quote:

There was no sense in arguing, so I didn’t; for one thing, I had no wish to plunge ahead into the kind of horror we’d experienced on the plains, and the prospect of a brief rest in Santa Fe was welcome. On the other hand, I’d no wish to linger in America, and was determined to get out of Susie’s fond embrace as soon as the chance arose. One pressing need would be money; like so many of my women (including my dear Elspeth, I regret to say), she seemed devilish reluctant to let me get my paws on the purse-strings – they’re a mean sex, you know. So I had to take stock, and see what offered, while pretending a great interest in the establishment of our brothel.

Susie got her eye on a likely place just off the Plaza, a fine, one-storey house with plenty of rooms and a good-sized courtyard, all enclosed by high adobe walls. It belonged to the church, so she paid a rare price, “but never fear,” says she, “we’ll make four hundred per cent on this when we come to sell.” Then she hired labour to make it habitable, engaged servants and porters, and furnished it with the gear from New Orleans which had survived our journey. My respect for her increased when I saw all the stuffs, carpets, curtains, china and crockery, tables, chairs and beds – including the famous “electrical mattress”, too – and realised that she’d never have come by anything half so fine west of St Louis; up went the mirrors, chandeliers, and pictures, and out came the girls’ assorted finery; Susie saw to the very last detail of their personal apartments, and to the appointment of the public rooms, which included a large reception chamber where the wenches could be on view between engagements, so to speak, flirting with the customers while they made their selections; a buffet, and a gaming-room which I undertook to supervise – for there’s no call, you know, for a man about the bawdy-house, apart from the porter-bullies, and I didn’t care to be seen as a mere jack-gagger also it occurred to me that I’d be able to accumulate some private funds, with careful management.

quote:

We opened for business, with Susie dressed like a dog’s dinner queening it in the hall, her cashier in an office to one side, and a broken down medico in a little room on the other – “for the only thing they’re goin’ to leave here is cash,” says she, “an’ if they don’t like bein’ looked at by the pox-spotter, they can take themselves off, double-quick.” The girls were all got up in their most alluring finery, lounging artlessly in the reception on their couches under the shaded lamps, while Flashy, resplendent in new coat and pants and silk cravat, shuffled the decks in the gaming-room and waited for the gulls – and I’m here to tell you that I did a damned thin trade. You see, they could gamble anywhere in Santa Fe, but they couldn’t fornicate in the style to which Susie’s charmers quickly accustomed them; it was like a madhouse out yonder for a couple of hours, until she closed the doors, having made appointments for clients who kept us busy until four in the morning, and when I joined her at dawn and saw the pile of rhino on her office table – well, there was a cool four thousand dollars if there was a cent. “Mind you, I won’t ’ave the gels workin’ at this pace other nights,” says she. “It’s important to make a good impression at first; the word’ll spread, an’ we’ll attract good custom, but then we can pick an’ choose the real genteel – an’ put the prices up. I’m not ’avin’ those dirty buckskin brutes in ’ere again, though; they’re just savages! Pore little Marie ’ad to call the porters twice, she was that terrified, an’ Jeanette might ’ave been ’urt bad if she ’adn’t ’ad ’er pistol ’andy.”

I saw there was more to this business than I’d imagined – but, by George, wasn’t it a paying spec, though? Better than stock-jobbing or Army contracts, and just as respectable, really.

We throve astonishingly in that first week, just as Susie had predicted; our fame spread, and the dago quality began to come in, not only from Santa Fe but from the valley below Albuquerque even, and the rancherias in the country round. We had a rare platoon of bullies on the gate, and took no riff-raff; even so, there was no lack of customers, and since they weren’t the kind to haggle, she was able to exact prices that she confessed she wouldn’t have dreamed of charging in Orleans. Oh, she knew her business; taste and refinement, says she, are what we’re after, and she got it, I’ve known rowdier drawing-rooms in Belgravia. The tarts seemed to thrive on it, too; you’ve never seen such airs.

quote:

One thing that alarmed us both, though, was the amount of cash that piled up in Susie’s strong-box in that first week; it would have given you the frights anywhere, never mind in a town awash with sharps and slicks who’d have cut a throat for twenty cents. In New Orleans she’d have banked it, but here there wasn’t a strong-room worth the name. Trust Susie, though: in no time she’d reached an arrangement with one of the governor’s aides, and every second or third day the box was hefted across the Plaza by a couple of bluecoats and the blunt stowed under military guard at headquarters – I fancy the aide’s fee was free use of Eugenie every Friday, but I’m not certain; Susie was close about business arrangements. But she confided that she still wasn’t happy about keeping large sums on the premises between times, and perhaps we ought to hire a reliable guard. I remarked that I was on hand, and she went slightly pink and said, yes, love, but I couldn’t be awake all the time, could I?

“I was thinkin’ we might employ Nugent-Hare,” she added.

I didn’t care for this. He and Uncle Dick Wootton had been paid off with the arrieros and teamsters on Susie’s resolve to settle in Santa Fe, but while Wootton had gone off with a hunting party, the bold Grattan was still about the town. I was against taking him back, I said; I didn’t care for him.

“’E’s been a loyal servant to us, you can’t deny! Wot’s wrong with ’im, then?”

“He’s Irish, and his nose is too long. And I’ve never trusted him above half.”

“Not trust ’im – ’cos ’is nose is too long? Wotever d’you mean?” Suddenly she burst out laughing, catching my hand. “’Ere, I do believe you’re jealous! Why, you silly big thing – come ’ere! You are, aren’t you?” She was bubbling with delight at the idea, and kissed me warmly. “As if I could ever think of anyone but you!” She was all sentimental in a moment, her arms round my neck. “Oh, Beachie, I do love you so! Now, then, let’s chase them blue-devils away …”

The result was that Grattan was sought out and offered the post of chief of the knocking-shop police, which he accepted, pulling his long nose and bland as you please. I was surprised – because while I’ll do anything, myself, he didn’t strike me as the sort who’d lower himself to being a whore’s ruffian, which is what it amounted to. We discovered why he’d been so ready, two days later, when the son-of-a-bitch slipped his cable with two thousand dollars, which fortunately was all that had been in the office desk. Susie was distraught, damning his eyes and bewailing her foolishness in not heeding me; I was quite pleased myself, and comforted her by saying we’d have the scoundrel by the heels in no time, but at this she clutched my hand and begged me not to.

“Why the hell not?” cries I, dumbfounded.

“Oh, it wouldn’t do! Honest, I know it wouldn’t! Let the thievin’ little bastard go, an’ good riddance! Ow, the swine, if I could lay ’ands on ’im! No, no darlin’, let it be! It’ll be cheaper in the long run – it gets a place like ours such a bad name, you see, if there’s any commotion with the law! Really, it does – I know! Anyway, Gawd knows where he’s gone by this! No, please, Beachie love – take my word on it! Let it go!”

“Two thousand dollars? Damned if I do!”

“Oh, darlin’, I know – but it ain’t worth it! We’d lose by it in the end! Please – I know it’s my fault, an’ I should ’ave listened to you an’ not trusted the long red snake that ’e is! But I’m soft an’ silly – please, let it alone for my sake?”

She was so insistent that in the end I shrugged it away – it wasn’t my pelf, anyway. But I kept my thoughts to myself, and she calmed down presently and promised that we would make it back a hundredfold in no time at all.

quote:

Which I could well believe, seeing how business was in the second week. Our clients were more numerous than ever, and their enthusiasm showed itself in an entirely unexpected way – to me, at any rate, although Susie said it had been common enough in New Orleans, and was regarded as a great compliment to the establishment. For now we began to receive repeated offers from the wealthier patrons who wanted to buy one or other of the girls outright; I recall one enormously fat greaser with an oiled moustache and rings sparkling on his pudgy hands, sweating all over his lecherous moon face as he made Susie a bid for Marie – she was the delicate little mulatto with soulful eyes whose prime trick, I gathered, was to burst into tears beforehand.

“She ees so frail and sweet, like a fresh flower!” cries this disgusting bag of lard. “She must be mine – the price, I do not care! Name eet, and I pay. Only I must have her for my own, to protect and cherish; she consumes me, the little helado negro!”

Susie smiled and shook her head. “But I couldn’t do that, Señor Cascara de los Pantalunas, even for you! Why, I’d soon ’ave no gels left, an’ then where’d I be? They’re not for sale—”

“But I must have her! I weel care for her like … like my most precious brood mare! She shall have an apartment in my hacienda, with perfumed crystals for her bath, and bon-bons, and a silk coverlet, and a pet dog from Chihuahua—”

“I’m shore she would,” says Susie firmly, “’cos you’re a real gentleman, I know – but there’s the law, too, isn’t there? This ain’t slave territory, an’ I’d be in a real fix if word got out.”

“Ah, the Americano law! Who cares? Would eet be known – who should hear of it?” He grimaced like a sow in labour, and wheedled horrid. “Are there not t’ousands of slaves? What are the peons, but chattels? Do not los Indios own many slaves, stolen and bought, and what does the law know about them? Pleez, Mees’ Comber, I beg of you … free, four t’ousan’ dollar, even – what you will, por Dios! so I may possess my pure, my delicious angelic Marie!”

quote:

But she wouldn’t have it for all his groans and entreaties, and he went off lamenting to console himself on rented terms with his little black ice-cream, as he’d called her. Susie sent all other would-be buyers the same road, including one I’d not have credited if I hadn’t been present as translator. Believe it or not, he was a priest! Aye, from the mission just up the Santa Fe Trail, a spruce little runt of impeccable address who came in secrecy after dark, and hastened to explain that he wasn’t a customer, personally, but acting on behalf of an important client.

“He has heard, as who has not, of the beauty and refinement of the young ladies who are … ah, under the señora’s care,” says he, and from his very smoothness I scented a wrong ’un from the start. “I must make it clear immediately that my patron’s intentions are of the most honourable, otherwise it is unthinkable that I should act as his intermediary. But he is of consequence, and wishes to take the young lady to wife. He understands the señora’s position, and is prepared to pay substantial ah … compensation.”

When I’d recovered, and translated for Susie, she was so took aback that she didn’t offer her usual polite refusal, but asked who the patron was, and which gal did he want, for Gawd’s sake? I passed it back, and the Pimping Padre shook his head.

“I should not divulge his name. As to his choice … he knows of your ladies only by report, and is indifferent. He would prefer, however, that she is not too black.”

Susie, hearing this, said she was prepared to wager it was his bloody bishop; staunch Church of England, was Susie. “Tell ’im we regret our gals ain’t for sale, wotever name ’e gives it,” says she. “Compensation, indeed. An’ marriage! A likely tale!”

He was a persistent little terrier, though, and urged the importance of his patron, the unspecified amount he would cough up, and as a last resort, the desirability of giving a poor whore the chance to go straight in wedlock – he didn’t put it like that, quite. Susie shook her head grimly, and repeated her line about the law being the law, and the girls not being in the market anyway. He took himself off poker-faced, and Susie was remarking that it was all this celibacy that made ’em randy as stoats, when I voiced a doubt that had occurred to me before.

quote:

“Hold on,” says I. “If it’s true what you’ve been telling them … is this free territory? Because, if it is, what’s to hinder one of the girls from marrying a suitor – or little Marie going off with old Pantalunas or whatever he’s called? I mean, maybe they’d rather jolly a single party, with all home comforts as wives or mistresses, than be thumped by four different randies every night. And if slave law don’t run here – why, the whole pack of ’em could walk out and leave you flat!”

“You think I’m simple, don’t you?” says she. “Why, I knew all o’ that afore I left Orleans. Leave me flat? Why should they do that – and where’d they go, silly little sluts that don’t know nothink except ’ow to prop a man up? Trust ’emselves to some oily villain like ole Cascara-chops, who’d turn ’em out as soon as ’e’d tired of ’em? That much they do know, now. An’ they ’aven’t the wit to work their own lay, unprotected – they wouldn’t last a week. Wi’ me, they’re well-off, well-fed, an’ I treat ’em fair; they’re never driven or ill-used, an’ they know that when they’re past their prime I’ll see ’em set up proper – yes, or married, to some steady feller that I approve of. ’Ow many ’ores d’you know, in England, wi’ prospects as good as my gels? That’s another thing; they are my gels, an’ they’d not leave me – no, not for twenty Pantalunasses. You see, law or no law, they’re still slaves, in ’ere,” and she tapped her forehead. “An’ I’m Miz Susie, an’ always will be.”

Author's Note posted:

The law on slave-holding in New Mexico was in some confusion at this time. In September, 1849, a convention at Santa Fe of 19 elected delegates, under the acting governor, Lt-Col Beall, appointed a representative to Congress to obtain recognition as a territory; he was unsuccessful, but in May a convention at Santa Fe framed a constitution for New Mexico under which slavery was prohibited. Before this the Southern States had maintained the right of owners to hold slaves in the territory, whereas Northerners were insistent on prohibition. The position was complicated by New Mexico’s recent transfer from Mexican rule (under which slavery had been abolished) to American military government. (See Bancroft.)

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Well, she was the best judge, but I had doubts. I could think of one at least of her houris who was not a silly little slut, and who could see horizons wider than those visible in the ceiling mirrors of Susie’s private salons. One Cleonie, to wit, who’d been more passionately attentive to me than ever since our arrival in Santa Fe. There was a little summer-house hidden deep in the pines near the back gate, and when occasion offered she and I would repair to it for field exercises; since I was preparing to bid Susie adieu I didn’t heed the risk, but Cleonie’s eagerness astonished me. I’d have thought she’d have enough of men to sicken her, but apparently not. I discovered why one afternoon when everyone else was at siesta, and I was sitting meditating in the dim, stuffy little summer-house with Cleonie astride my lap going like a drunk jockey and humming “Il était une bergère”; when she’d panted her soul out, and I’d got a cheroot going, she suddenly says:

“How much do you love me, chéri?”

I told her, oceans, and hadn’t I just proved it, but she kept asking me, teasing at me with her lips, her eyes alight in the shadows, so I reassured her that she was the only girl for me, no error. She considered a moment, with a little smile.

“You do not love Miz Susie. And soon you will be leaving her, will you not?”

I started so hard I nearly unseated her, and she gave a little laugh and kissed me again. “There is no need to be alarmed. Only I know it – and that because I had a Haitian mother, and we can see. I see it in the way you look at her – just as I see what is in your eyes when you look at me – aahh!” And she shivered against me. “Why should you love her – she is fat and old, and I am young and beautiful, n’est-ce pas?”

If when you’re fifty you can light my fire half as well as Susie can, thinks I, you’ll be doing damned well, my conceited little fancy – but of course I told her different; she’d given me a turn with her prophecy, and I guessed what was coming next.

“When you go,” she whispers, “why do you not take me with you? Where will you go – Mexico? We could be very happy in Mexico – for a while. I could make money for us there, and on the way, with you to protect me. If you love me as you say you do – why do we not go together?”

“Who says I’m going, though? I haven’t – and if Miz Susie heard one word of this, and what you’ve said about her – well, I’d think caning was the least you could expect; she’d sell you down the river, my girl.”

“Pouf! She cannot sell me – this is free soil! You think we don’t know – and that she has said as much, to those who came to buy us? Oh, yes, we know that, too – already black Aphrodite is listening to that fat man – what is his name, Pantaloon? He who wished to buy Marie, only Marie is silly and timid. Aphrodite is not timid – she is of a force, as I am, even if she is black and rank and lacks education. I think she will go.”

So much for loyalty to the dear old brothel, thinks I. “What about the others?”

She shrugged. “Stupid little ’ores, what do they know? They would be lost without the fat Miz Susie to waddle after them like a foolish old hen.” She giggled and arched that superb body. “I shall go, whether she like or not. With you – because even if you do not love me as you say, you enjoy me … and I enjoy you as I have never enjoyed any man before. So I think we will march well together … to Mexico, hein? And there, if you please, I shall make an establishment, even as Fat Susie has done – or, if I wish, I may find a wealthy man and marry him. When will you go?”

It wasn’t such a bad notion, when I thought of it – not unlike my flight with Cassy along the Mississippi. But this one, while she might lack Cassy’s iron will and resource – and I wouldn’t have bet on that – had advantages Cassy had lacked. She was educated, highly intelligent, a linguist, a lady when she chose, and was ready to work her passage – that would see me right for cash, which had been vexing me. And she could keep me warm at nights, too, even better than Cassy, who’d been a cool fish when all was said. And when we decamped, dear Susie could do nothing about it; Cleonie was free as air. We could travel by easy stages down the Del Norte valley, which was safe enough, to El Paso, and once in Mexico I could let her make sufficient to buy me a passage to England. I couldn’t see a hole in it, and I was chafing to be away.

quote:

The long and short of it was that we discussed it until the end of the siesta, and I couldn’t for the life of me see why it shouldn’t be put in train at once. She was a smart wench, and had it well figured out; I must procure a couple of mounts for the journey, which could be done in the morning, and assemble what packages we needed; I had enough ready money for that, and she had almost a hundred dollars of her own – tippique from satisfied customers in Orleans and here in Sante Fe – so we should be all right to begin with. I must conceal our packages in the summer-house, and tomorrow night, when the frenzy was at its customary height, we’d foregather at midnight by the back gate and be off. There was no reason, really, why we shouldn’t have bowled off publicly, but the less bother the better. I’m always ready, as a rule, to turn the knife in anyone’s wound, but I had a soft spot for Susie – and recollections of the brisk way she’d corrected John Charity Spring’s exercises for him. I’d no wish to have the porters setting about me on behalf of a woman scorned.

Next day I bought a very pretty Arab gelding for myself, and a mule for Cleonie, left them in a livery stable south of the Plaza, and busied myself for the rest of the day with the final arrangements; by late afternoon I had our packages stowed in the summer-house, along with my rifle and six-shooter. Then, for old times’ sake, I surprised Susie at her toilet, and let her work her evil will of me as we’d used to in Orleans; she blubbered, even, afterwards, and my last memory is of her sitting there in her corset, sighing heavily and exclaiming at her reflection, with her glass of port beside her. I’ll have a drink in the Cider Cellars for you, thinks I, and closed the door.

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It was a slow night in the gaming-room, but all hands to the pumps in the bedrooms by the sound of it; at a few minutes to twelve I got up and sauntered through the grounds to the summer-house, and for some reason my heart was beating fifty to the dozen. I got my hat, and slipped my revolver into its holster; there was a rustle through the pines and the patter of feet, and Cleonie was beside me, a cloak over her head, held at her throat, her eyes shining in that lovely face pale in the darkness. She threw her arms round me, fairly sobbing with excitement, and I kissed her with some ardour and gave them a loving squeeze – goodness, it was all there, though, and as I’d done at every assignation with her, I shivered in anticipation.

From the distant house came the strains of music, and the faint sound of laughter; I cautioned her to wait and slipped out through the back gate to see that all was clear. It was an alley leading at one end to a street which ran to the Plaza; up there were lights and folk and traffic passing by, but down here all was in dark shadow. Something rustled under the wall behind me, and I whirled and froze in my tracks, my hand fumbling for the butt of my pistol but checked by sheer terror as a figure moved out from the wall, lean and lithe as a cat – and I gasped as the light fell on the tight-stretched skin of a painted face, with eyes like coals, and above, the double feathers of a Navajo Indian.

Before I could move there were two others, twin spectres on either side of me, naked to the waist, but I hadn’t had time even to think of screaming when a voice whispered behind me, and I turned with a sob of relief to see the little priest. He held out a leather satchel to me.

“Two thousand dollars, as agreed. Where is she?”

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I was so stricken I could only nod at the gate, and then I found my voice: “Indians, for Christ’s sake!”

“Did you not say this afternoon that men would be needed to carry her off in silence?” He gestured to the Navajos, and they slipped silently through the gate; there was a muffled gasp, and a small clatter as though a chair had been disturbed, and then they were in the alley again, one of them carrying Cleonie’s squirming figure over his shoulder while a second brave held her ankles and the leader kept a heavy blanket close-wrapped round her head. He grunted at the priest, and the three melted noiselessly into the dark while I held the wall and babbled at the priest.

“My God, those brutes gave me a turn! I thought you’d bring your own people …”

“I told you today, since you insisted, that my patron was Jose Cuchillo Blanco – Jose White Knife. What more natural than that he should send his own bravos to take her? Why – does the sight of them alarm you, on her behalf? Let me point out that you have had several hours to reflect on it, and on her fate as the wife of a Navajo chief.”

“I wasn’t expecting those painted horrors to be lurking in the dark, that’s all!” says I, pretty warm. “Look here, though – will he really marry her, d’you think?”

“After their fashion. Does it matter? For two thousand dollars; perhaps you should count them. Oh, and the receipt, if you please.” So help me the little bastard had a document, and a pencil. “In case the sale should ever be questioned. It is improbable; the wife of White Knife is not likely to be seen in Santa Fe again – or indeed, anywhere.”

I scribbled a signature: B. M. Comber, R. N., retired. “Well, now, padre, I hope he takes decent care of her, that’s all. I mean, it’s only because you’re a man of the cloth … Tell me,” says I, for I was agog with curiosity, “I didn’t care to ask earlier … but ain’t it a trifle out of the way for a priest to be procuring women for savages?”

He folded the receipt. “We have many missions in the Del Norte valley; many villages whose people look to us for help. Cuchillo Blanco knows this – how should he not, he whose bands have left red bloody ruin in the settlements these years past? He comes to Santa Fe; he hears of the beautiful white women whose bodies are for sale; he desires white women—”

“Now, I told you – she ain’t white, strictly speaking. Part Frog, part n*****—”

“She will be white to him. However … he fears that there will be reluctance to sell to an Indian, so he sends word to us: buy me such a woman, and the missions and settlements will be spared … for a season. Shall I hesitate to buy him a woman who gives herself to anyone for hire, when by doing so I can save the lives – perhaps the souls – of scores of men, women, and children? If it is a sin, I shall answer to God for it.” I saw his eyes glitter in the dark. “And you, señor, with your two thousand dollars. How will you answer to God for this – what souls will you tell Him that you have saved?”

“You never know, padre,” says I. “Maybe she’ll convert your Navajo chief to Christianity.”

I picked up my gear from the summer-house when he’d gone, and went quickly down through the crowded Plaza to the livery stable, where I slung my few traps over the mule, stowed the heavy purse of eagles in my money-belt, and rode out on the Albuquerque trail. I won’t say I didn’t regret Cleonie’s absence – clever lass, fine mount, charming conversationalist, but too saucy by half, and she’d never have earned us two thousand dollars between Santa Fe and El Paso, not in a month of Sundays.

Arbite posted:

P.S. So, when you first read this, did the reveal surprise you or had you seen it coming?

sebmojo posted:

When he tossed that woman out of the sleigh?

Crespolini posted:

It's hard to rank these things, but I'd also say this is probably the worst thing I can remember him doing.

Beefeater1980 posted:

As others have said, it’s premeditated villainy, which is pretty unusual from Flashy in the series. But…
this is perhaps a glimpse into what he’s like when he gets a bit of breathing space.

Undead Hippo posted:

The move feels driven more by narrative than character.

Norwegian Rudo posted:

That's exactly what I was going to say. This doesn't feel like something Flashy would do (in this situation), but something Fraser needs to drive the plot.

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From Santa Fe to Algodones on the river the trail was dotted that night with emigrant camp-fires, and I passed their clusters of wagons as I rode, first through cultivated land and then through scrubby mesa. The Del Norte was smaller than I expected – you think of the Rio Grande as something huge, to compare with the Mississippi, which it may be farther down for all I know; this wasn’t much larger than the Thames, muddy brown and flowing between banks of cottonwood, with ugly black crags looming up away on the southern horizon. I pushed on through the next night to Albuquerque, a big village swollen by the caravans and by the huts of the Mexican and American miners who worked the nearby gold-field.

Here I sold the mule, and considered crossing to the west bank. There were wagons and tents clustered all round the ford, and crowds of people making tremendous work of floating their vehicles and goods across on rafts and flatboats; the river hereabouts was quite swift, and about a quarter of a mile across through sandbars and quicksands. I watched one schooner being poled precariously across the currents, and then the whole thing pitched slowly into the river, while fellows roared and struggled in the water and hauled on lines and got in each other’s way, and all was confusion. The west bank seemed no better than the east, anyway, so I held on south along the wagon-road, where there was plenty of traffic in both directions.

That was when I discovered a new pleasure in life – riding in the American west. I’d spent enough time in the saddle on the plains, you might think, but this was different; here I was alone, and could take my own time. In other parts of the world one always seems to be in a great hurry, tearing from one spot to the other at a gallop, but out yonder, perhaps because distances are so great, time don’t seem to matter; you can jog along, breathing fresh air and enjoying the scenery and your own thoughts about women and home and hunting and booze and money and what may lie over the next hill. It’s easy and pleasant and first-rate in every way, and at night you can build your own fire and roll up in a blanket, or join some other fellows who are sure to make you welcome, and share a meal with you and a yarn over coffee or something sensible from a flask. This is in settled country, you understand.

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The Del Norte seemed to be settled enough, for all Harrison’s alarming talk, and if it ain’t the finest scenery in the continent it was new to me. It’s not a valley as we in England know the word: the river runs through its cottonwood fringe past numerous Mexican villages full of stray dogs and loafers in sombreros, all of ’em either asleep or preparing to lie down. Someone must work the place, though, for there are plenty of cultivated fields beyond the cottonwoods, with here and there a rancheria or hacienda, some of them quite fine, and beyond them again the scrubby plain stretching away on either side, with a dark barrier of mountains to the east, and little else to take the eye except one great black wedge of rock to the left which I had in view all through one day’s ride. Not Buckinghamshire, but it’ll do; any landscape without Indians suited me just then.

Six days down from Santa Fe I came to the ford at Socorro, where there was a fair concourse of emigrants. A few miles farther down, the Del Norte makes a great belly to the west, and it seemed to me from the map that time could be saved by making due south away from the river and behind the Cristobal mountains to rejoin it at Donna Ana. I mentioned this to a Dragoon despatch rider with whom I breakfasted at Socorro, and he shook hands solemnly and said should he write to my family?

“You take that road if you’ve a mind to,” says he facetiously. “It’s got this to be said for it, it’s nice and flat. Other’n that, I’d think hard before I’d recommend it. Course, mebbe you like the notion of a hundred and twenty-five miles of rock and sand and dust and dead bones – plenty of them along the old wagon trail. No water, though, unless you happen to find a rain pool at the Laguna or Point of Rocks – which you won’t, this time of year. But you won’t mind, because the Apaches’ll have skinned you by then, anyway, or rather, they won’t, because before that you’ll have died of thirst. That,” says this wag, “is why it’s called the Jornada del Muerto – the Dead Man’s Journey. There’s only one way across it – and that’s to fill your mount with water till he leaks, take at least two canteens, start at three in the morning, and go like hell. Because if you don’t make it under twenty-four hours … you don’t make it. Staying with the river, are you? That’s your sort, old fellow – good day to you.”

So I crossed the river, like most of the emigrants, and kept to the trail along its west bank; some of them struck out due west, God knows where to. There was less traffic now, and by the time I came to Fra Cristobal I was riding more or less alone. I passed the occasional hamlet and small party of emigrants, but by afternoon of the second day after leaving Socorro it was becoming damned bleak; I pushed on with a great sinister black rock looming across the river to my left, scrubby bushes and hills to the right, and devil a sign of life ahead.

quote:

For the first time since Santa Fe I began to feel a chill down my spine; the priest’s tales of savage bands who roamed this country filled my mind, with visions of ravaged villages and burned out wagons; I began to fancy hidden watchers among the rocks and bushes, and whenever a fragment of tumbleweed rolled across my path I had the vapours. Far off a prairie wolf yowled, and the wind made a ghostly rustle through the cottonwoods. Dusk came down, my spirits sank with it, and then it was dark, and the chill of the night air sank into my bones.

There was nothing for it but to stop where I was, curl up under a brush, and wait for morning. Not for the life of me was I going to light a fire in that desolation – and on the heels of the thought I caught a glimpse, far off through the gloom, of what might have been a spark of light. I gulped, and slowly went on, leading my horse; the chances were that it was emigrants or hunters … then again, perhaps not. It was a light, sure enough; a camp-fire, and a big one. I stood irresolute, and then from the dark ahead a voice made me leap three feet.

“Ola! Que quiere usted? Quien es usted?”

I fairly shuddered with relief. “Amigo! No tiras! Soy forastero!”

A shape loomed up a few yards ahead, and I saw it was a Mexican in a poncho, rifle at the ready. “Venga,” says he, so I came forward, and he fell in behind as I led my horse into a clearing under the cottonwoods, where the great fire blazed, with what looked like an antelope roasting over it. There were groups of men seated around smaller fires, some of whom glanced in my direction – buckskin hunters, Mexicans, two or three Indians in shirts, but mostly rough traders or hunters, so far as I could see. Close by the main fire stood a group of three, headed by a burly fellow with feathers in his hat and two pistols belted over his frock-coat; when he turned I saw he had a forked beard and a great red birth-mark over half his face – a Sunday school-teacher, devil a doubt.

“Who’re you?” grunts he, in English, and for some reason or other I replied: “Flashman – I’m an Englishman. Going to El Paso.”

The cold eyes surveyed me indifferently. “You’re late on the road. There’s mole in the pan, there – ’less you want to wait for the buck.” And he turned back to the fire, ignoring my thanks.

I hitched my horse with the others, got out my dixie, and was helping myself to stew and tortillas when one of his companions, a tall Mexican in a serape, says: “You go alone to El Paso? It’s not safe, amigo; there are Mescaleros in the Jornada, and Jicarilla bands between here and Donna Ana.”

“Which way are you going yourselves, then?” says I, and the Mex hesitated and shrugged. Fork-Beard turned for another look at me.

“Chihuahua,” says he. “In a week, maybe. Doin’ us some huntin’ in the Heeley forest. You want to ride with us?” He paused, and then added: “My name’s Gallantin – John Gallantin.”

It meant nothing to me, but I had a notion it was supposed to. They were watching me warily, and I had to remind myself that in this country men seldom took each other on easy trust. They were a rough crew, but that in itself was not out of the way; they seemed friendly disposed, and if there were Apaches on the loose, as the Mexican said, I’d be a sight safer along with this well-heeled party, even if it took a few days longer.

The Mexican laughed, and winked at me. “Safer to arrive – how you say? – than not get there?”

That wink gave me a momentary qualm for the cargo of dollars in my money-belt, but I was in no case to refuse. “Much obliged to you, Mr Gallantin; I’ll ride along with you.”

He nodded, and asked had I plenty of charges for my revolver and Colt rifle, whereafter I sat down by one of the smaller fires and gave my attention to the grub, taking stock of the company as I ate. No, they were more like hunters than bandits, at that; some sober citizens among ’em, mostly American, although as much Spanish as English was being spoken. But it was English, with a nice soft brogue, that broke in upon my thoughts.

“I’d ha’ sworn the last time I saw you the name was Comber. Flashman, is it? And where have I heard that before, now?” says Grattan Nugent-Hare.

quote:

Since I had my mouth full, it wouldn’t have done to speak, but for a moment I had difficulty swallowing. There he stood, large as life, pulling at his nose, and then he snapped his fingers.

“Eleventh Hussars! That duel … at Canterbury, was it? And then Afghanistan, seven-eight years back. You’re that Flashman?”

My indiscretion could hardly matter down here, so I admitted it, and he gave that slow foxy grin, but with a harder eye than I remembered; there was nothing lazy about the set of him, either.

“Well, well … wonders never cease. Didn’t I know ye were cavalry? Travelling incog, too. And what might you be doing down this way, so far from Santa Fe – not looking for me, I hope?”

Until that moment I’d absolutely forgotten that this rascal had two thousand of my – well, of Susie’s – dollars in his poke. Plainly, this called for tact.

“Far from it,” says I. “Have you spent it yet?”

He took a sharp breath, and his hand moved on his belt. “Let’s say it’s cached in a safe place,” says he softly. “And there it’ll stay. But ye haven’t answered my question: what’s your purpose here? Don’t tell me ye’ve left that old strumpet?”

“What’s it to you if I have?”

“Faith, ye might have given me warning, and I’d ha’ stayed on, so I would.” The grin was decidedly unpleasant now. “She’ll be needing a man about the place.”

I chewed, and looked him up and down, but said nothing, which stung as it was meant to. He gave a bark of a laugh. “Aye, look how ye like,” says he. “It’s not that kind of look she’d be giving me, at all – or did, while I rogered her fat bottom off all the way from Council Grove. Didn’t guess that, did you? – while you were taking the tail of every black wench in sight, more shame to you!” He sat down beside me, well pleased with what he supposed was his bombshell. “Fair mortified at your infidelity, so she was – and her such a fine, hearty woman. Ah, well, she paid you back by making a cuckold of you.”

quote:

I’d never liked or trusted friend Grattan above half even when he was being civil; now I found him downright detestable. Not, oddly enough, because he’d kept Susie warm – for I didn’t doubt his story, and it didn’t diminish my affection for her a bit. The randy trot, paying me back in my own coin! And why not? – she’d always known well enough that I was like the tobyman who couldn’t be satisfied by one woman any more than a miser could by one guinea, and that I’d stray sooner rather than later. She was another of the same herself. And it was gratifying to realise that she’d been prepared to keep me on, knowing I was unfaithful, and never say a word; quite a compliment. Dear Susie … no, my dislike of Grattan was for his own sweet sake, nothing else.

“Ye don’t seem to mind?” says he.

“Why should I? She’s a lustful bitch, and has to have somebody. I daresay she preferred you to one of the teamsters. Not much, though, or she’d have given you for the asking what you had to steal in the end. I think,” says I, rising, “I’ll have some coffee.”

He was on his feet when I came back, but the foxy grin was absent and the voice less soft than usual. “I don’t care for the world ‘steal’, d’ye know? Especially from a man that’s ashamed to use his own name.”

“Then stay out of his way,” says, I sipping. “He can stand it.”

“Can he so? Well, and he’d better stay out of mine,” says he nastily. “And if he has any clever ideas about a certain sum of money, he’d best forget ’em, d’ye see? I’ve seen you in action, my Afghan hero, and I’m not a bit impressed.” He tapped his Colt butt.

I weighed him up. “Tell me, Grattan,” says I. “Did Susie ever cry over you?”

“What’s that? Why the devil should she?” asks he suspiciously.

“Why, indeed?” says I, and ignored him, and after a moment he swaggered off, but continued to keep an eye on me. He couldn’t believe my arrival had nothing to do with his theft, and certainly it was an odd chance that had brought us together again; no doubt he too was on the run for Mexico. I’d have set his doubts at rest if he’d been less offensive about Susie, but he’d proved himself a cheap creature, without style. Chainy Tenth, what would you? I kept my eye on him, too, and when we bedded down I changed my place after an hour – and in the morning saw that so had he.

quote:

We were away before dawn, and I saw that the group was about forty strong and well able to look after itself, riding two and two, with point and flank scouts. In the afternoon Gallantin sent two Indians ahead to find a camp-site; they came back at the gallop, and conferred with Gallantin and the tall Mexican, constantly pointing ahead; I was too far back to hear, but the way the word “’Pash!” rippled down the column, and men began to look to their priming and tighten their girths, said all that was necessary. We went on at the canter, until we smelled smoke, and then in a big clearing among the woods we came on a burning hacienda, a splendid place it must have been, but now a blackened ruin with the flames still licking on its charred walls, and a dense pall of smoke overhead.

There were bodies huddled about the place, and a few slaughtered beasts, but no one gave them even a look; the party scattered on Gallantin’s orders, hunting among the outbuildings and stables, and the Indians circled about the limits, their eyes on the ground. Presently there were shouts, and I went with three or four others to where a couple of our buckskin men were kneeling beside a trough, supporting the body of a small, white-haired woman; they’d found her crouched under a blanket in an outhouse, but even when they’d given her water, she could only gaze about in a stupefied way – and then she began to sing, in an awful cracked voice, and laughed crazily, so they laid her down on the blanket and resumed their search.

I went with the tall Mexican – and found more than I wanted to. Behind the hacienda were other smaller houses, all of them smouldering wrecks, and among them more bodies, scalped and mutilated. They were all peons, so far as I could bear to look at them, with flies buzzing thick about them; the Mexican stooped over one.

“Dead less than an hour,” says he. “A few minutes earlier, by the guts of God, and we would have had them!” He grimaced. “See there.”

I looked, and stood horrified. Only a few yards away, by a high adobe wall, was a row of trees, and from their branches hung at least a dozen bodies, naked, and so hideously mutilated that your first thought was of carcases slung in a butcher’s shop, streaked with blood. They were all hung by the heels, about a foot above the ground, and beneath each one a fire was still smouldering, directly under the heads – if you can call ’em heads after they’ve burst open.

“They stayed long enough fer fun, anyway,” says one of the buckskin men, and spat. Then he turned away with a shrug, and said something to his partner, and they both laughed.

That was the most horrible thing of all – not the hanging bodies, or the scalped corpses, or the vile stench, but the fact that none of Gallantin’s followers paid the slightest heed. No one bothered with a body, except the Mexican when he pronounced on the dead peon; for the rest they just hunted among the ruins, and whatever they were bent on, it had nothing to do with the two score or more poor devils who’d been murdered and tortured in that ghastly shambles. I’ve served with some hard cases, but never with any who didn’t betray horror or disgust or pity or at least interest at such beastly sights. But not this bunch of ruffians.

Then there was a yell from the other side of the hacienda, and everyone gathered where Gallantin and the Indians were examining a ball of horse dung in the dust. There was a great buzz of talk as an Indian and a bearded trapper poked and sniffed, and then the trapper cries: “Gramma!” and held up a peck of ordure for inspection. I didn’t know then that these Indians and frontiersmen could tell from the age and composition of droppings just where a horse has come from and who owns it, and what his grandfather had for luncheon two weeks ago, damned near. (Maize seeds in the crap mean Mexicans, and barley Americans, in case you’re interested.)

Kuiperdolin posted:

We're coming right up to my favorite line in the entire series.

quote:

Another Indian was crawling about, examining the ground, and presently comes up to Gallantin and says: “Mimbreno.”

“Copper Mines band, for sure,” says Gallantin. “How many?” The Indian opened and closed his hands nine times, rapidly. “Ninety ponies, eh? Maybe two hours off by now, but I doubt it. Headin’ west. Hey, Ilario – that smoke t’other day. Could be a camp, huh? Ninety ponies, could be a couple o’hundred ’Pash.”

“That’s forty, fifty thousand dollars,” says someone, and there were yells and laughs and cries of hooraw, boys, while they brandished their pieces and slapped each other on the back.

“Hey, Jack – that’s better’n beaver, I rackon!”

“Better’n a plug a plew o’black fox, ye mean!”

“That’s your style! Mimbreno ha’r’s the prime crop this year!”

I’m not hearing right, thinks I, or else they’re crazy. I couldn’t make out why they were suddenly in such spirits; what was there in this ghastly place to be satisfied about, let alone delighted? And I wasn’t alone, as it turned out; Ilario, the tall Mexican, roared to us all to saddle up, and when we came back to the group about Gallantin, all became suddenly, and shockingly, clear.

quote:

Two fellows, one a plain, bearded emigrant sort whom I’d noted as a sober file the previous night, and the other a youngster of about twenty, were in hot argument with Gallantin; I came in towards the finish, when the sober chap was shaking his fist and crying, no, damned if he would, so there. Gallantin, hunched in his saddle, glared at him in fury and flung out a hand to point at the burned-out hacienda.

“Don’t you give a drat ’bout that, then? You don’t car’ that them red snakes butcher an’ burn our folks? You one o’ these bastard Injun-lovers, seem-like! Hey, boys; hyar’s a feller sweet on th’ Pashes!”

There was a growl from the assembled riders, but the sober card shouted above it. “I give a drat, too! But I ain’t no scalp hunter! There’s a law fer them redsticks, an’ I rackon th’ Army can deal with ’em—” This was drowned in a roar of derision, Gallantin’s eyes rolled with rage, and he fairly spat his reply.

“Th’ Army, by Christ! A sight o’ good th’ Army done this place! You ain’t no scalp-hunter, says you! Then what the hell you jine wi’ us fer?”

“We didn’t know what you wuz!” cries the youth.

“You thunk we wuz some ole ladies’ knittin’ party, by the holy?”

“Come on, Lafe,” says the sober card in disgust. “Let ’em git their blood-money ifn they wants.” He swung into his saddle, and the young fellow followed suit. “Scalp-hunters!” growls the other, and swung his mount away.

“Whar th’ hell you think you goin’?” bawls Gallantin, in a huge fury.

“Away from you,” snaps the youth, and followed his partner.

“Come back hyar! You ain’t goin’ ter put the sojers after us, by God!” And he would have spurred after them, I believe, but Ilario snapped his fingers at one of the Indians, and quicker than light the brute whipped out his hatchet, and flung it after the departing pair. It hit the youth square in the back with a sickening smack; he screamed, and pitched from the saddle with that awful thing buried in his spine, and as his partner wheeled Ilario shot him twice. The sober chap rolled slowly past his horse’s head and fell beside the other; his horse whinnied and bolted; Ilario spun the smoking pistol in his hand, and Gallantin cursed horribly at the two fallen men. The youth was flopping about, with awful gasps, then he was still. No one moved.

“They’d ha’ put the sojers on us,” says Gallantin. “Waal, thar they be! Any other chile o’ thar mind?”

quote:

I knew one who was – not to notice, though, and if any others shared my doubts they kept quiet about it. It had happened with such fell speed, and now it was done there was only stony indifference on the bearded, savage faces of the band. Not all were indifferent, though; the Indian retrieved his hatchet, and called an inquiry to Ilario, who nodded. The Indian drew his knife, stooped over the youth, grunted with disgust, and stepped instead to the corpse of the older man. He knelt, seized the hair, made one swift circle with his point, and dragged off the scalp with brutal force. He stuffed the awful bloody thing into his belt, and then one of the hunters, a huge, pock-marked ruffian, slipped from his saddle.

“This coon don’t see three hunner’ dollars goin’ ter waste!” cries he, and no one said a word while he scalped the dead youth. “Rackon it’s good as Mimbreno ha’r, boys!” He grinned round, bloody knife in one hand and dripping scalp in the other.

“Good as squaw’s ha’r, mebbe,” cries another. “Kinder fine, Bill!” A few of the others laughed, and I noticed Grattan was wearing that foxy half-grin as he sat and tugged at his long nose. Myself, I reflected that here was another good anecdote for the next church social, and studied to look unconcerned. What else was there to do?

For like it or not, I was fairly stuck, and while I had much food for thought as we headed westward into the evening sun, there could be only one conclusion. Here I was, by the most awful freak of chance, among a band of those scalp-hunters of whom young Harrison had spoken, but whom I had supposed no longer existed now that American law governed the land; it was flattery of a kind, I supposed, that Gallantin had looked me over and thought me worth recruiting – I recalled our brief conversation of last night, and the way he had spoken his name; he wasn’t to know that he was addressing perhaps the one man in New Mexico to whom it meant nothing. I’d ride along with him, I’d said in my innocence, and there was nothing else for it. Even without the fearful example of those two scalped deserters, I’d never have dared to quit, in a countryside alive apparently with the kind of fiends who had wrought the destruction of the hacienda. It was an irony that I was too terrified to appreciate, that my one hope lay in the company of these foul brutes who were carrying me mile by mile closer to battle, murder, and sudden death which I could only hope would not be mine.

Genghis Cohen posted:

It's very interesting to read the slightly humorous/adventurous stylings of Flashman in this American frontier environment, and compare it to the way the conflict between native Americans and settlers is portrayed in, say, Blood Meridian or Lonesome Dove.

Darth Walrus posted:

Funny you should mention Blood Meridian. For readers of that novel, the name 'John Gallantin' should be ringing certain bells.

Darth Walrus posted:

Funny you should mention Blood Meridian. For readers of that novel, the name 'John Gallantin' should be ringing certain bells.

quote:

We rode the sun down, and pushed on into steep country of hills covered with pine and cedar, with only the briefest of halts while Gallantin and Ilario conversed with our Indians. Mile after mile we went, through that fragrant maze, and the order came back to eat from our saddle-bags as we rode, for Gallantin had the scent and knew exactly where he wanted to go. God knows how many miles it was, or how he and the others were so sure of the way; I can night-foray as well as most by the stars, but in those dense bottoms and ravines, or along those precipitous hillsides, thick with trees, I lost all sense of direction. But I know we rode fourteen hours from the hacienda, and I was beginning to believe my Arab must founder under me when a halt was called.

But even then it was only to take to the woods on foot, groping through the night with your hand at one man’s belt while another held you behind, trying for dear life not to thrash about like a mad bear in a cane-break, gripping your rifle and gritting your teeth against the pain of saddle-sore buttocks. I became aware that the sky was getting lighter, and Ilario, who led my line, urged us on with whispers; once he stopped and pointed, and over the bushy ridge ahead was a dim reddish glow that was not of the dawn. Oh, Jesus, thinks I, now for it, as we pressed forward slowly up the slope, testing each step before we took it, no longer in touch but each for himself with Ilario ahead. Then it was down on our bellies and crawl; the dark was thin enough to see the man either side and Ilario in front, as he motioned us forward. We reached the summit of the ridge, and lay screened among the bushes, drenched in sweat and like to drop – but in no danger, I assure you, of dozing off.

To explain, as I understood the thing later: Gallantin had identified the marauders as Mimbreno Apaches of the Santa Rita Copper Mines, which lay some distance to the south. He had suspected the presence of a camp of them in this fastness of the Gila forest, a sort of temporary base to which this particular band had moved, no doubt for game; Apaches, you must know, are almost entirely nomadic, and will move on after a week or a few months, as they feel inclined. They build no permanent houses; their home, as they say, is their fireplace. Gallantin had further calculated that after their successful attack on the hacienda, they would return to camp, there to whoop it up in celebration and gorge and booze on tizwin and cactus-juice, and keep the girls in stitches with accounts of how their flayed victims had wriggled over the fires. By dawn he reckoned they would be well under – and here it was dawn, the rays striking down through the trees into the little valley, and on the heights about Gallantin and Co. were ready to go into business. (I wondered if Lieutenant Harrison knew that the going rate for Apache hair was now $300 a pelt. Better than beaver, indeed.)

quote:

Beneath us was a narrow, rocky defile, with a brook running through it, broadening into a goodish stream at a point where the defile itself opened out briefly into a level space of about an acre before it closed again to a rocky gorge. On the level space was the Indian village, and behind it rocks rose almost sheer for seventy feet to a forested lip. On our side, the slope down was steep, and studded with bushes; the ends of the defile were thick-wooded clefts. A splendid lurking-place, in fact, provided it was never found; Gallantin had found it, and so it had become a death-trap. If the Apaches had posted sentries, I suppose they had been dealt with – but I doubt if they had. Flown with triumph, confident of their remote security, they wouldn’t see the need.

I half-expected that we would rush the place at dawn (and wasn’t relishing a mêlée in the valley-bottom) and indeed that is what would have happened if the village had been in an open place with avenues of escape. What I had overlooked was that this wasn’t a military or punitive expedition: it was hunting. The one aim was to kill the quarry and take its pelt, at sixty quid the time. If your game can scatter, you must pounce and take it by surprise; when it’s fish in a barrel, your best road is to sit safe on the edge and destroy it at leisure. (I tried to explain this once in an article to The Field entitled “The Human Quarry as Big Game, and the Case for and against Preserving”, in which I laboured the point that to scalp-hunters the Apaches were no different from bear or wolf or antelope – of course they hated the brutes, but they ain’t too sweet on wolf or lion, either, and a hunter’s hate tends to be in proportion to his fear of the quarry. Oh, there were some to whom the lust of slaughter was sweeter than the scalp-price – folk who’d had families murdered and tortured and enslaved by these savages, or those, like myself that day, who perfectly enjoyed paying back what had been done at the hacienda – but for most it was a matter of business and profit. I cited the case I’ve described to you in which the hunters scalped two of their own kind, and pointed out that there were those in New Mexico at that time who claimed that Gallantin’s practice of selling any hair he could get – Mexican, American, friendly Indian, and the like – was ethically unsound; it gave scalp-hunting a bad name, they said. The Field didn’t print my piece; limited interest, you may say, but I hold that it’s a matter worth serious discussion, and would have provoked a fine correspondence.)

quote:

So we waited, as the light grew until we could easily see the sprawl of wickiups on the level ground beyond the stream – they’re big skin igloos with willow frames, perhaps twenty feet across, and can hold a family with ease, with a hole on top to let out smoke and stink. The whole place was filthy with refuse, and a few curs were prowling among it; here and there a human being was to be seen – a couple of braves sprawled and presumably drunk in the open; an old woman kindling a fire; a boy playing at the stream. Down near the gorge end was a rough corral in which were about a hundred ponies. Ilario passed whispered word of the range: a hundred and twenty yards. I looked to my caps, eased out my pistol, and examined my revolving rifle, head well down in the rough grass of the crest. There were about fifteen of us spread along it, five yards apart; the remainder of our band were evenly divided among the trees at either end of the defile. Nothing could get in or out. Nothing did.

The place began to stir, and I got my first look at the famous Apaches – the Sheeshinday, “Men of the Woods”, or as they are widely and simply known, “the enemy”. I’d had an impression that they were small, but not so. These, being Mimbreno of the Copper Mines, were not among the largest; even so, they were sturdy, well-made brutes, ugly as sin, and lithe and easy in their movements. Their hair was long and undressed, and while some wore it bound in a scarf, most were bare-headed except for a brow-circlet; a few were in shirts and leggings, many wore only the breech-clout. The women, in tunics, were buxom peasants – no tall, willowy jungle princesses here; their voices, shrill and sharp, floated across the stream as they fetched water or busied themselves at the fires, with the kidneys and kedgeree, no doubt. A few braves sauntered down to the corral, others sat outside the wickiups to yawn and gossip, and one or two began to paint, an operation which seemed to call for much care, and criticism from bystanders.

There must have been more than a hundred and fifty in view when one fellow in fringed leggings and a blanket stood forth and told the others to fall in, at which most of the men drifted in his direction to listen – the hunter next to me snapped his fingers softly and nodded, cocking his piece; I passed the signal on, and lay with my heart thumping. At a whispered word I pushed the rifle cautiously forward, covering a stout savage on the edge of the main group, my foresight just above his rump; I won’t pretend I had a vision of those bodies at the hacienda, or any nonsense of that sort – he was a target, and any soldier, from the saintly Gordon downwards, would tell you the same … crack!

quote:

The shot came from the gorge, and the whole rim of the valley exploded in fire and smoke. I squeezed off, and saw my savage leap and topple sideways; around him they were falling, and the whole camp boiled with dust and re-echoed with screams and the boom of shots as we poured our fire into them point-blank; I missed a tall fellow, but spun another round as he bolted towards the corral, and then I was firing steadily into the brown.

It was deadlier than a Gatling, for here each man was a marksman, and there were forty of us with six-shot rifles, except for one or two long-gun eccentrics who never missed anyway. A Sharp’s fires six to the minute, and a Colt rifle considerably faster. Within two minutes there wasn’t a live male Indian to be seen, and the ground was littered with bodies, none of ’em wounded, for any that kicked became instantly the target for half a dozen rifles. About a dozen had reached the corral, and came out like bats along the stream, but they got no distance; a few more dashed frantically through the water towards our position, and were cut down before they’d got half way up the hill. The slaughter was all but complete.

There remained the wickiups, and now our own Indians emerged at either end of the defile, with burning arrows which they shot methodically into the skins. There were shrieks from within as the lodges began to burn, and out dashed the females, with here and there a brave among them; the men were picked off while the women screamed and milled about like ants; one or two may have been hit as they ran blindly among the flaming wickiups, or cowered at the foot of the cliff behind. Round the lip of the valley hung a great wreath of powder smoke as our fire ceased; now there was no sound except the dry crackle of the burning wickiups, and the muted wails of terrified women and children.

Parties of hunters broke from the trees at either end of the defile, and Ilario stood up and waved us down the hill. We went quiet and careful, without whoop or halloo, because there had been no victory, and hunters don’t yell and caper when they’ve downed their quarry. There were one or two shots, as victims were made certain, and a few shouted commands; for the rest we splashed in silence through the stream to the corpse-strewn camp, where Gallantin was waiting.

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Guards were posted on the women and horses, and then out came the knives as they prepared to do what they had come to do. I shan’t horrify you with more detail than I must, but one or two points should be recorded for history’s sake. One was made by a buckskin hunter who was divesting a corpse of all the skin and hair above its ears, at which his mate, neatly removing the top-knot from another head, remarked that the first chap was being unnecessarily thorough, surely, to which the buckskin man replied that the Chihuahua authorities liked to see a full scalp.

“Ye see, some sonsabitches,” says he as he panted and sawed away, “has bin takin’ two scalps offn wun haid, so the Mexes is grown chary o’ leetle scalps. Yew want yore full money, yew tek th’ hull shebang! Come hup, ye bastard! Thar, now!”

Another thing I noted was that all scalps went into a common pile, which a popular novelist would no doubt describe as “reeking” – heaven knows why. They don’t reek; en masse they look like a cheap and greasy black rug. Gallantin stood by and kept careful count as they were salted; there were a hundred and twenty-eight all told.

You may wonder if I took a scalp. The answer is no. For one thing, I wouldn’t touch an Indian’s hair on a bet, and for another, it’s a skilled job. It did cross my mind, though, as something to have done, if you follow me – as I wrote for The Field, it’s a nice point which trophy on your wall does you greater credit, the head of a pretty, gentle impala, or a switch of hair marked “Mimbreno Apache, Gila Forest, ’49”. I even wandered across the stream to one of the bodies that had fallen on the hillside, and considered it a moment, and then came away quickly. He must have been all of eight years old.

That was the point at which I was sickened, I confess – by that and the cold, brisk efficiency with which the scalpers worked. There were a few crazy ones who obviously enjoyed it – I was intrigued to see Grattan red to the wrists, with a wild look in his eye – but for most of them it was no more than chopping wood. And if you cry out on them, as you should – well, be thankful that you weren’t born along the Del Norte, and the matter never arose for you.

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As for the massacre itself, I’ve been on t’other end too often to worry overmuch. The scalping was beastly, but I couldn’t regret the dead Apaches, any more than Nana’s people regretted us at Cawnpore. And if you’ve marched in the Kabul retreat, or fled from Isandhlwana, or scaled the Alma – well, the sight of six score Indians piled up without any tops to their heads may not be pretty, but when you reflect on what deserving cases they were, you don’t waste much pity on them.

I won’t say I was at my cheeriest, though, or that I ate much at noon, and I was quite happy to be one of a party that Gallantin sent out to circle the valley for Indian sign. There wasn’t any – which is the worst sign of all, let me tell you – and we came back at evening to find the camp cleared up, with a great fire going, and the real devil’s work about to begin.

You will remember that the women had been rounded up, more or less unharmed, and if I’d thought about them at all I dare say I’d have concluded that they would be spared, give or take a quiet rape or so. In fact, I discovered that the habit of Gallantin’s gang of charmers was to while away the night with them, and then slaughter and scalp them the next day – along with the children. If you doubt me, consult Mr Dunn’s scholarly work, among a score of others, and note that the proyecto made distinctions of age and sex only by price.

I was eating my stew like a good lad, and washing it down with more corn beer than was good for me, when Ilario came over to where I and a couple of others were sitting; he carried a leather bag, which he shook and proffered; not thinking, I reached in like the others, and came out with a white pebble; theirs were black, at which they cussed roundly, and Ilario grinned and jerked his thumb.

“Felicitaciones, amigo! You first!” cries he, and wondering I followed him over to where the main party were seated round the great fire, with Gallantin in the place of honour; three hunters were ranged before him, grins on their ugly faces as their mates chaffed them and they answered with lewd boasts and gestures. Then I saw the four Indian women off to one side, and understood; presumably they were the pick of the crop, for all were young, and presentable as squaws can be in dirty buckskin and an agony of fear.

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it gave scalp-hunting a bad name, they said.

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“He the last?” cries Gallantin, and if you had seen that blotched, fork-bearded face, and the crowd leering and haw-hawing either side of him, you’d ask no better models for Satan and his infernal crew. They’d been brisk and disciplined enough in action, but now they’d been at the tizwin and cactus juice, and the true beastliness was on the surface as they waited eager for their sport.

“Now, then, Ilario, look alive!” shouts Gallantin, and Ilario faced us with his back to the squaws. “Who shall have her?” Gallantin was pointing at one of the girls, unseen by Ilario, who grinned and kept everyone in suspense before indicating a squat, bearded fellow next to me.

The brute whooped and rushed to grab his prize – and to my disgust he set about her then and there, in front of everyone! How they yelled and cheered, those charmers; I can see their bestial, grinning faces still, and the bearded man on top of the struggling squaw, his backside going like a fiddler’s elbow. Gallantin yelled above the din for the second girl, and again Ilario named a man; this one at least had the decency to haul her away, half-fainting as she was, to some private place, pursued by the groans of that mob of devils. Then it was the third girl, and this time Ilario pointed to me.

“Goddam!” yelled the ape beside me. “I wanted that ’un!” and they cat-called with delight at his disappointment. “Hooraw, Jem – don’t ye wish ye cud! Haw-haw, she’s yore sort, though.” And as he made off with the last wench, they egged me on to be at the third one. “Go on, hoss – lay aboard! Whut – he’s th’ Englishman! I say, ole feller, give ’er th’ Union Jack, haw-haw!”

If she’d been Cleopatra, I wouldn’t have wanted her, not then. I’d never felt less like venery in my life, not in that ghastly place, after the sights I’d seen, and with that obscene mob about me; even apart from that, she did not prepossess – which shows how wrong you can be. As I looked across at her, I saw only an Indian girl in a grubby fringed tunic, with long braids of hair round a chubby, dust-stained face; the only thing different about her was that where the others had cowered and trembled, she was straight as a ramrod and looked dead ahead; if she was frightened, it didn’t show.

“Go on!” roars Gallantin. “What ails ye, man? Go git ’er!” And he seized her by the shoulder and thrust her forward at my feet. Nice point of etiquette – I didn’t know what to do, in that company, as they roared drunken encouragement and vile instruction, and the bearded man and his victim heaved and gasped on the ground a couple of yards away. Turned on my heel, possibly, or said “Your bird”; my girl scrambled to her feet, eyes wide now and fists clenched, and for no good reason that I can think of, I shook my head at her as I stood irresolute. The mob bayed and bellowed, and then a well-known voice sang out:

“He can’t! The great soft Limey bugger! Well, here’s one’ll deputise for him, so he will!” And Grattan Nugent-Hare stood forth, a trifle unsteady on his feet, flushed with tizwin, and a triumphant sneer on his face as he reached for the girl.

Now, I ain’t proud, and I’ll run from a fight as fast as any; if it had been another man I don’t doubt I’d have swallowed the insult and slunk off. But this was the detestable Grattan, who’d bulled Susie unbeknownst, and had a nasty long nose, and gave himself airs – and was three parts foxed, anyway, by the look of him. He was unprepared, too, as he grabbed the girl by the wrist – and my temper boiled over. I lashed out with all my strength and caught him full in the face; he went back like a stone from a sling, into the circle of watchers, who whooped with glee – and then he was on his feet like a cat, his nose spurting blood, mad rage in his eyes and a hatchet in his hand.

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There wasn’t time to run. I ducked his murderous stroke and sprang away, and Gallantin yelled: “Hyar, boyee!”, jerked out his Bowie, and flipped it towards me. I fumbled and grabbed it, diving aside as Grattan swiped at me again. His hatchet head nicked the very edge of my left hand, and enraged by pain and terror, I hacked at his face; a Bowie is not a knife, by the way, but a two-foot pointed cleaver, and if I’d got home it would have been brains for supper, but he caught my wrist. In a frenzy of panic I flung my weight at him and down we went, Flashy on top, but drunk or not, he was agile as a lizard and wriggled out from under, letting drive with that razor-sharp axe as we regained our feet. It whisked so close above my head I believe it touched my hair, but before he could swing again I had my left hand on his throat and would have been well set to disembowel him if he hadn’t seized my wrist again. I was bellowing with rage and funk, throwing up my left elbow to hamper his axe-hand; strong as he may have been, he was no match for Flash in brute coward strength, and I bore him back in a great staggering run and with one almighty heave pitched him headlong into the fire.

There was a terrific yell from the onlookers as he rolled out, sparks flying and his shirt smouldering. I’d have run then, but seeing him helpless I leaped on him, stabbing the earth by mistake in my eagerness. He hacked and clawed, and as we grappled on our knees I butted him hard in the face; it jolted him sideways, but he surged up at me again, axe raised, and I just managed to block his arm as he let drive. The jar of our forearms knocked me back; he hurled himself on top of me, and gave a horrible shriek of agony; his face was only inches from mine, mouth wide and eyes glaring – and then I felt his body go limp and realised that my right hand was being drenched with something warm. It was gripping the Bowie, and the blade had impaled Nugent-Hare as he fell on me.

I flung him off, and as I scrambled up he rolled over and lay with the hilt protruding from his midriff. For a moment I was rooted with shock; there lay the corpse, and just beyond it was the bearded fellow still on top of his squaw, his eyes round in fear and amazement. That was how quickly it had happened: a mere few seconds of fevered hacking and struggling, with no respite for truce or flight, and Nugent-Hare was in a pool of blood, his eyes sightless in the fire-glare, with that awful thing in his body.

There was dead silence as I stood in a daze, my right hand dripping blood. I stared round at the faces – astonished, curious, frozen in grins, or just plain interested. Gallantin came forward, stooped, and there was an involuntary gasp from the watchers as he retrieved the knife. He glanced from me to the girl, who stood petrified, her hands to her mouth. Gallantin nodded.

“Waal, hoss,” says he to me, conversational-like, “I reckon you earned her for the night.”

That was all. No outcry, no protest, no other observation even. By their lights it had been fair, and that was that. (I put it to a good silk, years later, and he said a civilised court would have given me two years for manslaughter.) At the time, I was numb; he wasn’t the first I’d killed hand-to-hand, by any means – there’d been Iqbal’s n**** at Mogala, a Hova guard in Madagascar, and dear old de Gautet dipping his toe in the water at the Jotunschlucht, but they’d been with my eyes open, so to speak, not in a mad, sudden brawl that was over, thank God, before it had well begun.

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Stupefied as I was, some instinct must have told me not to refuse Gallantin’s invitation a second time – it’s a good rule, as I hope I’ve demonstrated, that when scalp-hunters offer you a squaw, you should take her away quick and quiet, and if you don’t fancy her, then teach her the two times table, or “Tintern Abbey”, or how to tie a sheep-shank. I think I may have taken her wrist, and no doubt my aspect conquered resistance, for next thing I knew I was leaning against a tree in the grove beyond the corral, being sick, while she stood like a graven image and watched me. When I’d recovered I sat down and looked at her, not carnally you understand, but bemused-like. It was middling dim, away from the fires, and I beckoned her so that I could see her face; she came, and I examined her.

She was plump-cheeked, as I’ve said, and under the grime by no means ill-favoured. Rather a hooked little nose, small sullen mouth, and slanted eyes under a broad brow; she didn’t smell unpleasant, either, although her tunic was filthy and torn. What was under it looked passable enough, too, but I was too shaken and fagged out to care. She looked down at me wide-eyed, but not fearful – and then she did an extraordinary thing. She suddenly dropped to her knees, took one of my hands between both of hers, stared at me closely, and said: “Gracias.”

I was quite taken aback. “Entiende Español?”, and she nodded and said: “Si.” Then after a moment she looked back towards the firelight and shivered, and when she turned her face again there were tears in her eyes and her mouth was open and tremulous. “Muchas gracias!” she sobbed, and dropped her head on my knees and clung to my legs and had a fine bawl to herself.

Well, one likes to be appreciated, so I patted her head and murmured some commonplace, at which she raised her face and looked at me dumbly; then she heaved a great sniffing sigh, but rather spoiled the effect by turning aside to spit copiously. She mopped at her tears, and continued to watch me, very grave, so to cheer her up I tapped her cheek and gave her the polite smile I reserve for females on whom I have no designs. She smiled back timidly, showing rather pretty teeth; it occurred to me that when washed and combed and stripped she’d be perfectly presentable, and since I was feeling rather more settled now I placed a hand gently on her shoulder. Her eyes widened a fraction, but no more, so I gave her my impish grin and very slowly slid my hand inside her tunic neck, so that she had every opportunity to start or shudder. She didn’t; her eyes were as solemn as ever, but her lips parted on a little gasp, and she kneeled upright as I took hold – by Jove, it was A1 material, and quite restored me. I squeezed and stroked her lightly, asking myself was she all for it or merely steeling herself for the inevitable; I do prefer ’em willing, so I kissed her lightly and asked: “Con su permiso?”

She started at that, quite bewildered for a moment; then her eyes lowered, and I’ll swear she stifled a smile, for she glanced at me sidelong and gave that little lift of the chin that’s the coquette’s salute from Tunbridge Wells to Pago Pago, as she murmured: “Como quiera usted.”

I pulled her on to my knee, and kissed her properly – and if you’ve been told that Indians don’t know how, it’s a lie. And I was just slipping her tunic from her shoulders when an odd movement in the distant firelight caught my eye through the thin branches which partly shielded us.

A man appeared to be dancing beside the fire – and then I saw it was not a dance but an agonised stagger, as he clutched at something protruding from his neck. His scream echoed through the trees, to be drowned in a crash of gunfire and whistle of shafts, figures leaped up around the fire, men shouted and ran and fell in confusion, and my pearl of the forest was hurled aside as I sprang to my feet. From the woods all about sounded blood-freezing whoops, shots boomed and echoed along the valley, bodies were rushing through the thickets. All this in a second; I could see Gallantin by the fire, rifle raised, and then he and the whole scene before me slowly turned upside down and slid from view; my body shook and a numbness in my head turned to a blinding pain as I fell forward into darkness.

Arbite posted:

Ugh. This whole bit will be awful. You can skip it and pick up next time.

The line for some people can really be something.

Well good riddance but no individual death is going to fix this.

Also everyone dying won't fix this, but at least they're dead.

So. Let's hope the next chapter is very different. Christ, a lot's happened and the big break is still not in sight.

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There’s no question that a public school education is an advantage. It may not make you a scholar or a gentleman or a Christian, but it does teach you to survive and prosper – and one other invaluable thing: style. I’ve noted that Grattan-Hare didn’t have it, and you know what happened to him. I, on the other hand, have always had style by the cart-load, and it saved my life in the Gila forest in ’49, no error.

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Thus: any other of Gallantin’s band, given possession of my Apache lass, would have gone at her bull at a gate. I, once I’d decided on reflection that I might as well rattle her as not, set about it with a deal of finesse – chiefly, I admit, because it’s better sport that way. But I knew how to go about it, that’s the point, patiently and smoothly and with … style.

You must understand the effect of this, of Flashy imposing his winning ways on that fortunate native wench. There she was, a helpless prisoner in the hands of the most abominable ruffians in North America, who had butchered her menfolk before her eyes and were about to subject her to repeated rape, possible torture, and certain death. Up jumps this strapping chap with splendid whiskers, who not only kills out of hand the cad who is molesting her, but thereafter treats her kindly, pets her patiently, and absolutely asks permission to squeeze her boobies. She is astonished, nay gratified, and, since she’s a randy little minx at bottom, ready to succumb with pleasure. All thanks to style, as inculcated by Dr Arnold, though I wouldn’t expect him to claim credit for it.

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And mark the sequel. When other of her tribesmen, having got wind of the massacre, attack the scalp-hunters by night, she is alarmed for her protector. If he joins in the scrap – the last thing I’d have done, but she wasn’t to know that – harm may come to him, so being a lass of spirit she ensures his neutrality by clouting him behind the ear with a rock. Then, when her tribesmen have wiped out or captured most of the marauders (Gallantin and a few others alone escaped)...

Author's Note posted:

But not for long. Gallantin (also known as Glanton) had driven a thriving trade in scalps sold to the Chihuahua authorities, who were much puzzled that in spite of all his efforts, Apache raids seemed to be increasing, with Mexicans and friendly Indians being scalped in large numbers. Eventually it dawned on them that Gallantin himself was responsible, and was selling these “innocent” scalps as well as Apache ones. Gallantin was forced to flee in 1851, taking about two thousand stolen sheep with him through the Gila River country; here he was met by Yuma Indians whose chief Naked Horse protested friendship and, at the first opportunity, wiped out Gallantin and his entire party. (See Dunn, Cremony, Bancroft.)

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... she is at pains to preserve her saviour from the general vengeance. Had he been a man without style, she’d have been the first to set about him with a red-hot knife.

Mind you, luck was on my side, too. Had she been any common Indian wench, it would have been Flashy, b. 1822, d. 1849, R.I.P. and not even a line in the Gazette, for her rescuers wouldn’t have heeded her for an instant; I’d have been just another white scalp-hunter on whom to practise their abominations. But since she happened to be Sonsee-array, the Morning-Star-Takes-Away-Clouds-Woman, fourth and dearest daughter of Mangas Colorado, the great Red Sleeves, chief of the Mimbreno, lord of the Gila, and scourge of plain, forest and mountain from the Llanos Estacados to the Big-Canyon-Dug-by-God, and since she was also famous for having more beads and trinkets than any other female since time began, and for never having worked in her young life – well, even a Bronco brave with blood in his eye takes notice, and decides to humour her.

So they contented themselves with stripping and hanging my unconscious carcase upside down from the cotton-woods, along with those of a dozen other scalp-hunters who’d been unlucky enough to survive the attack. They then built fires under us in the approved fashion, but at Sonsee-array’s insistence refrained from lighting mine until she had stated her case to the great man. Meanwhile they beguiled the time by slowly removing the skins from my fellow-unfortunates, a process in which she and the other squaws gleefully joined. Mercifully, I was dead to the world.

When I came to I was blind, with a thunderstorm drumming in my skull, and my whole body in torment; to make matters worse, a voice nearby was alternately babbling for mercy in Spanish and screeching in agony – that, though I didn’t know it, was Ilario being flayed alive on the next tree. The screams died away to a whimper, with an awful distant chorus of cries and groans and hellish laughter; closer at hand voices were talking in a mixture of Spanish and some language I didn’t understand.

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I struggled to force my eyes open, trying to get to my feet but not able to find ground anywhere – that’s what it’s like to come awake when you’re hanging upside down. I was floating, it seemed, while my feet were being torn away; then my eyes opened, I could smell smoke and blood, and before me were human figures the wrong way up – and then I realised where I was, and the ghastly sight of those bodies at the hacienda flashed across my mind, and I tried to scream, but couldn’t.

“Por qué no?” were the first words I made out. “Why not?”, in a double bass croak so deep it was difficult to believe it came from a human being (I’m not so sure, from my later acquaintance with him, that it did). A woman’s voice answered, high and fierce, mostly in Spanish, but there were men’s voices trying to interrupt her, and in shouting them down she sometimes lapsed into the unknown tongue which I guessed must be Apache.

“Because he was good to me! When the others, like that dog-dirt there—” there was a horrid smack, and yells of laughter as she took a swipe at the unhappy Ilario “—would have raped and killed me – he fought for me, and slew a man, and used me gently! Are you all deaf? He is not evil, like these others!”

“He has white eyes!” shouts some curmudgeon. “Why should he be spared?”

“Because I say so! Because he saved me while you cowards were asleep, or hiding, or … or defecating under a bush! I say he shall not die! I ask my father for his life! And his eyes are not white – they are dark!”

“He is pinda-lickoyee – the enemy! He is Americano, scalp-taker, butcher of children! Look at the bodies of our people, mutilated by these beasts—”

“He did not do it – if he had, why should he help me?”

“Huh!” sulkily, and knowing grunts. “All men help you! Evil men as well as good – you know the art of getting help.”

“Liar! Pig! Bastard! Ugly lump of rotten buffalo dung—”

“Basta!” It was the bass voice again. “If he doesn’t die, what will you do with him? Make him a slave?”

That seemed to be a facer for her; she wasn’t sure, and there were sceptical grunts and sneers, which drove her wild. In a passion she cried that she was a chief’s daughter and would please herself. The sense of the meeting seemed to be, oh, hoity-toity miss, and the leader of the opposition said no doubt she would want to marry the white-eyed villain … you understand that I give you the gist of the conversation, so well as I heard and understood it.

“And if I chose to, what then?” cries madam. “He is braver and more beautiful than any of you! You stink! Black Knife stinks! El Chico stinks! The Yawner stinks! And you, Vasco – you stink worst of all!”

“Do we all stink, then, except this creature? Does your own father stink?” The bass voice sounded closer, and through blurred eyes I made out two massive legs beneath a hide kilt, and huge booted feet. “He is big, even for an Americano. Big as a Striped Arrowa.”

“Not as big as you, father,” says she, sweet and tactful. “Nor as strong. But he is bigger and stronger and fiercer and faster and prettier than Vasco. But then – a Digger’s arse is prettier than that!”

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I must have fainted, for that’s all I remember until a strange period of half-consciousness in which I was aware of women’s voices muttering, and hands working on my body with what I suppose was grease or ointment, and being given a drink, and the pain ebbing from my head. At one time I was in a wickiup, and a dirty old crone was spooning some mush of meat and corn into me; again, I was being carried on a stretcher, with open sky and branches passing overhead. But it was all confused with evil dreams of hanging upside down among flames, and then I was plunged head-foremost into the icy depths under Jotunberg with Rudi Starnberg’s wild laugh ringing in my ears. Women’s faces swam up through the water towards me – Elspeth blonde and lovely and smiling, Lola sleepy-eyed with lips pursed in mockery, Cleonie pale and beautiful and very close as she hummed softly: “Oh-ho-ho, avec mes sabots!”, and as her mouth closed on mine it was Susie who teased and fondled and smothered me in flesh, which would have been capital if we had not been upside-down with fellows arguing in Spanish, among them Arnold who said that all scalp-hunters at Rugby knew perfectly well that a gerundive was a passive adjective, and Charity Spring shouted that here was one who didn’t, this graceless son-of-a-bitch hung by the heels with his fat whore, and he must die, at which Arnold shook his head and his voice echoed far away: “I fear, captain, that we have failed …”, and Susie’s plump, jolly face receded, her skin darkened, the bright green eyes dissolved into new eyes that were black in shadow and cinnamon as the light caught them, set between slanting lids that were almost Oriental. Lovely eyes, like dark liquid jewels that moved slowly and intently, absorbing what they saw; whoever you are, I thought, you don’t need to talk …

… the chubby-faced Indian girl stood above me, looking solemnly down; I was lying in a wickiup, under a blanket, and the horror of memory rushed back and hit me in the ribs with a boot belonging to one of the ugliest devils I’ve ever seen, who snarled as he kicked: a young Apache in hide kilt and leggings, with a dirty jacket about his shoulders and a band round the lank hair that framed a face from the Chamber of Horrors. Even for an Apache it was wicked – coal-black vicious eyes, hook nose, a mouth that was just a cruel slit and wasn’t improved when he laughed with a great gape that showed all his ugly teeth.

“Get up, perro! Dog! Gringo! Pinda-lickoyee!”

If you’d told me then that this monster would one day be the most dreaded hostile Indian who ever was, terror of half a continent – I’d have believed you; if you’d told me he would be my closest Indian friend – I wouldn’t. Yet both were true, and still are; he’s an old, done man nowadays, and when we met last year I had to help him about, but mothers still frighten their children with his name along the Del Norte, and as for friendship, I suppose one scoundrel takes to another, and we’re the only ones left over from that time, anyway. But at first meeting he scared the innards out of me, and I was deuced glad when the girl cried out before he could kick me again.

“Stop, Yawner! Don’t touch him!”

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“Why not? It feels good,” snarls my beauty, with another great gape, but he left off and stepped back, which was a double relief, for he stank like a goat in an organ-loft. I thought I’d best obey nevertheless, and struggled up, weak and dizzy as I was, for I realised that any hope I might have in my fearful plight depended on this girl I’d rescued … it must have been she who had spoken up for me when I was hanging helpless … now she was interceding again, and with authority. Decidedly she deserved all the fawning courtesy I could show her. So I struggled painfully upright, gasping with my aches and holding unsteadily to the blanket for modesty’s sake while I muttered obsequiously, muchas, muchas gracias, señorita. The Yawner growled like an angry dog, but she nodded and continued to inspect me in silence for several minutes, those splendid eyes curious and speculating, as though I were something in a shop and she was trying to make up her mind. I stood unsteady and sweating, trying to look amiable, and took stock of her in turn.

Seen in daylight, she wasn’t unattractive. The chubby face, now that it was washed and polished, was round and firm as a ripe apple, with sulky, provocative lips. In figure she was sturdy rather than slim, a muscular little half-pint under her puppy-fat, for she couldn’t have been over sixteen. She was royally dressed by Apache standards, in a fine beaded doeskin tunic, fringed below the knee, which must have taken a dozen squaws a week to chew; her moccasins had bright geometric patterns, a lace scarf was bound about her brows, and there was enough silver and beadwork round her neck to start a bazaar. She was utter Indian, but there was a cool, almost drat-you air that didn’t sort with the busty little figure and savage finery, an impersonal poise in the way she looked me up and down that would have suited a hacienda better than a wickiup – if I’d known that her mother was pure Spanish hidalga with a name three feet long, I might have understood.

Suddenly she frowned. “You have much ugly hair on your face. Will you cut it off?”

Startled, I said I would, certainly, ma’am, and the Yawner spat and muttered that given his way he’d cut off more than that; he was giving blood-chilling particulars, but she snapped him into silence, took a last long look at me from those slanted pools, and then asked with perfect composure:

“Do you like me, pinda-lickoyee?”

Now, I hadn’t more than a half-notion of what this queer inspection was about, but it was a stone certainty that this young lady’s good opinion was all that stood between me and a frightful death. Ignoring the Yawner’s snort at her question, I fairly babbled my admiration, leering eagerly no doubt, and she clapped her hands.

“Bueno!” cries she, and laughed, with a triumphant toss of her head at the Yawner, accompanied by a gesture and an Apache word which I doubt was ladylike. She gave me one last hot appraising stare before sweeping out, and the Yawner let go a great fart by way of comment, and jerked his thumb at my clothes, which had been thrown in a corner. He watched malevolently as I pulled on shirt and pants and struggled with my boots; I ached with stiffness, but my dizziness was passing, and I ventured to ask him who the señorita might be. He grunted as though he grudged the words.

“Sonsee-array. Child of the Red Sleeves.”

“Who’s he?”

His black eyes stared with disbelief and mistrust. “What kind of pinda-lickoyee are you? You don’t know of Mangas Colorado? Bah! You’re a liar!”

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“Never heard of him. What does his daughter want with me?”

“That is for her to say.” He gave another of his gapes of laughter. “Huh! You should have dropped your blanket, white-eye! Vaya!” And he shoved me out of the wickiup.

There was a motley crowd of women and children outside in the brilliant sunlight, and they set up a great yell of execration at sight of me, waving sticks and spitting, but the Yawner drew a sling from his belt and lashed at them with the thongs to make way. I followed him through the cluster of wickiups and across a level space towards a few ruined buildings and a great crumbling triangular fort before which another crowd was assembled. How far we were from the valley of the massacre I couldn’t tell; this was quite different country, with low scrubby hills round the sandy flat, and one great hill looming over the scene; it looked like a permanent camp.34

There must have been a couple of hundred Apaches grouped in a great half-circle before the fort, and if you think you’ve seen ugly customers in Africa or Asia, believe me, there are worse. I’ve seen Fly River head-hunters who ain’t exactly Oscar Wilde, and not many understudies for Irving among the Uzbeks and Udloko Zulus – but they’re merely awful to look at. For an ugliness that comes from the soul, and envelops the stranger in a wave of menace and evil cruelty, commend me to a gathering of Gila Apaches. Or rather, don’t. To have those vicious eyes turned on you from those flat, spiteful brute faces, is to know what hate truly means; you’ll never wonder again why other Indians call them simply “the enemy”.

They watched me come in silence, until the Yawner stopped me before a group seated under the fort wall. There were six of them, presumably elders, since in contrast to the crowd they all wore shirts and kilts and leather caps or scarves. But there was only one of them to look at.

He might have been fifty, and was undoubtedly the biggest man I’ve ever seen. I’m two inches over six feet, and he topped me by half a head, but it was his sheer bulk that took your breath away. From shoulder to shoulder he was three and a half feet wide – and I know that because I once saw him hold a cavalry sabre horizontal across his chest, and it didn’t protrude either side. His arms were as thick as my legs, and bulged under his deerskin shirt; the knees beneath his kilt were like milestones. His head was to scale, and hideous, with black snake eyes that bored out from beneath the brim of his flat hat with its eagle feather. I’ve felt my bowels dissolve in the presence of a few ogres in my time, but none more awe-inspiring than this celebrated Mangas Colorado; he was truly terrific. He surveyed me for a moment, and glanced aside, and I saw that my girl and two other young females were there, kneeling on a spread blanket before the crowd. She was looking bothered but determined.

Now, what I didn’t know was that a heated debate had been in progress, the subject being: what shall we do with old Flashy? The overwhelming opinion had been that I should be slung up by the heels forthwith and given the skin treatment I’d have had days ago but for the unseemly intervention of young Sonsee-array; the only dissenting voices had been those of the lady herself, her girl-friends (who being common women counted for nothing), and her doting father (who being Mangas Colorado counted for everything). But it was widely recognised that he was only humouring her because he was a fond old widower with three married daughters, and she was all he had left, presumably, to fetch his slippers, preside at tea, and torture visitors; his indulgence had limits, however, and he had told her pretty sharp that it was high time she stated her intentions where this pinda-lickoyee was concerned. Was it true that she wanted to marry the brute, foreign white-eye and scalp-hunter that he was? (Cries of “No, no!” and “Shame!”) Let him remind her that she had turned down half the eligible bachelors in the tribe … however, if this gringo was what she wanted, let her say so, and Mangas would either give his blessing or signal the band to strike up the cottonwood polka. (Hear, hear, and sustained applause.)

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