Return of the Tall Man Read online

  “Mon ami, we are honored!” he boomed. “We have come far to talk a little business, but that will wait.” He turned to Ben and the others. “Come, I want you to meet Soledad; he’s the most important man in this country.”

  Getting off his pony, Ben had time to tell himself that such adventurous spirits as Frank Go-deen and Baptiste Pourier required many talents to stay alive in the High Plains. It wasn’t just a simple matter of being a good shot, quick with a knife, or having the constitution of a grizzly bear. A man had to have the morals of a stray dog, the cunning of a coyote, and the guts of a government mule as well. Going toward the swarthy Comanchero, he suddenly got a better angle at the latter’s face in the nearer glare of the fire. When he did, he wanted to pull back the hand he had just extended. But it was too late.

  “This is Mr. Ben Allison,” Big Bat was saying. “He is the one who has the business with you.”

  Soledad took his hand, and Ben felt as though he had just picked up a live cottonmouth. He stood holding on, afraid to let go, afraid not to. The Comanchero had no such compunctions. He wrung Ben’s hand heartily, flashed his fine smile again, swept a gracious arm toward the seat at fireside which he had vacated to greet them.

  “Señor Allison, please to take my place by the fire. A matter of business is always a matter of pleasure with Dominguin.” He pointed to the various spits propped in the ground before them. “What will you have, señor?”

  “Some of the ribs,” nodded Ben, sitting down uneasily.

  Dominguin pulled a stick with six hump ribs impaled upon it—approximately four pounds of meat—and handed it to his guest of honor. To the others he waved a general invitation to be seated and advised them to choose what they would and eat well. No more was said for twenty minutes, while the famished travelers wolfed down their first fresh meat in over a week. The other Comancheros watched them from other fires, the women and children seeming particularly curious and friendly in their regard. The men appeared nervous or at least more reticent to stare than their mates or offspring. The four tough-looking hunters who had been with Dominguin when they rode up had drifted off to dine elsewhere and were now nowhere to be seen. Such was the sauce of hunger, however, that Ben, Lame John, and Go-deen thought nothing of these missing henchmen, murderous-looking as they had been at casual glance. Big Bat, just as famished but more familiar with the situation, kept his shoe-button eyes busy while his great teeth tore at the foot-long chunk of fat loin meat he had selected.

  Ben, first pangs of the need for fresh meat dulled by five minutes of silent wolfing, would have liked the time to study the Comanchero camp. From what he could see of its endless strings of drying buffalo jerky, its quaint old Spanish wooden-wheeled carretas, narrow-bedded oxcarts for the hauling of meat and camp gear, its Arab-style desert tents, tethered buffalo-running horses, caballada or remuda of pack mules, its hordes of yapping, spotted mongrels, and, above all, the raffishly attired Comancheros themselves in their part-Indian, part-Spanish, part-American cowboy garb. The campo of these colorful half-breed buffalo hunters would have been worth a full day of friendly investigation.

  Such time and temper was not to be given, however.

  When Dominguin had gorged himself and inquired of his guests as to their state of satiety, he clapped his hands and a dark-skinned woman, looking for all the world like a gypsy hag from a Romany caravan, came from the outer darkness with earthen mugs and a great, steaming pottery urn of roast chicory beans and Mexican coffee. The mugs poured full, the woman asked in Spanish if any of the señores would care for leche in their beverage?

  To his complete surprise, Ben found himself replying in the same tongue and with equal fluency:

  “Por favor, señora; un poco, no más.”

  The hag seemed pleased with his ability in the tongue and went off into the darkness to return with a potbellied mustang mare towed on a frayed tether. The mare was sided by a suckling colt which squealed and bit at the Comanchero woman as she milked the mare directly into the hot mug taken, before he could object, from Ben’s hand.

  A bit rattled but up to the occasion, Ben took the cup back, raised it gallantly to the seamy harridan.

  “Yo saludo usted,” he smiled. “A su hermosura, mocedad, y prudencia.”

  The old woman cackled like a stewpot hen who had laid an egg just in time to avoid the ax. She slapped Ben on the back with one bony hand, stabbed the crooked forefinger of the other member into Dominguin’s chest.

  “You hear him?” she said in Spanish. “That’s a goddam good man there. You take care of him. You hear me, hijo?”

  “Madre mío,” said Dominguin, “you get the hell away from here and keep your mouth closed. Do you hear me?”

  “Bah!” snorted the elder witch, who Ben was left to guess was the mother of the Comanchero chief. “You don’t frighten me, Soledad. Mind what I say. I mean it.”

  With that she was gone into the night again, and Dominguin was smiling and lifting his shoulders in apology.

  “When they get so old,” he explained, “they say foolish things. In her day she was something, though. When I was small, I have seen her peel and flesh seventeen skins, daylight to dark. Ay de mí. It is different these times. You can’t find a woman to do five hides, and then they leave more meat on the skin than they do on the skeleton. Mierda!”

  With the curse, he spit into the fire, laughed good-naturedly, turned back to Ben with his bright smile.

  “Mil pardones, señor.” He gestured humbly, dropping his dark eyes a moment, softening the smile almost to shyness. “It is a rough life out here. We forget our training. Our good manners escape us. Forgive me the oversight. There was a matter of business with Dominguin I think you said?”

  “Yes,” said Ben. “Is it all right if we talk in English?”

  “If you will,” agreed the other. “Though your Spanish is better than mine. Where did you get it, señor? I am curious to know.”

  “So am I,” said Ben. “Up to tonight I didn’t know I could speak a word of it. But then there’s a lot of things I don’t know about myself. That’s one reason I’m down here in this south country—looking for answers.”

  “Ah, yes.” Ben was aware now that Dominguin’s eyes had the flat glitter of a snake’s. He hadn’t noticed it before, and it made him suddenly edgy. “Well,” continued the Comanchero, “what answers are you looking for, señor? That is to say, that you believe Dominguin can help you to find? I am waiting, but don’t hurry yourself. There’s time.”

  Suddenly, Ben felt the short hairs at the nape of his neck begin to rise. He knew they were behind him then but had to look to make sure. He reached as though to put his emptied mug upon the flat stone by the fire, the movement allowing him the imperceptible, eye-corner glance he needed. He straightened, looking across the fire at Big Bat. The latter jogged his beard a quarter inch in the affirmative, his black eyes staring at Soledad Dominguin as he answered for Ben.

  “Oui, mon ami, you are right, there is time. But let’s don’t waste it talking to those who do not carry the gold. Am I not right, Soledad, mon frère?”

  “You have gold, Big One?”

  “Oh, come now. Was it some other Comanchero I gave the other bag to last week?”

  “You have more gold then?”

  “All that is needed. Shall we talk?”

  Dominguin spread his hands. And his lizard’s gaping smile. His warmth would have melted buffalo butter.

  “Gold always talks. What do you want?”

  “The woman,” said Big Bat Pourier. “The one you stole from Satank for eight spotted horses.”

  Dominguin’s smile died stillborn.

  Behind him his four returned lieutenants closed a soundless step. They were so near Ben now that he could smell the rank odor of buffalo offal and dried slaughter blood on their filthy buckskins.

  “It is most unfortunate,” declared Sole
dad Dominguin, “that you have said what you have said.”

  The silence set in.

  Ben felt that his tensed muscles must crack. He saw Go-deen and Lame John look at him for a sign and knew that they would follow where he would lead. Moreover, he knew the lead was his; the others, after prairie protocol, had leaned their rifles against the nearest carreta before squatting to the fire. He wore the only weapon.

  Across the fire, Big Bat was watching Soledad Dominguin.

  “I have asked about the woman,” he said carefully. “Why do you say that this is unfortunate, Frère Soledad? Has she died? Have you let her get away? Have you already given delivery of her”

  Dominguin’s features thawed a little.

  “Oh, no, none of these things.”

  “What then?”

  “I have given my word.”

  “On what agreement?”

  “A matter of my own arrangement.”

  “You will not tell us about the woman then?”

  “What is there to tell?”

  “What you have done with her. You know we carry gold to buy. Now I will reveal to you another power we hold.”

  “Oh?” Dominguin glanced around at his four ruffians. “I see my power, but I do not see yours. Where is it?”

  Big Bat pointed to the north.

  “At Fort Cobb. The army has commissioned me to tell you that if you do not deliver the woman to us, they will send a hundred soldiers down here and shoot out the buffalo in this one summer. They will make a shambles, an abattoir, of the South Plains. Now, mon chèr, how does that sound for power?”

  Ben could see that Dominguin felt the thrust of the blade. Apparently, the threat to destroy the hunting from which his people made their livelihood was more of a practical menace than any personal fears he might hold for his own head.

  “Malo,” he said to Big Bat, “muy malo.”

  “But of course.” The huge scout shrugged. “Now what about the woman?”

  “What about the gold?”

  “I have the gold.”

  “I want to see it.”

  “I want to see the woman.”

  The silence returned. During it the four shadows behind Dominguin separated at a lift of his hand. Two moved out to flank the fire, giving themselves a line to shoot clear of Ben. The third stayed behind Ben. The fourth glided completely around the fire, to the carreta. Picking up the leaning rifles of Go-deen, Big Bat, and Lame John, he dropped them one by one over the sideboards into the empty bed of the buffalo wagon. The muffled, metallic thunking of their hidden falls seemed to Ben to put Fort Cobb farther away than the hinder surface of the moon. Dominguin’s grin returned for the first time in three minutes.

  “You still want to see the woman?” he said.

  For answer Big Bat reached inside his elk-skin jacket. He reached with exquisite care and slowness, and the bandit Comanchero leaned forward with intent, sudden interest. When the hand came forth again, Ben’s eyes went as wide as Soledad Dominguin’s. The leather poke, even in Big Bat’s enormous paw, looked swollen enough to hold a queen’s ransom. Big Bat held it by the rawhide strings, letting its weight sway like the pendulum of some invisible clock ticking off the moments of wordless greed in the Comanchero’s slitted eyes.

  Ben swore to himself in soundless admiration. He had not dreamed that Pourier had the gold to back his boast about the army. It had seemed like the most undressed sort of a cold-deck bluff. Obviously, Dominguin had read it the same way. Now the entire temper of the matter altered abruptly. The bandit chiefs smile almost set his mustache afire.

  “With old friends,” he laughed, “one always enjoys a little joke before getting down to the agreement.” He turned to Ben, waving the gunman behind him to step back. “No es verdad, patrón?” he asked unctuously.

  “Si, hombre,” replied Ben, unwarmed. “A dónde está la mujer?”

  Dominguin laughed again, rattled off an order to the man by the carreta. The latter went off into the dark, returned moments later leading by the hand a slim, graceful Indian woman in the soiled camp dress of an Oglala squaw. It was only when she had come into the full firelight and raised her bowed head to stare at the four strangers that they saw her eyes were a startling cornflower blue, her waist-long braids a dull gleaming copper-gold.

  “Amy Johnston …” breathed Ben. “My God.”

  None of the others said anything.

  17

  Lost Sister

  The woman, girl really—looking more seventeen than twenty-four—was an eyeful. Big Bat had not exaggerated her form but had neglected to mention her face. It was striking. Dark as Mexican saddle leather, angular, and beautifully drawn, with oblique eye-set and straight, full mouth, it was a face to both haunt a man’s memory and hold his heart still at first sight.

  Ben could only look after his involuntary gasp of recognition. In turn, the captive studied each of the newcomers with her cornered-animal stare, searching to find among their number a friend. Big Bat she had seen before. She lingered on him only long enough to catch and seek into his snapping eyes. Go-deen she dismissed in passing as though she sensed he was not present in her account. Moving to Ben, her gaze hesitated. He felt the long, deep probe of her regard and stood tongue-tied under it. He wanted to speak out but could not. The girl appeared to wait for him a hopeful moment; then when he said nothing and made no sign, her glance dropped, shifted hesitantly to Lame John. There was an instant’s doubtful peering, then Ben saw the anxious, brilliantly blue eyes come alive. As they did, the tall Nez Percé youth stepped forward to stand in front of her.

  For perhaps the drawing of three breaths, neither of them moved. Then Lame John reached and took her right hand in both his. Carrying it to his breast, he placed and pressed its palm over his heart. Then, stepping back, he signed to her in the Plains language.

  “We are your friends; we have come to take you home.” He pointed to Ben. “This tall one is of your own people. He has come from your true father, who is still alive. Will you listen to his story? He wants to tell you who you are and why you must come back with us.”

  The girl looked from him to Soledad Dominguin. Dominguin shrugged his consent. Big Bat, voice rumbling deep with feeling, added his encouragement. Ben, eyes unable to leave the wild-thing compellingness which marked each movement of her body, each expression of her slender face, made the signs which told her that Lame John spoke the truth. Even Frank Go-deen, that Milk River man of few words and no sentiments, as he saw it, offered to break his well-known rule of golden silence long enough to serve as interpreter in the matter of conveying the Tall Brother’s story of her true birth. Since he alone of those present spoke her Shoshoni tongue, it was the least he could do, and despite his dislike of long talking, he would be happy enough to do it for her, his lost white sister.

  Hearing Go-deen speak in Shoshoni brought a second light to her averted face. Replying to Go-deen but staring straight at Ben, she murmured in a voice as guttural as any Wind River woman’s.

  “My ears are uncovered; I will listen to the half-blood brother.”

  Go-deen told the story with unusual astringency. And speed, too. It was clear he wanted to get it done with and be gone from the Comanchero camp. Throughout the recounting—well-presented, if somewhat short—the listening captive remained impassive. From time to time she would nod, from time to time shake her head. When the breed had concluded with a rather eloquent brief for the dangers risked by Ben to bring her back to the love of her aging white father, Ben received his second jolt of the evening. Still looking at him, she barked a quick string of Shoshoni at Go-deen, motioning finally to herself, then to Ben, the first of the terminal gestures proud and defiant, the second—to Ben—cold-faced and disdainful.

  When she dropped her moving hands, she stood, head down, as she had before, her expression returned to its original blankly hopeless stare.
r />   “Do you want to know what she said?” asked Frank Go-deen in the lengthening silence.

  “Yes,” said Ben, “every word of it.”

  “It’s not good.”

  “For God’s sake,” said Ben, “tell it.”

  “All right. She said to tell the Tall One that he lies. She has no white father. She is Shoshoni. Suckled on a Horse Creek squaw, weaned on a stolen Sioux pony. She says she is the daughter of Crowheart and the Milk River woman, Magpie. She says to say to you that she is Shacun, Indian woman; you are Wasicun, white man.” Go-deen made the cutting-off motion with his right hand. “She says to tell you, ‘that’s all’; that she is already katela.”

  “Katela?”

  “Yes, dead or fallen.”

  Ben looked over at Big Bat Pourier.

  “She knows about the Apaches,” he said.

  “Oui, it would seem so.” He waved to Go-deen. “Tell her not to worry about the Mimbreño of Red Sleeves. We have the gold to buy her first. Tell her we must hurry, though, to be gone before the Apaches arrive to make their offer.”

  As Go-deen nodded and began to apprise the captive of what had been said, Soledad Dominguin got up slowly from the fire. Instinctively, Ben followed him up.

  “It would seem,” said the Comanchero, “that you do not understand the situation. It is no longer a matter of who comes first with the price.”

  “What do you mean?” rasped Big Bat, heaving up like a buffalo, rump first, to stand glaring across the fire.

  “Very simple.” Dominguin shrugged. “The Apaches have already been here.”

  Ben’s stomach shrank, as Big Bat said softly, “You didn’t sell her to those fils de chiennes, Soledad? Be very careful with your reply.”

  In the instant Dominguin’s face went blank.

  “She is sold,” he said.

  There was a heartbeat of dead stillness before Lame John struck like a red wolf for his throat.