by John Benteen
The man straightened up, turned. Nearly as big as Sundance himself and about the same age, just turned thirty, his face, craggy but apparently usually good-humored, was now pale and tense with strain. Blue eyes raked over Sundance. “I’m Art Rawlings. My brother Yance’s out lookin’ for the stage from Lordsburg. It’s overdue.”
“I’m Jim Sundance.” Half facing Rawlings and half the crowd, he said, “The stage from Lordsburg was hit by Chiricahuas fifteen miles east of town. No survivors. I’m sorry.” And briefly he told them what he had found, not mentioning either the money or his run-in with the men led by the other Rawlings. “I stored ten bodies in the coach,” he finished. “If it’s any consolation, they all died easy. The Apaches didn’t take time to play games.”
Even as he spoke, Rawlings’ face seemed to crumple, then harden, and a stir went through the crowd, a gusty sigh at first, then a low rumble of sullen anger, and finally a thunderous burst of outrage. Men surged toward Sundance as if holding him responsible, murder in their eyes. The streak of Indian blood in him was, after all, easily visible; he was a handy object for their wrath.
His hand dropped to his gun, but Rawlings vaulted the rail, moving between the crowd and the half-breed. “Hold on!” he roared. “This man just brought the news. You can’t blame him!” Then, as they hesitated, quieting save for the sound of a woman sobbing, he gestured. “Don’t worry! By Heaven, Yance and I and the Darts will find those broncos if it takes forever, if we have to hire every tracker and every gun in Arizona! I promise you, you’ll have their heads! But for right now, calm down! From what he says, Yance and the coach’ll be in any minute. You men hold your horses and—” his voice broke a little “—see to the widows and orphans!”
That did it; the crowd fell back. Rawlings gripped Sundance’s arm. “You—” His voice fell to a whisper. “There was fifty thousand cash on that stage. Do you—?”
“You got a private office?” Sundance murmured.
“This way.” Rawlings led him through a gate. “Fred,” he told the clerk, “no interruptions. You make the official announcement to anybody ain’t heard it and send Yance and the Darts in to see me soon as they hit town.”
The office was spartan, desk, a pair of chairs, a big iron safe, and, Sundance noted, a sawed-off shotgun leaning against the wall, within easy reach of anyone in the desk chair. Rawlings shut the door, turned a key, whirled. He wore town clothes, but there was a Colt set for a cross-draw on his left hip. “Now, mister,” he said, eyes fixing Sundance. “We were talkin’ about fifty thousand dollars ... ”
Sundance lifted the pannier. Rawlings stared, then reached for it. “Not so fast!” Sundance snapped. “There’s things in there belong to me—private things!” Unknotting the tie-thongs, he dug into it and, as Rawlings goggled, began to drop packets of currency on the desk.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Rawlings whispered. “You found the money?” He began to count. “How much did you get back?”
“Whatever was there. The Apaches had no use for it, left it behind. This is all was in the strongbox.” The currency mounted on the desk while Rawlings kept on counting. Finally, groping in the pannier, Sundance said: “That’s it.”
“Forty-nine thousand,” Rawlings said. “A thousand shy. You sure there ain’t—?” Again he reached for the parfleche, but when his eyes met Sundance’s, he drew back.
“I’m sure,” Sundance said.
After a pair of seconds, Rawlings’ taut face eased. “Sorry. Sure. Anybody that would bring back forty-nine thousand wouldn’t hold out an extra one.”
“Likely one of the bucks thought the pictures on it were pretty, took it along for the hell of it.”
“Likely. In which case you’re still due a reward.” He stripped some bills from a packet, held them out. “Five hundred. Enough?”
Sundance hesitated. “Plenty. I’ve got good use for it. But your brother may object. Look, there’s somethin’ I’ve got to tell—” His voice was drowned in a wild roar of excited outrage from the crowd on the street.
Art Rawlings’ face turned grim. “That’ll be Yance bringin’ in the coach. Well, First this cash goes in the vault—” He turned toward the big safe.
Sundance tensed. Now there would have to be an accounting for his actions with the other Rawlings. He shoved the five hundred across the desk. “You’d better put this in there with it. You ain’t heard the whole story yet and—” He broke off, whirling, as the office door burst open.
Two by two, the four men jammed themselves through the door, guns up, and all of them aimed at Jim Sundance.
~*~
He froze, hands uplifted. The first two men stepped forward. The one on the left was a hulking giant, and there was no mistaking his relationship to Art Rawlings. They had the same features, only the mould had been changed in the casting. The face of the man who had to be Yance Rawlings was coarse, bluntly-chiseled, a brutal face beneath a shag of thick black hair. He held a Remington revolver aimed squarely at Sundance’s chest, and there was cold murder in the blue eyes behind the gun. “By God,” he said, hoarse-voiced, “you got your nerve, half-breed. But we seen that spotted horse outside, and they told us you were in here. Now the only question is whether we set fire to you before or after we swing you from a rope!”
“Yance, what the hell—?” Art blurted.
The man beside Yance Rawlings held two matched Navy Colts low and trained on Sundance. “There’ll be no hanging, Yance,” he said thinly. “Not until after he’s had a trial.” He stepped forward a pace, tall, lean, in his thirties, face cleanly chiseled, handsome, mouth wide and almost sensitive beneath a pair of drooping cow-horn mustaches as blond as his hair. On his dusty vest was pinned a silver shield. “We caught this man leavin’ the scene of the crime, Art. Ridin’ like hell away from us. When we gave chase, he opened fire, killed one horse, wounded two others, and we lost him. But I knew who he was the minute I saw that spotted stallion and that yellow hair, Jim Sundance, right?”
Sundance said quietly, “That’s my name. And you—?”
“Tulso Dart, Federal marshal of this district of Arizona. That’s my brother Pliny and chief deputy behind me, and the other one’s Doc Ramsey, a deputy, too. You may have heard of us ... ”
“I’ve heard of you,” Sundance said. Like himself, the Dart brothers and Doc Ramsey had already become legendary figures, lawmen in one Kansas trail town after another, but gunmen first of all, using their skills with weapons to clean up and clamp down any place that hired them to wear a badge. Tulso’s reputation was the most towering of them all; it was said that only Hickok or Hardin could possibly match him for gun speed, and when he shot it was always to kill. Pliny, his younger brother, was only a little slower and not one whit less ruthless, and as for Doc Ramsey—theoretically, the short, wispy little man was a veterinarian. Actually, lungs rotting with tuberculosis, he was a professional gambler and gunman, maybe the worst of the three, never known to hesitate to shoot an enemy in the back.
“Good. Then you know better to make a break. You’re under arrest for murder, highway robbery, resistin’ a lawman, and a lot of other things. Now, before I take you in—” Dart’s blue eyes were strangely blank, devoid of expression, which made them all the more chilling “—you’d better tell us where you hid the money.”
Before Sundance could answer, Art Rawlings stepped aside. “The money’s here,” he said, pointing to his desk.
For a moment the office was absolutely still, as the quartet stared at the huge pile of currency. “All but a thousand,” Art added. “Which likely some Apache took. The rest he brought in in that—” and he pointed to the pannier. “He was,” Art went on heatedly, “the first to hit town with the news of the stage, and he brought back the money of his own accord. And me, I think all of you better put down those guns. Whatever this man is, he’s no highway robber. Suppose somebody had run up on that coach and that open strongbox before you got there—somebody not this honest? Do you think we’d ever have se
en that fifty thousand again—?”
Still no one moved. “Well, I’ll be damned,” Yance Rawlings growled. “This I don’t understand.”
“Me, I understand it clear as day,” said Tulso Dart. “But then I don’t reckon y’all know who Jim Sundance is.”
“No,” both brothers said at once.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” Dart went on, still keeping the Navy Colts leveled. “He’s a goddamn renegade, that’s what he is, and he’s hand in glove with every tribe of hostiles in the West, and that includes the ’Paches. In fact, they say Cochise is his godfather.”
“Listen—” Sundance began.
“Be quiet,” Dart said and jerked the barrel of his right hand gun. “I’ll start at the beginning. Sundance’s daddy was English, a remittance man from one of them old noble families. Drifted west back in the old fur-trappin’ days, married into the Cheyenne tribe. Took the name Sundance because he was the first white man they let join in their sacred Sun Dance. Set himself up as a trader, traveled from Canada to old Mexico, dealin’ with all the tribes.”
He nodded toward the man in buckskins. “So this big sonovagun grew up among the goddam Injuns. Hell, he was a Cheyenne Dog Soldier and they don’t come no meaner than that. Same time, he traveled along with his daddy, met all the other Injuns, was adopted into a whole mess of tribes. Sioux, Cheyenne, Apache, God knows what all, he knows ’em and can speak their language. Like I said, the word is, when he was little, Cochise himself took him on as godson, so he knows the Cherrycows all right.”
“You’re sayin’—” Art began.
“Lemme finish. Back when he was still a kid, they say his folks was ambushed and killed north of Bent’s Old Fort. Three drunk Pawnees, three white men, and they split up. They tell the story that Sundance spent a year trackin’ down all six, and when he found ’em, they died hard and he took their scalps. After that, he joined the bushwhackers on the Kansas-Missouri border, and, hell, he fought on both sides; it didn’t matter to him, as long as he was fightin’. Come out of the war with a gun rep bad as the James boys, and ever since then he’s made his livin’ hirin’ out his gun. Not only his gun, neither—he can kill you jest as quick with a bow and arrow or a tomahawk as a Colt. And—” Dart’s voice harshened “—the devil of it is, he’ll fight on the Injun side as quick as he’ll hire out to a white. One time he’ll be scoutin’ for the cavalry against the Sioux, next time, he’ll be ridin’ with the Sioux against the troopers. Anyhow, he makes a lot of money and nobody knows what he does with it, but he’s always on the prowl for more. And it all boils down to this—he’s jest as dangerous as a six-foot diamondback and you can’t count on him to rattle ... ”
“You think he’s in with the Apaches, then,” Yance rumbled.
“Me, I’d say he likely put ’em up to it—and all the other raids they’ve made against your line. The mastermind. They take the horses and the other loot, he takes the money. Only this time he must have hung around too long and we caught him in the act. And seein’ me and Pliny and Doc, he knew we’d run him down. So he switched tactics, brought the money in to clear himself. Then he’s clean for the next time—”
“Dart,” Sundance said, voice quiet, controlled, “you’re lying and you know it. You’ve been around long enough to know how to read sign. And you know damned well those pony tracks were hours older than the shod tracks of my stud. I’d be some mastermind to hang around two or three hours waitin’ for y’all to come and get me, wouldn’t I? Filling in meanwhile, of course, by loadin’ all the bodies in the coach so the zopilotes couldn’t get ’em. You know damned well why I ran from you—because you came shootin’ first, no questions asked, and if I’d stayed put that whole crowd would have burned me down before I had a chance in this world to explain. Somethin’ else. If I’m the rattlesnake you claim I am, you think I’d have shot horses instead of men to slow you people down? Or brought this money in? You know damned well, too, I hid my trail so nobody but another Indian could have found me, unless I wanted to be found. I brought the money in because it wasn’t mine and I wanted no papers out against me for stealin’ it. But that’s somethin’ you wouldn’t be able to understand.” He grinned, but it was more like a wolf’s snarl. “You see, I know your rep, too. Plenty of graft and rake-off from every gamblin’ hell and cathouse in any town where you ever held a badge. You couldn’t walk past the pennies on a dead man’s eyes without makin’ a grab for ’em—!”
Dart’s eyes showed no emotion, but his lips thinned. “Well, that slander’s somethin’ else you’ll pay for, gut-eater. Now—”
“All right!” Art Rawlings snapped. Suddenly he was between Dart and Sundance. “When a man puts forty-nine thousand dollars on my desk of his own accord that I thought was lost and gone, he gets more hearin’ than this. Yance, did you read the sign?”
“No. I was too damned broke up over Jethro, that pore old bastard—”
“Tom Evans was with you, though.”
“Yes.”
“Call him in.” Rawlings’ gaze went to Dart. “And you and your men put up those guns.”
“The hell you say?” Doc Ramsey broke in. A thin, hollow-cheeked wisp of a man clad in dusty gambler’s black, boiled shirt and tie, his voice was like a snake’s hiss. “We—”
“This is my office. And remember, Dart, it was me who played the main part in gettin’ you this Federal appointment. I can get it revoked just as quick—”
The three men stared at Rawlings for a moment, as Yance went out. Rawlings stood firm, an impressive figure. But so was Tulso Dart, and Sundance could see why his legend had preceded him everywhere he went. There was no humility or submission in the way Dart finally nodded, holstering his Colts. “Put ’em up, boys,” he said. “He’s not fool enough to draw against me anyhow.”
Sundance did not answer. Then the door opened and Yance and the man named Evans entered.
~*~
Tom Evans, Sundance saw at once, was a frontiersman of the old breed, clad in buckskins black with grease, a salt and pepper beard masking most of his weathered face, a huge cud of tobacco in his cheek. “Tom,” Art said. “You were with ’em when they found the stage. You read the sign?”
“I read it,” Evans said thickly, around the tobacco.
“Well?”
“Ole Jethro had the coach right on schedule, judgin’ from the tracks. I figure they hit him about ten in the mornin’, smack halfway between stations. Maybe a dozen braves, all on unshod ponies, at least half of ’em with rifles judgin’ from the empty brass we found. There was a Cherrycow arrow in the coach—it was Chiricahuas, okay.” His eyes flicked to Sundance. “Time we came in sight of the coach, this big ‘un here was just mountin’ an Appaloosa stud. Dart opened fire on him and missed and he took off like a corncobbed dog. The stud’s shod; I seen him outside, and besides, I followed his fresh tracks a long way. I’d say it was a good two hours after the killin’ was over that the shod horse showed up. Seen where the man on the stud dragged the bodies to the coach, loaded ’em in against the buzzards. Strongbox was pried open, empty. What they done, the ’Paches, was bushwhack the outfit. Dropped the wheelers and the outriders from ambush, hit the rest like a flash flood. Come and went double-quick or they’d a raped the women and ever’ dead man would have had his pecker cut off and stuck in his mouth at the very least. But they was too close to town to risk the time. Anyhow, when they hit, there wasn’t no shod horse among ’em. I tried to tell Dart that, but he wouldn’t listen.” He spat a long stream of dark brown juice into a spittoon. “Been me, I’da rode like hell, too, when Dart and the others started shootin’. They didn’t miss by much. Anyhow, him—” he jerked a thumb at Sundance “—come along after the killin’ was all done. More than that, I ain’t prepared to say.”
“That’s enough for me. Obliged, Tom.”
Evans spat again, went out. Art Rawlings turned to Dart. “You’ve got no case that’ll stand up in court. Not that I’ve heard.”
“All the same,” Yanc
e put in, voice savage, “he’s mixed up in it somehow, if he’s what Dart says he is. Cochise’s godson and a half-breed to boot! You didn’t see it, Art … “ He faltered, almost broke. “That coach full of nekkid dead people, that little girl, ole Jethro, the first driver we ever hired! Burnin’ alive’s too good for any man that...”
“Easy,” Art said gently. “I know how you feel. But Tom verifies everything Sundance said ... and above all, he brought the money back. Until somebody shows me more evidence, I’ll have no part in prosecutin’ him.”
“Be that as it may,” Dart said quietly, “I’m ordering him not to leave town without my permission. And that’s an order from a U.S. Marshal, Sundance.”
“He won’t do that,” Art put in before the half-breed could answer. “Now ... Out of my office, all of you. Except Sundance. Him I want to talk to. Yance, I guess you’d better make the arrangements for ... you know ... And the outbound stage. You’d better double the guard on that.” Yance stood there wordlessly a moment, face working, then whirled, went out. Dart hesitated, but when Rawlings said, “You, too,” he slowly turned.
“Let’s go,” he told his brother and the man named Ramsey. “We got things to do. Remember what I said, Sundance.” And they filed out, closing the door behind them.
Chapter Three
When they were, gone, Art Rawlings let out a long breath. “That was close for you.”
“It was close for Dart, too,” Sundance said coldly.
Rawlings looked at him oddly for a moment. “Yeah, by God, I believe it would have been. Well, me, I can use a drink. What about you?”
Sundance nodded, appraising Rawlings. Lacking his brother’s shambling muscle, inbuilt brutality, there was still a core of steel within this man, an icy courage, and cool judgment. He liked Art Rawlings. “A pretty big one,” he said.
