by John Benteen
Sundance said, “Yeah. I’ve known the Houstons a long time. General Sam lived with the Cheyennes in his younger days. During the War, I served with Stand Waitie and his Cherokees at Pea Ridge. Me and both the Houstons have tried to give the Cherokees a hand ever since, have worked together on that.”
“Right. We got to trust somebody, and I’d a heap rather trust a friend of Sam Houston’s son than some so-called professional detective. Well, Sundance, you want the job? There’s four of those hardcases—the Chesters and their two understrappers. You want to go down into Coahuila and see can you get them—and our money?”
“It depends,” Sundance said again. “Like I told you, I’ll do it if the price is right.”
“We’re offerin’ a thousand dollars each for the Chesters, five hundred for their men, and another thousand for the money.” Kearney, in the store clothes, spoke up.
Sundance looked at him and smiled. “Sorry. I wouldn’t dirty up a gun barrel for that kind of money.”
Kearney was softer than the others, running to fat, but he was still tough. His eyes went hard. “Hell, man, that comes to four thousand dollars. That’s more than a cowpoke’ll make in ten years!”
“But I’m no cowpoke,” Sundance said. “Nope, gentlemen, if that’s your best offer—” He shoved back his chair.
“Hold on!” Joe Tom snapped. “Don’t get over-sudden. Let’s hear you talk a little. Name your price.”
“Five thousand each for the Chester boys,” Sundance said promptly. “Twenty-five hundred for their understrappers. And ten percent of all the money I bring back. That’s it, gentlemen; take it or leave it.”
For a moment, the room was silent save for the breathing of the five men who stared at him astounded. Kearney licked his lips. “You’re out of your mind! That could come to almost thirty thousand dollars!”
“Not likely,” Sundance said. “They’ll have spent some of the money, maybe five thousand apiece by now, possibly more. But you’d better count on paying out between twenty-five and thirty. And, of course, I’ll want expense money—say two thousand, to be deducted from whatever my earnings come to.”
“The hell you say,” Kearney whispered.
Sundance shrugged. “Okay, maybe it seems steep. But remember, there’s next year and you folks’ll be making another drive. Your bank’ll be stuffed with cash again, unless you aim to keep it under your mattresses. And now that the Chesters have seen how easy it was to crack, they’ll be back. Or if not them, somebody else who’s picked up the idea.”
“All the same—” Kearney began, but Joe Tom Clinton’s voice sliced through his.
“Hush.”
“I will not! I don’t like being held up by a … a half-breed.”
Joe Tom swung his wrinkled face around and, like some ancient turtle, looked at Kearney with half-lidded eyes. “Me,” he said, “I never knew many Cheyennes. But I have fought a lot of Comanch’ in my time, and I never seen men I respected more. You may be President of this bank, but I happen to be Chairman of the Board and, lest you forget, I can fire your ass if I take a notion.”
Kearney muttered something, his face flamed, and he sank back in his chair. Joe Tom Clinton turned to Sundance. “That’s your lowest price.”
“Rock bottom,” Sundance said.
“Then we’ll take it,” Joe Tom said. “Right, Walt, Sam, Shad?”
The others nodded, albeit reluctantly. Kearney grunted deep in his throat.
“The way I see it,” Joe Tom went on, “is this. I got to have some cash to tide me over the winter. Cows I got, but I can’t make another drive ’til spring. Whatever Sundance brings back I can use, but most of all I want them Chester hides hung on the fence as an example to any other scissorbills that might get the idea that Eagle Pass’s an easy place to make a quick hundred thousand. Okay, Sundance, you’re on.”
“Good,” Sundance said. “I’ll draw up the contract and be back in an hour.”
Joe Tom’s mouth dropped open and his withered face turned red. “Contract—? Hell, I gave my word.”
“I know. And I’m not doubting it. But let’s face it, Mr. Clinton. You’re no spring chicken. You might not be around tomorrow, much less when I get back from Mexico. Then maybe I’d have to deal with Mr. Kearney here. And sometimes—not often, but sometimes—people, white people, have a way of figuring that just because I’m a half-breed, they’re not bound to any terms they made when payoff time comes. I’d hate to risk my life to bring in the Chesters and the money and have that happen here. So you sign the contract, all of you, or it’s no deal.”
Joe Tom stared at him a moment, still enraged. Then, suddenly, he laughed. “Hee! Hee, hee! I been in Texas since it was Mexican territory, and this is the first time anybody ever made me sign a contract for anything! By God, Sundance, you’re a hard ’un, ain’t you?”
“You wouldn’t want to send a soft ’un after the Chesters.”
“Hell, no. Bring on your contract! We’ll sign and have the expense money waiting for you. Where you aim to start?”
Sundance shrugged. “Piedras Negras. Where else?”
Two hours later, with a thousand of the two thousand already dispatched to Barbara Colfax in Washington, the rest in his pockets, Sundance crossed the bridge into Mexico.
Lying directly across the river from Eagle Pass, Piedras Negras was a sleepy town a little larger than its American counterpart, dominated by a big church at one end of its tree-shaded plaza. Sundance had never been here before and had no contacts; but, he thought, he would have to make some now. It was unlikely that the Chesters were here, they would be far south, but this was the place to start. Likely they had jumped off from here when they set out to rob the bank, and they might have talked, spilled their plans to someone. If so, he would have to find that someone.
Meanwhile, he was tired and dirty and so was Eagle and night was coming on. He found a posada with a livery on a street off the plaza and took a room that was small, but clean and cool, and he hauled his gear upstairs to it, including the two big bull hide panniers from behind the saddle. He saw to Eagle personally, giving the horse grain, but not too much, watching it roll in the corral. After that, he went back to the room, called for a tub of water and took a bath.
His body was thick with rippling muscle, an encyclopedia of scars, blazed and puckered from old wounds of knife, arrow, bullet. But the two biggest scars had been made by none of those; they were on either breast, big, ugly masses of long-healed tissue. That was where his skin and flesh had been slit and rawhide ropes run through. The ropes had been long ones, trailing behind him, and a heavy buffalo skull had been tied to each. At the Sun Dance, the most sacred ceremony of the plains tribes, he had, as a boy of fifteen, danced and danced with the big skulls trailing until he reached exhaustion and, at last, the ropes tore through his flesh, freeing him. The ordeal had been part of becoming a man, a warrior, a dedication of the self to the Sun, The Great Spirit, Giver of Life.
When he was clean, he felt better. Whenever possible, Cheyennes bathed every day, winter or summer, and he hated to go dirty for longer than he could help—a trait not notably shared by the white men of the southwest. In his bedroll were clean clothes—another Cheyenne shirt, denim pants like those he had discarded, underwear. Donning the fresh clothes, he buckled on his weapons and went out to explore Piedras Negras, leaving his dirty garments with the senora to wash.
South of the plaza, there was a quarter of bars and cantinas and brothels, built to cater not only to the inhabitants of the town, but the American cowboys who swarmed across the river on payday for a spree. That was where the Chesters would have hung out before they made their raid, and that was where he would pick up information.
He did not press, but one thing he had going for him was that he spoke fluent Spanish. He did not betray that fact immediately, though, preferring to listen rather than to converse.
First he ate hungrily a meal of roast cabrito, tortillas and tostadas and kept his ears open in the
crowded, candlelit restaurant, but he learned nothing. The people there did not know what to make of the big, dark-skinned, blond-haired man in buckskin, all hung with weapons. They were a little afraid of him and tended to be silent around him. He decided he would do better where liquor had loosened tongues. He left the restaurant and went into a bar next door and ordered a shot of tequila. He did not drink it immediately, tossing it off in the Mexican fashion, but sipped it carefully. Perhaps it was the Cheyenne blood in him, but he had a low tolerance for alcohol. Like most Indians, he simply could not handle more than a few drinks, and he usually set himself a limit of two. More than that made him mean and truculent, too many could send him into a wild, destructive kind of insanity in which he smashed things and would take on an army single-handed with bare fists. Right now, he needed all his control and judgment.
He stretched the tequila out for so long that the bartender began to eye him, so he ordered another. The level of voices in the smoky little room rose as the level of tequila and mescal and beer in bottles fell, and soon the conversation was a babble of which he could catch only fragments. But he heard enough to find out that they were still talking about the big bank robbery across the river—that was the most excitement they’d had in this part of the country for months.
He heard nothing that helped him and was about to leave when a tatter of conversation rose above the rest. “I tell you,” a man in the clothes of a vaquero yelled, pounding the table, “she got no money out of him! He made a fool of her, used her house, used her—And then rode south without leaving her even a peso of the gringo dinero! I know, she told me so herself! It was nothing but love, and now she mopes around like a ghost, the Dona Teresa! In that big house, all alone!”
Sundance edged around to where he could look at the man. The vaquero was very drunk. “And now,” he said, shaking his head, “she cannot even pay my wages. She has the big ranch and nothing left.”
“Dona Teresa,” the man across the table from him said thickly, “will pay you what she owes you. She is a good woman. Sooner or later, she will pay you. Meanwhile, you do not starve.”
“Maybe,” the vaquero said. He got to his feet. “Excuse me. I must go for a minute.” He lurched through the crowd toward the back door of the place. Sundance waited for a moment, then followed.
Outside, in the rear, the vaquero was getting rid of all the liquid he had taken in. He stood there, spraddle-legged, staring up at the immense, star-shot sky, humming drunkenly to himself. Sundance joined him. They stood side by side, neither speaking, looking at the sky or the desert beyond. As the vaquero was about to leave, Sundance said in Spanish, “Excuse me, Señor. I could not help but overhear. A few minutes ago you spoke of one Dona Teresa. I used to know a Dona Teresa Salazar in Saltillo. Would it be she? Is she in Piedras Negras now?”
The man turned unsteadily and squinted at Sundance. Then he shook his head. “No. I spoke of Dona Teresa Sanchez, widow of the hidalgo, Don Antonio Sanchez. She is a woman of this area, living at the Hacienda del Carmen, ten kilometers out on the south road. Una mujer muy hermosa, but as a rancher—Ay, Dios! I live for the day when she marries again to a good manager. Maybe then I get my wages on time. Adios.” He turned away.
Sundance watched him go thoughtfully. It was too late tonight to follow up this lead; no Spanish woman would receive a stranger at this hour. But in the morning—Meanwhile, he would continue his rounds, see what else he could pick up. He walked through an alley, into another cantina.
Three bars later, he had exceeded his limit by one drink, knew he had to throttle back lest he get himself in trouble, and had picked up nothing else of interest. But there was no point in giving up now, so he picked out another bar, the biggest one on the street, a structure of wood and adobe from which came the whine of a fiddle and the plunk of a guitar; apparently it was also a dance hall.
Reeking of coal-oil lanterns hung from the rafters overhead, full of the smoke of harsh Mexican cigarettes, chatter and laughter merging with the soulful, slightly off key music, it contained a good-sized crowd. Most were around the bar or the table, not many dancing, and a couple of broad-hipped, flat-faced girls, unclaimed by anyone, clad in too-tight dresses, sat on chairs at the edge of the dance floor, waiting for partners. Sundance edged through the throng, ordered a bottle of beer which he had no intention of drinking. With innate politeness, the vaqueros and laborers at the bar made room for him and went on talking. He nursed the beer for fifteen minutes, while the musicians struck up a livelier tune; its syncopated rhythm had more people up and dancing, and now the floor was crowded. Even the two wallflowers had been claimed. It was impossible to hear anything, and Sundance was about to leave when a familiar voice snapped out harshly above the music. “Goddamn you, take your hands off my woman!”
Instantly, the music died, and so did the racket of the crowd. In the dead hush that followed, Sundance turned as couples pulled back from the dance floor.
Then he saw Whitewolf.
The Crow half-breed stood in the center of the dance floor, swaying slightly, a bottle of tequila in one hand, the other gripping the wrist of a pretty mestiza. Facing him was a burly vaquero in enormous sombrero, leather jacket glittering with the same conchos that decorated his tight pants. His face was square, his eyes black slits, his nose flat, his cheeks pitted with old pockmarks, his mouth another, wider slit. He had the look of a thoroughly dangerous man, and Sundance saw the butt of a Colt and the hilt of a knife protruding from the sash around his waist.
Yet his voice was soft, silky, when he spoke. “Excuse me, señor, but you are mistaken. Juanita has been my woman for a very long time, and it was I who was dancing with her, not you.”
“I told her I’d be back in a minute, not to dance with anybody else!” Whitewolf stood spraddle-legged. “I paid her for this dance—”
“Then I will give you your money back.” The vaquero was still being reasonable. “I have ridden sixty kilometers to see Juanita; I walked in just now and she was alone, I took her in my arms and then you seized me. There is, of course, only a misunderstanding—”
“You’re damn right there’s one, and it’s all yours.” Whitewolf yanked the girl to him savagely. “On your way, Mex! Come on, Juanita.”
Sundance took a step forward, into the circle made by the watching crowd. “Whitewolf!” he said harshly. “Wait a minute.”
Whitewolf turned his head. In that instant, the Mexican’s hand flashed to his sash, seized his knife’s hilt. The blade gleamed as it came out, up. “Whitewolf, look out!” Sundance roared.
Whitewolf jerked back around, swiftly, smoothly, like a striking rattler. As the long blade tongued at him, he sucked in his belly and the knife slid by harmlessly; simultaneously, he swung the whiskey bottle. The vaquero’s eyes rolled back in his head as the heavy bottle slammed against his temple; then the man fell like a sawed-through tree.
Grinning, Whitewolf stepped back, bottle clubbed. He was wholly without fear, and he was about to speak when they rushed him—a dozen cowboys like the one he’d just downed. “Get the son of a goat!” one yelled, and Whitewolf smashed the bottle on his head. Somebody wrenched the stub of it from his hand, and then the half-breed was smothered under a pile of bodies.
Sundance stood motionless for one clock tick. Then he leaped across the floor. From beneath the writhing bodies came a shrill, high, chilling sound, the war cry of the Crows. Sundance seized the collar of the vaquero closest to him, jerked the man up, spun him around. The cowboy gaped in surprise; then Sundance hit him and knocked him across the room. He slammed against the bar, and Sundance was already reaching for another victim. His hand closed on a cartridge belt, and he jerked its owner off the pile that smothered Whitewolf. The man spun around, long-armed, loose-jointed, stared at Sundance. Then Sundance broke his nose with a straight left jab. Blood spumed down the vaquero’s face, but he was tough. He let out a roar, charged Sundance with clubbed fists. Sundance whirled nimbly as a bull-fighter. The man rushed past and Su
ndance’s outthrust foot tripped him. He plowed into a table, sent it spinning across the room, landed hard on his face on the floor. But others had seen what was happening, and Sundance turned just in time to take a punch that nearly tore off his jaw. Lights exploded in his head, he staggered back, and his assailant, a giant of a man, flat-nosed Yaqui face contorted, hit him in the stomach. The breath went out of Sundance, and he doubled up as the man hit him again. This time Sundance sailed backward. Glasses, bottles went spinning as he landed on a tabletop. The big man came after him without waiting for him to recover, and the table collapsed under both their weights, as the vaquero threw himself on Sundance. They hit the floor in its wreckage with jarring impact, the cowboy on top. The rank smells of mescal and garlic were in Sundance’s nostrils as the man clubbed a big fist. Sundance summoned all his strength, brought his hand up from the side, felt his arm jar with the shock as it smashed into the vaquero’s temple. It was like hitting a brick wall; the vaquero did not go out, but he faltered. In that instant, Sundance got up the other hand, rammed his fingers hard in the man’s eyes. When the cowboy’s fist slammed down, it missed Sundance’s face, only grazed his cheek. Sundance pushed harder with his fingers; the man tried to bite his hand, then snarled and rolled away. Sundance knew he had to be on his feet first, and he was already up in a pantherish leap when the vaquero scrambled erect. Before the man could get his balance, Sundance hit him with a long-traveling right and he fell back, jarring the floor when he landed, this time not moving. As Sundance whirled, an arm seized him around the throat. In the same motion, he grabbed the arm with both hands, dropped to his knees, throwing his weight forward. The flying mare worked, although it almost tore Sundance’s head off in the process; a cowboy squawked as he flew literally across the room and skidded across the floor when he landed, sending chairs skittering in all directions. Gasping, Sundance turned. Whitewolf was on his feet, face battered and bleeding; but he had still not lost his grin. Sundance saw him duck a roundhouse swing from a young, hard-looking vaquero, and while he was low, hit low. The vaquero cried out in pain and threw up his arms. Whitewolf kicked him where he had hit him; that was one more out of the fight. Without pausing, Whitewolf whirled only to be knocked sideways by another puncher’s fist. Agile as a cat, he fell, somersaulted, was up again as the man charged in, caught the next blow on his shoulder—Sundance had no time to see more because somebody clubbed him in the kidneys. He jerked aside, the next blow missed his head, and he brought his own elbow back hard. It sank deep in a belly, and a man’s breath whoofed in his ear. Sundance turned again, hand chopping. The blade of it caught the man across the neck; he gagged, went down. Whitewolf’s war cry rang out again, shrill, jubilant, and there was the thud of another body hitting the floor. Then, for the moment, the vaqueros had had enough. Suddenly Sundance and Whitewolf found themselves alone in the midst of a shambles of wrecked furniture and sprawled, unconscious men, as the Mexicans drew back.
