Sundance 11

by John Benteen

  “You can’t be sure,” Sundance said. “You can’t trust one of that ilk as far as you can spit. But you’ve done what you can … the Army, the Rangers, the Comancheros. Now it’s up to me.”

  “You mean you’ll take on the job?”

  Sundance nodded, then said, after finishing his drink, “You offered me two thousand in your letter. Like Montoya, I want half of it in advance. You’ll send it to Barbara Colfax at the Indian Brotherhood League, in Washington, D.C. If I bring your niece back, I’ll collect the other half of my money. If I fail, you won’t owe me the second thousand.”

  “Fair enough,” Owens said. “Phil, how about another drink for our visitor—and for me too?”

  As Markham rose to take their glasses and go to the cellaret to refill them, he had a sour look on his face, as though he were displeased about something. When he returned to hand Sundance his second drink, he stared down at him in a challenging manner.

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “No you won’t. I always work alone.”

  “The lady is my fiancée, remember.”

  “I’m not likely to forget.” Sundance tried to hold onto his temper even though he sensed that Markham held him in contempt because he was a half-breed. “I’ll go straight into the Staked Plains, to find Quanah Parker’s band. I’d be letting you throw your life away if I took you with me. And dead you’d make a damn poor bridegroom for that girl. I’m not hoorawing you, friend. The Comanches would kill you on sight.”

  “Because I’m white?”

  “You’re catching on fast.”

  “You’re part white, aren’t you?”

  “That I am. My father was an English remittance man from a family that hobnobbed with royalty.”

  “Why won’t the Comanches kill you for being half white?”

  “Because Quanah Parker, chief of the Quahadi Comanches, is also half white. We’re known to each other, and we’re simpatico. My being on good terms with him may be of help when I try to get your Miss Stevens back. If he can’t help ...” Sundance shrugged and let the thought go unspoken. “Anyway, I’m not taking you with me.”

  “I’ll follow you, by damn!”

  “Easy now, Phil,” Sam Owens said. “Jim knows his business, and he’s right when he says the Comanches would kill you on sight. If you want to be of help, you can go to the Territory and visit Montoya, just in case he is on the level. He told Miguel O’Reilly that he would take her to his home if he was able to trade her away from her captives. If she is brought there, she’ll be relieved to find you waiting. I’ll have Matt go with you.”

  “Well, if you think that best, Sam,” Markham said grudgingly.

  “It’s the only sensible thing,” the rancher told him. “I would go there myself, if I was able—and if I didn’t have to take Mrs. Stevens to Weatherford where it’s safe.” He looked at Sundance with a scowl on his bearded face. “Trouble always comes in bunches. A week ago some of the Barton wild bunch rode in and tried to pull a holdup. I guess they knew I’d trailed a beef herd to Fort Sumner some months back and figured I had the money from the sale here. Matt and I saw them coming, and we gave them a fight. After we killed two of them, the other three high-tailed it. I’m scared the whole gang will come gunning for me now. That’s why we fort up at night, with Matt and Phil spelling each other at keeping watch from the roof. I took a bullet in my left knee during the fight, and the wound ain’t healing right. So I figure me and my sister had better stay in Weatherford for a time, so both of us can have a doctor. Martha is sick with worrying about Virginia, you understand.”

  Sundance nodded. “You’ve got trouble, all right. Maybe I should stay and see to it that you get to Weatherford safe.”

  Owens shook his head. “No need for that. I’ve a livery stable rig coming out from town for us tomorrow. And the Ranger captain promised to send a couple of his men to serve as an escort. I’ll be taking my cattle money along, of course. My only worry on that score is that if the Barton crowd comes, they’ll vandalize my house when they find me gone. An ornery lot, Will Barton and his crew of renegades. But what they’ll maybe do is a mighty small thing compared to Virginia’s being in the hands of the Comanches. So you needn’t bother about anything except trying to rescue her.”

  “I’ll be on my way early tomorrow morning. Tell me what she looks like, so I’ll know her if I spot her in one of the Comanche villages. Those people won’t even admit they have her, let alone point her out to me. And she won’t be the only white woman they’ve got.”

  Owens frowned in thought. “Well, she’s a tall young woman ... on the slender side but not skinny. She has red-brown hair as shiny as a new copper penny, and her eyes are green. You notice her hair and eyes right off. She’s real pretty, prettier than … hey, Phil has a picture of her. Show Jim Virginia’s picture, son, eh?”

  Markham hesitated a moment, then grudgingly took the picture from the pocket of his shirt. He didn’t hand it to Sundance but laid it on the table. He seemed reluctant to share even a picture of his fiancée with the half-breed.

  Sundance looked at the picture without touching it. A studio portrait with a full-length pose of the young woman standing in front of a backdrop depicting a park. As was the custom, she had posed unsmilingly, in a sober mood, and the camera had not caught her coloring. But it was easy to determine that she was an extremely attractive young woman.

  Sundance looked at Markham. “How old?”

  “Nineteen. She’ll have her twentieth birthday next week.” The young man’s voice became edged with bitterness. “And a sorry anniversary it will be for her.”

  Sundance nodded, then looked at Sam Owens. “I’ll be on my way in the morning. Can you stake me to some grub for the trail?”

  Owens said he could, then added, “I’ve got a map you can look at, so you know the country you’ll be heading into.”

  He had Phil Markham get the map from the roll-top desk and spread it out on the big center table. Although Sundance knew the area from having ridden it on several occasions, he got up from his chair and had a look at the map. He found it to be of no help whatsoever, even though it was Army issue. The Staked Plains covered a vast section of western Texas and eastern New Mexico. It had been named El Llano Estacado because of the stone mounds the conquistadores had erected every few leagues along their trail as they searched for the nonexistent gold-plated Seven Cities of Cibola. The markers had been intended to show these adventurers their way back out of the country. On the map the area was simply a blank space marked The Great American Desert.

  Sundance took a stubby pencil from the pocket of his handsome doeskin shirt and began making marks on the blank space. He sketched the three major Comanchero trails leading eastward from Las Vegas, Santa Fe, Puerta de Luna, and Anton Chico to the places of rendezvous at the western edge of the Plains. One of these spots was on a creek, Rio de las Lenguas—Tongue River. It was so named because the bartering was done in three different languages: Comanche, Spanish, and English.

  “Some of the traders are renegade Americans,” Sundance told Sam Owens, who had taken up his crutches to stand by the table, and the sour natured Phil Markham. “And some of these Comancheros are backed by army officers at Fort Bascom and by gringo merchants at Santa Fe and Las Vegas.”

  Looking surprised, Markham asked, “How can that be?”

  Sundance moved his broad shoulders in a shrug. “Money corrupts, and greed makes strange bedfellows. The trade isn’t illegal. The Comancheros are actually licensed by the Superintendent of Indian Affairs at Santa Fe. Maybe the profits made off the trade is the reason no campaign has been mounted to put an end to the depredations by the Comanches and their brothers, the Kiowas.”

  He marked a second rendezvous as Valle de las Lagrimas—Valley of Tears.

  “It was so named because here the war parties bring their captives—American and Mexican—to be separated from each other, children from each other and from their mothers—and divided among the different tribal ba
nds. The Indians split them up to lessen their chances of escaping and to make it easier to assimilate them into the tribe.”

  “My God, how terrible!” young Markham burst out. “But it goes without saying, doesn’t it, that these white women and children can’t be turned into Indians?”

  “No, it doesn’t go without saying,” Sundance told him. “Quanah Parker’s mother, Cynthia Parker, became as much an Indian as any Comanche squaw.”

  Markham shuddered visibly. “But not Virginia … We can’t let it happen to her!”

  Sundance’s gorge rose, and only with difficulty did he keep himself from telling the handsome young Easterner that the Indian’s way of life was a good one when not infringed upon by white men.

  With a firm grip on his temper, he said, “I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to keep her from becoming a Comanche squaw, but I’ll try my best. If I pull it off, I’ll take her first to Esteban Montoya’s ranch outside Las Vegas—partly because you’ll be there to comfort her but mostly because that will be a lot quicker than bringing her straight back here and she may need a rest after what she’s been through. You’d better take some of her clothes with you, because by now she’s probably wearing squaw attire.”

  He looked at Sam Owens, asking, “Which route will Markham and Boland take to New Mexico?”

  From the doorway a harsh voice said, “I’ll pick my own route, without help from any damn ’breed!”

  Sundance swung around and saw that Matt Boland was so big a man he all but filled the doorway. Like the half-breed, he stood several inches over six feet tall, and he was half again as thick through the body as the half-Cheyenne troubleshooter. He had a square, blunt-featured face and a look of habitual belligerence. He had his rifle in the bend of his right arm, and he also wore a gun-rig that held a Colt’s revolver. Like Markham, he stared at Sundance with contempt for his being a half-breed. Going even farther than the young Easterner, he sneered at the troubleshooter. A real hard case.

  “By damn, it wouldn’t have been much lost if I had plugged you out there. You’ve brought Injun stink into this house, mister.” Then, without taking his sour gaze off Sundance, he spoke to his boss. “You ain’t handing him good money on his say-so that he’ll fetch Miss Virginia back, are you?”

  Looking embarrassed, Owens said, mildly rebuking of tone, “Matt, you’re going off half-cocked again. You know the man’s reputation as well as I do and—”

  Sundance cut in, “No need to have a fool argument over me. The three of you can think it over until morning. If you decide you can’t trust me, I’ll cut out ... go about my own business.”

  He set his unfinished drink on the table, picked up his hat from beside the chair he had occupied, and strode to the door.

  When Boland failed to step aside for him but continued to gaze at him with that contemptuous sneer, he said, “Move, or by damn I’ll move you!”

  The hard cased ramrod said, “That’s mighty tough talk from a hombre that’s got a gun lined on his guts,” and let his Winchester slide from the crook of his arm into his hand.

  Sundance grabbed the barrel of the weapon with his right hand and held it away from himself. At the same instant he jerked his Bowie knife from its sheath and drove it against Boland’s right side. He used just enough force for the point of the fourteen-inch blade to pierce the ramrod’s shirt and penetrate his flesh slightly. Boland let out a startled yelp, let go of his rifle, and reeled backward from the doorway with his hand pressed to his side.

  “You cut me, you ornery bushwhacking Apache!”

  “Cheyenne,” Sundance said, softly but ominously. “Next time, get it right. And if you try something like that with me again, I’ll gut you like I would a steer. Keep that in mind too.”

  He moved through the doorway, and Matt Boland made haste to give him plenty of room. Leaving the house, he slid the Bowie knife back into its sheath and mounted Eagle. He rode away from Snake-in-a-Hole’s buildings to bed down in the brush. When he’d unsaddled the stallion and was wrapped in his blanket, he smoked a marijuana cigarette and made the decision to attempt to rescue the girl on his own if Boland got Sam Owens to change his mind about paying him to make the try.

  The way he saw it, the Indians’ way of life was fine for them, and even some few whites, such as his father, but it would break the spirit of a young woman such as Virginia Stevens.

  He had etched the photographic image of her upon his exceptionally retentive memory, and he could imagine vividly what she was like in the flesh. Hair the color of bright copper, exotic green eyes … He found it easy to fantasize about her with the marijuana working its magic on his senses. A strong-willed young woman, her uncle had said; a girl with a spirit. Too much woman for the weak-kneed tenderfoot to whom she was engaged. A woman for a rugged man like Jim Sundance, in whom the best qualities of two races were embodied. A woman too for a fierce Comanche warrior ... by now she was certainly the squaw of some brave who would not give her up without a fight.

  Yes, Sundance told himself, he would make his try at rescuing her whether he was paid or not. He wanted to know what she was like. And the truth be known, he was eager to fight that unknown warrior who had her in his tepee … even though it would be a fight to the death, with no quarter asked or given.

  Chapter Four

  Awake at the first faint light of dawn, Sundance washed up at the creek and then gathered brush for a fire. He put on coffee and cooked another meal of bacon and frijoles. After eating, he washed his utensils and stowed them in his saddlebags. He filled his canteen at the stream, then saddled Eagle and rode the short distance to Snake-in-a-Hole headquarters. Smoke rising from the chimney at the back of the ranch house told him that somebody there was up and had started the breakfast fire. He dismounted by the barn and walked around to the back door of the house. He found it open and Sam Owens busy fixing breakfast.

  “Mind if I come in?”

  “No, of course not. Make yourself at home.”

  Entering the kitchen, Sundance asked, “You still want to hire me to try to get your niece back or has Boland changed your mind about me?”

  “Matt Boland can’t change my mind about anything,” the rancher replied. “You shouldn’t pay him any mind. He’s a blowhard a lot of the time. Sit up to the table. Breakfast will be ready in a shake.”

  “I’ve eaten. “I’ll take the grub you promised me and be on my way.”

  “I’ve got it ready for you.” Owens pointed at a bulging flour sack that stood to one side of the door. “Flour, beans, bacon, coffee, jerky, and some leftovers—roast beef and biscuits—from supper last night. I threw in some salt, matches, and a couple sacks of tobacco too. The lot should do you for a week or more, if you eat stingy.”

  Sundance picked up the sack, saying, “So long,” and turned to leave.

  “Hold on a minute. I’ve been wondering why you asked Matt which route he and Phil would take to New Mexico.”

  “I figured he’d be fool enough to take the shortest one, by way of Horsehead Crossing, which would take him right through country where the Comanches roam. The two might even run into some Apaches. A couple of good men might make it, but Boland will be saddled with that young dude—and I figure he wouldn’t be of much account in a fight with Indians.”

  Owens nodded. “You’re right. Phil never shot off a gun until we had that go-around with those outlaws a week ago. He’s not much of a horseman, either. He wouldn’t be much better at running than at fighting. You think they should go the long way, ride east to Fort Worth to take the Dodge City trail and then stagecoach it west to Colorado and down into the Territory?”

  “It’s a thought,” Sundance said. “But what that pair does is no skin off my nose. I’ll be on my way. So long.”

  He stepped outside and walked around the house, then stopped short upon reaching the yard and seeing Matt Boland standing beside the Appaloosa and rummaging in the panniers tied to the cantle of its saddle. The ramrod was dumping what he found onto the groun
d as he satisfied his curiosity.

  Sundance swore under his breath with quick-soaring anger. He set the sack of food down and eased his tomahawk from the loop on his extra cartridge belt. The weapon was no stone-age affair; its blade was of fine steel, and honed razor-sharp. He moved into the yard, then stopped again and hurled the tomahawk toward Bolan so that it passed him by a scant inch or two and embedded itself in the barn’s adobe wall. Boland let out a startled yelp, then shouted an oath upon seeing the ’breed.

  Advancing on him, Sundance said, “A man who fools with another man’s belongings has got no more sense than a jug head mule. It looks as though I’ll have to pound some into you, mister.”

  Boland swore again. “I was suspicious of you from the first I laid eyes on you, hombre. All this Injun junk you tote around proves you’re hand-in-glove with them Comanches. You’re taking old Sam’s hard-earned money by a tinhorn’s trick—and laughing up your sleeve about it. You ain’t going to try to get back that girl, and you know it!”

  He grabbed the tomahawk, wrenched it free of the wall, and charged at Sundance like a man gone berserk. The ’breed could have cut him down with his six-shooter, but even in his anger he didn’t want to waste him. He stood his ground until the ramrod was close enough to swing the tomahawk at his head, then he erupted into lightning-quick action. He bent low and went in under the striking weapon, slamming into Boland’s legs. Knocked off his feet, the enraged man went hurtling forward over the ’breed and fell to the ground with a jolt ten feet away. Sundance swung around and lunged at Boland, who had rolled over cat-quick and come to his hands and knees. Having lost the tomahawk when he hit the ground, he grabbed out his gun as he started to rise. Sundance kicked him under the chin with a moccasined foot, toppling him over backwards. For an instant he was utterly helpless, and the troubleshooter wrenched the gun from his hand. He tossed the weapon aside, beyond Boland’s immediate reach, and braced himself for barehanded combat.