Ghost Dance Page 5

  Totter's blunt, heavy nose had once been broken to the left and never set. His face as a whole was squarish and freckled. The eyes were gray and narrow, the mouth big and loose. Two of his tobacco-stained teeth were missing on the left side of his face. That from the same barrack-room fight that had broken his nose, and cost him his sergeant's stripes, for the third time.

  Not perfect, Totter admitted, but pretty damn good. And nobody could deny he had a way with women. Nancy upstairs had admitted that.

  It wasn't right that a man like him should be done wrong to.

  Goddam Southerner, he was, thought Totter.

  Should've beat the hell outa him.

  Will beat the hell outa him, thought Totter, the living tar.

  Totter wiped his mouth with his sleeve, the blue of the army jacket scratching across the unshaven face, and turned to put his back to the bar, and look to the third table to his left, about ten yards from where he stood.

  He cheated me, said Totter to himself.

  He had to of, he thought.

  The bland, nondescript gentleman in his wide-brimmed hat string tie and white suit, sitting at the table, dealing the cards, happened to look up about the time Totter turned to face him. The gentleman's noncommittal, smooth face read the signs aright, perhaps from long experience of such matters.

  Payday, said Totter to himself, already broke, cheated me, had to of.

  The gentleman signaled the bartender expertly, and Totter heard liquid sloshing into his glass behind him.

  Totter wavered at the bar, and took one step toward the table, and stopped, and shook his head, and unbuttoned his holster, and took another step, and then turned back to the bar to seize the glass again.

  I'll beat the living tar outa him, said Totter to himself, the living tar.

  He chucked the drink down, wiped his mouth again and turned to the table.

  He squinted, and waited for the room to come back to something that looked possible.

  The gentleman in the broad-brimmed hat was gone.

  Totter fumbled his way across the sawdust on the boards of the floor and leaned on the table, spilling chips, planting his hands in cards, spilling a drink.

  The gentleman's chair was empty, clearly.

  "He cheated me," yelled Totter, and slammed both fists on the table.

  Chips jumped and glasses shook, and nobody at the table said anything.

  Payday, said Totter to himself, and it's all gone, all gone.

  Totter could've cried, but he was too goddam mad to cry.

  He kicked a brass spittoon halfway across the room, a long swirl of brown water flying out of it, leaving a trail of puddles and spots across the floor.

  "Take it easy, Soldier," said the bartender.

  Totter knew there was a shotgun under the bar, but he didn't see it yet, and so he knew he didn't have to pull out, not yet at any rate.

  "He cheated me," said Totter.

  "Have another drink, Corporal," said the bartender. "On the house."

  Totter, being a man of principle, did not immediately take the drink, but waited an amount of time appropriate to a man of principle, and then stomped to the bar and took the drink.

  Goddam Southerner, he was, said Corporal Jake Totter to himself. Goddam soft-talking Southerner. We whipped 'em, we whipped 'em good. Whipped 'em.

  Should of beat the living tar outa him. Should of.

  Beat the hell outa him. Should of. Should of.

  Should of.

  It had been another hot, dry summer, that summer of 1890.

  Homesteaders claimed that the rain graphs prepared in Washington were forgeries, to dupe people into settling desert lands.

  The maps of General Fremont had been honest.

  He called it the Great American Desert, from the Rockies to the Missouri Basin.

  And now it was fall again, and once more the crops had burned and the grasshoppers had come, and the trains and wagon trails were filled with the predictable exodus of homesteaders and settlers, broken and impoverished, their dreams vanished in the dust and rainless skies.

  Thousands upon thousands, this year like last, and the year before, picked up their stakes and moved out.

  You could ride through the land, for hours, without seeing a human being, though the abandoned sites of their habitations might be in evidence, the soddies with their fallen roofs, the furrowed, barren fields, the dry, cracked boards of empty corncribs, the miles of sagging wire, swaying in the dusty wind.

  The town of Good Promise, South Dakota, population 407, no railroad, lay pretty well within a network of Indian reservations, of which Standing Rock was only one.

  There were more than thirty thousand Indians in the Department of the Dakotas.

  The Ghost Dance had swept through the reservations, an Indian Pentecost carried by seers and prophets, men like the Minneconjou, Kicking Bear. The powerful medicine of these men, shirts that could turn bullets, chunks of meat brought fresh and hot from the spirit world, their signs and miracles, breathed into the plains nations, mostly Cheyenne and Sioux, the vision of the apocalyptic destruction of the white race, the return of the buffalo, the restoration of the days of the eagle feather. Once more the grass would grow waist high, and green, and the brown humps of the buffalo would bend northward again in the now almost forgotten flowing rivers of hide and meat. The Son of Wakan-Tonka, the Christ, rejected by the whiteman, would return to His true children, and they would accept Him, and give Him robes and ponies, and meat and beads, and smoke with Him the pipe of friendship and of peace.

  The town of Good Promise, never much as it was, now seemed very small, with its few boarded stores and shacks on the prairie. Outside the town lay dozens of abandoned homesteads, and farther out a handful of isolated ranches, where stubborn men nursed their small herds on prairie browse, and beyond that lay the Indians, some thousands of them, and the Ghost Dance.

  * * *

  A lone rider came up the unpaved main street of Good Promise, the dust of the street hanging fetlock high about the hoofs of his rangy sorrel stallion.

  He was a stranger and so was marked by the people of Good Promise. No one came to Good Promise in these days. Plank bars lay near the doors. Many of the windows had been shuttered, except for the cracks you could shove a rifle barrel through. At each end of town there were men on the roofs of buildings. Wagons were bunched at each end of the street, so they could be drawn by men across the street, making a barricade, closing the town, making it into a fort. No children played in the street. There were no women in sight. Not many men. Those there were carried weapons, and they watched the rider as he approached.

  The stranger had a beard some six or seven days heavy on his face, and it was a tired face, not old, but worn and lined. His eyes were half closed, and he slumped in the saddle, and the boots in the stirrups moved with the horse's pace, and you had to look to make sure he wasn't asleep, but he wasn't. You could tell that from the eyes. They weren't much open, but they were, and he was looking.

  Back of the saddle, fastened with the blanket roll over the saddlebags, was a small black bag, something like those physicians carry around in their buggies.

  This man wore a dark shirt, plaid, cotton, and over this shirt, like a jacket, he wore another shirt, this one of brown corduroy, with the sleeves cut off at the elbows. His pants were blue denim but pretty much white now, from the sun and the rain, and washing. He wore a broad-brimmed hat, white and low-crowned, something like those once favored by Southern gentlemen.

  He also wore a Colt, and when he dismounted in front of the saloon, the natural fall of his hand was at the handle of the weapon.

  Edward Chance tied his sorrel to the hitching post and entered the saloon.

  Edward Chance was tired, and he wanted to cut the prairie dust with a drink, and find some place to wash, and eat and sleep.

  Mostly he wanted to be left alone.

  When Chance shoved open the swinging doors and entered the saloon he was surprised at the num
ber of men inside. The street outside had been mostly empty.

  Of course in the days of the Ghost Dance it was good to have a place to gather together, and talk and drink, and tell each other there was nothing to worry about, and see plenty of men and guns in the same place.

  Hadn't troops been ordered into the area? Hadn't they taken target practice near the ration points on Saturday? There was nothing to worry about, but the saloon was a good place to listen for news, to meet friends, to forget the dust and the wind outside.

  Chance noted that there were about nine tables in the saloon, and each was full; at most of them men were playing cards, nursing their drinks, making them last a long time from the looks of it, almost all the glasses about half full.

  The bar, too, was crowded, and there Chance saw the blue uniforms of two or three soldiers, contrasting with the vests and jackets of the civilians.

  There must have been townspeople there, homesteaders, too, probably, some ranchers, and the soldiers.

  These people suddenly seemed to have one thing in common, their interest in Edward Chance.

  The cards had stopped clicking and slapping.

  It's because they don't see many strangers, said Chance to himself.

  It could have been that, but what Chance didn't know was that no one came to Good Promise in these days, because of the Ghost Dance, the Indians. A man would have to have plenty good reason to come to Good Promise this dusty, dry fall. And the men in the saloon, looking at Chance's bearded face and haggard features, decided that he must have had that plenty good reason.

  And so it was that most people, for the wrong reasons, figured Edward Chance right that afternoon in Good Promise–that here was a man running from something, and they figured him wrong only in figuring he was running from the law.

  He was running from Lester Grawson, whom he would not kill, who would kill him.

  Chance was running because he wanted to stay alive.

  The resources of the law though, Chance had told himself a dozen times, a hundred times, could always be tapped by Grawson, with his badge, his credentials, with documents from Charleston, forged or otherwise, to which he would have had access.

  Thus the people of the town, supposing him to be fleeing from the law, were not as mistaken as one might have supposed.

  For most practical purposes Edward Chance was indeed running from the law, and knew it, that law that might, with a shuffling of papers, benignly surrender him into the hands of Lester Grawson, Charleston detective, for return to the scene of some hypothetical crime, a return that once had stopped short in an alley in New York City, and next time might terminate in some grove of cottonwoods, or perhaps on the open prairie, or perhaps in some homesteader's abandoned shack, wherever Grawson, at his pleasure, would decide to perform the execution.

  Chance went to the bar. "Bourbon," he said.

  The bartender set a small heavy glass before Chance, turned, took a squarish bottle from in front of the mirror and filled the glass.

  The bartender hadn't said anything, nor had anyone else.

  Irritated, Chance threw the drink down, not looking the way it tasted. The swallow of amber fire burned its way down his gullet and hit his empty stomach like dropping a torch into a barrel of oil.

  Chance put down a silver three-cent piece on the bar, which the bartender retrieved.

  Chance became aware of a burly figure in an unfastened blue jacket next to him.

  Chance put down another three-cent piece. The bartender picked up the second coin, then refilled the glass.

  "Where you from, Stranger?" asked the voice of the man next to him, the man in the blue jacket. Chance noted the two wide, yellow chevrons on the sleeve. The speaker was drunk. The voice was not pleasant.

  Chance turned to look at Corporal Jake Totter. He saw the heavy face, its lines loose from alcohol, the unfriendly gray eyes red and prominently veined. Mostly Chance noted that the nose had been broken and had not been set properly, or had never been set.

  "East," said Chance.

  Chance returned to the drink. He picked up the glass.

  "I said where you from, Stranger?" repeated the voice. A wide hand, heavy as a wrench, held down his arm.

  Chance turned again to regard the man in the unbuttoned blue jacket. He saw long white underwear under the jacket, black around the collar. The man wore suspenders. On the back of his head was a cavalry hat, with crossed sabers on the turned-up brim. Around the man's neck there was a yellow neckerchief.

  "You're out of uniform, Soldier," said Chance.

  "You ain't from the East," said the voice. The words had been slow, measured, slurred with drink, hostile.

  "I am," said Chance.

  "You're a liar," said the man.

  "Take your hand off my arm," said Chance.

  "I know that South-talk," said the man. "You're from the South."

  "Once," said Chance.

  "We whipped you," said the man.

  He removed his hand from Chance's arm and pulled off his jacket, put it on the bar, and put his hat on top of it. Chance noticed that the men in the bar had gathered around, but leaving an open circle near where they stood. Chance thought that someone might as well come up now and draw a scratch line on the floor. How drunk is he, Chance asked himself. Damn drunk, Chance answered his own question.

  "We whipped you once," said Totter, wiping his underwear-clad arm across his face, "and by God we can do it again."

  "Forget it, Corporal," said Chance.

  Chance had been four years old when the war had ended. He doubted if Totter had been much older. Maybe six or seven.

  Chance tried to take the drink calmly, but when he lifted it to his mouth, Totter's arm lashed out and splashed it in his face. The rim of the glass stung his cheek.

  It was quiet in the saloon.

  Chance put the empty glass down on the bar, with a small click. His face was expressionless. He did not look at Totter directly, though he watched him in the mirror. "You owe me for that drink, Corporal," said Chance.

  Totter, in the mirror, spat in his hands and wiped them on the sides of his trousers, across the yellow stripe that ran to his boots. Then he balled up his fists and hunched over.

  Chance noted that Totter was standing with his left side turned a bit toward him. Judging from Totter's fists this was not a boxing stance, but a natural precaution, protecting himself from a kick. Chance suddenly realized that Totter would not be a particularly pleasant man to fight, particularly not in a saloon. Totter knew what he was up to, and what he guarded against he presumably would not be above doing. If there was a fight it would not be a good one to lose. Therefore, Chance told himself, there must be no risk of losing it.

  But Chance did not want to fight.

  He had enough trouble.

  There would be a sheriff in this town, undoubtedly, and if he were picked up in a brawl, there would be questions, difficulties.

  But Totter owed him for a drink.

  "I'll forget this," said Chance, still not facing Totter, "if you buy me that drink."

  When Totter charged, Chance was not at the bar. He had moved to one side and Totter plunged into the wood. As he did so Chance's hand seemed to brush at his throat and, choking, Totter sank to the floor, his hands at his neck, his face turning black.

  No, said Chance to himself, there would not be a risk of losing it.

  What Chance had done could have caused death, if done by an amateur hand, with too much force, too clumsily, not properly, but Chance, a skilled physician, had not broken the cartilage that would have closed the windpipe, that might have closed the life of a drunken soldier in the dusty town of Good Promise, South Dakota.

  Chance hauled Totter to his feet and half threw him over the bar, taking the man's wallet from his hip pocket, and gouging about in it until he found a liberty nickel which he tossed to the bartender, who filled his bourbon glass for him and shoved it back to him, along with two Indian-head pennies in change. Chance returned the
pennies to Totter's wallet and shoved it back in the man's hip pocket; then he sat Totter down on the brass rail at the foot of the bar, and Totter slid from it to the sawdust floor, sitting there, holding his throat.

  "He didn't even hit him," said one of the men watching.

  "Get up, Jake," said a soldier standing nearby.

  "Get him, Jake!" urged another.

  But Jake Totter sat in the sawdust, holding his throat, trying to get oxygen into his lungs.

  Chance chucked down the drink.

  He looked down at Jake, who was breathing better now, but with difficulty. The burly figure sitting on the floor was now, it seemed, sober, sick, enraged. He rolled over on his side and threw up against the bar.

  As Chance watched him, Totter struggled to his knees, fumbling at the holster at his side.

  "Don't, Jake!" yelled one of the soldiers.

  The service revolver in Jake's unsteady hand jerked out of the holster.

  Edward Chance's Colt had slipped from its holster and before Jake could bring his gun up Chance fired once into the body of Jake Totter, who yelped and grunted and was spun back against the bar, rolling along the floor, hugging his right shoulder.

  Chance put the weapon back into the holster.

  "Get a doctor," yelled somebody.

  "No doctor closer than Fort Yates," said one of the soldiers.

  A couple of soldiers had turned Jake over.

  They pulled his hands from the wound. There was a large, irregular scarlet stain on the white underwear and a powder burn.

  One of the soldiers looked up at Chance. "The army will get you for this, Mister," he said.

  "Jake was gonna plug him," said a man in overalls, peering in between a couple of ranchers.

  "Get a doctor," said somebody else.

  "I ain't gonna ride to Fort Yates," said one of the townspeople. "Not these days I ain't."

  Chance wondered what was wrong about riding to Fort Yates, wherever that was, these days. There were a number of things he didn't understand about this town, the people. They seemed to be afraid, jumpy. He was out of touch.