Sundance 3

by John Benteen

  Horne bit his lip. “The Sioux won’t kill anybody. Not with this Gatling gun against them. They don’t know how to fight anything like that.”

  Sundance smiled. “I do.”

  Horne stared at him. “You?”

  “That’s right. Me.”

  “Maybe I’ve made a mistake,” Horne whispered.

  “Maybe you have. Because, you see, Horne, I’m only half white. The other half of me is Indian. And there’s something else. I’m a full-fledged Cheyenne Dog Soldier and have been since I was eighteen years old. The Cheyennes and Sioux are allies now, and a Cheyenne Dog Soldier ranks with a Sioux Dog Soldier —and the Dog Soldiers are the top warriors of both tribes. You try this scheme of yours, you’d better be prepared to fight the Dog Soldiers. And when that happens, I’ll be riding with them and calling the shots. So forget it, Horne. Forget the Black Hills and stick with your Texas cattle out there.”

  Horne looked at him impassively, then slowly, carefully, took a cigar from a humidor, bit off its end. “So you’d turn renegade,” he said.

  “How can I be a renegade when my mother was an Indian?” Sundance smiled faintly. “I spent a lot of time when I was young with the Hunkpapa and Oglala Dakotas. Crazy Horse was my playmate, and Red Cloud was like a father to me.”

  “I see.” Horne snapped a match. “Then, no deal?”

  “No deal. Take my advice, don’t try it.”

  Horne blew smoke. “Well,” he said, “I thought it was worth the chance. You’d be the ideal man to run the expedition. But I reckon Leroy and I can do it ourselves while my men bring up the cows from Kansas. All the same, you surprise me, Sundance. I never saw a man before that I couldn’t buy for near a quarter of a million.”

  “I guess I’m just not white enough,” Sundance said.

  “And I guess I ought to of let Chessman take you. But now I reckon it’s up to Leroy.”

  Sundance stepped back, eyes shuttling to the younger man. Leroy took a step toward him, hands dangling by his guns. “Me,” Leroy said, “I kind of hoped it would work out like this. There’s some big reps being made these days. Burning you down would put mine up there with the best.”

  Sundance said, “Horne. Call off your son. I owe you him for balkin’ Chessman. I don’t want to kill him.”

  Horne laughed. “Don’t you worry about Leroy. He can take care of himself. He’s been up against the best there is in Wichita, and they don’t come no better. I taught him everything he knows.” Horne laid down the cigar. “We can’t let you out of here alive. You’d run for the Sioux and tip ’em off. You talked of death warrants. Sundance, when you turned me down, you just sealed yours. Because, you see, I aim to build me and Leroy an empire. Here in Kansas, up in Dakota. And nobody’s gonna stand in the way, not you, nor all the Indians between here and the Yellowstone.”

  Sundance backed toward the door. “Horne—”

  “Don’t try to make a break. You saw those hunters out there. They’re all my men. They’d burn you down the minute I gave the word.”

  “That’s right,” Leroy said. His shoulders hunched, he went into a crouch. “Stand and fight, half-breed.”

  Sundance met his eyes. He saw then, reading those metallic pupils, that there was no other way. He stood loosely, hand dangling at his side. “Leroy,” Horne murmured and the young man’s eyes changed. Sundance drew.

  His draw was fast and smooth, honed by years of endless practice. The Colt was in his hand, seated in his palm, lined, hammer back, just as Leroy’s gun’s muzzle cleared leather. Sundance had even a fraction of a second to aim, and used it. He pulled the trigger. Leroy’s Colt roared hard on the sound of Sundance’s, and Leroy screamed. The bullet from his gun chunked into the floor. Then, arm smashed by Sundance’s heavy slug, Leroy was knocked across the room, slammed against the wall. He sagged to his knees, vomiting from pain.

  Sundance whirled, facing the older Horne through white drifting powder smoke. “You! Don’t try it!”

  Horne’s hand lifted slowly from his gun butt. His face was pale behind the grizzled mustache, his lips thin bloodless lines. “You shot him,” he whispered. “You shot my son.”

  “Only ruined his arm,” Sundance rasped. “Now we’re even for Chessman; otherwise, I’d have nailed him.” Threatening Horne with the gun barrel, he crabbed across the room, kicked Leroy’s dropped gun skittering, fished the other Colt from the moaning young man’s belt and tossed it after. Then he went behind the desk, dragged Clyde Horne’s gun from leather.

  Outside, there was shouting, yelling. Men hammered on the door, but Horne had locked it for their private conference. Sundance jabbed his spine with the muzzle of his own revolver. “Raise your hands.”

  Horne’s voice shook with rage. “You’ll never make it!” he rasped. “God damn you, Sundance, you’ll never get out of Wichita alive. Those men out there will blast you down. You got no prayer of gettin’ through ’em.”

  “I’d better,” Sundance said, “if you want to see the sun come up tomorrow.” He jerked his head toward the door to the storeroom. “In there.”

  “There’s no way out of there.”

  “I know. But I’ve got business there.” He prodded Horne with the gun.

  Horne went ahead as they entered. Sundance looked around the storeroom; then he saw what he wanted. A nine-pound sledgehammer, the kind used for driving railroad spikes, leaned against the wall. Keeping Horne covered with his right hand, he edged toward the hammer, seized it with his left. He went to the Gatling gun, laid the hammer down long enough to jerk out the gravity feed magazine, which this one had in lieu of drum. Horne gave a muffled cry as Sundance raised the hammer, brought it down with all his strength on the Gatling gun’s breech. Again and again he smashed at the machine gun, and metal finally gave and shattered beneath his blows. Still, he thought, as he threw the hammer away, it was a halfway job. But it was all he had time for now.

  “Okay, Horne,” he said. “Now, we’re going out.

  Horne muttered something. They went back into the office. The bullet had smashed bone, and Leroy had fainted. Sundance prodded Horne past him to the door. “Now,” he said, “give ’em the word.”

  Horne swallowed, then roared: “Listen! Everybody stand back. There’s a man in here that’ll kill me if anybody points a gun! Stand back, don’t shoot. We’re comin’ out!”

  Sundance unbolted the door, shoved Horne through. The front office was full of men, bearded, mangy buffalo hunters in greasy clothes, every one with a gun. But when they saw Sundance behind Horne, they froze.

  “Out front,” Sundance said. “And if somebody tries to take me in the back, that won’t help you a bit. Both these guns’ll still go off.”

  “Stand fast!” Horne roared. “All of you, you hear me? Stand fast!” They went outside, into the full reek of the rotting buffalo hides. Two Texas cowboys reined in their ponies over by the railroad tracks, staring. But it was not their put-in, and they only looked on as Sundance shoved Horne toward the hitchrack outside the office, where there was a buggy.

  “In,” Sundance said. He unlatched the lines. Horne got in, Sundance beside him, ramming the muzzle of a Colt into his ribs. “Now, you drive me to the Riverside Hotel.”

  Horne did. “Sundance,” he began once, “I’ll guarantee you—”

  “Shut your mouth,” said Sundance. “I’m not in the mood for any of your talk.”

  They made the hotel. Sundance forced Horne from the buggy. The clerk stared as Sundance herded him upstairs. “Carry my gear,” Sundance said. “Put it in the buggy.”

  Horne obeyed, face pale, eyes blazing. Back in the vehicle, Sundance had him drive to the livery. Eagle, the appaloosa, whinnied, ran to the corral fence.

  Sundance spoke to him, then told the hostler, who stared wide eyed, “Saddle the stallion. He’ll stand. Then I want another horse for Mr. Horne.”

  The man blinked. “Move!” Sundance roared and jerked one of the Colts he held. The man hurried to obey.

  Wh
en both animals were ready and Sundance’s gear was lashed on behind Eagle’s saddle, Sundance holstered one Colt, swung nimbly up from the right side. “Mount,” he ordered Horne.

  Horne obeyed.

  “Now,” Sundance said, “we’re riding out of Wichita, and you better hope nobody tries to stop me. If they do, you’re the first to get it.”

  They swung out of the livery yard, Horne just a little ahead, the big stallion trailing him closely without any word from Sundance, or any pressure on the reins. Sundance held the gun low, kept it inconspicuous, but it was there, and Horne knew it was. They swung north, threaded through town. Hardly anybody noticed that one of them had drawn a gun, and those that did made no move to interfere. Drawn guns were no novelty in Wichita; this was a place where you could see anything, and unless the gun was aimed at you, you stayed out of it.

  When they were on the outskirts of town, Sundance leaned over, slapped the bay Horne was mounted on across the rump. “Ride!” he snapped.

  They rode. Eagle easily kept pace with the bay; there was no way for Horne to escape. Five miles out of town, Sundance yelled: “All right, pull up!” He reined Eagle in. When Horne had stopped the horse, Sundance gestured with the Colt. “You can climb down, now.”

  “Climb down?”

  Sundance smiled, and when he did that, a scar on his cheek, made years ago by a Blackfoot arrow, pulled up his mouth in a kind of wolfish snarl. “You didn’t think I was gonna let you ride back to town to organize your gunnies, did you?” Then the smile went away. “Climb off that horse.”

  Cursing, Horne dismounted. Sundance took the bay’s reins, swung Eagle to cover Horne with the gun. “Okay,” he said. “You’re alive, Leroy’s alive, because you two whipsawed Chessman. But we’re square. Next time, there’s no debt to pay.” He leaned out of the saddle a little way. “Now,” he said, “I’m riding up to Dakota Territory to see the Sioux. If you’re smart, you’ll keep your wagons and your hunters at Horne. Because if you and Leroy show up there, next time I’ll kill you—Gatling gun or no. That’s a promise, Horne.”

  Horne looked at him and did not answer.

  Sundance said, “Start walking.”

  Horne did not move, gray eyes blazing with hatred.

  Sundance fired a round. The shot sprayed dirt between Horne’s boots. The great gray bear of a man trembled.

  “Next time,” Sundance said, “it’ll be higher and you won’t be able to walk. Move out!”

  Horne turned slowly, began to walk toward town. Sundance holstered the Colt, drew his Winchester from its saddle scabbard. Horne walked on. He reached a rise of ground, a hundred yards away. There he turned, faced Sundance defiantly.

  “Damn you, Sundance!” he yelled. “You shot my boy! You’ve made me eat dirt! Nobody does that to Clyde Horne! Go to the Black Hills, go to hell itself, and I’ll still find you! All the damn Sioux in creation can’t stop me from comin’ after you and killin’ you!”

  Sundance coolly lined his gun. Horne stared. The Winchester went off. Dirt sprayed just behind Horne’s heel. The man turned, lumbered into a kind of run. Sundance, face grim, watched him go. Then, leading the bay, he rode north at a gallop.

  Three miles further on, he looped the bay’s reins around its saddle horn slapped it with a rope end and sent it on its way; it would go home. Then he put Eagle once again into a dead run and made ten miles before he slowed. After that, he traveled at a more leisurely pace, concerned now not so much with speed as covering his tracks. He used all the skill years of living with almost every Indian tribe from the Mississippi to the Shining Mountains and on beyond to the rain forests of the Northwest had taught him. Five more miles, and he was pretty sure nobody in Wichita would pick up his trail. After that, he kept Eagle at a steady, ground-devouring lope.

  Toward nightfall, well out on the plains now, headed northwest, he halted long enough to take the bow and quiver from the pannier. When he had strung the bow, he kept it on the saddle before him. It was not long before he saw two prairie chickens running through the short grass. He put Eagle after them, and just as they took flight let loose an arrow. It caught a cock on the rise and dropped him, dead before he hit the ground. Sundance retrieved the bird, restored the arrow to its quiver and rode on until he found a buffalo wallow. There he gutted the bird and then plastered it thoroughly with wet mud from the wallow. In a nearby draw, he made a fire of buffalo chips and baked the prairie chicken in its shell of clay. When, much later, he peeled off the dried mud, the feathers came with it, and the meat was sweet and tender and well-done. He ate hungrily, then put out the fire, rode on and made camp in a different place. Here he made no fire, only took the saddle off Eagle, wiped him down and let his back cool, then resaddled him and stowed his gear behind the saddle, save for his bedroll, bow and quiver. He picketed the horse to graze near where he spread his soogans. By that time, night had fallen. Sundance picked up the bow, slung the quiver, and took a look around.

  He was not worried about pursuit from Wichita now. What worried him was Pawnees. Weakening, almost dispossessed from their hunting grounds along the Platte and the Republican, they were mortal enemies of the Sioux who had overpowered them, and who, the year before, had killed a lot of them, including a leader named Sky Chief up in Nebraska. The Pawnees had thrown in their lots with the Army, and under Pawnee Frank North had been organized into bands of scouts. If he should run into a bunch of them out here, he could expect no mercy. They all knew that Sundance was half Cheyenne and a friend of the Dakota Sioux.

  With the bow in one hand, an arrow in the other, he made a careful circuit of his campground. He did not need his rifle; anything he could see in this light, he could hit with the bow, and it would make no flash to betray his hiding place. But all was quiet, and soon he went back to his blankets.

  There, he took out a pouch and cigarette papers and rolled another smoke. This time, though, it was not tobacco, but a weed called marijuana which grew wild everywhere, and which he had learned to smoke years before down in Mexico. Unlike whiskey, it would not stir him up. It would only calm him, relax him, without interfering with his reflexes, so long as he smoked the single cigarette. He drew it deeply into his lungs, thought about what lay ahead.

  Two hundred thousand; that was how much Horne had promised him, at thirty percent. Which meant that Horne foresaw, in two years, a profit of three-quarters of a million dollars. The Blackfoot arrow-scar pulled up the corner of Sundance’s mouth. A white man would charge the gates of hell itself for that much money; he had not deterred Horne, only aroused him. Maybe he should have killed him. But, owing his life to the man, that had gone against his grain.

  His next move would be to hit North Platte, Nebraska. There he would send telegrams and write letters: to his man in Washington, to the generals he knew, the ones he had guided on occasion and who had turned to him for advice before. Sheridan, Sherman, Crook. He would use all his influence to explain to them what was about to happen, that Custer’s announcement of gold in the sacred lands of the Sioux would trigger an Indian war that would dwarf anything ever seen in the West before, if they did not adhere to the treaty terms, resolutely keep every white man out of the Paha Sapa, the sacred Black Hills, where Wakan Tonka, the Great Spirit, dwelled when he chose to come to earth. And he hoped he would draw enough water to get Crook transferred from Arizona to the Dakotas. Of all the Indian-fighting generals, only Crook really understood the red men and wished to honor the treaties made with them. He was the only one who would really try conscientiously to keep the miners out of the Paha Sapa.

  But that would take time. And Horne had his hunters together, his wagons ready. His Gatling gun was smashed and so was his son’s gun arm, but that would not stop him long. He would be in Dakota soon, and there would be nobody but Custer between him and the Sioux—and Custer was in Horne’s debt.

  Custer, Sundance thought contemptuously and spat. Custer was a fool, an idiot, a glory-hunter. He had stirred up more ill-feeling among the Plains Tribes tha
n all the rest of the Army put together. Sundance thought that Custer’s luck could not last forever. If Custer stayed where the Sioux could get at him—

  He put out his cigarette, rolled up in his blankets, guns and bow and arrows close at hand. Eagle would serve as watchdog, awaken him if anything dangerous appeared. Sundance closed his eyes.

  The prairie night was far from quiet. Somewhere over a ridge, an old bull buffalo, driven from the herd, bawled weirdly. Coyotes added their shrill yapping to the sound, and then the big red and gray lobos joined in with lonesome howls. Sundance hardly noticed the sounds, but he would have come out of the deep sleep into which he sank instantly if they had ceased.

  He made North Platte, a booming rail junction, without trouble. There he wrote his letters, sent his telegrams. He searched the newspapers and kept an ear cocked for rumors, but Custer had not yet made his announcement. The man was giving Horne plenty of time. After a day, Sundance rode north again, fast, traveling like a wolf, keeping to cover, always making sure of what lay ahead.

  He crossed the Niobrara, headed for the White. He rode now across a level tableland, and ahead upthrust higher, rougher country, a jumble of wind-carved buttes and hills and draws. Meanwhile, he saw buffalo, plenty of them. They grazed undisturbed; the Sioux had not yet begun their fall hunt, and the hide-hunters who were wiping the Kansas and Texas prairies clean of the southern herd had not got this far north.

  But the Pawnees had. They hit him just at midday, as he rode across the flats, and there was no cover anywhere.

  Sundance had just halted to give Eagle a chance to blow when they came, boiling up out of a coulee far to the west. The big stallion caught their scent, snorted, and Sundance twisted in the saddle to see ten, fifteen, coppery warriors with roached hair hit the level a mile away. They had already spotted him, and they bent low in the saddle, lashing their ponies to a dead run as they came. Sundance cursed. He was on the ground next to Eagle with the cinches loosened. Tightening them cost him a precious pair of seconds; then he hit the saddle without touching stirrup. The range was still too great for either him or the Pawnees to open fire. He spoke to Eagle, touched him with his heels, and the big horse flew.