He rode northwest across a land that, once clear of the railroad, was a deserted vastness. Settlers had not yet begun to fill it up, and he encountered none of the usual wandering hunting parties of Indians. The biting sickness that had spread among the animals had made it a forbidden zone, a no-man’s-land. Twice he shot, with the rifle, from a safe distance, coyotes which were obviously infected with the disease. He made his camp and cooked his meals in the open, and he ate Army-issue food, not daring to kill and eat the game here. Then he would move on until at last he found a grove of cottonwoods in some stream bed, and there he would build a platform in a tree, where he could sleep without risk of being bitten in the night. As for the horse, there was nothing to do but let it take its chances on a picket rope near a fire. Each morning he would inspect it to see if it had taken even any minor wounds from a ferret, kit fox, badger or the like, but fortunately nothing attacked it. Presently, three days’ hard ride north of the Platte, he encountered a hunting party of half a dozen Brule Sioux, and then he relaxed, knowing he was out of the danger zone.
He spoke the Lakota dialect as well as he did Cheyenne; his father had traded among and been respected by all the tribes from Canada to Mexico, and there were few Indian languages he could not get along in, few tribes that had not heard of him at least, if they did not know him well. The Burnt Thighs were glad to see him, reporting that the sickness had not reached this far and that the Shyela, the Cheyennes, were far north of the Red Cloud Agency on the river that bore their name. They had never heard of anyone answering the description of Silent Enemy, but the Cheyennes were aroused, as angry as a nest of yellow-jackets, by the wanton murder of many of their warriors by some unknown Wasichu, some white man, likely a Long-knife, a soldier. He ate their buffalo ribs and they drank his coffee; then he moved on, circling the agency and the Dakota badlands, and at last finding four bands of the tribe in camp on the upper South Fork of the Cheyenne River, in the lush country near the foothills of the Black Hills.
It was like coming home; something moved within him at the sight of all those tipis in their concentric circles, of the big horse herds spread out up and down the stream. There was the smell of wood smoke and the incense perfume of burning sweet-grass, and for a little while, as he made reunion with the outlying guards and then rode on down into the valley, it was possible to believe that there were no railroads, no telegraph, no blue-clad soldiers, and that nothing had changed since the old days. The only difference was that, as he entered camp, there was not the usual clamor of the dogs. The Cheyennes had killed them all and had not yet replaced them—and that was, for them, a great loss. Not only were the tribal dogs invaluable as guards, but as a source of food: fat young puppy was considered a real delicacy.
His arrival caused much excitement and there were many greetings to be passed; it was a good two hours before he sat in the lodge of his old friend Tall Calf, with the peace and war chiefs of the four bands gathered in a circle. When they had smoked, Sundance got down to business.
“All we know,” Tall Calf said, his rugged, weathered face grim beneath the graying hair, “was that they were our best warriors. And that, even riding alone, they could be taken by surprise is a thing to make you wonder. Yet some Long-knife, or some white man who’s been a Long-knife, did it. To speak honestly, Sundance, your name has been mentioned. You could have done it. You know all the Long-knife ways. But, of course, we knew it could not be you. You would not kill your own people. It had to be some white man.”
He paused. “That, along with the biting sickness spreading across the land, has made all the People jumpy. There’s been talk that all of this coming at once is a punishment, that lately we’ve been too tame, too quiet, let ourselves be pushed around too much by the white men. The Sioux feel the same way, and if we join with them and our other allies—well, we could show the whites who really owns this country.”
“You mean war, a big war.”
“I mean that. And I can tell you, the next time we are on the North Platte and it happens, a lot of whites are going to lose their hair.”
“A lot already have,” Sundance said, and told them about the murders.
“Paugh!” Tall Calf snorted like an old bull buffalo. “Wind talk! We’ve not seen the bodies. It’s only lies, like all the rest, to cover up what they’ve done to us.” A murmur of assent went around the council.
“I’ve seen the bodies—at least one.” Sundance told them about the murdered, mutilated deserter. The Indians listened with growing interest. “I tell you, it’s not wind talk. What it is, is somebody trying to set the People against the Long-knives and the Long-knives against the People. With Three-Stars in command on the Platte, there is still a chance for peace, a much better chance than there’s ever been before. That fool Custer has been called back East in disgrace with the Grandfather in Washington, and he was the worst of the Long-knife troublemakers. If you’ll give Crook half a chance, he’ll do his best for peace and to see that all the treaty terms are kept. But he needs time. Maybe there will be war. If it comes, I’ll not forget that I’m still a Dog Soldier. But peace will be much better. Now, I have a question. It’s the one I’ve ridden all this way to ask.”
“Ask it,” Tall Calf said.
“Do you remember five years ago at the Arrow Renewal Ceremony there was a member of the Shield Society—”
“Silent Enemy.” Tall Calf’s mouth twisted. “The murderer who profaned the whole ceremony. Well, we dealt with him—”
“Maybe not hard enough. You said a while ago that I was one man who could have murdered all those warriors. Well, he’s another. Like myself, he knows two ways of fighting—the Cheyenne, and the white. Unlike myself, he has a grudge against both sides, and a reason to kill people on both of them. I want to know if anyone’s ever seen or heard of him since then.”
There was silence for a moment. Then Tall Calf shook his head. “Not since that day he left our camp, naked and beaten. He could have gone to another tribe and they would have taken him in, but he did not. He’s not among any of the tribes north of the Platte, or we’d have heard. Our guess is that he’s dead, and the wolves and coyotes have long since scattered his bones. No. In five years, there’s been no word of him. No one has seen him.”
Sundance let out a breath. “Then I’ve had a long ride for nothing.”
“Not for nothing.” Tall Calf stood up. “Because you can take back a message to your friend Three-Stars. You tell him that when the biting sickness among the animals is over and winter comes, we’ll be back down on the Platte—and if there are any more such killings, we’ll do to that town, North Platte, what we did to Julesburg. Remember?”
Sundance remembered. Years before, the Cheyennes, in one fierce raid, had wiped the settlement of Julesburg off the map, burning every building. Since then, the whole town had been rebuilt in a new location. But it had been a shocking demonstration of the power of the Indians—and that power, like a coiled spring compressed ever tighter, still existed, was only waiting to be released. The Cheyennes—and the Sioux—had been shoved around, but they were still far from beaten.
“I’ll tell him that. But it won’t be necessary. Whoever it is—Silent Enemy or someone else—will be dead long before then. Or I will.”
Tall Calf looked at Sundance for a moment. His eyes glinted with sudden humor, and he smiled and laid a hand on the half-breed’s shoulder. “I don’t think it will be you,” he said. “Now, let’s call this council to an end and let the women feed us.”
~*~
It was hard leaving the Cheyennes, but he had no time to waste, and he made the return journey south as quickly as possible, pushing the strong horse hard. On the way, there was a lot to think about—a lot of dead men killed slowly, horribly, and whether or not he was barking up the wrong tree. Maybe everyone else was right and he was wrong. Maybe Silent Enemy was long since dead, and it was some other maniac half-breed or even an old-time mountain man who knew the Indian style of fighting. More than that, Marsh Ravenal and the events in North Platte were tangled in his mind with the other problem; a whole lot did not ring true there. Anyhow, for the time being, there was only one thing to do—and he had to do it, no matter how great the danger. By the time be reached Fort McPherson again, his mind was made up to that.
It was after sundown when the guards let him pass. As the tired horse plodded across the parade, it seemed to Sundance that a strange hush lay over the entire post. There was none of the usual sound of soldiers, after retreat, enjoying themselves riotously in the sutler’s store or loafing around the barracks, pitching horseshoes or staging wrestling matches for fun. A curious, silent depression hung over the place—and then, as he passed a long log building, the silence was broken by an eerie, screaming howl that made the horse prick its ears and snort and the short hair raise itself on the half-breed’s neck. It came again, that agonized, enraged, ululating wail, ending in a series of strange grunting rasps, and Sundance reined in his mount and swung down. That building was the hospital.
The howling, not like anything animal or human he had ever heard before, continued as he entered. “Goddammit!” somebody yelled from a bed in the long ward, “can’t somebody shut him up? Why don’t somebody put a bullet between his eyes?”
“At ease, Mercer,” a sharp voice roared, and as he entered the room full of beds, Sundance saw Dr. Schulz, the contract surgeon who carried the rank of captain, emerge from a smaller room at one end of the building. A powerful man in his mid-forties, the doctor himself looked pale and shaken. “There’s nothing I can do and you know it!” Schulz yelled at the whole ward. “Nothing anybody can do! Nature just has to take its course!” His voice was almost drowned by another of those terrible wails.
“Sundance.” The doctor saw him then. “You’re back, eh?”
“I’m back. What in God’s name—?” He jerked his head toward the door of the little room, as another howl ended in those rasping grunts.
Schulz shook his head. “You want to know, eh? All right, come with me.” He grabbed Sundance’s arm, led him to that door, flung it open. The half-breed halted, staring.
The man was strapped to the bed with a restraining sheet made from heavy canvas and double lashed. Nevertheless, his writhing body almost stretched the ropes as he tried to sit upright. His eyes bulged, his mouth drooled saliva, there was nothing human left in his face as he emitted another ululating scream. Seeing the two men standing there, he redoubled his efforts to break the restraint, and Sundance heard the click of snapping teeth as the man bit empty air, like a dog or wolf. “God Almighty,” Sundance whispered.
“There,” Schulz rasped. “Phelan—the first man bitten; a skunk got him in the face as he lay sleeping out on the prairie. That was weeks ago; now he’s in the last stages.” He looked at Sundance almost pleadingly. “Morphine has no effect on him whatsoever. He can’t eat, he can’t drink, and it’s dangerous for anyone to go near him; he’ll bite, exactly like a dog. Do the Indians have any cure?”
“They have a cure,” Sundance said. He touched the knife at his belt. “This.”
“Which I can’t use,” Schulz said bitterly. Phelan strained, howled, then made a senseless whimper in a throat nearly swollen shut. “I can’t put him out of his misery. I’ve sworn an oath to prolong his life, make him suffer every minute of it ... ” He rubbed his face. “I’ve seen men die in my lifetime, God knows, in just about every possible way. But to go like this—” He turned away and Sundance followed him from the room. Phelan’s howling was still loud and clear, even through the tightly closed door. “I’m sorry, men,” Schulz told the four soldiers in bed there. “You’ll just have to bear it. I can’t be much longer now.”
Sundance thought of that mad wolf’s jaws closing on his boot. A few pounds more of pressure and he would have been inevitably condemned to the same terrible death. A shudder rippled down his spine. Then he straightened up as Crook entered the hospital.
The General’s face was pale beneath its tan, but otherwise he seemed not to hear the dreadful wailing. There was something about the bearing of his tall, skinny frame that seemed to bring an air of reassurance into the ward. “Captain Schulz.” His voice was calm. “If you please, I should like to see you in your office. Jim, I’m glad you’re back. If you’ll wait a few minutes, I’ll be with you.”
“Sure.” Sundance tried to shut the howling from his ears as he left the hospital. Leaning against the hitch rack where he had tied the horse, he rolled a cigarette. The howling went on and on. Lighting the smoke, he wondered if he really had the nerve to do what must be done after seeing that. If not, it would be the first time his courage had failed him. This was different, he told himself. The real Silent Enemy was not Cole Maxton. It was that germ or microbe or whatever in the veins of all those rabid animals out yonder, that was now lodged in the degenerating brain of Phelan. Then, he straightened up. All at once he was conscious that the dreadful wailing had stopped completely. Now there was only silence.
Three minutes later, when he ground out the butt beneath the jackboot heel, there were footsteps on the porch of the hospital. Then Crook was there beside him, and though his bearing was still composed, his voice shook slightly. “Well, it’s finished.”
“It came quickly,” Sundance said.
“Yes. Come along to my office. The medical orderly will see to your horse.” They walked across the parade, Crook silent, as if deep in thought. Sundance said, “What did you use?”
“What?”
“The doctor couldn’t do it. But you’re not a doctor. What did you use?”
Crook looked at him a moment, then said tersely: “Cyanide. The doctor prepared an injection. We just got in a shipment of both cyanide and strychnine. But strychnine takes too long to act, is too agonizing. Cyanide’s instantaneous.” His voice thickened. “Dammit, Jim, as far as anyone knows, I just went in to take a look at the boy, and he died while I was in there.”
“Yeah,” said Sundance. “What about the other one? I heard two were bitten. This one was first. You’ve got another coming up?”
“No,” Crook answered heavily. “When this one went into the last stages and the other man saw what it was like, he took his razor and slashed his throat.”
“He was smart,” Sundance said. They walked the rest of the way to Crook’s office in silence.
The General finished his drink and set it down. There had been another murder while Sundance was gone. This time, the killer had slipped into Fort McPherson itself, seized one of the perimeter guards in the middle of the night, and dragged him out on the prairie, well away from the post. “Knocked him out, of course,” Crook said bitterly. “Then cut out his tongue so he couldn’t yell, spread-eagled him, and went to work on him with a knife, all within rifle shot of this very office. What we found the next morning wasn’t pretty.”
“And the sign?”
“A couple of Cheyenne arrows in him. But otherwise, not a track or trace. I looked myself, and you know I wouldn’t miss anything.”
Sundance nodded. Crook, an enthusiastic hunter, could read trail sign as well as any Indian ever born. “I’m at the end of my rope,” the General said suddenly, and all at once he looked old and worn. “Jim, I don’t know what’s next.”
Sundance drained his glass and rose. “There’s only one thing that can be next. He’s out there somewhere, and likely not very far away. I’ve got to go after him and hunt him down. Just like a wolf or a bear …”
Crook, shoulders slumped, shook his head. “No, Jim, I can’t allow it. Not right away. It’s far too dangerous. I don’t mean that I’m afraid he’ll get you. But the rabies epidemic is at its peak now. You can’t expose yourself to being bitten. You’ll have to wait until we’ve finished our poisoning program.”
“Poisoning program?”
“That’s what the cyanide and the strychnine’s for. We’ve got enough to put out poison bait for a radius of thirty miles around the post. Some we’ll put in meat, some we’ll put in grain. But we’re going to do our best to poison every animal out there. Taylor at North Platte’s got a supply, and he’ll do the same around the town. On top of which we’re burning all the grass and brush, wherever it’s high enough to hide an animal. We’ve talked it over with the people of the town and Ravenal’s got ’em all behind us. They’ll pitch in and help, too.” He raised his head, eyes sunken in his face. “I hate to do it, but there’s no alternative. We’ve got to exterminate every living thing that can carry the disease for as far as we can reach, either by gun, fire, or poison. That comes first, even before hunting down the killer—and we need you to help us. I’m competent to oversee the work around here, but Taylor’s a greenhorn when it comes to this kind of thing. I’d like for you to ride to North Platte and help him.”
“It’s a dirty business,” said Sundance.
“I know. It goes against all your Indian instincts—mass slaughter of game. But it has to be done, and in this case, it’s more humane. And maybe—” he looked at Sundance “—in the process, we’ll flush out the killer if he’s hiding out there.”
Sundance nodded. That was a possibility. “You know the critters that are in the last stages of the sickness won’t eat, won’t take your poison.”
“No. But we can wipe out everything they can infect, and then, when they themselves die off, maybe it will all be over. I don’t want an animal capable of carrying the disease left alive, within two days’ ride of either post.” He gestured. “We’ll work outward from the two posts in circles. Poison and burn a small area, and when we have that cleared, move on to another one, not too much at a time. That lessens the chances of anyone getting bitten. And really, there’s not much big game left in the area; hunting’s already cleared it out. But we’ve got to get the little stuff, the wolves, the foxes, coyotes and the like. What about it? Will you help Taylor and Ravenal at North Platte?”
“If that’s what you want, Three Stars.”
“It’s what I want; and I’m obliged. Now—” Crook raised a haunted face. “I’ve still got a lot of work to do. Write a report on the attitude of the Cheyennes to General Sheridan—and a letter to the parents of that poor, damned young soldier.”