by John Benteen
Very many men, Sundance thought. Uklenni had said that the Apaches had killed a lot of Spaniards here. Their bones and armor would be scattered up and down the canyon. This spur, long since covered by sand, had been hidden for centuries until the convulsive twisting of his wrist had worked loose the dirt that shielded it. Dead Man’s Canyon, he thought; and a man dead for two centuries or more had saved his life.
The rawhide that bound Herta von Markau’s ankles parted easily under the rusty but razor-sharp points of the ancient spur. But she, still dazed, did not move. She had fainted.
Sundance got unsteadily to his feet, blood dripping from his right wrist and the talon-scratches on body and face. All around the ashes of the dead campfire, feeding vultures made a blackness. They squabbled, fought, beaks dripping remnants of their gory meal. Sundance, a little crazy, ran at them, shouting, waving arms, windmilling. The buzzards took fright, lifted off, flapping heavy wings with a sound like water pouring over a fall. He saw them rise, confused, circle, climb higher.
He tried not to look at what they had left. Right now, what he needed was water. There was none in Dead Man’s Canyon, and Gannon had taken every bit of his own gear, including the full goatskin on one of the mules. But then he found what he sought: an Apache wicker water bottle. He picked it up, shook it, heard a faint slosh within. He opened it, took enough from it to moisten his lips and mouth. Then he went back to where Herta lay unconscious. He trickled a little over her lips, then ran some down her mouth. There was hardly more than two swallows in the bottle anyhow—a day’s ration for an Apache.
The long lashes of her eyelids fluttered as the liquid seeped down her throat. Then she opened her mouth to scream as memory returned.
“Hush,” Sundance said. “It’s all right. We’re not buzzard bait yet.” He stood there, naked, bleeding, sun-blistered, looking toward the west. “We’ll get out of here somehow. And then I’ll find Gannon.”
The floor of the canyon around the dead ashes of the fire was a shambles. Sundance searched it carefully for anything of use, especially for weapons. But in this country, rifles, pistols, knives and axes were too precious to be left behind, even by men who possessed a treasure. Not a scrap of armament was left.
But he found clothes. The vaquero outfit in which Herta had been disguised so she could be smuggled past Army patrols had been thrown aside. She got into it, as Sundance wrapped his loins in the cloth Gannon had stripped from them, pulled on his Apache moccasins which Gannon had left behind. Nagged by a feeling that there should be something else, he trotted on a wider circuit of the area. Then he saw them: the bullhide panniers he usually carried behind his saddle.
They had been slit open. His shield had been thrown into some nearby rocks. He ran to it, picked it up; this was good luck, part of his medicine. From it dangled six scalps, three black as crows’ wings, one brown, one red, one yellow as his own. The last scalps he had ever taken. Those of the six who had murdered his parents north of Bent’s Fort.
The other pannier, which had held his bow, arrows, his pipe and a few other items important to him, lay ripped and empty nearby. Sundance climbed up on a rock, looked around carefully. Then a flash of color caught his eye, fifteen yards away, in the rubble. He scrambled over to it, grinned wolfishly as he picked up a Cheyenne arrow, brilliantly painted to make it easy to find in just such circumstances. He continued his search, found a dozen more like it. All pointed in the same direction, though they were widely scattered. Apparently, Gannon’s men had amused themselves by shooting his bow.
He backtracked in the direction from which the arrows had come. Thirty yards away, behind another rock, he found the bow, strung, and the quiver, holding the rest of the shafts. Sundance laughed soundlessly, and his face was not a pleasant thing to look upon. The time might come when Gannon would be very sorry indeed that he had not broken these arrows.
He felt better, infused with new strength. He strode back to where Herta sat, hands covering her face. “They left us something, anyhow. Now, we’ve got to start, walk out of here.”
“But, Walther . . .” Her shoulders shook. “He must be . . . buried.,,
“No,” Sundance said harshly. “We don’t have water enough to waste our strength on anything like that.” His voice gentled. “I’m sorry. I would like to bury Uklenni, too.” He pulled her to her feet, held her up, and wordlessly she leaned against him as they began to walk.
Gannon’s sign was plain, leading out of the canyon, he and his men traveling fast. They would not, Sundance thought, head back to Tucson nor near any other Army post. Crook would be frantic now, wondering what had happened to the woman he had been supposed to guard, and he would have every soldier under his command seeking trace of her, stopping every traveler. No, if Gannon were smart—and he was—he would head north, then swing west, keeping to the broken country of the Mogollons, taking his chances with Apaches. It was risky, but the risk was worth it for a treasure like the jewels of Maximilian. Anyhow, he would be making all the time he could; no need to worry about an ambush on his backtrail for a while.
They reached the canyon mouth, and then, for a nightmare hour, Sundance pulled and dragged the fainting Herta von Markau, who was still in shock, over rocks and through brush along the gorge. Presently he was exhausted, sank gasping by a boulder, staring down the defile with its barricades of stone and cactus thickets dazedly. His heart sank; he could make it, but the woman—? He had no illusions about what lay ahead. He knew where he was going, and alone, even on foot, he could get there, somehow. But could he get there with her?
Still, he had to try. They started out again, and this time she was more help, but still not enough. After two more miles, Sundance was again exhausted; and it was plain now that she would never make it. Well, this was no place to spend the night, this far from water, but she must rest.
Then he tensed, and with a swift motion drew an arrow from the panther-skin quiver, nocked it to the bow. “Get down,” he hissed, and shoved Herta behind a rock, disappeared behind another, seeming to melt into the terrain. From down the gorge, the sound came again, faint, yet unmistakable: the click of shod hoof on rock. Sundance held his breath, waited.
Then he caught a glimpse of color in that wild jumble of rock and scrub. Suddenly he relaxed, then jumped to his feet. He gave a low whistle, like that of a prairie lark.
From behind a pile of boulders, something like a trumpet answered him, and a surge of joy went through Sundance, followed by apprehension. Herta forgotten for the moment, he leaped over the rock, plunged down the gorge, stumbling, his flesh ripped by thorns. At the same time, hoofs scrabbled on stone; then Eagle appeared, stripped of bridle and saddle, broken picket rope trailing. And yet, as he approached the horse, a kind of coldness filled Sundance. I’m pretty sure I broke his leg. If that were true, he would have to use an arrow on the stallion—
He halted, watched the horse’s movement as it plunged toward him. Yes, he thought bitterly, its off hind leg was crippled. Then he ran again, and he and the horse came together. Eagle thrust his head against Sundance, bowing crested neck, nickered softly. Sundance rubbed his forelock, then, with a heart that seemed to stop beating, went to Eagle’s rump.
Then something unknotted within him. A bullet had gouged a huge chunk of flesh from the hind-quarter; and flies and gnats already swarmed around the ghastly wound. But it had broken no bone, cut no important tendon. If the wound did not fester, Eagle would recover, though he would have trouble traveling for a while.
“Wait,” he told the stallion. It nickered as he went back to where Herta slumped behind a rock, scrambled after him. He picked up the girl, slapped her awake out of her exhaustion, dragged her down the gorge. Somehow he got her on the horse’s back.
It was going to be hard on Eagle, but he knew the animal’s endurance. He rubbed the velvet muzzle, scratched the topknot. Then he started down the gorge again, and Eagle limped behind, the girl slumped across his neck, clinging to his mane.
They fin
ally reached the gorge’s end. Now they were in comparatively open country. Sundance scouted; there was no sign of Gannon. He began to lope, like an Apache. Eagle hobbled along behind.
Sundance turned not west, toward Tucson, but north. He thought of Uklenni, von Markau, and of the vulture standing on his face; and the hatred within him was a flame. Everything else could wait; but he was not letting Gannon get away.
He could not fight fifteen men alone, unarmed, so he had to go north, find Cochise, up in the Mogollons with the Mescaleros, and seek his help.
Chapter Eight
Tormented by flies around the healing bullet wound, despite the juniper pitch with which Sundance had smeared it, Eagle hobbled as he ascended the steep slope of the Mogollon rim. But it was cooler here; at this altitude, the trees were bigger, juniper giving way occasionally to pine; the harsh sacaton yielded to nutritious grama, on which Eagle gorged himself; sometimes there was running water, bubbling springs or flowing streams. In these, Sundance and Herta von Markau drank their fill and, naked, let the current wash and cool their scraped, dusty, exhausted bodies.
Three days it had taken them to gain the Mogollons; and slowly the girl was coming out of shock. But, Sundance thought, maybe it would have been better if she hadn’t. She had recovered physically, but tortured by regret, she was in mental agony. As she lay resting on a rock, after a swim in a stream, while Sundance broiled a wild turkey he had brought down with an arrow, she drew the jacket of the vaquero outfit around her, shivered, and covered her face with her hands. “Sundance.” Her voice was muffled.
“Yes.” He fed the fire.
“How can I ever forgive myself?”
He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “You didn’t know. You couldn’t know about what kind of country this is, you’d never met a man like Gannon. You made a mistake, but von Markau made some, too. The first was buying you like a piece of property—he told me about that, how he paid your family’s debts—and expecting your love and loyalty for that. The second was bringing you to Arizona with him. The third was disobeying me, breaking out that cognac; if he hadn’t, Gannon would never have caught us off guard. What neither one of you knew is that this is a country that doesn’t allow you even one mistake.”
“Still, I did betray him. And now he is dead. A lot of men are.”
“People die all the time in Arizona; death is a part of this country, like the mountains, the deserts. The Apaches mourn their dead and never speak their names again, and sometimes even burn their villages. After death, they wipe out everything, make a fresh start. Out here, it’s the only way to survive. Regret won’t bring von Markau back; but the lesson you’ve learned may save somebody else someday. Come and eat; we’ve got a long way to travel before the sun goes down.”
She looked at him strangely as she sat down across the fire from him. “I have never met a man like you, either,” she said. “Thank you for your kindness. Kindness is not something I have come to expect from men. All my life, I have only been something men wanted, felt they had to have, not someone to whom they should be kind. Perhaps that made me bitter, perhaps I wanted to get revenge on them ...” She touched her hair. “I feel better, now.”
And after that, she began to come to life again. They rode on that afternoon, camped that night. The next day, they found Cochise.
Or rather, his scouts, as Sundance had expected, found them. When Sundance awakened at daybreak, shivering from the cold, he sat up to look straight into the eyes of an Apache hunkered over him, rifle pointed at him. Three more squatted in a circle all around them.
“So you are awake,” the Apache said. “An Indian with yellow hair. And a white-eye woman. What is this?”
He betrayed no surprise when Sundance answered in fluent Chiricahua. “My name is Sundance, of the Cheyennes; but I am also an adopted Chiricahua. Cochise is my godfather, and I have news for him, bad news, of Uklenni and Uklenni’s people, and I would ask you to take me to him.”
“Sundance.” The Apache considered. “I think I have heard of you. Inju. Good. On your feet. We’ll take you to Cochise. But be very careful, do not make one wrong move.”
They crested a ridge, pine-clad and grassy, rode down a long, broken slope into a deep basin. There smokes, a dozen of them, curled skyward in thin, steady columns. In a fold by a creek on the basin floor, they found therancheria, the Apache village.
As they rounded a ridge and it came in sight, Sundance drew in a long breath. It was almost like coming home.
The camp was a big one, the Chiricahuas and the Tontos and Mescaleros having come together. Sundance recognized the brush shelters of the first two bands, rude domes of limbs and foliage over which cloth and deerhides had been thrown to help cut the wind, spread out along the stream. Farther away were the teepees of the Mescaleros, who, ranging out onto the plains, had adopted that sort of shelter from the buffalo tribes. Three hundred people, maybe more, Sundance judged, as Choddi—Antelope—the chief of the patrol, led them into the village. Not many men were present; they hunted or scouted or, perhaps, even raided somewhere far enough not to draw down revenge upon the rancheria. Women were everywhere, working hard, dressed in deerskins or in cloth bought in trade, their garments voluminous, modest. The smokes came from great pits in which mescal cooked; it was the staple food of the tribe. Leaves, stalks, and the central bulb, like a huge onion, were all baked together in the pits for three days, producing a sweet gluey mixture which the Apaches loved, and which they dried in sheets. Other women tended small cornfields, and still others, Sundance knew, would be on the mountainsides, digging wild potatoes and gathering piñon nuts, acorns, black walnuts, grass seeds, nopal fruit, and sunflower seeds which they would combine with mesquite beans to make a rich bread. Weavers were at work, too, making the tightly woven, superb Apache basketry. A few men were busy sewing buckskin; that was a peculiarity of the tribe; the men were all expert tailors, sewed beautifully. Some others gambled, tossing painted sticks in the game of Tze-chis; and children, mostly naked, were everywhere, the boys practicing throwing lances, the girls playing with dolls or helping their mothers gather firewood.
Choddi called out as they entered the village. Everyone looked up, all activity ceased. The people crowded forward, staring curiously at the strange spectacle: an Apache with yellow hair and a beautiful white woman in Mexican clothes mounted on an appaloosa stallion. They chattered in wonder, and the children stood open-mouthed. Sundance searched for familiar faces in the crowd, saw none.
Choddi gestured to him to stop the stallion. Sundance, walking beside Eagle, halted him with a touch. Now the crowd moved in closer, and one woman with a strange deformity reached out, touched Herta von Markau’s boot.
Herta shrank back. “Sundance,” she whispered, “what happened to her?”
Sundance looked at the woman. “She was caught in adultery,” he said flatly. “Her husband cut off the end of her nose.”
“Oh,” Herta said faintly and, shuddering, put one hand over her face.
Then a hush fell over the crowd. It parted, and Sundance looked around. People made way for a tall, wide-shouldered man with iron-gray hair. He wore a buckskin shirt, loin cloth, leggings, some hawk’s plumage in the band bound around his head. A Colt revolver was strapped around his waist. He came forward, square-faced, massive, halted before Sundance, legs spraddled. Black eyes probed Sundance’s face, ranged over the scarred, coppery body.
They stood like that for a long moment, looking at one another.
“My father,” Sundance said softly.
The hard face broke; thin lips smiled. Suddenly the eyes gleamed with pleasure. “My son. It is good to see you.” Then Cochise, chief of the Chiricahuas, stepped forward and embraced Jim Sundance.
Cochise had two wives. They led Herta von Markau off to another house, after spreading food before Cochise and Sundance in the chief’s dwelling. The dome-shaped place smelled of smoke and grease and drying mesquite and juniper. The two men sat cross-legged opposite each oth
er, and Cochise listened without speaking while Sundance talked. With each minute that passed, the Apache’s face grew more stern and dour.
Then Sundance had finished. Cochise tamped a pipe, lit it. “It was bad for you and Uklenni to go after the treasure without first coming to me. But, no matter; what is done is done. Uklenni should not have drunk the tiswin,either.”
He paused. “For the treasure, I care nothing. I well know the value of a white man’s dollar; I have done business with them, cutting wood for the fort at Bowie and being paid for it. But I know much else about the white man, too. If, as you say, this is worth more dollars than we can imagine, it is bad, bad medicine. If we had it, we could not sell it. They would say, you Goddam dirty Injun sonofabitch” and here he lapsed into English, mockingly,“this belongs to us. You stole it, we’ll put you in jail and hang you. The more valuable it is, the more ways they would find to kill Indians for it. I say the treasure is well out of our country; I do not want it.”
Sundance nodded.
“Of course,” Cochise said, “you are half white. If we took it, maybe you could sell it for us.”
Sundance laughed bitterly. “Father, I am half Indian, too. They would say, you Goddam dirty half breed sonofabitch, and then it would be the same thing.” He sobered. “But if I can take the treasure, I will get money which I will pay to the people in the council of the Grandfather in Washington. Money that will make the Grandfather’s heart good toward the Tenneh.”
Cochise spat into the fire. “Nothing makes the Grandfather’s heart good but money, does it? What kind of man is he, what sort of heart does he have?” Then he said harshly. “I would not pay the Grandfather anything. He has sent his man Colyer to me, we bargain. But if I must pay to bargain with the Grandfather—”
