Sundance 30: Death Dance

By Peter McCurtin

Wealthy cattleman Brian Athlone promised Sundance a generous reward if the half-bred could find Athlone’s daughter Laurie, who had been abducted by Indians. If he failed, however, Athlone swore to destroy the village of Sundance’s blood brothers—the Indians who had kidnapped Laurie.
When Sundance reached the village, he learned that the girl had vanished, and the enraged chief promised Sundance death by slow torture if he didn’t return her to the tribe!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Piccadilly
• Release date: Jun 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9798201093365

Peter McCurtin

Peter J. McCurtin was born in Ireland on 15 October 1929, and immigrated to America when he was in his early twenties. Records also confirm that, in 1958, McCurtin co-edited the short-lived (one issue) New York Review with William Atkins. By the early 1960s, he was co-owner of a bookstore in Ogunquit, Maine, and often spent his summers there.McCurtin's first book, Mafioso (1970) was nominated for the prestigious Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award, and filmed in 1973 as The Boss, with Henry Silva. More books in the same vein quickly followed, including Cosa Nostra (1971), Omerta (1972), The Syndicate (1972) and Escape From Devil's Island (1972). 1970 also saw the publication of his first "Carmody" western, Hangtown.Peter McCurtin died in New York on 27 January 1997. His westerns in particular are distinguished by unusual plots with neatly resolved conclusions, well-drawn secondary characters, regular bursts of action and tight, smooth writing. If you haven't already checked him out, you have quite a treat in store.McCurtin also wrote under the name of Jack Slade and Gene Curry.

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Western Fiction

Wealthy cattleman Brian Athlone promised Sundance a generous reward if the half-bred could find Athlone’s daughter Laurie, who had been abducted by Indians.

If he failed, Athlone swore to destroy the village of Sundance’s blood brothers—the Indians who had kidnapped Laurie.

When Sundance reached the village, he learned that the girl had vanished, and the enraged chief promised Sundance death by slow torture if he didn’t return her to the tribe!

SUNDANCE 29: DEATH DANCE

By Peter McCurtin

First published by Norden Publications in 1979

Copyright © 1979, 2023 by Jack Slade

This electronic edition published July 2023

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.

You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by means (electronic, digital, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

Series Editor: Mike Stotter

Text © Piccadilly Publishing

Published by Arrangement with the Golden West Literary Agency.

Visit www.piccadillypublishing.org to read more about our books.

Chapter One

JUD STEELE DREW rein between sheer walls of a deep canyon and spoke confidently to the man he had been hired to protect. Probably they recognized me and backed off, he said in a deep voice. Wasn’t no need to waste time hiding that stuff you been carrying. Nobody’s gonna rob you with me around.

Paul Dormier, older by two decades than the famous gunman he used from .time to time in his business as buyer of precious stones, looked apprehensively over his shoulder into the dust haze their mounts had raised. A sweeping bend in the canyon they had been traversing for over a mile blocked his view of the four riders who had been trailing them. Dormier strained his ears, but heard no sound of horses down canyon. He was relieved to a point, but still uneasy, in this deep canyon where there was always danger of being trapped by a flash flood, not uncommon in this part of New Mexico Territory.

Paul Dormier’s dark eyes, under a dusty hatbrim, burned with the cold determination of a man who refused to be coerced. If pressed, he had intended joining Steele in making a fight of it. But he breathed easier now that there were no longer sounds of pursuit. The horsemen gaining on them every mile had for some reason or other given up the chase. Perhaps they had been frightened off by an Apache hunting party—or possibly they had recognized Jud Steele through field glasses.

I don’t like canyons, Dormier said, shivering as he stared up at the towering walls.

It’s a shortcut.

So you said. He told Steele that he wanted to climb out of the canyon to level ground as soon as possible. If there were still no indication of the pursuers, they would return to the place where he had hidden his latest acquisition.

Steele drank deeply from a flask, saw Dormier scowling at him and said, Didn’t get much sleep last night.

"I think I know the reason, Señor Steele."

She was worth losing sleep over. Steele grinned and stowed the flask in his hip pocket.

Dormier’s relief at having eluded the horsemen was short-lived. At the next twist in the canyon his plump face paled as four riders blocked the trail ahead. Obviously they had bypassed the canyon mouth, hurried along the rim, then found a trail that brought them to the canyon floor.

Jud Steele swung his roan broadside and gave the leader a cold stare. Rupe Sage, he grunted. He had recognized the man who seemed hewn in outsize proportions from the same dark oak as the part-Yaqui face, leavened by white blood. His boots were of fine Mexican leather, probably stolen. Steele said, I’m escorting this gentleman to Alta Mesa, indicating Dormier in his wrinkled black suit. We got a stage to catch there for Santa Fe. We don’t figure to be late. You boys move them hosses an’ let us by.

Rupe Sage glanced at Steele’s .44 in a low-cut holster strapped over a blue silk shirt. Damn if it ain’t the famous Jud Steele. Tough man.

One of the riders, tall and gangling, was unable to suppress a giggle. Sage allowed a smile to spread across his wide mouth at the outburst from his companion. Sage wore a faded wool shirt and pants of bleached canvas, as coated with dust as was his hat. His holstered revolver, a big Remington, was capable of knocking down a bull buffalo.

Dormier flicked a nervous glance at Steele and said under his breath, I told you we should have tried to reach the hills.

Steele waved his employer to silence with an arrogant flick of the hand, apparently unconcerned by the menacing riders blocking the trail. Steele’s brown hair was neatly trimmed, as was his brush mustache. He was beginning to show annoyance when the riders failed to move aside. Sage, you’ll be the first one dead if you an’ your boys don’t clear out. You’ve got half a minute.

Sage turned lazily in his saddle to address the rangy man who had giggled. You hear what he says, Jody? You scared?

My knees are shakin’, Jody Thorne tittered.

Steele reddened. Careful, Sage. Don’t try any tricks or I’ll blow you right out of them fancy boots.

Me try tricks against a famous gunslick? This brought grins to the hard faces of his three companions. Then Sage spread his hands wide from his body to show peaceful intentions. Reckon we don’t want trouble with you, Steele.

Now that the crisis seemed lessening, Paul Dormier drew a white handkerchief from his pocket. He was wiping his face when Sage’s right hand moved in a blinding blur impossible for the eye to follow. Steele also moved. His .44 was half out of the holster when Sage’s bullet from the big Remington revolver thundered squarely into his stomach, removing a section of backbone at its exit. Steele was slammed off the rump of his horse and against the canyon wall at his back, dead before he began to slide limply down a gentle slope, raising dust.

Paul Dormier’s mouth fell open. Quickly he recovered. In the dust and confusion, his eardrums throbbing from concussion, Dormier desperately drew a pistol and tried to spur away. Jody Thorne quickly rode him down, ripped the weapon from his hand. Jody threw the gun into a clump of brush clinging to the canyon wall, then tore the reins out of Dormier’s grasp. The plunging horse was brought to an abrupt halt.

Sage dismounted and jerked a thumb at one of his men, bearded and thick through shoulders and neck. Bascom, you head downtrail and have a look. Just in case somebody heard that shot and gets curious.

As Bascom pounded away on a big buckskin stallion, Sage flung Dormier to the ground and searched him thoroughly. All Dormier had in his pockets were a few gold coins. Sage jerked him to his feet.

Where’d you hide the jewels you bought from old man Athlone? Sage demanded.

There was no jewelry, Dormier said defiantly.

Convince him, Jody, Sage ordered. Jody Thorne unlashed a catch rope from his saddle, tittering at the look of mingled horror and stubbornness on Dormier’s face; the chin with its spike beard trembled.

The gunshot has been heard, as Rupe Sage had thought possible. But the one who heard the shot was uptrail, not down, from the direction Bascom had taken.

Jim Sundance reined in, listening to the distant reverberations against canyon walls to the south. His trained ear told him the shot had been from a revolver. When there was no continuation of gunfire he decided it might have been a hunter surprising a deer or other game and bringing it down at close range. Whoever had done the shooting he would no doubt meet deeper in this canyon, which was a shortcut to Fort Anders where he had business.

But even so, he was taking no chances. He eased a Henry rifle in its saddleboot and urged his great Nez Perce war horse into motion again. A splendid team, this horse and rider. Over the years more than one man had coveted such a horse—some offering money for it, others threatening with a gun to force Sundance to give up his prize. None had succeeded.

Sundance rode straight as a war lance in the saddle of the appaloosa. His features were those of a Cheyenne, the eyes black and alert. Shoulder-length hair of ripe corn paleness was a startling contrast to the coppery skin.

In addition to the rifle, he was armed with a Colt revolver, the grips yellowed ivory, and a sheathed Bowie, designed for the lethal business of knife fighting. Other tools of his dangerous trade were carried in two parfleche bags of buffalo hide, one of them round, the other long and cylindrical, lashed to the saddle.

Sudden faint human cries carried by the warm breeze seemed to be a blend of defiance and pain. Sundance pulled up Eagle, straining his ears. But when the cries failed to be repeated he wondered if the bitterness riding so heavily on his shoulders had unleashed screaming ghosts in his head and the cries were imagined, not real. As he rode he had been brooding over the latest injustice to the Indian. In retaliation he had walked off his job, which had been to persuade the Navajo that a road could be built in peace across their sacred lands and would penetrate no deeper than twenty miles. He finally convinced the Navajo that the white man could never be thrown out of the West, that such things as a freight road might as well be accepted, even though to most of those with Indian blood, himself included, incursion of their lands by the paleskins was anathema. Accepting the road peacefully was better than slaughter, should they try to resist. Yes, they would accept, though reluctantly, a twenty-mile freight road.

But no sooner had Sundance obtained the agreement than things went wrong. The proposed road was to be for a hundred miles, not twenty, in order to open up new territory. Certain politicians had put pressure on the Army. Upon learning of the duplicity, Jim Sundance tore in half his contract with the Army, flung it on the desk of Colonel Erskine Weed—who had hired him for the delicate assignment—and walked out.

At first he had intended to lose himself for a time among his blood brothers, the Cheyenne. Then, after cooling down, he decided to make one more attempt at Fort Anders on behalf of the Navajo.

All this was running through his mind when the distant outcry had cut like a saber between the towering walls of the canyon, to slash through a silence broken a short time before by the faint gunshot. Distant buttes were pinkish in the sunlight; behind these were mountains whose peaks were lost in goosedown clouds.

Eagle halted at Sundance’s slight pressure on the reins, ears alertly forward, as the cry was repeated, louder this time. Sundance’s lithe six-foot body was completely stilled. His sombrero, the brim tilted to shade his tense features, took the full impact of the sun. A red neckerchief contrasted with a fringed buckskin shirt adorned with intricate beadwork. His pants were dark brown, dusty from the trail. On his feet were moccasins instead of the customary boots.

This time when the cry was repeated, Jim Sundance was able to make out faint words: "I … I cannot stand much more! Dios, the pain!" A male voice, reflecting agony, the defiance Sundance had noted in it earlier now diminished.

No longer was there any doubt that this voice was real, not some horror from his past that had escaped the tightly locked recesses of his mind—a mind troubled anew by the latest blunder by the Army in their dealings with the Indian.

Quickly he gauged the wind and found it to his liking—in his face, so that his scent would not carry and alert horses down canyon. Cautiously he rode another twenty yards or so toward an elbow in the canyon, the sounds of Eagle’s hooves diminished by fresh outcries from a man in pain. Long brown fingers drew the Henry rifle from its boot. Then Sundance bounded from Eagle to land gracefully, long yellow hair swaying about his shoulders.

The man screamed again. "Por Dios, do not do this to me! Surely you are not a savage—"

A bark of laughter and another voice. Savage? You didn’t look close enough, Dormier.

"Your Yaqui blood, yes, Señor Sage. But surely there is compassion in the white blood we share!"

"Your white blood? Sage taunted. You bastard Frenchman trying to pass yourself off as Spanish?"

Sundance had never heard of anyone named Dormier. The name Sage, however, was familiar. Sundance moved swiftly, but in his haste the back of the left hand accidentally brushed a lip of granite heated from the sun, setting in motion a trickle of gravel. He jerked to a halt, wondering if the sound had alerted whoever was out of sight around the bend in the canyon. How many men? Two that he knew of. Dormier, a man in pain. Sage taunting him. Rupe Sage? Possibly, because today the man seemed to be in character, prolonging the suffering of a fellow human. Last year Sage had ripped off the fingernails of a young merchant who had refused to open his safe on demand. Sage had then raped the wife. Finally he inflicted a lingering death with a knife on the husband.

Certain that the dislodged gravel had not given him away, Sundance crept forward again.

"Why do you torture me, señores?" came another agonized cry from Dormier.

Sundance silently thanked the man. Señores was plural and meant that there were more than one of them—Rupe Sage and one partner, at least. Sundance wished mightily that he could be sure, but his view was blocked by the abrupt bend in the canyon.

Sage shouted at Dormier, Speak up! The truth is all we want. I know you got jewels from Athlone.

No, no, you are mistaken. He only wanted to talk to me about cattle.

Athlone had you come all the way from Santa Fe just to talk about cows?

I swear.

You’re in the business of jewels, Dormier. You were pointed out to me one time in Santa Fe. So quit lying.

I tell you only the truth.

You gave Athlone money for jewels. I know damn well you didn’t just make him a present.

The name Athlone caused Sundance to narrow his eyes, it was the name of a powerful and respected cattleman of the territory.

Moving soundlessly, Sundance covered the remaining distance to the last bulge of granite that could afford him cover. Beyond that point he would be in the open. Facing how many men? Halting at the protective slab of rock, he put one cheek against the hot stone, to show as little of himself as possible, and inched forward. He peered with one eye at a bearded man, all middle and narrow shoulders, spread face down across a slab of rock, lashed in place with a saddle rope. His shirt had been ripped off and lay in tatters near a crumpled jacket. Across the pale naked back was a crisscross pattern of welts, some of them bloodied.

Towering over him was a powerfully built man with black hair chopped off just above the shoulders. Sundance recognized him from a wanted notice which hinted that it would be foolish to try and take Rupe Sage alive. Dead, he was worth three thousand dollars.

As Sundance stared, he saw two men stroll into view and halt across from Sage to look down at the man lashed to the rock. They were armed and roughly dressed— Anglos with the tough leathery faces of men who spent long hours in the sun and who no doubt made a habit of glancing over their shoulders for sheriffs. The younger, taller of the pair, in his late twenties, with sandy hair and downcurving mustache, giggled like a girl.

That there bloodied lump sure don’t look like no jewel buyer now, does he, Rupe?

Sure don’t, Jody. Looks more like mule shidd in a corral.

Jody Thorne roared with laughter, then gestured at a zopilote hovering overhead as if already sensing the ultimate conclusion of the drama below. Eager wings beat the air as the bird came to rest on a pinnacle rock midway down the canyon.

Smart buzzard sure smells blood, Thorne drawled.

Sage agreed, tightened his grip on a doubled saddle rope in one large hand. You’ll be his supper Dormier, if you don’t speak up.

Sundance moved his head slightly so that he had a better view of Dormier, tied to the rock with a duplicate of the rope Sage idly flicked against a pants leg. He was swept with a consuming rage at the torture of a helpless middle-aged man.

My arm’s tired from whipping him, Sage said, making exaggerated motions of weariness. Jody, you remember the Yaqui tricks I taught you? Show this greaser how much you learned, eh?

Jody Thorne tittered and drew a knife from its sheath attached to a belt of inlaid silver, the blade glittering. Sundance strained his eyes against the sun glare. Somehow he had to handle three men in the narrow canyon and do it without endangering the life of the very one he hoped to save, Dormier.

Jody Thorne’s Anglo companion, broad as a stout mule, grinned down at Dormier. CM’ Bascom ought be here, Jody, to see you use that knife.

Tex, by the time Bascom gits back here, Thorne said, laughing, "there won’t be enough hide left on this hombre to carve his initials on. Rupe, where you want him cut first?"

Mention of another man, Bascom, sent a cold flutter down Sundance’s spine. He risked moving his head an inch from the protective elbow of canyon wall so as to enlarge his view. Nothing moved down canyon, only some saddle horses, reins trailed, tails switching flies. But he did see another man and recognized him—though he was no threat now to anyone, ever again.

Jud Steele, who had contributed his share of corpses to cemetery or unmarked grave throughout the West, was flattened against the east wall of the canyon. His head was tilted back so that Sundance could clearly see blood at mouth corners and surprise in sightless eyes that seemed to be staring up at a narrow shelf of rock slanting sharply down from the canyon rim. Steele’s arms were clamped to his middle, where blood had darkened the sleeves of a silk shirt. Steele had always been a fancy dresser. Whatever reputation he had achieved as a gunfighter had been abruptly canceled by the bullet that obviously caught him by surprise. But he’d had time to draw his gun. It lay near his feet, half covered with sand.

Again Sundance squinted down canyon to make sure there was no sign of the man Bascom that Jody said would be coming back. Facing up to three men would be hazardous enough, but adding a fourth would stretch the odds a little too fine.

Sundance started to move but the chunky Tex, standing beside Jody Thorne, happened to glance his way. Or so Sundance imagined in that tense moment. He tightened his grip on the rifle. But apparently Tex hadn’t seen him after all; he began taunting Dormier again.

Sage was adding his own taunts, his voice more cultured than those of his friends, indicating that the half-breed had had some exposure to education. Powerful shoulders strained the fabric of his shirt. A big cedar-butted pistol jutted from a hip. His legs were long and thick in a pair of canvas pants. His boots were of fine tooled leather, the spurs Chihuahua and quite possibly solid silver, from the way they caught the sunlight. Possibly taken from the same unfortunate hacendado who had supplied Thorne’s belt of Mexican silver?

Dormier gave a bleat of fear as Jody hovered above him with the knife.

Hold it, Jody, Sage cautioned with a flat grin, as the knife point came within an inch of pricking the lacerated back. Don’t cut him till I give you the word. We don’t want to scare him to death so he can’t talk. He leveled a forefinger at Dormier’s agonized features. "All right, Señor Dormier, listen careful. I was at a window at the ranch house when you and Athlone talked. I heard two words: ‘money’ and ‘jewels.’ Then Athlone’s goddamn riders spotted me and chased me off. My guess is you turned over money to Athlone. He gave you some jewels. You and Steele left Athlone’s ranch with the jewels. I know damn well Steele can’t tell me. But you can. And will!"

"Señor, you are quite wrong."

You got a head start on me because I had to double back to where my two boys here and Bascom were waiting. You spotted us later on your backtrail. You stopped someplace and hid the jewels, then rode on.

I … I hid nothing.

Tell me where you hid them. And I’ll send you home … alive.

The shred of defiance Sundance had noticed earlier again crept into Dormier’s voice. I’m no fool. No matter what I tell you, I am a dead man.

Rupe Sage shifted his feet, the heels of his boots, with their high polish, settling deeper into sand on the canyon floor. You say you aren’t a fool, Dormier. But you are. A few minutes of Jody’s knife work and you’ll talk.

Where you want me to cut him first, Rupe? Jody Thorne drawled, the three of them making a game out of Dormier’s plight.

When I give the nod, cut off his pants, Sage said indifferently. Then geld him like we do the bulls, eh?

That threat produced a strangled protest from Dormier. But it was wasted; Jody’s knife already sawed at the thick belt.