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.
“Well, we’re runnin’ out of daylight, and they’re as through as they’ll get. We’ve got to get back farther into the hills, to the main herd before night. Garvey and his men may already be there waiting for us. Sundance, you’ll ride with us, spend the night? There’s some medicine I think we ought to make together.”
Sundance ran his eyes over the big, gaunt man. “Yeah,” he said after a moment. “Yeah, I think there is.” And as the Navajos gathered the remnants of the flock and drove them into the pines, he swung aboard the stallion. Jokers in the deck, all right; but they would have to wait.
Because of the Navajo horror of their own dead, McCaig tied his horse behind the wagon and drove it himself. Delia Gannt stayed close to him, and Sundance, as self-appointed rear guard, dropped behind, watching their back trail alertly as they headed north and west. McCaig and the Indians knew the country, and they picked an adroit route that led them the easiest way through some of the roughest terrain in Arizona, working ever farther back into the broken country of the Mogollon plateau, which, for a long time until General George Crook had brought them in, had been the last fastness and hiding place of the Tonto Apaches. The plateau itself was good country for sheep or cattle, Sundance thought, but only as summer range. Up here the winters would be bitter, and livestock would not survive them—at least not as easily as in the grassy shelter of the vast basin below.
It was well after sundown when first Sundance smelled the sheep—the odor of a great flock of them assaulting his nostrils like a stench. Along with it came, on the north wind, their flat bleating and baa-ing, mingled with the occasional barking of a dog. Then, in a jumbled country that was a mixture of barren rock and grazing land and stands of pinon, he spotted the winking campfires. The wagon lurched down a slope and presently they had reached the main sheep camp. In the darkness, bedded bands were like dirty blots of snow on the ground, the dogs keeping watch over them conscientiously. And, as they approached, they were challenged in Navajo by a band of six armed men. McCaig answered in the same language, telling them briefly what had happened. There were exclamations of dismay, and then they moved on into camp.
McCaig unhitched the team, left the wagon with its two dead men well distant from the campfires. “In the mornin’,” he told Sundance, “maybe you’ll help me bury ’em. You know how the Diné hate to handle their own dead.” He used the term the Navajos used for their own tribe—like most others, they referred to themselves simply and succinctly as “the people.
“Yeah,” Sundance said. “In the morning, I’ll help you.”
As the word spread, Navajo herders, mostly tall, lean men with impassive faces, began to come in from the outlying reaches of the flock, which covered a wide area. Their head man seemed to be a giant of an Indian whose hair was streaked with gray, his body thick and powerful, without an ounce of fat on it. The name he used was Easy Dreamer, but of course that was only his public name, not his secret, warrior name, which always remained private. Sundance was impressed by him at once, and not least by the fact that he spoke fluent English. He was also better armed than the at least two dozen of his followers, with a new Colt .45 slung low on his right hip, its holster thonged down, and a hatchet like Sundance’s own on his left. Smoking a thin, black cigar, he listened impassively while McCaig told them all what had happened and then introduced Jim Sundance. Sundance had already felt those black eyes penetrating him; at the mention of his name, he thought that, in the firelight, something stirred briefly in them.
When McCaig had finished, a kind of sigh went through the group of Indians. “Now,” the Scot added, “ye’d all best return to your flocks. Except you, Easy Dreamer. We have some medicine to make, and I’d like you with us.”
The big Indian nodded. Then he turned to Sundance. “The others haven’t heard of you,” he said. “They are all young men and not many speak much English. But I learned good English and to read and write at Bosque Redondo. I’ve heard much about you, from the white men and also from the Apaches, who say you are the godson of Cochise. And I remember, too, that many years ago, before the Long Bad March from our homeland to Fort Sumter, your father came to trade among us for silver and blankets. You were very young then, but you were with him, and I remember how you outrode our young men in horse races. Sometimes I have wished that you would come to us and help us as the Apaches say you have tried to help them, and also the Comanche. But you never came.”
“You were at peace,” Sundance said. “The others weren’t. I tried to help make a peace for them.” He spread his hands as McCaig and Delia Gannt watched. “But what I tried was too much for one man alone.”
“What you did was good. Someday you will be able to look back and see how much you have done that doesn’t show right now. Anyhow, it’s good that you’ve come at last. Because—” he gestured to the wagon “—you can see that we’re not at peace now. We are at war. I hope you can help us.”
“I don’t know. There’s a lot I don’t know yet about this situation.”
“Which I’m now going to explain,” McCaig said. “What’s Delia told you?”
Sundance summed it up, as they gathered around a fire and Easy Dreamer carved chunks of roasted venison for them. McCaig nodded. “Fair enough, as far as she got. As she said we met in Prescott and the deal we made was that I’d clear Barkalow out of Bloody Moon Basin in return for her leasing of the grazing rights to the tribe.”
“The tribe can’t enter into any lease agreement without approval of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Army,” Sundance said, voicing what had been bothering him. “You know that.”
“Of course I do. I know a lot of other things, too; that on the reservation the sheep are multiplying so that they’re turning what isn’t already desert into desert. And that’s got to be stopped. So I intend to stop it.”
He gestured toward the scattered flock. “I’m a front man for the Indians, Sundance, neither more nor less. You see all those sheep? Legally, they’re my property. I bought them, band by band, for one dollar a flock from the Navajos. Then I secured permission for their former owners to hire on with me as herders and leave the reservation. When the lease agreement’s taken, it’ll be in my name; so will all the sheep. But actually the profits will go to the Indians themselves, just as if they owned the sheep. In other words, they’ve signed over everything to me, put their whole future into my hands. I do not intend to let them down.”
Sundance said tonelessly, “No insult intended. But you could sure as hell do it if you took a notion to. You’ve got title to what—two thousand head of Indian sheep?—for almost nothing. You get rid of Barkalow, you’ll have a lease on the best range in this part of Arizona in your own name. You could—” he snapped his fingers “—freeze the Navajo out like that and there wouldn’t be a thing they could do.”
“That’s absolutely right,” McCaig said promptly. “Everything depends on whether I’m honest or a crook. Easy Dreamer knows that, all of them do.”
Easy Dreamer said promptly, “I’ve known Andrew McCaig for nearly fifteen years. All of us have. Never once has he betrayed our trust in him. We believe he will do what he says. Of course, if he doesn’t, we’ll kill him.”
McCaig laughed. “You see? I don’t have much choice, do I?”
“No,” Sundance answered, for he knew Easy Dreamer had meant exactly what he said. Navajos always did. “But there’re still things I don’t understand. You aim to go into the Basin and fight Barkalow and hired gunnies like Strawn with Navajos who haven’t been to war in fifteen years? They’d have no more chance than those two Strawn slaughtered on the rim. Anyhow, if you tried it, Barkalow would yell Indian attack and the Army would come in and the tribe would be in worse trouble than overgrazin’ the reservation could ever cause it.”
“Of course, man, I know that. But you forget, I was once a minister, but I’m a Scot, too, and we Scots are born to fight, whether it’s against the devil or against Strawn and Barkalow. As far as I’m concerned, it’s an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. That’s why I’ve hired Coy Garvey and his men. Barkalow uses force, I’ll use force right back.”
Sundance stared at him. “McCaig, you hired Coy Garvey and his outfit?”
“Aye, the leader and seven men, and a rare sum it cost me. They’re due in tonight, I’d hoped they’d be here now. As soon as they show up, they go to work, and then there’ll be no more killing of defenseless men like those two on the rimrock. If Strawn and Barkalow want a range war, they shall have it!” His eyes glittered almost fanatically in the firelight. “Eight of the toughest hired gunfighters in the Southwest, and I myself—that makes nine. And once Garvey comes, we’ll smite Barkalow like God’s vengeance itself!” He put a hand on Sundance’s shoulder. “And now we come to the medicine I had to make with you. I want you to join us.”
Sundance pushed the hand away. “No,” he rasped.
McCaig frowned. “Why not? I know you come high. But whatever your price is, we’re prepared to pay it.”
“We?” Sundance turned to Delia Gannt.
“Yes. I put up the money for Garvey and his men. Andrew has always been so selfless, he’s given everything he’s ever made to the Navajos. And money’s not the question. Getting revenge for Tom’s death, punishing Barkalow, that’s what I want.” Her eyes narrowed. “Is something wrong with Garvey?”
Sundance drew in a long breath. “You two shouldn’t even be allowed out on the street by yourselves. For God’s sake, don’t you know Garvey’s reputation?”
“He’s a hard man, but hard men are called for now,” McCaig snapped.
Sundance turned away, spat into the fire.
“Mr. Sundance—Jim.” Delia’s voice was anxious. “What’s wrong?”
“You’ve had a run-in with Garvey?” McCaig asked.
Sundance turned. “I’ve had a lot of run-ins with him. All you’ve done is made Garvey a present of two thousand sheep.”
“Now, wait a minute—”
“No, you wait!” Sundance’s temper flared. “The least you could have done was check his reputation! Sure, he hires out his gun, his men. And they’re all tough as boot-leather! But Garvey’s word ain’t worth a handful of spit! He’ll hire on with somebody, size up the situation, and if he sees more money to be made in a double-cross, sell out whoever hired him in a second! He’s got no loyalty to anything but a dollar or a peso, and you can’t trust him as far as I could throw Easy Dreamer here with one hand!” The anger ebbing from him, he said tiredly, “How much did you pay him?”
“One thousand dollars in Prescott. Another two after the Basin’s cleaned out. He agreed to that and promised to meet us here.”
Sundance laughed harshly. “Three thousand dollars split among eight men? Garvey wouldn’t even dirty up his gun barrel for that kind of money!”
“But he agreed! Then why—?”
“Because—” Sundance gestured. “These sheep. What would two thousand sheep be worth in Mexico?”
In the firelight, McCaig blinked. “I don’t know. They’re all prime, I saw to that. Surely on one of the big ranchos they’d bring twelve, fifteen dollars a head ... ”
Again Sundance’s laugh was a rasp. “Garvey would be glad to settle for eight, ten, which he’d have no trouble gettin’—after he struck a deal with Barkalow, of course, to bring in a little extra cash. You promised him three thousand to wipe out Barkalow. He’d likely ask Barkalow a thousand over that to lay off, with clear passage across the Basin guaranteed. Then he’d hire some Mexicans, push the sheep across the border, sell ’em in Sonora and collect another sixteen or twenty thousand dollars. Come out of it all with a hell of a lot more than you could pay him, either way.”
“But, man, that makes no sense. What about me, Delia, the Navajos?”
“You’d all be dead,” Sundance said. “If Garvey comes in tonight, by tomorrow night you’ll all be finished. Except maybe Delia. Garvey might take her along. He has an eye for good-lookin’ women.”
“You can’t mean that,” Delia whispered.
“I mean every word of it,” Sundance said. “I know Coy Garvey and how he operates. When you struck your deal with him, the first thing he saw was that you were makin’ him a present of two thousand sheep. Up here in the hills where he’d have a free hand, could make sure there was nobody left alive to know what happened, and the total cost to him a box of cartridges for each man.”
McCaig’s face seemed to sag. “I can’t believe it,” he whispered. “I can’t believe he’d do a thing like that.”
Before Sundance could answer, an owl hooted in the distance. Easy Dreamer, the big Navajo, stiffened. Again, closer, another owl hoot sounded.
Easy Dreamer’s voice was thin and hard. “Well, we’ll soon have a chance to see. That’s the signal—riders coming from the north. It must be Garvey and his men.”
“If you’re right, Sundance,” McCaig said thickly, “then what are we to do? Easy Dreamer—?” He turned. But there was no sign of the big Navajo. He seemed simply to have vanished into the night.
McCaig blinked. “Now where is he? Sundance, what—”
Jim Sundance smiled tightly, hawk nosed face glinting copper-colored in the light of the campfire. “Suppose you let me handle Garvey,” he said. “Delia, get in the wagon.”
“But—”
“Do what I said!” he snapped, smile vanished. “And McCaig, make sure your rifle’s where you can reach it. Now, let’s build this fire up as big as we can make it. When Garvey comes, we’ll need all the light we can get.” And, before he reached for the piled wood nearby, he loosened his Colt in its holster.