Jim Sundance stared at that lean, hook-nosed face in flickering firelight. Crook’s expression did not change as he looked back. Then Sundance set aside his cup. “Go on,” he said tautly.
“Jim,” the General said, “we’ve known each other for a long time. I know all about you, what makes you tick. Your mother was Cheyenne, your father an English remittance man who came out here in beaver days, liked the way the Cheyennes lived, married a chief’s daughter and settled in with ’em. Discarded his real name, took the name Sundance.”
“Three Stars,” Sundance began impatiently, but Crook held up a hand.
“You grew up with the Cheyennes. Learned the Indian ways, became a full-fledged warrior, a Dog Soldier. But Nicholas Sundance was an educated man, and he gave you a white man’s education, too, taught you everything you needed in case you chose to live and prosper as a white instead of as an Indian.”
Again Sundance started to cut in, but Crook motioned him to silence. “Let me lead up to this in my own way. Your father was a trader. He traveled and lived among all the tribes from Mexico to Canada, they all knew and trusted him. You grew up among all sorts of Indians, learned to speak their languages and know their ways, and they trust you, too.”
Getting to his feet, he went to a pile of buffalo chips, brought back a couple and put them on the fire. Then he sat down again.
“Your parents were murdered. You and they’d gone to Bent’s Old Fort to trade, and you stayed to watch the horse races while they headed north again. When you caught up with them, you found them dead. And the signs of six men.”
“Three Pawnees,” Sundance said, “and three drunken white men.” His voice was cold, his eyes bleak, as he remembered.
“Yes. You took up the trail. They split up, but you followed them, hunted them down, every one of them—and they didn’t die easily when they died. You took their scalps.”
“I’ve never taken any since.”
“But those you had to have, and I don’t blame you. Then the war broke out. You had a kind of mad on at the world, all you wanted to do was fight, so you joined the bushwhackers on the Kansas-Missouri border. And you learned everything there was to know about fighting the white man’s way in that hellhole. You came out of that a top-notch gunhand.”
“Get to the point,” Sundance said.
“I’m coming to it now,” Crook said patiently. “If you’ll remember, it wasn’t long after that that we met for the first time. I saw the potential in you then. Here was a man who could be at home in two worlds—the Indian’s and the white’s. A man who could fight with weapons of either kind, and who knew more about Indians, spoke more dialects, than maybe anybody else this side of the Mississippi. And I didn’t want to see you go to waste, not the way the James boys or the Daltons have. In dealing with Indian matters, we, the Army, needed your help. Sherman’s consulted you, Sheridan; they trust you, you have influence with them.”
“I did have, once,” Sundance said bitterly.
“Besides, you and I wanted the same things. To find some way whites and Indians could live together out here, at peace, learn the things each had to teach the other. And we both knew that couldn’t come about without taking Washington, Congress, into consideration.”
“So you introduced me to that lawyer. I hired him to lobby in Congress for the Indians. I’ve been paying him a hell of a lot of money to get as much justice for them as he can, with the President, in the Senate—money I’ve earned with my gun. But it hasn’t been enough. The banks and railroads and land agents have got more.”
“And you’re growing bitter,” Crook said.
“I’ve seen one promise, one treaty, broken after the other. Ten years ago, most of the high plains was Indian country. Now they’re crammed back into the north. All they’ve got left is the Great Sioux Reservation in Dakota, west of the Missouri, and the unceded lands north of the Platte and east of the Big Horn mountains, land never covered by any treaty, never sold or released by the Indians. Yes, by God, I’m bitter.”
Crook nodded. “That’s why, when you passed through Fetterman on your way north, I asked you to make this hunt with me. I wanted to size you up ... and talk to you. How long since you’ve last heard from your man in Washington?”
“A spell. Like I said, I’ve been down in Mexico. I telegraphed him from Laramie to send me a full report at North Platte, thought I’d swing down that way to pick it up, then head for Montana.”
“Well, I can tell you some of the things his report will contain,” Crook said quietly. “Jim, the responsibility for the Indians is being turned over from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the Army again. Do you know what that means?”
Again that lobo howled. He was answered by another from a distant ridge. The deer liver sizzled in the pan as Sundance looked across the fire at Crook. Instantly, he comprehended the significance of Crook’s words.
“So,” he said at last. “It’s finally happening, eh?”
“It’s happening.”
Sundance stood up. He turned away from the fire, staring into darkness. Then, thickly, he said, “God damn Custer.”
“It’s not all Custer’s fault,” Crook said.
Sundance whirled. “Enough of it is!” he rasped. “The tribes made a treaty with the Government seven years ago at Laramie. They gave up everything else they had, but they were to keep their hunting grounds in Dakota and Montana, and no white man could set foot on it without their permission. Then, last year, Custer and his Seventh Cavalry up at Fort Abe Lincoln ... they weren’t getting enough headlines. So he mounted an expedition, violated the Sioux Reserve, went into the Paha Sapa, the Black Hills, sacred Sioux territory, and then spread word that there was gold there.” His mouth twisted. “That got him headlines, all right. It started a gold rush to the Sioux lands.”
“The Army’s tried to keep the miners out in accordance with the treaty. That’s been my job—”
“And you’ve done it as well as anybody could. But it’s like trying to hold back the Missouri with your hand. They’re coming in anyhow, and so— What you’re telling me now is that the Government’s decided to let them. It’s going to break that treaty too and take the last of the Indians’ hunting grounds.”
“It’s not just the gold,” Crook said. “It’s the railroad, too, the Northern Pacific. It runs as far as Bismarck, Dakota, now. Stopped there because of the financial panic back East, last year and year before. But money’s loosening up now, and it’s ready to go on, and the route’s already been surveyed. Jim, it’s to pass through the unceded lands—the Cheyenne hunting grounds.”
Crook broke off, took the pan from the fire. The liver was done. He sliced it with a hunting knife, forked it onto tin plates. “So they want Dakota for its gold and Montana for the railroad,” he said. “Meanwhile, the Indians won’t stay at the agencies that have been set up for them. They’ve all gone north, into the Sioux Reserve and the unceded lands. Crazy Horse, Gall, Sitting Bull, Two Moons, Tall Calf ... The word is that they’re gathering to talk war.”
Sundance’s voice was low and furious. “Talk war? Hell, man, they’ve got to eat! The damned agents don’t issue half the rations they’re supposed to and cheat the tribes every way they can. What are they supposed to do, starve? There’s no law that says they’ve got to live at the agencies. Under the treaty, they can hunt all through western Dakota and eastern Montana as they please, and they’re killing game for winter—”
“I know that and so do you. But the fact remains that the excuse of war will be used. Soon, the word will be passed for all the tribes to come in from those lands and report to the agencies. And those that don’t, after a decent interval, will be considered hostile and brought in by force.”
“Or wiped out,” Sundance said.
“Yes,” said Crook. “If they fight.”
Sundance stared at him. “Don’t be a fool,” he said. “You know they’ll fight. They’ve given up everything else they had. This is all that’s left. Of course they’ll fight for it. If that order goes out, it’s war all right. Big war. A different kind than anybody’s ever seen before.”
“I know that,” Crook said. “And that’s why I wanted to talk to you. The question is, which side will you be on?”
Sundance sat down. He took the plate of liver that Crook, staring hard at him, passed. But instead of eating, he set it aside.
“I might ask you that same question,” he said.
Crook’s face was grave. “You know the answer. I’ve been a soldier all my life, and when I joined, I took an oath. When war comes ... Well, it will be me from the southwest, I expect, and Custer moving in from the northeast. And both of us will have to do what we are ordered to.”
Then he went on, his voice low and urgent. “But you, Jim—it’s different with you. You don’t have to go anywhere, do anything. That’s why I’m telling you all this in advance. So you’ll have time to get clear, stay out of it.”
Sundance laughed, a metallic sound, like iron chiming on iron. “Stand clear?”
“Have your winter on the Yellowstone with the Cheyennes. Then take your woman and go East. Stay there until it’s over, no matter which way it goes.” His voice rose. “Because I’m afraid,” he said. “There was a time when I thought you were so much white man that when the final decision came, there was no need to worry, that you might even ride with me. But then ... this afternoon, when you cut off that bear’s head and put it in the tree. I saw how much Indian you were, too, and it scared me. It made me afraid that someday I might be fighting Cheyennes and see one coming toward me who had yellow hair ... that the last time we see each other might be over gunsights ... ”
He broke off. “The Army would love to have you on its side. You’d be worth a regiment. But it can’t afford to have you on the other side, against it. So, if and when the last big fight comes, I’m begging you, stay out of it. Don’t turn renegade.”
Again Sundance laughed, without mirth. “Renegade,” he said harshly. “I’m half Cheyenne, remember? How can a man fighting with his mother’s people be a renegade?”
Suddenly, Crook looked weary. His shoulders slumped. “Is that what you’re going to do?”
All at once Sundance felt compassion for this man whom he loved like an older brother. He knew how Crook was torn between the oath he had taken and his own love for justice and admiration for the Indians. “Three Stars,” he said in a gentler voice, “I don’t know what I’m going to do. On the day the Army marches on to Indian land, I’ll make my decision. Meanwhile, if there’s any way to keep the Army from marching, I’m going to try to find it.”
“There isn’t,” Crook said. “I’ll tell you that now. The die is cast. Come next spring, it’ll be war.”
Sundance looked at him. Then he nodded. “At least I’ll promise you this much,” he said. “If it comes to that, I’ll never look at you over a gunsight. Never.”
There was silence. Then Sundance picked up his plate. “Let’s eat,” he said. “Tomorrow, I’ll help you lug the meat back to Fetterman. Then I’m on my way to North Platte. It looks like I’ve got a lot to do before winter comes.”