Sun Dance Page 2

  When his cup of coffee was brought a few minutes later, the Sergeant turned towards Herne’s table and winked, nodding in the direction of the waitress. Herne didn’t acknowledge the look, said thanks for the coffee and waited. As the woman went to pass the soldiers’ table, the Sergeant flung out an arm and grabbed at the material of her skirt, laughing and pulling her towards his lap.

  She cried out and spun round, bringing the edge of the tray hard down on to the man’s forearm.

  ‘Bitch!’

  He jerked the arm away, loosing his hold.

  For a second the dark eyes of the woman stared down at him with contempt and scorn and then she whirled away and left the dining room.

  ‘Damn bitch!’ said the Sergeant, rubbing his arm.

  ‘That the way you was tellin’ us you handled that girl down in Mexico?’ asked the Corporal sarcastically.

  ‘Yeah, Serge! Bet that’s how you got her eatin’ out of your hand!’

  ‘Eatin’out his what?’

  ‘Shut it!’

  Angrily the Sergeant pushed himself forward from his chair, sending the plates across the table. He slammed a fist down on to the middle of his own and shattered the china into a hundred tiny pieces.

  ‘Hey, Serge! There’s no call to go on like that. Just ’cause she didn’t take to...’

  The Sergeant swung his left arm through a sharp angle and the back of his open hand struck the Private full in the face. The man went back out of his chair and fell sideways to the floor, banging into one of the empty tables.

  The room was suddenly quiet.

  The soldier looked up at the man who had struck him, wiping the blood away from the side of his mouth. The two of them stared at one another for several moments before the Corporal slowly and deliberately got up and went over to where the Private was still lying. He helped him up without a word, set his chair to rights and motioned for him to sit down.

  None of the men said a word.

  Herne eased his hand away from his right leg, where it had been resting inches from the butt of his Colt.

  Three of the soldiers went back to finishing their food: the Sergeant sat there scowling, rubbing the knuckles of his left hand. After a while the waitress came back in with Herne’s steak.

  She kept her eyes averted from the soldiers and set the plate down in front of Herne quickly, obviously eager to be out of the room.

  The Sergeant had other ideas.

  He jutted out his boot and tripped her so that the wooden tray bounced on the floor and the woman started to fall forwards. Strong hands grasped hold of her and swung her round, finally forcing her to her knees. The Sergeant stood over her, keeping both her wrists tight within one hand. With the other he yanked her head back by her hair.

  She gasped with pain and he tugged harder.

  Herne could see the smooth, dark skin taut over her Adam’s apple; the white teeth of her parted mouth.

  ‘You’re gonna wish you never done that to me! No woman ever hit Chance Lattimer. Specially no breed!’

  He laughed and then spat full in the woman’s face.

  Two of the three other soldiers laughed also.

  ‘Goddamn no-good half-breed whore! No wonder the food in this place stinks, with your poxed-up hands touchin’ it. Ain’t worth eatin’!’

  And he scooped the remains of his meal up with his left hand, keeping his tight grip on her ringletted hair.

  ‘Stinkin’ mess!’

  He smeared the mashed-up food into her face, pressing down hard. The woman struggled and tried to call out but her shouts were muffled by the Sergeant’s hand.

  The two Privates were looking on, red-faced, laughing fit to bust.

  ‘Go on, Serge. Show the bitch!’

  The back door to the room opened about six inches and a man’s face showed, then disappeared quickly.

  The Sergeant changed hands, flung back his right arm ready to strike the woman in the face.

  The arm never came forward again.

  ‘What the Hell?’

  Herne held the forearm fast, on his feet now, his body dropping naturally into a gunfighter’s crouch, his right arm curved above his Colt like a hawk about to strike.

  There were four of them, all armed, but Herne had worked out his chances before taking a hand. He didn’t think the Corporal would back the Sergeant’s play and he had the Sergeant’s gun arm tight himself. That left the pair of Privates, but the flaps of their army holsters were still fastened down.

  ‘What you buttin’ in for, stranger?’ The eyes that stared at Herne from out of the Sergeant’s enraged face were fierce and angry.

  ‘Let’s say I don’t like to see no woman picked on. Specially when I’m about to eat the first good meal I’ve had in three days or more.’

  The Sergeant pulled at his arm but didn’t loosen Herne’s grip.

  ‘Woman! She ain’t worm botherin’ over. She’s a stinkin’ whore of an Injun breed. Worse than dirt.’

  ‘She ain’t done nothin’ called for you treatin’ her that way.’ The Sergeant released the woman’s hair and swung round to face Herne.

  ‘What’s eatin’ you? You an Injun lover or somethin’?’

  Herne answered slowly: ‘That depends on the Indian.’

  The waitress was still kneeling on the floor, her head bowed, hands clenched together into her waist. Herne couldn’t see but he knew from the sound that she was sobbing.

  ‘I reckon you’ve all but finished up here,’ said Herne. ‘Best thing for all of us if you just got on those mounts of yours outside an’ rode off wherever you’re headed.’

  The Corporal pushed back his chair and stood up: ‘He’s right, Chance. Let’s go.’

  Herne released the Sergeant’s arm and the heavily built man turned away. Half-turned. He jumped back into Herne faster than a man of his size ought to have been able and it was all that Herne could do to duck his head away from the roundhouse punch that came for him.

  The Sergeant followed up with a knee aimed at Herne’s groin that missed by less inches than were safe. Herne winced and let himself be driven backwards against the wall, watching for an opening. As the soldier drove in with his fist, Herne knocked it away with his arm and punched at the Sergeant’s throat.

  There was a choked shout of surprise and pain which changed to a gasp as Herne followed up with the toe of his boot deep into the big man’s belly.

  As the Sergeant slowly toppled sideways and back, Herne saw two of the others reaching for their guns.

  ‘Don’t!’

  Before the word was out his own Colt was in his hand.

  The men stared, unable to believe what they had seen. Nearly seen, the speed of the draw too fast for the eye to follow.

  The two Privates let their hands fall away from their guns.

  The waitress continued to sob, sucking in air in great gulps.

  On the floor the Sergeant held his belly and stared up at Herne with hate writ large on his face.

  ‘One day,’ he said between rasping breaths. ‘One day I’m gonna kill you.’

  Herne looked at him, a grim smile playing at the corners of his mouth. ‘One day you can try. But it ain’t today. You mount up and ride on out an’ keep ridin’. I got a steak goin’ cold an’ it ain’t worth wastin’ for the likes of you.’

  The Corporal started to help the Sergeant up, but the big man pushed him away and scrambled to his feet himself. He kept staring at Herne all the way to the door.

  ‘You remember... one day...’

  But Herne was no longer listening. Colt back in its holster he contemptuously sat back down and picked up his knife and fork. With a slam of the door the soldiers left.

  The woman stood up with difficulty, leaning on the table for support. Eventually she came and stood in front of Herne and he looked up at the tear-streaked face, lips moving and trying to say words of thanks which would not come.

  Herne half-smiled: ‘Steak’s fine. When you’re ready, I’d sure like another cup of coffee.�
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  Chapter Two

  Herne rolled over on to his side, his hand pulling the worn end of thin blanket above his shoulder. Underneath him the straw of the mattress was uneven and coarse. In that second between sleeping and waking there was someone lying there beside him but it passed and he knew it had been a dream.

  Again.

  Louise.

  How long did it take to forget a young wife?

  Six years was not enough.

  Herne forced his eyes open. The beginnings of daylight slid weakly between the cracks between the boards and filtered through the rough sacking that was tacked over the window.

  He rubbed his eyes, stretched, coughed.

  He thought of Rachel Fairfax. That last fall in Powderville she had looked at him with her green eyes and touched him with her warm hand and said for him to ride back. As different from Louise as chalk was from cheese. Older. More rounded. Bolder. Come back, she had said and instead Herne had ridden away from the newly forming snow line and on into the Dakotas.

  His fortieth year.

  Alone.

  His horse and his gun: that was the way it was.

  He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and before his feet could touch the floor his senses sang with a new alertness. He inclined his head, listened. Yes, there it was again. Like a giant cat he stood and stepped towards the head of the bed, slid the Colt .45 from its holster. Waited: tense: nerves on a hair trigger.

  The dirt outside the shack shifted once more. Most men would not have noticed—but most men weren’t Herne. Whoever it was was doing his damnedest to move as quietly as he could and he was doing pretty damned well.

  Herne held his thumb tight against the hammer of his pistol, not cocking it for fear whoever was outside would hear the triple click. Shadow filled in the small spaces between the planking of the wall alongside the door.

  Herne lifted his gun arm.

  The wooden latch lifted.

  Slow as a snake in sunshine the door eased back.

  ‘In!’

  Herne kicked the door back and leaped into the space, jamming the barrel of the Colt forward.

  ‘Inside! Fast!’

  He grabbed the man’s buckskin shirt with his free hand and dragged him into the shack, throwing him back against the side wall.

  ‘The gun! Drop it!’

  The short-barreled Colt Peacemaker hit the ground and spun in a slow circle.

  ‘Now talk fast!’

  The man ran his tongue round his bewhiskered mouth a couple of times, never taking his eyes off the gun in Herne’s hand. Then he nodded slowly and said in a husky voice: ‘You sure you don’t want t’pull your pants on over them long Johns first? Man’s likely to catch himself a cold this hour of the day otherwise.’

  ‘Say your business an’ I’ll attend to mine.’

  The man set his head to one side, as if sizing Herne up. He seemed less worried at being held at the end of Herne’s Colt than he had any right.

  ‘Maybe they’s the same. Your business an’ mine, that is.’

  ‘That ain’t likely.’ Herne snapped shortly.

  ‘You’re Herne, ain’t you? Jed Herne?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘The one some folks call Herne the Hunter?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So you’re the one they sent me in to get.’

  ‘Who’s they?’

  ‘Tenth Cavalry at Fort Rice.’

  A nerve started to tick at the side of Herne’s left temple.

  ‘Keep talkin’.’

  ‘You sure you don’t want to get dressed? It...’

  Herne took half a pace forward: ‘I said, talk!’

  ‘Okay.’ He brushed the stray hairs of his drooping grayish mustache from his upper lip. ‘Got a job for you. That is, unless you’re already on somebody’s pay roll.’

  ‘I’m listenin’.’

  ‘You worked as a scout for the army agin the Apache some years back, didn’t you? Ran into Micky Free?’

  ‘What of it?’

  The man shrugged. ‘Words gets passed around. Names stick in the back of the mind. Month or so back I heard tell you was in the Dakotas. Somethin’ to do with some hold-up gang. When the Tenth needed another man fast, I suggested your name.’ He wrinkled his face, narrowing his eyes. ‘Here I am.’

  Herne released the hammer of the Colt, but kept the gun pointing straight at the man’s chest.

  ‘Seems a strange way to ask a man if’n he wants a job. Sneakin’ up on him before he’s likely awake with a gun in your hand.’

  The man grinned: ‘Wanted to check if you was as good as they said you was. You hadn’t heard me then you wouldn’t have been no good with no Oglala Sioux.’

  Herne looked at him closely. The skin above his beard and mustache was deeply tanned and weather-beaten, like the cracked rind of a fruit. He was four or so inches less than six feet and didn’t seem to weigh more than a hundred and forty, fifty pounds. Herne set him at nearer fifty than forty years of age.

  ‘Name’s Carey.’

  He put out his hand and after a moment’s hesitation, Herne shifted his Colt across and reached out his own right hand. Carey’s fingers were thin and strong: it was like grasping strips of sun-dried leather.

  ‘Okay,’ said Herne. ‘Guess now I’ll get those pants on.’

  ~*~

  Carey was even older than Herne had guessed. Five years the wrong side of fifty. In the warmer weather it didn’t show, but when the cold snap set in and bit into his bones, you could hear his joints creaking clear across the stockade. He’d been working as a trapper and buffalo hunter, off and on as a scout for the army, ever since he was a mere boy. At no time had he met up with Herne the Hunter before, always missing him by a season or a hundred odd miles. But Carey knew Micky Free; Tom Horn and Al Seiber; he had known Kit Carson out in California.

  Now he was getting past the more difficult and dangerous sides of his job. Come the following spring he reckoned the army would let him go. And Carey didn’t blame them. Time was when he could have got all the way into that shack and patted Herne on the head while the big man was still sleeping.

  But that time had long passed.

  Which was why the Camp Commander at Fort Rice had sent him to fetch Herne.

  Carey sat across from Jed Herne in the McGibbons’ dining-room and chewed on the stringy ham, half of his teeth missing from his head. Herne sat opposite him and pushed a piece of com bread across his plate, sopping up the yolk of the eggs.

  The dark-skinned waitress had blushed when Herne had come in, mumbled her thanks and hurried back to the kitchen. McGibbon, whose startled face had shown itself at the door the previous day, came out and told Herne that their breakfast was on the house but he didn’t seem all that pleased with what had happened.

  He couldn’t afford to be—the army accounted for more than half of what little trade he had.

  There was no one else in the dining-room.

  ‘That Chance,’ said Carey with his mouth still half-full of ham, ‘he’s meaner than a bear that’s walked into a swarm of bees. An’ that’s when he’s sober. From what you say he’d got a few under his belt.’

  ‘He had.’

  ‘Well,’ Carey paused to finger a particle of meat from between his teeth, ‘ordinarily I’d advise any man who crossed Chance Lattimer to keep well clear. But I guess you can take care of yourself. ’Sides, you ain’t goin’ to be at the Fort for long.’

  Herne pushed the last wedge of bread into his mouth and picked up his coffee cup. ‘Fill me in.’

  ‘Band of Sioux. Oglala. Jumped the reservation south of here. Wakpala Agency. On the banks of the Missouri. Headed north. ’Bout twenty braves, women an’ a few kids.’

  ‘Hostile?’

  ‘Hell, no! Least, not yet they ain’t. There was the usual stuff ’bout supplies bein’ kept from ’em an’ sold to whites on the cheap. You know how it is.’

  Herne nodded, both hands round his cup.

  ‘This chief
. Morning Cloud. He said they weren’t staying for the white men to steal their food from under their noses. Led ’em out.’

  ‘An’ what now?’

  ‘Seems he’s changed his mind. Says he’ll lead ’em back.’

  Herne raised an eyebrow: ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Commander at the Fort, rode out an’ talked him into it. Along with fifty or so men. Now Morning Cloud and his bunch are camped outside the stockade, waitin’ on an escort back.’ He pointed a bent finger at Herne. ‘That’s where you come in.’

  Herne drained his cup. ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Seems most things. Or maybe the Commander just wants to keep me around the Fort for reasons he ain’t said yet. But he wants someone to ride down with a detachment of cavalry, take the Indians in.’

  ‘That all?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Herne eased back in his chair. ‘Sure don’t seem like much of a job.’

  Carey wiped his sleeve across his mouth and belched: ‘Sure don’t.’

  ~*~

  The Fort lay in an area of flat plain north of the Cannonball river and west of the Missouri. The original outer stockade wall now only stood on two sides. A smaller, inner stockade surrounded the officers’ quarters and the post trader’s compound. The stables, barracks and guardhouse were unbounded to the east.

  Herne followed Carey past the edge of the outer stockade, glancing over at the huddle of makeshift tenting which the army had erected for the Indians. They rode past the long barrack rooms of logs chinked with a mixture of sand and mud and lime and the open-fronted stables. A platoon of men were drilling in the square in front of the adobe-walled officers’ quarters.

  The sun was burning as strongly as the day before and the men looked hot enough to drop. The officer’s commands fell flat on the dull, heavy air. From inside one of the buildings back to the right came the off-key notes of someone practicing a bugle call.

  Carey dismounted and looped the end of his animal’s rein round the hitching pole in front of the doorway. Two sentries stood guard on either side of the door, looking bored.

  ‘Let’s go see the man,’ said Carey as Herne climbed down from the saddle.

  Herne followed him into the partial shade of the adobe building, turning left and stopping outside a flat wooden door. Carey knocked and waited for a reply.