Sundance 15

by John Benteen

  Sundance swung up on the gelding, working slowly down the draw. Almost imperceptibly, the trail became easier to follow. The more distance put between himself and the crime, the less pains the killer had taken to hide it. Still, it was twenty-four hours old and the half-breed was under no illusions; its maker was far away by now. That did not matter; now that he had the trail, he would run him down unless the man sprouted wings.

  The sign ran on down the draw, which gradually opened up. Where it turned sandy once more, mouthing into the Platte low grounds, there were no tracks; the killer had put his mount up one side or the other. A brief search showed Sundance the passage through the juniper brush, and he led his own horse up over the low bank, into a lush growth of bottomland wild hay.

  Here the passage of the unshod horse through the tall grass was easier to follow. Sundance rode bent in the saddle, a smaller target in case the killer had doubled back today to watch his back trail. Then the gelding snorted, shied, jumped backwards. Sundance stared at the tan-colored, long-bodied little animal that furiously attacked its foreleg, needle-sharp fangs gnawing at the heavy bull hide armor. The horse kicked, and the black-footed ferret went spinning through the air, landed on its feet, and with mindless savagery came back at this creature a thousand times larger than itself. It was a tiny, twisting target, so swift-moving that it blurred, but he loosed the arrow from the bow and suddenly, pinned to earth, it writhed and died.

  Sundance stroked the excited gelding. There was no way the ferret’s teeth could have pierced the heavy bull hide. But reminded of the danger now, he scattered more of the poisoned balls of tallow as he went, with another arrow nocked to the bowstring as he rode.

  ~*~

  The sun was low-slanting when the trail led him out of the high grass into the cottonwoods along the river. Now, deliberately, it wandered, meandered aimlessly—a fine imitation of a stray horse drifting along the river, pausing here and there to browse. To the unpracticed eye, it would have seemed just that—but when he found the droppings, he grinned tautly, having further proof that this was no stray he followed. A stray would have halted to void its bowels, leaving the droppings in a pile; a horse being ridden left them strung out, as Sundance found them. Sundance dismounted, stirred the dung with a stick, found it hours old. He swung back into the saddle, keeping to the wandering trail as the light lessened.

  Here the Platte ran wide and shallow, studded with sandy islands, some no more than brushless spits. It looked easy to ford, but Sundance knew that beneath its muddy surface were treacherous quicksands. Presently, though, he found where the horse had entered the current.

  Boldly, he put his own animal in, guiding on a nearly brushless low sandy island in midstream. There was no doubt in his mind that the killer knew every inch of this country intimately; he had not ridden this close to the Union Pacific Railroad in broad daylight, but had made his trip through the lowlands and across the river under cover of darkness. Where he had gone, it would be safe to follow.

  Sure enough, it was swimming water all the way, and the cavalry gelding breasted the current easily, shaking itself as it clambered out on the island in midstream. In the last of daylight, Sundance reined in, swung down. Horse tracks crossed the island, entered the current on the other side. All right: but for him, this would be a fine place to spend the night. There was no animal sign at all on the spit, except for mink tracks along its shore, and mink were not likely to be rabid, living mostly on fish as they did, and being too quick and too smart to be caught by predators. He gave the horse a measure of grain from his saddlebags, ate cold Army rations, spread his blankets, slept, rifle cradled in his arms, pistol close at hand, weapons belt draped around the horn of the saddle he used as a pillow.

  Before first light, he was up, having marked at sunset the night before the place where the tracks left the island. It would have made him too vulnerable to cross after dawn; in midstream he would have been a fine, helpless target. So he trusted the horse to find its way in darkness, and again there was swimming water to the far bank. Day was just breaking when it climbed out in the brush along the stream.

  The killer had ridden all night. Again, he’d simulated the wandering, meandering trail of a stray horse, but always edging back into a direction that gave Sundance a bearing on his course. No doubt about it. Once over the bluffs along the south bank of the Platte, he was bound across the low divide that separated the Platte from the broken drainage of the Republican. There in the rough country along Fox Creek or the forks of Medicine Lake Creek or one of many others, he could hole up, still be within easy striking distance of either post.

  Sundance followed him more rapidly now, but without lessening wariness. In crossing the divide, his quarry had used every scrap of cover, just as he would have done, and as the country became more broken, there was plenty of it. Again he was taking pains to conceal his trail as well, and there were times when the half-breed lost it, but patiently he circled, sometimes going on foot, and eventually he found some mark or sign to give him bearing. Usually it was the faintest trace, and more and more he was convinced that the man ahead of him was Cheyenne-bred.

  At least, he told himself, once down on the Republican side of the divide, he would more than likely be out of the rabies epidemic’s range. The day wore on, and he moved into the drainage of the southern river, convinced that the killer was heading for some specific spot there, a permanent hiding place. He found himself wondering why the Indians themselves hadn’t picked up a trail, run the man down—but he’d probably been a lot more careful while the Cheyennes were still in the territory. He knew he had little to fear from the cavalry and not much from any Pawnee scouts who might be brought in—their efforts to find a man who killed their enemies would be at best half-hearted.

  It was late afternoon when the trail led him to a thin-running creek where the killer had taken to water to hide his trail. Sundance followed, watching either bank for any sign of where he might have climbed out. His alertness was doubled now, for he was fairly sure he was nearing the end of his quest. Judging from the sign, his quarry had gone more than twenty-four hours without sleep; he and his horse alike would give out soon. This was the last push to reach his hideout, and it could not be too far away.

  Another hour, and he reined up his mount, hock-deep in water. The stream, wider now, was edged with alders and willow, and a few cottonwoods grew along its bank. Here there was a buffalo crossing, used by other game as well, the ground chopped by hoofmarks in the mud. He reined over to the right bank, examined the churned sign there, but saw no trace of anything but cloven hooves. Turning to the left bank, he leaned far out of the saddle, eyes probing the mud. Early this afternoon, a bull and two cows had crossed, and their splayed hoof prints nearly blotted out the marks left by the unshod horse. Sundance’s mouth twisted, and with bow and arrow at the ready, he put the gelding up the bank, through the brush, into the cottonwoods.

  Beyond them lay a miniature badlands of sandy cutbanks, draws and gullies, clogged with brush. He was aware of his heart beating faster: it was up in there somewhere, had to be—the killer’s lair.

  The horse’s feet made no sound on the sand beneath the cottonwoods. Sundance passed from under the trees, eye picking up an almost invisible fleck of trail sign here, another there: the killer had tried here to erase all marks of passage. Ahead lay a narrow, steep-banked cut grown up to the height of a horse’s head with a solid wall of scrubby juniper and thorn. Seemingly impenetrable, it had nevertheless afforded passage to the killer and his mount—at the level of a rider’s shoulder, Sundance saw the one telltale broken twig of cedar.

  He turned the horse back into the shelter of the cottonwoods, dismounted, hitched it. Now he put away his bow, useless in thick brush, and his arrows, hanging both on the saddle horn. The killer had ridden in there, but he was not about to, not until he had reconnoitered it on foot. With a round in the chamber of the Winchester, he edged back to the draw’s mouth. Dropping behind a mound of sand, he watche
d and listened for a long five minutes before he was wholly satisfied. But nothing moved, and there was no sound but the constant trickling murmur of the stream not far away. Getting to his feet, bent low, he moved into the brush.

  He had hunted grizzly, mountain lion, black bear and wolves in such thickets, but now he was after the most dangerous game of all—a man Cheyenne-raised and armed with guns and arrows. His own life depended on his stealth and caution, and he was like a shadow as he vanished into the juniper.

  It was with excruciating slowness that he edged forward, never putting down a foot until sure of a silent place for it to rest, never forcing passage so that limbs would rasp on leather. Ten feet into the thicket, he saw it—the first hoof print of the horse he had followed for so long. Then there were more, as if, safe now in his covert, the killer saw no need for caution. And from here on his passage had worn a kind of corridor in the juniper, so that Sundance could move a bit more swiftly.

  Two hundred yards, three hundred, he worked up the wash, and it took him half an hour. Presently a change in the quality of light ahead told him that the thicket ended. Dropping to his belly, he crawled the last hundred feet to the edge of the juniper and peered out cautiously at what lay ahead of him, and slowly his lips peeled back from his teeth in a snarling grin of triumph.

  ~*~

  Ahead, the cut opened up into a kind of small bowl, with walls towering more than thirty feet, all eroded dirt, rock, a few clumps of brush. The dugout shelter had been built into one side, a cave dug back into the clay and sand, shored with timbers, screened by a door of buffalo hide that fell like a curtain. Nearby, a horse grazed on a picket line. Beyond the bowl, the wash continued, turning, and Sundance saw the edge of what looked like a pen made of juniper and cottonwood poles close set—probably a corral for a spare horse. For the moment, that did not worry him—a faint but perceptible wind blew straight into his face, so his scent would not carry to any animal that might give the alarm.

  His hand tightened on the rifle. The man he had sought so long was inside that dugout, and, behind that bull hide curtain, more than likely sound asleep after his long, grueling ride. It should be easy to take him—but Sundance had been around too long, survived too much, to take that for granted. There would be no rush that might alarm the horse, wake the killer. Slowly, carefully, with the rifle at the ready, he edged from the brush. Crouched low, he stalked across the sandy, rock-strewn earth, all his attention focused on that dugout only fifty yards away. The horse, hearing sounds inaudible to the man ears, raised its head, turned, looked at him, but, catching no scent, did not even snort.

  Now only ten yards lay between him and the door. He moved more quickly, raising the Winchester higher. Then, the voice rang out, familiar, harsh, from the draw’s rim: “All right, half-breed! Hold it right there and drop the gun! I’ve got you covered, and so has Maynard on the other side!”

  Sundance seemed to turn to stone. “Fitz,” he heard himself say, and his brain froze like the rest of him. It was not Fitz he’d followed, nor yet Maynard—and then he understood, and a chill went down his spine and he lowered the hammer on the cocked Winchester and let the rifle drop and raised his hands.

  Then Fitz’s voice rang out. “Okay, Maxton. We got him cold. You can come out now.”

  And as Sundance stared, the bull hide curtain moved and a man—or what had once been one—emerged. Wearing buckskins, moccasins, and carrying a cocked Colt leveled at Sundance’s belly, he grinned. “Hello, Jim,” he said. “Damned if you didn’t ride right into the trap.”

  “Silent Enemy,” Sundance said.

  “That’s right, Sundance,” the other half-breed said. “What’s left of me, after the beating the Cheyennes gave me. Not much, is there? But that’s all right. You’ll pay for everything that’s missing.”

  Chapter Seven

  Sundance, raking his eyes over the twisted form before him, felt revulsion. Black eyes glittered, lips peeled back from a gap-toothed mouth in a face maimed and hideous. Where a jawbone had been smashed, one cheek was caved in, making the whole scarred countenance lopsided. Maxton’s left shoulder was lower than his right by a pair of inches, his powerful torso warped forward in a kind of permanent crouch, making him look almost like a hunchback. Only the arms and legs were undamaged.

  Reading the reaction on Sundance’s face, Maxton spat. “No, I ain’t very pretty, am I? Women don’t think so, neither. I ain’t had one that I didn’t have to rape since that day on the Tongue. Now, unbuckle your belt and drop those weapons and step back two paces.” He raised his voice. “Okay, Fitz, you and Maynard come on down now.”

  As Sundance obeyed, dirt slid, rocks rolled, and then they were there, Fitz with a Colt in either hand, Maynard holding a Winchester trained on Sundance.

  “Work him over, Maynard,” Maxton said. “Make sure he’s clean.”

  “I’ll work him over, okay.” Maynard leaned the gun against a rock, balled one huge fist. “He’s got a beatin’ comin’—”

  “No!” Maxton snapped the word. “No, don’t you damage him! He belongs to me! You understand? He’s mine, all mine! I wouldn’t be like this if it wasn’t for him, and I got somethin’ special planned. All you do is search him.”

  Maynard started to protest, took one look at Silent Enemy, and his argument died unuttered. There was madness in Maxton’s eyes, but the gun was steady in his hand. Yielding, Maynard only searched the half-breed expertly. “Nothin’ on him but a cartridge box—and that’s empty.” He did not even take it from Sundance’s pocket. “He’s clean.”

  Meanwhile, Fitz had picked up Sundance’s weapons. “Put ’em in the shack,” Silent Enemy ordered, and Fitz obeyed. Maxton said, “Well, Jim, Crook’ll be surprised when he finds out I took you, too. You were my last piece of unfinished business down here. Now I can pull out north and kill me some more Cheyennes. Oh, not right away. I figure it’ll take a few weeks for you to die—”

  “A few weeks ... ?” Sundance stared.

  “The hard way. The hardest way I know of. The one thing I’ve been savin’ special for you. It’ll take a while, but I aim to stick around to watch it.” Maxton grinned. “You don’t understand it, do you? You don’t understand any of it ... ” He gestured. “Maynard, Fitz … ”

  “No,” Sundance said.

  “Well, I’ll tell you, short and sweet.” His eyes shone with bitter rage. “I guess you all figured I couldn’t live after what I went through at the Arrow Ceremony. Sometimes I didn’t think I could, either. But, by God, I made up my mind I would—and get my revenge. You’ve guessed that, though, or you’d have been more surprised to see me.”

  “I guessed it.”

  “It wasn’t easy. I was naked, alone, hurt all over, and I had no weapons. There was a week when I was out of my head and I don’t know what happened to me then. When I come to, I was rippin’ meat off a buffalo carcass and eatin’ it raw, and fightin’ off the wolves that had killed it at the same time. All the same, I reckon I would have died if a band of Crows hadn’t come along and taken me in.”

  “I see.” The Crows were implacable enemies of the Cheyenne and Sioux.

  “They got me back on my feet. When I was able to ride, I took off—headed west. Crossed the Shining Mountains, went all the way to California. But a crippled, ugly half-breed there didn’t have no more chance than he would in North Platte. So I went south, down into Baja California, lived with one of those fish-eatin’ cannibal tribes down there for years.”

  Sundance had heard of those Indians, but had never met them. Baja California was an unknown world even to the Mexicans who owned it, a bleak, forbidding wasteland inhabited by the wildest, most primitive of tribes.

  “But then I couldn’t stand it any longer,” Silent Enemy continued. “All I could think about was how much I hated the Cheyennes—just like I hated the goddamned blue-bellied Yankee soldiers. And finally I knew I had to come back and kill some of each. So I snuck back north—and when I got here, I found everything was ripe. T
he Cheyennes were itchin’ to get at the Long-knives, and the other way around. You could smell war in the air, and, by God, I figured I was just the man to start it. Kill some Cheyennes and make it look like they’d been lynched by soldiers, kill some soldiers, make it look like they’d been tortured to death by the Cheyennes—and they’d be at each other in a hurry. And then, comin’ back through California, I met Ravenal—”

  “Maxton, you’re talkin’ too damn much,” Fitz cut in.

  Maxton turned glittering eyes on him in a way that made Fitz’s face go pale. “I’ll talk as much as I please. You and Maynard already know it—and he’ll never have a chance to spill it. This is somethin’ I’ve been waitin’ a long time to rub his nose in, and now I’m gonna do it.”

  He faced Sundance again.

  “Ravenal was lookin’ for somebody to do just what I had in mind. He was scared that Crook takin’ command of this Department would mean peace with the Indians—and what he wants is a nice big war. The bigger it is, the more he sells to the Yankee soldiers, and the richer he gits. And besides, he hates their blue-bellied guts. They think he’s put his loyalty to the Confederacy, the whippin’ the South took, behind him—but he ain’t, no more than I have. So we struck a deal. He brought me to North. Platte, and for a long time I operated out of his warehouse there. Nobody but him and Fitz and Maynard and a man named Carson even knew I was there. So I could strike anywhere and everywhere I wanted to—at the soldiers and at the Injuns.”

  “But his own wife—”

  Maxton’s mouth twisted lasciviously. “He wanted her out of the way. He was carryin’ on with some whorehouse madam from Julesburg that he was crazy over—”

  Sundance remembered the gorgeous woman who’d got off the eastbound that morning in North Platte

  “So I took care of her, too—and had me some fun doin’ it. And of course he played like he was all broke up; offered a reward ... and that knocked suspicion off of him. But we decided it was too risky for me to operate out of his place after everybody got stirred up, so I crossed the divide and set up here. No way to connect the two of us then. And finally,” he said with satisfaction, “you showed up. Ravenal, he was scared. He put that gunslinger Carson onto you right away, but you blew him to hell and gone so easy that Ravenal got even scareder. But I told him not to worry—I knew I could take you.” His ruined mouth broadened its grin. “So when you made up your mind to come after me, rabid animals or no, Ravenal knew it—Taylor told him—and we set up this little trap. I knew there was no way I could hide my trail from you, that you’d run me down. And we decided to take no chances. Whilst you was followin’ my sign, Fitz and Maynard cut cross-country, got here long before you did, and they were waitin’ up there when you got here. Insurance, you might call it. Well, it worked. Now, you got it all clear, Sundance?”