by John Benteen
Which did not necessarily mean that they knew how to use them. His old friend General Crook had once said: “If the Indians had ever learned what the rear sight on a rifle was for, we’d never have stood a chance.” The Diné, like most tribesmen, lacking money for ammo with which to practice, were prone to offhand snap shooting, just flinging a bullet from a gun-barrel. Now, like an Army instructor on the firing line, he went among them, not letting them waste actual ammunition, but correcting some of their worst mistakes as they dry-fired. He knew he could not make real marksmen of them in an afternoon, but if his instructions sent even ten extra bullets to their mark, the time was well spent.
They had other weapons, too. Not a one of them but had a bow and a quiver full of arrows, and with these they were expert. Though they had not been on the warpath since the mid-1860’s, they still used these weapons to guard their flock against wolves, bears, coyotes and cougars, and they had kept their skills with them. And, of course, like most outdoorsmen, red or white, each had his knife and his hatchet. And their prowess with the store-bought tomahawks was something to take a man’s breath away. Here again, these were weapons vital to the guarding of their sheep—as vital as the sling and rocks of David in the Bible had been to him. Not even Sundance was their superior at using those keen bladed hatchets, and like most desert Indians, they were natural knife-fighters as well. All in all, he thought, he was damned glad they were on his side instead of against him. Now, if he could just get them to work together ...
Through Easy Dreamer, each received his assignment, and patiently the Navajo head man kept at him until it was thoroughly understood. Only a Navajo could have brought that off; there were so many subtleties and complexities in their language that even Sundance’s mastery of their speech was insufficient to convey exactly what had to be done. But Easy Dreamer told them simply and clearly, and as they began to understand, Sundance saw their eyes light with eagerness and battle-lust. Finally Easy Dreamer turned to Sundance.
“Now, I think you had better talk to them one last time. Any mistake you make, I’ll correct.”
“Right.” Thumbs hooked in weapons belt, the tall half-breed in the fringed buckskin shirt, denim pants and moccasins, yellow hair spilling around his shoulders, faced that assembly of hard-looking, weapons-draped men in their slouch hats, each usually with a feather in it, their dark velvet shirts, touched with silver and turquoise, their Levis or, in the case of a few, buckskin pants, and their moccasins or boots. They waited in silence, obsidian eyes fixed on him.
“There are two days,” he said, “until the dark of the moon is upon us. By nightfall of the second day, we must be at the broad trail at the rim and ready to take the sheep down into the Basin. It’s a steep trail and a bad one, but there will only be nine men to do it. You nine know who you are—the best sheepmen of all, with the best dogs. It will not be easy, but before daylight you must have all of them in the Basin. I myself, Easy Dreamer and the others will be there ahead of you, a shield to guard in case the white men attack, but if you are still on the wall of the rim at daybreak, they will shoot from far away and drop you and the sheep like deer with their rifles. So everyone must hurry. Once the sheep are in the basin, it must be left to the dogs to tend them. All men with their weapons are to take positions on the bluffs along the river. That is where we shall fight. It is our deadline, and we must not let the whites past it. When they come, they will have to cross the creek and fight uphill. If they fail at first, they will try again and again, in different places. We must not let them cross our deadline. We’ll fight with guns and we’ll fight with bows, and if it comes to it, we’ll fight with knives and tomahawks. But we must not let them get past us to the sheep. There will be many of them, more than us. So every man of us must do the work of two or three. Now, there will be a little time to sing and pray and then we’ll move the sheep and work them to the rim. Does anyone have any questions?”
For a moment, silence. Then a tall man, temples winged with gray, stepped forward: Sundance said, “Well, Silent Man?”
Silent Man spat a mouthful of tobacco juice. “You say there will be more of them than us. Well, maybe not so many more.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have a dog,” Silent Man said. “I call him Fierce Thing because he is so brave. For years we’ve herded sheep together, and all I have to do is speak, and he will fight a puma or a grizzly if it comes to that. He will obey my every word—lie low or go for a man’s throat. There are other dogs like him with us—maybe half are that way. I think each man who has a good dog that can fight should have him by him on those bluffs. The others that are fit only for working the flocks can be left with the sheep. But ten or twelve dogs like Fierce Thing would be like ten or twelve more men on our side if the whites break through.”
Sundance grinned. “And I think your idea is a good one. Easy Dreamer, you know all the dogs. Pick the ones that are like Fierce Thing and let their masters bring them to the bluffs. The rest stay with the sheep.” He remembered how the wounded dog had attacked him as he had inspected its dead masters. It would be another surprise for Strawn and Barkalow. “Then I have finished. Now an hour to sing and pray and do all that’s necessary—and then we move out.”
Hours later, scouting ahead, he reined in the big stallion, turned, and something in him stirred at the sight that met his eyes.
They had brought the sheep up out of the canyon—two thousand of them. Now, in vast dirty-gray streams that joined together sometimes to form a river and then split apart again, the animals moved through the broken mountain country toward the rim. Even though he had no love for sheep as such—what buffalo Indian could love them?—the way the Navajos and their dogs handled the mass of animals was so professional, so adept, that no one could have helped admiring it. But more than that: these men were ready to fight and die for their flocks, and they were following him, depending on him. By Sweet Medicine, the great god of the Cheyennes, he thought, he would not let them down.
He had talked to Delia about how, if they were successful in this battle, there were precautions she must take. “You’ve got to watch that they don’t overgraze the range. That flock’ll increase faster than you can imagine, and you’ll have to watch that. And those little hooves of theirs churn up the ground and then pack it hard, and unlike cattle they’ll go right down to the grassroots and eat those, too. That’s why cowmen hate them so much. Most sheepmen tear up the range and then go on to new grass, leaving a desert behind.”
She nodded. “Say this for Andrew, he discussed all that with me. He knew sheep, Sundance; he grew up in the Scotch highlands where everybody has a flock, and sheep have grazed on the same pastures for centuries without ruining them. He used to talk about the way the Scotch handled their flocks, and he taught these Navajos the way to handle theirs. Even though he’d gone rogue and was planning to double-cross them, it was something that fascinated him, and I think they’ve learned from him. On the reservation, they sell only the wool. We’ll be shipping mutton east as well. I’ll guarantee I’ll not let them ruin the land Tom died for.”
And now they came, blatting and bleating, nimbly traversing rocks and gullies, the dogs, fantastically intelligent, seemingly everywhere at once, keeping them on course. Sundance watched a moment longer, then put the stallion in widening circles toward the rim.
The great flock reached it on schedule, was held well back from the edge. Now the next phase of his plan must go into operation; now it was time to fight. He called Easy Dreamer and his warriors together. “At sundown, we start down the trail. You can bet we’ll have a battle when we hit the bottom. Strawn and Barkalow will have men watching it because it’s the only one the sheep can travel. We’ll have to drive those back, back across the river and to the other side of the Basin, before the sheep reach bottom. We’ll move out in ten minutes. The sheep will follow in an hour.”
“Jim,” Delia said, “I’m riding with you.”
“No. You come down with the sheep.�
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“But—” She started to protest, then broke off, seeing the expression on his face. “All right. You’re in charge. I’ll take your orders like the rest.”
“Right,” Sundance said. He turned to Easy Dreamer. “Have your men check their weapons.”
Lying on the rim, as the sun went down behind the hills across the Basin, he scanned the valley’s floor with a pocket telescope. It showed nothing, but he knew they were there—Strawn’s men, Barkalow’s Texas cowboys. Still, he thought, he might have accomplished one thing by the scout the other night on which McCaig had betrayed him. Barkalow knew now there was another trail by which men could come into the Basin. He and Strawn would have to split their forces, watch both of them.
Sundance arose, snapped shut the telescope, unslung his bow and strung it. “All of you,” he told the fighting men. “Use your bows, not your guns, unless you have to. They’ll give us flashes to shoot at, but we’ll try not to give them any. And—as little noise as possible.” The sun winked out, quenched all daylight. The Cheyenne half-breed swung into the Appaloosa’s saddle. “Let’s go,” he said. And he put the stallion over the edge of the rim.
Surefooted in the darkness, it went easily, straining to hold back, however, on the trail’s steep drop. Here the sheer cliff walls eased, and though generations of Indians had worn a broad way, the slope was still not an easy one.
Part of his mind instinctively alert, Sundance considered with the other part what advantages he might have, sought any that he had overlooked. In a way, surprise was on his side. McCaig had sold out to Barkalow, but Barkalow had no idea McCaig was dead; he would, in all likelihood be expecting some signal from the Scot that the drive was on its way. That was one advantage.
And there was another. They had seen what he could do, respected him as a fighting man. But like most whites in Arizona, they had developed a kind of contempt for the warrior prowess of the Navajos, who’d been tame, quiescent, on their reservation for a decade and a half. If he’d been leading that many Apaches, a proper respect and fear among the whites would have been inspired, but they saw the Diné now only as beaten, spiritless herdsmen, silversmiths and blanket weavers; they had no idea of the fierceness and rage masked by that semi-white man’s clothing, had forgotten the prowess of warriors who had once made even the Apaches tremble and forced Kit Carson into a full-scale Army expedition. They would see the Navajos as easy game.
Well, he thought, they would learn something new before the night was over. Then he turned his full attention to descending the steep trail in total darkness.
He and the men behind him moved with uncanny silence. Every bit of horse or man-gear that would click or jingle had been tied down. And ponies trained to silence did not snort or whicker, nor, used to rough country, did they stumble more than rarely. The men rode as befitted warriors raiding, with no whispering, not even a cough or clearing of the throat; they were only a deeper blackness in the moonless night. Trusting Eagle and the others, Sundance put the stallion to a smarter pace. It was urgent that they reach the bottom of the trail, be ready to fight, by the time the sheep came over the rim. And, down there in the basin, Strawn’s men would be watching the point where the trail debouched, like so many wolves.
Then instinct and his own night vision told him that they were near the bottom. The trail was broader, the grade easier Sundance reined in, listened. From not far away, only a couple of hundred yards, now, lowered voices drifted to him through the darkness. “Hey, Clint, my makin’s run out. Where are you? I wanta borrow some tobacco.”
“Over here, and hush, you damn fool—”
Sundance grinned. Now! he thought, raised the bow high in signal and brought it forward, and touched the stallion with his heels and suddenly it was on the run, thundering down the last few yards of trail and behind him the other horsemen came.
“What the hell—?” a voice blurted from below. Then it yelled: “Gates! Martin! Listen, there’s a whole damn bunch—” A match flared to light a carbide lamp. Sundance reined the stud wide and to a skidding halt and loosed an arrow from his bow at that easy target in the darkness, and a man screamed. Then the Indians were pouring off the trail behind him, spreading out, and a white man yelled: “It’s the Navvies!” and a gun flared and the battle now was joined.
It was a wild and brutal fight in total darkness. Strawn had disposed a good ten men or more down there. Experienced gunmen that they were, they opened fire, shooting at those hard-riding shadows. The pattern of gun flame showed them in a half circle, some on foot, others mounted. Sundance let out a Cheyenne war whoop without even knowing that he did so, and sent arrow after arrow at the gun flashes. Behind him the Navajos were shrieking like demons unpent from hell and using their own bows, and then suddenly from above there was the protesting bleat of sheep, the deep throated barking of the dogs as the herd was pushed over the rim and down.
It was the gun flashes that made the difference, gave the Indians their edge, that and the carbide lanterns. Every white gunman, firing or trying to light a lantern revealed his position, but bows made no muzzle-flames. As Sundance wheeled the stallion, a Colt thundered almost in his ear; he heard a bullet’s rip. By then he had another arrow on the string and let it go, and as the gun went off again, firing straight up this time, he caught in its brief light sight of a man with an arrow driven through his chest, sliding backward across his horse’s rump. Sundance turned his mount once more, as a Winchester unloosed a hose spray of lead from behind a boulder. But before he could bring another arrow from the quiver to the string, he saw Easy Dreamer, bent low in the saddle, coming up from behind the man, upraised hatchet in his hand. “Hiiyaaa!” the Navajo cried out and swung the tomahawk, and there was a sodden sound, and the Winchester ceased its firing and Easy Dreamer’s horse reared high on its hind legs and a war whoop chilling in its madness shattered the night as the Navajo wrenched loose the axe and waved it. Sundance laughed, and precisely then a charging horse hit Eagle with such force that the big stud staggered, and a man grated, “You red bastard!” and even in the darkness Sundance saw the muzzle of the Colt only inches from his face. He jerked his head aside, felt gun flame sear his cheek. There was no time to draw the bow. Crouching low, he threw himself halfway from the saddle, the arrow he’d been about to string out-thrust like a dagger. As Strawn’s rider grappled him, bringing the gun again in line, he felt the hard flint point ram through soft flesh, travel upward, grating hard on bone. He leaned against it, turned it. “Christ,” the man groaned, foul breath blasting full in Sundance’s face, and his grappling hand fell away. Eagle bit at the other horse, it whirled away, and its rider fell from saddle, both hands clutching the shaft in his belly. He was screaming, but as the Appaloosa stud ran on, Sundance felt something soft crunch beneath its hooves and then the screaming stopped.
And now, out of the turmoil, a pattern was forming. A voice deep with authority yelled, “Fall back! Fall back, take cover, and don’t use your guns! They’re spottin’ our flashes!” The whites were breaking, retreating, but all the fight was not gone out of them as yet. Sundance saw a Navajo and a white, both mounted, locked in deadly embrace, knives in their free hands. He saw, too, the white man’s blade drive home, and the Indian gurgled and slipped from his mount—so the Navajos were taking casualties as well. Before Sundance could slip an arrow at the knife artist, he had vanished into darkness. Hoof beats drummed as the remnants of the gunmen turned, fled across the basin, making for the shelter of the bluffs. The Navajos laughed, shrieked, and hooted as they pursued them.
But Sundance checked his own horse. There would be another contingent of the enemy due to hit them soon, on the flank—the men whom Strawn must have stationed at the smaller trail where Sundance had been ambushed.
“Wolf Jaw! Greasy Shirt! Cloud Watcher!” He caught up three of the best warriors, led them at a gallop along the basin wall. Presently on ground he liked, where he had the advantage of surprise, he reined up, motioned to his men to spread out. “Wh
en they come,” he rasped, “I’ll draw their fire. Take as many out as you can at the first muzzle-flames. There won’t be too many of them—” Behind and above, the sound of the sheep coming down the trail was louder. Soon they’d reach the valley floor, and, temporarily, anyhow, there would be more fighting men available.
He and his men waited, undercover, spread out, Wolf Jaw dismounted, stuck a knife blade in the ground, touched it with sensitive fingers. Then he signaled, sheathed the knife, swung back into the saddle. Sundance drew his Colt. They were coming.
In the black-dark night under the shadow of the rim, he heard, rather than saw them—three or four men galloping toward the sound of gunfire. He waited until they were within easy arrow range, and then, suddenly, he raised the Colt, blasted five rounds in a wide spread.
“A bushwhack!” someone yelled, and even as he whirled the stallion into the shelter of a huge boulder, the night came alive with gun flame, four guns blasting at the space he’d occupied only seconds before. Apparently his blind shooting had not hit any of them, but that did not matter. Now the waiting Navajo had their targets and arrows slipped from bows. A man’s gurgle of surprise, another’s grunt of sudden agony, a horse’s scream as an arrow, sent too low, caught it. Guns flamed twice more, but a spread of arrows was on the way. Someone else cried out incoherently; then there was the sound of running horses.
“Stay here!” he told the Indians. Wheeling the stallion, he sent it back up-basin, to where the first sheep, herded and harassed by barking dogs, were pouring off the trail onto the level. More jammed behind them. As the herders came off the heights, he rode alongside them, one by one, gave each his orders. In the distance, toward the bluffs, there was still shouting, war-cries, and the occasional blast of some white man’s gun. Far across the basin, the whole town of Ganntsville was ablaze with light: Strawn and Barkalow would be sending out reinforcements soon.