by John Benteen
The man had time for a guttural squawk, and then, like a great cat, as he hit the ground with jarring force, Sundance was on him and Sundance’s fist rose and fell. After that, Rockford made no other sound ... Knowing that every second counted, Sundance ran to catch the riderless horse.
~*~
The man was spread-eagled, wrists and ankles lashed to four stout pegs driven deep into hard earth. It was not a comfortable posture, but it was better, Sundance thought, than being shot to pieces bit by bit, but Rockford did not appreciate the contrast. He stared up at the half-breed towering over him, and his lips curled back in a snarl that made him look more than ever like a bulldog.
“Go ahead, yell if you want to,” Sundance said. “Yell your damn lungs out. We’re a long way north of Cavanaugh’s range. And nobody’s gonna hear you, unless maybe an elk or two, or a bear.”
Rockford did not yell. He only asked harshly, “How the hell did I git here? Who’re you?”
“My name’s Jim Sundance.”
Rockford’s face changed. The snarl left it and suddenly it became very grave. “Sundance,” he breathed. Then he was silent, staring despairingly at the blue sky overhead.
After a while, he asked, “You gonna torture me?”
“I’d thought about shooting you to pieces,” Sundance said coldly. “Like you did an Indian two days ago.”
“Oh, God … ”
“But I’ve changed my mind. No, I’m not gonna torture you. Unless you lie to me about the S & S Concern. I want to know what that is.”
“I don’t know. So help me, I’ve heard of it, but I don’t know.”
“Of course,” Sundance said, “I could skin you alive. One leg today, another tomorrow maybe. I’ve seen it done.”
Rockford sucked in a sob of a breath. “Sundance, I swear to you. There ain’t but one man knows what that is, and that’s Cavanaugh.”
“Well,” Sundance said, “I guess I’ll have to ask him, then.” He stood there thoughtfully for a moment, looking around this hidden valley in the Medicine Bow mountains. After roping Rockford, Sundance had packed his unconscious body on his horse, bound and gagged him, hidden him in the woods. That night, he rode off of Cavanaugh’s range, fast, taking Rockford with him, knocking him out again each time he started to wake up. Another night’s hard traveling had taken them out of cattle country, and a half day had brought them to this lonesome place. “I’ll need your help, Rockford,” he added.
“Oh, God, I’ll tell you anything I know, do anything you ask—”
“Fine,” Sundance said. “That’s just fine.” He went to where his saddlebags lay beneath a tree and when he came back, there was a big bottle in his hands.
Rockford stared at it. “What you gonna do with that?” he whispered.
Sundance’s grin was more like a snarl. “You’d be surprised,” he said. Then, opening it, he knelt by Rockford’s head. The sun, at zenith, was as bright as polished brass in the sky above …
~*~
She had been right, it worked like magic. Two applications were enough, and in forty-eight hours, Rockford was transformed. His long shag of black hair was now as yellow as that of the woman in Cheyenne—or Sundance’s own without the blacking. And the rest, Sundance thought, would be no problem. He had already made the dye himself from certain berries and root barks.
And so, he thought, this part of it was about to come to an end. Rockford had sung like a bird, and Sundance knew every detail now of the inside of Cavanaugh’s fort and its routine. There was only one thing more he needed now from Rockford—and he could not take that while the man was alive and pegged out in such a way.
He felt again that surge of curiosity, that instinctive gunman’s challenge that had touched him at first sight of Rockford as he cut loose the man’s hands. Then, loosely, he hobbled Rockford’s feet and allowed the man to stand. He knew it would take a long time for proper circulation to return, and he wanted no undue advantage.
“You just hang loose,” he said. “You try to run, I’ll give you what you gave that Indian, only slower.”
Rockford stared at him as Sundance loaded Rockford’s two Smith & Wessons and checked them out, then slipped them into Rockford’s holsters.
“I don’t git this,” Rockford said. “That stuff you put in my hair; now ... what you doin’ with my guns?”
“Why,” Sundance said, “when you’re fit to fight again, give ’em to you. So you’ll have an even break.”
“What?” Rockford’s eyes flared. He stared at Sundance incredulously. “You wouldn’t be that much fool.”
“Any time you’re ready,” Sundance answered. “Just say the word. I’ve got to kill you, Rockford. I could do it in cold blood, but I’d rather give you a chance, I got enough things restin’ hard on my mind. Besides, I want to try you out.”
“You want to try me out?” Rockford was rubbing his hands together vigorously now to hasten circulation. “Why, ever since I first heard of you, I been itchin’ to git a crack at you. I’ll take your carcass in, scalp and all, and collect the old man’s reward.”
“You do that,” Sundance said, “if you’re man enough.”
He waited a long while. Rockford rubbed and stamped, and knowing he would not run now, Sundance cut his hobbles. After a couple of hours, during which Rockford had undergone considerable pain from returning circulation, the man looked at Sundance with eyes that gleamed. “Let me have my guns,” he said.
“Sure.” Sundance drew his own, and, covering Rockford with it, passed over the Smith & Wessons and their belts. “It’s gonna be even, Rockford, you and me, straight-up. Don’t try anything funny or I’ll kill you where you stand. Just put on those guns.”
Rockford did not answer. He belted the guns in place, tugged the holsters into adjustment, thonged them around his legs. He let out a sigh of satisfaction and stood spraddle-legged. “All right, Sundance.”
Sundance kept him covered for a moment more with the Colt. This hidden valley was very silent, only the wind in some aspen leaves, the bright sun overhead, the blue peaks encircling them. “I’m gonna put my gun up now.”
“I’ll wait,” Rockford said, crouching slightly.
Sundance returned the Colt to holster, stood there with hands at his sides. He felt no fear, only that unholy gunfighter’s eagerness. He kept seeing the crippled Indian crawling over the bloody grass as Rockford had fired at him and fired again. And he watched, now, Rockford’s eyes, and when they changed, as he had known they would, he drew.
Rockford’s right hand gun had cleared leather, was coming into line, hammer back, when Sundance’s bullet hit him in the belly. Rockford toppled backwards, firing into space. His eyes were wide, face unbelieving. Shock left him with no pain, but the knowledge that his life was ended struck him. “You—By God, you beat me!”
Sundance fired again.
Rockford landed on his back, arms and legs flung wide, sightless eyes staring at the sky, yellow hair vivid against the grass. Sundance looked down at him a moment, sucked in a long breath, and reached for his knife …
~*~
What a long, bloody way it had been from Rio, he thought, three days later, as Cavanaugh’s fort loomed on the knoll before him as he rode up the valley; and what a trail of corpses he had left behind him. And now, the final gamble, the last risk, and, curiously, he felt neither fear nor anticipation, only a great weariness, a disgust with endless double-dealing, greed, and slaughter, that struck through to his bones. To shake it off, he kindled again the hatred, and it grew once more into a hot, bright flame as he thought of Cavanaugh and all his wealth and power and his senseless lust for more. He straightened in the saddle.
Of course, he knew as he neared the fort, he was under observation from the watchtowers, and with Rockford missing, everyone would be alert. What the guards saw was a shabby Indian in drab white man’s clothing, well armed, riding a pretty good horse, and with a small canvas bag slung to the horn. It was growing late, but the fort’s gates were
still open, and as he approached, Sundance raised his right hand in a gesture of peace.
Somebody in a tower yelled, a rifle barrel thrust out. Sundance drew rein, waited. Then three riders galloped from the fort, Texans cut from Rockford’s pattern, if not quite of his caliber. The Indian waited impassively as they surrounded him. One, with a fringe of chestnut beard and sharp black eyes lined a rifle barrel on Sundance’s chest. “All right. Stop there. No Injuns inside the fort.”
“Got business with Mr. Cavanaugh,” Sundance said.
“The hell you have. What business a blanket-head like you got with a man like him?”
“I got to find a letter,” Sundance said. “I ain’t reachin’.” Carefully he felt in his coat, left-handed, brought out a thick envelope with a fine copperplate script address. The bearded man took it, read aloud: “Mr. Lance Cavanaugh near Cheyenne, Absolutely personal.”
“Who give you this?” he asked suspiciously.
“Man named Jeffers, Abilene.”
The bearded man said, “Hold him, boys, and take his guns. I’ll carry this to Mr. Cavanaugh.” He whirled his horse and pounded off. The other two kneed their mounts alongside, and Sundance made no protest as they disarmed him, taking his knife as well. One eyed the canvas bag. “What’s in there?” He reached out, crushed it, nodded. “Something soft. No hardware. Okay.”
They waited for five minutes, with Sundance under their guns and then the bearded man came back, looking puzzled. “Mr. Cavanaugh says to bring him in right away. Under guard. Okay, Injun, move out.”
They walked their horses through the gates, and Sundance’s eyes shuttled from side to side. This stronghold was everything men had said it was, tight as a prison, swarming with hard-bitten cowboys. Getting in, he thought, had been simple; getting out would be something else again. They, the Indians from Oglalla, had damned well better have seen the signal fires he had lit three nights before and which had blazed briefly on a ridge above the Platte. They were supposed to be watching for them, and they were supposed to know what to do now and carry out their orders with precision. His lips curled. It was asking a lot of a bunch of drunks, pimps, and human wrecks. But once they had been warriors. Maybe that would count for something.
Behind him, the gates swung shut; now it was nearly sundown. His guards led Sundance toward the main house, a fortress in itself of cottonwood logs, reined in, dismounted. Sundance followed suit, taking the canvas bag from the saddle horn. The bearded man looked at it narrowly. “What’s that?”
“Private for Mr. Cavanaugh,” Sundance said.
“It’s all right, Chess, there’s no hardware in it,” the guard who’d squeezed it said.
“Okay.” Chess prodded Sundance with his rifle. “Come on, Farley, you help watch him.” They entered the living room of the house, long and low and wholly masculine, with guns on the wall, horse gear in the corners. They prodded Sundance across the room toward another door, one of massive oak timbers, not cottonwood, and strapped with heavy iron. It was closed, and Chess pounded on it. A voice within said, “All right,” and Sundance heard the sliding of a heavy bar. Then the door swung open on heavy hinges, and Lance Cavanaugh was there.
Up close, face to face, the big Texan was even more impressive than from a distance. Tall as Sundance was, Cavanaugh topped him by two inches, and his rawboned, erect, slope-shouldered frame was as powerful and muscular as a longhorn bull’s. Eyes like two chips of granite raked over Sundance, the mouth beneath the long mustaches was like the joining of a steel trap’s jaws. He wore range clothes, a long-barreled Colt on his right hip, holster thonged. Sundance felt the power, force, emanating from the man and for a moment almost knew fear. He was in the presence of terrific strength and utter ruthlessness.
“He’s got blue eyes,” Cavanaugh said harshly.
“Me Mandan-Santee,” Sundance said.
“Maybe. Take off that hat.”
Sundance did; Cavanaugh ran his gaze over hair black as a crow’s quills. For a moment, he said nothing. Then: “Is he slick?”
“Plumb,” Chess said. “They frisked him good.”
Cavanaugh looked at the canvas bag and something stirred in his eyes. “Then bring him in.” He stepped aside.
Sundance was prodded into a small room with a single high, barred window, a huge iron safe in one corner, a desk, a couple of chairs, a cabinet for files and accounts. It was a stronghold within a stronghold, exactly the way Rockford had described it. Cavanaugh, he’d said, distrusted banks, kept a fortune on hand in cash in this room built like a vault. “Now,” Cavanaugh said, drawing his Colt, “Chess, you and Farley get out. Wait in the front room. I’ll call you if I need you.”
“Boss, you sure—?”
Cavanaugh’s voice crackled. “I think I can handle one unarmed Injun! Out! This is private!’’
“Yes, sir.” They exited and Cavanaugh closed the door and shoved the massive bar through its keepers. Sundance’s eyes flicked to the window: dusk out there now. His gut was taut, knotted; if Horse Running and Tall Tree let him down …
Cavanaugh gestured to a chair before his desk. “All right, Injun, you can sit. But one fancy move and you’re cold meat, you sabe?”
“Sabe.” Sundance threw the canvas bag on the desk and sat. Cavanaugh went around behind the desk, stood looking down at Sundance. Right hand holding the gun, he fingered the envelope and its sheet of paper with his left. “So Jeffers gave you this letter in Abilene, huh?” He drew in a long breath. “And you claim to be the man who took Jim Sundance, huh?”
“I took him,” Sundance said. “Miss Danton down in Del Rio, she sent eight men again’ him. He killum all. Finally, she git smart and come to me, Mandan Charlie. See now it take an Injun to catch an Injun. He leave Del Rio, I trail ‘im.”
“And bushwhacked him, eh? You couldn’ta taken a man like him straight up.”
Sundance grinned. “Sundance no damned fool, ’cept when it come to Injuns. He find an Injun north of Del Rio on the desert, no horse, no water, look like he near dead, he got to stop and help. He turn me over with canteen in his gun hand—and my own gun underneath and it take jest one bullet.’’ He pointed to the bag. “You no believe, you take a look. Ain’t two scalps like that nowhere around.”
“We’ll git to that in a minute. First, these letters. This one from the Danton woman says she paid you five hundred dollars, told you Jeffers would give you another five hundred when you delivered the scalp to him. This one from Jeffers to me says he paid you five hundred and I’m to give you another five when I’m satisfied.”
“That right,” Sundance said.
“There’s a couple of little hitches.” Cavanaugh raised the gun, leveled it at Sundance. “First of all, I told Jeffers to send that scalp to me by sealed express box, not have it delivered by some Injun saddle tramp. Second, Jeffers is dead. He got run over by a train in Abilene.” His mouth twisted under his mustaches. “And the whole thing stinks.”
Sundance said, “I know Jeffers dead, he killed the day after he wrote that letter. The other, I don’t know about express. He say I bring this to you, you give me more money, I want everything I got comin’. That’s Sundance’s scalp in there, I took it, you look-see, you not believe me.”
“I’ll damned well look-see,” Cavanaugh said, and with his left hand he opened the bag, upended it, shook its contents on the desk. Sundance tensed. Now, he thought, if there’s to be a chance at all—
The thing whispered as it landed on the desk. It was not just a scalp, it was the skin of a head, from forehead to nape. In a last ray of dying light, the yellow hair, long and silky, shone like freshly minted gold. And the dried skin beneath it was the color of a copper penny.
And so there it was, spread before Lance Cavanaugh, the key to the whole northern ranges, the thing he had waited and lusted for so long, and he stared at it, and his eyes flared, and his whisper was hoarse. “By the old Harry,” he breathed. “This is it! By God, this is it!” And for a moment he could not resist.
The gun’s muzzle slid off line as Cavanaugh ran his left hand through the yellow hair—Rockford’s hair, peroxide-dyed—as if it were a stack of double eagles, and then Sundance leaped.
He came out of the chair like a coiled spring exploding, and his left hand seized Cavanaugh’s right wrist and jerked, and his right hit Cavanaugh between the eyes. The Colt went off, a single bullet going wild, the noise tremendous in the close confines of the room. Cavanaugh, jarred by that tremendous blow, sagged. Sundance went across the desk, but Cavanaugh was already recovering, struggling. “Damn—” he whispered and they were on the same side of the desk then and wrestling for the gun, two big men, each as strong and hard as tempered steel.
“God damn you!” Cavanaugh husked and he got his clawed left hand in Sundance’s face, groping for the eyes as Sundance clamped down harder on his gun-wrist. Sundance felt skin rake away as he twisted his face and hit Cavanaugh hard in the belly. It was like striking a stone wall, but the force knocked Cavanaugh back against the big iron safe, and Sundance shoved up tight to pin him there. He exerted every ounce of strength he owned, focusing it all in his left hand, felt bones slide and grate, and then the gun dropped from Cavanaugh’s hand. Sundance kicked it, and it slid into the far corner.
Boots pounded outside, someone hammered on the door. “Boss, hey, boss!” Somebody threw himself against the door, but the strong oak and steel held, and at the same instant Cavanaugh braced himself, shoved with terrific force. Sundance was hurled back, fell across the desk. Cavanaugh leaped at him. Sundance raised his boots, kicked Cavanaugh in the belly. Cavanaugh grunted, bounced away. As Sundance came off the desk, Cavanaugh turned toward the gun in the corner.
Sundance was after him like a cat, got Cavanaugh’s neckerchief, jerked the man around, hit Cavanaugh in the face with a jarring left. Cavanaugh forgot the gun. His mouth twisted beneath mustaches tinged with blood. “All right, damn you,” he hissed. “I’ll kill you with my bare hands!” The pounding went on, both ignored it. Because now, like two maddened range bulls, they were fighting at close quarters, giving, taking punishment. The room was loud with the sodden sound of fists on flesh and bone, of grunting, heavy breathing. The desk went over, the golden scalp spilling among papers as Cavanaugh bore Sundance against it: Sundance dropped, Cavanaugh’s fist whistled past his cheek. Sundance came up from under, and his head caught Cavanaugh’s jaw from beneath; the rancher’s teeth clicked and blood poured from a bitten tongue. Sundance hit Cavanaugh twice, one two, in the belly. Cavanaugh chopped him on the back of the neck and almost broke his spine. Sundance slid free, fell on one knee. Outside, somebody yelled, “The window! Damn it, to the window!”
