Sundance 12

by John Benteen

  The town of Bootstrap, Nevada, was being terrorized by a killer they called the Big Fifty Sniper. Folks had a hunch it had something to do with the Lost Pistol silver mine, but no one knew for sure. Then Sundance, the half-breed professional gunman, rode into town. He was just in time to save young Billy Mercer from a hangman’s knot. Furthermore, he was also willing to chase the sniper down … for a price. There was no job too touch for Sundance, if the price was right.

  RUN FOR COVER

  SUNDANCE 11

  By John Benteen

  First published by Leisure Books in 1976

  Copyright © 1976, 2016 by John Benteen

  First Smashwords Edition: May 2016

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Cover image © 2016 by Tony Masero

  Series Editor: Ben Bridges

  Published by Arrangement with the Author Estate.

  Chapter One

  Sundance saw the town called Bootstrap long before he reached it. Distorted by the shimmering heat of the Great Basin of Nevada, it lay at the foot of a bleak mountain range—the Skull Mountains he knew they were called locally, whatever their official name on maps might be—one of those clutters of sundried-board and adobe brick buildings that grew up around the waterholes. Bound south for Arizona, he had no business to transact there, except to have two drinks of whiskey, buy some coffee, and give Eagle, his Appaloosa stallion, a feed of grain, if any were available. Catching the scent of water, the lathered stud struck a lope, and Sundance did not rein it in, though they’d had hard traveling this day and the horse was tired.

  A tall man, better than six feet when dismounted, he rode Indian style, like a Cheyenne, the best horsemen of the plains, save perhaps for the Comanches. From a distance he could have been taken for an Indian; a feather rode in the beaded brim of his gray sombrero; his big torso, with its wide sloping shoulders and narrow waist was clad in a fringed Cheyenne buckskin shirt, beautifully beaded and worked with porcupine quills; his pants were store-bought, brown canvas; but instead of boots, he wore high Cheyenne leggings ending in moccasins. His face was sharp-planed, harshly cut, like a hawk’s, with a high-bridged nose, wide thin mouth, high cheekbones, his skin the copper color of a penny. Wholly Indian, a man might say—until he saw the gray eyes, the thick shock of pale blond hair hanging to the collar. And the Colt .44 tied down white man’s style in a cutaway holster on his right thigh. He was, in fact, a half-breed, his father a white man from England adopted into the Cheyenne tribe, his mother a Cheyenne woman. And the way he wore that Colt was the mark of his trade; a fighting man, a gunman, a professional. There was, in the West of the early 1880s, plenty of work for a man in that line, even for one who came as high as Sundance.

  And it was with the professional’s caution that he scanned the country as the big stud carried him to Bootstrap, head swinging from right to left, eyes squinted against the dazzling glare of the three-o’clock sun. On either side of the trail, flats of sage and creosote stretched away, level as a billiard table top for at least a thousand yards before the ground began to rise in gravelly slopes jumbled with great boulders. No cover for anyone until those hills began, nothing stirring; even the sidewinders would be holed up until the worst of the day’s heat had ebbed. Sundance relaxed a little, allowed himself to think of cool water, maybe even a cold beer.

  Then, only inches from his belly, the horn of his saddle exploded. He heard a bullet’s whine, ricocheting off of steel. By the time the dull roar of the distant gun reached him, he had responded with whiplash reflexes, jerked his Winchester from its scabbard, left the saddle, hit the ground like a cougar at the end of its leap, and was rolling off the trail into the sage. He fetched up behind a clump flat on his belly, panting, as the gun roared again. The Appaloosa whinnied, stampeded, blood trickling from a bullet rake across its rump.

  Carefully, never raising his body an inch, Sundance levered a round into the .44-40 Winchester’s chamber. The shots, he thought, had come from the right of the trail, but, damn it, there was no cover there, nothing but the low brush to conceal a hidden rifleman; there should have been smoke, too, but there was none. Slowly and carefully Sundance raised his head a little.

  The next bullet slapped past his ear with a noise like a dry stick breaking; he felt its wind. And when the report rolled across the plains like distant thunder, he recognized the sound of a Big Fifty, a Sharps buffalo gun. Sundance swore, amazed. Now, eyes upraised, he could see up there on the hill-flank in a patch of boulders a faint drift of white—gunsmoke.

  Despite the heat, a chill walked down his spine. They looked nearer, but he was not deceived by the clearness of the air. Those rocks were a thousand yards away, at least. A hell of a long distance—but not too far for a caliber fifty Sharps that took a three-inch shell, a hundred and ten grains of power, and threw a seven hundred-grain slug to kill, especially if that would drop a bull buffalo at six hundred yards and a man at a thousand with no trouble at all.

  Telescope or none, though, whoever was using that big fifty was one hell of a shot, Sundance thought. His misses had been by inches, and the next one—Sundance rolled. As he did so, he let out a shrill, piercing whistle.

  The slug plowed up dirt where his body had been half a second before. Then Sundance was on his feet, running, and Eagle, the stallion, was galloping to meet him in obedience to that signal. Three seconds, four, Sundance guessed; a Sharps was single shot and he had that much time before the sniper reloaded.

  Body stretched, hoofs pounding, the big stallion bore down on him. Sundance hit the saddle in a flying leap, hand tangled in the horse’s mane, locked one leg over the cantle, slid down behind the stallion’s neck. The Sharps roared again, but now it had a trickier target, a running horse, its rider thoroughly concealed, and Sundance did not hear the bullet. The stallion veered off south, widening the distance between itself and the gun, one hundred, two hundred yards. There was another shot, and then the range was a good fifteen hundred yards and increasing. The stallion pounded on: two thousand, now, and Sundance swung up into the saddle. Checking the snorting horse, he reined it around.

  The distant hills shimmered in the heat. Nothing moved. Again that chill walked down the half-breed’s spine. The whole thing was crazy, senseless. The worst part had been the feeling of helplessness. He was not accustomed to feeling helpless in a fight, but— Hell, a sniper with a gun like that, a master marksman, firing without warning. A man had no more defense against such an ambush than he would against a lightning strike.

  Well, he was safe here now, out of range. Turning in the saddle, he checked the horse’s wound: it was nothing, a mere hide-scrape near the tail. Sundance considered for a moment, fierce rage burning in him now. He could circle, go up in those hills, stalk that bushwhacker with the Sharps—and likely get his head shattered like a pumpkin. In that cover, on the high ground, the gunman would see him long before he saw the gunman, no matter how much Indian craft he used—and he had plenty; in his time he had been a Cheyenne Dog Soldier. No, he thought; bad medicine. If he didn’t take a slug, Eagle surely would.

  It galled him, but for the moment there was nothing to do but admit defeat. He’d head on into Bootstrap, riding wide around the road, staying better than a thousand yards from any cover, traveling fast. And maybe in the town he
could pick up information that would make sense of this attack. One thing was sure, the sniper couldn’t even have known who he was. Sundance had never been in this part of Nevada before and had not even known he would be until a couple of days before, when he’d chosen one trail over another to get him to Arizona. Apparently the man with the big fifty didn’t care whom he killed as long as he killed somebody.

  He said aloud, “Move out, Eagle,” and touched the stallion with his heels. The big horse snorted, pounding zigzag across the flats. Sundance did not slow it until he reached the grubby outskirts of the town of Bootstrap.

  ~*~

  The lathered horse entered the dusty main street at a walk. It needed to be cooled before it was allowed to stand and now it would be some time before he could water it. He rode it up and down several times, hand near the holstered Colt, eyes sweeping the street warily. After what had happened out there on the trail, he meant to be ready for anything.

  He’d seen a thousand towns like this in the West; judging from its looks, its economy depended both on mining and ranching. They sprang up, bloomed a while and withered; a few, built on more solid foundations, grew, like Denver, and became real cities. Bootstrap never would. Even now, it dawned on him, it was almost eerily deserted. There were no horses at the racks, no loafers on the sidewalk. When Eagle had cooled down enough, Sundance put him up to the rack of a saloon called the Bootstrap Bar, apparently the town’s largest, swung down. Hitching the horse, he entered the long, dim room, cool after the hammering heat of the outdoors.

  There was not a single customer. Not even the bartender was there. There was only a bearded, one-legged man with a drink-blasted face and bushy whiskers. His clothes were filthy; you could smell him yards away. Likely the saloon swamper, he dozed in a chair in the corner.

  “Hey, friend,” Sundance said.

  The one-legged man opened his eyes, which widened as he saw the buckskin clad figure towering over him. “Hah? What—?” He rubbed his face.

  “Where the hell is everybody?” Sundance asked.

  “Everybody? Hah?” The man batted his eyes. “Well, they’re up yonder at the cottonwoods.” His voice was like the raspy screech of a dry wheel hub. “Up yonder at the hangin’.”

  Sundance stiffened. “Hangin’?”

  “Yeah? Where you been, mister? Ain’t you heard? They caught the Big Fifty Sniper this mornin’! They’re swingin’ him right now. Hey ...” He reached for his crutch, leaning against the wall beside him. “You want a drink? I’m supposed to be mindin’ the place. Maybe you’d buy me one, too, hah?” Then he squawked as Sundance grabbed his shirtfront, jerked him up, held him, balanced on one foot.

  “Mister—” he breathed, looking into cold gray eyes.

  “Big Fifty Sniper.” Sundance’s voice was a rasp. “What’s that? You talk, tell me.”

  “I … ” Fear crossed the drink-blasted face. “I, well, hell. He’s killed a dozen, two dozen people here in this valley. White men, Injuns, it don’t make no difference. Crazy man, I reckon. Last two months, it ain’t even safe to step outdoors. He even shot two women. They was hangin’ out their wash and he jest cut ’em down. Makes no never mind who, nobody knows when he’ll hit. Shoots from so far away nobody can shoot back. Then he’s gone. Mister, I ain’t got but one leg. Don’t handle me so rough. I—”

  “Yeah. Sorry.” Sundance eased him down into the chair, brain racing. “So they caught him, eh? When?”

  “Got ’im this mornin’. Done tried and sentenced him. Now they’ll be swingin’ him up yonder at the cottonwoods—”

  Sundance’s hand swooped down, came up. A silver coin glittered in the air, landed in the oldster’s lap. “They got the wrong man!” he snapped, and then he was running for the door. Unlatching reins, he hit Eagle’s saddle without touching stirrup, and the big horse left the rack like a rocket, bound for the grove of cottonwoods visible in the distance at the north end of town. Nearing it, he could hear the sound of voices, ugly, hate-filled, like the gabble of hounds treeing a wild animal.

  His mouth thinned. Whoever they were hanging up there, it was not the sniper; he had proof of that. And though he usually didn’t mix into any kind of trouble he could stay out of unless he got paid, he was not the sort to hang around a saloon drinking when an innocent man was being lynched. Maybe he was already too late, maybe they were hoisting him now. His hand flashed down, came up with the Colt. He fired three shots straight up, in a brief drum roll. That might distract them, buy their victim a little time.

  At least it changed that yap of voices. The gabble died. Then Sundance was in full view of the cottonwoods, saw the crowd beneath their shade, saw, too, the figure mounted on the horse, hands tied behind its back, a rope around its neck. “Hell,” Sundance grated. Even from here he could see that the man they were about to hang was nothing but a kid. As Eagle pounded on, he crammed fresh rounds in the Colt. Reholstering it, he dropped the reins, rode into the cottonwoods with both hands held high.

  ~*~

  It was well he did. There were fifteen guns or more trained on him as, Eagle slowing, he jogged up.

  Sundance hissed a command in Nez Percé. The big stud halted. Sundance looked around. The grove swarmed with people, men, women, children. “The whole town of Bootstrap was indeed out to see the hanging. But, their attention diverted, they stared now at the big man in buckskin who had fired those shots.

  “Don’t shoot!” Sundance snapped. “I mean no harm! Who’s in charge here? You’re hangin’ the wrong man!”

  There was a frozen silence. Then a gray-haired man holding a Winchester, snapped a command to another, a hulking giant, standing by the rump of the horse straddled by the condemned man. “Wolf, you hold off.” He stepped forward, dressed in town clothes, eyes hard, his rifle aimed squarely at Sundance’s chest.

  “I’m MacLaurin,” he said. “Ron MacLaurin, mayor of Bootstrap. Who’re you?”

  “My name’s Sundance. Jim Sundance.”

  MacLaurin’s brows went up. “I’ve heard of you. Not much of it good. You’re half Injun and you’re known for stirrin’ up trouble, with the tribes.”

  “What you’ve heard’s twisted,” Sundance said. “I’m half Indian, yeah. But I’ve also scouted for Crook and Miles and the U.S. Army. Generally I try to damp down Indian trouble after white men start it. Right now, that’s neither here nor there. I hear you’re hangin’ this man for bein’ the Big Fifty Sniper, I think you call it. Well, before you swing him, let me tell you this. Some joker cut down on me from a thousand yards out there south of town not an hour ago—shootin’ from ambush. And he was usin’ a Sharps fifty-caliber. Take a look at my saddle-horn. Damn near blew it off, just missed my gut by a hair. And my stallion—you’ll see a fresh bullet mark below his rump. Maybe there’s two of ’em, I don’t know. But I’m telling you this before you swing that fellow yonder.”

  For a moment the crowd was silent. Eyes turned to the man with the rope around his neck. Boy, rather, Sundance saw, not over sixteen, seventeen, slender, not very tall. Shabby old sombrero, baggy woolen shirt, dust and dirt-smeared jeans and run-over boots. His eyes were wide, blue-gray, full of fear, his features regular and handsome. “Listen,” the kid said in a high, thin voice. “I told you I was innocent. I told you— Mister, don’t let ’em hang me!”

  “Shut up, Mercer,” the huge man named Wolf said, running a braided rawhide quirt across a ham-sized palm. “You got hangin’ comin’ to you, sniper or not. Dammit, MacLaurin, let’s get it over with. Then you and this Siwash can jaw all you want to.”

  Sundance stiffened in the saddle. “Mister,” he said, “you’ve got a bad mouth on you.”

  Wolf swung around. His head was huge, rough-featured, his dark hair shaggy. His shoulders were wide and sloping, and muscles rippled under his hickory shirt. Sundance was reminded of a bull buffalo—a rogue bull, horned out of the herd, hating everything that moved, ready to do violence at the least provocation. He also, Sundance saw, wore two guns on crisscrossed bel
ts, strapped low. “Mouth,” Wolf growled, black eyes glittering, “is what I don’t take from Injuns, gut-eater.”

  “All right!” MacLaurin snapped. “Cinch it up, Wolf. And don’t you hit that horse ’less I give the order.” He stared at Sundance a moment, moved to where he could see the saddle. He whistled softly. “Somebody blew hell outa that all right. Where’d he crease your horse?”

  “Just above the tail. Don’t get too close. He’ll kick hell out of any man comes up on me with a gun.”

  “I see it,” MacLaurin said. “Where did this happen? How you know it was a fifty?”

  “I know a Sharps when I hear it.” Sundance recounted what had happened. MacLaurin listened soberly; so did most of the others gathered ’round. “I don’t know what evidence you got against this kid,” Sundance finished, “but it looks to me like your rope’s on the wrong neck.”

  “Evidence?” Wolf’s voice was a rasp. “We caught him with the goods! He come into Gantt’s General Store this mornin’, bought some stuff. Pulled his money out to pay and what rolls out of his pocket with it but a round for a Big Fifty. By God, what more evidence you want?”

  Sundance stared. “You’re hangin’ him because he had a Sharps cartridge on him?”

  “We figured that was proof enough,” MacLaurin said. “Two months ago, when this madness started, we searched the town and every mine and ranch for twenty miles around. Impounded every Sharps and every cartridge we could find. Took ’em out of all the stores, too. Nobody’s supposed to have no Sharps ammunition on him or in his possession. Yet, this kid, this Billy Mercer, he had that round that fell out and another one in the other pocket.”

  “And I told you,” Mercer almost shrilled, “that I found ’em! Up yonder in the Skull Mountains! Next to a dead campfire! I was gonna show ’em to you, but this big bastard grabbed me first!” He jerked his head toward Wolf. “Then you hardly gave me a chance to talk!”

  Sundance fixed MacLaurin with his eyes. “Two cartridges ain’t a lot of proof. Besides, he don’t look big enough to handle a Sharps. They’ll weigh from fourteen to sixteen pounds and kick like an Army mule. A lot of gun for a younker like that to use.”