Sundance 9

by John Benteen

  As they cantered out of the village, a Mexican, short and potbellied, emerged from the store they had just left. He had one hand to his face, and he staggered as he crossed the street. The door of a hut opened to receive him, and he vanished inside. But Sundance had seen enough to know that he was the storekeeper and that he had taken a beating.

  Until the gates of the fort had closed behind the two, the village remained deserted. Timidly, then, like prairie dogs coming from their holes after the passage of a badger, the inhabitants of the pueblo emerged. They stood in groups, talking animatedly. The storekeeper reappeared, head bandaged, returned to his store. Then, as the sun went down, the street cleared once more and the flat beneath the mesa was speckled with the lights of lamps.

  When darkness had fallen totally, the moon not yet risen, Sundance said, “All right. Now’s the time to move.”

  He and Whitewolf ran to their horses, which were already saddled, loaded. Knowing the ground now, they filed out of the draw. Another draw cut the desert closer to the mesa, a deep, jagged ravine. It was there that Sundance intended to leave the horses. Meanwhile, he did not doubt that there were still lookouts in the towers on the fortress walls. He and Whitewolf kept to deep shadows and whatever cover was available, although it took them on a long, circuitous course. And they walked their horses—the sound of a running horse carried a long way in the stillness of the desert night.

  They reached the other draw, and as they filed down into it, its high walls swallowed them. The ravine angled behind the village and the mesa, and its mouth would bring Sundance out less than a mile from the pueblo. The intervening ground was flat as a pool-table top and completely devoid of cover, and Sundance had to get across it before moonrise.

  Whitewolf watched curiously as he went to his saddlebags, took out a small can. “What’s that?” the Crow half-breed asked.

  “Shoe blacking.” Sundance opened it, smeared his hands with it. “This yellow hair stands out like a lantern in moonlight.” He smeared the greasy black mess into his hair until it was dark as Whitewolf’s own. Then he carefully wiped his hands clean; it would not do to have his palms slippery when he needed his gun.

  After that, he discarded his hat, emptied his pockets of anything that might clink or jingle, saw to his Colt, checking the rounds in the chamber. He let the buckskin shirt hang out over the cartridge-studded belt on which the sixgun rode, lest any gleam of brass in moonlight betray him. He took a long swallow of water from a canteen to insure him against dryness of throat that might make coughing involuntary, and then he was ready. “Keep the horses saddled, ready to ride, and stand a sharp watch. I’ll be back before sunrise. If I’m not, you’ll know something’s happened and you’re on your own.”

  Whitewolf nodded. Slowly, he put out a hand, almost shyly touched Sundance’s shoulder. “Good luck, Jim,” he whispered.

  Sundance grinned at him, then ran down the draw.

  Reaching its end, he made the steep climb out, halting for a moment to reconnoiter the flat before he completely emerged. It lay dark and empty before him, the mesa a great black hulk beyond. A few lights burned in the village in the distance, a few more were visible in the fort. Crouched low, Sundance ran swiftly and soundlessly through the uncannily regular rows of creosote bushes, spaced precisely by nature so that each would have exactly its own share of the scant moisture in the ground. From time to time, he threw himself flat behind a clump of creosote, looked around again. So far, he had seen nothing to disturb him and there was silence at the fort. But the moon would soon be rising; he had no time to waste, so these intervals of observation were short; almost immediately he was on his feet again, dodging through the shadows.

  He was near the back side of the village. Behind the row of huts, a few goats moved restlessly in a pen made of mesquite palings; there would also likely be pigs and dogs running loose and tethered burros here and there to give the alarm if he were scented. Well, those were chances he had to take. He turned, getting the wind in his favor, moved on in utter silence, and then, without causing any outcry, was hunkered against the wall of a hut. The house was dark; inside he could hear the snoring of a man; a baby cried out, and a woman spoke to it.

  Sundance edged forward, looked up and down the single street. The moon was a half-blob of silver on the horizon, and he could easily make out details of the place. The store was across the street and two houses down. Light spilled from a window in its rear.

  Sundance crouched, crossed the street in a dash, made the back of the store. Cautiously, he edged to the lighted window and, pressed against the clapboard wall, peeped in. The fat man with the bandage on his face sat slumped at a table, staring moodily at a half-empty bottle of tequila before him. Sundance searched the room carefully with his eyes, looking for guns. Save for an ancient long-barreled musket on the wall, he saw none.

  Sundance bent, found a pebble, picked it up, flicked it through the window. It landed on the table, pinged against the bottle when it bounced.

  The fat man sat up straight, blinking. He looked around, panic in the one eye visible beneath the bandage across his face. Sundance flicked another pebble; it hit the man on the belly, rattled to the floor. The fat man pushed back his chair, rose, turning toward the window, trembling in fear.

  “Hombre. Come here. I will not hurt you.” Sundance hissed the words in Spanish.

  “¿Quien es?” The fat man’s voice shook.

  “A friend. And an enemy of the Anglos in the fort.”

  The fat man stood there indecisively, licking his lips. Then he edged toward the window. “Listen,” Sundance whispered as he neared it. “I must talk to you. If you let me in, I can be of service to you. But if you do not let me in, if you cry out, then I may be forced to shoot you.” And then he let himself be seen, holding the Colt loosely aimed inside.

  The storekeeper stopped short at sight of the gun and his trembling intensified. “I do not understand—”

  “You will. Unlock the back door. I tell you, I mean no harm unless you call out or resist.”

  After a pause, the storekeeper nodded. “Si. But please, whoever you are, I have been hurt enough today.” Still shaking with fear, he trudged barefooted to the door, and Sundance ran to it. When it opened, he was there and he shoved the gun barrel forward until its muzzle sank in the flab at the storekeeper’s waist. The man squawked, gave way as Sundance dodged into the store, then closed and barred the door behind him. “Are you alone?” he rasped.

  “Yes. My wife is dead. My daughter lives across the road.”

  “Good.” Sundance grinned. Then he eased down the hammer on the Colt and pouched the gun. “You see? I’m no bandido.”

  “Who are you?” The one eye goggled at him, taking in the black-smeared greasy hair, the buckskin shirt, the gun, knife, and sheathed hatchet. “Some devil from hell?”

  “Except that I’m the enemy of the men who beat you and took your goods today, who I am is of no interest to you. But if you want revenge against them and to be paid for all they’ve stolen from you, you’ll talk to me and give me the information I need. How do they call you?”

  “Manuel. Manuel Guiterrez.”

  “Well, Don Manuel, would you like to see the Anglos in the fort disposed of?”

  “Disposed of? By all the saints! This is no paradise, deserving its name Infierno. But it was not really hell until they came. Yes, man, if you’re their enemy then”—he licked his lips, summoned courage—“then you’re my friend.”

  “Good. I don’t have much time, and no one must know of my presence here. If you so much as peep about this, you’re dead. If I don’t get you, the Anglos will for having talked to me, understand?”

  “I understand.” Don Manuel sat down heavily, reached for the tequila bottle, drank deeply from it. “What—”

  “I want some questions answered. First of all, how many Anglos are there up at the fort?”

  “Eight,” Manuel said promptly.

  Sundance’s heart sank. Double the
odds he had hoped for. The Chesters must have picked up some more men. It was a damned good thing he’d made this scout. If they’d boiled in the way Whitewolf had wanted to—

  “You’re sure.”

  “Absolutely. Eight, and every one hard men, dangerous, with many guns and without mercy.” He drank again. “They came two weeks ago, and then hard behind them came the Rurales. Not to catch them, but to meet and talk with them and drink their liquor—and plunder our village. The teniente of the Rurales warned us that we must say nothing to anyone about their presence here—the Anglos—on fear of arrest, imprisonment, or shooting. We are only poor villagers and have no guns, so we’ve had to put up with all their indignities.” He shook his head. “They are under the protection, it seems, of the police.”

  “I thought so,” Sundance said. “Mordida. The payoff.”

  “Yes, undoubtedly.” Guiterrez licked his lips. “There is talk that they have committed a big robbery north of the Rio Bravo. You are a lawman from Texas?”

  “Never mind who I am. There are no Rurales here now?”

  “No. They went away, leaving us at the mercy of the Americanos.” He spat onto the dirt floor. “Who have no mercy. Who take our women and our goods and if we protest torture us and shoot us, as they did Luis Morales.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “The ugly little one with the strange off-center eyes—”

  “Coy.”

  “Yes, that’s how they call him. Morales’ wife was young and beautiful. The ugly one wanted her and tried to take her. Morales fought him and the ugly one shot him.”

  “He’s dead?”

  “Yes. But he did not die at once. Coy only wounded him, and then, as he lay helpless in the dust, shot him to pieces, bit by bit. First the hands, then the feet, then the arms, the legs, the shoulders, hips, and poor Morales screaming and bleeding, and the ugly one laughing—such a laugh as you cannot imagine.” He drank once more. “¡Dios! What a horror. Finally, impatient, not because he had mercy, the tall one with the handsome face and the smile of an angel finished Luis off. What a pair!” He grimaced with revulsion. “And today— They needed supplies. They rode down here to my store. I asked them for money—you see how poor my stock is, and it must come a long way, from Piedras Negras or Saltillo. I should have known better, all along they’ve taken what they wanted. But today I insisted, and the tall one drew his pistol and beat me around the head with it.” He sucked in a deep breath. “I could tell you other stories. I could tell you such stories all night long.”

  “Maybe I can put an end to such stories. Listen, are you familiar with the fort?”

  “I know the fort. I have lived here all my life.”

  “When the gate’s closed, is there any other way in?”

  “Only over the walls. They are spiked on top—and always the Tejanos keep guards in the old towers. They never venture out at night, either, only in daytime to plunder us of what they need. It is hopeless, señor; if you are after them, you cannot get them as long as they’re in the fort.”

  Sundance nodded. “Gracias, Guiterrez. If you keep quiet about this talk, you may soon be rid of them. If you speak of it, I will kill you.” He turned away.

  “Señor, who—”

  “Never mind. Blow out the lamp.”

  The storekeeper obeyed. In darkness, Sundance opened the door, slipped out. Then, with the gait of a loping wolf, he ran out of the village and made a circuit of the mesa. It took him a long time, and it was nearly morning when he reached the draw where Whitewolf waited.

  The young Crow half-breed was on his toes despite the lateness of the hour; and as Sundance, approaching the ravine, yapped like a coyote, Whitewolf responded with a perfect imitation in kind. He was waiting tensely when Sundance slid into the draw. “Well? What’s the layout?”

  Sundance drank thirstily from the canteen, then plugged it. “Damned bad. The Chesters have picked up four more men. There are eight of those hombres in the fort.”

  Whitewolf whistled softly. “Long odds, even for us.”

  “Damned long. We’ve got to cut ’em down. We try to get in there after ’em, they’ll have us cold. So we make ’em come to us.”

  “Come to us? How?”

  Sundance grinned at him. “With bait,” he said. “How else?”

  Chapter Seven

  Alone, the blond man on the big appaloosa stallion rode across the shimmering flats toward the town of Infierno, huddled in the shadow of the great mesa. He rode straight up, at a lope, but warily, rifle across his saddle; and the hooves of the spotted stud roiled up a stream of dust that must have made his passage obvious to the watchers in the tower of the fort above.

  It was late afternoon, after siesta time, and the people of the pueblo saw him coming, too. They halted whatever they were doing and stared as the rider approached; then, in apprehension, they took shelter in their houses, mothers calling to their children, men shouting orders to their wives. By the time Sundance entered the village street, the place was deserted, the only door open and unbarred that of Don Manuel Guiterrez’s store and cantina. Sundance hitched the stallion, entered the place. Don Manuel, behind the bar, head still bandaged, stared at him. It was a moment before he realized that this was the same man who, with greasy black hair, had confronted him last night. There were still streaks of shoe-blacking in Sundance’s mane; even though he had washed it in the draw at a little spring just after sunrise, it would be a long time before he would be rid of all of it.

  “Señor—” Guiterrez began.

  Sundance looked around the room to make sure it was empty. “He is here?”

  “Si. But—”

  “Be quiet,” Sundance said, “and give me a bottle of tequila. For the rest of the day, you understand, you have never seen me before. If you so much as indicate by one word to anyone that you have—” He drew his finger across his throat.

  “As you say,” Guiterrez stuttered. He found the tequila, a glass, some lime and salt. Sundance took the bottle and other stuff, carried it to one of the two tables in the rear of the room, where he could have his back to the wall and watch both doors—the front one and the other that led to the bedroom where he had surprised Guiterrez last night. He poured a healthy drink, knocked it back, sighed, and settled himself to wait, the rifle across the table before him.

  It was hot in the cantina, but the sweat running down his flanks beneath the buckskin shirt was cold. This was a long game he was playing, and it was going to require luck and perfect coordination between himself and Whitewolf. If the Crow let him down, the chances were good that he, Sundance, would be dead by nightfall.

  He did not let those chances worry him too much, though. They were part of the job. Nobody paid you any money for doing things that were safe and easy.

  He poured another drink, sipped this one lightly. It would have to last a long time. After that, he sloshed half the bottle onto the dirt floor behind him. By the time the first curious inhabitants of Infierno dared enter the cantina to size him up, he wanted it to look as if he had put away a lot of liquor on a hot day.

  Minutes passed, dragging into a half hour. Still, he and Guiterrez were the only people in the store. Outside, the town was hushed, perfectly still save for the cluck and cackle of chickens, the occasional bray of a burro. Once a pig, a sow with dragging dugs, walked through the front door, and Guiterrez shooed it out.

  Ten minutes after that, the first one came.

  He was a young man in the tattered white garments of the campesino, the peasant; and he was mostly Indian. He hesitated in the entrance, staring at Sundance, then edged warily to the counter and ordered a sack of tobacco. When Guiterrez gave it to him, he sidled hastily to the door, hurried out, never taking his eyes off the blond man in buckskins.

  But as if he had proved that one could confront the strange blond Indian and survive, things began to happen. There were voices in the street again. Two more villagers entered the store, trading a half dozen eggs to Guiterrez for me
scal. They went to the far end of the bar, had a drink each, standing close to the door as if ready to run. Then a child’s face peeped around the doorjamb, and after that another. Still, Sundance sat motionless, only occasionally sipping from his glass. After a few minutes more, the traffic in the store got heavy—far heavier, Sundance guessed, than normal, as people came to size him up. When the place was full, he drained the contents of his glass. Then he sprang to his feet, so suddenly that everybody jumped. “What the hell you looking at?” he roared in English. “Huh? What’s so damned funny? Get out of here, get out, all of you!” He picked up the rifle, worked its lever, fired a round, another one, into the floor. There was shouting and instant panic. Everybody scrambled for the door, men half falling over each other. In seconds, the place was clear. Only Guiterrez and the smell of tequila and powdersmoke lingered.

  Sundance sat down again. He had, he knew, quite a while still to wait. He beckoned to Guiterrez. Nervously the man came to him.

  “You keep an eye out the front door,” Sundance said. “Every minute or so you take a look. When you see riders coming, you let me know, you understand?”

  “Si,” Guiterrez whispered. “As you say, señor.” He was thoroughly confused and terrified; and that was the way Sundance wanted him.

  The afternoon wore on, fifteen minutes, twenty passing. When he was sure nobody looked, Sundance poured more of the tequila on the floor. Then he leaned forward, put his head in his hands. He sat like that for a while, then spread his arms on the table, eased his head down on them. From time to time, he snored throatily.

  From slitted eyes, he saw them. They came again, peeped in the doorway, and though he did not betray it, he heard their whispers. By now, he was pretty sure, someone would be on the way up the mesa to the fort—someone paid by the Chesters as an informer, or wanting to curry favor with them by carrying news. It would take a man on foot a full half an hour to get up the mesa, and he had seen no horses in the village, only burros. Allow about the same time or a little longer for the Chesters to decide what to do about the lone, drunken half-breed with all the guns down here in the cantina, and another twenty minutes or so for them or their men to come to deal with him.