Sundance 11

by John Benteen

“I know that they were real men and you aren’t!”

  “If I didn’t feel in so good a humor, I’d show you I know how a warrior treats a squaw who nags.”

  “If beating me would give you pleasure, beat me!”

  “Later. After I’ve slept.”

  She gazed at him with fury for a moment longer, then shrugged and changed her position so that she was seated cross-legged.

  “You speak English like a white man.”

  “I’m half white, half Cheyenne.”

  “Who sent you after me?”

  “Your uncle.”

  “He really wants me back when he must realize what happened to me?”

  “He has tried every possible way to get you back,” Sundance told her. “The Army, the Texas Rangers, a Comanchero. He sent to San Antonio for me, as a last resort. He’s paying me two thousand dollars to take you back to him.”

  She was silent for a long interval, frowning with thought, then said, “Of course, he would overlook what I’ve become. But what of my mother? And Phil Markham, my fiancé?”

  “They too want you back. Phil has gone to New Mexico, to the ranch of a Comanchero. I’m to take you to him there.”

  “He’ll not marry me now. Unless it’s out of pity.”

  “He’s a damn fool if he doesn’t.”

  She looked surprised, and curious. “Why do you say that?”

  “You’re a lovely girl and you’ve become, I suspect, one hell of a woman.”

  “He’d always hold it against me. It will make him stop loving me.”

  He gazed at her through half-closed eyes, seeing her fuzzily. He was on the edge of sleep. She was very lovely, and extremely desirable. He was going to have trouble restraining himself until he could have her as a man should have a girl.

  In a dreamy voice, he said, “By now you should know how to hold his love in spite of his being touchy about not being the only man to have had you. Hold your head high, Virginia, and look him straight in the eyes. Tell yourself that you had an experience such as damn few women ever have except in their fantasies. And tell him that he can have you only if he feels himself a lucky man to get you.”

  Again she lapsed into a thoughtful silence, but her face became gloomy. “No, I can’t do it. He would marry me because he felt it the decent thing to do. I can’t face people who know me. They would secretly laugh at me whenever they saw me. They would talk about me behind my back. If I married Phil and bore him children, they would find out when they became old enough to know. Someone would tell them that their mother had belonged to Indian warriors. Even if that part of it hadn’t happened, I couldn’t face people because they would believe it had. I’m not going back—ever. I’m going to stay with the Comanches, like those other white women who were captured in Texas and Mexico. Like them, I’ll become an Indian squaw.”

  “You’ve got no say in the matter, my dear Virginia.”

  “Yes, I have—all the say.”

  More asleep than awake because of the marijuana, he said. “And just why do you?”

  “Because I’ll kill you while you sleep,” she said, and the same instant grabbed his knife from its sheath.

  Chapter Eleven

  Due to his having smoked weed, Sundance’s reflexes were so sluggish that if the girl had used the knife at once she might have done him in before he was able to react. But instead of driving the blade into him immediately she got from her cross-legged position to her knees and only then raised it for a thrust. By that time he was alarmed enough to heave up off his back and slap her hard to the side of the head. She was knocked over backward and the knife flew from her hand. She rolled over cat-quick and went after it on her hands and knees, sobbing bitterly.

  He yelled, “Oh no, you don’t!” and dived at her from his seated position, catching her by the hips. She twisted around with a shriek of fury and tried to claw his face.

  “Damn you, I’m not going back home—to be a laughing-stock for everybody!”

  He grabbed her wrists and, when she continued to struggle fiercely, forced her arms behind her back and wrapped his legs about her body. He had her prisoner now, but she wasn’t subdued. She stared at him wildly, her eyes filled with hatred. He knew that if he released her she would make another try for the knife. Her breasts heaved with her hysterical sobbing. He applied pressure to her body with both arms and legs until it got to her and she went limp.

  “All right, you win,” she gasped. “Let me go.”

  “Will you behave now?”

  “Yes ... yes, I promise.”

  He eased the pressure, said, “Come here with me,” and, keeping hold of her by one arm, took her to the blanket. He again lay on his back and pulled her down with an arm about her and her head resting on his shoulder. “Now take a nap,” he told her. “We’ll talk about what you’re going to do later.”

  She settled herself comfortably, and for a little while was silent. He was almost asleep when he heard her murmur, in a drowsy voice, “You’re not at all the man the others were.”

  He woke several hours later to the sound of thunder. The girl still slept with her head on his shoulder but his attempt to move away wakened her. She sat up as he got to his feet, asking where he was going as he picked up his knife and slipped it into the sheath on his belt.

  “I’m going after my horse. It’s on the other side of the river.”

  “Are you taking me with you?”

  “No,” he said, stooping to go outside through the low opening. “I’ll be back. Sounds like a bad storm coming. We’ll have to wait it out here.”

  Glancing back at her, he saw her smile for the first time. It was a smug smile, telling him she still hoped to win him around to staying with her here in the badlands indefinitely. As he left the cave, to find the sky dark with storm clouds and a strong wind blowing, he was jolted by the suspicion that she had found life as a captive to her liking.

  Before setting out for the river, he gathered up those belongings he had left scattered about the area—his shirt, rifle, tomahawk and telescope—and took them to the cave. He then set out through the rock field at a dogtrot. By the time he had crossed the river to where Eagle waited, the sky was so heavy with black clouds the day was almost as dark as night and the wind had risen to gale force. Lightning flared constantly, and the thunder boomed like massed cannon. No rain fell as yet, but dust was swept along by the wind in vast, choking clouds. Before mounting the Appaloosa, Sundance petted him and talked to him in low-voiced Cheyenne. As friendly as a faithful dog, the spotted horse nuzzled him and nickered.

  Sundance swung to the saddle, rode to the river, which was shallow enough for Eagle to cross without having to swim. In an hour or two, it might well be at flood stage. The first of the rain came, a light splatter of huge drops, while the half-breed was still only halfway through the rock field. By the time he arrived back at the cave, it was falling in torrents—a veritable cloudburst. He stripped the rigging off Eagle and tossed it into the cave. He had to leave the animal to weather the storm as best it could, as Broken Nose’s two hobbled ponies would, for the entrance to the cave was too small to bring them inside.

  “Sorry, old boy,” he said.

  Eagle moved off, rump to the wind and head down. It knew nothing of stables and comfortable stalls.

  Entering the cave, Sundance found that Virginia had moved his gear to one side of the cavernous room. She handed him a cloth that had once been a flour sack to use as a towel. As he dried himself, some of the makeshift dye rubbed off his hair to reveal its true color in spots. The girl stared at the gold gleaming through the unnatural black as though fascinated.

  “You are half white, aren’t you?”

  “I didn’t lie to you, girl.”

  “I’m glad that you speak English,” she told him. “It was hard for me with the others. I picked up some of their language, but mostly I couldn’t understand what they said. It’s hard being with a man all the time and not be able to communicate with him except by gestures
and—well, by touch.”

  “By touch?” he said, eyeing her intently—remembering his suspicion that she might be finding her lot as a captive of the Indians to her liking.

  “Well, that’s a common language—one everyone understands.”

  “They treated you well—both Running Wolf and Broken Nose?”

  “Oh, yes. That is, they did after I stopped fighting them.”

  His brown denim pants and moccasins were soaked, and he skinned out of them. He picked up the blanket on which he and the girl had slept earlier and wrapped it about himself, noticing that she didn’t look away during the brief moment that he was completely naked. She had in fact regarded him appraisingly, as though comparing his physique with the builds of Running Wolf and Broken Nose. He was almost certain about her now. She had found captivity bearable because she had, first with Nocona Comanche and then with the Kiowa, become fulfilled as a woman. She had been a virgin until Running Wolf took her into his tepee, and then, after she had fought him and he had subdued her, she had discovered that something primitive in her nature, a feral instinct that had survived generations of civilization, permitted her to respond pleasurably to a warrior not far removed from stone-age man. He wondered if she would find the same gratification once she was the wife of the very proper, overly civilized Philip Markham. He doubted it.

  He seated himself cross-legged, keeping the blanket wrapped about him against the chill brought by the storm. She came to him with a plate of roasted venison and cornmeal mush flavored with wild onions. The food was cold, of course; no fire was possible in the cave because there was no outlet for smoke. Again she sat apart from him with her own plate, as she had learned to do from her captors. Always her gaze remained fixed on him, however, like that of a squaw completely subservient to her warrior.

  Looking at her, he could understand why Running Wolf had made her his favorite over his Comanche wives and why Broken Nose had killed the Nocona and made an outcast of himself. She was somehow especially desirable. Many men back East must have looked upon her beauty and coveted her. Many would again, when she returned there with her mother and Phil Markham. And he, Jim Sundance?

  Yes, he too desired her. But he would not have her if she gave herself to him only to keep him from returning her to her own world.

  If they had been able to have a fire, they would have been cozy indeed. The downpour continued, and the wind swept past the narrow entrance. The winter would have proven a problem for Broken Nose and the girl, but no doubt the Kiowa had planned on having a fire just inside the opening and making some sort of vent in the wall above it. And Virginia? How long would she have been contented with such an existence, Sundance couldn’t imagine. The novelty of being a warrior’s woman would certainly have worn off eventually, leaving her the victim of boredom.

  When he emptied his plate, she came and took it away and then spread one of the other blankets at the rear of the room. She removed her doeskin dress and moccasins, then seated herself cross-legged on the blanket and worked the plaits from her hair so that it hung loose in a coppery cascade over her shoulders and down her back. She then lay supine.

  “If you are a man,” she said softly, “you will come to me.”

  “You can’t get me to change my mind about taking you back where you belong.”

  “I’m not thinking of that now.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Nothing at all. I’m not a thinking person. I’m merely a feeling creature. But you, of course, are not a man as Running Wolf and Broken Nose were.”

  He thought: The hell I’m not. He threw off his blanket and got to his feet, a tall, superbly built male. He had warned her she wouldn’t have her way with him, and so it must be that she genuinely wanted him. He went and gazed down at her, and in the unnatural gloom her shapely young body appeared incredibly white. Here and there it bore blue-black bruises, attesting to the fact that Broken Nose hadn’t always been a gentle lover. She was so slender she looked fragile, but her breasts, the nipples so red and swollen they resembled wild strawberries, were disproportionately large. His heart had begun a sudden pounding, and in his loins desire burned white hot. As he savored her beauty, he realized that he was right about her. She did like being a captive of the Comanches, for her captors had awakened her as a woman and—

  And it’s made her wanton.

  He was shocked by this, for he was convinced that if she had not fallen into the hands of the Comanches she would never have committed an improper act in her life. The desire to become wayward might have come to her at times, but certainly she would never, after having become Mrs. Philip Markham, have strayed off the straight and narrow path.

  She watched him with half-closed eyes, a faint smile curling her lips. “You’ll have to take me by force, since I’m not your wife. I always fight.”

  “That’s why you have those bruises, eh?”

  “I won’t give myself willingly to any man who’s not my husband.”

  He didn’t like her at the moment, but she had aroused him to the point where he would play any sort of game that amused her. He dropped down onto the blanket, and when she fought him, which she did fiercely, with fists and knees, nails and teeth, he quickly overpowered her. She played her little game until the very instant he forced his way into her, and even then she clawed his back and cried in protest.

  “No, please! I don’t want you to!”

  The next instant her arms locked about him in a tight embrace, while her body strained against him and she sought his mouth with her own. He found to his delight that she more than lived up to the promise of her that he had seen in her photograph, back at Snake-in-the-Hole Ranch, when he had decided to search for her even if it meant risking his life.

  Chapter Twelve

  “I hate you, Jim Sundance, for what you forced me to do,” the girl said. “You know that, don’t you?”

  She lay beside him, propped up on her elbows with her chin cupped in her hands. He lay sprawled on his back, indulging himself in the weed now that the storm within them had spent itself. For a long time its fury had equaled that of the one raging outside the cave.

  He gazed at her through a haze of blue smoke, thinking how young she seemed, and really was, to be as skillful a lover as she had proved herself. A moment ago she had asked him his name. Now she was playing that game again, and he realized she was quite in earnest about it. For her to pretend that she had been taken against her will kept her from feeling guilty. Wanton though she was, she had the conscience of her puritanical upbringing.

  “All right, hate me,” he told her. “I’ve too thick a skin to be easily hurt.”

  She made a face at him. “I know you’re tough from the way you got the better of Broken Nose. By the way, you’re a wonderful lover as well as a fierce warrior.”

  “You’re the one who should know.”

  “You can understand now why I can’t ever return to my own people, can’t you?”

  “No, I can’t. And anyway, you are returning to them.”

  “I’ll find a way to keep you from taking me, I promise.”

  “I’ll take you if I have to drag you by the hair.”

  “Oh, no, you won’t.” She was in earnest about this too. “I’ll kill you before I let you.”

  He studied her wonderingly. “You have no feeling at all for me, even after what we were to each other, have you?”

  “I said you’re a wonderful lover.”

  “That’s not the same thing.”

  “You expect me to say I’ve fallen in love with you?” She was scornful. “You’re being stupid if you do.”

  “You didn’t give a damn about Broken Nose, either.” His tone was accusing, condemning. “Or, before him, Running Wolf.”

  “I liked them because they too were good lovers.”

  “You’ve a man of your own sort waiting for you to come out of this wild country.”

  She was scornful again. “Phil Markham! He seemed a good catch, being the scion o
f a banking family and socially prominent, but now I realize that he’s a milksop. He couldn’t be the kind of lover you are. Look, Jim …” She turned onto her side and laid an arm across his stomach. “See the difference?”

  He realized she meant the difference in their skin coloring. Hers was ivory white, his copper brown. He didn’t know what point she was making.

  “So?”

  “So this makes it all the worse. If I had returned after having been the—well, plaything of white men, I would have been in disgrace. Now, because the men were of another race, I’ll be doubly disgraced. You don’t realize how bigoted people in my world are.”

  “Nobody needs to be told. You don’t have to tell a living soul. And why should your mother and your fiancé know?”

  “The whole world must know that I was carried off. If my uncle asked the Army and the Texas Rangers to search for me, the newspapers surely learned about it. The story must have appeared in the newspapers back home. Everybody who knows me would have read it. Of course, it wouldn’t be told that I was forced to be a squaw of one warrior and then carried off by another and finally rescued by a half-breed. But I can just hear my friends saying to one another, ‘I wonder just what happened to Ginny while the Indians had her. Something awful, I’ll bet.’ And then they’d giggle about it.”

  Sundance now realized that she was genuinely terrified of returning to her own world. He decided she was right in believing that people would hold her in scorn and gossip about her. He had rubbed elbows with enough townspeople to know how intolerant they could be, and how especially strait-laced the women were. He remembered that, as a small boy, he had heard his father called a squaw man by a hard case at Fort Laramie. Yes, Virginia Stevens would be a marked woman the rest of her life. As for that dude she was to marry, his main concern, back at Snake-in-the-Hole, had been the possibility that the girl might be bedded by one or more of her captors.

  “I can savvy all that,” Sundance told her. “But there’s this ...You would be throwing your life away by staying out here. You weren’t born to this sort of life, and in time you would find it too hard and boring to bear. Indian women age early. They begin to lose their looks by the time they are thirty. When they get to be middle-aged, they’re as spiritless as—well, as beasts of burden. You’d begin to age soon, and once your looks were gone and no warrior wanted you any longer your spirit would be crushed. You’d do better to go home and try to ignore what people think and say. Hold Phil Markham to the engagement, and once you’re married the two of you can move to a town where you’re not known and have your children there.”