Sundance 11

by John Benteen

  Quanah reached for the gourd and poured more whiskey into his own and Sundance’s tin cup. He sipped the rotgut in silence, a brooding expression on his craggy face. The half-breed drank but sparingly, realizing that too much of the cheap whiskey would make for a morning hangover.

  Finally Quanah went on, “Soon after the girl was stolen by Broken Nose, a message from the Comanchero, Esteban Montoya, was delivered to me. He wanted me to meet with him at the Valley of Tears. I went with some of my warriors, accompanied by Nocona and some of his braves; Montoya came with gifts, which is not the way with Comancheros. It was clear that he wanted something. When we parleyed, he said he wanted the white woman and would pay much for her. Fifty Winchester rifles, five thousand rounds of ammunition, and ten casks of whiskey. I held my tongue, but Nocona admitted that it had been a Nocona war party that took the girl. He did not tell that she was no longer in his village but had been carried off by the Kiowa, whose whereabouts was unknown.”

  “And then?” Sundance prompted as Quanah drank more whiskey and remained silent.

  “And then the Comanchero said he would return with the trade goods at the next full moon and would take delivery of the woman.”

  “Nocona thinks he will find her by that time?”

  “He hopes the Great Spirit will so favor him,” Quanah replied. “But so far he and his warriors have ridden this way and that without cutting any sign of Broken Nose and the woman. It was as though they vanished from the face of Mother Earth—or never existed.”

  Sundance studied the Chief’s face which was now so hard it might have been chiseled from rock. The half-breed sensed that Quanah was holding something back.

  “And you, my friend ... you have no knowledge of where they are?”

  Quanah maintained his brooding silence for minutes longer, and even then did not answer Sundance’s question.

  “I held my tongue at the rendezvous at the Valley of Tears because I wanted no part of the bargain,” he said. The whiskey had gotten to him. His voice was thick, his words slurred. “Nocona will use those rifles for a great raid on Texas. He is still young, and he is filled with hatred for the White-Eyes. If he goes raiding on such a large scale, it will surely bring the soldiers into the Staked Plains in such number that the ground will indeed tremble under the hooves of their horses. And, as you say, they may force a Comanchero to guide them here to our villages. Then there will be a great battle ...”

  “Which the Comanches and Kiowas will surely lose,” Sundance said. “And then, defeated, you, a proud people, will be corralled on a reservation—to live like caged animals.”

  He said this, then no more. Now Quanah Parker must tell where Broken Nose and the white woman were, if he knew. And he must know. That had to be what the aging chief was holding back. Quanah refilled his cup from the gourd. He was well on the way to being drunk. Although half white, he was no better at holding his liquor than a full-blooded Indian.

  “Broken Nose is now a renegade warrior,” he said. “And a renegade is the most dangerous of all warriors.”

  “I’m not afraid of him, Quanah.”

  “He will kill from ambush.”

  “Men have tried that with me more than once.”

  “He may kill the woman if he becomes cornered.”

  “I’ll not give him the chance.”

  Quanah drank again, belched, and shook his head. “So much depending upon a woman, when a woman is only a woman. I can’t send my warriors with you, my friend. Nocona would look on it as an unfriendly act, since he too wants to get hold of her. I don’t want a blood feud between the Quahadis and the Noconas. You will have to go after her on your own.”

  “That is how I would have it.”

  “A few days ago some of my people returned from the breaks of the great river to the north, the one the white men called the Canadian. They had gone to gather plums from the trees there. Two of the squaws saw Broken Nose there in the rough country.”

  “With the white woman?”

  “No, alone.”

  “They are sure it was the Kiowa?”

  Quanah nodded. “They were bathing in the river, these two. He rode out of the brush and made sport of them. To see Broken Nose once is to know him forever. When they cried out, he rode away fast—before any of the Quahadi men could come.”

  “Was this told to the Noconas?”

  “Not a word of it,” the chief replied. “The women talked of it to my wives, and they told it to me. I summoned all those who had been there after plums and commanded them to seal their lips about Broken Nose forever—or I would punish them.” He looked uncertainly at Sundance, as though bleary-eyed. “Now I have broken the silence and told you.”

  “And I’ll tell no one—certainly not the Noconas.”

  “I want no trouble with the Noconas, who are spoiling for blood. As for the renegade Kiowa, he will certainly kill you for trying to take the woman from him. This is something I know, my friend.”

  Quanah drank again, belched once more, then lay back on the buffalo robe. He muttered, “A woman is only a woman, after all. Why die for one?” A moment later a sound of snoring revealed that he had drunk himself into a stupor.

  Jim Sundance sat a moment longer, his blood having run cold by the chief’s word. Had Quanah Parker been merely making whiskey talk or had he, while in his cups, come by the insight of a prophet? There was one way to find out, which was of course by going into the wild country of the Canadian River breaks where Broken Nose was holed up with the girl. Maybe the Kiowa would kill him, as Quanah had foretold. And maybe a woman was only a woman. But he would not give up his quest for her. Not only had he given his word to her uncle that he would attempt her rescue, but again, as his mind conjured up that picture of her that he’d been shown by her fiancé, he felt the heat of desire in his loins. The truth was, Jim Sundance was quite willing to lay his life on the line in hope of knowing her as Running Wolf had known her and Broken Nose was perhaps knowing her this very moment.

  Rising, he left the lodge, spoke farewell to Quanah’s wives who sat about the fire in front of the tepee, and went to his Appaloosa. He mounted and rode away from the Quahadi village, the far-off Canadian River his destination—and the green-eyed, flame-haired Virginia Stevens filling his thoughts.

  Chapter Eight

  As Sundance pressed the woman hunt day after day, without finding a trace of his quarry, he felt as though he were looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. For one thing, the Canadian River stretched in a meandering course from the mountains of eastern New Mexico across the unexplored Texas Panhandle and over the breadth of Indian Territory where, at long last, it spilled into the Arkansas. For another thing, here to the north of the Palo Duro Canyon it ran through rough country—badlands—where a warrior of Broken Nose’s cunning could choose any of a hundred and one places in which to hole up with his woman captive.

  The Cheyenne half-breed knew his own almost limitless capabilities, but, as the days passed, his self-confidence became shaken. How was he, he asked himself, to find the renegade Kiowa when Nocona and his warriors were unable to do so? When he became most dispirited, he argued with himself that the Noconas merely wanted the young woman to barter with the Comancheros and therefore their efforts would not be as thorough as his own—for he had developed a personal interest in the search. He wanted to keep the Nocona Comanches from getting their hands on those fifty Winchester rifles, and he also wanted to return the girl to her own people—her own world.

  But most of all he had looked upon a photograph and had a desire to—well, yes, possess the girl who had posed for it, if only for a brief time. In this, he realized, he was no better than Running Wolf, who had made Virginia his squaw, or Broken Nose, who had stolen her. Partially civilized Jim Sundance might be, due to his having been sired by a white man, but because of his Cheyenne blood his nature could become at times as feral as that of the most primitive Indian. His obsessive craving for the white girl with the flame-touched brown hair
and green eyes was a case in point.

  For six days he prowled the tortuous breaks of the Canadian directly north of the Palo Duro, and on the seventh he rested. Early in the afternoon of this day, he was rewarded. As he lounged about his camp on the south bank of the river, he heard the far-off crack of a rifle shot. He tensed, caught up by hope. He listened intently for a second shot that would tell him the direction of the rifleman. No second shot came, and he could only test the course of the faint breeze that had carried the sound to him. It came from the west, which meant that whoever had fired that single shot was upstream of him by some miles. He saddled Eagle and rode out, and an hour later came to where someone had killed a deer and butchered out one of its hindquarters.

  Searching for more signs, he found a few footprints and hoof marks. The hunter wore moccasins, and his mount was unshod. An Indian certainly. He had taken his venison and traveled farther upriver. Riding slowly, his rifle across his saddle, Sundance tracked the man until he lost his sign. He was not surprised that Broken Nose, if it had been he who shot the deer, had made his kill so far from his hiding place. That was the sensible act of a cautious man. A foolish man would have done his hunting close at hand and thus revealed his hideout.

  Late in the day Sundance came to a range of craggy bluffs. He dismounted, left Eagle ground-hitched and, taking his rifle and telescope, climbed to the top of the bluffs. From here he had a view of a vast area of the malpais, and by crouching among the brush that grew there he could remain unseen by anyone watching even from far off. With his glass, he scanned the area upstream of the river and saw nothing of any humans in the jumble of rocks, brush thickets, and draws. Somewhere in this maze Broken Nose must have his hideout camp, and yet ... yet certainly the Noconas would have searched the area thoroughly. Sundance began to feel puzzled, frustrated. How the Kiowa had eluded him after killing the deer, he did not know. How the warrior had hidden himself and the girl from Nocona and his warriors, he could not imagine. Cunning as the devil himself, Broken Nose.

  Sundance began to think he would have to fine-comb every foot of that rough country to find the pair, but such a painstaking search would be risky—maybe even suicidal. Broken Nose would become aware of his presence and bushwhack him. One well-aimed rifle bullet … Hell, he’s not hiding along the river!

  This thought popped into the half-breed’s head of its own accord, and he held to it tenaciously. The Noconas hadn’t been able to find him because he wasn’t holed up where logic said he should be. True, he had appeared at the river when the group of Quahadis had been gathering wild plums, but the fact that he had let himself be seen while ogling the two squaws naked in the water was proof that he felt his camp was safely hidden.

  Grinning with satisfaction, Sundance used his telescope to study the rough country far back from the river. He did this patiently and thoroughly, and finally he was rewarded by spotting a wispy tendril of smoke rising in the still air deep in an area of boulders and rock slabs that resembled a gigantic graveyard. The smoke, certainly from a cook fire, was so distant that he well might have missed it but for his intense concentration.

  With his camp deep in the rock field, Broken Nose either made a long trek to the river when in need of water or he’d found a water hole back there. And by hiding in such a desolate place ... no wonder the Noconas had failed to find him.

  Sundance studied the area for some minutes longer and came to the conclusion that the Kiowa’s hideout camp was not invulnerable. A rider making his way through the rocks would be easily spotted and as easily bushwhacked. But a man on foot ... Having made his decision about how to go after his quarry, Sundance descended from the bluffs. He left Eagle at their base, where there was water and graze, and forded the river on foot.

  Two hours later, with the sun beginning to set, he was deep in the rock jungle and lay belly down on a little knob of ground. Using his telescope again, he now had a view of the renegade’s camp. It was a cave in the side of a small rise of ground. Nearby was a tinaja, a rock-bound spring.

  Farther away two hobbled ponies grazed. The cook fire, the smoke of which had led Sundance here, was outside the entrance to the cave, and it was now burned down to a handful of embers. The girl came from the cave, bent over because of the low entrance. She wore a shapeless blue calico dress of the sort sewn by Indian squaws, several strands of brightly colored trade beads, and moccasins. Her red-brown hair, gleaming brightly in the last rays of the sun, hung in two plaits, one to either side of her head. She walked to the tinaja, and there removed her moccasins and dress, then, naked except for her necklaces, waded into the little pool of water.

  Having her in his glass, Sundance could see her shiver from the chill of the spring water. She had picked up a small pottery vessel from the bank of the pool and now used it to dip water to pour over herself. A primitive way for a young white woman to bathe, the half-breed thought. This one was certainly used to warm water and fragrant soap. But the fact that she was bathing at all impressed him. It certainly meant that she was not hopelessly dispirited over being the Kiowa’s captive.

  Evidently she had nothing with which to dry herself, for when she came from the water she simply put on her moccasins, then picked up and carried her dress as she walked slowly back toward the cave.

  She was as lovely of face and figure as Sundance had imagined. No, that was not true, he told himself; she was even lovelier than he had visualized when fantasizing about her. The burnished red-brown hair, the exotic green eyes, the perfectly formed features, the ivory skin—the body of a goddess. Almost as though aware that she was the object of male appraisal, she stopped and gazed out across the rock field in every direction. This gave him an opportunity to study her face. No despair showed there. Her expression was placid ... like that of a squaw contented with her lot. She might have been looking for the return of her man, and, since she knew he was on his way, showed no anxiety. It was as though captivity for her was no ordeal. To a degree, this shocked Jim Sundance. He would not have believed that a white woman would have borne up so well under being carried off to be the squaw of first one and then a second copper-skinned warrior. He supposed that this said one thing in the favor of both Running Wolf and Broken Nose: they had treated her gently.

  Broken Nose!

  In ogling the young woman, Sundance had forgotten that the Kiowa was as deadly as a sidewinder. Instantly alert, he looked about without rising from his prone position—afraid even to raise his head. He sensed danger, and knew that he had been played for a dupe. Captor and captive had known someone had entered the rock field, and the warrior had sneaked out to waylay that someone. Meanwhile, to distract the intruder, the girl had emerged from the cave and gone to the tinaja—and what better way to distract a man from even a threat to his very life than for a woman to disrobe in front of him?

  Sundance swore under his breath, his anger directed at himself. Between them, they’d almost done this to him—for he glimpsed a furtive movement out in the jungle of rocks behind his position on the hump of ground. Now a shot came, and the slug kicked up dirt beside him even before he heard the report. Close, too close. The second slug struck rock and screamed as it ricocheted. The Kiowa was one Indian who had mastered the white man’s firearm—to perfection. Sundance broke out in a sweat from tension—from being a target. He squirmed about while trying to make himself small among the rocks and brush, so that he could fire back. The third shot came, and he felt as though an unseen fist had clubbed him to the left side. He heaved over in a frantic roll and let himself tumble down the side of the hump, the side away from Broken Nose. He had his rifle and telescope with him, but he dropped the latter to feel where he’d been hit. Blood was seeping through his doeskin shirt. And by now Broken Nose would be circling around to get another shot at him.

  A finishing shot, by damn!

  Chapter Nine

  From where Sundance had fallen to save himself from taking another of the Kiowa’s bullets, his view was sharply limited. The profusion of ro
cks and brush, and the knob of ground itself, formed a cul-de-sac about him. Broken Nose could make a stealthy, unseen approach and fire that finishing shot before Sundance knew the renegade was even close. He had to get away from the spot, and he could do so safely only by crawling through the boulders and thickets. He snaked his way forward for perhaps twenty minutes, ending up in a brush-fringed arroyo deep enough to give him some cover.

  Crouching there, he lay his rifle aside and untied the lacings of his doeskin shirt to examine his wound. To his relief, he found it to be merely a crease just below his left ribs. It was still bleeding, but not profusely. He took a bandana handkerchief from his pocket and wadded it over the wound, then laced his shirt tightly to hold the makeshift bandage in place. Taking up his rifle again, he peered one way and another through the dense growth of bushes in an attempt to spot his adversary creeping up on his position. He saw nothing, heard nothing. He might have been alone in the rock field. Broken Nose gone? Not a chance. The Kiowa was close-by in the thickening dusk, waiting to see or hear him.

  With his left hand, Sundance picked up a fist-sized rock and hurled it fifty feet farther down the gully. It struck the ground with a thump that seemed explosively loud in the taut quiet. The sound drew no response from the Kiowa. An expert at the stalking game, Broken Nose. Evidently he had played it too often in the past to be tricked into reacting before he was ready. And he would only be ready when he had a clear target.

  Sundance did not make the mistake of thinking this was a Mexican standoff. The odds were in no way even. He was pinned down, and Broken Nose, if long on patience, could keep him huddled there in the arroyo indefinitely—outwait him in safety and comparative comfort. Hell, the Kiowa could drag it on for days, meanwhile having the woman fetch him food and water while his enemy suffered from the lack of both.