Under the open shed set aside for that purpose, Sundance, two days later, lectured Captain Taylor, his lieutenants, and his non-coms. Ravenal was also there. “It’s not as easy as it looks. You don’t just ram the poison in the bait with your bare hands and toss it out yonder. Some of the animals will take it, but not the smart old lobos and coyotes. You wouldn’t believe how some of them can detect the least trace of human scent, or even if cold steel, for that matter.” He held up his hands, encased in leather gauntlets. “These gloves like those yonder—” he gestured to a pile of them “—have been buried in the stable litter and then aired out to take most of the human scent away from ’em. I wore ’em while I made these knives made out of bone.” The instruments were crude but sharp, adequate for their purpose. “The gunny sacks to carry the poison in have had the same treatment. We’ll lead the old horses and cattle Mr. Ravenal’s donated out in the open, around the post and town and kill them there. Men wearing gloves will use the bone knives to cut ’em open and insert the strychnine I’ve worked into the balls of fat. Every carcass’ll draw a lot of wolves and coyotes—and buzzards and hawks and eagles, too, I’m afraid—so you’ll want to saturate the carcasses with poison. Be sure to get plenty up in the guts.”
Ravenal cut in. “The same holds true, I reckon, for any big game we kill.”
“That’s right. You jump an antelope, deer, buffalo, you shoot it, then poison it. The General’s orders are that everything has to go.” He turned to another pile of tallow balls on a rawhide sheet. “Each one of these has got a cyanide pellet in it. You’ll carry them in the gunny sacks and sprinkle them around between the carcasses. There should be a team making more right along—and they’ll have to use the gloves and the bone knives the same way.”
He gestured to another work bench. “The meat’ll take care of the wolves, coyotes, skunks, kit foxes and maybe some of the badgers. This poisoned bran and oats mixed with strychnine is for the prairie dogs and rats and mice. They’ll gobble it up, and anything that eats them will get the same dose, too.”
“That ought to take care of just about everything that moves,” Taylor said.
“No,” Sundance answered. “There are some critters out there that kill just for the joy of killing and eat nothing but what they’ve killed themselves. That’s mostly weasels and black-footed ferrets. The poisoning of the wolves and things is the first step. The second will be the burning. All the grass, all the brush in every draw or gully has to go. That’ll wipe out the ferrets and burn the carcasses of the poisoned animals so that any that already have the disease don’t pass it on when others eat ’em. Since it hasn’t rained in a long time and it ain’t likely to in the next week or so, everything ought to burn real easy.”
Taylor sighed with regret. “An expensive business. There are some places out yonder horse high with fine tall grass. We’d planned to cut it for hay for winter.”
“It can’t be helped,” Sundance said. “Anyhow, some of it’ll grow back before fall gets here. Lots of times a good burning helps the grass. Just make sure none of your men gets caught ahead of the fire. A real big prairie fire can move faster in the wind out here than a horse can run. There’ll have to be teams to be ready to set back fires, and other teams to shoot anything the fire flushes out.” He paused. “Everything that lives must die for thirty miles around. That’s more than the usual range of any wolves or coyotes, so if we can bring it off, maybe we can wipe out the epidemic. But each man’ll have to look sharp to make sure he or his pardners don’t get bitten—or bushwhacked by that crazy killer.”
Ravenal nodded. “It all sounds practical enough to me. We start today?”
“We start today,” Sundance said. “But just in a circle for a mile around the town and post. Tomorrow, we’ll move out a few miles farther, the next day a few more miles, and so on, clearing as we go.”
“Right. Well, today I won’t ride, with you. I’ll set up fire protection for the town and post. We wouldn’t want the burning later on to endanger either. But when you move farther out, I’d like to ride with you, Sundance.”
“Sure,” Sundance replied.
“Captain Taylor.” Trim in a lightweight suit of gray, Ravenal gave a half-salute, left the shed, went to his horse. By it, Fitz and Maynard waited, the face of the first expressionless, the latter glowering at Sundance.
The half-breed watched as all three mounted and galloped out of the post toward the adjoining town. Then he turned to Taylor. “Well, let’s get to work,” he said.
~*~
The first day was fairly simple. Rickety old horses and culled beef animals were led a mile out of the post and killed at strategic locations. Sundance demonstrated the poisoning of the carcasses and troopers quickly learned the technique. The balls of tallow, containing cyanide capsules which would bring instant death the moment they were broken, were also scattered, as was the poisoned grain. That night, sharing Taylor’s quarters, Sundance could hear the snarling and howling of animals fighting over meat. When daylight came, he and Taylor led a team out to see the results.
They were both impressive, and to Sundance, at least, somewhat sickening. In all, the poison had claimed over twenty coyotes and wolves and stray dogs from the town that had gone wild and been missed in the extermination program. Here and there, black dots against the dun grass were dead skunks and a nearby prairie dog town was littered with the carcasses of the rodents. Overhead, vultures gathered.
“Hell, I never guessed there were that many animals this close in!” Taylor exclaimed.
“Except when they go mad, they make sure they see you first,” Sundance said. He shook his head. “What a rotten waste, though.”
Taylor looked at him in surprise. “You Indians don’t consider wolves and coyotes game?”
“The fur,” Sundance said. “In the winter it would be prime. Now, though, it’s thin and useless.” He shrugged. “But anyway, it would be too dangerous to skin ’em. No telling which ones were in the early stages of the disease. Still, where I grew up, we never wasted anything.”
While armed soldiers watched, others, gloved, gathered up the carcasses and burned them. Once a coyote loped from the brush and, showing no fear of man, stood with tongue lolling, watching. A dozen bullets simultaneously ripped it apart, and it was thrown on the cleansing fire. After that, they began the burning of the prairie and the brush in draws and gullies.
That was even worse. All sorts of small creatures burst from their coverts at the approach of flames—kit foxes, ferrets, rats. Some were already on fire, some ahead of the flickering red death unharmed. The soldiers, strategically stationed, used them for target practice. It took the whole day to burn the one-mile circle around the town and then put out the flames.
The next day at sunrise Marsh Ravenal was at the post by reveille, flanked by Maynard and the gunman Fitz. Today he wore range clothes, boots and chaps and bull hide jacket, and an old slouch hat of Confederate gray. Riding with Taylor and Sundance, he himself shot the battered old animals which he had donated as bait. This time they were laid out in a circle four miles distant from the first one, and he watched with interest the poisoning technique. “Now I feel like we’re making progress,” he said. “I’ll guarantee to supply as many critters as you can use.”
“We’re obliged, Mr. Ravenal,” Taylor said, reining up on a flat and removing his hat to mop his sweating forehead. Then he stiffened in his saddle. “Look out there.”
They followed his pointing hand. On the short-grass plain not five hundred yards distant, a scatter of antelope watched the riders with the curiosity of their kind. “Well, I’ll be damned,” Ravenal said. “Pronghorns. Don’t see many around anymore.” He grinned. “First chance for target practice I’ve had in a long time.” Drawing a long-barreled Winchester from its saddle scabbard, he swung down, handing Fitz the horse’s reins. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I’ll show you how they taught us to shoot in the Confederate army.”
Sundance opened his mouth to protest, then closed it again. Like everything else, the half-dozen pronghorns had to go. With narrowed eyes, he watched as Ravenal took an offhand stance, aimed and fired. A doe antelope leaped and fell.
Taylor whistled. “Some shooting.”
Ravenal paid him no attention as the gun roared again, and a buck, its hind leg shattered, wheeled, limped off in a lurching run. Again the Winchester cracked and a doe about to take flight fell, belly shot, then scrambled up and tried to flee. Ravenal swung his gun, and Sundance watched his face. It was set in a strange, ugly grin, lips peeled back from white, even teeth.
“Wait,” Sundance began. “The range—You’re wounding—”
But Ravenal fired again and again, missed once, but shattered the shoulder of another doe. The last animal went rocketing out of range as he pumped two more slugs at it.
“Hell,” Ravenal cursed, and began to reload the rifle. “Well, it wasn’t too bad, considerin’ the distance.” He swung up into the saddle, eyes glowing; and Sundance knew that he had enjoyed the wanton killing.
Expecting Ravenal to ride out to finish off the wounded animals which, crippled as they were, could not go far, he was startled when the man reined his horse around. “Well, let’s get on with it.”
“Get on with it? First we’ve got to finish those wounded antelope.”
Ravenal looked at Sundance in surprise. “What for? They’ve got to die anyway. What difference does it make whether today or tomorrow?”
“An extra day’s suffering,” Sundance said, voice harsh.
“Since when did Injuns get so tender-hearted?” Ravenal shrugged. “Why waste the time? We’ll catch ’em when we burn tomorrow.”
Not answering, Sundance yanked his rifle from its scabbard, spurred his horse. Galloping across the flat, he gained on the gut-shot doe, dropped her with a single bullet. The buck’s white rump was like a flare as, three-legged, it tried to outdistance the horse. Even crippled, it was fast, but he gained on it enough to finish it with another shot. Then he looked around for the doe with the broken foreleg. Smashed shoulder and all, she was limping awkwardly across the prairie several hundred yards away, and even as he watched she vanished, with the instinct of the wounded animal, into a hiding place, a narrow, winding draw that split the table-land, its depths clogged with a thick growth of scraggly juniper.
Sundance grunted an oath, turned the horse to follow her. “Jim!” he heard Taylor shout from far away, but he did not slow. He didn’t want to ride into that draw, had no idea what animals, rabid or not, were hiding in that thick cover, but it had been bred into his bones since earliest remembrance—when you wounded something, you kept after it until you killed it. Not to do so was the worst sort of bad medicine. Besides, the doe could not go far in that heavy brush.
Reaching the narrow cut, gun up, he rode down into it at a walk, the juniper brush ranking at his thighs. Then he caught a flash of white: the doe’s rump. She was hobbling around a bend not far ahead, her strength nearly gone. Sundance cursed again and followed her, slowly, warily.
He turned the bend, and there the draw opened up, its walls still brushy, but its floor bare and sandy. The doe had finally collapsed, and was kneeling, shoulder streaming blood. Sundance swept the brush along each wall with his eyes, saw nothing to alarm him, lined the rifle, fired. Heart split by his bullet, the antelope rolled over on its side, killed instantly. Sundance reined in, thumbing rounds from his cartridge belt, reloading the rifle—and that was when he saw it, plain in the sand on the bottom of the draw: a single footprint, the outline of a Cheyenne moccasin. And it was not more than an hour old.
Pulses pounding, Sundance swept the brush along the draw once more with his eyes, more carefully now. He saw nothing, nor did he expect to. Edging the horse forward, he searched for more sign, raising his head every few seconds to look around. But he found nothing, not a trace, except for that one print. It was enough, though, to fill him with a glow of anticipation better than any drink, a kind of satisfaction. So—he was still here, and he had used this draw as a hiding place this morning to watch the movement of the troops. Likely he had then retreated, taking time to erase his trail, overlooking this single footprint. All the hunting instinct in him aroused in a way that none of the wanton slaughter of animals had done it, he grinned, lips peeling back in something like a wolf’s snarl. Then men were shouting from the draw’s head: Taylor and Ravenal. Sundance turned the horse, galloped back along the cut up to the open flat. Taylor’s face was pale with relief as he emerged. “Jim you ... you idiot! Riding into a place like that alone!”
“It’s all right,” Sundance said. He glanced at Ravenal, flanked by his bodyguards, decided this was not the time to tell what he had discovered. “I found the last wounded doe, finished her off.”
“And that brush could have been full of rabid animals!”
“Yeah, they’d been there,” Sundance said. “Now, let’s poison those antelope carcasses up yonder like all the rest. Ravenal—” his voice hardened. “Next time you shoot, make sure you’re in range to kill and kill clean, or else have the guts to finish off your game yourself.”
Ravenal’s face darkened. “Sundance,” he said quietly, “I don’t let anybody to talk to me that way.”
“Well, I just did. I’m runnin’ this operation, and either you do it my way or you stay clear of it.” Ravenal opened his mouth to speak, then closed it without a word, face red. “Gentlemen,” Taylor said uneasily.
But Ravenal relaxed. “No. Sundance is right. I got carried away. I’ve been too busy in town, had too little time for hunting. I’ll take his reprimand this time and—” He broke off as someone shouted in the distance and hoofbeats drummed across the flat. The men twisted in the saddle to see half a dozen troopers pounding toward them.
“What the hell?” Taylor blurted and spurred his horse, running it to meet them. Sundance followed, with the others coming hard behind.
The sergeant in the lead drew up his sweating mount, face working beneath his forage cap, eyes wide with shock and fear. “Cap’n—” he managed and seemed to freeze.
“All right!” Taylor snapped. “Out with it!”
“Jonas!” the sergeant blurted. “Kelly! They’re dead!”
“What? Impossible! They were riding with your detail! How—?”
“I don’t know!” The sergeant shook his head. “Arrows! Injun arrows! They just come from nowhere, made no sound. Jonas and Kelly was standin’ guard while we poisoned a carcass, and then we heard ’em yell and whipped around, and there they lay, each one of ’em with a pair of arrows in his chest! It was like—like they’d been struck by lightnin’!”
“Come on!” Ravenal rasped, his voice commanding. “Let’s take a look. Dammit, when that bastard can strike right under our noses—” He put his horse into a run, Fitz and Maynard swinging out on his flanks. Sundance and Taylor looked at one another, and then Taylor nodded.
“Show us, sergeant!” he ordered, and as the troopers turned their mounts, he and Sundance followed.
~*~
The two soldiers lay where they’d fallen, hard by the carcass of a fresh-killed cow. Sightless eyes stared upward at the hard blue sky. Their shirts were stained with red, the two arrows in each chest protruding not quite a foot. “All right,” Taylor snapped. “You men form a line of skirmishers and keep your heads up. Anything that moves out there, shoot first and ask questions later.” He and Sundance surveyed the land in the direction from which the arrows must have come. Flat, unbroken, covered by bunch grass, but otherwise seemingly without cover for as far as the eye could reach, it appeared impossible that anyone could have come within bow range of the soldiers. “Jim,” Taylor said in a tone of bafflement.
“He knew his business,” Sundance said. “Came up on his belly, used every inch of cover. A damned good stalk—and likely he’s pulled back now to wherever he came from, the same way.”
“I don’t see how he could have done it.”
“He could have,” Sundance said. “I could have.”
“Yeah, you could have,” Ravenal said behind him in a hard, strange voice. “Sundance, you freeze. One reach, and either Fitz or me’ll kill you.”
“Mr. Ravenal—” Taylor swung his horse. Slowly Sundance turned his own mount, to find himself staring into the muzzles of Fitz’s matched six-guns and Marsh Ravenal’s Winchester.
“No, you hold on, Taylor,” Ravenal said tautly. “Those arrows are just like the rest—Cheyenne. And by God, every Cheyenne and half-breed’s been chased out of the territory ... except this one. I think it’s time we put Sundance through the mill.”
“But it’s impossible! He was with us all the time!”
“Except when he was in that draw. How do we know he didn’t circle while we were arguin’ about followin’ him? It’s not but three-quarters of a mile. Anyhow, after what happened to my wife, I’m leavin’ no stone unturned. Get down, Sundance, and unbuckle that weapons belt, slow and easy.”
Sundance drew in breath. He glanced at Taylor, saw doubt in the face of the officer. Hands upraised, he slid from the saddle, and very carefully unlatched the belt that held his weapons.
Maynard, with a grunt of satisfaction, swung down and picked them up. “Keep him covered, Fitz.” Ravenal also dismounted. “Now,” he said. “I’ve been wonderin’ what’s in these bull hide bags he carries everywhere behind his saddle. By God, we’ll see.” He reached for the long, cylindrical pannier.
“I’ll tell you what’s in it,” Sundance rasped. “A bow, a quiver full of arrows, a war bonnet, and some other things I’d rather you didn’t touch.”
'“What you want don’t make any difference now.” Ravenal opened the pannier, shook its contents onto the ground. One of the nearby troopers grunted something as the short, powerful bow, unstrung, slid out, followed by the panther-skin quiver, its arrows spilling into the grass.
Something glowed in Ravenal’s eyes as he picked up an arrow. “Same markings, almost. Just one stripe of color different—”
“Likely there’s another difference,” Sundance said. “Push one of those arrows all the way through one of those dead soldiers yonder. Take a look at the point.”
“I aim to. I aim to take a look at everything, Maynard—”
The lanky giant went to a corpse, tried to pull an arrow out. Its barbed head held it, so he did as Sundance had said, pushed it on through. Disregarding the blood that coated it, he yanked it free, held it out to Ravenal.
The tautness in Sundance relaxed. “Steel point,” he said. “Most Indians use ’em nowadays. They’re easier to make.”
“So what?”
“Take a look at my arrows. They’ve all got flint points. I make the heads myself. They’ve got more shocking power, more stopping power than the iron points. Captain Taylor, if you’ll compare ’em, please.”
Taylor picked up one of the arrows from the panther-skin quiver, held it next to the one from the dead soldier. “Wholly unlike. And a difference in the painted stripe.”
“Every Indian has his personal mark,” Sundance said. “That one’s mine. I don’t know who the other one belongs to.”
Taylor shook his head and said to Ravenal, “Call off your gunman. As far as I’m concerned, Sundance is in the clear.”
“No,” Ravenal said. “How do we know he didn’t have some steel-headed arrows in the quiver?” He looked at Sundance with eyes like chips of stone. “I ask that you hold him under arrest until you’ve contacted General Crook.”
Sundance grinned faintly. “Any of you got the guts to follow me back down into that draw where I killed the antelope? There’s something there I want to show you.”
“It ought to be burned out first,” Ravenal snapped.
“No,” Sundance said. “Come with me now, Taylor, Ravenal. Bring along a guard.”
Fitz and Maynard will be guard enough,” said Ravenal.
“I want soldiers,” Sundance said.
“Of course,” Captain Taylor said. “Sergeant, I want a detail of four men. The rest of you return to the post with the bodies. I’ll take no more risks until this whole thing’s ironed out.” He took Sundance’s weapons from Maynard. “These are in my custody until I decide to release them.”
~*~
A half hour later, with the soldiers standing guard, Sundance showed Taylor and Ravenal the moccasin print in the bottom of the draw. Deliberately, he pressed into the sand a print of his own foot. “Jackboots, not moccasins. He was down here watching what was going on. When he saw his chance, he left, stalked one of the teams, put his arrows into those soldiers from maybe two hundred and fifty or three hundred yards. Bellied down so they couldn’t even see him.”
“Impossible,” Ravenal snorted. “At such a range—”
Sundance met his eyes. “Ravenal,” he said. “You give me two arrows and my bow, and I’ll meet you at three hundred yards anytime, with you armed with a Winchester and two rounds. You want to try it in case you don’t believe me?”
Ravenal’s eyes flickered. “No. Anyhow, this moccasin track proves—”
“That it was somebody else, not me,” Sundance said. “And whoever it was, he made a mistake. Because I know where he is now, and sooner or later I will find his sign and trail him down.”
“Not yet,” Taylor said, rubbing his face. “Not until I get in touch with General Crook and get orders to clear up this whole affair.” He gestured. “Let’s mount and ride. Things are finished for today. The men wouldn’t go out any more even if I ordered them to, and I don’t want a mutiny on my hands.”