Sundance 15

by John Benteen

  Sundance said coldly, “It’s not a case of my understanding. You understand what rape and murder mean among the Cheyenne. Now—” He came forward, hand outstretched. “The gun, Maxton.”

  There was a moment, then, when he thought the cornered man would use it. Something flashed in Maxton’s eyes. He had the Colt lined on Sundance’s belly, his finger tightening on the trigger. Still, Sundance did not falter. “It’s for your own good, Maxton.”

  Now the gun muzzle was only inches from his belly. He held out his hand, palm up. “Pass it over,” he said quietly in English. “If you kill me—or anybody else—it’ll be twice as bad.”

  “I—” Maxton licked his lips. Then something flickered in his eyes and his body began to tremble. Slowly, almost as if mesmerized, he lowered the hammer on his Colt. Then he placed it in Sundance’s hand.

  “All right,” Sundance said. He turned to the other Dog Soldiers behind him. “Take him,” he said.

  ~*~

  The legal system of the Cheyennes, evolved over centuries, was strict and simple. The murder of one member of the tribe by another was almost unthinkable—indeed, the very word for murder was the same as the word for putrid, stinking. A killer carried the stink of his act as long as he lived—but there was no capital punishment. Instead, after a thorough beating, he was banished forever—and to be a Cheyenne no longer was the worst punishment any of the People could imagine. Murder while attempting to commit rape—the Cheyennes valued the chastity of their women far more than most Indians and tremendously more than whites—and that done during the sacred ceremony of the Arrows Renewal—made the crime far more heinous. Sometimes a murderer could be rehabilitated, his exile ended, but for Silent Enemy there would never be any chance of that. The stink of his deed had contaminated the whole ceremony, the whole camp of the People, and his banishment would be forever.

  Meanwhile, there was still the beating.

  Ordinarily that would have been the responsibility of the Dog Soldiers, the military society detailed to police the camp that day. But since Silent Enemy was himself a member of the Shields, a society nearly as powerful, they demanded and were given the right to take responsibility for his punishment.

  The whole camp, with the exception of Barbara Colfax, Two Roads Woman, who said she could not bear to watch, turned out to see it.

  Dozens of warriors in a double line formed a gauntlet, armed with bow staves, clubs, or merely big limbs broken from a jack pine. Maxton, stripped naked, was brought to the head of that corridor of violence, and Sundance, looking on, had to give him credit for this: he conducted himself as a Cheyenne should. The trembling was gone; his face was impassive, almost defiant. He looked down the double row of waiting Indians; at the very end were the relatives and friends of Elk Horn, the man he’d killed, whether Shield members or not. Then, contemptuously, he spat into the dust.

  The men who held him shoved him roughly into the gauntlet.

  Silent Enemy ran for his life.

  Brutally, the first men in line swung clubbed bow-staves, and Sundance heard the dull thud of wood against flesh, saw blood running from Maxton’s back. Maxton stumbled, yet somehow stayed on his feet. He made another couple of yards before more clubs slamming against his body, slashing across his face, brought him to his knees. Then again, he was up and running.

  It took a long time, and the whole thing was carried out in an eerie silence. Maxton ran a few paces, was brought down, beaten unmercifully as he sprawled, then managed to get to his feet again. Over and over this happened, until at last, body covered with blood and welts and lumps, he could no longer rise and run, only crawl, and fifteen, twenty men, Elk Horn’s relatives, were still waiting for him. On hands and knees, like some wounded animal, he kept going, crawling through the dust, and never did any sound escape him. At last, he was something hardly human, shoving himself on his belly through the dust, leaving behind him a trail of blood—but somehow he managed to reach the gauntlet’s end. One of Elk Horn’s brothers brought down a tremendous jack pine limb with a thud that must have shattered bone; yet somehow Silent Enemy crawled on, and then he was in the clear.

  Elk Horn’s brother turned, teeth bared, for another savage swing, but the voice of the chief of the Shield Society rang out loud and clear. “Enough!”

  The upraised club was lowered.

  Maxton lay sprawled in the dust. Only the trembling of his body, the oozing of the blood from all those wounds, betrayed that he still lived. He lay there for a long time and no one went to help him. But a young boy had brought up one of his horses from the herd.

  Presently Maxton got to his hands and knees. Blood streamed from a battered, broken nose; from a mouth that had lost teeth, from slashes on his cheeks that would leave long and ugly scars. His whole body, in fact, would bear the marks of this beating to the grave.

  After a while, he managed to stumble to his feet. He stood there swaying until he made it to the horse. Then, leaning against the animal, he turned. When he spoke, it was in English. “Sundance,” he said thickly. “Sundance, hear me.”

  “I hear you,” Sundance said, moving closer.

  Cole Maxton—Silent Enemy—looked at him through eyes puffed almost shut. “Tell them—” he husked, broke off, spat blood. Then he managed to go on. “Tell them that since I’m no longer a Cheyenne, it doesn’t matter to me how many of them I kill. Cheyenne or white, it makes no difference now—they’re all fair game. Tell them to remember that, and that they’ll hate the day they let me leave this camp alive.” Then, with one last titanic surge of energy, he managed to swing up on the horse.

  He gathered up the jaw bridle’s rein. His body reeled, he almost fell, as the horse went into motion. No one moved, no one spoke as he rode through the great concentric circles of the ledges, clinging to the horse’s mane, swaying with its every step, naked, beaten and alone. They watched him splash across the river, climb the divide beyond. At its crest, he was, for one moment, a tiny figure in silhouette, still somehow, on naked strength and courage, managing to ride on. Then he disappeared down the reverse slope and was gone.

  There was great commotion in the camp then, much to do. The council must meet, decide whether the ceremony of the Arrows must be repeated. Sundance returned to his own lodge, where Barbara waited. When he entered, she looked up at him from beside the fire, her face pale. “Is it over?”

  Sundance thought of that last threat of Maxton’s. He thought of the incredible strength and energy of the beaten man clinging to the horse as it made its way up the slope. He drew in a deep breath and shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m afraid it’s a long way from being over.” And, sitting down beside her, he lapsed into a moody silence as he smoked, staring into the campfire as if looking far into the future.

  Chapter One

  Sundance knew that there was something wrong with the wolf the moment he saw it. Emerging from a draw not a hundred yards away, it moved with an unsteady gait, great jaws snapping at empty air, flinging strings of saliva. Sundance reined in Eagle, the big Appaloosa stallion, watched the big gray lobo narrowly. It saw him, but instead of halting or darting off as any ordinary wolf would have done, it came on steadily, directly for him. The half-breed felt a chill go down his spine, despite the pounding summer sun that bathed the Nebraska sand hills. Instinctively he pulled his Winchester from its saddle scabbard, levered a round into the chamber.

  The wolf came on, showing no fear, at an unsteady lope. As it neared him, he heard it growl and it broke into a shambling run. Sundance aimed the rifle, fired. Shot through the head, the animal went down. He put an extra round into it for certainty, but he did not dismount. Instead, holding the stallion tight-gathered, he swept the rough country south of the Platte with a careful gaze, seeking even the slightest sign of life. A skunk, even a black-footed ferret, would have drawn a bullet from the rifle as quickly as the wolf had. Rabies, hydrophobia—the animal had shown all the symptoms. Sundance had seen them before; there was nothing anyone, Indian or wh
ite, feared more than the periodic epidemics of the disease that occasionally swept the prairies. It was carried not only by wolves and coyotes, but by all warm-blooded animals, and even a bite from the smallest, ordinarily most harmless creature might condemn a man to a lingering, hideous death for which there was no cure.

  Waiting, he rolled a cigarette. In his early thirties now, he wore a sombrero with a beaded band in which was stuck a red-tipped eagle feather, a Cheyenne war shirt, decorated with bead and quillwork, canvas pants, and moccasins with leggings that came halfway up his calves beneath them. On his right hip was strapped a .44 Colt; behind it was a Bowie knife. On his left was a hatchet in a beaded sheath, its handle straight, without the usual curve at the end—a sign that it was made for throwing. Behind the saddle were two parfleches, panniers made of buffalo hide. One was long, cylindrical; the other round and disc-shaped. Among other things, the long one contained an unstrung bow, a quiver full of arrows, the disc-shaped one held his war shield. White man’s weapons, Indian’s, they were the tools of the hard trade he had followed for so long—that of the professional fighting man.

  Drawing in smoke, he considered. He could not simply leave the carcass of the wolf to be devoured by scavengers, all of which would then be infected by its sickness. The risk had to be taken. Warily, hand close to his holstered Colt, he swung down off Eagle, leaving the stallion ground-reined; it would stand, rock-like, until he mounted it again. Carefully, very carefully, as tense as if each grass-clump contained an enemy—as well it might—he gathered rocks, piled them over the lobo’s carcass. During this whole process, he was careful not to touch the animal. When it was done, he turned toward the horse—and then he saw it, a tiny black and white furriness emerging from a cedar clump. Sundance pulled the Colt, walked toward it. The skunk, going about some business of its own, paid him no attention. He had no way of knowing whether it was infected or not, but he carefully aimed and fired and killed it. The heavy .44 slug nearly blew the small creature apart.

  Then, as he had with the wolf, Sundance covered it with rocks. By the time he remounted Eagle, he was sweating beneath his shirt, his usually rock-steady nerves jumping. Suddenly the sand hills and the prairie, in which he was normally as much at home as a fish in water, had turned hostile. Infested with wolves, coyotes, and smaller carnivores, there would be more rabid animals, and he might not see the next one in time. As long as he was mounted, he was fairly safe—but Eagle was not, and if the horse were bitten unexpectedly by a hydrophobic skunk or weasel, it too would have to be shot, which would be like killing his best friend. And it was still five miles to Fort McPherson.

  He covered that distance warily, keeping Eagle in the open, out of tall grass or brush, as much as possible. Once, far away, he saw a yellowish dot break cover—a coyote. It moved with the same unsteady gait at which the wolf had traveled, but before Sundance could bring rifle to bear, it had vanished again in a cedar thicket. He was not going in there after it. But that proved that rabies was epidemic here along the Platte. Well, if the General didn’t know it, he’d report it to him, but the chances were that he was already completely aware. Little escaped Brigadier General George Crook, now, in 1875, commander of the Army’s Department of the Platte.

  Presently, with relief, Sundance saw the buildings of Fort McPherson on a tableland above the river. Riding in, he was challenged by a sentry; the telegram Crook had sent him made the soldier nod respectfully and let him pass. A few minutes later, he reined up before the frame building that was the headquarters of the post.

  ~*~

  “Jim!” The man who came from behind the desk was tall, thin, with a sharp nose and a wispy brown beard. His uniform was rumpled; it was rare that he wore a complete one at all, and more than once, in the field, he’d been mistaken for some scout or saddle-tramp accompanying the command. But his eyes were keen and piercing, and Sundance knew there was no better general in the Army—none who knew Indians so well, sympathized with them so much, and yet was so completely effective once he had to go to war against them.

  “Three-Stars.” Sundance shook Crook’s hand. “It’s good to see you again. I got your telegram in Dodge and came as quickly as I could.”

  “I hoped it’d catch up with you there. You’re like the wind—nobody ever knows where you may be heading at any given time.” Crook grinned. “A drink?”

  “Just one.”

  Crook took a bottle and a couple of glasses from the desk and poured, passed a glance to Sundance. He smiled, raised his own in salute, took a sip. Sundance followed suit, and as Crook went back behind his desk, hitched at his fighting gear and sat down in a chair across from him.

  “I appreciate your coming,” Crook said. “But, then, you’ve never failed me yet.”

  “Well, you never call me unless it’s urgent. And you and I are working for the same objective.”

  Crook’s thin face shadowed. “Yes. Peace among the whites and Indians and justice for both. You do it your way, I do it mine—and neither of us is having much luck, are we?”

  “I don’t know. I do the best I can. Hire out my gun, earn as much as I can with it, send it back east to that lawyer in Washington. He lobbies in Congress on behalf of the Indians—”

  Crook nodded. “Yes. Washington’s where the real battle’s going on, between the people who want justice for the tribes, and the land-grabbers and the financiers and railroaders who see the West as nothing but a great chicken to be plucked and the Indians as feathers that can simply be torn out and thrown away. Barbara Colfax is back there, too, now, I take it?”

  “Yeah. She’s doing what she can for the Cheyennes.” Sundance finished his drink, set it down. “I’m glad to see you commanding this department, Three-Stars. You made peace with the Apaches down in Arizona and—”

  “And I’m working on it here, with the Cheyennes and Sioux and the other tribes, trying to insure that they get the payments the government promised them, that whites keep off their hunting grounds.” He frowned. “For a while, I thought I was having some success. Now, though, I’ve got a problem—and it looks like everything’s going to be blown sky-high if it isn’t solved. We’ve tried everything we know to catch him, and so have the Cheyennes—and we’ve both failed. He’s too smart for either the Indians or the whites.”

  “Who?”

  Crook stood up, began to pace the room. “I wish to God I knew. But—” He gestured. “There’s a madman loose out there somewhere, Jim. A coldblooded killer and torturer, determined to keep the Army and the Cheyennes at each other’s throats. Every time it looks like peace negotiations will get somewhere, he—but let me show you.”

  Sundance watched as Crook took a small wooden box from his desk, opened it, and from it lifted photographs printed on glass plates. “There’s a photographer in North Platte, and he’s made pictures, at my request, of some of the worst cases. Here.”

  Carefully he laid the pictures out. Sundance rose, stared at them, and whistled softly.

  “These are only a few,” Crook said. “He’s killed thirty, maybe forty people in the past three months, red and white alike. You see—here are some of the white victims. Shot full of arrows, then mutilated in the worst Indian style.” His mouth thinned. “After being tortured first, exquisitely. Most of them—the whites—are soldiers, but some are civilians. Men and women alike, it makes no difference to him. This is the latest case—a corporal who ventured off by himself against orders; actually he was going AWOL to North Platte to have himself a spree. He never made it. Somewhere along the line the killer caught him. When we found him, he’d been spread-eagled, face up, eyelids cut off, scalped while still alive, and then a fire built on his belly and allowed to burn through until he died. Meanwhile, the madman cut off his genitals and stuffed them in his mouth.”

  “Hell,” said Sundance thickly.

  “Just to make sure, a couple of arrows had been put into him.” Crook raised his eyes, met those of Sundance. “Cheyenne arrows.”

  Sundance was si
lent. There was no getting around it, of course. Indians occasionally tortured white captives in such a manner, but even among the tribes warriors who did it were considered abnormal—unless the victim had committed some terrible offense against them.

  “That’s pretty much typical of all the whites,” Crook said harshly. “Now, this is how he treats the Indians.” He shoved a picture across the desk.

  The bullet-riddled body of a warrior dangled limply from a cottonwood limb, a rope around his neck. “Our contract surgeon,” Crook went on, “says he usually hangs them first, and they die by slow strangulation. Then he fills them full of lead—from an Army Springfield. There’ve been at least fourteen Cheyennes killed in such a manner.”

  “And no one under your command did it?”

  “Of that I’m certain,” Crook said promptly. “But, of course, to the Indians, it looks like Army work. Just as these ghastly murders of whites look like Indian work to the soldiers and the people in North Platte.” Carefully he returned the photographs to the box. “It’s been going on, as I said, for nearly three months now. And the upshot of it is, nobody will trust anybody else. The Cheyennes won’t even listen to peace proposals until this is stopped. And the whites, of course, are mad with rage—they’re wiring their Congressmen to declare no-quarter war against anything and everything with red skin.”

  He closed the box. “Whoever he is, he has the genius of insanity. Strikes without warning, always at the lone traveler, leaves no trail. He’s almost like ... like an evil spirit. When I heard about it, I came straight from Omaha, of course, and took personal charge of trying to run him down. Enlisted Cheyenne scouts to help me. We had no luck—none whatsoever.” Crook slid the box back in the desk. “I tell you, Sundance, this whole area is like a powder keg about to explode—all on account of these murders. And now we have a rabies epidemic to add to the tension—”