by John Benteen
Big Blue Mountain Spirit
The home made of blue clouds,
The cross made of the blue mirage,
There you have begun to live,
There is the life of goodness,
I thank you for all made of goodness there . . .
Then the dancers costumed as Gods, the “gahe-nde,” came stamping out, heads concealed by weird black wooden masks, save for one masked in white. Dressed in buckskin, each brandished a wooden sword and danced around the fire. Five of them: They cast fantastic shadows as they charged back and forth, toward the flames, at each other, and at the crowd, with their swords. Soon they were joined by five more, and another five after that, and the drums throbbed and reed whistles blew and rattles clattered dryly as the fantastic figures continued the wild dance of the mountain ghosts.
Leaning against Sundance, Herta watched raptly. Sundance had already told her the legend of the two young men, one blind, one crippled, abandoned in a mountain cave by their tribe; how they were saved by the four black Gods, the one white one, the blind man’s sight restored, the cripple’s lameness cured; and how ever since, the Apaches had danced this dance in honor of those mountain spirits, to insure health and good fortune in the coming year.
Later, the ceremonial dancing was over, and the whole tribe gathered around the fire to dance, forming a circle, men and women holding hands. Sundance and Herta joined them, sidestepping to the beat of drums. They did the back and forth dance, long ranks of people swaying forward and back, in the firelight, to the drumming.
He looked at her. In the ten days they had spent here, she had recovered from her ordeal; her blistered face had healed, the bruises left her body. Now, in sheer exuberance, she laughed, great eyes shining, white teeth gleaming. Her hand squeezed his as they swayed back and forth, and her hip, clad in an Apache buckskin dress, brushed against him.
Then it was over. Tired yet exhilarated, they returned at dawn to their own house. Herta threw herself down on the buckskin matting of it, laughed, then looked up at Sundance above her. She sat up suddenly, pulled off the skirt. “Jim . . .” she whispered.
Later, she lay in Sundance’s arms. “Must we leave tomorrow?” she whispered.
“Yes,” Sundance said.
“But I do not want to go, to return to the Emperor’s court. Here I feel so alive, so real. Sundance, could I stay here? Be an Apache woman? And you ...”
“No,” he said. “I have work to do. And you, Herta. It’s fun for you now. But later, it’ll be different.” He paused, and his face hardened. “Later, they’ll all be hunted. Men, women, children. I know Crook. His job is to fight them and beat them and bring them in. And he will do it. All I hope is that they’ll also let him settle them and civilize them. He’s a good man; he knows what they need and want and how to get it for them. But if he’s going to do that, it’s going to take pressure in Washington, and that’s my job, to provide the money for that.” He raised himself on one elbow, looked out the door; the drumming and chanting still went on. “They don’t know what’s ahead of them, what they’re going to have to cope with.” His voice was sad. “I do.”
She clung to him, then sank back. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. I belong back in Vienna. This much I can do for Walther, save his honor by seeing that the jewels get back where they belong, and that the emperor pays your money promptly. Still ... I will always remember this as my time of greatest grief and greatest happiness.”
Her nails dug into his flesh. “Jim. Jim, please come with me.”
“No,” he said. “I can’t.”
She was silent; then she sighed. “Of course not. Then all we can do is take what time we have left.” She pulled him to her again.
And now it was done; the feasting was over and the mescal cooked and dried and stored, and the tribes split up, the Tontos to go back to their basin, the Mescaleros to return to the White Mountain and the Davis Mountains further east, the Chiricahuas to head for the Dragoons and Peloncillos and Huachucas.
Except for ten. Led by Choddi, the ten warriors sat horses in the center of the village—which was rapidly being dismantled— an escort for Sundance and Herta von Markau back to Fort Lowell. Sundance adjusted the lashings of the leather bag on the back of the pack animal, its weight of gold and silver and jewelry, a mule sufficient for the load. Then he checked the fastenings of the panniers that held his bows, arrows, and shield, behind Eagle’s saddle.
He also checked the rifle in his saddle scabbard, the sixgun at his waist, the knife and hatchet on his belt. Everything was in order. The sun gleamed on his coppery body, his golden hair, as he helped Herta into the saddle of a fine gelding, son of Cochise’s Arabian, then swung up on Eagle.
He looked around, holding the appaloosa’s reins tightly gathered. Then he saw the man for whom his eyes had searched. Cochise strode toward him, tall, graceful, thick-chested, hair frosted with gray. He came up by Eagle, raised one hand.
“My son,” he said, “I do not know when we will see one another again. Perhaps never. Perhaps in the Shadow Land. But whatever you can do for us with the white-eyes, we will be thankful for. And if the white-eyes become too much for you and you have a stomach full—then your home is always here, with the Chiricahua, in the Mogollons, the Dragoons, or the Sierra Madre. We will be free for many years yet, that I promise you.”
“I hope so, Father,” Sundance said; and they shook hands.
“Now,” said Cochise, “a safe journey and good hunting.” He swung up on his Arabian. “I will ride a distance with you.” At the head of the column, he gave a signal, and all moved out.
They filed down through a sloping canyon, which brought them off the Mogollon rim and back to the desert again. There Cochise reined in.
“I leave you now,” he said. Only that, no more.
Then he wheeled his horse and galloped off alone.
They rode on. Sundance turned in the saddle, looked back. The Mogollon rim was a high, jagged, tree-clad escarpment, its top dominated by a great butte. As he watched, a lone horseman climbed that, gained the crest, turned his white mount around, sat, rifle cradled across his arm, watching the cavalcade file down the slope and turn west toward Tucson.
Sundance stood in Eagle’s stirrups, raised his arm.
The silhouetted figure on the rim saw the gesture, raised high one hand in reply. Then it wheeled and rode away, vanished amidst boulders.
On the third day, they were in the desert. Sundance, at the column’s head, reined in.
Ahead, a dust cloud roiled. It was moving toward them.
Sundance turned to Choddi. “Sikisn, brother. Someone comes.”
“Yes,” Choddi said.
Then they heard the sound of bugles.
“It’s the Army,” Sundance said. “Time for you to leave us.”
“I will do that,” Choddi said. He put out his hand, clasped Sundance’s. Then he snapped orders to his band; they wheeled and galloped off.
Herta von Maukau looked at Sundance sadly as the bugle sounded again, closer. “It really is over,” she said.
“Yes,” Sundance said. “But remember. I depend on you to get me justice from the Emperor. My money. The Indians’ money.”
“I will do it. I can do that much, anyhow.”
“Then let’s go,” said Sundance, and he touched Eagle with his heels. The packhorse, laden with the treasure of Maximilian, trotted behind as they rode to meet the column with General Crook at its head.
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About the Author
Ben Haas aka John Benteen was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1926. His imagination was inspired by the stories o
f the Civil War and Reconstruction as told by his Grandmother, who had lived through both. Ben’s father was also a pioneer operator of motion picture theatres, “…so I had free access to every theatre in Charlotte and saw countless films growing up, hooked on the lore of our own South and the Old West.”
Largely self-educated (he had to drop out of college in order to support his family), Ben wrote his first story, a pulp short for a western magazine, when he was just eighteen. But when he was drafted into the Army, his dreams of becoming a writer were put on hold. He served as a Sergeant in the U.S. Army from 1945 to 1946, and saw action in the Philippines.
Returning home to Charlotte (and later Sumter, in South Carolina) in 1946, Ben married Douglas Thornton Taylor from Raleigh four years later. The father of three sons (Joel, Michael and John), Ben was working for a steel company when he sold his first novel in 1961. The acceptance coincided with being laid off, and thereafter he wrote full time.
A prolific writer who would eventually pen some 130 books under his own and a variety of pen-names, Ben wrote almost twenty-four hours a day. “I tried to write 5000 words or more every day, scrupulous in maintaining authenticity,” he later said.
Ben wanted to be a mainstream writer, but needed a way to finance himself between serious books, and so he became a paperback writer. Ben’s early pen names include Ben Elliott (his grandmother’s maiden name), who wrote Westerns for Ace; and Sam Webster, who wrote five books for Monarch. As Ken Barry he turned out racy paperback originals for Beacon with titles such as The Love Itch and Executive Boudoir. But his agent was not happy about his decision to enter the western market, and suggested he represent himself on those sales. Ben had sent a trial novel to Harry Shorten of Tower Books. Ben’s family remembers it being A Hell of A Way to Die, written for Tower’s new Lassiter series. It was published in 1969, and editor Shorten told his new author to create a western series of his own. The result was Fargo.
The success of Fargo led to the Sundance series. Jim Sundance is a half-Cheyenne gunslinger who takes on the toughest jobs in order to raise funds to fight the corrupt Indian Ring back in Washington.
The short-lived John Cutler series followed, and then perhaps Ben’s crowning achievement, the Rancho Bravo novels, published under the name Thorne Douglas.
Ben Haas died from a heart attack in New York City after attending a Literary Guild dinner in 1977. He was just fifty-one.
