So far there had been no killings. A big fire burned in the center of the canyon like a beacon. One Indian sat pounding on a saddle bag as if it were a drum; another rhythmically hit an empty cognac bottle with a knife blade. Five more danced unsteadily around the fire; two lay sound asleep, and one of those was Uklenni. The rest of the Apaches giggled and quarreled over a monte game like kindergarten children, their weapons laid aside. Sundance stared in fury at von Markau. “You see?” he rasped in English. “Now do you see what I meant?”
The Baron stared at the spectacle of fifteen Indians roaring drunk on four bottles of cognac. “Sundance, I am sorry, I did not realize—”
“Realize! I—” He stopped. “Well, the damage is done.”
Von Markau’s hands caressed the huge bag between his feet. “Perhaps not so much. The cognac’s all gone. One night’s carouse. Is that so harmful?”
“You’d better hope it isn’t.” Sundance cast an eye at the shadowed rimrock all around them. “You’d better damned well hope there’s nobody else on the track of this treasure or even in these mountains. Because that fire and all this racket will bring ’em like buzzards to a carcass.” He spat disgustedly. “And I can’t even leave you to scout. If I did, I’d probably come back and find your throat cut.”
Von Markau touched his pistol. “I can take care of myself.”
“Oh, sure. You saw how they went for that booze.” The minute the Apaches had seen the bottle in von Markau’s hand, they had been like wolves on the hot scent of game. And Uklenni had been the first and worst of all. Even as the Baron had lowered the quart of cognac, still nearly full, the Apache leader had, quite without ceremony, snatched it from his hand. “Thank you, brother,” he grunted in his own dialect, rammed the bottle in his mouth, drank long and deeply. And in that instant, the others had already swarmed about von Markau’s horse, rummaging in his saddle bags.
He had brought four bottles, and they found them all. And there has been nothing Sundance could do. Once someone was his friend, an Apache would die before stealing from him. But whiskey was different. That was a rare treat, to be seized and shared, and they swarmed all over the four quarts, arguing, laughing, drinking greedily, everything else forgotten. The cognac was high proof, the sun strong, their bodies dehydrated and their systems unused to alcohol; the effect was instantaneous. Fifteen white men sharing four bottles might have become a little tipsy; the Apaches were quickly dead drunk.
“Yeah,” Sundance grated, “you can take care of yourself, all right. Listen, they’re mean, now, not responsible for their actions. One comes at you, you’d have to put a bullet in him to stop him. Then the rest would be all over you and—” He made a chopping gesture. “You’d better just hope they don’t decide they want to divvy up all that pretty stuff in the bag. They’re liable to kill both of us if they do—and then be sorry in the morning when it’s too late.”
He sat down beside von Markau. “Well, I’ll side you.” His rifle was cradled across his knees, and Eagle, the warhorse, guarded his rear. “Let’s hope they just stay good-humored. And tomorrow morning, they’re gonna feel like hell and—” He stiffened. One of the Apaches, a brave named Bu, the Owl, had left the card game, was lurching across the firelight toward them. His voice was thick, his eyes glittering, as he mumbled in Chiricahua dialect:“Tiswin. More tiswin.”
“There is no more tiswin.”
Bu knew a little English. “Goddammit,” he growled, “you give me one time tiswin. You got more. Pletty damn much more . . .”
“I said there is no more!” Sundance snapped.
Bu swayed, mouth a slit in a mask of a face. “Lie,” he grunted, in Apache language once again. “Yellow-headed Apache is no Apache, only white-eye liar. And wants tiswin for himself.” His hand dropped to a sheathed knife. Sundance swung the rifle muzzle around, centered it on his chest.
The gunshot was thunderous in the confines of the canyon.
Bu stood on tiptoes, eyes wide, clutched his back. He opened his mouth and blood poured from it. Then he fell sideways, dead before he hit the ground.
“Sundance!” von Markau cried in horror.
Sundance stood frozen for a split second, the unfired rifle still in his hand. Then he roared: “Out of the light!” He fell backwards, too, hit von Markau, seized the man’s shirt, dragged him over. They rolled out of the circle of yellow fire gleam just as the canyon wall to the right came alive with spitting orange gunflashes, and the sound of rifles crashed from rock to rock like thunder.
Sundance rolled again, landed on his belly, tilted up the Winchester, worked the lever. Around the fire, the dancing Apaches halted dazedly. Then every one of them went down beneath a withering sleet of lead. The man who beat the saddlebags screamed, fell backward. The cognac bottle in the hand of the other dissolved in shards as a bullet struck it. Then the next blew off the top of his head.
Sundance saw that much as he returned the fire from the slope above, pumping round after round from the Winchester at those orange flashes. He heard a man cry out up there, a thin, reedy sound, but the shooting went on. The card players had scrambled to their feet, leaped for their weapons. None made it; he saw them whirl, crumple, fall. It was as if a mighty hand had slapped them all. Then Uklenni and the other sleeping Indian were on their feet. Uklenni, dazed, took one step forward. A rifle bullet caught him in the mouth. He was jerked backwards into darkness beyond the firelight. The last Apache fell across his feet, three bullets in his chest; and now Sundance’s gun was empty. He rolled over, scrabbling desperately for cartridges from his belt, shoving them through the loading port. But while he did that, the canyon fell silent, save for the frightened snorting of the animals.
Sundance rammed in the last cartridge the gun would hold, rolled back into firing position. “Von Markau,” he began, “swing around outside the firelight. See if you can get Uklenni’s rifle. Don’t try for your own, it’s where they can see you. There’s ten, maybe fifteen men up there and—”
A voice sliced through his words. “Sundance,” it roared from up above, and in the chill night, the echoes bounced it back and forth from cliff to cliff. “Sundance, Sundance ...”
Sundance froze. “They know your name,” von Markau whispered.
The voice came again. “Sundance! Von Markau! This is Gannon!”
“And yours,” Sundance rasped.
“Gannon? Who—?”
“The one man I was afraid of. In Tucson with a bunch of hardcases when we left. Somehow he got wind—”
“Sundance! We know you’re down there, you and the Dutchy! We know you got the treasure, too! You might as well give up! All your Injun friends are dead, and we got the canyon mouth blocked. Neither one of you has got a prayer! We can come and take you any time we want to.”
Sundance clenched his teeth. Wild fury flamed in him. “Then come ahead!” he roared back defiantly. “Maybe you’ll get us, but we’ll get some of you!”
“Shore!” Gannon yelled back from the slope above. “But there’s a joker in the deck. A damn purty one! Her name’s Miz von Markau, and if you and that Dutchman don’t give up, we’re gonna cut her throat! You see, we got her with us up here, and either you throw down your guns, or you and her husband can listen to her scream awhile before we finish her!”
Beside Sundance, von Markau made a strangled sound. “Herta? How—? Mein Gott—”
“You don’t believe us?” Gannon bellowed. “Listen!”
There was a second’s silence before the night was shattered by a woman’s scream. “Walther!” she wailed. “Walther, in the name of heaven—”
“It is she!” von Markau rasped. “How did they get her?” Then he got to his knees. “Herta!” he cried. “Herta, are you there?”
His answer was another scream. “Walther, please—”
“Get down,” Sundance rasped. “You can’t help her now.”
“Yes. Yes, I can.” Suddenly Sundance felt a hard pressure in his ribs. He recognized it at once, the muzzle of a pistol.
Von Markau’s voice was hard, cold. “Those fiends up there have my wife. I don’t know how they got her, but I’ll not have her tortured. Drop your gun, Sundance. We give up.”
“Von Markau, don’t be a fool. We can get out of here in the dark, then have a chance—”
“And Herta may be dead.” The Baron’s voice rose, quavered, and the pistol barrel burrowed harder into Sundance’s ribs. “No . . .” Von Markau’s voice broke. “I have ruined it, ruined everything, and for that I am very sorry. But now I must think of my wife. On your feet, Jim, without your gun.”
There was nothing to do but obey.
Sundance let go the rifle. As he got up, he felt von Markau pull revolver, knife and ax from his belt, throw them out into the firelight. Then von Markau rammed the pistol in his back. The Austrian’s voice was full of grief. “Out where they can see us, Jim.”
“All right,” Sundance said thinly. He raised his hands and, prodded by von Markau, walked slowly into the firelight, bracing himself for the bullet that he was sure would come. To his astonishment, it did not.
“You’re a smart man, Dutchy!” Gannon yelled. Then Sundance heard him say, “All right, boys, let’s go down.”
Ten minutes, fifteen, passed. Sundance stood there beside the fire, von Markau’s pistol in his back. Once the Baron said, in a trembling voice, “Jim, you must understand—”
Sundance did not answer. There was nothing to say. It was bitched, all bitched, and fifteen good men were dead, thanks to von Markau’s patriotic fervor and stupidity. If the Apaches had been sober, no one would have got within rifle shot of them without the alarm being given. He only stood there, stoically, as the outer darkness came alive with the sound of many men approaching.
Gannon’s gang came into the firelight. The red-bearded man himself was first to appear, a rifle leveled. His handsome face had wholly recovered from the effects of Sundance’s beating. His teeth gleamed white in his ginger beard as he trained the gun on Sundance. “All right, Dutchy. We take over now. You can throw that pistol away.”
Von Markau made a sobbing sound. Then he threw the Smith and Wesson into the darkness. At that instant, the rest of them were there with drawn guns, surrounding them. Sundance saw the man called Jessup, Gannon’s black-mustached major-domo. At first he thought Jessup wrestled ahead of him a Mexican boy, arm held in a hammerlock. Then he tensed. That was no boy: it was Herta von Markau, eyes wide, face pale, hair falling from beneath her sombrero, breasts heaving under her tight shirt.
When he saw her, the Baron gave a wordless cry, took a step forward. Gannon swung the gun. “Stand hitched, Dutchy.”
Under the threat, von Markau froze. He and the woman looked at one another. “Herta,” he whispered, “how—”
She turned her face away.
Gannon moved forward, still grinning.
“That’s a right hot little piece you got there, Dutchy!” He jerked up the gun as the Baron rocked forward. “She didn’t hang around the fort long after you and Sundance took off. No, sir, she went into Tucson, where the action is.”
“Herta,” von Markau groaned, voice despairing. “You—”
She shook her head, staring at the ground. “Walther, I am sorry. I did not mean—”
“You betrayed me,” he whispered.
Gannon laughed again. “You’re damned well right she did. Come into town a-prowling. I spotted her right off. I mean, I can recognize a slut like her from a mile away, and I moved in. I’m a good sweet-talker, von Markau, and she was kind of all stirred up by what she called a ‘real frontiersman’. On top of which, I’m ten years younger than you. You’re a little long in the tooth for a kid like this, ain’t been keepin’ her happy, seems like—”
“He lies,” Herta von Markau whimpered. “It was only ... I was lonely.”
“Lonely,” the Baron said, and the contempt in the single word was like a blow.
“Oh, she was lonesome all right. Lonesome enough to bed down and git drunk with me. She don’t hold her likker well, Dutchy. She talks a lot. Told me about a treasure, even had a map—”
“I gave her a duplicate,” von Markau said dully, “in case something happened to me—”
“Shore. When I got my hands on it, me and my boys took off right away, brought her with us. Figured she might come in handy for bargainin’ in case things got tight. Besides, she keeps the blankets warm at night.” Gannon chuckled. “We trailed pretty far behind, but we made it up fast. Saw a damn fire, heard all sorts of drummin’ and singin’, knew it must be you and Sundance and them Apaches we cut sign of. But we shore never expected to find ’em all sittin’ ducks for us. When we finally come up, we saw ’em finishin’ off the bottles. Figured it would be dead easy, and it was.”
His mocking grin vanished. “Tie ’em up!” he snapped. “Hands behind their backs. And some of you check them Injuns. Put a bullet through every head, whether they look dead or not; we’ll take no chances.” And he swung his gun toward von Markau once again. “Where’s the jools?”
As men moved behind Sundance, jerked his hands back, wrapped thongs around them, the Baron’s glance went to the leather bag.
“Ahhh,” Red Gannon said, lust thick in his voice. He knelt beside it, gun still on the Austrian, opened the straps. Then he stood up, seized the bag, shook out its contents. A moan went up from the gunmen around the fire. Gannon crowed: “I told you boys, you stick with me, you’d strike it rich! Feast your eyes on that, but keep your damn hands off it. Nobody touches it until we fence it to a guy I know in Frisco!”
Sundance was tightly bound. Men whipped thongs around von Markau’s wrists. The Baron looked at his wife, and his voice trembled. “Herta, how could you do this to me?”
She only stared down at her boot toes, unable to meet his gaze. “All I can say,” she breathed, “is forgive me. If you can, forgive me. I can never forgive myself.” She shuddered. “I thought ... It was so lonely at the fort. An innocent affair. Like in Vienna.”
“Tucson is not Vienna,” von Markau said.
Gannon giggled. “Shore as hell ain’t.”
The Baron turned on him. Suddenly the Austrian’s face was scarlet. “And you, you swine!” He flung himself, bound, at Gannon.
Gannon’s rifle barrel came up, as the red-bearded man nimbly stepped aside. It made a sodden sound on von Markau’s skull. The Austrian pitched forward, lay unconscious beside the fire. Gannon looked down at him. “Well, ain’t he rambunctious? I got plans for Sundance, but on second thought, I don’t see no reason to bother with a Goddamn Dutchman. Hell, might as well cut his throat right now.” And he drew his Bowie from his boot. Sundance lurched forward. “Gannon!” Gannon hit him between the eyes. Sundance, stunned, fell backward. “Shut up,” Gannon rasped, “or you git the same medicine.” Then he rolled von Markau over, knelt beside him. The knife blade flashed in firelight.
Herta screamed, over and over, until Jessup hit her and knocked her out.