Sundance 17, page 2
It was twelve feet in height. He sprang upward and his hands seized the edge. His moccasined feet found a hold, and then he was up and over and landed hard in a field of salt scrub behind it. In the lumber yard, the whistle sounded once again. Sundance darted up the slope behind the fence, dodging through low brush. Presently, in the cover of the undergrowth, he stopped, regained his breath. Then he trotted on until he reached a back street, and from there he worked his way, up one of the many hills of Seattle until he was on Skid Road again. In the glow of a street lamp, he lit a cigarette.
Carcajou, he thought. The French-Canadian term for wolverine, adopted by most northern Indians. The wolverine was the most feared animal of the North. One of the weasel family, it had a weasel’s bloodlust. But it was the size of a dog, with powerful jaws and powerful claws, and a cunning that was almost supernatural. A wolverine, a carcajou, was by nature a wanton killer, slaughtering for the fun of it, and a destroyer equally as wanton, and one of them could ravage a trapline from end to end for a whole season, ruining all the fur and eluding all efforts to catch or shoot it.
In fact, the northern Indians who lived by trapping were convinced that it was not an animal at all, but an evil spirit. Which was why the white men of the north sometimes called it the Injun Devil.
Whoever had hired those gunmen had gone by that name, and that made no sense at all to Sundance. It surely was not someone from Washington, D.C., or the range country in which he usually operated. It was someone from the North, from the trapline country, and that brought his mind back to the letter from MacDougal. Which maybe was genuine after all.
Sundance hauled out his watch again, glanced at it. Five minutes after seven. Somewhere in the Lava Beds was the Panther Bar. And somewhere in the Panther Bar was, maybe, the man named Samuel MacDougal, who had been his father’s friend. And if MacDougal was on the up-and-up, maybe the name Carcajou would mean something to him. In any case, he had to have the money, Sundance did, because the tribes needed it, and so he must go and find MacDougal, whether it was another trap or not.
Chapter Two
The Panther Bar was a hole in the wall, a counter, half a dozen tables, a couple of tired, aged, waitresses in gowns that revealed more flesh than they should have, at their time of life, put on display. There were two rooms for private card games in the back. It stank of cheap booze and unwashed flesh and the tobacco juice soaked into the unchanged sawdust shavings on the floor. Sundance saw all this as he entered and closed the frosted glass door behind him.
A rank joint, he thought, eyes sweeping the tables. Three lumberjacks were arguing at one, a drunk slept head down at another. But at a third, in the corner, his back to the wall, sat a brawny man in a brown. suit and a black tie. His bald head glinted in the lamplight, and there was a bottle of whiskey on the table before him. At the sound of the closing door, he raised his head, raked blue eyes over the tall man in the buffalo hide jacket and buckskins standing there, and a slow smile tugged at a thin mouth in a weathered face. MacDougal had changed since the days of the Cree camps, Sundance thought. Cautiously, he walked across the room.
The man in the brown suit stood up. His grin revealed stained teeth. “Well,” he said. “You’d be my old friend Jim Sundance.”
“Sam MacDougal.”
“Aye, that’s me.” MacDougal’s hand was hard as a block of spruce. “Jim, it’s been a long time. When last we met, ye were just a tad, guardin’ the horse herd like the other Injun boys. Now ...” He looked at the tall, hard man before him, eyes lingering on the gun. “Now you look like the kind of man I need.” He gestured. “Sit down, sit down, and have a drink.”
Sundance did, choosing a chair that also put his back toward the wall. An extra glass already waited on the table, and MacDougal filled it, shoved it over. He filled his own, raised it. “To old times.”
He drained this, but Sundance only sipped. MacDougal grinned. “You’re not a drinking man?”
“Can’t afford to be,” Sundance said. “I’m half-Indian, don’t forget, and whiskey gets to me fast. Two drinks are my limit. The third one and I get mean. Fourth, I’ll fight anything from a grizzly bear to a bull moose. Give me five and I’ll try to clean up this town single-handed. So I put on the halter at two.”
“Yep, that’s the Injun blood for you. Somethin’ in it that just can’t take alcohol. All the same, it’s good to see you.” His eyes shadowed. “Jim, I heard about your parents and how they died, and what you did afterward.”
Sundance said, “That was a long time ago.”
“Yeah,” MacDougal said. “But it has bearing on why I’m here.” He stared down at his glass. “Even though I’m a Scot and he was English, I always admired your father. His family sent him to America as a remittance man, because he was a wild one and they wanted him out of their hair. And he came west, and he fell in with the Cheyennes and he fell in love with the wild, free way they lived. So he married the daughter of a Cheyenne chief and changed his name to Sundance.”
“That was because he was the first white man they let join in the Sundance ceremony,” the half-breed said. “It’s the most sacred ceremony the plains tribes have.”
“Aye. And he was a trader, traded for furs and robes and the like all up and down the plains, and everybody, all the tribes, loved and trusted him, from the Crees down to the Yaquis in Mexico. And you, yourself—you lived among all those tribes, learned their languages, were adopted into half of ’em, they tell me. God knows how many dialects you speak, but you ask anybody in the West, who knows more about Indians than anybody else, and the answer always comes back, Jim Sundance.”
Sundance shrugged.
“But to get back to your papa. It was awful, Jim. The way I heard it, the three of you, father, mother, son, went into Bent’s Old Fort to trade. Nick sold his furs, he and your mother started back, and you stayed on for the horse racing and the high times.”
“Sam, I’d as soon forget it. I should have gone north with my parents. When I caught up with ’em, I found ’em—”
“Dead,” MacDougal said. “Three rogue white men and three drunk Pawnees from the fort had followed ’em out, killed ’em, stole their money. And they split up, each went his own way. But …” His eyes met Sundance’s. “You picked up the trails and followed ’em. It took you a year, but they died hard, all of ’em. You revenged Nick Sundance and his wife Two Blue Flowers. You took six scalps, three from white men, three from Pawnees. Then you went into the American Civil War. You were already a Cheyenne Dog Soldier and knew Indian fighting style. Time the War was over, you were a first class white-style gunman, too. And I’ve followed your career from then on. Your work for the Indians. And for the whites as well. You’re the one man out here who can get on with both races, know how they both think, at home with each, can fight with the weapons of each and … and that’s why I need you, Jim.”
He poured himself another drink. “I was afraid you might not get my letter, or that you wouldn’t come. Because—” His hand tightened around his glass. “You’re just about the only man I know of who might be able to catch the Carcajou.”
~*~
Jim Sundance sat up straight. “The Carcajou,” he said. A faint chill walked down his spine.
“You know what a carcajou is, a wolverine.”
“I know,” Sundance said, and something in his voice made MacDougal look at him keenly. He drained his glass. Then he said, “I’ve one of the back rooms reserved. Maybe we’d better move in there.”
“Yes,” Sundance said. “Maybe we’d better.”
A couple of minutes later, MacDougal locked the door behind them. “Something in your eyes,” he said. “When you heard that name, Carcajou.” He sat down at the table. “You’ve heard the name before?”
“Today,” Sundance said, and then, carefully, told MacDougal what had happened.
The Scotsman’s face went pale beneath its ruddy tan. “The bastard,” he muttered. “Maybe he is a devil! How would he know? How in the hell would he know that I was meeting you here in Seattle at this time on this day? And find you and put a tail on you?” He slammed the table with one big hand. “God damn it, it doesn’t make sense! It’s almost … witchcraft, like the Injuns claim!”
Sundance said quietly, “Those two gunmen weren’t witches, Sam. They were flesh and blood. They died.”
“Aye.” MacDougal settled in his chair. “All the same.”
Sundance said, “Begin at the beginning.”
MacDougal looked at him a moment, then nodded. “Aye, I’ll do that. But still it’ll make no more sense.”
Pouring himself a drink, he arose, went to the single window in the room, a blocky bull of a man. Big, thick-boned, like a moose, Sundance thought. That was MacDougal, all right, a bull moose of a man.
“Well,” he said, “first of all, you know I’m Chief Factor, manager, of the Storm River Post of the Hudson’s Bay Company. That’s the biggest post, serving the richest trapping territory, in British Columbia. More than fifty thousand square miles of it, maybe a hundred good traplines, and each trapper’ll bring in from a thousand to three thousand dollars’ worth of fur a year, sometimes more if prices are high. They’re high right now, highest they’ve been in ten years.”
Sundance whistled. “You’re talking about a lot of money.”
“This year damn near half a million. That was what we hoped for, before the Carcajou ...”
Sundance said, “Hoped for?”
“All right,” said MacDougal. “Our trappers come in from their lines in June, sell their furs. Then they go back, do the summer work to get ready for the winter. You know anything about trapping? Hell, yes, you do. Nick was a fur trader, and fur traders have to know trapping.”
Sundance nodded. “When I was a kid we spent two winters with the woods Crees. You ever hear of Broken Jaw?”
“Hell, yes. Even back then he was so old he looked like God’s grandfather. And he’d been the best trapper and hunter among the Crees for years.”
“He taught me,” Sundance said.
MacDougal looked at him. “Then you’ll know your way around a trapline. And you know it takes a lot of summer work, locating the animals, where they live and travel, building caches, all that. So our trappers maybe a third of ’em are white, the rest Indians and half-breeds—go back in the woods for the summer. Then, come August or early September they’re back at Storm River to outfit again for the winter hunt. Only ...” He paused. “Ten of ’em didn’t come in this year.”
“So?” Sundance still nursed the first drink.
MacDougal’s face was hard. “I got worried. A lot of things can happen to a man out in the bush. So I sent people out to check on ’em—two of the best woodsmen at the post. They didn’t come back either.” MacDougal paused, drew in breath. “That really set me on my ear. So Constable Cameron of the Mounties and I went out to make a search. We found the two men—or what was left of ’em, after the wolves had finished with them. And we checked the traplines of the missing trappers—and we found eight of them. Or, rather, their skeletons. The other two, God knows where their bones are scattered. But it was murder, Sundance; all of them were murdered. There were bullet holes in three of the skulls as proof of that. Some of the others, it looked like died harder. I’ll swear someone chopped them to bits with an axe.”
Sundance drained his glass.
“And,” MacDougal finished, “near every dead man we found a hunk of wood with one word burnt in it with a hot iron: Carcajou.” Sundance poured another drink.
“Twelve murdered men, Sundance.” The trader’s voice shook. “Ten of ’em the best trappers in the territory with the richest lines. And the word spread like wildfire among the others. Most of those were Indians and half-breeds and—no disrespect—you can imagine what effect it had.”
“Suppose you tell me.”
“Well, the first question the Indians ask is how could any mortal man cover so much territory, so much wild country—and then how could he take a dozen of the best woodsmen in the North by surprise? And those signs, Carcajou, that added the last touch. They think the wolverine’s an evil spirit anyhow. So it had to be the work of devils, not of men. Half of ’em have already told me they’re not gonna trap their lines this winter, they’ll head south or east and try to find some work around the settlements. Those killings are just about clearing out the woods. And they’re gonna cost the Hudson’s Bay Company a fortune in furs this season. And that,” he wound up, “is why I got in touch with you.”
He paced the room. “You’re half Indian and you understand the Indian mind. They’ll talk to you in a way they won’t to white men, no matter how well they know us. More than that, you’ve got the mind of an educated white man as well, so you won’t buy this stuff about evil spirits. But the main thing is, goddammit, you’re a fighting man and you know the woods. The way I understand it, this is right down your street, the kind of job you make your living at. I want you to come north, up to Storm River. I’ll give you a free hand to work it any way you want to. But I want you to find this damnblasted Carcajou, and I want you to bring him in and put a stop to all this killing, and prove to my trappers that he’s only mortal man and not an evil spirit. Jim, there’s nobody else can do it. So, what about it? I’ll pay ten thousand dollars!”
Sundance said: “Make it twenty.”
MacDougal stared. “Twenty? God Almighty, man.”
“Ten now and when I bring in the Carcajou, ten more.”
“The Company wouldn’t—”
Sundance stood up. “The Company had better. Because twenty thousand’s my price. Which you yourself say is about five per cent of what you’ll lose if the Carcajou brings trapping to a standstill up there. The Company can afford it.”
“Hell!” MacDougal grabbed the bottle, filled his glass. “You won’t work for less?”
“No. Maybe you can find somebody else who will.”
“Don’t talk foolishness. There’s only one Jim Sundance. Only one man who’s Indian enough and white enough to bring it off.” MacDougal tossed down the drink, wiped his mouth with his hand. “All right,” he said harshly. “The Company’s given me carte blanche to clear this up, bring in the killer of two Company men. Twenty thousand. You’ve got your deal.”
“I’ll write out a contract for you to sign. I only work by contract. Not that I don’t trust you, Mac, but sometimes folks aren’t as scrupulous about keeping their bargains with a man who’s half Indian as they would be with a fellow who’s a hundred per cent white.”
“The Company keeps its bargains,” MacDougal said harshly.
“Then the Company shouldn’t mind a contract.”
“Write out your God damn contact,” MacDougal said. “And the minute it’s signed, I’ll write you a draft on the Hudson’s Bay Company for ten thousand dollars American.”
~*~
Sundance carefully stowed the draft the trader had written in the inside pocket of his coat. He lit another cigarette, finished his second drink, reminding himself that that would have to be enough. “Now,” he said. “Let’s get down to cases. Okay. The Carcajou’s killed all these trappers, scared off more. He knew somehow I was meeting you in Seattle and put two killers on my tail. The law has already found their bodies by now, and in a few days they’ll trace back and maybe find somebody on Skid Road that remembers those two men were trailing a half-breed with blond hair. I don’t exactly blend in with a crowd. So there’s no time to waste; I got to get out of Seattle before I get hung up here. Anyhow, the Carcajou’s already tipped his hand. It’s not one man, somebody gone bush-crazy or with a grudge against the Company. It’s somebody that’s got a connection here in Seattle, not a loner, but a gang.”
“Sure. Had to be from the start. Like I said, no one man could have covered all that rough country up Storm River and taken twelve good woodsmen by surprise. Had to be a gang.”
“But what the hell have they got to gain?” Sundance shook his head. “I could understand it if they waited until the season was over and high-jacked the furs. But why kill off the trappers before the season’s even started?”
“Easy,” MacDougal said. “Once winter settles in, nobody goes in or comes out of the trapping country. The Carcajou, whoever he is, could fill up all those traplines with his own men and nobody would know the difference. A good trapper who works the same territory over and over again knows he has to leave some animals for seed. But rogue trappers, coming in for just one season, would clean out everything that wore fur and was worth a dollar. Strip the country bare of game, so it might take another three, five years, if ever, for it to recover. Let’s say, by scaring off half my trappers, fifty territories vacant, men could take out two hundred thousand worth of fur in the regular way. Hard trapping, raping the country of everything that moved, could double that and more. The Carcajou, whoever he is, stands to make a half million dollars in a single winter. A real trapper harvests fur like a crop. The Carcajou’s men could come in once the country’s closed down and take everything, leaving no seed for next year’s crop.”
“Like the professional buffalo hunters,” Sundance said coldly, feeling hatred stir within him.
“Exactly.”
“All right. What about the Mounties? What are they doing?”
MacDougal laughed hoarsely. “The Royal Northwest Mounted Police? Well, first of all, that outfit’s not ten years old, yet. Second, it’s tied up with a lot of dissension among the Red River Crees in Saskatchewan. They say Riel, the half-breed leader, is fomenting another rebellion there among the half-breeds. Then they’ve got your American Sioux who crossed the border after Little Big Horn. Sundance, their plate is full and overflowing. There’s one constable assigned to the Storm River territory, and while he’s a damned good man, comparatively speaking, he’s a greenhorn. Owen Cameron’s only twenty-four years old and he’s from the prairie, not the woods. But he’s only been on the job six months, fresh out of training. He’ll be lucky if the Carcajou doesn’t eat him up as well. Once winter settles in, he’ll be paralyzed. Normally, he’d work with Indian guides. But no Indians will lead him against the Carcajou. They’re too scared, too demoralized.” He shook his head. “You can’t expect much help from the Mounties. It will all be up to you.” His mouth thinned. “Of course, you’ll have no legal authority to arrest anyone. And I don’t want anyone arrested. I want them killed. Wiped out. Exterminated. Like vermin. The way a trapper tries to wipe out a wolverine when it gets on his trapline.” He took out a pair of cigars, handed Sundance one. “Kill or be killed.”
