Sundance 2

by John Benteen

  “It isn’t,” Sundance said. “Listen, Baron—besides General Crook, myself, your wife, who else knows why you’re here?” “Absolutely no one.” Von Markau frowned. “Do you think I am a fool?”

  “No. The point is, I can deal with the Apaches—maybe. But Tucson’s full of white men who’d cut your throat for a two-bit piece, much less a fortune in jewels. Hardcases, gunmen, outlaws. Nobody deals with them. Let one whisper of this get out, they’ll be swarming into the Dragoons like heelflies after a calf. Apaches or no Apaches. And we’ll be lucky to get out with our hides, much less the jewels.”

  “I can assure you, Mr. Sundance, that no whisper of this will get out.” He turned to his wife. “Herta, I trust you understand the importance of what Sundance says. Our very lives depend on secrecy.” She took his hand. “Darling, you know—” “Yes, of course. I only wanted to emphasize. Well, Mr. Sundance, hurry your preparations. I should like to leave as soon as possible.”

  Sundance had hurried, all right, but not at the cost of thoroughness. He and his friend Don Estevan Ochoa, a leading merchant of Tucson, had spent all night checking and rechecking the list Sundance made up. Then Estevan had sent the goods to Fort Lowell as if delivering supplies to the post. Crook himself had provided von Markau’s horse and the three pack mules. They would, Sundance explained, ride at night and hole up in daytime. They had made their departure from the fort at midnight.

  Herta von Markau’s lovely face was pale, her eyes enormous as she clung to her husband, who was dressed now in Arizona clothes: slouch hat, leather jacket, woolen pants, high boots, a Smith and Wesson top-break .44 revolver on his hip. Crook and Sundance looked away while the Austrians made their good-byes. “Jim,” Crook asked, “what are your plans?”

  Sundance shrugged. “It would be ridiculous to try to find that stuff and get it out without getting permission from the Apaches first. When we’re in the Dragoons and I’m sure we’re not followed, I’ll make contact with the Chiricahuas. Maybe I can even get an escort from Cochise. Anyhow, everything depends on the Indians.”

  Crook’s hand was hard as it clamped his. “Well, good luck.”

  “We’ll need it.” Sundance had picked up his Winchester. “Baron, if you’re ready, we’d better ride.”

  So far, Sundance thought, the Austrian, allowing for his inexperience in the desert, had been a good traveler. His experience in the Alps made him an excellent mountaineer; and he had courage, plus the knack of observing everything around him. Leave him out here long enough, Sundance thought, and he’d make a damned good scout.

  He himself was under no illusions about what they were up against. He knew the Apaches, yes. Once he had been respected and loved by them, but that had been in a different world, when they were the undisputed rulers of Arizona, not yet pushed into a corner by a flood of white men. They might feel differently now. Men like Gannon and Jessup hated him for his red skin, but after what the Chiricahuas had been through, they might hate him with equal fervor for his yellow hair.

  It was a strange arrangement, he thought. Crook had filled him in on it. Crook’s assignment was to subdue the other Apaches of Arizona. But he had no authority over the Chiricahuas. They were being dickered with by a special emissary from Washington. It was said that he intended to let them have the Dragoons and the Huachucas for their range and guarantee them safety from the Army. The bargain implicit in that was that they could use those mountains for their bases, so long as they confined their raids to Mexico, left Arizona alone. Sundance did not think it would work. Crook could never tame the other bands—the Tontos, Mescaleros, Gilas, Yavapais, White Mountains—so long as the Chiricahuas ran wild and free. It would have been better if they had let Crook deal with Cochise, too: fairly and honestly, as he always dealt with Indians. Then, perhaps, he could bring them all in together.

  Well, that was not the problem now. The problem was that this was the undisputed stronghold of the Chiricahua, and if they got in trouble, no help could be expected from the Army. Still, Sundance thought he could bring it off. Cochise had been his father’s friend; he could deal with the Apaches—if only nothing happened, if only no other white men came into the Dragoons and mucked everything up.

  Before him the Dragoons shimmered in the heat. Nothing moved out there to excite his suspicion; apparently they’d brought it off all right, the backtrail was clear. And now it was time for him to eat and get some sleep, time for von Markau to stand watch.

  Sundance wriggled off the ledge, slid soundlessly back down into the canyon. There, where a pathetic seep of water trickled from a rock, the horses were picketed and von Markau sat on his blankets, eating, with a look of distaste on his face, cold biscuits and jerky, washing it down with a sip of water from his canteen, a gulp of cognac from a bottle he’d brought with him.

  Sundance looked at the bottle. “Not too much of that,” he said harshly. “You’ve got no idea what this heat will do to you with that in you.”

  “I miss my coffee,” von Markau said. “We Viennese are great coffee drinkers. If we could only build a fire—”

  “No fire,” Sundance said. “Until this is over, we live off jerky and biscuits and airtights.”

  “Then I must have my occasional sip of cognac. Is everything quiet above?”

  “So far,” Sundance said. He ate biscuits, jerky, took a moderate swallow of water from a canteen. “You’d better get on up there, though, and keep your eyes peeled. Remember, no shots. You see anything, you roll down a rock. And leave that bottle here.”

  “Jawohl,” von Markau said.

  “Keep a special watch on our backtrail. The Indians we can’t do much about; if they’re around, they’ll be on us before we see them. But if there are any whites in these mountains, I want to spot ’em first.”

  Von Markau nodded, then hesitated, a strange expression on his face. “Sundance,” he said, “I do not believe you trust my wife.”

  Sundance looked up at him. “I didn’t say that.”

  “But you imply it. Only the General, whom I know you trust, and Herta could possibly tell our secret. If you do not think the General will, then it must be in your mind that Herta might betray us.”

  Sundance searched for words that would convey what he thought without enraging von Markau. He could not say, von Markau, let’s face it. You’re twice as old as the Baroness and I know a woman with dynamite in her pants when I see her. For all I know, your wife may be sleeping with someone else right now. And women talk to the men they sleep with.

  “Among the Indians,” he said, “they say that a woman’s mind is a pool of water. And her tongue is the stream that carries it out for everyone to drink of it. All women are alike, von Markau, Austrian, Cheyenne, Apache; they don’t keep secrets well.”

  The Baron’s mouth thinned. “I do not think you know my wife well, or you would not say that. I know of no woman I would trust more implicitly. In the three years of our marriage, she has never given me cause to doubt her discretion.”

  Sundance laid aside the canteen, took cigarette papers from his loincloth, and a tobacco pouch. Carefully, he went about the business of building a cigarette, but it was not tobacco he shook into the paper. Marijuana, a weed he had learned to smoke from the Mexicans; he could not trust himself with whiskey or the Baron’s cognac, but one cigarette of this would ease him, make him sleep, and still not interfere with his reflexes if he had to wake in a hurry. He said, “Three years? That’s how long you’ve been married?”

  “Ja. For a long time, I resisted marriage. Then I met her. Her family was very highborn, but far from wealthy. I settled their debts, and she has been very grateful to me for that; with all she owes me, I know she would not betray me. Besides, she loves me.”

  “Sure she does,” Sundance said, and snapped a match on his thumbnail, lit the cigarette. “I didn’t mean to imply she didn’t. Only, in a business like this, you take no chances. That’s why you’d better get up on guard right now.”

  “I will do that,�
� von Markau said. He turned.

  “The bottle,” Sundance said. “Leave it behind.”

  “Oh, yes, I forgot.” Von Markau put down the bottle; then, rifle in hand, he climbed up the rubble-strewn, cactus-clad canyon wall.

  Sundance drew the marijuana smoke deeply into his lungs, and he thought of Two Roads Woman, Barbara Colfax. She had been captured by the Cheyennes on the Santa Fe Trail a few years before; he had brought her back to her wealthy father. But, like his own sire, she had fallen in love with the Indian way of life, and one night he had taken her back to the camp of the Southern Cheyenne band that had adopted her. She was still there, unmarried, yet living happily as part of a society in which she was valued, useful, instead of the sterile cocoon of ease and riches and boredom in which, in New York, she had been wrapped and stifled. He had seen her on his trip south from Laramie, and even now he could almost feel the eager mouth on his, the body moving beneath him, as they had made love in the willows along the Republican River. Oh, Jim, if you would only come back to these people, where you belong, where we both belong—

  And he said aloud what he had said to her then: “I can’t, yet. Too much to do.” She had understood, but that had not eased the pain of separation. The marijuana helped a little.

  While he smoked it, Sundance drew the buffalo-hide panniers that he had unslung from Eagle to him, opened them. He fished in the first one, cylindrical, about four feet long, and brought out a bow. Made of juniper, wrapped with bison sinew and tipped with horn, it was a weapon he had learned to use in childhood, was still master of. With it, he could send an arrow four hundred yards, drive one through a full-grown buffalo—or a man. He had done that, too, more than once, especially as a Dog Soldier of the Cheyennes in battle against the Crows and Blackfeet.

  He ran his hands over the bowstave, checking for any possible split, checked the dangling string, too, for defects, found none. He laid the bow aside, took out an arrow quiver made of panther skin, the tail still attached. It held more than thirty arrows, each a yard long, feathered with vulture quills, tipped with flint points worked to razor sharpness. The making of flint arrowheads was almost a lost art; those Indians not armed with rifles used arrowheads of steel. But a flint point inflicted a more grievous, deadly wound, had greater stopping power; and he had his reasons for clinging to the old style arrowheads, even though they were hard to get and cost him a premium.

  He laid those aside with the bow. There were other things in the pannier, but he did not take them out. Instead, he pulled up the other bag, which was round. Opening it, he withdrew the shield.

  To a Cheyenne, a shield is sacred. This one, painted with a Thunderbird, had required much ritual and sacrifice to complete and make holy. Thick hide of a buffalo bull’s neck drawn over a wooden hoop, a pad of grass added and antelope skin sewn over that, it was round, with a loop that would slide up his left arm. It would stop a musket ball or an arrow, but was useless against a bullet from a modern rifle. That did not matter; he believed in it, as he believed in the medicine in the otter-skin pouch on a thong around his neck, just as some men believed in saints’ medals and crucifixes worn the same way. He looked up at the sun. All medicine came from the same source; it did not matter what a man believed, so long as he believed in something.

  He dug deeper in the sack, took out other gear. Then he put his sombrero aside, peeled off the buckskin shirt and pants and moccasins. A few minutes later, he was dressed in a loose-fitting spotted calico shirt, a loin cloth, and high Apache leggings that reached nearly to his groin. His yellow hair was bound with a red band. From now on, Apaches might come at any moment. When they did, maybe he would be recognized from a distance if he dressed this way. If he were not recognized from far off, he might be shot from far off. Maybe he would be, anyhow; maybe nobody remembered Jim Sundance among the Chiricahuas anymore, or if they did, maybe his yellow hair made him their enemy now.

  He put back the shield, stored the bow and arrows. His cigarette almost finished, he looked at von Markau on the ledge above. He had to trust the man; but there was no chance in hell of von Markau seeing Apaches before they were ready to let themselves be seen; if any alarm were given, it would have to come from Eagle.

  Sundance draped his pistol belt around the horn of the saddle he’d use for a pillow. He put the rifle in his crooked arm, pulled up a blanket to shield him from the brutal sun, dust, and gnats. Then he slept.

  Like an animal, he came awake, knowing at once by the sun that three hours had passed, that something was wrong. The moment he opened his eyes, he was totally alert, but he did not spring from his blanket with his rifle, only sat up slowly. Von Markau was still on guard up on the ledge. Sundance looked at Eagle.

  Then he understood what had brought him out of sleep. Eagle sidled restlessly, raising his head, testing the air. His ears pointed straight up.

  Sundance laid aside the rifle. “Von Markau,” he called softly.

  The Baron stirred, turned. “Ja, Sundance?”

  “Lay your gun aside. Slowly, carefully. Put your pistol with it. Then come down here.”

  Von Markau’s face was a white, amazed blot in the sunlight. “What? Are you quite—”

  Sundance’s voice was low and even, yet hard as iron. “Do what I say. Now. This minute. Don’t ask questions. Just lay your guns aside and come down here with your hands up.” He himself got slowly to his feet, moved away from the saddle and all his weapons. Stood there with hands slightly raised, open palms outward.

  Rock clattered and dust roiled as von Markau came down the slope. Sundance let out a breath of relief as he saw that the Baron had obeyed, was unarmed. Then von Markau came up to him, face pale. “What—?”

  “Stand still,” Sundance said. “Very still. They’re here.”

  “They?”

  “The Chiricahuas,” Sundance said.

  Von Markau blurted something. “I don’t see—”

  ‘They’re here.” He raised his eyes to the razor-backed canyon walls above them, their flanks scabbed with boulders and slides of rock, overgrown with every sort of thorny plant, plus a few junipers stunted for lack of water. The sun was high, cruel; the wind through the canyon’s mouth was like the blast from a furnace. Eagle moved restlessly, and now the mules had raised their heads as well. The ears of the animals pricked forward as they swung around at the ends of their picket ropes. “They’re all around us.”

  Von Markau sucked in a breath. “And we just stand here, wait for them to murder us?”

  “That’s it,” Sundance said. “It’s what the Emperor of Austria has asked of you.” He broke off. “I heard one.”

  “I heard nothing.”

  “You weren’t listening. Cartridge clicking in a bandolier, behind us, to the left, up high. Don’t move. Let them look us over. They’ll look us over for a long time. Then I’ll talk to them.”

  He himself had not looked up, had made no attempt to find them in the cover on the hillsides, the canyon walls. He knew it was useless anyway. They would not let him see them unless they chose to.

  The silence stretched on, charged and deadly, for five more minutes. Sundance felt a prickling in the short hair on his neck, a twitching along the spine. Well, he thought, now or never. He cleared his throat, and then, in Chiricahua dialect, he called out: “My brothers, it is I, Sundance, the Cheyenne, the yellow-headed Indian. It is I, Sundance, who comes among you again. It is I, Sundance, who comes in peace and who brings presents. I wish now to talk with you. I have brought a friend, a white-eye friend. He wishes to talk with you, too. Will you come down and smoke and talk? I have tobacco, plenty of tobacco. My brothers, the Chiricahuas, I come in peace. I seek Cochise.”

  There was silence. The furnace wind rustled the stalks of ocotillo. Now, Sundance thought. Now they will either talk or shoot. Every muscle in his body was tense, strung tight.

  Then, in Chiricahua, a voice called down. “Sundance. It is I, Uklenni.”

  “Uklenni.” Sundance drew in a long breath. �
��My brother Uklenni. Fifteen years ago, in the Sierra Madre, when we were young. We killed a bear together. A great grizzly. We divided the claws and teeth between us.”

  “I still wear the claws and teeth,” the voice said. “It was the only grizzly I have ever killed. But I have killed some white-eyes since.” The voice hardened. “You are my brother. But the white-eye with you is not my brother; he is my enemy.”

  “No. He is my friend and would be yours. He comes in peace from a far place. He has brought presents for the Chiricahuas— blankets, knives, axes, tobacco, cloth and conchas for your women. My heart is good for the Apaches and so is his.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. We can kill him and take the presents anyhow. And the horses and the guns.”

  “Then you would have to kill me, too, because I would fight you then. Why should Sundance and Uklenni fight? Look, we have laid aside our guns. We seek friendship with the Chiricahuas, and their help, not war.”

  There was silence. Sundance looked at von Markau. The big man stood rigid, sweat pouring down his face. But he cast a glance at Sundance’s guns, over by the saddle. He trembled slightly.

  Sundance whispered: “Don’t break. You break, you’re dead.” And he called out, “Come down, Uklenni. I have been lonesome for you. I would see you again.”

  The silence held a moment more. Then Uklenni said, “I come. But the others remain up here. You are covered, Sundance.”

  “I know,” Sundance said.

  There was no sound, not a whisper of it, but now Eagle snorted. Sundance growled an order at the warhorse, as it laid back its ears, bared its teeth; and, obediently, it eased. Then, silently as a puff of smoke, Uklenni was there.

  Chapter Five

  The Apache was in his thirties, Sundance’s age. He was shorter than the halfbreed by six or seven inches, but enormously broad across the shoulders, his chest a massive barrel. His coppery thighs bulged with muscle above his leggings. His face was square, his nose flat, his skin the color of chocolate. He wore a shapeless deerskin hat in which a few turkey feathers had been fixed. He carried an old Spencer carbine. As he moved around the two men, coming up from behind, stepping in front of them, he held it pointed at Sundance’s belly.