Sundance 7

by John Benteen

  The rider on a spotted horse wore a dirty sombrero, a greasy buckskin shirt, and corduroy pants tucked into boots, as well as a Colt around the waist. But the high-pitched twanging voice as she called out, “Jim? Jim Sundance, whur are you?” was a woman’s.

  Sundance materialized from behind the log, and both riders were startled when he appeared at the clearing’s edge. “Hello, Calamity,” he said.

  Calamity Jane Canary, in man’s clothes, was in her late forties or early fifties and ugly as homemade sin. But the other woman with her was not. She was young and lovely, with hair the color of hammered gold beneath an absurd little hat, her eyes were huge and green, vivid in her pale ivory face, and, unlike Jane Canary, she rode sidesaddle, a black velvet dress modeling a figure tall and fully curved.

  Now she raked those magnificent eyes over Sundance, from the yellow hair down to the moccasins, and something flickered in them. When she spoke, it was with a musical English accent.

  “How do you do, Mr. Sundance,” she said. “I am Lady Doris Bucknell. My late husband was the man you came to Deadwood to meet. They’ve murdered him, but I intend to carry on in his stead. I want to talk to you about the Nez Percé horses.”

  ~*~

  It had never occurred to Jim Sundance that any man in his right mind would bring his wife to Deadwood, but, of course, Sir John Bucknell had had no idea of what he was getting into. Only faintly surprised, Sundance touched his hat brim. “Lady Bucknell. I’m sorry about your husband.” He gave her a hand and, lithely, she came off the big horse, landing close enough to Sundance so that he caught the odor of her perfume.

  Calamity Jane swung down. “You see, Miz Bucknell? I told you, Jim Sundance’s a real gentleman, jest like my late dear friend Wild Bill. A wild one in a fight, but he knows how to treat a lady.” She gave a raucous laugh. “Jim, that shore was a sweet beatin’ you handed that big coyote Drury back in Carl Mann’s. It was a full half hour before he come out of it, and likely the doctor’s still workin’ on that nose and eye of his. Only—” her laugh died. “You coulda killed him, that’s what you oughta done. He’s bad medicine, Jim, I can spot his kind a long way off. You ain’t through with him yet. You shoulda blowed a hole in him right off, like Wild Bill would have done.”

  “I agree with Jane,” Doris Bucknell said with unexpected sharpness. “You should have shot him, Mr. Sundance.”

  Sundance looked at the two women. “What do you know about Drury, both of you?”

  “All I know,” Jane said, “is that him and his men been stompin’ around Deadwood for the past two weeks like they owned the town.”

  “His men?”

  “He’s been puttin’ together a crew, hirin’ some pretty tough characters, Jim. They was all out of town today on some kind of errand for him, or you’d had a lot more music to dance to than you did. ’Course, if they’d ganged up on you, I’da took a hand myself.” She touched her gun butt. “Anyhow, he rubs me the wrong way. I was shore glad to see you hand him one. And when Lady Bucknell come to me later and asked if I could find out whur you’d gone and bring her to you, I said shore. I knowed you’d head for water and that we’d find you up one creek or another.” She gave that crowing laugh. “I’m glad I ain’t Drury, or I got a hunch I’d have one of them Cheyenne arrows clear through my gut.”

  “You might have had,” Sundance said. He turned to Doris Bucknell, gesturing toward his grounded saddle. “Maybe you’d like to sit down, Lady Bucknell, and tell me what you know about Drury, and then we’ll get down to business.”

  “Of course.” He liked the way that she seemed as at ease in this forest clearing as in a drawing room. He supposed she was not much older than twenty-five, and she had been through a lot in a strange place, and yet she still had obvious reserves of strength. She was, Sundance thought, a real thoroughbred herself.

  For a moment her face was touched by grief as she looked into the fire’s coals. “My husband was one of the most famous horsemen of the British Empire. Horses were his passion. He served in the Bengal Lancers on the Northern Frontier of India and—racing, polo, hunting, he loved them all. For that matter, so do I.

  “Anyhow,” she continued, “our newspapers were full of the story of your magnificent Nez Percé Indians last year, and their great retreat. There was much about the horses, too, and one day at breakfast John simply decided that he absolutely had to have a stud of Appaloosas. So, quite simply, he decided we were coming to America to buy them. That was the way he was.”

  They had, she said, come directly to the miserable Quapaw Reserve in Kansas, where the Nez Percé were jammed in with the Modocs, also sent down from the Northwest after an earlier war. “We were disappointed at first. They were so shabby and so dirty and their horses were only nags …”

  “Well, everything they had was taken.” Iron rang in Sundance’s voice. “You should have seen them before, up in the mountains, when they were free …”

  “Yes, I would like to have seen that. At any rate, we almost turned around and went home; there seemed nothing for us. Then we heard rumors— about the Nez Percé horses saved during the last battle with the Army ... and about the man who saved them.” Her eyes met Sundance’s.

  “It took a long time to win the confidence of Chief Joseph,” she went on, “but John finally did it. He promised Joseph to pay whatever you should ask, and promised that the horses would be taken out of the country so that the Army could not get them and use them against the Nez Percé or other Indians. He met all of Joseph’s conditions, and then Joseph wrote you to meet us here in Deadwood. It was all supposed to be very secret, but apparently it wasn’t.”

  “You can bet it wasn’t,” Sundance said. “The Army had spies planted in Joseph’s band. Nez Percé, especially starving ones, can be bought like anybody else. So they made a deal with Drury …”

  “To kill my husband,” she said bitterly.

  “Not necessarily. Just to get the horses. Likely they left it up to him to do it in his own way.”

  “All I know,” Doris Bucknell said, “is that Drury was almost the first person we met in Deadwood. We had no idea anyone even knew we were there, but he came to our hotel room immediately and he made no bones about it. He said that he knew our mission, that we were wasting our time, and that when you came, you would deal with no one but him. And that if we persisted, we would find ourselves in deep trouble. He warned John to leave Deadwood right away or take the consequences.”

  Her voice was hard. “My husband was a brave man and not one to mince words. He told Drury, quite simply, to go to hell. After that, he always carried a gun wherever he went. But what good is a gun against someone who shoots you in the back? Now—” she raised her head “—he’s dead, buried in this dreadful place ten thousand miles from home! But I’ll avenge him, Mr. Sundance! I have the money to buy the Nez Percé horses, and I shall certainly have them!”

  Sundance drew in a long breath. “Does Drury know how you feel?”

  “He surely does. He came to me at the funeral, crying crocodile tears, actually trying to find out what I intended to do. I told him I intended to carry out John’s mission. Then his whole attitude changed. Now it was me he threatened. He told me I had better not stick around, as he put it. He said Deadwood could be rough on women as well as men.” She smiled savagely. “I told him what John had told him—that is, to go to hell. And then I walked away. That was last week, Mr. Sundance. Now, do you understand why I wish you had killed him?”

  Jim Sundance nodded slowly. “It’s beginning to look like I may have to, sooner or later, anyhow.”

  “That’s th’ boy, Jim!” Calamity slapped her thigh.

  Lady Bucknell looked at her. “Jane, perhaps you would excuse us …”

  “Shore. I know ye wanta talk business. Well, I got a piece of a bottle in my saddle bags. I’ll jest go up the creek and have a leetle dram.” She strode away. Lady Bucknell looked after her with a faint smile. “She’s been very kind to me,” she said. Then, seriously, she t
urned to Sundance.

  “Very well, Mr. Sundance. What are you asking for the horses?”

  “Forty thousand dollars for the six studs, the twenty-five mares, and whatever new foals they’ve dropped in the past year, delivered to the railhead.”

  Doris Bucknell’s brows went up. “Forty thousand dollars? Eight thousand pounds? Isn’t that rather dear for a band of Indian ponies?”

  Sundance pointed to Eagle. “That’s one of your Indian ponies, Lady Bucknell. Look him over if you’d like to. There are better stallions than him in the bunch. You know perfectly well you can sell the stallions alone for that much in England, or certainly earn back the money in stud fees. And that doesn’t count the value of the mares and foals.” She arose and walked to where Eagle grazed. Sundance spoke to the big horse, and he let her come to him, run hands over his head and muzzle, down his neck, along the line of loin and rump. She felt the strong legs, and Sundance knew that her boast was not an empty one: she was a horsewoman. When she straightened up, her face was glowing, her eyes shining.

  “Better than he? Incredible!”

  “But true.”

  “Then your terms are met,” she said. “Twenty thousand now and twenty thousand when they’re loaded on the railroad cars. Right?”

  “Right.” Sundance felt a vast relief; he had not failed Joseph after all.

  “I’ll give you a certified draft on a New York bank this afternoon. Then—when can we start after the horses?”

  Sundance stared at her. Standing there in her blue velvet riding habit, with Eagle in the background, she might have been a Currier and Ives print; she was very beautiful, and something within him responded to that. But he shook his head. “We?”

  “Of course. I intend to go with you when you get them. You don’t think I’ll stay in a place like Deadwood waiting for you?”

  “No need for you to. You go on to Omaha or St. Louis and I’ll bring the horses there.”

  “Oh, no, Mr. Sundance.” Her voice was determined. “I’ll pay you the first twenty thousand this afternoon, and with that much invested, I intend to make sure there are no slip-ups. It’s not that I don’t trust you, but those horses are more to me than just horses now. They are the symbol of my revenge against John’s killer. They are a memorial to my husband, and I want to see them as soon as possible and be with them all the way.”

  Sundance kept his voice even. “I understand how you feel. The fact remains that those horses are in a place that nobody can reach without a long, hard ride. I’ve got ’em hidden in mountains that make these Black Hills look like warts, and the way in is a trip that not many men could make, much less a woman. Besides, there’s still Drury and the Army. They’ll do everything they can to get their hands on the Nez Percé stud, and I’ll probably have to fight before I get ’em to the railhead.” He smiled, to take the sting out of his refusal. “You wait in Omaha, and I’ll be in there with ’em in a couple of months.”

  “I shall not!” Doris Bucknell’s eyes flared. “I may not be a Westerner, Mr. Sundance, but I was brought up on horseback and in the hunting field. I can ride anything with four legs anywhere you or anyone else can go! And I can shoot, too: my father served in India also, and he taught me how to use a rifle and pistol while we were there. I won’t hamper you, I promise, but I must go with you!”

  “No. It’s out of the question.”

  “Then our deal is off.”

  Sundance looked at her a moment. “Suit yourself,” he said coldly and turned away.

  “Mr. Sundance!”

  He took his time about facing her again.

  Her mouth worked, and her eyes were angry. “Very well. I suppose I have no choice but to yield. I’ll wait for you in Omaha, then, and you’ll bring the animals to me there.”

  “That’s better,” Sundance said, taking no pleasure in his triumph. It was a matter of necessity. He thought of the narrow, dizzying trail across cliffs almost sheer, of the dangerous river crossings. When he had hidden those horses, he had chosen the most inaccessible spot he knew; and it would be a grueling, dangerous journey even for himself.

  “I suppose it is. All the same, I wish—” She shrugged. “Well, shall we go into Deadwood and transfer the money?”

  “Right.” Sundance raked aside the coals, brought out the ball of mud. “First, try some fool hen a la Cheyenne Indian. Then we’ll head for town.”

  ~*~

  This time Sundance did not ride boldly up the main street of Deadwood. Instead, he sent Calamity Jane on ahead to scout the town while he and Doris Bucknell took a circuitous path through the forest on the walls of the mountain above the town. When, from a hiding place in the brush, they could look down on the gulch and its scattered buildings, they waited. Presently Jane appeared, coming up almost as silently as Sundance himself could have, for she’d been on the frontier a long time, and when she could bring her raddled senses to bear, she knew the tricks of the scout’s trade. “Drury’s up and around. He’s bandaged all over that ugly mug of his, but I reckon there’s plenty of fight left in him. Didn’t see nothin’ of his men, though. Guess they’re still out of town.”

  “Maybe,” Sundance said. Holding Eagle tight-reined, he thought for a moment. “I’m not the one in danger so much,” he said. “Not right now. Drury knows that if he kills me, nobody will ever see those horses again. But you—” He looked at Doris Bucknell. “You’re the one he’d like to see out of the way. His only competition. Once he sees us ride into town together, he’ll know exactly what’s going on. And …”

  “You think he’d really kill me?”

  “I don’t think he’d even blink an eye. Over the years, the stud fees from those stallions and the remounts he can sell to the Army could mean more than a hundred thousand dollars to him. People have been killed out here, women included, for a lot less. Maybe we should ride on. We can go on up to Custer or to Rapid City, it doesn’t have to be Deadwood. It would be a lot safer for you.”

  “No,” Doris Bucknell said. “I don’t want to waste even an hour, much less days, in getting this thing under way. I insist we ride down now, go to the bank, handle the whole thing and have it over with. Then I’ll catch the stage east tomorrow and you’ll be free to go get the horses without more delay.”

  “I don’t like to take the chance,” Sundance said. “You don’t know how a man like Drury works. He could rig a gunfight on the street, for instance, and you’d stop a stray bullet ... Or maybe break into your hotel room at night—”

  “All the same …” Doris began, and then she smiled. “Wait a minute, Mr. Sundance. Jane—” She leaned close to Calamity and whispered. Jane Canary’s rugged face looked startled, then broke into a grin.

  “Sho!” she crowed, and without another word to Sundance, she and Doris Bucknell turned their horses and rode into deeper brush.

  “Hold on—” Sundance began, but it was useless. They were already gone. He heard them halt their mounts, and he tipped back his hat, hooked one leg over the saddle horn, and rolled a cigarette. If, he thought, he could get the twenty thousand this afternoon, he could send it immediately to his man in Washington. He and Barbara would see to it that it got to Joseph at once, safely, and was put to proper use.

  Barbara ... Sundance felt something stir within him. Barbara Colfax, Two Roads Woman, her Cheyenne name was. Years before, she had been captured by the Cheyennes, adopted into the tribe. Sundance had taken her from the Indians, but of her own free will she had returned, for she had fallen in love with the wild, free life of the horsemen of the high plains. She had fallen in love with Jim Sundance, too, and had become his woman.

  But now the Cheyennes were broken and on reservations and Two Roads Woman was in Washington, working for the cause of the Indians there, and it had been a long time, many months, since they had seen one another, since he had held her in his arms. It would be months more before he saw her again. But that could not be helped. He had too much work to do out here, and she had too much there. Each was equally i
mportant in its own way; like this matter of the Nez Percé horses, there were still rearguard battles to be fought, desperate efforts to salvage anything possible from the wreckage of what had once been an Indian empire.

  Still, he wished— Then he heard the horses coming from the brush, and he turned. For a moment, disbelievingly, he stared. Then, suddenly, as the figure in the battered sombrero and dirty buckskin shirt tipped back the hat and smiled, he understood.

  “How do you like me as a frontierswoman, Jim Sundance?” Doris Bucknell asked. She hitched at the revolver around her waist and gave a pale imitation of Calamity Jane spitting, and Jane Canary, dressed now in Doris’ riding habit, laughed. “Fer that matter, ain’t I purty gorgeous, myself?” Then she sobered. “Sundance, if Lady Bucknell keeps that hat pulled down and rides my hawss, ain’t no reason why she can’t ride in with you and be fair to middlin’ safe, at least until she comes outa the bank. Then you git her to her hotel quick and pen her in so Drury’s folks can’t git to her and stay there and watch her. I’ll meet you later on and we’ll swap clothes again.”

  Sundance ran his eyes over Doris Bucknell again. She was mounted on Jane’s animal, riding now astride in the long-stirruped way of the frontier American. Jane’s clothes were baggy enough to hide the lines of her figure, and as she pulled the hat down again, Sundance nodded.

  “Okay, we’ll give it a try. Jane, when you come in, don’t try to pretend you’re Lady Bucknell, or you might catch a slug yourself. Ride in with your head up so they can see who you are. Doris—” the first name came out involuntarily “—you slouch down and don’t look around. And if I say ride, you hit that horse with spurs and take off with all he’s got. Because that’ll mean there’ll be trouble with guns. Don’t worry, I’ll cover you.”

  Doris Bucknell touched the butt of the Colt. “I told you, I can handle this—”

  “Honey,” Jane Canary said firmly, “you do exactly what Jim Sundance says. He’s been in the trouble business a real long time.”