Sundance 3

by John Benteen

“There is no risk!” Fears-No-Lightning almost yelled, cords swelling in his neck. “I tell you, I am invincible!” He chopped the air with an angry gesture. “You have seen it, all of you. And now you listen to one who’s not even a Sioux, who’s half-Cheyenne and half-wasichu!”

  “And whom I have known since he was a child,” Sitting Bull said thinly. “Be still a little while, or else leave the council.”

  Fears-No-Lightning stared at him. “You?” he sneered. “You, old man, you tell me, Fears-No-Lightning to be still? Do the Gods talk to you inside your head every morning, every night? No, you must go up on the mountain and fast and pray and beg them to come and give you a little bit of help, advice. But they are always with me!”

  Sitting Bull slowly got to his feet. He was of medium height, blocky, yet radiating strength and power. He looked straight into Fears-No-Lightning’s mad, flaring eyes. “It is a bad thing,” he said, “to have such shouted talk at council.”

  “Don’t tell me what is bad and what is not, old man! How many scalps have you taken this week?”

  Sitting Bull drew in a long breath. He looked at the chiefs around the fire. “I think this man should leave the council.”

  Fears-No-Lightning’s face twisted. “Perhaps I shall. But if I do, I’ll also leave this camp. And if I leave this camp, I’ll take a hundred of your lodges with me, and more later on. I am as great a chief now as any here, with as many followers, and as great a prophet and talker to the Gods as any medicine man. And the people know it; they know I am the only one who can keep them safe. I am the only one whose followers will live forever!”

  Sitting Bull’s eyes narrowed. “No one, no matter how great his magic, lives forever. You’d do well to remember that, Fears-No-Lightning.”

  He and the other stared at one another for a moment; and the atmosphere inside the teepee was tense. Others looked on in awe and apprehension; such an altercation at council was unheard of. Then Sundance’s voice sliced through the taut silence. “Wait!”

  They turned.

  Sundance stood up. “We may not have to fight the Gatling gun. I don’t care about the buffalo hunters, but I do not want to see a single Dakota killed. On my way to tell you this, I stopped at North Platte and sent messages to the Long Knife Army chiefs who’re my friends, and to a man who will talk to the Grandfather in Washington. I asked for answers to those messages to be sent to me at Bismarck, where Yellow Hair has his fort. According to the treaty, the Sioux should not have to fight for their land. It’s the Army’s responsibility to stop Horne and the prospectors, too.”

  “The Army?” This time it was Sitting Bull who spat into the fire. “And besides, you say Yellow Hair is a friend of the man who owns the Gatling gun, indeed, gave it to him. Do you expect him to stop that man?”

  “I do,” Sundance said, “if I get the right answers to my messages. He can’t disobey orders from the Grandfather in Washington. Besides, it may be possible that I can get him sent away and another general brought here to take his place, a good one, Crook. That will take time, but in the meanwhile, according to the treaty paper, the Army must stop Horne. I intend to do my best to make sure it does.”

  Sitting Bull shook his head. “It’s a long ride to Bismarck and back. What if Horne and the buffalo hunters come before you return?”

  “My own stallion’s lame; give me two fast horses to ride in relay, and I’ll make it to Bismarck and back before they get here. If I don’t, if they come before I return, there’s only one way to deal with that gun. Spy on them until you see where they keep it and how to use it. Then pick a few good, level-headed men and go after it the way you’d steal a horse, at night, by stealth. Whatever you do, don’t try to take it or stop it by a head-on attack, not even with a hundred men or a thousand. Once you see it in operation, you’ll know why.”

  “If I know the white men, it will do no good for you to go. The Army has not kept its word to us yet.” Crazy Horse’s voice was bitter.

  Red Cloud stood up, the great chief who had led the war against the forts along the Bozeman Trail and forced the Army to abandon them. “I say it must be tried anyhow. Sundance knows the white man’s way and we do not. He has friends where the Grandfather lives and we do not. I say, if he can make Custer do what the treaty requires, he should do it. That would be better than fighting now. If we must fight, the time to do it is in the spring, after our spring hunt. If we fight now, we’ll have no chance to kill winter meat, and when the snows come we’ll starve, and the soldiers can easily hunt us down. Let Sundance make the Grandfather keep his word, if he can. If he can’t—Well, then, we shall do what we have to do.”

  “That is the way,” Rain-in-the-Face agreed.

  Red Cloud said, “Take your pick of all my horses. The tall bay is the very best, and fast. When will you ride?”

  “At daybreak tomorrow,” Sundance said. “There’s no time to waste.”

  “And if you fail?”

  “Then I’ll come back,” Sundance said. “I’ll come back and we’ll take that Gatling gun and turn it against Horne and his men.”

  A murmur of assent went up. Only Fears-No-Lightning did not join it. “I say we don’t need his help. I say I will take the gun myself.”

  “The council has made its decision,” Sitting Bull said thinly. “You’ll do no such thing, until all else has been tried.”

  Fears-No-Lightning stared at him a moment. Then, wordlessly, he turned, strode to the door of the lodge, bent, went out into the night.

  “I think the council is over,” Red Cloud said, after a moment. “Sundance, choose your horses early and ride hard and fast. There has been bad medicine here tonight.”

  When they had stepped out into the night, Crazy Horse took Sundance’s arm. “My friend,” he said, “let us walk together for a while, before you spread your robes in my lodge.”

  They had known each other for a long time, had played together as children when Nicholas Sundance had come to trade with and live among the Oglalas; and Sundance sensed immediately a significance in the words. “Yes,” he said.

  They strolled through the camp, then climbed the hill behind it, shrouded in the darkness of the thick pine timber. Presently they came to a place where the trees were full of bodies: here, the Sioux had buried their dead, or rather, wrapped them in hides and put them on platforms out of reach of ground-ranging scavengers. Unlike many tribes, the Sioux held their dead in no superstitious awe; still, this was not a place many people came at night, and here they could talk, alone and unobserved.

  Crazy Horse sat down on a log, pulled his blanket more tightly around him. He wore only a single feather, none of the trappings of the warrior or the chief; in his puberty dreaming, it had come to him that always he must walk among his people as a plain and modest person, though he would be great in battle.

  “I have something to tell you,” he said. “On your ride to Bismarck, be very careful.”

  Sundance waited. Crazy Horse went on.

  “You’ve seen Fears-No-Lightning’s magic, have tested it yourself. I want to know what you think of it.”

  Sundance took out tobacco, rolled two cigarettes, passed one to Crazy Horse.

  “Go on,” Crazy Horse said. “Tell me. Not like an Indian, but tell me with the white man’s half.”

  Sundance drew in smoke. “The Pawnees almost had me. He and the other two charged right in. They must have fired a hundred rounds at the three of them, and not a one hit. But they took the Pawnees by surprise. And when they came on, three against a dozen, it was such a foolish, brave action that it must have astounded the Pawnees. Surely, they must have thought there had to be more Sioux, a lot of them, somewhere not far behind.”

  “That might have shaken their aim,” Crazy Horse said. “Yes.”

  “Something else shook their aim, too,” Sundance said. “I saw at least one whiskey bottle beside a dead Pawnee. Now that they scout for the whites, they get all the whiskey they want. Men with firewater in their bellies on a hot day don’t
shoot too straight, especially not against targets on running horses. That doesn’t change anything, though. It was a brave thing Fears-No-Lightning did, and a lucky one, a very lucky one.”

  Crazy Horse nodded. “The trouble is, he’s had too much luck like that. Although if I believed no bullet could hurt me I wouldn’t think that I’d be doing anything very brave by making such a charge. The brave man is the one who attacks even when he knows he can be blown from his horse and killed. But he made you try to shoot him.”

  “I checked my pistol the next morning,” Sundance said. “It’s a new kind Colt’s just brought out. The mainspring had weakened. There are always little things that go wrong with a new kind of gun until it’s been in use awhile and tested. I made it right, as best I could.”

  Crazy Horse made a sound in his throat. “More luck. But you heard the story of the lightning. How it killed all around him and spared him.”

  “Once I saw it strike a buffalo bull,” Sundance said. “It knocked him down, knocked off the horn on one side and burned off all the wool on that side. It didn’t touch his other flank. Lightning does strange things.”

  “Yes. Well, you are saying how I feel.” Crazy Horse paused. “I believe in Sitting Bull. His brain is good, and his heart, and he makes no wild claims, and he has never misled us. He offers nothing cheap and easy to his people. But Fears-No-Lightning, with those voices in his head, his promises of living forever. There are always a lot of stupid people who believe such stuff. They flock to him and worship him as if he were Wakan Tonka himself, and that would not be bad if his mind were right and he were brilliant, with the welfare of the Dakota Nation and his tribe at heart. But all he thinks of is his own glory. Maybe he can’t be blamed. As Black Horse, he never had any glory. And it’s true, he’s earned a lot by brave deeds and has become a fine fighting man, where once he was just a bumbler.” He ground out his cigarette. “But I think that is because he just had more self-confidence. Self-confidence is what makes the difference between the good warrior and the bad. When he survived the lightning, he knew that something special had happened to him, and for the first time, he believed and trusted in himself.”

  He turned. “The thing is, though, Sundance, he’s splitting the tribes apart, just when they most need to be together. He’s fighting to take everybody’s authority away, make himself supreme, and there’s no way we can stop him so long as people believe in him.”

  Sundance said, “There’s one way.” And he touched his Colt.

  Crazy Horse laughed softly. “I’ve thought of that. But it’s not possible. You know our laws. It would touch off a war inside the tribe itself for one Sioux to kill another. Especially a great leader like he’s come to be.”

  “I’m not a Sioux,” Sundance said. “And I told you, my gun won’t misfire again.”

  “No. We need you. We need your influence with the Grandfather and the Army—and you’re the only one who knows anything about the Gatling gun, how to take it and how to use it. Let it go, for now at least.” He stood up. “This is what I had to tell you. You saw him in council tonight, how defiant he’s become. He wants the chance to charge that fast-shooting gun. If he did that and his luck held and no one got killed and he took it—and he believes that’s what will happen—he’d be the greatest leader the Sioux ever had. Nobody else would be listened to, not Sitting Bull or Red Cloud or Gall or myself, no one who did not have crazy voices in his head. And a man with crazy voices and a taste for glory for himself could lead our people to disaster.”

  He turned, faced Sundance. “Anyhow, on your way to Bismarck, watch your back trail. Fears-No-Lightning doesn’t want you to succeed. He wants a fight against that gun, and—”

  “And he might try to kill me to make sure that I didn’t keep him from having one.”

  “When a man hears voices in his head, who can say what he’ll try to do?” Crazy Horse stood there a moment. “I think we have a bad time ahead of us. We don’t need Fears-No-Lightning to make it worse. Now, I have said what I had to say. Let’s go down and get some sleep.”

  Chapter Six

  From a distance, the Badlands of South Dakota looked like a great city on the horizon, with roofs, chimneys and turrets. Inside, they were like a cross section of Hell. A finger of dry, wind-eroded rock and barren soil, almost a hundred miles in length, a third that wide, they pointed northeast from the Black Hills and, for Sundance, crossing them was the quickest way to Bismarck.

  He pushed the two horses Red Cloud had given him mercilessly across lava flats and down great washes where the skulls of prehistoric creatures leered at him blankly from the dirt. Changing horses, he traveled eighteen hours a day, slept and ate the remaining six. Time was absolutely of the essence. The smashed Gatling gun and Leroy’s arm would delay Horne, but not too long; a wagon train of such a size would travel slowly, but not too slowly. And if Horne reached Dakota Territory and began to kill buffalo before Sundance got back, with the Army or without it, Fears-No-Lightning might sacrifice a hundred good warriors, maybe more, to that damned gun.

  With the Army Sundance was not optimistic. He’d have to deal with Custer, and he’d dealt with Custer before. Still, if his connections held, if he could present Custer with a direct order from Sherman or Sheridan, the General of the Army and the latter commanding the Division of the Missouri, not even the arrogant yellow-haired lieutenant colonel who still clung to his temporary Civil War rank when he signed his name would dare to disobey.

  He made it almost across the Badlands by the end of the second day, camped that night on a barren slope in a burst of boulders, sipping a few drops of water from a canteen, barely wetting his horses’ muzzles. He picketed them well, then, exhausted, rolled into his blankets, pillowed his head on his saddle. His belts, with Colt, knife, and axe, were draped around the horn, his Winchester in his arm’s crook. His last thought was that he wished he were mounted on Eagle; the big appaloosa would not let any stranger approach without trumpeting warning. Then he slept.

  The resources of his tough-muscled body exhausted, he slept hard, dreamlessly. In the night, he must have uncrooked his arm. Because, when they tried to kill him and he woke up, the gun was gone, snatched from his grasp.

  He must have rolled over just in time. As the hand closed on his throat, a knife blade slashed down through his blankets, raked a gash along his ribs. The burning pain of it brought him wide awake in darkness, staring into a shadowy face, painted with jagged yellow streaks. He saw the blade rise again, poise, as the hand pinned his neck.

  He was like a mountain lion or some other hunting animal. He did not stop to wonder, but moved reflexively. He gripped the wrist of the hand that held him, used all his strength to pry it loose, and rolled again, hearing the down-slashing blade grate into rocky dirt. Then he was loose and on his feet in darkness, in a single, catlike bound, and as whoever held the knife charged him, he fell to one side, hands reaching out for the weapons on his saddle.

  He caught the Bowie’s haft, dropping to one knee, and the charging man missed him with the blade and tripped and fell over Sundance’s outstretched leg. Sundance came up, with the long knife ready, and only then did he know there were two attackers. As the first one sprawled, then jumped to his feet, another shadowy form came toward him in darkness. Sundance jumped aside. The moon was high; he leaped into a patch of silvered ground. Now he could see, and when both of them came after him, each with knife in hand, he recognized them: Lame Bear and Single Moon.

  There was no time to speak. Lame Bear came in from the right, Single Moon from the left, both armed with steel. Sundance crouched, chin down over his throat, left arm across his belly, right wrist turned down to protect its artery. He caught Lame Bear’s blade on his own, jerked and twisted, and Lame Bear’s steel slid away. The man plunged on past Sundance, who whirled to meet Single Moon’s attack.

  Single Moon was lean and young, and fast as a striking snake. Sundance barely caught his blade in time, and if his own knife had not had a special hilt,
Single Moon’s would have ridden up and chopped his fingers. But the guard blocked the lean Sioux’s blade, turned it and threw him off balance, and Sundance took the chance and opportunity and went in low, turning as he did so in case Lame Bear came at him from behind. He heard Single Moon cry out, felt his blade sink deep; then he jerked it up, mercilessly ripping, and Single Moon fell back, screaming, and his knife clattered on the rocks. He was still screaming, lying there trying to hold his entrails in, when Sundance whirled to meet Lame Bear’s charge.

  But Lame Bear did not come fast. He had seen how Sundance could handle that knife, and now he and Sundance circled, both crouching, around that moon-silvered patch of sloping earth, like two boxers in a prize ring, each waiting for the other to make a move and go off balance. Single Moon kept on screaming.

  Lame Bear’s eyes glittered in the moonlight. “Sing your death song, Cut Left Arm,” he said, using the Sioux term for Cheyenne.

  “Don’t be a fool, Lame Bear. You want to end like Single Moon?”

  “He will not die. Followers of Fears-No-Lightning cannot die. By the time you’re dead, he will be well again. That has been promised.”

  “His guts are cut out,” Sundance said. “So will yours be, if you don’t drop that knife.”

  “Hahhh!” was all the answer Lame Bear gave, and then he charged.

  Sundance caught the young Sioux’s blade on his own, pried back, locking. Now he and Lame Bear were face to face. Neither dared break the lock lest the other stab him. Lame Bear’s neck corded, veins stood out in his temples, his teeth gleamed white, clamped together, as he sought to force Sundance’s arm down and free his knife. Sundance, in turn, mustered all his strength to force Lame Bear’s knife up, give him a clear stab at the heart.

  Lame Bear was blocky, muscular, very strong. For a moment, neither of them could move the other’s knife. Then Sundance braced his feet, threw all the weight of his wide-shouldered body into effort. Inch by inch, bit by bit, he forced Lame Bear’s blade up and back.