Sundance 7 Read online

  “You go down there in the draw and wait for me. I’ll scout ahead.”

  “Yes.” Doris Bucknell had learned to obey his commands implicitly. As he dropped off of Eagle, she gathered the Appaloosa’s reins and loped her own good horse down into concealment. Sundance, rifle in hand, went up the hill on foot, running low, crouched, and before he reached the crest, flinging himself on his belly, peering around, not over, a tuft of grass.

  Before him, the land stretched endlessly, emptily. Once Cheyennes, Blackfeet, Piegans, a few stray Flatheads and Nez Percé, and Crows from the south had ranged across these hunting grounds above the Yellowstone. Now the Indians were gone, only a few hundred white men were left to fill the hugely vacant land. Since there was no gold out here, and they had not yet come with cattle, Sundance did not expect to see anyone, and he was right. Satisfied that the way was clear, he ran back down the slope with a wolf’s easy, loose-jointed gait, and joined Doris Bucknell in the draw.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “We’ll camp here.”

  “Good,” she said, rubbing her sunburnt face with relief.

  Sundance looked at her. A week had passed since Drury had taken them in Deadwood and they had fought free. But she was still in shock; too much had happened to her too fast. As he helped her make the camp, showing her again how to build a nearly smokeless fire of dried sage and buffalo chips, he let his mind run back over the events of those seven days.

  In the alcove of the tunnels, she had slept like someone dead in his arms. Long before dawn, Mr. Tsu had awakened them. “Your horses are here and everything that you wanted. I think it would be well if you left now.”

  “Yes.” Sundance had followed him down a long tunnel, and with Doris had climbed a ladder that brought them out through a trapdoor in the forest south of town. There, two hulking Chinese held the horses, and they were, as Sundance found when, meticulously, he checked, loaded with everything he needed. When he had boosted Doris into the saddle and swung up himself, he had gathered her horse’s reins and, striking Eagle with his heels, had wasted no time. Climbing a ridge, he had halted once, turned; below, he saw in torchlight glare in the forest Mr. Tsu. Sundance raised his hand, the Chinese did likewise, and then Sundance rode on with Doris following.

  He had wintered here with the Sioux many times and knew the Black Hills like the back of his hand, and he went down hidden creeks and across barren ridges, exercising all the arts he had learned from every Indian tribe, and he had an idea that Drury, unless he also had an Indian tracker and that one a genius, could not pick up the trail. It was not Drury he worried about now. It was the United States Army. After all, the Army was behind Drury, and it sent the tentacles of its patrols out everywhere, in every unexpected direction. It had begun to build a ring of forts to hem in what had been northern high plains Indian territory, and Sundance knew that Drury must have been in touch with Sheridan in Chicago, and Sheridan must have telegraphed or sent by riders’ messages to all his forts in the West. Look out for Jim Sundance …

  The Army had Crow scouts, and the Crows were good fighting men. It had recruited Cheyennes, too, and also some Sioux; with the tribes starving, you could buy anybody if your price was high enough. So it was not just Indian against soldier; it was Indian against Indian. Sundance was certain in his own mind that Drury would have mobilized all the forces of the Western Army under Miles and Howard against him.

  That was why he traveled like a hunted animal, always masking his trail, always checking the land over the next ridge before he moved on.

  Now, in the draw, he put a loin of antelope killed this morning with his bow on to cook and looked across the fire at her. Her green dress was tattered, revealing legs and bosom; the rough jacket of antelope hide he had made for her did not cover her much. Her hair was tousled, tangled, and most of it tied in a pigtail behind her neck. All the same, she bore up well. Sundance, looking at her, knowing that here there was comparative security, for the first time in a week allowed himself to feel a natural response. She was a woman, and he had been without a woman for a long time. All the same, he was, he told himself, no Drury. She was as safe with him as she wanted to be.

  They ripped into the antelope loin almost savagely, and Doris’ cheeks were smeared with grease. Swallowing, washing down the meat with water from a canteen, she said, “You still haven’t told me, really, where we’re going. To the Bitterroots?”

  “No. I lied to Bucknell, of course. That’s not where they are.”

  “Then where?”

  Sundance did not answer.

  Doris sat up straight. “Jim!” There was anger in her voice. “Don’t you think we’ve been together now long enough for you to trust me? I’ve paid twenty thousand dollars and ... and if anything happened to you, I’d be left high and dry! Aren’t I entitled to something?”

  “I’m sorry,” Sundance said. “But even if I told you, you couldn’t find them without me. And if by some chance Drury should take us—”

  “I see,” she muttered bitterly. “You think he might ... torture the information out of me. So I’m not to have it, despite the money I’ve paid.”

  “Look,” Sundance said. “Those horses are all Joseph and his people have. If I can get ’em out safely, well and good. If it turns out I can’t, then they can stay where they are indefinitely. There’re two warriors with them, and eventually they’ll come out and let Joseph know where they are and then maybe he can still sell them. But I’m not going to take the least chance of Drury or the Army getting them now. Anyhow—” his voice was hard “—if we don’t get ’em out, the chances are that neither of us will be in shape for twenty thousand to mean anything to either of us, one way or the other. We’ll be dead.”

  Her mouth thinned. “All right, so I’m to be kept in ignorance. You’re a stubborn man, Jim Sundance.”

  He shrugged. She had a right to be angry with him, but his first duty was to the Nez Percé, and there was no help for it. “I’ll tell you this much,” he said. “We’re not headed for the horses now. We’re bound for Canada.”

  “Canada?”

  That’s right. To Sitting Bull and his Hunkpapa Sioux. After Little Big Horn they went there, under the Queen’s protection, and now they’re about the last free Indians left north of Apache country. The horses are in such a place that I’ll need help to get them out and to the railhead, three men and a woman can’t do it alone, not and defend ’em against Drury or the Army, too. Joseph was heading to join up with Sitting Bull when the Army caught him, and a lot of Nez Percé did make it. I’m gonna ask them for help. With fifteen or twenty fighting men, I know I can get the horses out and to the railroad, and when I do that, then I’ll give you title, and not even the Army will dare interfere with the property of a British subject.”

  His voice softened. “I know it sounds like I don’t trust you. But that’s not true. It’s just that things have to be a certain way and—”

  After a long moment, Doris nodded, and the anger left her face. “Yes. Yes, I understand. All right, I won’t ask about the horses again. I’ll just follow where you lead and try to help and not to hinder.”

  “Thanks,” Sundance said, meaning it.

  She turned her face away. Presently, almost as if to herself, she said, “I don’t think I ever met anyone like you in my whole life. I suppose, in a way, you’re like a patriot fighting for his country. Only your country is this—” She swept out an arm to encompass the whole vast lonely territory. “And its citizens are the Indians.” Then she said, still not looking at him, something that startled him. “Jim. My period of mourning for John is over. He always told me that if he died, I must not mourn too long.” She did look at him now, and he tensed, recognizing what he saw in her eyes. “He always said that I must go on living. And ... Jim. We have a long way to go together.”

  “Yes,” Sundance said. “We do.” He stood up, and as she shrugged out of the antelope hide jacket and reached for the fastenings of the tattered dress, he exulted in the chanc
e to forget Drury and everything else for the moment, and, quickly, knowing what she wanted, wanting it, too, he went to her.

  ~*~

  Riding north, they crossed the Yellowstone, the Missouri, and followed the valley of the Milk. Sundance moved now with even greater caution; patrols. were always out along the border, lest Sitting Bull go to war again and swoop down unexpectedly. Three times, from a distance, they saw blue clad troops moving like ants across the enormous land, but Sundance saw to it that the soldiers never caught a glimpse of them. But, he thought, it would not be this easy coming back with ten or twenty men, and even harder when the horses were out of their hiding place and in the open. Meanwhile, of Drury there was no sign.

  Then there came a day, nearly four weeks out of Deadwood, when Sundance touched Eagle with his heels and the stallion broke into a dead run, with Doris, surprised, lashing her mount to keep up. But the stallion only raced for a few hundred yards; then Sundance pulled it up, danced it around. As Doris came alongside, he pointed. The granite marker and the cairn of stones around it was almost hidden in tall grass, but they were north of it. “Now,” he said with triumph in his voice. “That’s the boundary, we’re out of the United States and in Canada. We may have to worry about Drury, but at least the Army’s off our necks, and here you’re a citizen. All we’ve got to worry about is the Northwest Mounted Police, and there’re nowhere near as many of them as there are American soldiers.”

  Doris sighed with relief. “Thank God, it’s almost like being home. But why should we have to worry about the Canadian Mounties?”

  “Because,” Sundance said, “they’re not going to take kindly to anybody leading twenty or so Indians still classified as hostiles back into the U.S. So we’re better off dodging ’em if we can.” He swung the stallion. “Now, on to Sitting Bull. We’ve still got nearly five hundred miles to go.”

  As they pointed north again, Sundance thought that it was no wonder that the Hunkpapa Sioux had fled to this place and remained. This country was as Montana had been until five years ago. Buffalo still grazed on endless rolling prairie, moose and elk were shadowy in the big forests. Once they saw a grizzly on its hind legs, watching them with unfearing curiosity, like some huge, shaggy idol.

  Nine days over the border, Sundance began to see signs of former camps, circles of campfire stones, the drag marks of travois, abandoned meat-drying racks. Increasingly, these signs were fresher. There were a lot of Indians up here in Canada right now, most of them Sitting Bull’s Hunkpapa oyati, but Minneconjou, Sans Arc, and Black Moccasin Sioux as well. Sundance had no need to look for them; he knew they would find him first.

  They did. Crossing the divide between two creeks, they traveled through the dimness of a spruce forest. Horses had been along this trail not long before. Presently, without knowing how, Sundance became aware that they were being watched. There was not a sound, nothing more than the constant mourning of breeze in treetops, but they were there, in the woods. He rode on with his hands high, well away from his guns.

  Then, with no warning, they appeared. Like drifting fog, five of them, on horseback, materialized in the trail ahead; more were on the flanks and others in the rear; they were encircled, and a gasp broke from Doris.

  “It’s all right,” Sundance said. “Stand fast.” He raised one hand, addressing the leader of the Indians who barred the trail. “Haukolah, Hawk Circling. I haven’t seen you since the Greasy Grass.”

  “Sundance.” The man trotted his spotted pony forward. He was in his thirties, muscular, and he had fought well at Little Big Horn. He carried a rifle cradled in his arms, and he leaned out of the saddle to take Sundance’s hand.

  After the greetings were over, Hawk Circling, too polite to inquire about the woman, said, “So you finally tired of the old place. You have come here to be free again.”

  “I have come to see Sitting Bull and Yellow Wolf of the Nez Percé. He’s with you, isn’t he?”

  “Yes. We’ve many Nez Percé with us. In the old days sometimes we fought them, but now we are all one people. Come on, I’ll take you to the camp.” He turned his horse, and motioned with his hand. “Hokay hey! Let’s go!”

  ~*~

  For Sundance, it was like coming home after a long absence. There were no more Indian camps like this below the border.

  Here, in the valley of a creek, a hundred lodges or more, sending pale fingers of smoke skyward, ranging up and downstream on one bank; on the other grazed a huge pony herd. Among it Sundance saw a few Appaloosas. Buffalo, deer, elk and moose meat dried in plenty on racks among the teepees, and there was the nostalgic fragrance of sweet grass mingled with wood smoke. Doris Bucknell drew in a breath of awe.

  “Take a good look,” Sundance said, as they rode through the camp, Hawk Circling going ahead to chant the news of their coming. “You may never see its like again.”

  When they halted in the middle of the village, men, women, children crowded in around. Many knew Sundance and called out greetings and he answered them in turn. Then they made way as a tall, brawny Indian in a Hudson’s Bay blanket strode through to where Sundance sat the Appaloosa. There was excitement and a kind of hunger on his handsome face. “Sundance! It’s good to see you! You have news from Thunder Rolling in the Mountains?”

  Sundance shook his hand. “I have, Yellow Wolf, but it’s not very good. I’m glad you’re here. You’re the one I want to see—you and Sitting Bull.”

  Yellow Wolf, Hermene Moxmox, of the Nez Percé, was years younger than Jim Sundance, but even so, he was the most famous breeder of horses among the Nez Percé, save for Joseph the final authority on the management of the herd. He had also been among the fiercest fighters of the tribe, and Joseph had forced him to leave to look for the women and children separated from the band and to take them to freedom. Horseman and fighting man, he was also tribal historian, and his eyes were keenly intelligent as he looked at Sundance. “Yes. We must talk about Joseph. We have many things to talk about.”

  Then Sitting Bull appeared, dodging through the door of one of the largest lodges, which was ornate with picture writing. The great leader of the Teton Sioux, mastermind of Little Big Horn, had aged in the past two years, Sundance noted. His hair was threaded with silver, his forehead furrowed. But he was still erect, if not tall, muscular, and his handshake was firm. “You have a new woman? You have not stolen her to bring the Mounties on us, or to make trouble with the Queen?”

  “No,” Sundance said. “She is a subject of the Queen who comes of her own free will. But she needs the help of Sitting Bull and Yellow Wolf.”

  “Then come into the lodge,” Sitting Bull said. “And we will talk.”

  Doris looked around with curiosity when they entered the teepee. It was compactly arranged, with fighting gear neatly stowed, buffalo robe beds, and back rests made of rib bones and wood around the fire. A special concession was made; she was allowed to stay with Sundance and sit with the men. There was smoking, eating, and then, after the other women had withdrawn, the serious talk began. Although Sioux still occasionally raided below the boundary line, the leader of the Hunkpapa was hungry for news and so were the other chiefs who had joined them. Yellow Wolf was the most impatient of all. “Joseph,” he said. “Tell me about Joseph.”

  Sundance did, and slowly Yellow Wolf’s face grew hard. “He should have known it,” he said bitterly. “He should have known that they would not keep their promises. He and all the rest should have run with us or died fighting ... Kansas. A strange land and a bad one, I have heard it from the Modocs.” Then he leaned forward. “But the horses, the stallions and the mares. You have saved them?”

  Sundance nodded.

  Yellow Wolf’s eyes lit. “Where are they?”

  Slowly, Sundance shook his head. “I can’t tell you that yet.”

  There was a moment during which all the friendship seeped out of the Nez Percé’s face and it was like something carved from stone. “You can’t tell me? Those are our horses, Sundance! They belong t
o us, to the Nez Percé! We need them now, here, in Canada!”

  “They are Joseph’s horses,” Sundance said. “And Joseph is leader of the Nez Percé. Still. Even of you, here in Canada. He has made me promise not to tell where they are until they are safely sold and delivered ... into this woman’s hands.”

  Yellow Wolf stared at Doris. “Sold? To her? To a white woman? No! Joseph can’t do that with our horses! You can’t!”

  “There is no other way,” Sundance said.

  Yellow Wolf sprang to his feet. “I think there is! I think—” Instinctively his hand went to the Colt on his hip. “I—”

  Then Sitting Bull was up, between them. “Wait,” he said harshly. “Wait and let Sundance finish. Maybe he still has things to say.”

  “I have things to say, all right.” Sundance’s voice was rough, too. “About starving women and children and ... Sit down, Yellow Wolf and listen!”

  Yellow Wolf’s nostrils flared and he drew in a long breath. But his hand came away from his knife. “All right,” he said. “Then talk. I will hear you out, but I still say—” He broke off and sat down, and Sundance leaned forward and began to speak.

  When he was through, Yellow Wolf still sat tensely, unreconciled. “I still do not think—”

  Sitting Bull interrupted him, his deep voice gentle, but strong. “My friend.”

  Yellow Wolf turned to stare at the Sioux Chief. Sitting Bull’s face was grave. “It is not pleasant, no. But in these days few things are. You and the other Nez Percé here could use those horses, yes. But your lives do not depend on them. Look—” He gestured. “You live still in your own way in country like your home. You still have buffalo to hunt and mountains to climb to pray on. Most important of all, you still have freedom, and the chance to make a choice, for on the day when you choose to die like a warrior, you can do it. But Joseph and the others, your friends and relatives. They have nothing left; no buffalo, no mountains, no freedom, and only one way to die, and that by hunger or disease in a strange, far country. It is our way when we have something to give it to those who have nothing; that is why we took you in when you came to us last year. You have much, now, still, and Joseph very little. It is up to you to make things equal, to give him what he needs. It is not my affair, but I know Jim Sundance; he is my godson. If he says this is true, it is true, and if he says it is right to do it thus, it is right, and if he says Joseph needs the money for the horses to feed his people, then I think the horses are more important to Joseph than to you. I only know that if I had the horses and selling them would help my people penned up below the border like the white man’s pigs, I would sell them, and at once! But it is not my affair. I have spoken.” Sundance knew he would say no more on the subject. The decision was up to Yellow Wolf.