makings, rolled a cigarette. Voice drowsy, yet touched with curiosity, Delia rolled over, touched the beaded parfleche , the panniers made of the thick neck hide of a buffalo bull. “I’ve been wondering. What’s in these?”
“Some things you can see, some that are personal to me.” He opened the long, tubular bag. From it he took a neatly folded, carefully packed Cheyenne war bonnet. Each eagle feather on it meant a coup counted in his warrior days—a horse stolen, an enemy touched before being killed, the kind of deeds of valor esteemed by the Northern Cheyenne. Not a feather there lightly earned or at less than the risk of his life ...
She gasped at its magnificence, but he laid it aside. The next thing from the pannier was the bow, short, recurved, of juniper tipped with buffalo horn, its string of interwoven back-sinews of buffalo. With it was a panther-skin quiver full of arrows, fletched with the wing-feathers of buzzards, barbed tips made of flint. She examined one curiously. “The Navajos use arrows made with iron points.”
“So do most Indians nowadays. I stick to the flint ones, make ’em myself if I can’t get ’em elsewhere. The stone points have a lot more shock and stopping power.”
“You mean a gunfighter like you still uses bow and arrows?”
Sundance laughed. “I’ve put an arrow like that clean through a bull buffalo—and I can drop a man at three hundred yards just as easy as with a gun. Besides, bows make no sound, no muzzle flash, no powder smoke. Especially at night, they don’t advertise where the man who’s usin’ them is hidin’.” He began to restore the items to the pannier.
“And this other one.” She touched a disc shaped bag a yard across.
“My war shield,” Sundance said tersely. It had been ded
icated in a sacred ceremony, and there was no need for her to see it—or the six scalps dangling from it, taken from the murderers of his parents—the last scalps he had ever taken. Closing the panniers, he stood up, whistled for the stallion, which came obediently. “They’ll be waiting for us back at camp. Besides, I want to see that map before it gets dark.”
Delia stood up, body rich, magnificent, breasts full, waist slender, hips curved, legs long and shapely. Without embarrassment, she began to dress. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. Andrew McCaig keeps a very close watch on me.”
“Does he, now?”
“Yes. He feels so responsible for everybody and everything in this fight. He’s tormenting himself now over having made such a mistake in hiring Garvey. Anyhow, he worries about me as if I were his own daughter.”
“All right, then,” Sundance said. “Let’s ride.”
~*~
With the details of McCaig’s map burned into his mind after long study, he had spent most of the next day working through the broken high country toward the rim above Bloody Moon Basin. Once he had reached his destination along the rim, he holed up patiently in timber, rested, waited. He mulled over the map and his own recollection of the basin while he smoked a cigarette and checked his weapons—white man’s and Indian’s alike.
“You can see,” McCaig had said. “It’s roughly oval and split right down the middle by Bloody Moon Creek, which runs fresh and full all year. The ground rolls, and there are bluffs along the creek on this, the eastern side. Everything else is across the creek to the west, closer to the road to Prescott and the other towns. Ganntsville, which Tom Gannt founded, the saw mill and the logging operations he set up, and the ranch he built, about three miles from town ... there. Barkalow uses it as his headquarters now.”
Sundance had nodded. “Gannt was more than just a cowman, then.”
“He was a builder, a dreamer,” Delia put in, a catch in her voice. “He wanted to see the town grow. He knew it would take more than just cattle, and there’s so much timber in these hills—and maybe gold and silver. He even talked himself about bringing in sheep along with cattle ...”