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  THERE WASN’T A MAN ALIVE WHO COULD TRAP SUNDANCE

  Sundance was riding north from Arizona to Seattle at the request of an old friend. Several trappers had been murdered while setting out their winter lines. There were no clues except for an old piece of wood found near each body with one word, Carcajou, burnt into it.

  No sooner had Sundance set foot in town than he found himself in a tangle with a couple of gunmen aiming to see that he didn’t stick around long. But Sundance wasn’t the kind to get caught in a trap. Just before the two men died, one managed to utter a single word: Carcajou!

  SUNDANCE 17: GUNBELT

  By John Benteen

  First published by Leisure Books in 1977

  Copyright © 1976, 2017 by John Benteen

  First Smashwords Edition: May 2017

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Cover image © 2017 by Tony Masero

  Check out Tony’s work here

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Published by Arrangement with the Author Estate.

  Chapter One

  The man named Sundance had come a long, hard way. Arizona only three weeks ago had been blazing hot, but here on Puget Sound in Washington Territory, the wind off the water had the raw bite of coming winter in it, though it was still early in October. Sundance felt the difference in his bones, hunching down in the buffalo hide jacket, worn fleece in and cut short enough not to interfere with the butt of the Colt holstered low-slung on his thigh. Seattle, he thought: a tough, brawling town, especially this part of it south of the street men here called Skid Road.

  Head down against the wind, he walked on. The Lava Beds, they called this district of bars and cheap hotels and gambling hells and brothels, and it was as ugly and mean a place as he had ever been in: muddy streets, shabby wooden buildings, and everywhere the human vultures who preyed on lumberjacks and sailors. Now, at twilight, tinny music whanged from nearly every deadfall, there was high-pitched laughter, drunks lurched along the sidewalks or through the mud, and painted harpies shrilled invitations from doors and windows. Somewhere down here was a place called the Panther Bar, and that was where he was to meet MacDougal.

  Hudson’s Bay, he thought, pausing in the doorway of a pawnshop, out of the wind, to deftly roll a cigarette. He was a big man, better than six feet tall, his skin as bronze as an old penny, his hawk-nosed, high-cheek-boned profile wholly that of a high-plains Indian. But his eyes were gray, the hair spilling thick and heavy to the collar of the jacket from beneath his sombrero the yellow of fresh-minted gold. He was a half-breed: his father had been English, his mother the daughter of a Cheyenne chieftain.

  Hudson’s Bay, the enormous trading company, controlled the fur trade all across Canada. MacDougal was manager of one of its biggest posts. His letter had reached Sundance at the San Carlos Apache reservation almost a month before.

  Maybe you will remember me. I was a friend of your father’s twenty years ago. I used to see you at the Cree camps when you were just a kid and Nick Sundance came there to trade. A lot of water’s gone down the river since then. Now I run the Storm River Factory–trading post–for the Hudson’s Bay Company. And you, I understand, are a man with a gun for hire. I’ve made some inquiries. They say you don’t come cheap, but you’re the best there is. I need the best there is, and I’m willing to pay. I’ll be in Seattle on the fifth of October. If you’re interested and can be there too, meet me at a place called the Panther Bar, in the district below Skid Road, either on the fifth or sixth at seven in the evening. Look for a man of sixty, about two hundred pounds, bald, gray mustache, brown suit and black tie. I’ll guarantee travel expenses and if we can deal, it’ll be worth your while.

  Sundance let smoke dribble from his nostrils. He remembered MacDougal, all right; the man had been with Hudson’s Bay even then, a roving trader buying furs and robes from the plains Cree tribes. Nick Sundance had been in the same business, and he and MacDougal had been rivals. But they had also been friends, and Sundance remembered the evenings when the two men had talked endlessly across the fire in the Sundance teepee, while the boy listened and his Cheyenne mother kept the coffee pot hot on the coals. MacDougal could be trusted. The Hudson’s Bay Company had money, lots of it. Sundance needed money, lots of it. So it had been worth the gamble of the long journey north.

  He waited a moment more, finished the cigarette, ground it out beneath a hard-soled moccasin. Hitching at his gunbelt, he was about to leave the doorway. Then he froze. Two men had stopped across the street to talk with a blowsy woman sitting on a bench behind a partly-opened window in a brothel over there. Blonde, she wore a low-cut skintight dress of red that hugged her plump body, revealing every curve. But it was not the woman Sundance was looking at. One of the men wore a fur cap made from the skin of a black beaver. He was tall and massive across the shoulders, with a barrel chest. The other, a half-breed like Sundance himself, was lean and lank, in the blue denims, pea jacket, and stocking cap of a sailor or a stevedore.

  Slowly, thoughtfully, Sundance took out his makings, rolled another smoke. He had first seen them up on Skid Road itself. Nearly an hour ago, when he had stopped at a store to buy this sack of tobacco, they had come in behind him. They’d still been there when he’d left. Then, coming down into the Lava Beds, he’d stopped at a cheap restaurant for a cup of rotten coffee. While he was drinking it at a table, they’d each had a cup at the counter. Now there they were again, killing time across the street. He clamped the cigarette between his lips, but he did not light it. A warning bell was sounding in his head. Maybe it was coincidence, only meaningless, but maybe …

  Jim Sundance was a fighting man by trade. In his younger days, he had been a Cheyenne Dog Soldier, and after that, he had seen action with guerilla bands in the Civil War, He had been making his living with weapons –both those of white man and Indian– for a long time, now, and he had not survived more than three decades of hard, violent life from Canada to Mexico by being careless or taking anything for granted. In his line of work, one mistake was all it took. Now his hand moved unobtrusively, loosening the Colt in its holster, then doing the same with the long Bowie in its beaded sheath further back on his hip.

  Snapping a match on his thumbnail, he lit the cigarette, left the doorway, sauntered with seeming aimlessness two blocks farther down the street. When he turned to fling the butt of his smoke into the gutter, the man in the beaver hat and the half-breed were ten yards behind him and across the way, on the other sidewalk. Not breaking stride, Sundance went on.

  He turned a corner, walked a block, still sauntering, then turned another corner, made two more blocks, crossed the street. A few paces more and now he halted, as the blonde said from the window, “Hi, good-lookin’. Want a good time?”

  Sundance looked in at her. Her powdered, naked flesh was goose-pimpled from the cold breeze blowing through the gap in the open window. One front tooth was gold. She was about forty pounds too heavy for his taste, even if his taste had run to dollar whores. “Maybe,” he said. “What’s your name?”

  “They call me Pearlie. And I sure do like dark men.”

  “Yeah,” Sundance said. He could see their reflection in the window now. They were on the sidewalk across the street. Had, in fact, moved into the same pawnshop doorway, w
ere rolling cigarettes. One of them pretended interest in a display of knives in the window. “How much you charge?” Sundance asked. “Two bucks. But for a handsome guy like you, only one.”

  “Sorry,” Sundance said, “I only got fifty cents.” He walked on. Behind him, the girl squawked, “Why, you cheap Siwash!” Sundance did not hear. All right, he thought, pulling out his watch. An hour until he met MacDougal. Okay, give them their chance. But he needed more fighting room than he had here. And he knew the layout of the town, now. It was not far down the bluff to the waterfront. And by the time he got there, it would be nearly dark.

  He crossed Skid Road: Yesler Way was its real name. He descended steep streets. Out in the anchorage, tall-masted sailing ships and clumsy-looking lumber schooners rode at anchor. Here and there paddle-wheeled steamers were crowded in at docks. Sundance did not look behind him; he knew they would be coming.

  Fog drifted in across Smith Cove. Now he was in a dimly lit district of great wooden warehouses, wharves and docks fingering out into the water, and at this time of day the area was nearly deserted. A couple of drunken longshoremen were coiling hawsers between nips at a bottle to ward off the chill; stray cats and gaunt dogs were small ghosts in the darkness. Then Sundance found what he sought: a vast lumberyard, stacked high with freshly-sawed Douglas fir. He seemed about to walk on past, then quickly dodged in among the towering piles of planks and beams. He ran quickly, lightly, down the aisle between them, that made a labyrinth, a complicated maze. Working deeper into the yard, he paused, held his breath.

  For a couple of seconds he heard nothing save the moaning of a ship’s whistle in the harbor. Then it came, a brief, high-pitched whistle. Sundance’s mouth thinned, warping in a grin like that of a snarling wolf. All right, they were doing more than just tailing him. They were out to get him; otherwise they would just have covered the gates of the fenced in yard. He had to count on it that they aimed to kill him; and so it was up to him to kill them first.

  His eyes darted around the yard; then he saw what he wanted: a huge pile of four-by-fours, stacked a full fifteen feet above the ground. He ran to it, went up its end like a cougar, his moccasins giving him sure foothold. On top of the pile of lumber, he stretched flat: and he drew his gun.

  From here, he could see across the yard. Looking toward the gate, he saw them, only blurs in gathering darkness, one working down each aisle. Again that whistle, as they signaled to one another. Sundance waited; if they did not change course, one would pass on either side of the pile of beams on which he lay.

  He did not know why they wanted him, and if he were lucky, maybe he could find out. It must, of course, have something to do with his meeting with MacDougal. Then his belly knotted, and silently he cursed. The letter from the Hudson’s Bay man—maybe it had been merely the bait for a trap! God knows, he had enemies all across the west, and in Washington, D.C., not just in Washington Territory, for that matter. He had, after all, since the end of the Civil War, fought long and hard to try to make peace between Indians and whites. With the blood of each running in his veins, that was something he longed for, a dream of his, that the two races share the West, learn to live together, each granting the other a fair deal, learning from the other. Sometimes he had fought with the Indians against the whites, sometimes with the whites against the Indians, depending on which side seemed in the right. But always that dream—and maybe it might even have been achieved, if war between the races had not been so profitable for a few greedy white men.

  And, the financiers, the profiteers, of the East, they could not be fought with guns. They could only be fought on their own home ground, in the halls of Congress in the capital, where they bought and sold the congressmen who made the laws affecting Indians and settlers. They had lobbyists working on their side, the Indians had none—until Sundance had hired one.

  Now, he had one of the best, most influential lawyers in the East working for the Indians in Washington. And though his dream of both sharing this Promised Land equally had long since died, that man’s services were even more valuable now. The Indians were being drawn in to the reservations, after having been conquered by force of arms, and only a man in Washington could see that they got anything like a fair deal, that the promises made to them were kept. The hire of such a lawyer and the buying of Congressmen over to the Indians cost a small fortune. Sundance made a small fortune every year—with his gun. Nowadays, he took whatever job for a fighting man that came along, provided it paid top wages, and somehow, at the risk of his life, managed to keep the cash flowing east. But he had ruined a lot of deals for a lot of powerful people, been the fly in many pots of ointment, the burr under plenty of saddles. There were plenty of profiteers who would be happy to see him dead; and maybe they had fooled him here with a fake letter and put gunmen on his trail …

  ~*~

  Beaver Hat on Sundance’s left, the half-breed in the stocking cap on his right, the two men moved forward, keeping to cover, fading into shadows cast by the piles of lumber, searching what lay ahead carefully, professionally, before they moved. The darkness was almost total, but Sundance saw the guns in their hands as they worked their way from lumber pile to lumber pile.

  Then another whistle, and, forty yards away, both halted, merging with the shadows. Sundance waited. Neither reappeared. Maybe they had given up, or maybe ... He raised his head. There were plenty of stacks of lumber just as high as this one in this yard, and he was not the only one who could climb. And these were men who knew their business.

  He quit watching the ground. Now his eyes swept across the tops of the piles of planks and beams, searching for any movement. A stack to the right, a stack to the left. They’d climb up, survey the yard, and if they spotted him up there, he’d be in a cross-fire.

  Then, on his right, a board, dislodged, clattered to the ground. Sundance heard a whispered curse. He shifted weight, and then he saw it, the head and shoulders of a man, barely visible as a blot against lesser darkness, cresting that pile of beams over there.

  Sundance wasted no time. In seconds, the man would slither forward on his belly and he’d lose his target. The Colt lined itself in his hand seemingly of its own accord, and he fired.

  There was a muffled cry, and the man disappeared. Then a sodden thud as a body hit the ground. Sundance rolled and just in time, because now the top of another pile of lumber came alive with gun flame, firing at the target created by his own. Bullets chunked into wood as he whirled across the lumber pile, hurtled over its edge. One clutching hand caught a pile of beams, straightened him and broke his fall. Nevertheless, he landed hard, hit knees bent and rolled like a big cat. He came up, darted around the pile of lumber, ran through shadow to the other pile, from which the man had fired. He crouched against it, holstering his gun, drawing the Bowie, and he waited.

  Up on top, boards rattled, shifting underweight. Seconds passed. “Brady?” a voice called. “Brady, did he git you?”

  The night was silent.

  “Brady?” And then the whistle once again.

  “Here,” Sundance said thickly in a muffled voice. “Here, and ...” He moaned. “Hit hard.”

  “All right,” the whisper came. “Well, I got him. Know I couldn’t have missed. Watch out, comin’ down.” Another rattling of boards. On the opposite side. Sundance, ran without sound around the pile of planks.

  The man let go, dropped, landing gracefully. In the fraction of a second it took him to recover, Sundance had him, taking him from behind. His arm clamped around a throat, his right hand came up with the knife, point against the belly. “Drop the gun,” he rasped.

  The half-breed in the stocking cap went rigid in his grasp. “Goddamn!” he breathed. Then he dropped the Colt he held.

  “All right,” Sundance said, mouth close to his ear. “Now, you talk. Who sent you after me? Who sent you after Jim Sundance?”

  “I—” The man broke off for lack of breath. Sundance loosened his arm lock on the throat a little. “Who?” he rasped.
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  “Carcajou,” the man said. “It was the Carcajou!’

  “Carcajou. That means Wolverine. Damn you, I want a name.”

  “Don’t know no name. He never gave me one but Carcajou. He’s from—”

  The thunder of a gun drowned the words. Sundance heard the sodden chunk of lead in flesh, and the man in his grasp went up on tiptoes and said, “Oh, God!” And then he fell forward, limp in only the way that a dead man is.

  Sundance let him drop, reeled back behind the corner of the lumber pile. Again a gun roared and flashed, from close to the ground only ten yards away. “Ba’tiste!” a strangled voice cried. “Ba’tiste!” The gun flashed again.

  Sundance had sheathed the Bowie, and now his own Colt was in his hand. He fired at the tongue of flame, and he heard a strange, thick grunt. Panting, he leaned back against the lumber pile and waited, cursing silently. He had miscalculated. ^Beaver Hat had not been dead when he hit the ground. And he had fired at the sound of voices.

  Two minutes passed. Gun ready, Sundance edged around the lumber stack, worked forward. Now he could see it, a dark, sprawled blot on the ground. Brady, the man in the beaver hat, was dead, too. Gaining confidence, Sundance ran to the corpse, bent over it. His first shot must have chopped Brady in the shoulder. The second one, after Brady had killed Baptiste, the half-breed, had blown away a good part of Brady’s beaver hat —and his skull as well.

  “Damn,” Sundance said, straightening up.

  His hands worked instinctively, punching fresh rounds into the gun to replace the pair expended. Then he heard the whistle from outside the lumber yard and down the waterfront, and this was a different kind of whistle, a policeman’s signal. Again Sundance cursed: a copper was on the way to investigate the shooting.

  Sheathing the Colt, he turned and ran, darting among the lumber piles like a weasel. Five minutes later, and as the whistle blew again at the front gate of the yard, he was slam up against the high board fence of its back.