Sundance 4

by John Benteen

  “I don’t blame you for feeling like that,” Sundance said. “But there’s another way.” He looked at Chachisi, Beneko. “Why should your women die, even if you do? Why should any of you die, when you can live in freedom?”

  “Freedom.” Nehlo snarled the word contemptuously. “What freedom is there in a land full of white men?”

  “I know where there is some,” Sundance said. “Not far from here, on the Wallowa River in northeastern Oregon. There a big band of Nez Percé lives, under Hinmaton-yalakit, Thunder-Rolling-in-the-Mountains; the white men call him Joseph. Their land is still undisturbed by whites. Whether that will last, no man knows, but for now they live in the old way. They are horse Indians, but once they lived much like the Modocs and still retain a great deal of their traditions. Modocs would feel at home with them; and Joseph is a generous man. He would take the Modocs in.”

  Chachisi sat down flat, laid his gun across his thighs. “I know about the Nez Percé; I lived among them for a year. They are good people, living in a good way.” He turned to the others. “It is a country of high mountains and blue lakes with lots of game. There are no tules, but plenty of meat, and lots of berries, and in the summer, they come down to dig the camas.” His eyes glittered. “It would be good to live with the Nez Percé. Only . . .” He let out a long breath. “There is no way to get there.”

  “I think there is,” Sundance said.

  Nehlo’s mouth thinned. “How?”

  “You know the white man named Wade?”

  Nehlo nodded. “Yes. He is the only one we can trust. He has always been on our side. Kintpuash saved his wife from snakebite.”

  “Wade and I would take you there. We could put you in a wagon, hide you until we were clear of this country. If tonight you left the lava in darkness, came to Wade’s ranch so that no one could see you ... Tomorrow we would start in a wagon for Chief Joseph’s country.”

  The cave was very quiet. Then Chachisi said, “I would like to go.”

  Nehlo turned on him. “Of course you would. You have your woman! She is not being sent east to some strange land. But I ... I am like the wind blowing over the lava. I have no one, nothing; I am alone.”

  “You won’t be alone when I bring your woman to you,” Sundance said.

  “My woman, Nimena, will be sent to the eastern country like a cow the white men ship on their railroad. How can you bring her to me?”

  “I’ll go after her,” said Sundance, “find her and take her out of Indian Territory to Chief Joseph’s band.”

  Nehlo looked at him out of black, glittering eyes that were simultaneously full of longing and suspicion. “You can’t do that. She’ll be a prisoner.”

  “There’s a way I can,” Sundance said.

  “How?”

  Sundance smiled faintly. “Since you’re supposed to be dead, and since I am half white and allowed to travel as I please, I can go to Indian Territory, find your wife and marry her. Once I have married her, no one will stop me from taking her wherever I want to.”

  Nehlo’s breath was sibilant. “Ahhh ... so.” Suddenly there was admiration on his face. “Yes. Yes, that would work.” He looked at Sundance for a moment, then rose. He walked across the cave, leaned against the wall, head pillowed on crooked forearm.

  “They say we Modocs do not love our women,” he muttered, speaking more to himself than to his listeners. “And this is true, many of us don’t. Always very poor, when we came to the traders’ rendezvous, we had nothing to trade but our women; and so the tradition grew in the tribe that women were to be sold like animals. It is a thing I have always hated. From the moment I saw Nimena, my heart was hers. Other Modocs sold their women to the Klamaths or to the white men, but I would have as soon sold my own heart. In this we are alike, myself, Chachisi, Beneko. It is a reason we determined to stay here in the lava.” Suddenly he whirled around. “Goddam you!” he rasped in English. “Don’t you lie to me, you son bitch! You tell me straight! If I leave the lava, go to the Nez Percé, you bring my woman to me?”

  Sundance got to his feet, denim trousers tattered around the knees from the lava, moccasins shredded. “I’ll bring her to you,” he said softly.

  “And not take her for yourself.” There was sudden suspicion and jealousy on Nehlo’s face.

  “No,” Sundance said. “I already have a woman. She is white, but she lives with the Cheyennes. Her name is Barbara Colfax, but they call her Two Roads Woman, and she waits there for me now. The Cheyennes took her captive, and she liked the way they lived, thought it better than the white way, and chose to stay there. I do not need another woman. I will bring Nimena to you.”

  Nehlo stared at him, breathing hard, muscular chest rising and falling, white teeth bared. Then he shook his head. “We cannot decide now. We must talk about this.”

  “Shall I stay here until you decide?”

  Nehlo’s face twisted. “No. We don’t want an outsider around while we do it.”

  “Then I can go?”

  Nehlo hesitated. His voice was harsh when he said: “We will go with you to the edge of the lava. You will be blindfolded again until we reach Tule Lake. We will not have you betray our hiding place.”

  Sundance masked his disappointment. This meant that he would have to search again for the Cave of Ancient Pictures. Still, that was of small moment; the important thing now was to save these Indians. The money was worth nothing beside that.

  “Good,” he said. “I will be at Wade’s ranch. If you decide to go to the Nez Percé, come there tomorrow night in the darkness. Don’t come in daylight; we want no one to see you. But if you come at night, you’ll be safe. The next day, we’ll take you out in a wagon. Once we’re clear of this country, I’ll get you horses, and we can make the trip without trouble.”

  Nehlo lifted his rifle. “Then hold still while we blindfold you again. We’ll give you your weapons when you’re out of the lava. If we will come with you, we’ll be at Wade’s ranch tomorrow night. If we don’t show up, it’ll be because … ” he lapsed from Modoc into English, “... we decided to play out our string here.”

  “Sundance!” Susan Wade blurted. “My Lord! What’s happened to you?”

  It was almost midnight. Sundance had been herded blindfolded through the lava again until he heard the waters of the lake lapping the reed-grown shoreline. When they had peeled the blindfold from his eyes, the sun was already going down. Then, remembering Roane’s warning, he had ridden around the western edge of the lake, through the high bluffs. He had not eaten since breakfast, he had walked miles, blind, over the roughest terrain in the world, his moccasins were cut to ribbons, and his pants, and his knees and feet were bloody. Still, he felt a certain satisfaction. He had done what he had set out to do.

  “I’m all right,” he said, limping into the Wade ranch house.

  “But you’re all bloody!” Susan’s voice was horrified. “Your legs, your feet—”

  “A few scratches. I’d like some coffee and I could eat a horse.” Sundance collapsed into a chair.

  “What about a shot of whiskey?” Glenn Wade went to a cabinet.

  “That would be good. Only one.”

  Wade poured the stuff; it was cheap, strong, but it served its purpose. Sundance felt strength flow back into him. Wade drank a shot himself. “Sundance, did you—?”

  “Find the Modocs? Yeah, I found ‘em.”

  Wade’s eyes blazed. “Will they come out?” He poured another drink. “Will they clear out of the lava?”

  Sundance looked at him, startled by Wade’s intensity. “I don’t know,” he said. “If they will, they’ll be here tomorrow night.” Then, briefly, he told Wade what had happened.

  Wade paced the narrow room while Susan sat at the table across from Sundance. “God, I hope they do! I hope they come out, so I can get Roane off my hump!”

  “Can you really do that?” Susan asked. “I mean, Nehlo’s wife. Marry her and take her to Nez Percé country?”

  Sundance’s mouth twisted.
“Sure. Who cares what Indians do among themselves? Once she marries me, she can go anywhere I can. After all, I’m just another half-breed. Nobody gives a damn about half-breeds.”

  Susan’s eyes clouded. “Don’t say that. Besides ... marriage. Once you’re married to her—”

  Sundance laughed. “It will be only temporary. Nobody will care when I unload her.”

  She looked down at the table. “I guess not. I guess I was taught to believe that marriage was sacred. But ... maybe it isn’t, always. Maybe there are circumstances where . . .” She stood up. “Jim, I’ll make some coffee and cook your supper.”

  When she had gone into the kitchen, Wade came back to the table, poured another drink. “Jim, one more?”

  “No,” Sundance said.

  Wade poured himself a drink, tossed it off. “Damn,” he said, “I hope they do come in, those Modocs! It would solve so many problems for me!”

  “You’re a long way from having all your problems solved yet,” Sundance said. “We’ve still got to get ‘em out of here under the noses of the Army, the ranchers, and the Hell, Yes! crowd. But you’ve got a wagon, and if we can hide ‘em in that, get ‘em at least fifty miles northeast of here, into the high desert, they can switch to horses and cover ground fast on their own. Once they’re in the clear from around here and up in that empty country, they can get all the way to Idaho, if they want to, and nobody will ever see ‘em. There’s not half a dozen towns between here and there. I’ll send a letter along to Chief Joseph. He can read English pretty well. It’s getting ‘em out in that wagon that’s gonna be tricky.”

  “Not so hard,” Wade said. “Up on the north end of my range there’s a big meadow. I cut a lot of hay last month; it’s just cured out. Nobody can’t claim that I didn’t get an order from one of those desert ranches for it for winter feed. I’ll load the hay wagon tomorrow, and if I meet anybody I’ll tell ‘em that’s why. Park it here at the ranch tomorrow night and they can slide in under. We’ll haul out of here come first light. I’ve got five horses, besides my mule. They ain’t much, but they’ll do to get the Modocs up to Wallowa. I’ll hitch that string along with the wagon, say I’m gonna try to sell ‘em, too. That’ll look natural. Everybody knows I need every penny I can lay my hands on to meet that payment of Roane’s.”

  Sundance looked at him steadily for a moment. “About that payment,” he said. “How’re you gonna make it?”

  Wade’s eyes dropped away. He looked down at his glass. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I’ll worry about that after we clear the Modocs out. One thing at a time.”

  “I see.” Sundance kept on looking at him, then got stiffly to his feet and limped to the corner where his gear was stowed. He picked up a pair of saddlebags and lugged them back to the table, where he unstrapped one. From this he took a canvas bag which clinked when he set it down. Opening the drawstring, he poured a pile of gold double eagles into the center of the table.

  “Count it,” he said. “Ought to be just over twenty-one hundred dollars there, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Wade sat open-mouthed, eyes wide and dazed. In the kitchen doorway, Susan made a sound.

  “Go ahead,” Sundance said. “That still leaves me a hundred or so in the other bag—and I can always get more, long as I don’t run out of cartridges.”

  “I—” Wade’s voice faltered, choked. He shook his head. “I—Sundance, I can’t take this.”

  “I figure the extra hundred is for the horses. I’m buyin’ them for the Modocs from you. The rest— If it makes you feel better, that’s a long-term loan, no interest. You can pay me back when you make it here on the ranch.”

  “But, damn it—”

  Sundance touched the rope burns on his neck. “Don’t hand me any argument, Glenn.”

  He turned away, partly to put the saddlebags back in the corner, partly because what he saw on Wade’s face embarrassed him. Behind him, he heard Wade say, shakily: “Susan. Susan, come here. Did you see?”

  “I saw.” Her voice trembled, too, and there was a mist of tears in it. When Sundance turned, Wade had his arm around her and they were both staring at the gold on the table as if afraid it would suddenly vanish, as if they were in a dream. “Jim,” she breathed. “Jim, how can we thank you?”

  He grinned. “Maybe with some supper. I’m still hungry as a lobo.”

  Suddenly she broke free from Wade, ran to him, and kissed him briefly, but hard, on the mouth. She backed off, looked at him with great, grave, moisture-filled eyes. “You don’t know . . .” Her voice was a faint whisper. “You just don’t know ... This ... may change everything for me, for us . . .” Then she whirled, laughed. “I’ll have your supper in a minute.” She ran into the kitchen.

  With a hand that shook, Wade counted the money into the canvas bag. “Exactly twenty-one hundred, Jim. God ... You’ve saved my bacon.”

  “Then we’re almost even,” Sundance said, as Susan appeared with food. “And once we’ve got the Modocs out of here, we’ll be absolutely square.”

  Then, hungrily, he sat down to eat.

  Sundance’s body, naked to the waist, gleamed like bronze in the sun of late afternoon. He rammed the pitchfork in the haystack, lifted an immense forkful, and threw it to Glenn Wade, atop the wagon. Wade worked it into place with his own fork, walked across the load, then called down: “Okay, Jim, that ought to be enough.”

  Sundance wiped sweat off his face, stuck the pitchfork in the ground. “Right. Come on down and give me a hand with the tarp.”

  “Sure.” Wade jumped the ten feet to the ground, landing lithely, catlike. He and Sundance took a moment, standing there in the big meadow which Wade had mowed by hand, with a scythe last month—a staggering task of grinding hard work for one man alone—to smoke a cigarette. As blue plumes trickled from his nostrils, Wade looked south, across an arm of the lake, toward the lava beds.

  “You think they’ll come in?”

  “I don’t know. If they don’t, I’ll go back and talk to them some more.” Then Sundance’s voice crackled. “Where the hell’s your rifle?”

  “On the other side of the wagon.”

  “Get it.”

  Wade frowned. “Damn, you’re jumpy.”

  “The most useless thing in the world’s a gun that’s where you can’t reach it when you need it.”

  Wade stared at him a moment, then loped around the wagon, came back with his Winchester. His eyes swept the meadow and the adjoining hills. “I don’t see a damned thing—”

  “That makes no difference.” Sundance’s own gun was in easy reach beside the haystack, and he had not taken off the holstered Colt, even though it was an awkward encumbrance for this kind of work. “Until this whole thing is over with, you keep your weapons where you can get your hands on ‘em.” He gestured. “Roane on one side of you, the Hell, Yes! crowd on the other, both up to here with grudges against you—”

  “I told you the Hell, Yes! bunch ain’t got the guts—”

  Sundance said quietly, “Listen. You want to stay alive, don’t you count on anything. Don’t you assume anything. I’ll put it to you another way. Archie took a hell of a beating from me the other night. First couple of days, he wouldn’t be feeling like doing any riding. Besides, they had their break in the monotony for awhile—the fight, the attempted hanging. But that was three days ago. Archie’s healed up now. And they’re back where they started, him and his crew. Sitting around that dying town, broke, nothing to do except listen to the wind blow and tell each other the same old stories they’ve heard a million times, and drink themselves full of rotgut. The longer they sit there, the drunker they’ll get, the meaner they’ll get; and when they get drunk enough and mean enough and bored enough again ... Well, that’s when both of us better look out.” He carefully put out the cigarette, making sure no spark was left to set the hay on fire. “Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. Maybe something will happen to distract ‘em, and so maybe never. But maybe in the next five minutes, ten; we can’t
tell. You keep your gun handy.”

  Wade looked at him narrowly. “I guess you’re right.”

  “The fact that I’m still alive after all these years proves I’m right. Let’s get that tarp on the wagon.”

  They wrestled the heavy canvas cover in place over the load of hay that filled the wagon box, lashed it down. Wade had unhitched the team; now they harnessed the horses again. Then Wade climbed up on the wagon to take the reins Sundance handed him. As he reached for the leathers, he froze, straightened up. Then he bent, picked up his Winchester from beside the seat. “I see what you mean,” he said quietly. “Riders comin’. Looks like Roane and some of his men.”

  Sundance whistled up Eagle. The big stallion trotted to him, stood motionless as he swung up—on the right side, Indian style. When he was in the saddle, Sundance turned the horse, followed the direction of Wade’s gaze. Roane and three men had entered the meadow from the south, loped toward them.

  Sundance jacked a round into the Winchester, laid it on the saddle before him. Roane and the others were galloping now, closing the distance rapidly. But, Sundance saw, they had not pulled their own saddle-guns; their carbines still rode sheathed in leather.

  The rancher hauled in his bay before the wagon, men fanning out behind him. Left hand on the reins, right hand held high, he ran his eyes over the wagon. “Sundance,” he said. “Wade.”

  “Roane, you’re on my land,” Wade said, tipping the muzzle of the Winchester toward him.

  “Not yours yet.” The big man smiled faintly, without any humor. “Besides, we’re just takin’ the shortest route to Hell, Yes!”

  Sundance stiffened. “Why Hell, Yes?”

  Roane’s eyes were opaque. “I don’t know that that’s any business of yours. I ride where I want to, and I don’t answer questions about it. Wade, I see you’re haulin’ hay.”

  “My, you got good eyes,” Wade said wryly. “Yeah, I’m haulin’ hay. Up northeast, into the high desert, where it’ll bring a premium price.”

  “It’ll bring a premium price here. I didn’t know you had any to spare. But if you got some, I’ll pay you as much as you could get anywhere else and save you the haul.”