by John Benteen
Once they had—the Navajos—been a mighty tribe, warriors as well as herdsmen. But during the Civil War, the government had assigned Kit Carson and plenty of soldiers to break them, round them up, and march them to Bosque Redondo, near Fort Sumter, New Mexico, where they were, along with the Mescalero Apaches, held captive for four years, dying like flies from white man’s illnesses against which they had no immunity, half-starved on the scant rations issued by corrupt agents.
First the Mescaleros had broken out; then the Navajo, in 1868, had been allowed to return to their lands, to start all over again in their fight to make a living. Gradually, as small bands of sheep were issued to them, they’d gone back to herding, built up their flocks, tended their gardens again, but the country was too bleak to yield a living to all of them, so there would be plenty of them available for McCaig to hire to handle his own flocks. But, Sundance thought angrily, it was one thing to hire men to tend sheep; it was another to use them as pawns, pushing them straight into a range war they might have no idea they faced. Sundance stood up, tightening the cinch. If that was what McCaig had done, he had an idea he’d like the sheepman even less than he had Barkalow.
It was cool and pleasant up here in the mountains, and Eagle, in his element went briskly, needing little guidance from his rider to find his way northward through the trailless country. Overhead, the arching branches of pines interlaced to veil the sky and they traveled under a green canopy, to the accompaniment of the constant soughing of wind through pine needles. Once or twice they passed the remains of mountain lion-killed deer, but there was no sign of human beings. Not until the sun was starting to ease down; then Eagle snorted and swung his head, ears pricking forward.
Sundance reined up, hand tightening on the rifle. Sharp as it was, his own hearing was far less acute than the horse’s. He cocked his head, held his breath—and finally, mingled with the sound of the incessant wind, he heard it, coming from far away; the howling of a dog.
Listening, he nodded. Yes, a dog, all right; not a wolf. The difference was unmistakable. Anyhow, wolves would not be howling before dark. Frowning, Sundance sat motionless for a long moment. Then he turned the stallion toward the sound, which eerily went on and on, rising in volume as they neared it. The hair prickled on the back of Sundance’s neck. Then, ahead, he saw it through an opening in the pines: a mountain meadow, the yellow canvas of a sheepherder’s wagon, and a strange carpet of dirty white against the meadow’s green, as if it were littered with giant snowflakes. At that instant the dog’s howling ceased, and everything was still, except for another sound, the blatting of sheep, many of them, in agony.
“Hell,” Sundance grated and touched the stallion with his heels. It lanced forward, but even as it reached the clearing, there was a savage growl and from a clump of brush, a dark, wolf-shaped form launched itself for the horse’s throat. Eagle snorted, shied, and Sundance heard the dog’s teeth click on emptiness as, having missed its target, it landed a few feet away, pivoted, and crouched to spring again, its dark fur matted with scarlet, its fangs bared.
“No!” Sundance roared. “Down!”
The black border collie, its chest white-ruffed except where blood had stained it, hesitated. Sundance spoke quickly, mustering Navajo words from his memory. “The sheep. Go to the sheep.” Visibly, the dog’s tension lessened, understanding now the words in which it was addressed. “Go,” Sundance said, pointing.
After a long moment, the dog slowly turned, limped off toward the meadow. Sundance, mouth a thin, set line, followed it warily. Carefully, before leaving the shelter of the pines, he reconnoitered the meadow.
It was a shambles. Dead sheep lay everywhere. A few wounded ones dragged themselves around, bleating pitiably. A handful, unharmed, huddled together at the edge of the clearing. Painfully the dog loped toward them.
But it was not the sheep that held Sundance’s attention. It was the two men who lay sprawled in the grass near the wagon, face down. The black velvet shirts they wore were stained with red; so were their Levis. But they had died fighting; in one’s hand was a Winchester, and the other clutched a Colt.
Sundance breathed an oath, rode into the slaughterhouse that was the clearing. The dog, exhausted, sat down by the huddled sheep, licked the wound where a slug had creased it, threw back its head and howled. Then it stretched out in the grass, eyeing the half-breed watchfully.
Sundance put his horse up to the bodies, looked down at them. Navajos, all right. He stared up at the sky, grimaced at the sight of low-circling buzzards. Some that had already landed and were gorging themselves on dead or dying animals took off with a rushing sound, flying clumsily, gorged with meat.
Satisfied that his presence would keep the others at bay a while, the half-breed circled the meadow on the Appaloosa, reading sign. To him, what had happened was as plain as if its perpetrators had left a written record.
There were the tracks of six horses shod in the white man’s way. The grass they’d crushed down had long since sprung back up; all of this had happened much earlier, likely while he’d been having his upscuttle with Barkalow in town, which was why, working through the mountains, he’d heard no shots.
Anyhow, the dog had scented them first, given the alarm as they’d approached the meadow through the woods. They’d answered that by shooting it, though they had failed to kill. And, as the herders had sprung to arms, they’d charged on in, guns blasting. Each dead Indian had taken at least a half dozen bullets Once the Navajos were finished, the riders had begun killing sheep. Methodically, they’d slaughtered this flock of well over a hundred leaving behind a litter of spent brass, empty revolver and rifle shells in the grass. Not bothering to finish off the wounded, missing a few of the flock entirely, they’d been satisfied with the damage they had done and galloped off in the direction from which they’d come. Sundance, swinging the horse back toward the two corpses, let out a long breath. Now he knew where Beecher Strawn had been today when Barkalow had needed him.
And damn that McCaig! Sundance thought bitterly, staring down at the two dead Indians. It had been nothing but cold-blooded murder to leave the two Navajo herders to fight against such long odds by themselves! McCaig should have known Barkalow would throw everything he had against them, that they had no chance against a man like Strawn, backed by others of his kind. McCaig might as well have killed them himself, in cold blood—
But let that ride. Right now, these corpses had to be protected from the predators. Then the badly wounded sheep, though it would take more ammunition than he could spare, must be put out of their misery. Sundance swung down. The dog, loyal to its masters even in their death, growled, but it simply lacked the strength for another attack; it tried to rise, fell back.
Gently but powerfully, Sundance hoisted each blood-soaked corpse by belt and collar, carried it to the sheep wagon, and wrestled it inside, without any particular ceremony. Navajos themselves abhorred contact with death, believing in an afterlife beneath the surface of the earth even grimmer than the one they lived above; their world was haunted by the ghosts, they believed, of the dead, and usually these meant nobody well. Compared to that of the Cheyenne, their beliefs were complex, and the world more a place to be feared than enjoyed. This would have been a task they loathed even more than he did.
With it done, he turned away, strode toward the blood-nervous stallion. He had just caught its reins when it snorted, sidled, pricked its ears. Sundance whirled, hand instinctively dropping to his Colt.
But he was too late. “All right, you,” the tall man on the gray horse said, muzzle of his rifle lined on Sundance’s belly. “Freeze right there. Ye pull that iron, ye’ll be dead before ye know what hit ye.”
Sundance let his hand fall away from the Colt, staring at the five riders who had emerged from the pines, the sound and scent of their approach blocked by the blatting and rank smell of sheep until too late.
They walked their horses toward him. The man who’d spoken was gaunt, rawboned, with a shag of iron g
ray hair. In his mid-fifties, his face was seamed by weather, his blue eyes flaring with outrage. Behind him were three Navajos, with a motley collection of firearms pointed just as unwaveringly as the gaunt man’s. And the fifth, her horse keeping pace with the gaunt rider was a woman. In her early thirties, she wore a sombrero, leather jacket over blue denim blouse, divided leather skirt. Her hair was black, her skin pale, and not even the shock written on her face masked the beauty of clean-cut features, violet eyes wide with horror. She was the only one not aiming a gun at him.
Sundance let out a long breath. “You,” he said to the gray-haired man. “You must be McCaig.”
“Aye, that’s my name. I’m Andrew McCaig.” His voice was like the tolling of a funeral bell, richly accented with a Scots burr. “And as for you, we’ll have your name before we hang ye, so we can put it on the marker of your grave. Because, for the horror ye’ve done here, hang ye we certainly will.”
Three
For a moment, the clearing was silent. Then, himself full of rage, Jim Sundance said thinly, “McCaig, I’m not the murderer. You are.”
It was not what McCaig expected. His white brows went up, his eyes turned lambent. He spurred the gray forward. “You! Ye dast call me that after ... after this?”
“Hell, yes. Anybody that would send two men and a hundred sheep right up to the rimrock without any backing and knowing a man like Beecher Strawn was on the loose—”
“Strawn? What d’ye know of him? Well, of course, you work for him and Barkalow—”
“Right now, I work for nobody.” Sundance’s voice was like the rasp of iron on iron. “And if you speak Navajo, suppose you tell one of the men with you to read the sign and then tell you if I did it.”
McCaig bit his lip. Then, in Navajo even more fluent than Jim Sundance’s own, he said: “Two Dreams Man. Read the sign, tell me what happened.”
Wordlessly, one of the Indians put his spotted mount forward, circling the clearing with head down, like a tracking hound. No one spoke or moved as he did that. Five minutes later, he raised his head and his eyes, black as coals, raked over Sundance appraisingly. Then he swung his horse. In Navajo, he said: “No. It was not this one in the Cheyenne clothes.” He recounted what apparently happened exactly as Sundance had interpreted it. “This one came later, found Water Rock and Yelling Man already dead and loaded them in the wagon. It was,” he added bitterly, “the white man Strawn and his people, all right.”
Sundance followed his speech with slight difficulty. He had lived among the Navajos, but the language was complex and he had not used it in some time. McCaig, though, seemed to understand perfectly. He let out a long breath and slowly lowered his gun. “All right,” he told the Indian. “You and the others see to the dog and the wounded sheep. We’ll save what we can.” Then, to Sundance, in English, “It appears ye’ve told your story straight. So I suppose I owe ye apologies. But I haven’t yet heard your name.”
“Sundance,” he said. “Jim Sundance.”
Again McCaig’s white brows went up, and all the Navajos looked at the half-breed. “Wait a minute,” McCaig said. “Ye’d be the Jim Sundance? Delia, this may change things. This may change a lot of things.”
The woman looked puzzled. “Andrew, I don’t understand.”
“He’s a gunfighter,” McCaig said. “A hired gunfighter. And his reputation, anyhow, is the equal of Strawn’s any day. Only he fights for a different reason.” Relaxing in the saddle, he went on. “He’s half Cheyenne himself. And it’s said that what money he makes, with his hired gun goes for the Indian cause.” With sudden decision, he sheathed the rifle, dismounted, came forward with his hand out. “As I said, ye have my apology, lad. I hope ye’ll accept it. And this—” he indicated the woman. “—is Mrs. Delia Gannt. She’s the real owner of Bloody Moon Basin.”
McCaig’s hand was solid, rock hard, as Sundance took it. The woman, dismounting, had a hand slim and soft. “I’m sorry that we wronged you, Mr. Sundance. All this is so gruesome—”
Sundance nodded. “Yeah, it’s gruesome. McCaig, you still haven’t explained why, if these are your sheep, you let two defenseless herders bring them out here on the rim where they were sitting ducks for Beecher Strawn.”
“I didn’t let them. And they aren’t my sheep, they belonged to the two dead men. They were under strict orders to hold them with the rest of the big herd ’way back in the mountains, but they didn’t listen. They were warriors and their blood was up, and they pushed their sheep out here on their own. But Mrs. Gannt’ll explain all that to ye. Right now, there’s a mort of work to be done. When it’s finished, I want to hold a powwow with you, but now what I’m worried about is Strawn and his men comin’ back. Delia, ye fill him in while I get done what needs to be.” And he turned away, a big man with head bowed low, giving orders in their own language to the Navajos. Promptly, they obeyed, while McCaig mounted his gray again and with drawn rifle took position on the rim, standing guard.
By the wagon, Sundance rolled a cigarette and lit it. “All right, Mrs. Gannt. Suppose you tell me what’s going on here?”
Her face was pale. “Beecher Strawn. You seem to know about him. Maybe you know about Barkalow, too. Lem Barkalow.”
“Yeah, I know about him.” Sundance told her what had happened as he watched the three Navajos go about their work, first treating the wounded dog, then adeptly tending those sheep capable of being saved. After which, in order to waste nothing, they pitched in, shearing the dead ones. Color came back to Delia Gannt’s lovely face as Sundance recounted his story. Once she actually laughed. “You did that? You made Lem Barkalow walk? Out of town, ahead of you, in front of everybody? Wait’ll Andrew hears!”
“Yeah. Well, I think you’d better tell me about Andrew. And what’s going on here.”
“Of course. But first I’d better begin with myself. Andrew told you I owned Bloody Moon Basin.”
“From the looks of it, Barkalow has got it hard and fast.”
Delia’s eyes shadowed. “Yes, he has it that way now. But he’s not going to keep it if we can help it. I tell you, it belongs to me and I’ve got papers to prove it. Or did have.”
“Go on.”
“Once the Indians were cleared, the Basin was declared public land. Tom, my husband, was a cowman, and he formed a syndicate, took up and proved titles to the whole basin, then bought the other members of the syndicate out. He wanted to go into ranching in a big way, so he bought a herd from Barkalow in Texas for delivery to the Basin. And that was when the trouble started. Barkalow brought in the herd, saw the Basin, and decided he wanted it for himself—so he took it.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that,” Delia answered bitterly. “He reneged on the deal, wouldn’t sell the cattle to Tom and wouldn’t move ’em out. Tom tried to fight back, and Barkalow brought in Beecher Strawn and a bunch of hired gunmen that follow Strawn like jackals behind a lion. Tom wouldn’t have me mixed up in the fighting. I protested, but he sent me back home, back East to Columbus, Ohio. The next word I had was of his death. One of his men met me in Prescott, told me that Tom’s horse had come in riderless with blood on the saddle and they’d found his body out on the range with two bullet holes between the shoulder blades. After which, Barkalow had thrown the fear of God into anybody in the Basin who’d ever had anything to do with Tom; even ... even taken over our ranch house itself, the one we built together.”
“What did you do then?”
“Went to the law in Prescott, of course. Right up to the governor. After all, Tom’s deeds were recorded in the court house there. But when we examined them, we found that Barkalow had recorded new ones, showing he’d bought the property from Tom. The governor and the U. S. Marshal said there was nothing they could do. I rode in to the Basin myself—”
“Alone?”
“Of course, I’m not afraid of Barkalow, Strawn either.” She held her head high, and Sundance felt a thrust of admiration. This was a lot of woman. “But what could
I do? They just laughed at me and I was helpless, even though I was in a white-hot rage.”
Sundance nodded. The Indians had most of the dead sheep that bore any wool worth saving sheared now. They were experts, working with unbelievable speed. His eyes went to the gaunt figure of McCaig, in sombrero, gray shirt, black pants, mounted on the big gray horse, wholly alert. Somehow, the Scotsman was almost like an Indian himself.
“So where does McCaig fit in?”
“Well, I went back to Prescott, and that was where I met Andrew. He’s an unusual character, and the Indians trust him and adore him. You’d never know it to look at him, but he started out as a Presbyterian missionary at Bosque Redondo, when they were captive there. But, as he says, when he saw people starving and needing a chance to make a decent living by standing on their own two feet, he decided helping them do that was really God’s work, not thumping a Bible at them. So he resigned his ministry and pitched in to help the Navajo. When they went home to their reservation, he went along, as a trader, not a preacher, to make sure they got a square deal on what they bought and sold.”
“I see.”
“Anyhow, once they got back to the reservation, the Navajos began to multiply. The land they were allotted wasn’t nearly enough to graze their sheep on, so Andrew was in Prescott, trying to get the government to enlarge the reservation. Of course he got nowhere. But then we met and he heard my problems and I heard his—and we struck a deal.”
“What kind of deal?”
“I wanted Barkalow out of Bloody Moon Basin. The Navajos had to have more range to graze their sheep. Andrew promised to get rid of Barkalow for me if I’d lease part of the grazing rights in the basin to him for the Navajo to range their flocks on.”
“I see,” Sundance said, but he didn’t. There were a lot of things not clear in his mind, a lot of jokers he could spot in this deck. But before he could start asking questions, McCaig galloped the gray horse toward them.
