Copyright

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First published in Great Britain by Collins 1982

Copyright © George MacDonald Fraser 1982

How Did I Get the Idea of Flashman? © The Beneficiaries of the Literary Estate of George MacDonald Fraser 2015

Map © John Gilkes 2015

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015

Cover illustration © Gino D’Achille

George MacDonald Fraser asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical events and figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007217175

Ebook Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780007325726

Version: 2015-07-23

The following piece was found in the author’s study in 2013 by the Estate of George MacDonald Fraser.

How Did I Get the Idea of Flashman?

‘How did you get the idea of Flashman?’ and ‘When are we going to get his U.S. Civil War memoirs?’ are questions which I have ducked more often than I can count. To the second, my invariable response is ‘Oh, one of these days’. Followed, when the inquirer is an impatient American, by the gentle reminder that to an old British soldier like Flashman the unpleasantness between the States is not quite the most important event of the nineteenth century, but rather a sideshow compared to the Mutiny or Crimea. Before they can get indignant I add hastily that his Civil War itinerary is already mapped out; this is the only way of preventing them from telling me what it ought to be.

To the question, how did I get the idea, I simply reply that I don’t know. Who ever knows? Anthony Hope conceived The Prisoner of Zenda on a walk from Westminster to the Temple, but I doubt if he could have said, after the calendar month it took him to write the book, what triggered the idea. In my case, Flashman came thundering out of the mists of forty years living and dreaming, and while I can list the ingredients that went to his making, heaven only knows how and when they combined.

One thing is sure: the Flashman Papers would never have been written if my fellow clansman Hugh Fraser, Lord Allander, had confirmed me as editor of the Glasgow Herald in 1966. But he didn’t, the canny little bandit, and I won’t say he was wrong. I wouldn’t have lasted in the job, for I’d been trained in a journalistic school where editors were gods, and in three months as acting chief my attitude to management, front office, and directors had been that of a seigneur to his serfs – I had even put Fraser’s entry to the House of Lords on an inside page, assuring him that it was not for the Herald, his own paper, to flaunt his elevation, and that a two-column picture of him was quite big enough. How cavalier can you get?

And doubtless I had other editorial shortcomings. In any event, faced with twenty years as deputy editor (which means doing all the work without getting to the big dinners), I promised my wife I would ‘write us out of it’. In a few weeks of thrashing the typewriter at the kitchen table in the small hours, Flashman was half-finished, and likely to stay that way, for I fell down a waterfall, broke my arm, and lost interest – until my wife asked to read what I had written. Her reaction galvanised me into finishing it, one draft, no revisions, and for the next two years it rebounded from publisher after publisher, British and American.

I can’t blame them: the purported memoir of an unregenerate blackguard, bully, and coward resurrected from a Victorian school story is a pretty eccentric subject. By 1968 I was ready to call it a day, but thanks to my wife’s insistence and George Greenfield’s matchless knowledge of the publishing scene, it found a home at last with Herbert Jenkins, the manuscript looking, to quote Christopher MacLehose, as though it had been round the world twice. It dam’ nearly had.

They published it as it stood, with (to me) bewildering results. It wasn’t a bestseller in the blockbuster sense, but the reviewers were enthusiastic, foreign rights (starting with Finland) were sold, and when it appeared in the U.S.A. one-third of forty-odd critics accepted it as a genuine historical memoir, to the undisguised glee of the New York Times, which wickedly assembled their reviews. ‘The most important discovery since the Boswell Papers’ is the one that haunts me still, for if I was human enough to feel my lower ribs parting under the strain, I was appalled, sort of.

You see, while I had written a straightforward introduction describing the ‘discovery’ of the ‘Papers’ in a saleroom in Ashby-de-la-Zouche (that ought to have warned them), and larded it with editorial ‘foot-notes’, there had been no intent to deceive; for one thing, while I’d done my best to write, first-person, in Victorian style, I’d never imagined that it would fool anybody. Nor did Herbert Jenkins. And fifty British critics had recognised it as a conceit. (The only one who was half-doubtful was my old chief sub on the Herald; called on to review it for another paper, he demanded of the Herald’s literary editor: ‘This book o’ Geordie’s isnae true, is it?’ and on being assured that it wasn’t, exclaimed: ‘The conniving bastard!’, which I still regard as a high compliment.)

With the exception of one left-wing journal which hailed it as a scathing attack on British imperialism, the press and public took Flashman, quite rightly, at face value, as an adventure story dressed up as the memoirs of an unrepentant old cad who, despite his cowardice, depravity and deceit, had managed to emerge from fearful ordeals and perils an acclaimed hero, his only redeeming qualities being his humour and shameless honesty as a memorialist. I was gratified, if slightly puzzled to learn that the great American publisher, Alfred Knopf, had said of the book: ‘I haven’t heard this voice in fifty years’, and that the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police was recommending it to his subordinates. My interest increased as I wrote more Flashman books, and noted the reactions.

I was, several critics agreed, a satirist. Taking revenge on the nineteenth century on behalf of the twentieth, said one. Waging war on Victorian hypocrisy, said another. Plainly under the influence of Conrad, said yet another. A full-page review in a German paper took me flat aback when my eye fell on the word ‘Proust’ in the middle of it. I don’t read German, so for all I know the review may have been maintaining that Proust was a better stand-off half than I was, or used more semi-colons. But there it was, and it makes you think. And a few years ago a highly respected religious journal said that the Flashman Papers deserved recognition as the work of a sensitive moralist, and spoke of service not only to literature and history, but to the study of ethics.

My instant reaction to this was to paraphrase Poins: ‘God send me no worse fortune, but I never said so!’ while feeling delighted that someone else had said it, and then reflecting solemnly that this was a far cry from long nights with cold tea and cigarettes, scheming to get Flashman into the passionate embrace of the Empress of China, or out of the toils of a demented dwarf on the edge of a snake-pit. But now, beyond remarking that the anti-imperial left-winger was sadly off the mark, that the Victorians were mere amateurs in hypocrisy compared to our own brainwashed, sanctimonious, self-censoring and terrified generation, and that I hadn’t read a word of Conrad by 1966 (and my interest in him since has been confined to Under Western Eyes, in the hope that I might persuade Dick Lester to film it as only he could), I have no comments to offer on opinions of my work. I know what I’m doing – at least, I think I do – and the aim is to entertain (myself, for a start) while being true to history, to let Flashman comment on human and inhuman nature, and devil take the romantics and the politically correct revisionists both. But my job is writing, not explaining what I’ve written, and I’m well content and grateful to have others find in Flashy whatever they will (I’ve even had letters psychoanalysing the brute), and return to the question with which I began this article.

A life-long love affair with British imperial adventure, fed on tupenny bloods, the Wolf of Kabul and Lionheart Logan (where are they now?), the Barrack-Room Ballads, films like Lives of a Bengal Lancer and The Four Feathers, and the stout-hearted stories for boys which my father won as school prizes in the 1890s; the discovery, through Scott and Sabatini and Macaulay, that history is one tremendous adventure story; soldiering in Burma, and seeing the twilight of the Raj in all its splendour; a newspaper-trained lust for finding the truth behind the received opinion; being a Highlander from a family that would rather spin yarns than eat … I suppose Flashman was born out of all these things, and from reading Tom Brown’s Schooldays as a child – and having a wayward cast of mind.

Thanks to that contrary streak (I always half-hoped that Rathbone would kill Flynn, confounding convention and turning the story upside down – Basil gets Olivia, Claude Rains triumphs, wow!), I recognised Flashman on sight as the star of Hughes’ book. Fag-roasting rotter and poltroon he might be, he was nevertheless plainly box-office, for he had the looks, swagger and style (‘big and strong’, ‘a bluff, offhand manner’, and ‘considerable powers of being pleasant’, according to his creator) which never fail to cast a glamour on villainy. I suspect Hughes knew it, too, and got rid of him before he could take over the book – which loses all its spirit and zest once Flashy has made his disgraced and drunken exit.

[He was, by the way, a real person; this I learned only recently. A letter exists from one of Hughes’ Rugby contemporaries which is definite on the point, but tactfully does not identify him. I have sometimes speculated about one boy who was at Rugby in Hughes’ day, and who later became a distinguished soldier and something of a ruffian, but since I haven’t a shred of evidence to back up the speculation, I keep it to myself.]

What became of him after Rugby seemed to me an obvious question, which probably first occurred to me when I was about nine, and then waited thirty years for an answer. The Army, inevitably, and since Hughes had given me a starting-point by expelling him in the late 1830s, when Lord Cardigan was in full haw-haw, and the Afghan War was impending … just so. I began with no idea of where the story might take me, but with Victorian history to point the way, and that has been my method ever since: choose an incident or campaign, dig into every contemporary source available, letters, diaries, histories, reports, eye-witness, trivia (and fictions, which like the early Punch are mines of detail), find the milestones for Flashy to follow, more or less, get impatient to be writing, and turn him loose with the research incomplete, digging for it as I go and changing course as history dictates or fancy suggests.

In short, letting history do the work, with an eye open for the unexpected nuggets and coincidences that emerge in the mining process – for example, that the Cabinet were plastered when they took their final resolve on the Crimea, that Pinkerton the detective had been a trade union agitator in the very place where Flashman was stationed in the first book, that Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King had a factual basis, or that Bismarck and Lola Montez were in London in the same week (of 1842, if memory serves, which it often doesn’t: whenever Flashman has been a subject on Mastermind I have invariably scored less than the contestants).

Visiting the scenes helps; I’d not have missed Little Big Horn, the Borneo jungle rivers, Bent’s Fort, or the scruffy, wonderful Gold Road to Samarkand, for anything. Seeking out is half the fun, which is one reason why I decline all offers of help with research (from America, mostly). But the main reason is that I’m a soloist, giving no hints beforehand, even to publishers, and permitting no editorial interference afterwards. It may be tripe, but it’s my tripe – and I do strongly urge authors to resist encroachments on their brain-children, and trust their own judgment rather than that of some zealous meddler with a diploma in creative punctuation who is just dying to get into the act.

One of the great rewards of writing about my old ruffian has been getting and answering letters, and marvelling at the kindness of readers who take the trouble to let me know they have enjoyed his adventures, or that he has cheered them up, or turned them to history. Sitting on the stairs at 4 a.m. talking to a group of students who have phoned from the American Midwest is as gratifying as learning from a university lecturer that he is using Flashman as a teaching aid. Even those who want to write the books for you, or complain that he’s a racist (of course he is; why should he be different from the rest of humanity?), or insist that he isn’t a coward at all, but just modest, and they’re in love with him, are compensated for by the stalwarts who’ve named pubs after him (in Monte Carlo, and somewhere in South Africa, I’m told), or have formed societies in his honour. They’re out there, believe me, the Gandamack Delopers of Oklahoma, and Rowbotham’s Mosstroopers, and the Royal Society of Upper Canada, with appropriate T-shirts.

I have discovered that when you create – or in my case, adopt and develop – a fictional character, and take him through a series of books, an odd thing happens. He assumes, in a strange way, a life of his own. I don’t mean that he takes you over; far from it, he tends to hive off on his own. At any rate, you find that you’re not just writing about him: you are becoming responsible for him. You’re not just his chronicler: you are also his manager, trainer, and public relations man. It’s your own fault – my own fault – for pretending that he’s real, for presenting his adventures as though they were his memoirs, putting him in historical situations, giving him foot-notes and appendices, and inviting the reader to accept him as a historical character. The result is that about half the letters I get treat him as though he were a person in his own right – of course, people who write to me know that he’s nothing of the sort – well, most of them realise it: I occasionally get indignant letters from people complaining that they can’t find him in the Army List or the D.N.B., but nearly all of them know he’s fiction, and when they pretend that he isn’t, they’re just playing the game. I started it, so I can’t complain.

When Hughes axed Flashman from Tom Brown’s Schooldays, brutally and suddenly (on page 170, if I remember rightly), it seemed a pretty callous act to abandon him with all his sins upon him, just at the stage of adolescence when a young fellow needs all the help and understanding he can get. So I adopted him, not from any charitable motives, but because I realised that there was good stuff in the lad, and that with proper care and guidance something could be made out of him.

And I have to say that with all his faults (what am I saying, because of his faults) young Flashy has justified the faith I showed in him. Over the years he and I have gone through several campaigns and assorted adventures, and I can say unhesitatingly that coward, scoundrel, toady, lecher and dissembler though he may be, he is a good man to go into the jungle with.

George MacDonald Fraser

Dedication

For

Icimanipi-Wihopawin

‘Travels-Beautiful-Woman’

from Bent’s and the Santa Fe Trail

to the Black Hills

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

How Did I Get the Idea of Flashman?

Dedication

Explanatory Note

Maps

Introduction

The Forty-Niner

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

The Seventy-Sixer

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Appendix I

Appendix II

Footnotes

Notes

About the Author

The FLASHMAN Papers: In chronological order

The FLASHMAN Papers: In order of publication

Also by George MacDonald Fraser

About the Publisher

EXPLANATORY NOTE

A singular feature of the Flashman Papers, the memoirs of the notorious bully of Tom Brown’s Schooldays, which were discovered in a Leicestershire saleroom in 1966, is that their author wrote them in self-contained instalments, describing his background and setting the scene anew each time. This has been of great assistance to me in editing the Papers entrusted to me by Mr Paget Morrison of Durban, Flashman’s closest legitimate relative; it has meant that as I opened each new packet of manuscript I could expect the contents to be a complete and self-explanatory book, needing only a brief preface and foot-notes. Six volumes have followed this pattern.

The seventh volume has proved to be an exception; it follows chronologically (to the very minute) on to the third packet,fn1 with only the briefest preamble by its aged author. I have therefore felt it necessary to append a résumé of the third packet at the end of this note, so that new readers will understand the events leading up to Flashman’s seventh adventure.

It was obvious from the early Papers that Flashman, in the intervals of his distinguished and scandalous service in the British Army, visited America more than once; this seventh volume is his Western odyssey. I believe it is unique. Others may have taken part in both the ’49 gold rush and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, but they have not left records of these events, nor did they have Flashman’s close, if reluctant, acquaintance with three of the most famous Indian chiefs, as well as with leading American soldiers, frontiersmen, and statesmen of the time, of whom he has left vivid and, it may be, revealing portraits.

As with his previous memoirs, I believe his truthfulness is not in question. As students of those volumes will be aware, his personal character was deplorable, his conduct abandoned, and his talent for mischief apparently inexhaustible; indeed, his one redeeming feature was his unblushing veracity as a memorialist. As I hope the footnotes and appendices will show, I have been at pains to check his statements wherever possible, and I am indebted to librarians, custodians, and many members of the great and kindly American public at Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Minneapolis, Fort Laramie, the Custer battlefield, the Yellowstone and Arkansas rivers, and Bent’s Fort.

G.M.F.

INTRODUCTION

In May, 1848, Flashman was forced to flee England after a card scandal, and sailed for Africa on the Balliol College, a ship owned by his father-in-law, John Morrison of Paisley, and commanded by Captain John Charity Spring, MA, late Fellow of Oriel College. Only too late did Flashman discover that the ship was an illegal slave-trader and her captain, despite his academic antecedents, a homicidal eccentric. After taking aboard a cargo of slaves in Dahomey, the Balliol College crossed the Atlantic, but was captured by the American Navy; Flashman managed to escape in New Orleans, and took temporary refuge in a bawdy-house whose proprietress, a susceptible English matron named Susan Willinck, was captivated by his picaresque charm.

Thereafter Flashman spent several eventful months in the Mississippi valley, frequently in headlong flight. For a time he impersonated (among many other figures) a Royal Navy officer; he was also a reluctant agent of the Underground Railroad which smuggled escaped slaves to Canada, but unfortunately the fugitive entrusted to his care was recognised by a vindictive planter named Omohundro, and Flashman abandoned his charge and beat a hasty retreat over the rail of a steamboat. He next obtained employment as a plantation slave-driver, but lost his position on being found in compromising circumstances with his master’s wife. He subsequently stole a beautiful octoroon slave, Cassy, sold her under a false name, assisted her subsequent evasion, and with the proceeds of the sale fled with her across the ice-floes of the Ohio River, pursued by slave-catchers who shot him in the buttock; however, he succeeded in effecting his escape, and Cassy’s, with the timely assistance of the then Congressman Abraham Lincoln.

With charges of slave-trading, slave-stealing, false pretences, and even murder hanging over his head, Flashman was now anxious to return to England. Instead, mischance brought him again to New Orleans, and he was driven in desperation to seek the help of his former commander, Captain Spring, who had been cleared of slave-trading by a corrupt American court and was about to sail. Flashman, who throughout his misfortunes had clung tenaciously to certain documents from the Balliol College – documents proving the ship’s slaving activities with which Flashman had hoped to blackmail his detested father-in-law – now offered them as the price of his passage home; Captain Spring, his habitual malevolence tempered by his eagerness to secure papers so dangerous to himself, agreed.

At this point, with our exhausted narrator quaking between the Scylla of United States justice and Charybdis in the person of the diabolic Spring, the third packet of the Flashman Papers ended – and the next chapter of his American adventure begins.

THE FORTY-NINER

I never did learn to speak Apache properly. Mind you, it ain’t easy, mainly because the red brutes seldom stand still long enough – and if you’ve any sense, you don’t either, or you’re liable to find yourself studying their system of vowel pronunciation (which is unique, by the way) while hanging head-down over a slow fire or riding for dear life across the Jornada del Muerto with them howling at your heels and trying to stick lances in your liver. Both of which predicaments I’ve experienced in my time, and you may keep ’em.

Still, it’s odd that I never got my tongue round it, for apart from fleeing and fornication, slinging the batfn1 is my strongest suit; well, I speak nine languages better than the natives, and can rub along in another dozen or so. And I knew the ’Paches well enough. God help me; I was even married to one for a spell, banns, beads, buffalo-dance and all, and a spanking little wild beast she was, too, with her peach-brown satin skin and hot black eyes, and those white doeskin leggings up to her thighs with the tiny silver bells all down the sides … I can close my eyes and hear them tinkling yet, sixty years after, and feel the pine-needles under my knees, and smell the woodsmoke mingling with the musky perfume of her hair and the scent of the wild flowers outside her bower … the soft lips teasing my ear, murmuring ‘Make my bells ring again, pinda-lickoyeefn2 …’ Aye, me, it’s a long time ago. But that’s the way to learn a language, if you like, in between the sighs and squeals, and if it didn’t happen in this case the reason is that my buxom savage was not only a great chief’s daughter but Mexican hidalga on her mother’s side, and inclined to put on airs something peculiar, such as speaking only Spanish in preference to the tribal dialect of the common herd. They can be just as pert and hoity-toity in a Mimbreno wickiup as they can in a Belgravia drawing-room, believe me. Fortunately, there’s a cure. But that’s beside the point for the moment. Even if my Apache never progressed far beyond ‘Nuetsche-shee, eetzan’, which may be loosely translated as ‘Come here, girl’, and is all you need to know (apart from a few fawning protestations of friendship and whines for mercy, and much good they’ll do you), I still recognise the diabolical lingo when I hear it. That guttural, hissing mumble, with all its ‘Tz’ and ‘zl’ and ‘rr’ noises, like a drunk Scotch-Jew having trouble with his false teeth, is something you don’t forget in a hurry. So when I heard it in the Travellers’ a few weeks ago, and had mastered an instinctive impulse to dive for the door bawling ‘’Pash! Ride for it, you fellows, and save your hair!’, I took stock, and saw that it was coming in a great spate from a pasty-looking specimen with a lordly academic voice and some three-ha’penny order on his shirt front, who was enthralling a group of toadies in a corner of the smoking-room. I demanded to know what the devil he meant by it, and he turned out to be some distinguished anthropologist or other who had been lecturing to the Royal Geographic on North American Indians.

‘And what d’you know about them, apart from that beastly chatter?’ says I, pretty warm, for he had given me quite a start, and I could see at a glance that he was one of these snoopopathic meddlers who strut about with a fly-whisk and notebook, prodding lies out of the niggers and over-tipping the dragoman on college funds. He looked taken aback, until they told him who I was, and that I had a fair acquaintance with North American Indians myself, to say nothing of other various aborigines; at that he gave me a distant flabby hand, and condescended to ask me an uneasy question or two about my American travels. I told him I’d been out with Terry and Custer in ’76 – and that was as far as I got before he said: ‘Oh, indeed?’ down his nose, damned chilly, showed me his shoulder, and began the most infernal prose you ever heard to the rest of the company, all about the Yankees’ barbarous treatment of the Plains tribes after the Uprising, and their iniquitous Indian policy in general, the abominations of the reservation system, and the cruelties practised in the name of civilisation on helpless nomads who desired only to be left alone to pursue their traditional way of life as peaceful herdsmen, fostering their simple culture, honouring their ancient gods, and generally prancing about like fauns in Arcady. Mercifully, I hadn’t had dinner.

‘Noble savages, eh?’ says I, when he’d paused for breath, and he gave me a look full of sentimental spite.

‘I might call them that,’ snaps he. ‘Do I take it that you would disagree?’

‘Depends which ones you’re talking about,’ says I. ‘Now, Spotted Tail was a gentleman. Chico Velasquez, on the other hand, was an evil vicious brute. But you probably never met either of ’em. Care for a brandy, then?’

He went pink. ‘I thank you, no. By gentleman, I suppose,’ he went on, bristling, ‘you mean one who has despaired to the point of submission, while brute would no doubt describe any sturdy independent patriot who resisted the injustice of an alien rule, or revolted against broken treaties—’

‘If sturdy independence consists of cutting off women’s fingers and fringing your buckskins with them, then Chico was a patriot, no error,’ says I. ‘Mind you, that was the soft end of his behaviour. Hey, waiter, another one, and keep your thumb out of it, d’ye hear?’

My new acquaintance was going still pinker, and taking in breath; he wasn’t used to the argumentum ad Chico Velasquez, and it was plainly getting his goat, as I intended it should.

‘Barbarism is to be expected from a barbarian – especially when he has been provoked beyond endurance!’ He snorted and sneered. ‘Really, sir – will you seriously compare errant brutality committed by this … this Velasquez, as you call him – who by his name I take it sprang from that unhappy Pueblo stock who had been brutalised by centuries of Spanish atrocity – will you compare it, I say, with a calculated policy of suppression – nay, extermination – devised by a modern, Christian government? You talk of an Indian’s savagery? Yet you boast acquaintance with General Custer, and doubtless you have heard of Chivington? Sand Creek, sir! Wounded Knee! Washita! Ah, you see,’ cries he in triumph, ‘I can quote your own lexicon to you! In face of that, will you dare condone Washington’s treatment of the American Indian?’

‘I don’t condone it,’ says I, holding my temper. ‘And I don’t condemn it, either. It happened, just as the tide comes in, and since I saw it happen, I know better than to jump to the damnfool sentimental conclusions that are fashionable in college cloisters, let me tell you—’

There were cries of protest, and my anthropologist began to gobble. ‘Fashionable indeed! Have you read Mrs Jackson,¹ sir? Are you ignorant of the miserable condition to which a proud and worthy people have been reduced? Since you served in the Sioux campaign, you cannot be unaware of the callous and vindictive zeal with which it and subsequent expeditions were conducted! Against a resistless foe! Can you defend the extirpation of the Modocs, or the Apaches, or a dozen others I could mention? For shame, sir!’ He was getting the bit between his teeth now, and I was warming just a trifle myself. ‘And all this at a time when the resources of a vast modern state might have been employed in a policy of humanity, restraint, and enlightenment! But no – all the dark old prejudices and hatreds must be given full and fearful rein, and the despised “hostile” annihilated or reduced to virtual serfdom.’ He gestured contemptuously. ‘And all you can say is that “it happened”. Tush, sir! So might Pilate have said: “It happened”.’ He was pleased with that, so he enlarged on it. ‘The Procurator of Judea would have made a fit aide-de-camp to your General Terry, I daresay. I wish you a very good night, General Flashman.’

Which would have enabled him to stalk off with the honours, but I don’t abandon an argument when reasoned persuasion may prevail.

‘Now see here, you mealy little pimp!’ says I. ‘I’ve had just about a bellyful of your pious hypocritical maundering. Take a look at this!’ And while he gobbled again, and his sycophants uttered shocked cries, I dropped my head and pulled apart my top hair for his inspection. ‘See that bald patch? That, my industrious researcher, was done by a Brulé scalping knife, in the hand of a peaceful herdsman, to a man who’d done his damnedest to see that the Brulés and everyone else in the Dacotah nation got a fair shake.’ Which was a gross exaggeration, but never mind that. ‘So much for humanity and restraint …’

‘Good God!’ cries he, blenching. ‘Very well, sir – you may flaunt a wound. It does not prove your case. Rather, it explains your partiality—’

‘It proves that at least I know what I’m talking about! Which is more than you can say. As to Custer, he’s receipted and filed for the idiot he was, and for Chivington, he was a murderous maniac, and what’s worse, an amateur. But if you think they were a whit more guilty than your darling redskins, you’re an even bigger bloody fool than you look. What bleating breast-beaters like you can’t comprehend,’ I went on at the top of my voice, while the toadies pawed at me and yapped for the porters, ‘is that when selfish frightened men – in other words, any men, red or white, civilised or savage – come face to face in the middle of a wilderness that both of ’em want, the Lord alone knows why, then war breaks out, and the weaker goes under. Policies don’t matter a spent piss – it’s the men in fear and rage and uncertainty watching the woods and skyline, d’you see, you purblind bookworm, you! And you burble about enlightenment, by God—’

‘Catch hold of his other arm, Fred!’ says the porter, heaving away. ‘Come along now, general, if you please.’

‘—try to enlighten a Cumanche war-party, why don’t you? Suggest humanity and restraint to the Jicarillas who carved up Mrs White and her baby on Rock Creek! Have you ever seen a Del Norte rancho after the Mimbrenos have left their calling cards? No, not you, you plush-bottomed bastard, you! All right, steward, I’m going, damn you … but let me tell you,’ I concluded, and I daresay I may have shaken my finger at the academic squirt, who had got behind a chair and was looking ready to bolt, ‘that I’ve a damned sight more use for the Indian than you have – as much as I have for the rest of humanity, at all events – and I don’t make ’em an excuse for parading my own virtue while not caring a fig for them, as you do, so there! I know your sort! Broken treaties, you vain blot – why, Chico Velasquez wouldn’t have recognised a treaty if he’d fallen over it in the dark …’ But by that time I was out in Pall Mall, addressing the vault of heaven.

‘Who the hell ever said the Washington government was Christian, anyway?’ I demanded, but the porter said he really couldn’t say, and did I want a cab?

You may wonder that I got in such a taking over one pompous windbag spouting claptrap; usually I just sit and sneer when the know-alls start prating on behalf of the poor oppressed heathen, sticking a barb in ’em as opportunity serves – why, I’ve absolutely heard ’em lauding the sepoy mutineers as honest patriots, and I haven’t even bothered to break wind by way of dissent. I know the heathen, and their oppressors, pretty well, you see, and the folly of sitting smug in judgement years after, stuffed with piety and ignorance and book-learned bias. Humanity is beastly and stupid, aye, and helpless, and there’s an end to it. And that’s as true for Crazy Horse as it was for Custer – and they’re both long gone, thank God. But I draw the line at the likes of my anthropological half-truther; oh, there’s a deal in what he says, right enough – but it’s only one side of the tale, and when I hear it puffed out with all that righteous certainty, as though every white man was a villain and every redskin a saint, and the fools swallow it and feel suitably guilty … well, it can get my goat, especially if I’ve got a drink in me and my kidneys are creaking. So I’m slung out of the Travellers’ for ungentlemanly conduct. Much I care; I wasn’t a member, anyway.

A waste of good passion, of course. The thing is, I suppose, that while I spent most of my time in the West skulking and running and praying to God I’d come out with a whole skin, I have a strange sentiment for the place, even now. That may surprise you, if you know my history – old Flashy, the decorated hero and cowardly venal scoundrel who never had a decent feeling in all his scandalous, lecherous life. Aye, but there’s a reason, as you shall see.

Besides, when you’ve seen the West almost from the beginning, as I did – trader, wagon-captain, bounty-hunter, irregular soldier, whoremaster, gambler, scout, Indian fighter (well, being armed in the presence of the enemy qualifies you, even if you don’t tarry long), and reluctant deputy marshal to J. B. Hickok, Esq., no less – you’re bound to retain an interest, even in your eighty-ninth year.² And it takes just a little thing – a drift of woodsmoke, a certain sunset, the taste of maple syrup on a pancake, or a few words of Apache spoken unexpected – and I can see the wagons creaking down to the Arkansas crossing, and the piano stuck fast on a mudbank, with everyone laughing while Susie played ‘Banjo on my knee’ … Old Glory fluttering above the gate at Bent’s … the hideous zeep of Navajo war-arrows through canvas … the great bison herds in the distance spreading like oil on the yellow plain … the crash and stamp of fandango with the poblanas’ heels clicking and their silk skirts whirling above their knees … the bearded faces of Gallantin’s riders in the fire glow … the air like nectar when we rode in the spring from the high glory of Eagle Nest, up under the towering white peaks to Fort St Vrain and Laramie … the incredible stink of those dark dripping forms in the Apache sweatbath at Santa Rita … the great scarred Cheyenne braves with their slanting feathers, riding stately, like kings to council … the round firm flesh beneath my hands in the Gila forest, the sweet sullen lips whispering … ‘Make my bells ring again …’ oh, yes indeed, ma’am … and the nightmare – the screams and shots and war-whoops as Gall’s Hunkpapa horde came surging through the dust, and George Custer squatting on his heels, his cropped head in his hands as he coughed out his life, and the red-and-yellow devil’s face screaming at me from beneath the buffalo-scalp helmet as the hatchet drove down at my brow …

‘Well, boys, they killed me,’ as Wild Bill used to say – only it wasn’t permanent, and today I sit at home in Berkeley Square staring out at the trees beyond the railings in the rain, damning the cramp in my penhand and remembering where it all began, on a street in New Orleans in 1849, with your humble obedient trotting anxiously at the heels of John Charity Spring, MA, Oriel man, slaver, and homicidal lunatic, who was stamping his way down to the quay in a fury, jacket buttoned tight and hat jammed down, alternately blaspheming and quoting Horace …

‘I should have dropped you overboard off Finisterre!’ snarls he. ‘It would have been the price of you, by God! Aye, well, I missed my chance – quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus.’fn3 He wheeled on me suddenly, and those dreadful pale eyes would have frozen brandy. ‘But Homer won’t nod again, Mister Flashman, and you can lay to that. One false step out of you this trip, and you’ll wish the Amazons had got you!’

‘Captain,’ says I earnestly, ‘I’m as anxious to get out of this as you are – and you’ve said it yourself, how can I play you false?’

‘If I knew that I’d be as dirty a little Judas as you are.’ He considered me balefully. ‘The more I think of it, the more I like the notion of having those papers of Comber’s before we go a step farther.’

Now, those papers – which implicated both Spring himself and my miserly Scotch father-in-law up to their necks in the illegal slave trade – were the only card in my hand. Once Spring had them, he could drop me overboard indeed. Terrified as I was, I shook my head, and he showed his teeth in a sneering grin.

‘What are you scared of, you worm? I’ve said I’ll carry you home, and I keep my word. By God,’ he growled, and the scar on his brow started to swell crimson, a sure sign that he was preparing to howl at the moon, ‘will you dare say I don’t, you quaking offal? Will you? No, you’d better not! Why, you fool – I’ll have ’em within five minutes of your setting foot on my deck, in any event. Because you’re carrying them, aren’t you? You wouldn’t dare leave ’em out of your sight. I know you.’ He grinned again, nastily. ‘Omnia mea mecum portofn4 is your style. Where are they – in your coat-lining or under your boot-sole?’

It was no consolation that they were in neither, but sewn in the waistband of my pants. He had me, and if I didn’t want to be abandoned there and then to the mercy of the Yankee law – which was after me for murder, slave-stealing, impersonating a Naval officer, false pretences, theft of a wagon and horses, perjury, and issuing false bills of sale (Christ, just about everything except bigamy) – I had no choice but to fork out and hope to heaven he’d keep faith with me. He saw it in my face and sneered.

‘As I thought. You’re as easy to read as an open book – and a vile publication, too. We’ll have them now, if you please.’ He jerked his thumb at a tavern across the street. ‘Come on!’

‘Captain – for God’s sake let it wait till we’re aboard! The Yankee Navy traps’ll be scouring the town for me by now … please, Captain, I swear you’ll have ’em—’

‘Do as you’re damned well told!’ he rasped, and seizing my arm in an iron hand he almost ran me into the pub, and thrust me into a corner seat farthest from the bar; it was middling dim, with only one or two swells lounging at the tables, and a few of the merchant and trader sort talking at the bar, but just the kind of respectable ken that my legal and Navy acquaintances might frequent. I pointed this out, whining.

‘Five minutes more or less won’t hurt you,’ says Spring, ‘and they’ll satisfy me whether or not you’re breaking the habit of a lifetime by telling the truth for once.’ So while he bawled for juleps and kicked the black waiter for being dilatory – I wished to God he wouldn’t attract attention with his high table manners – I kept my back to the room and began surreptitiously picking stitches out of my flies with a penknife.

He drummed impatiently, growling, while I got the packet out – that precious sheaf of flimsy, closely written papers that Comber had died for – and he pawed through it, grinding his teeth as he read. ‘That ingrate sanctimonious reptile! He should have lingered for a year! I was like a father to the bastard, and see how he repaid my benevolence, by God – skulking and spying like a rat at a scuttle! But you’re all alike, you shabby-genteel vermin! Aye, Master Comber, Phaedrus limned your epitaph: saepe intereunt aliis meditantes necem,fn5 and serve the bastard right!’ He stuffed the papers into his pocket, drank, and brooded at me with that crazy glint in his eyes that I remembered so well from the Balliol College. ‘And you – you held on to them – why? To steer me into Execution Dock, you—’

‘Never!’ I protested. ‘Why, if I’d wanted to I could have done it back in the court – but I didn’t, did I?’

‘And put your own foul neck in a noose? Not you.’ He gave his barking laugh. ‘No … I’ll make a shrewd guess that you were keeping ’em to squeeze an income out of that Scotch miser Morrison – that was it, wasn’t it?’ Mad he might be, but his wits were sharp enough. ‘Filial piety, you leper! Well, if that was your game, you’re out of luck. He’s dead – and certainly damned. I had word from our New York agent three weeks ago. That takes you flat aback, doesn’t it, my bucko?’

And it did, but only for a moment. For if I couldn’t turn the screw on a corpse – well, I didn’t need to, did I? The little villain’s fortune would descend to his daughters, of whom my lovely simpleton wife Elspeth was the favourite – by George, I was rich! He’d been worth a cool two million, they reckoned, and at least a quarter would come to her, and me … unless the wily old skinflint had cooked up some legal flummery to keep my paws off it, as he’d done these ten years past. But he couldn’t – Elspeth must inherit, and I could twist her round my little finger … couldn’t I? She’d always doted on me, although I had a suspicion that she sampled the marriage mutton elsewhere when my back was turned – I couldn’t be sure, though, and anyway, an occasional unwifely romp was no great matter, while she’d been dependent on Papa. But now, when she was rolling in blunt, she might be off whoring with all hands and the cook, and too much of that might well damp her ardour for an absent husband. Who could say how she would greet the returning Odysseus, now that she was filthy rich and spoiled for choice? That apart, if I knew my fair feather-brain, she’d be spending the dibs – my dibs – like a drunk duke on his birthday. The sooner I was home the better – but Morrison kicking the bucket was capital news, just the same.

Spring was watching me as he watched the weather, shrewd and sour, and knowing what a stickler he could be for proper form, murderous pirate though he was, I tried to put on a solemn front, and muttered about this unexpected blow, shocking calamity, irreplaceable loss, and all the rest of it.

‘I can see that,’ he scoffed. ‘Stricken with grief, I daresay. I know the signs – a face like a Tyneside winter and a damned inheriting gleam in your eye. Bah, why don’t you blubber, you hypocritical pup? Nulli jactantius moerent, quam qui loetantur,fn6 or to give Tacitus a free translation, you’re reckoning up the bloody dollars already! Well, you haven’t got ’em yet, cully, and if you want to see London Bridge again—’ and he bared his teeth at me ‘—you’ll tread mighty delicate, like Agag, and keep on the weather side of John Charity Spring.’

‘What d’you mean? I’ve given you the papers – you’re bound to see me safe –’

‘Oh, I’ll do that, never fear.’ There was a cunning shift in those awful empty eyes. ‘Me duce tutus eris,fn7 and d’ye know why? Because when you reach England, and you and the rest of Morrison’s carrion brood have got your claws on his fortune, you’ll discover that you need an experienced director for his extensive maritime concerns – lawful and otherwise.’ He grinned at me triumphantly. ‘You’ll pay through the nose for him, too, but you’ll be getting a safe, scholarly man of affairs, who’ll not only manage a fleet, but can be trusted to see that no indiscreet inquiries are ever directed at your recent American activities, or the fact that your signature as supercargo is to be found on the articles of a slave trader—’

‘Christ, look who’s talking!’ I exclaimed. ‘I was shanghaied, kidnapped – and what about you—’

‘Damn your eyes, will you take that tone with me?’ he roared, and a few heads at the nearest table turned, so he dropped his voice to its normal snarl. ‘English law holds no terrors for me; I’ll be in Brest or Calais, taking my money in francs and guilders. Thanks to those misbegotten scum of ushers at Oxford, who cast me into the gutter out of spite, who robbed me of dignity and the fruits of scholarship …’ His scar was crimsoning again, as it always did when Oxford was mentioned; Oriel had kicked him out, you see, no doubt for purloining the College plate or strangling the Dean, but he always claimed it was academic jealousy. He writhed and growled and settled down. ‘England holds nothing for me now. But your whole future lies there – and there’ll be damned little future if the truth about this past year comes out. The Army? Disgrace. Your newfound fortune? Ruin. You might even swing,’ says he, smacking his lips. ‘And your lady wife would certainly find the social entrée more difficult to come by. On which score,’ he added malevolently, ‘I wonder how she would take the news that her husband is a whoremongering rake who covered everything that moved aboard the Balliol College. By and large, mutual discretion will be in both our interests, don’t you think?’

And the evil lunatic grinned at me sardonically and drained his glass. ‘We’ll have leisure to discuss business on the voyage home – and to resume your classical education, whose interruption by those meddling Yankee Navy bastards I’m sure you deplore as much as I do. Hiatus valde deflendus,fn8 as I seem to remember telling you before. Now get that drink into you and we’ll be off.’

As I’ve said, he was really mad. If he thought he could blackmail me with his ridiculous threats – and him a discredited don turned pirate who’d be clapped into Bedlam as soon as he opened his mouth in civilised company – he was well out of court. But I knew better than to say so, just then; raving or not, he was my one hope of getting out of that beastly country. And if I had to endure his interminable proses about Horace and Ovid all across the Atlantic, so be it; I drank up meekly, pushed back my chair, turned to the room – and walked slap into a nightmare.

It was the most ordinary, trivial thing, and it changed the course of my life, as such things do. Perhaps it killed Custer; I don’t know. As I took my first step from the table a tall man standing at the bar roared with laughter, and stepped back, just catching me with his shoulder. Another instant and I’d have been past him, unseen – but he jostled me, and turned to apologise.

‘Your pardon, suh,’ says he, and then his eyes met mine, and stared, and for full three seconds we stood frozen in mutual recognition. For I knew that face: the coarse whiskers, the scarred cheek, the prominent nose and chin, and the close-set eyes. I knew it before I remembered his name: Peter Omohundro.

You all know these embarrassing little encounters, of course – the man you’ve borrowed money off, or the chap whose wife has flirted with you, or the people whose invitation you’ve forgotten, or the vulgarian who accosts you in public. Omohundro wasn’t quite like these, exactly – the last time we’d met I’d been stealing one of his slaves, and shots had been flying, and he’d been roaring after me with murder in his eye, while I’d been striking out for the Mississippi shore. But the principle was the same, and so, I flatter myself, was my immediate behaviour.

I closed my mouth, murmured an apology, nodded offhand, and made to pass on. I’ve known it work, but not with this indelicate bastard. He let out an appalling oath and seized my collar with both hands.

‘Prescott!’ he bawled. ‘By God – Prescott!’

‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ says I, damned stiff. ‘I haven’t the honour of your acquaintance.’

‘Haven’t you, though, you nigger-stealin’ son-of-a-bitch! I sure as hell got the honour o’ yores! Jim – git a constable – quick, dammit! Why, you thievin’ varmint!’ And while they gaped in astonishment, he thrust me by main strength against the wall, pinning me there and roaring to his friends.

‘It’s Prescott – Underground Railroader that stole away George Randolph on the Sultana last year! Hold still, goddam you! It’s him, I say! Here, Will, ketch hold t’other arm – now, you dog, you, hold still there!’

‘You’re wrong!’ I cried. ‘I’m someone else – you’ve got the wrong man, I say! My name’s not Prescott! Get your confounded hands off me!’

‘He’s English!’ bawled Omohundro. ‘You all hear that? The bastard’s English, an’ so was Prescott! Well, you dam’ slave-stealer, I got you fast, and you’re goin’ to jail till I can get you ’dentified, and then by golly they gonna hang you!’

As luck had it, there weren’t above a dozen men in the place, and while those who’d been with Omohundro crowded round, the others stared but kept their distance. They were a fairly genteel bunch, and Omohundro and I were both big strapping fellows, which can’t have encouraged them to interfere. The man addressed as Jim was hanging irresolute half way to the door, and Will, a burly buffer in a beard and stove-pipe hat, while he laid a hand on my arm, wasn’t too sure.

‘Hold on a shake, Pete,’ says he. ‘You certain this is the feller?’

‘Course I’m sartin, you dummy! Jim, will you git the goddam constable? He’s Prescott, I tell you, an’ he stole the nigger Randolph – got him clear to Canada, too!’

At this two of the others were convinced, and came to lend a hand, seizing my wrists while Omohundro took a breather and stepped back, glowering at me. ‘I’d know the sneakin’ blackguard anywhere – an’ his dadblasted fancy accent—’

‘It’s a lie!’ I protested. ‘A fearful mistake, gentlemen, I assure you … the fellow’s drunk … I never saw him in my life – or his beastly nigger! Let me loose, I say!’

‘Drunk, am I?’ shouts Omohundro, shaking his fist. ‘Why, you brass-bollocked impident hawg, you!’

‘Tarnation, shet up, can’t ye?’ cries Will, plainly bewildered. ‘Why, he sure don’t talk like a slave-stealer, an’ that’s a fact – but, see here, mister, jes’ you rest easy, we git this business looked to. And you hold off, Pete; Jim can git the constable while we study this thing. You, suh!’ This was to Spring, who hadn’t moved a muscle, and was standing four-square, his hands jammed in his pockets, watching like a lynx. ‘You was settin’ with this feller – can you vouch for him, suh?’

They all looked to Spring, who glanced at me bleakly and then away. ‘I never set eyes on him before,’ says he deliberately. ‘He came to my table uninvited and begged for drink.’ And on that he turned towards the door, the perfidious wretch, while I was stricken speechless, not only at the brute’s brazen treachery, but at his folly. For:

‘But you was talkin’ with him a good ten minutes,’ says Will, frowning. ‘Talkin’ an’ laughin’ – why, I seen you my own self.’

‘They come in together,’ says another voice. ‘Arm in arm, too,’ and at this Omohundro moved nimbly into Spring’s path.

‘Now, jes’ you hold on there, mister!’ cries he suspiciously. ‘You English, too, ain’t you? An’ you settin’ all cosy-like with this ’bolitionist skunk Prescott – ’cos I swear on a ton o’ Bibles, Will, that Prescott agin’ the wall there. I reckon we keep a grip o’ both o’ you, till the constable come.’

‘Stand out of my way,’ growls Spring, and although he didn’t raise his voice, it rasped like a file. Will gave back a step.

‘You min’ your mouth!’ says Omohundro, and braced himself. ‘Mebbe you clear, maybe you ain’t, but I warnin’ you – don’t stir another step. You gonna stay here – so now!’

I wouldn’t feel sorry for Omohundro at any time, least of all with two of his bullies pinioning me and blowing baccy juice in my face, but I confess to a momentary pang just then, as though he’d passed port to the right. For giving orders to J. C. Spring is simply one of the things that are never done; you’d be better teasing a mating gorilla. For a moment he stood motionless, while the scar on his brow turned purple, and that unholy mad spark came into his eyes. His hands came slowly from his pockets, clenched.

‘You infernal Yankee pipsqueak!’ says he. ‘Stand aside or, by heaven, it will be the worse for you!’

‘Yankee?’ roars Omohundro. ‘Why, you goddam—’ But before his fist was half-raised, Spring was on him. I’d seen it before, of course, when he’d almost battered a great hulking seaman to death aboard ship; I’d been in the way of his fist myself, and it had been like being hit with a hammer. You’d barely credit it; here was this sober-looking, middle-aged bargee, with the grey streaks in his trim beard and the solid spread to his middle, burly but by no means tall, as proper a citizen as ever spouted Catullus or graced a corporation – and suddenly it was Attila gone berserk. One short step he took, and sank his fists left and right in Omohundro’s midriff; the planter squawked like a burst football, and went flying over a table, but before he had even reached the ground, Spring had seized the dumbfounded Will by the collar and hurled him with sickening force against the wall.

‘And be damned to all of you!’ roars he, jerking down his hat-brim, which was unwise, for it gave the fellow Jim time to wallop him with a chair. Spring turned bellowing, but before Jim could reap the consequences of his folly, one of the coves holding me had let loose, and collared Spring from behind. If I’d been wise I’d have stayed still, but with only one captor I tried to struggle free, and he and I went down wrestling together; he wasn’t my weight, and after some noisy panting and clawing I got atop of him and pounded him till he hollered. Given time, I’d have enjoyed myself for a minute or two pulping his figurehead, but flight was top of the menu just then, so I rolled off him and came up looking frantically for the best way to bolt.

Hell’s delight was taking place a yard away; Omohundro was on his feet again, clutching his belly – which must have been made of cast-iron – and retching for breath; the fellow Will was on the floor but had a hold on Spring’s ankle, which I thought uncommon game of him, while my other captor had Spring round the neck. Even as I looked, Spring sent him flying and turned to stamp on Will’s face – those evenings in the Oriel combination room weren’t wasted, thinks I – and then a willowy cove among the onlookers took a hand, shrieking in French and trying to brain my gallant captain with an ebony cane.

Spring grabbed it and jerked – and the cane came away in his hand, leaving the Frog holding two feet of naked, glittering steel, which he flourished feebly, with Gallic squeals. Poor fool, there was a sudden flurry, the snap of a breaking bone, the Frog was screaming on the floor, and Spring had the sword-stick in his hand. I heard Omohundro’s shout as he flung himself at Spring, hauling a pistol from beneath his coat; Spring leaped to meet him, bawling ‘Habet!’ – and, by God, he had. Before my horrified gaze Omohundro was swaying on tiptoe, staring down at that awful steel that transfixed him; he flopped to his knees, the pistol clattering to the floor, and fell forward on his face with a dreadful groan.

There was a dead silence, broken only by the scraping of Omohundro’s nails at the boards – and presently by a wild scramble of feet as one of the principal parties withdrew from the scene. If there’s one thing I know, it’s when to leave; I was over the counter and through the door behind it like a shot, into a store-room with an open window, and then tearing pell-mell up an alley, blind to all but the need to escape.

How far I ran, I don’t know, doubling through alleys, over fences, across backyards, stopping only when I was utterly blown and there was no sound of pursuit behind. By the grace of God it was coming on to evening, and the light was fading fast; I staggered into an empty lane and panted my soul out, and then I took stock.

That was escape to England dished, anyway; Spring’s passage out was going to be at the end of a rope, and unless I shifted I’d be dancing alongside him. Once the traps had me the whole business of the slavers Cassy had killed would be laid at my door – hadn’t I seen the reward bill naming me murderer? – and the Randolph affair and Omohundro would be a mere side-dish. I had to fly – but where? There wasn’t a safe hole for me in the whole damned U.S.A.; I forced down my panic, and tried to think. I couldn’t run, I had to hide, but there was nowhere – wait, though, there might be. Susie Willinck had sheltered me before, when she’d thought I was an American Navy deserter – but would she do it now, when they were after me for the capital act? But I hadn’t killed Omohundro – she needn’t even know about him, or Spring. And she’s been besotted with me, the fond old strumpet, piping her eye when I left her – aye, a little touch of Harry in the night and she’d be ready to hide me till the next election.

But the fix was, I’d no notion of where in New Orleans I might be, or where Susie’s place lay, except that it was in the Vieux Carré. I daren’t strike off at random, with the Navy’s bulldogs – and the civil police, too, by now – on the lookout for me. So I set off cautiously, keeping to the alleys, until I came on an old nigger sitting on a doorstep, and he put me on the right road.

The Vieux Carré, you must know, is the old French heart of New Orleans, and one gigantic fleshpot – fine houses and walks, excellent eating-places and gardens, brilliantly lit by night, with music and gaiety and colour everywhere, and every second establishment a knocking-shop. Susie’s bawdy-house was among the finest in New Orleans, standing in its own tree-shaded grounds, which suited me, for I intended to sneak in through the shrubbery and seek out my protectress with the least possible ado. Keeping away from the main streets, I found my way to that very side-alley where months earlier the Underground Railroad boys had got the drop on me; it was empty now, and the side-gate was open, so I slipped in and went to ground in the bushes where I could watch the front of the house. It was then I realised that something was far amiss.

It was one of these massive French colonial mansions, all fancy ironwork and balustrades and slatted screens, just as I remembered it, but what was missing now was signs of life – real life, at any rate. The great front door and windows should have been wide to the warm night, with nigger music and laughter pouring out, and the chandeliers a-glitter, and the half-naked yellow tarts strutting in the big hall, or taking their ease on the verandah like tawny cats on the chaise-longues, their eyes glowing like fireflies out of the shadows. There should have been dancing and merriment and drunken dandies taking their pick of the languid beauties, with the upper storeys shaking to the exertions of happy fornicators. Instead – silence. The great door was fast, and while there were lights at several of the shuttered windows, it was plain that if this was still a brothel, it must be run by the Band of Hope.

A chill came over me that was not of the night air. All of a sudden the dark garden was eerie and full of dread. Faint music came from another house beyond the trees; a carriage clopped past the distant gates; overhead a nightbird moaned dolefully; I could hear my own knees creaking as I crouched there, scratching the newly healed bullet-wound in my backside and wondering what the deuce was wrong. Could Susie have gone away? Terror came over me like a cold drench, for I had no other hope.

‘Oh, Christ!’ I whispered half-aloud. ‘She must be here!’

‘Who must be?’ grated a voice at my ear, a hand like a vice clamped on my neck, and with a yap of utter horror I found myself staring into the livid, bearded face of John Charity Spring.

‘Shut your trap or I’ll shut it forever!’ he hissed. ‘Now then – what house is that, and why were you creeping to it? Quick – and keep your voice down!’

He needn’t have fretted; the shock of that awful moment had almost carried me off, and for a spell I couldn’t find my voice at all. He shook me, growling, while I absorbed the dreadful realisation that he must have been dogging me all the way – first in my headlong flight, then on the streets, unseen. It was horrifying, the thought of that maniac prowling and watching my every move, but not as horrifying as his presence now, those pale eyes glaring round as he scanned the house and garden. And knowing him, I answered to the point, in a hoarse croak.

‘It … it belongs to a friend … of mine. A … an Englishwoman. But I don’t know … if she’s there now.’

‘Then we’ll find out,’ says he. ‘Is she safe?’

‘I … I don’t know. She … she took me in once before …’

‘What is she – a whore?’

‘No … yes … she owns the place – or did.’

‘A bawd, eh?’ says he, and bared his teeth. ‘Trust you to make for a brothel. Plura faciunt homines e consuetudine, quam e ratione,fn1 you dirty little rip. Now then, see here. Thanks to you, I’m in a plight; can I lie up in that ken for a spell? And I’m asking your opinion, not your bloody permission.’

My answer was true enough. ‘I don’t know. Christ, you killed a man back there – she may … may not …’

‘Self-defence!’ snarls he. ‘But we agree, a New Orleans jury may take a less enlightened view. Now then – this strumpet … she’s English, you say. Good-natured? Tolerant? A woman of sense?’

‘Why … why, yes … she’s a decent sort …’ I sought for words to describe Susie. ‘She’s a Cockney … a common woman, but—’

‘She must be, if she took you in,’ says this charmer. ‘And we have no course but to try. Now then,’ and he tightened his grip until I thought my neck would break, ‘see here. If I go under, you go under with me, d’ye see? So this bitch had better harbour us, for if she doesn’t …’ He shook me, growling like a mastiff. ‘So you’d better persuade her. And mind what Seneca says: Qui timide rogat, docet negare.’

‘Eh?’

‘Jesus, did Arnold teach you nothing? Who asks in fear is asking for a refusal. Right – march!’

I remember thinking as I tapped on the front door, with him at my elbow, brushing his hat on his sleeve: how many poor devils have ever had a mad murderer teaching ’em Latin in the environs of a leaping-academy in the middle of the night – and why me, of all men? Then the door opened, and an ancient nigger porter stuck his head out, and I asked for the lady of the house.

‘Miz Willinck, suh? Ah sorry, suh. Miz Willinck goin’ ’way.’

‘She isn’t here?’

‘Oh no, suh – she here – but she goin’ ’way pooty soon. Our ’stablishment, suh, is closed, pummanent. But if you goin’ next doah, to Miz Rivers, she be ’commodatin’ you gennamen—’

Spring elbowed me aside. ‘Go and tell your mistress that two English gentlemen wish to see her at her earliest convenience,’ says he, damned formal. ‘And present our compliments and our apologies for intruding upon her at this untimely hour.’ As the darkie goggled and tottered away, Spring rounded on me. ‘You’re in my company,’ he snaps, ‘so mind your bloody manners.’

I was looking about me, astonished. The spacious hall was shrouded in dust-sheets, packages were stacked everywhere, bound and labelled as for a journey; it looked like a wholesale flitting. Then from the landing I heard a female voice, shrill and puzzled, and the nigger butler came shambling into view, followed by a stately figure that I knew well, clad in a fine embroidered silk dressing-gown.

As always, she was garnished like Pompadour, her hennaed hair piled high above that plump handsome face, jewels glistening in her ears and at her wrists and on that splendid bosom that I remembered so fondly; even in my anxious state, it did me good just to watch ’em bounce as she swayed down the stairs – as usual in the evening, she plainly had a pint or two of port inside her. She descended grand as a duchess, peering towards us in the hall’s dim light, and then she checked with a sudden scream of ‘Beauchamp!’ and came hurrying down the last few steps and across the hall, her face alight.

‘Beauchamp! You’ve come back! Well, I never! Wherever ’ave you been, you rascal! I declare – let’s ’ave a look at you!’

For a moment I was taken aback, until I recalled that she knew me as Beauchamp Millward Comber – God knew how many names I’d passed under in America: Arnold, Prescott, Fitz-something-or-other. But at least she was glad to see me, glowing like Soul’s Awakening and holding out her hands; I believe I’d have been enveloped if she hadn’t checked modestly at the sight of Spring, who was bowing stiffly from the waist with his hat across his guts.

‘Susie,’ says I, ‘this is my … my friend, Captain John Charity Spring.’

‘Ow, indeed,’ says she, and beamed at him, up and down, and blow me if he didn’t take her hand and bow over it. ‘Most honoured to make your acquaintance, marm,’ says he. ‘Your humble obedient.’

‘I never!’ says Susie, and gave him a roving look. ‘A distinguished pleasure, I’m sure. Oh, stuff, Beauchamp – d’you think I’m goin’ to do the polite with you, too? Come ’ere, an’ give us a kiss!’

Which I did, and a hearty slobber she made of it, while Spring looked on, wearing what for him passed as an indulgent smile. ‘An’ wherever ’ave you been, then? – I thought you was back in England months ago, an’ me wishin’ I was there an’ all! Now, come up, both of you, an’ tell me wot brings you back – my, I almost ’ad apoplexy, seeing you sudden like that …’ And then she stopped, uncertain, and the laughter went out of her fine green eyes, as she looked quickly from one to other of us. She might be soft where well-set-up men were concerned, but she was no fool, and had a nose for mischief that a peeler would have envied.

‘Wot’s the matter?’ she said sharply. Then: ‘It’s trouble – am I right?’

‘Susie,’ says I, ‘it’s as bad as can be.’

She said nothing for a moment, and when she did it was to tell the butler, Brutus, to bar the door and admit no one without her leave. Then she led the way up to her private room and asked me, quite composed, what was up.

It was only when I began to tell it that the enormity of what I was saying, and the risk I was running in saying it, came home to me. I confined it to the events of that day, saying nothing of my own adventures since I’d last seen her – all she had known of me then was that I was an Englishman running from the Yankee Navy, a yarn I’d spun on the spur of the moment. As I talked, she sat upright on her chair in the silk-hung salon, her jolly, handsome face serious for once, and Spring was mum beside me on the couch, holding his hat on his knees, prim as a banker, although I could feel the crouched force in him. I prayed Susie would play up, because God knew what the lunatic would do if she decided to shop us. I needn’t have worried; when I’d done, she sat for a moment, fingering the tassels on her gaudy bedgown, and then says:

‘No one knows you’re ’ere? Well, then, we can take our time, an’ not do anythin’ sudden or stupid.’ She took a long thoughtful look at Spring. ‘You’re Spring the slaver, aren’t you?’ Oh, Moses, I thought, that’s torn it, but he said he was, and she nodded.

‘I’ve bought some of your Havana fancies,’ says she. ‘Prime gels, good quality.’ Then she rang for her butler, and ordered up food and wine, and in the silence that followed Spring suddenly spoke up.

‘Madam,’ says he, ‘our fate is in your hands,’ which seemed damned obvious to me, but Susie just nodded again and sat back, toying with her long earring.

‘An’ you say it was self-defence? ’E barred your way, an’ there was a ruckus, an’ ’e drew a pistol on you?’ Spring said that was it exactly, and she pulled a face.

‘Much good that’d do you in court. I daresay ’is pals would tell a different tale … if they’re anythin’ like ’e was. Oh, I’ve ’ad ’im ’ere, this Omo’undro, but not above once, I can tell you. Nasty brute.’ She wrinkled her nose in distaste. ‘What they call a floggin’ cully – not that ’e was alone in that, but ’e was a real vile ’un, know wot I mean? Near killed one o’ my gels, an’ I showed him the door. So I shan’t weep for ’im. An’ if it was ’ow you say it was – an’ I’ll know that inside the hour, though I believe you – then you can stay ’ere till the row dies down, or—’ and she seemed to glance quickly at me, and I’ll swear she went a shade pinker ‘—we can think o’ somethin’ else. There’s only me an’ the gels and the servants, so all’s bowmon. We don’t ’ave no customers these days.’

At that moment Brutus brought in a tray, and Susie went to see rooms prepared for us. When we were alone Spring slapped his fist in triumph and made for the victuals.

‘Safe as the Bank. We could not have fallen better.’

Well, I thought so, too, but I couldn’t see why he was so sure and trusting, and said so; after all, he didn’t know her.

‘Do I not?’ scoffs he. ‘As to trust, she’ll be no better than any other tearsheet – we notice she don’t bilk at abetting manslaughter when it suits her whim. No, Flashman – I see our security in that full lip and gooseberry eye, which tell me she’s a sensualist, a voluptuary, a profligate wanton,’ growls he, tearing a chicken leg in his teeth, ‘a great licentious fleshtrap! That’s why I’ll sleep sound – and you won’t.’

‘How d’you mean?’

‘She can’t betray me without betraying you, blockhead!’ He grinned at me savagely. ‘And we know she won’t do that, don’t we? What – she never took her eyes off you! She’s infatuated, the poor bitch. I supposed you stallioned her out of her wits last time. Aye, well, you’d best fortify yourself, for soevit amor ferri,fn2 or I’m no judge; the lady is working up an appetite this minute, and for our safety’s sake you’d best satisfy it.’

Well, I knew that, but if I hadn’t, our hostess’s behaviour might have given me a hint, just. When she came back, having plainly repainted, she was flushed and breathless, which I guessed was the result of having laced herself into a fancy corset under the gown – that told me what was on her mind, all right; I knew her style. It was in her restless eye, too, and the cheerful way she chattered when she obviously couldn’t wait to be alone with me. Spring presently begged to be excused, and bowed solemnly over her hand again, thanking her for her kindness and loyalty to two distressed fellow-countrymen; when Brutus had led him off, Susie remarked that he was a real gent and a regular caution, but there was something hard and spooky about him that made her all a-tremble.

‘But then, I can say the exact same about you, lovey, can’t I?’ she chuckled, and plunged at me, with one hand in my curls and the other fondling elsewhere. ‘Ooh, my stars! Give it here! Ah, you ’aven’t changed, ’ave you – an’, oh, but I’ve missed you so, you great lovely villain!’ Shrinking little violet, you see; she munched away at my lips with that big red mouth, panting names in my ear that I blush to think of; it made me feel right at home, though, the artful way she got every stitch off me without apparently taking her tongue out of my throat once. I’ve known greater beauties, and a few that were just as partial to pork, but none more skilled at stoking what Arnold called the deadly fires of lust; when she knelt above me on the couch and licked her lips, with one silken knee caressing me to distraction while she slowly scooped those wondrous poonts out of her corset and smothered me with ’em – well, I didn’t mind a bit.

‘I’ll distress you, my fellow-countryman,’ says she, all huskylike. ‘I’m goin’ to tease you an’ squeeze you an’ eat you alive, an’ by the time I’ve done, if the coppers come for you, you’ll just ’ave to ’ide, ’cos you won’t be fit to run a step!’

I believed her, for I’d enjoyed her attentions for five solid days last time, and she’d damned near killed me. She was one of those greedy animals who can never have enough – rather like me, only worse – and she went to work now like Messalina drunk on hasheesh. About two hours it took, as near as I could judge, before she gave a last wailing sigh and rolled off on to the floor, where she lay moaning that never, never, never had she known the like, and never could again. That was her usual form; any moment and she would start to weep – sure enough, I heard a great sniff, and presently a blubber, and then the gurgle as she consoled herself with a large port.

As a rule I’d have sunk into a ruined sleep; for one thing, a bout with La Willinck would have unmanned Goliath. But after a while, pondering Spring’s advice, I began to wonder if it mightn’t be politic to give her another run – proof of boundless devotion, I mean to say; she’d be flattered sweet. It must have been my weeks of abstinence, or else I was flown with relief at the end of a deuced difficult day, but when I turned over and watched her repair her paint at the glass, all bare and bouncy in her fine clocked stockings – d’you know, it began to seem a not half bad notion for its own sake? And when she stretched, and began to powder her tits with a rabbit’s foot – I hopped out on the instant and grappled her, while she squealed in alarm, no, no, Beauchamp, she couldn’t, not again, honest, and you can’t mean it, you wicked beast, not yet, please, but I was adamant, if you know what I mean, and bulled her all over the shop until she pleaded with me to leave off – which by that time, of course, meant pray continue. I can’t think where I got the energy, for I’d never have thought to be still up in arms when Susie, of all women, was hollering uncle, but there it was – and I truly believe it was the cause of all that followed.

When we’d done, and she’d had a restorative draught of gin, with her head on the fender, heaving her breath back, she looked up at me with eyes that were moist once they’d stopped rolling, and whimpers:

‘Oh, Gawd – why did you ’ave to come back? Jus’ when I was gettin’ over you, too.’ And she started to snuffle again.

‘Sorry I did, are you?’ says I, tweaking her rump.

‘Bloomin’ well you know I’m not!’ she mumps. ‘More fool me. I knew I was gettin’ a sight too fond of you, last year … but … but it was on’y when you’d gone that I … that I …’ Here she began to bawl in earnest, and it took several great sighs of gin to set her right. ‘An’ then … when I saw you in the ’all tonight, I felt … such a joy … an’ I … Oh, it’s ridiklus, at my age, carryin’ on like a sixteen-year-old!’

‘I doubt if any sixteen-year-old knows how to carry on like that,’ says I, and she gulped and giggled and slapped me, and then came over all maudlin again.

‘Wot I mean is … like I once said … I know you’re jus’ like the rest of ’em, an’ all you want is a good bang, an’ I’m just an old … a middle-aged fool, to feel for you the way I do …’ cos I know full well you don’t love me … not the way I … I …’ She was blubbering like the Ouse in spate by now, tears forty per cent proof. ‘Oh … if I thought you liked rogerin’ me, even, more than … than others …’ She looked at me with her lip quivering and those big green eyes a-swim. ‘Say that you … you really like it … with me … more … don’t you? Honest, when I caught you lookin’ at me in the mirror … you looked as though you … well, cared for me.’

Tight as Dick’s hatband, of course, but it proved how right I’d been to give her an encore. If a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well, and if Susie wants to go with you a mile, gallop with her twain. I improved the shining hour by telling her I was mad for her, and had never known a ride to compare – which wasn’t all that much of a lie – and murmured particulars until she quite cheered up again, kissed me long and fondly, and said I was a dear bonny boy. I told her that I’d been itching for her all these months, but at that she gave me a quizzy look.

‘I bet you didn’t itch long,’ says she, sniffing. ‘Not with all them saucy black tails about. Gammon!’

‘One or two,’ says I, for I know how to play my hand. ‘For want of better. And don’t tell me,’ I added, with a sniff of my own, ‘that some lucky men haven’t been playing hopscotch with you.’

Do you know, she absolutely blushed, and cried no such thing, the very idea! But I could see she was pleased, so I gave her a slantendicular look, and said, not even one? at which she blushed even pinker, and wriggled, and said, well, it wasn’t her fault, was it, if some very valued and important clients insisted on the personal attention of Madame? Oh, says I, and who might they be?

‘Never you mind, sauce-box!’ giggles she, tossing her head, so I kept mum till she turned to look at me, and then I frowned and asked, quite hard:

‘Who, Susie?’

She blinked, and slowly all the playfulness went out of that plump, pretty face. ‘’Ere,’ says she, uncertain. ‘Why you lookin’ at me like that? You’re not … not cross, are you? I thought you was just funnin’ me …’

I said nothing, but gave an angry little shrug, looking quickly away, and she gasped in bewilderment and caught my arm.

‘’Ere! Beauchamp! You mean … you mind? But I … I … lovey, I never knew …’Ere, wot’s the matter—?’

‘No matter at all,’ says I, very cool, and set my jaw tight. ‘You’re right – it’s no concern of mine.’ But I bit my lip and looked stuffed and all Prince Albert, and when I made to get up she took fright in earnest, throwing her arms round my neck and crying that she’d never dreamed I would care, and then starting to blubber bucketsful, sobbing that she’d never thought to see me again, or she’d never have … but it was nothing, honest, ow, Gawd, please, Beauchamp – just one or two occasional, like this rich ole Creole planter who paid a hundred dollars to take a bath with her, but she’d have flung the ole goat’s money in his face if she’d known that I … and if I’d heard gossip about her and Count Vaudrian, it was bleedin’ lies, ’cos it wasn’t him, it was only his fourteen-year-old nephew that the Count had engaged her to give lessons to …

If I’d played her along I daresay I could have got enough bizarre material for a book, but I didn’t want to push my little charade of jealousy too far. I’d tickled the old trollop’s vanity, fed her infatuation for me, scared her horrid, and discovered what a stout leash I’d got her on – and had the capital fun of watching her grovel and squirm. It was time to be magnanimous and soulful, so I gave her bouncers a forgiving squeeze at last, and she near swooned with relief.

‘It was jus’ business, Beauchamp – not like with you – oh, never like with you! If I’d known you was comin’ back, an’ that you cared!’ That was the great thing, apparently; she was full of it. ‘’Cos, you really care, don’t you? Oh, say you do, darlin’ – an’ please, you’re not angry with me no more?’

That was my cue to change from stern sorrow to fond devotion, as though I couldn’t help myself. ‘Oh, Susie, my sweet,’ says I, giving her bum a fervent clutch, ‘as if I could ever be angry with you!’ This, and a glass of gin, fully restored her, and she basked in the sunshine of her lover’s favour and said I was the dearest, kindest big ram, honest I was.

Her talk of business, though, had reminded me of something that had slipped my mind during all our frenzied exertions; as we climbed into her four-poster presently, I asked why the place was closed up and under dust-sheets.

‘Course – I never told you! You ’aven’t given me much chance, ’ave you, you great bully?’ She snuggled up contentedly. ‘Well – I’m leavin’ Orleans next week, for good, an’ what d’you think of that? Fact is, trade’s gone down that bad, what with my partikler market bein’ overcrowded, and half the menfolk off to the gold diggin’s to try their luck – why, we’re lucky to get any young customers nowadays. So I thinks, Susie my gel, you’d better try California yourself, an’ do a little diggin’ of your own, an’ if you can’t make a bigger fortune than any prospector, you’re not the woman—’

‘Hold on, though – what’ll you do in California?’

‘Why, what I’ve always done – manage an establishment for the recreation of affluent gentlemen! Don’t you see – there must be a million hearty young chaps out there already, workin’ like blacks, the lucky ones with pockets full of gold dust, an’ never a sporty female to bless themselves with, ’cept for common drabs. Well, where there’s muck, there’s money – an’ you can bet that in a year or two Sacramento an’ San Francisco are goin’ to make Orleans look like the parish pump. It may be rough livin’ just now, but before long they’re goin’ to want all the luxuries of London an’ Paris out there – an’ they’ll be able to pay for ’em, too! Wines, fashions, theatres, the best restaurants, the smartest salons, the richest shops – an’ the crackiest whores. Mark my words, whoever gets there first, with the quality merchandise, can make a million, easy.’

It sounded reasonable, I said, but a bit wild to establish a place like hers, and she chuckled confidently.

‘I’m goin’ ready-made, don’t you fret. I’ve got a place marked down in Sacramento, through an agent, an’ I’m movin’ the whole kit caboodle up the river to Westport next Monday – furnishin’s, crockery, my cellar an’ silver … an’ the livestock, which is the main thing. I’ve got twenty o’ the primest yellow gels under this roof right now, all experienced an’ broke in – so don’t you start walkin’ in your sleep, will you, you scoundrel? ’Ere, let’s ’ave a look at you—’

‘But hold on – how are you going to get there?’ says I, cuddling obediently.

‘Why, up to Westport an’ across by carriage to – where is it? – Santa Fe, an’ then to San Diego. It only takes a few weeks, an’ there’s thousands goin’ every day, in carts an’ wagons an’ on horseback – even on foot. You can go round by sea, but it’s no quicker or cheaper in the end, an’ I don’t want my delicate young ladies gettin’ seasick, do I?’

‘Isn’t it dangerous? I mean, Indians and ruffians and so on?’

‘Not if you’ve got guards, an’ proper guides. That’s all arranged, don’t you see, an’ I ’aven’t stinted, neither. I’m a business woman, in case you ’adn’t noticed, an’ I know it pays to pay for the best. That’s why I’ll ’ave the finest slap-up bagnio on the west coast goin’ full steam before the year’s out – an’ I’ll still have a tidy parcel over in the bank. If you got money, you can’t ’elp makin’ more, provided you use common sense.’

From what I knew of her she had plenty of that – except where active young men were concerned – and she was a deuced competent manager. But if she had her future planned, I hadn’t; I remarked that it didn’t leave much time to arrange my safe passage – and Spring’s, for what that was worth – out of New Orleans.

‘Don’t you worry about that,’ says she, comfortably. ‘I’ve been thinkin’ about it, an’ when we see what kind of a hue an’ cry there is in the town tomorrow, we can decide what’s best. You’re safe ’ere meantime – an’ snug an’ warm an’ cosy,’ she added, ‘so let’s ’ave another chorus o’ John Peel, shall we?’

You can guess that I was sufficiently pale and wan next morning to satisfy Spring that he could continue to rest easy chez Willinck. One look at me, and at Susie languid and yawning, and he gave me a sour grin and muttered: ‘Christ, non equidem invideo, miror magis,’fn3 which if you ask me was just plain jealousy, and if I’d known enough Latin myself I’d have retorted, ‘Ver non semper viret,fn4 eh? Too bad,’ which would have had the virtue of being witty, although he’d probably not have appreciated it.

Pleasantries would have been out of season, anyway, for the news was bad. Susie had had inquiries made in town, and reported that Omohundro’s death was causing a fine stir, there was a great manhunt afoot, and our descriptions were posted at every corner. There was no quick way out of New Orleans, that was certain, and when I reminded Susie that something would have to be done in the next few days, she just patted my hand and said she would manage, never fear. Spring said nothing, but watched us with those pale eyes.

You may think that it’s just nuts, being confined to a brothel for four solid days – which we were – but when you can’t get at the tarts, and a mad murderer is biting his nails and muttering dirty remarks from Ovid, and the law may thunder at the door any minute, it can be damned eerie. There we were in that great echoing mansion, not able to stir outside for fear someone would see us from the road, or to leave our rooms, hardly, for although the sluts’ quarters were in a side-wing, they were about the place most of the time, and Susie said it would be risky to let them see us – or me to see them, she probably thought. Not that I’d have had the inclination to do more than wave at them; when you have to pile in to Mrs Willinck every night, other women take on a pale, spectral appearance, and you start to think that there’s something to be said for monasteries after all.

Not that I minded that part of it at all; she was an uncommon inventive amorist, and when you’ve been chief stud and bath attendant to Queen Ranavalona of Madagascar, with the threat of boiling alive or impalement hanging over you if you fail to satisfy the customer, then keeping pace even with Susie is gammon and peas. She seemed to thrive on it – but it was an odd thing – even when we were in the throes, I’d a notion that her mind was on more than passing joys, if you follow me; she was thinking at the same time, which wasn’t like her. I’d catch her watching me, too, with what I can only call an anxious expression – if I’d guessed what it was, I’d have been anxious myself.

It was the fourth evening when I found out. We were in her salon before supper, and I’d reminded her yet again that New Orleans was still as unsafe for me as ever, and her own departure upriver a scant couple of days away. What, says I, am I to do when you’re gone? She was brushing her hair before her mirror, and she stopped and looked at my reflection in the glass.

‘Why don’t you come with me to California?’ says she, rather breathless, and started brushing her hair again. ‘You could get a ship from San Francisco … if you wanted.’

It took my breath away. I’d been racking my brains about getting out of the States, but it had never crossed my mind to think beyond New Orleans or the eastern ports – all my fleeing, you’ll understand, had been done in the direction of the Northern states; west had never occurred to me. Well, God knows how many thousand miles it was … but, by George, it wasn’t as far-fetched as it sounded. You may not agree – but you haven’t been on the run from slave-catchers and abolitionists and Navy traps and outraged husbands and Congressman Lincoln, damn his eyes, with a gallows waiting if they catch you. I was in that state of funk where any loophole looks fine – and when I came to weigh it, travelling incog in Susie’s caravan looked a sight safer than anything else. The trip upriver would be the risky part; once west of the Mississippi I’d be clear … I’d be in San Francisco in three months, perhaps …

‘Would you take me?’ was the first thing that came to my tongue, before I’d given more than a couple of seconds’ thought to the thing, and her brush clattered on the table and she was staring at me with a light in her eyes that made my blood run cold.

‘Would I take you?’ says she. ‘’Course I’d take you! I … I didn’t know if … if you’d want to come, though. But it’s the safest way, Beauchamp – I know it is!’ She had turned from her mirror, and she seemed to be gasping for breath, and laughing at the same time. ‘You … you wouldn’t mind … I mean, bein’ with me for – for a bit longer?’ Her bosom was heaving fit to overbalance her, and her mouth was trembling. ‘I mean … you ain’t tired of me, or … I mean – you care about me enough to … well, to keep me company to California?’ God help me, that was the phrase she used. ‘You do care about me – don’t you? You said you did – an’ I think you do …’

Mechanically I said that of course I cared about her; a fearful suspicion was forming in my mind, and sure enough, her next words confirmed it.

‘I dunno if you … like me as much as I – oh, you can’t, I know you can’t!’ She was crying now, and trying to smile at the same time, dabbing at her eyes. ‘I can’t help it – I know I’m just a fool, but I love you – an’ I’d do anythin’ to make you love me, too! An’ I’d do anythin’ to keep you with me … an’ I thought – well, I thought that if we went together, an’ all that – when we got to California, you might not want to catch a ship at San Francisco, d’you see?’ She looked at me with a truly terrifying yearning; I’d seen nothing like it since the doctors were putting the strait-jacket on my guvnor and whisking the brandy beyond his reach. ‘An’ we could … stay together always. Could you … would you marry me, Beauchamp?’

If half the art of survival is running, the other half is keeping a straight face. I can’t count the number of times my fate has depended on my response to some unexpected and abominable proposal – like the night Yakub Beg suggested I join a suicidal attempt to scupper some Russian ammunition ships, or Sapten’s jolly notion about swimming naked into a gothic castle full of Bismarck’s thugs, or Brooke’s command to me to lead a charge against a head-hunters’ stockade. Jesu, the times that we have seen. (Queer, though, the one that lives in memory is from my days as a snivelling fag at Rugby when Bully Dawson was tossing the new bugs in blankets, and grabbed me, gloating, and I just hopped on to the blanket, cool as you please for all my bowels were heaving in panic, and the brute was so put out that he turfed me off in fury, as I’d guessed he would, and I was spared the anguish of being tossed while the other fags were put through it, howling.)

At all events – and young folk with their way to make in the world should mark this – you must never suppose that a poker face is sufficient. That shows you’re thinking, and sometimes the appearance of thought ain’t called for. It would have been fatal now, with Susie; I had to show willing quick, but not too much – if I cried aloud for joy and swept her into my arms, she’d smell a large whiskered rat. It all went through my mind in an instant, more or less as follows: 1, I’m married already; 2, she don’t know that; 3, if I don’t accept there’s a distinct risk she’ll show me the door, although she might not; 4, if she does, I’ll get hung; 5, on balance, best to cast myself gratefully at her feet for the moment, and think about it afterwards.

All in a split second, as I say – just time for me to stare uncomprehending for two heart-beats, and then let a great light of joy dawn in my eyes for an instant, gradually fading to a kind of ruptured awe as I took a hesitant step forward, dropped on one knee beside her, took her hand gently, and said in husky disbelief:

‘Susie … do you really mean that?’

Whatever she’d expected, it hadn’t been that – she was watching me like a hawk, between hope and mistrust. She knew me, you see, and what a damned scoundrel I was – at the same time, she was bursting to believe that I cared for her, and I knew just how to trade on that. Before she could reply, I smiled, and shook my head sadly, and said very manly:

‘Dear Susie, you’re wrong, you know. I ain’t worth it.’

She thought different, of course, and said so, and a pretty little debate ensued, in which I was slightly hampered by the fact that she had clamped my face between her udders and was ecstatically contradicting me at the top of her voice; I acted up with nice calculation, as though masking gallons of ardour beneath honest doubt – I didn’t know, I said, because no woman had ever – well, honoured me with true love before, and rake that I’d been, I’d grown to care for her too much to let her do something she might repent … you may imagine this punctuated by loving babble from her until the point where I thought, now for the coup de grâce, and with a muffled, despairing groan of ‘Ah, my darling!’ as though I couldn’t contain myself any longer, gave her the business for all I was worth on top of her dressing-stool. God knows how it stood the strain, for we must have scaled twenty-two stone between us, easy.

Even when it was done, I still did a deal of head-shaking, an unworthy soul torn between self-knowledge and the dawning hope that the love of a good woman might be just what he needed. I didn’t do it too strong; I didn’t need to; she was over the main hurdle and ready to convince herself against all reason. That’s what love does to you, I suppose, although I don’t speak from personal experience.

‘I know I’m foolish,’ says she, all earnest and sentimental, ‘an’ that you’re the kind of rascal that could break my ’eart … but I’ll take my chance o’ that. I reckon you like me, an’ I ’ope you’ll like me more. Love grows,’ says the demented biddy, ‘an’ while I’m forty-two—’ she was pushing fifty, I may say ‘—an’ a bit older than you, that don’t ’ave to signify. An’ I reckon – please don’t mind me sayin’ this, dearest – that even at worst, you might settle for me bein’ well-off, which I am, an’ able to give you a comfortable life, as well as all the love that’s in me. It’s no use sayin’ practical things don’t matter, ’cos they do – an’ I wouldn’t expect you to have me if I was penniless. But you know me, an’ that when I say I can make a million, it’s a fact. You can be a rich man, with me, an’ ’ave everythin’ you could wish for, an’ if you was to say “aye” on those terms, I’d understand. But I reckon—’ she couldn’t keep the tears back, as she held my chin and stroked my whiskers and I looked like Galahad on his vigil ‘—I reckon you care for me enough, anyway – an’ we can be happy together.’

I knew better than to be fervent. I just nodded, and ran a pin from her dressing-table into my leg surreptitiously to start a tear. ‘Thank you, Susie,’ says I quietly and kissed her gently. ‘Now don’t cry. I don’t know about love, but I know …’ I took a fairish sigh ‘… I know that I can’t say no.’

That was the God’s truth, too, as I explained to Spring half an hour later, for while he wasn’t the man you’d seek out to discuss your affairs of the heart, it was our necks that were concerned here, and he had to be kept au fait. He gaped at me like a landed shark.

‘But you’re married!’ cries he.

‘Tut-tut,’ says I, ‘not so loud. She doesn’t know that.’

He glared horribly. ‘It’s bigamy! Lord God Almighty, have you no respect for the sacraments?’

‘To be sure – which is why I don’t intend our union to last any farther than California, when I’ll—’

‘I won’t have it!’ snarls he, and that wild glitter came into his pale eyes. ‘Is there no indecency beneath you? Have you no fear of God, you animal? Will you fly in the face of His sacred law, damn your eyes?’

I might have expected this, when I came to think of it. Not the least of Captain Spring’s eccentricities was that while he’d got crimes on his conscience that Nero would have bilked at, he was a fanatic for the proprieties, like Sunday observance and afternoon tea – he’d drop manacled niggers overboard at a sight of the white duster, but he was a stickler when it came to lining out the hymns while his equally demented wife pumped her accordion and his crew of brigands sang ‘Let us with a gladsome mind’. All the result of boning up the Thirty-nine Articles, I don’t doubt.

‘What else could I do?’ I pleaded, while he swore and stamped about the room, snarling about blasphemy and the corruption of the public school system. ‘The old faggot as good as promised that if I didn’t take her, she’d whistle up the pigs.³ Don’t you see – if I jolly her along, it’s a safe passage out, and then, goodbye Mrs Willinck. Or Comber, as the case may be. But if I jilt her, it’s both our necks!’ I near as told him I’d done it before, with Duchess Irma in Strackenz, but from the look of him he’d have burst a blood vessel, with luck.

‘Why in God’s name did I ever ship you aboard the College?’ cries he, clenching his hands in fury. ‘You’re a walking mass of decay, porcus ex grege diaboli!’fn1 But he wasn’t too far gone to see reason, and calmed down eventually. ‘Well,’ says he, giving me his most baleful glower, ‘if your forehead is brazen enough for this – God have mercy on your soul. Which he won’t. Bah! Why the hell should I care? I can say with Ovid, video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor.fn2 Now, get out of my sight!’

He’d given me a scare, though, I can tell you. Even now, I couldn’t be sure that some quirk of that diseased mind wouldn’t make him blurt out to Susie that her intended was already a husband and father. So I was doubly uneasy, and puzzled, when Susie bade the pair of us that night to a supper party à trois in her salon – we’d had our meals on trays in our rooms since our arrival, and besides, I knew Susie’s first good opinion of Spring had worn thin. I’d given her a fair notion of the kind of swine he was, and since he could never conceal his delightful nature for long, she’d been able to judge for herself.

‘A small celebration,’ was how she described it when we sat down in her salon. ‘I daresay, captain, that Beauchamp ’as given you our happy news.’ And she beamed on me; she was dressed to her peak, which was dazzlingly vulgar, but I have to say that she didn’t look a year more than her pretended age, and deuced handsome. To my relief, Spring played up, and pledged her happiness; he didn’t include me, and he wasn’t quite Pickwick yet, but at least his tone was civil and he didn’t smash the crockery.

Mind you, I’ve been at dinners I’ve enjoyed more. Susie, for once, seemed nervous, which I put down to girlish excitement; she prattled about slave prices, and the cost of high-bred yellows, and how the Cuban market was sky-high these days, and the delicacy of octoroon fancies, who didn’t seem to be able to stand the pace in her trade at all; Spring answered her, more or less, and they had a brief discussion on the breeding of sturdier stock by mating black Africans with mulattos, which is a capital topic over the pudding. But by and by he said less and less, and that none too clearly; I was just beginning to wonder if the drink had got to him for once when he suddenly gave a great sigh, and a staring yawn, caught at his chair arms as though to rise, and then fell face foremost into the blancmange.

Susie glanced at me, lifting a warning finger. Then she got up, pulled his face out of the mess, and pushed up one eyelid. He was slumped like a sawdust doll, his face purple.

‘That’s all right,’ says she. ‘Brutus!’ And before my astonished eyes the butler went out, and presently in came two likely big coves in reefer jackets. At a nod from Susie, they hefted Spring out of his chair, and without a word bore him from the room. Susie sauntered back to her place, took a sip of wine, and smiled at my amazement.

‘Well,’ says she, ‘we wouldn’t ’ave wanted ’im along on our ’oneymoon, would we?’

For a moment I was appalled. ‘You’re not letting the bogies have him? He’ll peach! For God’s sake, Susie, he’ll—’

‘If he does any peachin’, it’ll be in Cape Town,’ says she. ‘You don’t think I’d be as silly as that, do you – or serve ’im such a mean turn?’ She laughed and patted my hand. ‘’E don’t deserve that – anyone who put out Peter Omo’undro’s light must ’ave some good in ’im. Anyway, if it wasn’t for the likes o’ your Captain Spring, where’d I get my wenches? But I didn’t fancy ’im above ’alf, from the first – mostly ’cos ’e didn’t mean you no good. I seen ’im watchin’ you, an’ mutterin’ ’is Italian or wotever it was. So,’ says she lightly, ‘I just passed the word to some good friends o’ mine – you need ’em in my business, believe me – an’ by the time ’e wakes up ’e’ll ’ave the prospect of a nice long voyage to cure ’is poor achin’ ’ead. Well, don’t look so shocked, dearie – ’e’s not the first to be shanghaied from this ’ouse, I can tell you!’

Well, it was capital – in its way, but it was also food for thought. Offhand, I couldn’t think of a better place for J. C. Spring than a long-hauler bound for South Africa, with a bucko mate kicking his arse while he holystoned the deck (although knowing the bastard, by the time they made Table Bay he would probably be the mate, if not more). He’d have been better fed to the fish, of course, but we must just take what benevolent providence sends us, and be thankful. On the other hand, it was a mite disturbing to discover that my bride-to-be was a lady of such ruthless resource. There she was, all pink and plump and pretty, selecting a grape, dusting it with sherbet, and popping it into my mouth with a fond smirk and a loving kiss that was like being hit in the face by a handful of liver – and not two minutes earlier she’d had a dinner guest trepanned before he’d even had his coffee. It occurred to me that severing our marriage tie in California would call for tactful management; hell hath no fury, and so forth, and I didn’t want to find myself bound for Sydney on a hellship, or dropped into Frisco Bay with my legs broken.

No, it bore thinking on. I’d always known that although Susie was a perfect fool for any chap with a big knocker, she was also a woman of character – she managed her slave-whores with a rod of iron, kindly enough but standing no nonsense, and the cool way she’d taken Omohundro’s demise, and seen Spring outward bound with a bellyful of puggle just because he was in the way, showed that she could be even harder than I’d have believed. But I was committed now – it was California or bust with a vengeance, and the only safe way when all was said. If I played my cards cleverly, I might even come out with a neat profit which should see me home in style, there to enjoy the fruits of the late unlamented Morrison’s labours. With luck I’d be back with my loving Elspeth after a total absence of about eighteen months – just nice time for the Bryant scandal to have died down. And there was no possibility that Susie would ever be able to trace her absconding spouse; she knew I was English, but nothing more, for Spring had naturally backed up my imposture as Beauchamp Millward Comber. I was clear there.

So now, once I’d put behind me the uncomfortable recollection of Spring with his beard soaked in custard being whisked off by the crimps, I gave my full attention to my betrothed, congratulating her on the smart way she’d recruited him back to the merchant marine, and regarding her with an admiration and respect which were by no means assumed.

‘You’re sure you don’t mind?’ says she. ‘I know it was a bit sudden-like, but I couldn’t ’ave abided ’avin’ ’im along, with that ugly phiz of ’is, an’ those awful creepy eyes. Fair gave me the shakes. An’ Jake an’ Captain Roger, they’ll see ’im well away, an’ never a word about it. An’ we can be just the two of us, can’t we?’ She subsided on to my lap, slipped her arms round my neck, pecked me gently on the lips, and gazed adoringly into my eyes. ‘Ow, Beechy, I’m that ’appy with you! Now, ’ave you ’ad enough to eat? Wouldn’t fancy a nice piece of fruit for dessert? I think you would,’ she giggles, and she took a peach, teased me with it, and then pushed it down the front of her dress between her breasts. ‘Go on, now – eat it all up, like a good boy.’

We started upriver two days later, and if you haven’t seen a bawdy-house flitting you’ve missed an unusual sight. The entire contents of the house were shipped down to the levee on about a dozen carts, and then Susie’s twenty sluts were paraded with their baggage in the hall, under the stern eye of their mistress. I hadn’t been invited to be on hand, but I watched through the crack of the salon door, and you never saw anything so pretty. They were all dressed in the most modest of crinolines, with their bonnets tied under their chins, like a Sunday school treat, chattering away and only falling silent and bobbing a respectful curtsey as Susie came opposite each one, checking her name and that she’d got all her possessions.

‘Claudia … got your portmanteau an’ your bandbox? … good … brushed your teeth, ’ave you? Very well … let’s see, Marie … are those your best gloves? No, I’ll lay they’re not, so just you change ’em this minute – no, not your black velvet ones, you goose, you’re goin’ on a steamboat! Now, then, Cleonie … oh, I declare white does suit you best of anythin’… why, you look proper virginal … wot are you now – thirty dollars, isn’t it? Well, I must be goin’ simple, you’re a fifty if ever I saw one. Ne’er mind … no, Aphrodite, you don’t wear your bonnet on the back of your ’ead … I know it shows you off, but that’s not what we want, dear, is it? You’re a young lady on your travels, not summat in a shop window … that’s better … stand up straight, Stephanie, there’s nothin’ becomes a female less than a slouch … Josephine, your dress is too short by a mile, you’ll lengthen it the minute we’re aboard. Don’t pout at me, miss, your ankles won’t get fat just ’cos they’re covered. Now, then, shoulders back, all of you, duck your heads just a little, hands folded, that’s right … eyes down … very pretty indeed. Good.’

She walked back along the line, well satisfied, and then addressed them.

‘Now, I want you gels to pay careful heed to me. On the boat, and indeed all the way to California, you’ll behave yourselves like young ladies – an’ I mean real ladies, not the kind of young ladies we talk about ’ere for the benefit of gentlemen, you hear? You’ll go always two an’ two, an’ you will not encourage or countenance the attention of any men you chance to meet – an’ there’ll be plenty of ’em, so take care. You won’t heed any man if he addresses you, you won’t talk to ’em, you won’t look at ’em. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, Miz Susie, ma’am.’ It was like a chorus of singing birds, soft and clear.

‘Nor you won’t stand nor look nor even think so’s to attract a man’s attention. You know what I mean. An’ bear in mind, I’ve forgotten more about takin’ a man’s eye than you’ll ever know, an’ if I catch you at it, it’s six of the cane, so there! You’re not workin’ till we get to California, none of you – an’ you’re not flirtin’ private, neither. Well?’

‘Yes, Miz Susie, ma’am,’ very subdued this time.

‘Now, you’re all good gels, I know that. It’s why you’re ’ere.’ Susie smiled as she looked along the line, for all the world like a head mistress at prize-giving. ‘An’ I’m pleased an’ proud of all of you. But none of you’ve been outside Awlins in your lives – yes, Medea, I know you an’ Eugenie bin to ’Avana, but you didn’t get outdoors much, did you? But where you’re goin’ now is very different, an’ I daresay there’ll be trials an’ temptations along the way. Well, you must just bear with ’em an’ resist ’em, an’ I promise you this – when we get to California you’ll ’ave nothin’ but the best gentlemen to accommodate, an’ if you’re good an’ do well, I’ll see each one of you settled comfortable for life, an’ you know I mean it.’ She paused and drew herself up. ‘But any saucy miss that’s wilful or disobedient or won’t be told … I’ll sell ’er down the river quicker than look – an’ you know I mean that, too. Some of you remember Poppaea, do you? – well, that contrary piece is bein’ whipped to hoe cotton on the Tombigbee this very minute, an’ ruin’ the day. So take heed.’

‘Yes, Miz Susie, ma’am,’ in a whisper, with one little sob.

‘Well, we’ll say no more about that … now, don’t cry, Marie – I know you’re a good gel, dear.’ Susie clapped her hands sharply. ‘Into the carriages with you – don’t run, an’ don’t chatter, an’ Brutus’ll see your bags on to the wagon.’

No doubt it was the vision of all that enchanting tail lined up in the hall below that had drawn me through the salon door during Susie’s address; one of the sluts, Aphrodite, I think, a jet-black houri with sinful eyes, had caught sight of me and nudged her neighbour, and they had both looked away and tried not to giggle; it wouldn’t do to draw back, so I sauntered down the stairs and Susie saw me just as she was dismissing them.

‘Wait, gels!’ she beamed and held out a hand to me. ‘You should know – this is your new master … or will be very soon. Make your curtsies to Mister Beauchamp Comber, gels – there, that’s elegant!’ As she passed her arm through mine I nodded offhand and said, ‘Ladies’ as twenty bonneted heads ducked in my direction, and twenty graceful figures bobbed – by George, I daren’t stare or I’d have started to drool. Every colour from ebony and coffee brown to cream and all but pure white – and every size and shape: tall and petite, statuesque and slender, lissom and plump, and all of ’em fit to illustrate the Arabian Nights. They fluttered out, whispering, and Susie squeezed my hand.

‘Ain’t they sweet, though? That’s our fortune, my love.’

One of them lingered a moment, telling Brutus to mind how he carried her parrot’s cage ‘—for he does not like to be shaken, do you, my little pet-pigeon?’ She had a soft Creole accent, well-spoken, and just the way she posed, tapping the cage, and the little limp gesture she made to Brutus, told me that she was showing off for the new boss: she was a creamy high-yaller, all in snowy crinoline, with her bonnet far enough back to show an unusual coiffure, sleek black and parted in the centre; a face like a wayward saint, but with a slow, soft-footed walk to the door that spoke a rare conceit.

‘M’m,’ says Susie. ‘That’s Cleonie – if she ’adn’t turned back I’d ha’ thought she was sickenin’ for somethin’. I may ’ave to think about takin’ the cane to ’er – yet you can’t blame ’er for doin’ wot makes ’er valuable, can you? Know wot she can make for us in a year? – fifteen thousand dollars an’ more – an’ that’s workin’ ’er easy. Now then …’ She pecked me and winked. ‘Let’s be off – we don’t want to keep a very important gentleman waitin’, do we?’

Who that gentleman was I discovered when we boarded the Choctaw Queen at the levee just as dusk was falling – for we’d agreed I must run no risk of being recognised, and that I’d keep out of public view in daylight until we reached Westport. Susie had bespoken the entire texas deck on the steamboat, which was one of the smaller stern-wheelers, and when we’d made our way through the bustling waterfront and its confusion of cargo and passengers milling under the flares (me with my collar well up and my hat pulled down), up the gangway past the saluting conductor, to the texas and its little private saloon – there in the sudden light of chandeliers was a table spread with crystal and silver, and nigger waiters in livery, and a band of fiddlers scraping away, and the big red-faced skipper himself, all consequence and whiskers, bowing over Susie’s hand and clasping mine heartily, while a little clergyman bustled up, solemnly asmirk, and a couple of sober coves behind looked wise and made play with pens and certificates.

‘Well, now, that’s just fine!’ cries the skipper. ‘Welcome ’board, Miz Willinck, ma’am, an’ you too, suh, kindly welcome! All ready, ma’am, as you see – Revn’d Hootkins, an’ heah Mistah Grace, the magistrate, an’ clerk an’ all!’ He waved a great hand, and I realised that the crafty bitch had brought me up to scratch all unawares – she was smiling at me, wide-eyed and eager, and the skipper was clapping my back, and the magistrate inquiring that I was Beauchamp Comber, bachelor of sound mind and good standing, wasn’t that so, while the clerk scribbled away and blotted the page in haste, and had to start again, and we both wrote our names, Susie’s hand shaking as she held the quill – and then we stood side by side while the little sky-pilot fumbled his book and cleared his throat and said shet the doah, there, an’ keep them fiddlers quiet, till we do this thing solemn an’ fittin’, now then … Susan Willinck, widder … an’ Bochump, how you say that? Bee-chum, that a fact? … we bein’ gathered in the sight o’ God an’ these heah witnesses … holy matrimony … procreation, yeah, well … long as ye both shall live … you got the ring, suh? … you hain’t? … lady has the ring, well, that’s a new one, but pass it over to him, anyhow, an’ you, suh, lay a-holt the bride’s hand, that’s it now …

I heard the bells boom over Strackenz Cathedral, and smelt the musk of incense, and felt the weight of the crown jewels and Irma’s hand cold in mine … and then it was Elspeth’s warm and holding firm, with little Abercrombie watching that I didn’t make a bolt for the abbey door, and Morrison’s irritable mutter that if there wisnae suffeeshent carriages for the aunts and cousins they could dam’ weel walk tae the weddin’ breakfast … and I was at the peephole looking down on Ranavalona’s massive black nakedness while her handmaidens administered the ceremonial bath – not that there’d been any wedding ceremonial there, but it had been a ritual preliminary, in its way, to my union with that ghastly nigger monster … Irma’s face turning, icy and proud, her lips barely brushing my cheek … Elspeth glowingly lovely, golden curls under her bridal veil, red lips open under mine … that mad black female gorilla grunting as she flung off her robe and grabbed my essentials … I don’t know what conjured up these visions of my previous nuptials, really; I suppose I’m just a sentimental chap at bottom. And now it was Susie’s plump face upturned to mine, and the fiddlers were striking up while the skipper and magistrate applauded and cried congratulations, the nigger waiters passed the plates with mirthful beams, with corks popping and Susie squealing with laughter as the skipper gallantly claimed the privilege of kissing the bride, and the little clergyman said, well, just a touch o’ the rye, thank’ee, no, nothin’ with it, an’ keep it comin’ …

But what I remember best is not that brief unexpected ceremony, or the obligatory ecstatic thrashings on the bed of our plushy-gilt state-room under the picture of Pan leering down appropriately while fleshy nymphs sported about him, or Susie’s imprisoning embrace as she murmured drowsily: ‘Mrs Comber … Mrs Beauchamp Millward Comber,’ over and over – none of these things. What I remember is slipping out when she was asleep, to stand by the breezy texas rail in the velvet dark and smoke a cheroot, looking out over the oily waters as we ploughed up past Baton Rouge. The great stern wheel was flickering like a magic lantern in the starshine; far over on the east shore were the town lights, and from the main saloon on the boiler deck beneath me came the sound of muffled music and laughter; I paced astern and looked down at the uncovered main deck – and that’s what I can see and hear now, clear across the years, as though it were last night.

From rail to rail the great deck was packed with gear and people, all shadowy under the flares like one of those Dutch night paintings: here a couple of darkies crooning softly as they squatted in the scuppers, there a couple of drummers comparing carpetbags, yonder some rivermen lounging at the gangway and telling stretchers – but they were just the few. The many, and there were hundreds of them, were either groups of young men who gossiped eagerly and laughed a mite too loud, or obvious families – Ma wrapped in her shawl beside the children huddled in sleep among the bales and bundles and tied wagons; Pa sitting silent, deep in thought, or rummaging for the hundredth time through the family goods, or listening doubtfully near the groups of the noisy single men. Nothing out of the way – except for a strange, nervous excitement that rose from that crowded deck like an electric wave; even I sensed it, without understanding, for I didn’t know then that these ordinary folk were anything but – that they were the emigrants, the vanguard of that huge tide that would pour into the wilderness and make America, the fearful, hopeful, ignorant ones who were going to look for El Dorado and couldn’t for the life of them have told you why, exactly, except that Pa was restless and Jack and Jim were full of ginger. And Ma was tired – but they were all going to see the elephant.

He was crowded two deep along the port rail, was Pa, soberly looking west as though trying to see across the thousands of miles to where he hoped they were going, wondering what it would be like, and why hadn’t he stayed in Pittsburgh? The single fellows had no such doubts (much); beneath me a bunch in slouch hats and jeans were passing the jug around boisterously, and one with a melodeon was striking up:

Oh, say, have ye got a drink of rum?

Doodah, doodah!

I’d give ye a taste, if I had some,

Doo-doodah-day!

and his mates clapped and stamped as they roared the chorus:

For it’s – blow, bully-boys, blow!

For Californeye-o!

There’s plenty of gold as I’ve been told

On the banks of the Sacramento!

You never hear it now, except maybe on a sailing ship when she’s upping anchor, and I doubt if it would have the same note of reckless hope that I heard off Baton Rouge – it wasn’t too well received then, either, with cries of shet-up-cain’t-ye? from the sleepers, and damn-yer-eyes-I-reckon-we-kin-sing-if-we-want-to from the optimists, and then a baby began to wail, and they piped down, laughing and grumbling. But whenever I remember it, I have an odd thought: I never suspected that night that I – or Susie and the sluts, for that matter – had the least thing in common with those folk down on the main deck, but in fact we all belonged to a damned exclusive company without knowing it, with a title that’s a piece of folklore nowadays. Millions came after, but we were the Forty-Niners.

That claim to immortality lay ahead in the unseen future; as I pitched my cheroot into the river I was reflecting that wherever the rest might be going, I was bound for home, admittedly the long way about, and they could keep Californeye-o for me. If there were pickings to be got along the way, especially from the overfed trollop snoring and sated in the state-room, so much the better; she owed me something for the amount of tup I’d given her, and no doubt would give her again before the journey’s end. There were worse ways of crossing America – or so I thought in my innocence. If I’d had any sense I’d have followed my cheroot and taken my chance among the enemies hunting me along the Mississippi valley.

Fifteen dollars a bottle they were charging for claret at the Planters’ Hotel in St Louis that year, and it was like drinking swamp-water when the mules have been by; I’ve tasted better in a London ladies’ club. But you daren’t drink anything else because of the cholera; the good folk of St Louis were keeling over like flies, the whole town stank of camphor and burning bitumen, you could even find bodies lying in the street, and the only place more crowded than the Planters’ must have been the cemetery – which was probably as comfortable.

It wasn’t only the plague that worried me, either; St Louis was the town where a few weeks earlier they’d been posting rewards of a hundred dollars for my apprehension, describing me to a T and warning the citizenry that I had Genteel Manners and spoke with a Foreign Accent, damn their impudence. But the Choctaw Queen went no farther, and we had to wait a day for a vessel to carry us up the Missouri to Westport, so there was nothing for it but to venture ashore, which I managed in safety by purchasing one of the new ‘genuine cholera masks, guaranteed to prevent infection’ for two bits, and sneaking into the Planters’ looking like a road-agent.

There I had further proof, if I’d needed it, of my new wife’s strength of character, and also of the length of her purse. Would you believe it – she had bespoken half a dozen rooms, and when the manager discovered that four of them were to be occupied by twenty nigger wenches, he had the conniptions; by thunder, he’d swim in blood before any black slaves stank up his rooms, no matter their airs and refinements. Unfortunately for him, Susie had the girls settled in and their doorkeys in her reticule before he realised it; he and she had a fine set-to in our parlour, while I kept safely out of view in the bedroom, and she told him that since her ‘young ladies’ were on no account going to be herded in the pens with fieldhands and such trash, nor in quarantine neither, he’d better put a hundred dollars in his pocket and forget it. I’d have let ’em go to the pens myself, but it was her money, and after some hem-haw he took it, and retired with a grovelling request that the ‘young ladies’ keep to their rooms, for his reputation’s sake.

But what with the din of the overcrowded hotel, the stink of sulphur smouldering in the fireplace, and the fear that some sharp might discover Mr Comber was the notorious slave-stealer Tom Arnold, I was mightily relieved when we boarded the Missouri packet next evening, and I felt it safe to drop my cholera mask over the side – the passengers included sufficient tall dark strangers with every kind of accent, whether their manners were genteel or not. She was a smaller and much dirtier vessel than the Choctaw Queen, and the girls had to make do in steerage among all the roughs and roustabouts and gamblers and frontier riff-raff; Susie just singled out the four biggest and ugliest and paid them handsomely to keep the wenches safe in a corner – which to my astonishment they did, for four days up to Kanzas Landing. The first drunk who tried to paw a crinoline was tipped over the side without ceremony, and the gamblers haw-hawed and laid bets whether he’d float or sink. After that our Magdalenes were left alone, but they had a miserable passage of it, even under the lean-to which the toughs rigged up to keep out the fog and drizzle, and they were a doleful and bedraggled jam of tarts by the time we tied up. Susie and I shared a cramped and stuffy saloon on the texas with about seventeen snoring merchants and dowagers with bad breath, but for once I didn’t mind the lack of privacy; I needed the rest.

They tell me that Kansas City nowadays covers the whole section, but in those days the landing and Westport and Independence were separated by woodland and meadow. And I wonder if today’s city contains more people than were crowded along the ten miles from Independence to the river when I first saw it in ’49: there were thousands of them, in tents and lean-tos and houses and log shacks and under the trees and in the few taverns and lodging-places; they were in the stables and sheds and shops and storehouses, a great swarming hive of humanity of every kind you can imagine – well, I remember the Singapore River in the earlies, and it was nothing to Westport-Independence. The whole stretch was jammed with wagons and carts and carriages, churning the spaces between the buildings into a sea of mud after the recent rain, and through it went the mules and oxen and horses, with the steam rising from them and the stench of hides and dung and smoke filling the air – but even that was nothing to the noise.

Every other building seemed to be a forge or a stable or a warehouse, a-clang with hundreds of hammers and the rasp of saws and the crack of axes and the creak of wheels and the thump and scrape of boxes and bales being loaded or unloaded; teamsters snapped their whips with a ‘Way-hay, whoa!’, foremen bellowed, children shrilled, the voices of thousands of men and women blended with it all in a great eager busy din that echoed among the buildings and floated off to be lost in the surrounding forest.

I daresay it was nothing to what it must have looked like a year or two later, when the gold-fever was at its height and half Europe came pouring to America in search of fortune. But in that spring every human specimen in North America seemed to have assembled at Kanzas Landing for the great trek west – labourers white and black and olive, bronzed hunters and pale clerks, sober emigrants and raffish adventurers, harassed women with aprons and baskets prodding at vegetables set out before the store-fronts and slapping the children who bawled round their skirts; red-faced traders in stove-pipe hats and thumbs hooked in fancy weskits, spitting juice; soldiers in long boots and blue breeches, their sabres on the table among the beer-mugs; Mexicans in serapes and huge-brimmed sombreros leading a file of mules; farmers in straw hats and faded overalls; skinners with coiled whips, lounging on their rigs; bearded ruffians in greasy buckskins bright with beadwork, two-foot Bowies gleaming on their hips, chattering through their noses in a language which I recognised to my amazement as Scotch Gaelic; bright-eyed harpies watchful in shack doorways; Spanish riders in ponchos and feathered bonnets, their sashes stuffed with flintlock pistols; a party of Indians beneath the trees, faces grotesquely painted, hatchets at their belts and lances stacked; silent plainsmen in fur caps and long fringed skirts, carrying buffalo guns and powder horns; a coach guard with two six-shooters at his hips, two five-shooters in his waistband, a slung revolving rifle, a broad-sword, and a knife in his boot – oh, and he was gnawing a toothpick, too; an incredibly lean and ancient hunter, white-bearded to the waist, dressed in ragged deerskin and billycock hat, his ‘nail-driver’ rifle across the crupper of his mule, staring ahead like a fakir in a trance as he rode slowly up the street, his slovenly Indian squaw at his stirrup, through the crowds of loafers and porters and barefoot boys scuffling under the wagons, the swaggering French voyageurs, gaudy and noisy, the drummers and counter-jumpers and sharp-faced Yankees, planters and crooks and rivermen, trappers and miners and plain honest folk wondering how they’d strayed into this Babel – and those are only the ones I noticed in the first mile or so.

But soft! who is this stalwart figure with the dashing whiskers so admirably set off by his wideawake hat and fringed deerskin shirt, a new patent Colt repeater strapped to his manly rump, his well-turned shanks encased in new boots which are pinching the bejeezus out of him? Can it be other than Arapaho Harry, scourge of the plains? – that alert and smouldering eye must oft have hardened at the sound of the shrill war-whoop, or narrowed behind the sights as he nailed the rampant grizzly – now it is soft and genial as he chivvies the dusky whores into the back of the cart, an indulgent smile playing across his noble features. Mark the grace with which he vaults nimbly into the driver’s seat beside the bedizened trot in the feathered bonnet – his aunt, doubtless – and with an expert chuck on the reins sets the team in motion and bogs the whole contraption axle-deep in the gumbo. The whores squeak in alarm, the aunt – his wife, you say? – rails and adjusts her finery, but the gallant frontiersman, unperturbed save for a blistering oath which mantles the cheeks of his fair companions in blushes, is equal to the emergency; for two bits he gets a gang of loafers to haul them out. The western journey is not without its trials; it is going to be a long trek to California.

But at least it looked as though we were going to make it in some style. Once we’d got the rig out of the stew, and rattled through Westport and the great sea of emigrant tents and wagons to Independence – which was a pretty little place then with a couple of spires and a town hall with a belfry, of which the inhabitants were immensely proud – we were greeted by the celebrated Colonel Owens, a breezy old file with check trousers full of belly and a knowing eye; he was the leading merchant, and had been commissioned to outfit Susie’s caravan. He and the boys made us welcome at the store, pressed sherry cobblers on me, bowed and leered gallantly at Susie, and assured us that a trip across the plains was a glorified picnic.

‘You’ll find, ma’am,’ says the Colonel, ankle cocked and cigar a-flourish, ‘that everything’s in real prime train. Indeedy – your health, sir. Yes, ma’am, six Pittsburgh wagons, spanking new, thirty yoke of good oxen, a dozen mules, and a real bang-up travelling carriage – the very best Hiram Young⁴ can furnish, patent springs, hand-painted, cushioned seats, watertight for fording streams, seats half a dozen comfortable. Fact is,’ with a broad wink, ‘it’s one of the new mail company coaches, but Hiram procured it as a personal favour. Indeedy – you won’t find a more elegant conveyance outside Boston – am I right, boys?’

The boys agreed that he was, and added in hushed tones that the mail company intended to charge $250 a head for the three-week non-stop run to Santa Fe, and how about that?

‘We’re goin’ to take three months,’ says Susie, ‘an’ ten cents a pound for freight is quite dear enough, thank you. To say nothin’ of fifty dollars a month for guards an’ drivers, who’ll eat like wolves if I know anythin’.’

‘Well, now, ma’am, I see you’ve a proper head for business,’ chuckles the Colonel. ‘An’ a real pretty head it is, too, if I may say. But good men don’t come cheap – eh, boys?’

The boys swore it was true; why, a good stockman could make two hundred a week, without going west of Big Blue.

‘I’m not hirin’ stockmen,’ snaps Susie. ‘I’m payin’ high for reliable men who can look after theirselves, and me.’

‘And you shall have the best, ma’am!’ cries the Colonel. ‘Say, I like your style, though! Your health again, Mr Comber! Indeedy – eight outriders, each with a revolving rifle and a brace of patent pistols – why, that’s a hundred shots without reloading! A regiment couldn’t afford better protection! A regiment, did I say? Why, three of these men rode with Kearny in the Mexican War – seasoned veterans, ma’am, every one. Isn’t that so, boys?’

The boys couldn’t fault him; dogged if they knew how the Army would have managed without those three. I remarked that so much firepower was impressive, and seemed to argue necessity – I’d been noting a bill on the store wall advertising:

Ho! Hist! Attention!

Californians! Why not take, among other necessaries, your own monuments and tombstones? A great saving can be effected by having their inscriptions cut in New York beforehand!!!⁵

The Colonel looked serious and called for more cobblers. ‘Indian depredations this past ten years, sir, have been serious and multiplying,’ says he solemnly. ‘Indeedy – red sons-o-bitches wherever you look – oh, beg pardon, ma’am, that runaway tongue of mine! However, with such vast convoys of emigrants now moving west, I foresee no cause for apprehension. Safety in numbers, Mr Comber, hey? Besides, the tribes are unusually peaceful at present – eh, boys?’

The boys couldn’t remember such tranquillity; it was Sunday afternoon the whole way to the Rockies, with all the Indians retired or gone into farming or catching the cholera. (That last was true enough, by the way.)

Susie inquired about a guide, reminding the Colonel she had asked for the best, and he smacked his thigh and beamed. ‘Now, ma’am, you can set your mind to rest there – yes, indeedy, I reckon you can, just about,’ and the boys grinned approval without even being asked.

‘Is it Mr Williams?’ says Susie. ‘I was told to ask for him, special.’

‘Well, now ma’am, I’m afraid Old Bill doesn’t come out of the mountains much, these days.’ The boys confirmed that indeed Old Bill was out west with Fremont. ‘No, I’m afraid Fitzpatrick and Beckwourth aren’t available, either – but they’re no loss, believe me, when you see who I’ve engaged – subject to his meeting you and agreeing to take the command, of course.’ And he nodded to one of the boys, who went out on the stoop and bawled: ‘Richey!’

‘Command!’ says Susie, bridling. ‘Any commandin’ that’s to be done, my ’usband’ll do!’ Which gave me a nasty start, I can tell you. ‘He’s in charge of our caravan, and the guide’ll take ’is pay ’an do what he’s told! The idea!’

The Colonel looked at the boys, and the boys looked at the Colonel, and they all looked at me. ‘Well, now, ma’am,’ says Owens doubtfully, ‘I’m sure Mr Comber is a gentleman of great ability, but—’

‘’E’s an’ officer of the Royal Navy,’ snaps Susie, ‘an’ quite accustomed to command – aren’t you, my love?’

I agreed, but remarked that leading a caravan must be specialised work, and doubtless there were many better qualified than I … which was stark truth, apart from which I’d no wish to be badgering roughriders and arguing with drunk teamsters when I could be rolling in a hand-painted, watertight coach. Seeing my diffidence, she rounded on me, demanding if I was going to take orders from some grubby little carter? I said, well, ah … while the Colonel called loudly for cobblers and the boys looked tactfully at the ceiling, and just then a burly scarecrow came into the store – or rather, he seemed to drift in, silently, and the Colonel introduced him as Mr Wootton, our guide.

I heard Susie sniff in astonishment – well, he was grubby, no error, and hadn’t shaved in a while, and his clothes looked as though he’d taken them off a dead buckskin man and then slept in them for a year. He seemed diffident, too, fiddling with his hat and looking at the floor. When the Colonel told him about my commanding the caravan he thought for a bit, and then said in a gentle, husky voice:

‘Gennelman bin wagon-captain afore?’

No, said the Colonel, and the boys looked askance and coughed. The clodpole scratched his head and asks:

‘Gennelman bin in Injun country?’

No, they said, I hadn’t. He stood a full minute, still not looking up, and then says:

‘Gennelman got no ’sperience?’

At this one of the boys laughed, and I sensed Susie ready to burst – and I was about fed up being ridiculed by these blasted chaw-bacons. God knows I didn’t want to command her caravan, but enough’s enough.

‘I’ve had some experience, Mr Wootton,’ says I. ‘I was once an army chief of staff—’ Sergeant-General to the nigger rabble of Madagascar, but there you are ‘—and have known service in India, Afghanistan, and Borneo. But I’ve no special desire—’

At this Wootton lifted his unkempt head and looked at me, and I stopped dead. He was a ragged nobody – with eyes like clear blue lights, straight and steady. Then he glanced away – and I thought, don’t let this one go. It may be a picnic on the plains, but you’ll be none the worse with him along.

‘My dear,’ says I to Susie, ‘perhaps you and the Colonel will excuse Mr Wootton and myself.’ I went out, and presently Wootton drifts on to the stoop, not looking at me.

‘Mr Wootton,’ says I, ‘my wife wants me to command the caravan, and what she wants she gets. Now, I’m not your Old Bill Williams, but I’m not a greenhorn, exactly. I don’t mind being called wagon-captain – but you’re the guide, and what you say goes. You can say it to me, quietly, and I’ll say it to everyone else, and you’ll get an extra hundred a month. What d’you say?’

It was her money, after all. He said nothing, so I went on:

‘If you’re concerned that your friends’ll think poorly of you for serving under a tenderfoot …’ At this he turned the blue eyes on me, and kept them there. Deuced uncomfortable. Still he was silent, but presently looked about, as though considering, and then says after a while:

‘Gotta study, I reckon. Care to likker with me?’

I accepted, and he led the way to where a couple of mules were tethered, watching me sidelong as I mounted. Well, I’d forgotten more about backing a beast than he’d ever know, so I was all right there; we cantered down the street, and out through the tents and wagons towards Westport, and presently came to a big lodge with ‘Last Chance’ painted in gold leaf on its signboard, which was doing a roaring trade. Richey got a jug, and we rode off towards some trees, and all the time he was deep in thought, occasionally glancing at me but not saying a word. I didn’t mind; it was a warm day, I was enjoying the ride, and there was plenty to see – over by the wood some hunters were popping their rifles at an invisible target; when we got closer I saw they were ‘driving the nail’, which is shooting from fifty paces or so at a broad-headed nail stuck in a tree, the aim being to drive it full into the wood, which with a ball the size of a small pea is fancy shooting anywhere.

Richey gave a grunt when he saw them, and we rode near to where a group of them were standing near the nail-tree, whooping and catcalling at every shot. Richey dismounted.

‘Kindly cyare to set a whiles?’ says he, and indicated a tree-stump with all the grace of a Versailles courtier; he even put the jug down beside it. So I sat, and waited, and took a pull at the jug, which was first-run rum, and no mistake, while Richey went over and talked to the hunters – fellows in moccasins and fringed tunics, for the most part, burned brown and bearded all over. It was only when some of them turned to look at me; and chortled in their barbarous ‘plug-a-plew’ dialect which is barely recognisable as English, that I realised the brute was absolutely consulting them – about me, if you please! Well, by God, I wasn’t having that, and I was on the point of storming off when the group came over, all a-grin – and by George, didn’t they stink, just! I was on my feet, ready to leave – and then I stopped, thunderstruck. For the first of them, a tall grizzled mountaineer, in a waterproof hat and leggings, was wearing an undoubted Life Guards tunic, threadbare but well-kept. I blinked: yes, it was Tin Belly gear, no error.

‘Hooraw, hoss, howyar!’ cries this apparition.

‘Where the devil did you get that coat?’ says I.

‘You’re English,’ says he, grinning. ‘Waal, I tell ye – this yar garmint wuz give me by one o’ your folks. Scotch feller – sure ’nuff baronite, which is kind of a lord, don’t ye know? Name o’ Stooart. Say, wasn’t he the prime coon, though? He could ha’ druv thet nail thar with his eyes shut.’ He considered me, scratching his chin, and I found myself wishing my buckskin coat wasn’t so infernally new. ‘Richey hyar sez he’s onsartin if you’ll make a wagon-captain.’

‘Is he, by God? Well, you can tell Richey—’

‘Mister,’ says he, ‘you know this?’ And he held up a short stick of what looked like twisted leather.

‘Certainly. It’s cured beef – biltong. Now what—’

‘Don’t mind me, hoss,’ says he, and winked like a ten-year-old as he stepped closer. ‘We’re a-humourin’ ole Richey thar. Now then – how long a hobble you put on a pony?’

I almost told him to go to the devil, but he winked again, and I’ll say it for him, he was a hard man to refuse. Besides, what was I to do? If I’d turned my back on that group of bearded grinning mountebanks they’d have split their sides laughing.

‘That depends on the pony,’ says I. ‘And the grazing, and how far you’ve ridden, and where you are, and how much sense you’ve got. Two feet, perhaps … three.’

He cackled with laughter and slapped his thigh, and the buckskin men haw-hawed and looked at Richey, who was standing head down, listening. My interrogator said:

‘Hyar’s a catechism, sure ’nuff,’ and he was so pleased with himself, and so plainly intent on making game of Richey that I decided to enter into the spirit of the thing. ‘Next question, please,’ says I, and he clapped his hands.

‘Now, let’s calkerlate. Haw, hyar’s a good ’un! Hyar’s a night camp; I’m a gyuard. What you spose I’m a-doin’?’ He looked at a bush about twenty yards away, walked a few paces aside, and looked at it again, then came back to me. ‘Actin’ pee-koolyar, hoss – you reckon?’

‘No such thing. You’re taking a sight on that bush. You’ll take a sight on all the bushes. After dark, if a bush isn’t where it should be, you’ll fire on it. Because it’ll be an Indian, won’t it?’ We’d done the same thing in Afghanistan; any fool of a soldier knows the dodge.

‘Wah!’ shouts he, delighted, and thumped Richey on the back. ‘Thar, boyee! This chile hyar’ll tickle ye, see iffn he doan’t. Now, whut?’

Richey was watching me in silence, very thoughtful. Presently he nodded, slowly, while the buckskin men nudged each other and my questioner beamed his satisfaction. Then Richey tapped my pistol butt, and pulling a scrap of cloth from his pocket, drifted over to the tree and began to snag it on the half-driven nail. My tall companion chuckled and shook his head; well, I saw what was wanted, and I thought to blazes with it. I’d taken as much examination from these clowns as I wanted, so I decided to put Master Richey in his place.

The tall chap had a knife in his waistband, and without by your leave I plucked it out. It was a Green River, which is the best knife in the world, and just the article to practise the trick that Ilderim Khan had taught me, with infinite patience, on the Kabul Road almost ten years before. As Richey adjusted his target, I threw the knife overhand; my eye was well out, for I was nowhere near the mark, but I damned near took his ear off. He looked at the blade quivering in the trunk beside his face, while the tall buffoon cackled with laughter, and the buckskin men doubled up and haw-hawed – if I’d put it through the back of his head, I daresay that would have been a real joke.

Richey pulled the knife free, while his pals rolled about, and drifted over to me. He looked at me for a moment with those steady blue eyes, glanced at the tall chap,⁶ and then said in that gentle husky voice:

‘I’m Uncle Dick. An extra hunnerd, ye said – cap’n?’

The men hoorawed and shouted, ‘Good ole Virginny! How’s yer ha’r, Dick?’ I nodded and said I would see him at sunrise, sharp, bade them a courteous good-day and rode back to Independence without more ado – I know when to play the man of few words myself, you see. But I didn’t delude myself that I had proved my fitness to be a wagon-captain, or any rot of that sort; all I had shown, through the eccentric good office of our friend in the Tin-Belly coat, was that I wasn’t a know-nothing, and Wootton could take service under me without losing face. They were an odd lot, those frontiersmen, simple and shrewd enough, and as easy – and as difficult – to impose upon as children are. But I was glad Wootton would be our guide; being a true-bred rascal and coward myself, I know a good man when I see one – and he was the best.⁷

We started west three days later, but I am not going to take up your time with wordy descriptions of the journey, which you can get from Parkman or Gregg if you want them – or from volume II of my own great work, Dawns and Departures of a Soldier’s Life, although it ain’t worth the price, in my opinion, and all the good scandal about D’Israeli and Lady Cardigan is in the third volume, anyway.

But what I shall try to do, looking back in a way that Parkman and the others didn’t, is to try to tell you what it meant to ‘go West’ in the earlies⁸ – and that was something none of us understood at the time, or the chances are we’d never have gone. You look at a map of America nowadays, and there she is, civilised (give or take the population) from sea to sea; you can board a train in New York City and get off in Frisco without ever stepping outside, let alone get your feet wet; you can even do what I’ve done – look out from your Pullman on the Atchison Topeka as you cross Walnut Creek, and see the very ruts your wagon made fifty years before, and pass through great cities that were baldhead prairie the first time you went by, and vast wheatfields where you remember the buffalo herds two miles from wing to wing. Why, I had coffee on a verandah in a little town in Colorado just last year – fine place, church with a steeple, schoolhouse, grain warehouse, and even a motor car at the front gate. First time I saw that place it consisted of a burning wagon. Its population was a scalped family.

Now, you must look at the map of America. See the Mississippi River, and just left of it, Kansas City? West of that, in ’49, there was – nothing. And it was an unknown nothing, that’s the point. You can say now that ahead of the Forty-Niners stretched more than two thousand miles of empty prairie and forest and mountain and great rivers – but we didn’t know that, in so many words. Oh, everyone knew that the Rockies were a thousand miles off, and the general lie of the country – but take a look at what is now North Texas and Oklahoma. In ’49, it was believed that there was a vast range of mountains there, blocking the way west, when in fact the whole stretch is as flat as your hat. Somewhere around the same region, it was believed, was ‘the great American Desert’ – which didn’t exist. Oh, there’s desert, plenty of it, farther west; nobody knew much about that either.

I say it was unknown; certainly, the mountain men and hunters had walked over plenty of it; that crazy bastard Fremont was exploring away in a great frenzy and getting thoroughly lost by all accounts. But when you consider, that in ’49 it was less than 60 years since some crazy Scotch trapper⁹ had crossed North America for the first time – well, you will understand that its geography was not entirely familiar, west of the Miss’.

Look at the map again – and remember that beyond Westport there was no such thing as a road. There were two trails, to all intents, and they were just wagon-tracks – the Santa Fe and the Oregon. You didn’t think of roads then; you thought of rivers, and passes. Arkansas, Cimarron, Del Norte, Platte, Picketwire, Colorado, Canadian – those were the magic river names; Glorieta, Raton, South Pass – those were the passes. There were no settlements worth a dam, even – Santa Fe was a town, sure enough, if you ever got there, and after that you had nothing until San Diego and Frisco and the rest of the cities of the west coast. But in between, the best you could hope for were a few scattered forts and trading posts: Bent’s, Taos, Laramie, Bridger, St Vrain, and a few more. Hell’s bells, I rode across Denver when the damned place wasn’t even there.

No, it was the unknown then, to us at least; millions of square miles of emptiness which would have been hard enough to cross even if it had truly been empty, what with dust-storms, drought, floods, fire, mountains, snow-drifts that could be seventy feet deep, cyclones, and the like. But it wasn’t empty, of course; there were several thousand well-established inhabitants – named Cheyenne, Kiowa, Ute, Sioux, Navajo, Pawnee, Shoshoni, Blackfeet, Cumanche … and Apache. Especially, Apache. But even they were hardly even names to us, and the belief – I give you only my own impression – in the East was that their nuisance had been greatly exaggerated.

So you see, we started in fairly blissful ignorance, but before we do, take one last look at the map before Professor Flashy endeth the lesson. See the Arkansas River and the Rockies? Until the 1840s, they had been virtually the western and south-western limits of the U.S.A.; then came the war with Mexico, and the Yankees won the whole shooting-match that they own today. So when we jumped off for California, we were heading into country three-quarters of which had been Mexican until a few months before, and still was in everything but name.¹⁰ Some of it was called Indian Territory, and that was no lie, either.

That was what lay ahead of us, gullible asses that we were, and if you think it was tough you should have seen the Comber caravan loading up in the meadow at Westport. I’ve squared away, and ridden herd upon, most kind of convoys in my time, but shipping a brothel was a new one on me. Visiting ’em in situ, you don’t realise how elaborately furnished they are; when I saw the pile of gear that had come ashore off the steamboat, I didn’t credit it; a stevedore would have taken to drink.

For one thing, the sluts all had their dressing-tables and mirrors and wardrobes, stuffed with silks and satins and gowns and underclothes and hats and stockings and shoes and garters and ribbons and jewellery and cosmetics and wigs and masks and gloves and God knows what beside – there were several enormous chests which Susie called ‘equipment’, and which, if they’d burst open in public, would have led to the intervention of the police. Gauzy trousers and silk whips were the least of it; there was even a red plush swing and an ‘electrical mattress’, so help me.

‘Susie,’ says I, ‘I ain’t old enough to take responsibility for this cargo. Dear God, Caligula wouldn’t know what to do with it! You’ve had some damned odd customers in Orleans, haven’t you?’

‘We won’t be able to buy it in Sacramento,’ says she.

‘You couldn’t buy it in Babylon!’ says I. ‘See here; two of the wagons must be given over to food – we need enough flour, tea, dried fruit, beans, corn, sugar, and all the rest of it to feed forty folk for three months – at this rate we’ll finish up eating lace drawers and frilly corsets!’ She told me not to be indelicate, and it would all have to go aboard; she wasn’t running an establishment that wasn’t altogether tip-top. So in went the fancy bed-linen and tasselled curtains and carpets and chairs and chaise-longues and hip-baths, and the piano with candlesticks and a case of music – oh, yes, and four chandeliers and crystal lampshades and incense and bath salts and perfumes and snuff and cigars and forty cases of burgundy (I told the demented bitch it wouldn’t travel) and oil paintings of an indecent nature in gilt frames and sealed boxes of cheese and rahat lakoum and soap and pomade, and to crown all, a box of opium – with Cleonie’s parrot in its cage to top everything off. In the end we had to hire two extra wagons.

‘It’s worth it,’ says Susie to my protests. ‘It’s all investment, darlin’, an’ we’ll reap the benefit, you’ll see.’

‘Provided the gold-fields are manned entirely by decadent Frog poets, we’ll make a bloody fortune,’ says I. ‘Thank God we shan’t have to go through Customs.’

The whores were another anxiety, for while Susie had them thoroughly chastened, and kept them dressed like charity girls, they wouldn’t have fooled an infant. They were all coloured, and stunners, and they didn’t walk, or even sit, like nuns, exactly. You just had to look at the stately black Aphrodite, regarding herself in a hand-mirror while the pert creamy Claudia dressed her hair, or Josephine perched languidly on a box, contemplating her shapely little feet with satisfaction, or Medea and Cleonie sauntering among the wildflowers with their parasols, or the voluptuous Eugenie reclining in a wagon, sultry-eyed and toying with her fan – no, you could tell they weren’t choir-girls. I took one look at the score of drivers and guards that Owens had hired for us, and concluded that we’d have been a sight safer carrying gold bullion.

They were decent men enough, as hard cases go, half of them bearded buckskineers, a few in faded Army blues, and all well-mounted and armed to the teeth with revolving pistols and rifles. Their top spark was a rangy, well-knit Ulsterman with sandy whiskers and a soft-spoken honey-comb voice; his name, he informed me, was Grattan Nugent-Hare, ‘with the hyphen, sir – which is a bit of a pose, don’t ye know, but I’m attached to it.’ There was a dark patch on his sleeve where chevrons had been; when he dismounted, it was like a seal sliding off a rock. Gentleman-ranker, thinks I, bog-Irish gentry, village school, seen inside Dublin Castle, no doubt, but no rhino for a commission. A very easy, likely lad, with a lazy smile and a long nose.

‘You were with Kearny,’ says I. ‘And before that?’

‘Tenth Hussars,’ says he, and I couldn’t help exclaiming: ‘Chainy Tenth!’ at which he opened his sleepy eyes a little wider. I could have bitten my fool tongue out.

‘Why, so it was. And you’re a naval gentleman, they tell me, Mr Comber – your pardon … captain, I should say.’ He nodded amiably. ‘Well, well – d’ye know, I’d ha’ put you down for cavalry yourself, by the set of the whiskers? I’d ha’ been adrift there, though, right enough.’

It gave me a turn; this was a sharp one. The last thing I wanted just then was an old British Army acquaintance – but I’d never known the Tenth except by name, which was a relief.

‘And how far west did you go with Kearny?’ I asked.

‘Gila River, thereabout … that was after Santa Fe, d’ye see? So it’s not new country to me, altogether. But I apprehend you’re all the way for California – with the ladies.’ And he glanced past me to where Susie was chivvying the tarts out of sight into the wagons. He grinned. ‘My stars, but they’re as bonny as fluffy little doe rabbits on the green, so they are.’

‘And that’s the way they’ll stay, Mr Nugent-Hare—’

‘Call me Grattan,’ says he, and grinned as he patted his pony’s muzzle. ‘I’m up the road ahead of you, Mr Comber. You were about to say, I think, that after a few weeks those boys of mine might feel the fever, and those charming little maids – if ye’ll forgive the term – would prove a temptation? Not at all, at all. They’ll be as safe as if they were in St Ursula’s.’ He tilted his hat back, not smiling now. ‘Believe me, if I didn’t know how to manage rascals like these – I wouldn’t be here, would I now?’

He was a cocksure one, this – but probably, I reflected, not without cause; the Army had left its stamp on him, all right. I reminded him that military discipline was one thing, and these were civilians, out on the plains.

He laughed pleasantly. ‘Military discipline be damned,’ says he. ‘It’s simple as shelling peas. If one of ’em so much as tips his tile to your young ladies, I’ll blow the bastard’s head off. And now, sir … the order of march … what would ye say to a point rider, a rearguard, two to a flank, and myself riding loose? If that would be agreeable … And you’ll be riding herd yourself? Quite so …’

If his nose hadn’t been quite so long, and his smile so open, it would have been a pleasure to do business with him. Still, he knew his work, and he was being well paid; captain or no captain, it struck me I might spend most of the trip lounging in the carriage after all.

However, when the great moment of starting came I was in the saddle, in full buckskin fig, for one has to show willing. With Wootton silent alongside, I led the way down the meadow and into the trees, and after us trundled the carriage, with Susie fanning herself like Cleopatra, and her nigger maid and cook perched behind, and then the eight big schooners, flanked by Nugent-Hare’s riders; their canvas covers were rolled up like furled sails in the spring sunshine, with the tarts sitting primly two by two; in the rear came the mules, with a couple of Mexican savaneros, the three-hundred-pound loads piled incredibly high and swaying perilously. It was a well-rutted trail, and the schooners rolled now and then, which caused some flutter and squeak among the girls, but I noticed that the guards – who might have taken the opportunity to render gallant assistance – barely glanced in their direction; perhaps Grattan was as strong a straw-boss as he made out, after all.

Once through the timber, we came out on the prairie itself, all bright with the early summer flowers, and I galloped ahead to a little hillock for a look-see. That’s a moment I remember still: behind lay the woods with the smoke haze rising from Westport; left and right, and as far ahead as the eye could see, was limitless rolling plain, dotted with clumps of oaks and bushes, the grass blowing gently in the breeze, and fleecy clouds against a blue sky that seemed to stretch forever. Below, the wagons crawled along the trail, its furrows running clear and straight to the far horizon, where you could just see the last wagon of the caravan ahead. And I absolutely laughed aloud – why, I can’t tell, except that in that moment I felt free and contented and full of hope, with my spirits bubbling as high as they’ve ever done in my life. Others, I know, have felt the same thing about starting on the trail west; there’s an exhilaration, a sense of leaving the old, ugly world behind, and that there’s something splendid waiting for you to go and find it, far out yonder. I wonder if I’d feel it now, or if it happens only when you’re young, and have no thought for the ill things that may lie along the way.

For it’s an illusion, you know – the start of the trail. Those first ten days lull you to sleep, as you roll gently down over that changeless plain, through the well-used camp-places to Council Grove, which is the great assembly point where little caravans like ours form themselves into regular wagon-trains for the long haul to the mountains – there! I’m writing in the present tense, as though it were all in front of me again. Well, it ain’t, thank God.

But it soon becomes dull; the only notable thing happened about the third day, when we came to a little stream and copse where there was a fairish assembly of wagons, and the trail divided – our fork continuing south-west, while the northern trail branched up towards the Kansas River, and then to the North Platte, and eventually to Oregon. As we were breaking camp, with several other California-bound parties, the Oregon folk were already setting out, and there was great badinage and cheering and singing as they got under way.

They were a serious lot, those Oregoners, being mostly farm folk intent on honest work – not like us California scamps off to the gold-fields. We were a raffish crew, but they were sober men and grim women, with never a tin pan or a rope out of place, everything lashed down hard and the kids peeping solemnly over the tailboards. They had an American flag on their lead wagon, and their captain was a bearded Nemesis in a tail coat, his harsh voice echoing down the mule lines: ‘One train, are ye set? Two train, are ye set?’ and every arriero sang out in turn, ‘All set! All set!’, which was the signal to go, for you don’t loaf about with a laden mule, and you don’t stop for a noon halt, either, or the brute will never start off again. So now it was ‘All set!’ and the whips cracked and the skinners yelled and the wheels groaned, and the great train rolled away and the mules plodded forward with their bells jingling, and all the California people yelled and waved their hats and hurrawed and fluttered their handkerchiefs and cried: ‘Good luck! Oregon or bust! Take care, and God bless you!’ and the like, and the Oregon folk waved back and began to sing a song that I’ve forgotten now, except that it went to the tune of ‘Greensleeves’ and was all about how the Lord would have a land of milk and honey flowing for His children, over there – and the women from the California wagons began to cry, and some of them hurried after the Oregoners, with their aprons kilted up, offering ’em last gifts of pies and cakes, and the children went scampering along after the wagons, whooping and cheering, except for the little ones, who stood with their fingers in their mouths staring at an old minister who sat astride a mule beside the trail and blessed the Oregon people, with his Bible held above his head. And the caravan wound over the ridge and out of sight, and there was a sudden stillness in the camp-site under the trees, and then someone said, well, better git started ourselves; come on, mother …

And they cheered up, for they were a jolly, carefree lot that went to California that year, with their wagons piled any old how with all sorts of rubbish that they thought might prove useful at the diggings, like patent tents and mackintosh boats (‘Gold-seekers, take heed! Our rubber boats and shelters are unsurpassed!! You cannot face the chill of the gold rivers without a rubber suit!!!’) and water-purifiers and amazingly fangled machinery for washing gold dust. And they didn’t sing any hymns about milk and honey and Canaan, either; no, sir, it was a very different anthem, plunked out on a banjo by a young chap in a striped vest, with his girl dancing impromptu on a packing-case, and everyone thumping the tailboards – I daresay you know the tune well enough, although it was new then, but I’ll be bound you don’t know the words the Forty-Niners sang:

I’ll scrape the mountains clean, my boys,

I’ll drain the rivers dry,

A pocketful of rocks bring home,

Susannah, don’t you cry!

Oh, Californey!

That’s the land for me,

I’m off to Sacramento

With my wash-bowl on my knee!

(omnes, fortissimo)

Oh, Susannah, don’t you cry for me,

I’m off to Sacramento

With my wash-bowl on my knee!

It was a raucous, ranting thing, but when I hear it now in imagination it’s just a ghostly drift down the wind, fading into a whisper. But it was hearty enough then, and we sang it all the way down to Council Grove.

I promised not to do a Gregg or Parkman, but I ought to tell you something of how we travelled.¹¹ When we camped at night, we set guards; Wootton insisted, but I was all for it anyway, for you must do things right from the start. Susie and I slept in the carriage, which was as comfortable as Owens had promised, and the tarts slept in two of the wagons close at hand. The drivers and guards had a couple of tents, although some preferred to doss down in the open. At breakfast and supper, and at the noon halt, Susie and I were waited on by her nigger servant, the tarts ate in their own wagons, and the guards messed at a discreet distance – oh, we were a proper little democracy, I can tell you. I suggested that we might have Grattan over for supper one night, since he was a bit of a gentleman, or had been, but Susie wouldn’t hear of it.

‘They’re our work-folk,’ says she, holding a chicken leg with her pinkie cocked, and guzzling down the burgundy (now I saw why we’d brought such an unconscionable lot of it). ‘If we encourage familiarity, they’ll just presume, an’ you know where that leads – you finish up ’avin’ to call in the militia to put ’em in their place, like New York.¹² Anyway, that Nugent-Thingummy looks a right sly smart alec to me; whatever ’e may say about lookin’ after my wenches, an’ keepin’ them randy guards at arm’s length, I’m glad I’ve got Marie an’ Stephanie on the cue vee.’

‘What’s this?’ says I, for I took a fatherly interest in the welfare of our fair charges.

‘Marie an’ Stephanie,’ says Susie, ‘would rat on their own mothers, an’ the other little trollops know it. So there’ll be no ’anky-panky – or if there is, I’ll soon ’ear of it. An’ Gawd ’elp the backslider; she won’t be able to sit down between ’ere an’ Sacramento, I promise you that.’

So two of the tarts were Susie’s pet spies, were they? That was useful to know – and lucky I’d found out before I’d done anything indiscreet. I could foresee circumstances where that knowledge might be useful.

One acquaintance that I did cultivate, though, on the quiet trek to Council Grove, was Uncle Dick Wootton. He was a strange case; after our first meeting he’d hardly said a word to me for days, and I wondered was he sulking, but I soon discovered it was just a pensive shyness; he kept very much to himself with new acquaintances, although he could be genial and even garrulous when he got to know you. He was younger than I’d thought, and quite presentable when he’d shaved. However, down to Council Grove he had no proper duties anyway; Grattan and I set the guards, and halts and starts seemed to determine themselves; when anything out of the way happened, like a river-crossing, the teamsters and guards saw to it, and since there were good fords and the weather was dry, all went smoothly enough.

So Wootton had no guiding to do, and he spent the time riding far out to flank, or some way ahead; he had a habit of vanishing for hours at a time, and once or twice I know he slipped out of camp at dusk only to reappear at dawn. He ate all on his own, looking out across the prairie with his back to camp; sometimes he would sit on a hill for hours at a time, looking about him, or wander silent round the wagons, checking a wheel or examining the mule-loads. I would catch his eye on me, occasionally, but he would turn aside and go off again, humming quietly to himself, for another prowl over the prairie.

Then one day just after a noon halt he trotted up to me and said: ‘Buffler, cap’n’, and I rode out with him a couple of miles to where a small herd of the beasts were grazing – the first I’d ever seen. I was for taking a shot at once, but he bade me hold on.

‘Got to pick a tender cow. Bull meat tough enough to build a shack, this time o’ summer. Now, see thar; you take a sight a half finger width down from the hump, an’ a finger from the nose, or she’ll cairry your lead away for ye. Gotta hit hyart or lungs. Now, cap’n; you blaze away.’

So I did, and the cow took off like a rocket, and ran quarter of a mile before she suddenly tumbled over, stone dead. ‘Gone under,’ says Wootton. ‘You shoot sweet’, and as he skinned the hump very expertly, and removed the choicest meat, he explained to me that a buffalo was damnably hard to kill, unless you hit it in a vital spot; I gathered I had gone up in his estimation.

I thought we would drag the carcase back to the caravan, but he shook his head, and set to roasting hump steaks over a fire. I’ve never tasted meat like that first buffalo-hump; there’s no beef to compare to it, and you can eat it without bread or vegetable, so delicious it is. Wootton also removed the intestines, and to my disgust grilled them gently by pulling them through the embers, whereafter he swallowed them in a great long string, like some huge piece of spaghetti. I watched him in horror – or rather, I didn’t watch him, for I couldn’t bear the grisly spectacle. Instead, I turned my head aside, and saw something infinitely worse.

Not twenty yards away, on the lip of a little grassy ridge looking down on the hollow where we’d built our fire, three Indians were sitting their ponies, watching us. I hadn’t heard them or had the least intimation of their approach; suddenly, there they were – and I realised that the wretched dirty creatures I’d seen at Westport, and scavenging round our train on the way down, were mere cartoon. These were the real thing, and my heart froze. The foremost was naked to the waist, with braided hair hanging to his belt, and what looked like a tail of coonskin round his brows; the face beneath it was a nightmare of hooked nose and rat-trap mouth crossed by stripes of yellow paint. There were painted signs on his naked chest, and his only clothing was a white breech-clout and fringed leggings that came to his knees. He had a rifle across his saddle and carried a long lance tufted with buffalo hair – at least, I hoped it was buffalo hair. The other two were no better; they had feathers in their hair, and their faces were painted half red and white; they carried bows and hatchets, and like their leader they were big, active, vicious-looking sons-of-bitches. But what truly scared me stiff was their sudden apparition, and the silent dreadful menace in the still figures as they watched.

I suppose it took me a couple of seconds to recover – but as my hand went to my pistol Wootton’s fingers closed on my wrist.

‘Set froze, cap’n,’ says he softly. ‘Brulé Sioux. Friendly … kind of.’

A fine reassurance, but Wootton seemed untroubled – you’ll notice that even with his back turned he knew they were there, and what they were. Now he turned his head and called to them, and after a moment they dismounted and came slowly down to us. They looked even wickeder at close quarters, but they squatted down, and the leader raised a hand to Wootton and grunted something that sounded like a mortal insult, but was presumably a greeting. Wootton responded, while I sat stone still and kept my hand close to my pistol-butt, nonchalant-like – which ain’t easy with the fiend incarnate hunkered down a yard away, glaring with basilisk eyes out of a mask of paint, and you’re uncomfortably aware that he’s a muscular six feet of oiled and smelly savagery, with a hatchet like a polished razor on his hip.

He and Wootton grunted some more at each other, and presently Wootton introduced us. ‘This hyar Spotted Tail,’ says he. ‘Big brave.’ How-de-do, says I, and to my surprise he shook hands, and made a noise between a snarl and a belch which I took for civility. While he and Wootton talked, I studied the other two – if I’d known that the red dots on their feathers signified enemies killed, and the notches stood for cut throats, I’d have been even uneasier than I was. For that matter, Spotted Tail himself had five eagle feathers slanted through his pigtail; each one, I learned later, stood for a scalp taken.¹³

Wootton was plainly asking questions, and the Indian answered with his slow grunts, accompanied by much deliberate gesture – mighty graceful it was, too, and expressive. Even I could tell when he was talking of buffalo, just by the rippling motion of his hand, so like a bison herd seen from far off; a gesture which I noticed he repeated more than once was a quick cutting motion with his right fingers across his left wrist, which I later learned meant ‘Cheyenne’, whose nickname is ‘Cut Arms’.¹⁴ Then Wootton invited them to join him in his awful mess of buffalo guts, and much to the amusement of the other two, he and Spotted Tail had a nauseating contest in which each took an end of an immensely long intestine and gobbled away to see who could down the most of it. The Indian won – I spare you a close description, observing only that they swallowed whole, without chewing, and Spotted Tail, by suddenly jerking his head back, regained a fair amount that Wootton had already eaten!¹⁵

There being no dessert, I gave each of the three a cigar, at Wootton’s prompting. They ate them, and presently went off, taking the remains of our buffalo carcase without a by-your-leave; I’ve never been happier to get rid of dinner guests, and said so.

‘I seen thar sign last night, an’ figgered they’d show today. Huntin’ party – fust time I ever see Brulés east o’ the Neosho,’ says Wootton. ‘In course, they dog the buffler – but since they say tharselves that thar’s heap big herds all along th’ Arkansas, my guess is thar takin’ a lick at the Pawnees. That a powerful lather o’ vermillion thar wearin’, fer hunters – an’ I read sign o’ fifty ponies last evenin’. Yup. I rackon thar be a few Pawnees talkin’ to th’old gennelman ’fore long.’

Which meant the Pawnees would be dead and in hell. But were the Sioux liable to attack us? Wootton considered this long enough to give me the shudders.

‘Cain’t say, prezackly. Spotted Tail has a straight tongue; then agin, Sioux kin be mean varmints – ’thout I wuz here, they’d ha’ had yore hoss an’ traps for sho’, mebbe yore ha’r, too. But I guess tha’r peaceable ’nuff. Uh-huh. Mebbe.’

Now, this had me in a rare sweat. I don’t suppose until that day I’d given Indians a thought, not seriously – it had been such a pleasant jaunt so far, and everyone in Westport had been so jolly and confident, and we still weren’t more than a few days away from civilisation, with its steamboats and stores and soldiers. And then, suddenly, those three painted devils had been there – and they were the peaceable ones, Wootton reckoned – and there were a thousand miles of wilderness between us and Santa Fe, crawling with tribes of the dangerous bastards who might be anything but peaceable. Stories and rumours and tall tales – you can take those with a pinch of salt, and remind yourself that your caravan is well-armed and guarded. And then you see the living peril, in its hideous paint and feathers, and your dozen rifles and revolvers and eight frail wagons seem like a cork bobbing out on a raging ocean.

So I put it to him straight – what were our chances of winning as far as Santa Fe without serious … interference? Not that it could make a dam’ bit of difference to me now – I was launched, and I daren’t have headed back to be hunted in the Mississippi valley. He scratched his head, and asked me if I had my map.

‘Look thar,’ says he. ‘Clar across to th’ Arkansas we kin rest pretty easy – Spotted Tail sez thar plenty Cheyenne an’ ’Rapaho lodges at Great Bend, an’ thar not hostile, fer sartin. But he talk of Navajo, Cumanche, Kiowa war-parties in the Cimarron country to th’ west – sez thar be ’Pashes up as fur as th’ Canadian, an’ Utes on the Picketwire. Even talk o’ Bent an’ St Vrain leavin’ the Big Lodge. I b’leeve thet when I see it. But it’s all onsartin; we cain’t tell hyar.’

Jesus, thinks I, so much for our picnic on the Plains. But he cheered me up by remarking that Spotted Tail might be lying, it being well known that no Indian told the truth unless he couldn’t avoid it;¹⁶ also, we would be part of a much larger caravan from Council Grove onwards, and too powerful for any but a very large and reckless war-party.

‘We see when we git ter the sojers’ new place, at Fort Mann. Then we tek a sniff at the wind, an’ decide whether we go across the Cimarron Road ter Sand Crik an’ th’ Canadian, or cairry on west fer Bent’s and down th’ Ratone.’ He raised the blue eyes and suddenly smiled. ‘Made the trip ter Santy Fee more times ’n he recollects, this chile has. An’ ev’y time he got thar – an’ cum back. If he cain’t make it agin this time, cap’n, he kin slide!’¹⁷

There were three caravans waiting when we reached Council Grove, which proved to be simply a wood with a few shacks and a stable for the new stagecoach line. One of the caravans was a twenty-wagon affair of young fellows, Eastern clerks and labourers, calling themselves the Pittsburgh Pirates; another was a train of some thirty mules and half a dozen emigrant families, also bound for the diggings; the third – and you may not believe this, but it’s gospel true – consisted of two ancient travelling carriages and a dozen middle-aged and elderly valetudinarians from Cincinnati who were making a trip across the Plains for their health. They had weak chests, and the pure air of the prairies would do them good, they said, clinging to their hot water bottles and mufflers and throat sprays as they said it.¹⁸ Well, thinks I, captaining a brothel on wheels may be eccentric, but this beats all.

Wootton thought that among us we made a pretty fair train – not as many guns as he would have liked, for the young fellows had set off in the crazy, thoughtless spirit that so many seemed to be possessed by in ’49, and had only about a score of weapons among them, and the emigrant families, although well-armed and with four guards, were few in numbers. The invalids had one fat drunkard of a driver with a flintlock musket; if attacked, they presumably intended to beat off the enemy by hurling steam-kettles and medicine bottles at them. Our own caravan had more firepower and discipline and general good order than all the rest put together, so they hailed us as they might salvation – and elected me captain of the whole frightful mess. My own fault for being so damned dashing in my buckskin shirt and whiskers, no doubt; look the part, and you’ll be cast in it. I demurred, modestly, but there was no competition, and one of the Pittsburgh Pirates settled the thing by haranguing his fellows from a tailboard, crying that weren’t they in luck, just, for here was Captain Comber, by cracky, who’d commanded a battleship in Her Majesty’s English Navy, and fought the Ayrabs in India, and was just the man whose unrivalled experience and cool judgment would get everyone safe to California, wasn’t that so? So I was elected by acclamation – none of your undignified running for office¹⁹ – and I read them a stern lecture about trail discipline and obeying orders and digging latrines and keeping up and all the rest of it, and they shook their heads because they could see I was just the man for the job.

Susie, of course, was well-pleased; it was fitting, she said. Wootton knew perfectly well that he was going to see the caravan through, anyway, and Grattan and our crew were all for it, since it meant we could take the van, and wouldn’t have to eat the others’ dust. So that was how we headed into the blue, Flashy’s caravan of whores and optimists and bronchial patients and frontiersmen and plain honest-to-goodness fortune-seekers – I don’t say we were a typical wagon-train of ’49, but I shouldn’t be surprised.

Now, I promised to skip the tedious bits, so I’ll say only of the prairie trek in general that it takes more weeks than I can remember, is damnably dull, and falls into two distinct parts in my memory – the first bit, when you haven’t reached the Arkansas River, and just trudge on, fifteen miles a day or thereabouts, over a sea of grass and bushes and prairie weeds, and the second bit, when you have reached the Arkansas, and trudge on exactly as before, the only difference being that now you have one of the ugliest rivers in the world on your left flank, broad and muddy and sluggish. Mind you, it’s a welcome sight, in a dry summer, and you’re thankful to stay close by it; thirst and hunger have probably killed more emigrants than any other cause.

There’s little to enliven the journey, though. River-crossings are said to be the worst part, but with the water low in the creeks we had little trouble; apart from that we sighted occasional Indian bands, and a few of them approached us in search of whatever they could mooch; there were a couple of scares when they tried to run off our beasts, but Grattan’s fellows shot a couple of them – Pawnees, according to Wootton – and I began to feel that perhaps my earlier fears were groundless. Once the mailcoach passed us, bound for Santa Fe, and a troop of dragoons came by from Fort Mann, which was being built at that time; for the rest, the most interesting thing was the litter of gear from trains that had passed ahead of us – it was like all the left-luggage offices in the world strewn out for hundreds of miles. Broken wagons, traces, wheels, bones of dead beasts, household gear and empty bottles were the least of it; I also remember a printing-press, a ship’s figurehead of a crowned mermaid, a grand piano (that was the one stuck on a mudbank at the Middle Crossings, which Susie played to the delight of the company, who held an impromptu barn-dance on the bank), a kilt, and twelve identical plaster statues of the Venus de Milo. You think I’m making it up? – check the diaries and journals of the folk who crossed the Plains, and you’ll see that this isn’t the half of it.

But it was always too hot or too wet or too dusty or too cold (especially at nights), and before long I was heartily sick of it. I rode a good deal of the time, but often I would sit in the carriage with Susie, and her chatter drove me to distraction. Not that she moped, or was ill-tempered; in fact, the old trot was too damned bright and breezy for me, and I longed for Sacramento and goodbye, my dear. And in one respect, she didn’t travel well; we beat the mattress regularly as far as Council Grove and a bit beyond, but after that her appetite for Adam’s Arsenal seemed to jade a trifle; nothing was said, but what she didn’t demand she didn’t get, and when I took to sleeping outside – for the coach could be damned stuffy – she raised no objection, and that became my general rule. I gave her a gallop every so often, to keep her in trim, but as you will readily believe, my thoughts had long since turned elsewhere – viz., to the splendid selection of fresh black batter that was going to waste on our two lead wagons. Indeed, I’d thought of little else since we left Orleans; the question was how to come at it.

You’ve learned enough of our travel arrangements to see how difficult it was; indeed, if I had to choose the most inconvenient place I’ve ever struck for conducting an illicit amour in privacy and comfort, a prairie wagon-train would come second on my list, no question. An elephant howdah during a tiger-hunt is middling tough; centre stage during amateur theatricals would probably strike you as out of court altogether, in Gloucestershire, anyway, but it’s astonishing what you can do in a pantomime horse. No, the one that licked me was a lifeboat – after a shipwreck, that is. But a wagon-train ain’t easy; however, when you’ve committed the capital act, as I have, in the middle of a battle with Borneo head-hunters, you learn to have faith in your star, and persevere until you win through.

My first chance came by pure luck, somewhere between Council Grove and the Little Arkansas. We’d made an evening halt and laagered, as usual, and I had wandered out a little piece for a smoke in the dusk, when who should come tripping across the meadow but Aphrodite, humming to herself, as usual – she was the big shiny black one who’d spotted me that day back in New Orleans; I’d thought then that she was one of those to whom business is always a pleasure, and I was right. What she was doing so far from the wagons unchaperoned by one of her sisters in shame, I didn’t inquire; you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, or a gift mare, either.

She stopped short at sight of me, and I saw the eyes widen in that fine ebony face; she glanced quickly towards the distant wagons, where the fires were flickering, and then stood head down, shooting me little glances sidelong, scared at first, and then smoky, as she realised that, however terrible Susie might be, it might be no bad thing to satisfy the lovelight in Massa’s eye. I nodded to a dry buffalo wallow under some nearby bushes, and without a word she began to undo her bonnet strings, very slow, biting her lip and shaking her hair. Then she sauntered down into the wallow, and when I came ravening after her, pushed me off, playful-like, murmuring: ‘Wait, Mistah Beachy; jus’ you wait, now.’ So I did, while she slipped off her dress and stood there naked, hands on hips, turning this way and that, and pouting over her shoulder. She was well-named Aphrodite, with those long black, tapering legs and rounded rump and lissom waist, and when she turned to face me, wriggling her torso – well, I’ve never looked at a pumpkin since without thinking: buffalo wallow. Pretty teeth she had, too, gleaming in that dusky face – and she knew how to use them. I drew her down and we went to work sidestroke-like, while she nibbled and bit at my ears and chin and lips, gasping and shuddering like the expert trollop she was; I remember thinking, as she gave her final practised heave and sob, Susie was right: with another nineteen like this we’ll be able to buy California after a year or two; maybe I’ll stay about for a while.

She was too much the whore for me, though; once was enough, and although she shot me a few soulful-sullen looks in the weeks that followed, I didn’t use her again. I’m not just an indiscriminate rake, you see; I like to be interested in a woman in a way that is not merely carnal, to find out new fascinations in her with each encounter, those enchanting, mysterious, indefinable qualities, like the shape of her tits. And having studied the other nineteen, as opportunity served, weighing this attraction against that, considering such vital matters as which ones would be liable to run squealing to Susie, and which were probably the randiest, I found my mind and eye returning invariably to the same delectable person. There wasn’t one among ’em that wouldn’t have turned the head of the most jaded roué – trust Susie for that – but there was one who could have brought me back for a twentieth helping, and that was Cleonie.

For one thing, she had style, in the way that Montez and Alice Keppel and Ko Dali’s daughter and Cassy and Lakshmibai, and perhaps three others that I could name, had it – it’s the thing which, allied with ambition and sense, can give a woman dominion over kings and countries. (Thank God my Elspeth never had the latter qualities; she’d not have married me, for one thing. But Elspeth is different, and always will be.)

Also Cleonie was a lady – and if you think a whore can’t be that, you’re wrong. She was educated – convent-bred, possibly – and spoke perfect English and better French, her manners were impeccable, and she was as beautiful as only a high-bred octoroon fancy can be, with a figurehead like St Cecilia and a body that would have brought a stone idol howling off its pedestal. Altogether fetching – and intelligent enough to be persuadable, in case she had any doubts about accommodating de massa wid de muffstash on his face. But I would have to go to work subtly and delicately; Spring’s pal Agag would have nothing on me.

So I bided my time, and established a habit of occasionally talking, offhand, to various of the tarts, in full view of everyone, so that if I were seen having a few words with Cleonie, no one would think it out of the way. I did it pretty stiff and formal, very much the Master, and even remarked to Susie how this one or that was looking, and how Claudia would be the better of a tonic, or Eugenie was eating too much. She didn’t seem to mind; in fact, I gathered she was pleased that I was taking a proprietorial interest in the livestock. Then I waited until one noon halt, when Cleonie went down to the river by herself – she was perhaps the least gregarious of them all, which was all to the good – and loafed along to where she was breaking twigs and tossing them idly into the stream.

When she saw me she straightened up and dropped me a little curtsey, preparing to withdraw. We were screened by the bushes, so I took her by the arm as she went past; she gave a little start, and then turned that lovely nun’s face towards me, without fear, or any emotion at all that I could see. I took her gently by the two braids of hair that depended from that oddly attractive centre parting, and kissed her on the lips. She didn’t move, so I kept my mouth there and slipped a hand on to her breast, to give her the idea. Then I stepped back, to gauge her reaction; she stood looking at me, one slim hand up to her lips where mine had been, and then turned her head in that languid duchess fashion and said the last thing I’d have expected.

‘And Aphrodite?’

I almost jumped out of my skin. I gargled some intelligent inquiry, and she smiled and looked up at me from under her lids.

‘Has Master tired of her? She will be disappointed. She—’

‘Aphrodite,’ says I, distraught, ‘had better shut her big black gob, hadn’t she? What’s she been saying, the lying slut?’

‘Why, that Master took her, and made much of her.’

‘Christ! Look here – do Marie and Stephanie know?’

‘We all know – that is, if Aphrodite is to be believed.’ She gave me an inquiring look, still with that tiny smile. ‘I, myself, would have thought she was rather … black … and heavy, for Master’s taste. But some men prefer it, I know.’ She gave a little shrug. ‘Others …’ She left it there, waiting.

I was taken all aback, but one thing was foremost. ‘What about Stephanie and Marie? I thought—’

‘That they were Mistress’s sneaks?’ She nodded. ‘They are … little tell-tales! And if it had been anyone but Master, they would have told her right away. But they would not readily offend you … none of us would,’ and she lowered her lids; her lips quivered in amusement. ‘Stephanie is very jealous – even more than the rest of us … if that is possible.’ And she gave me a look that was pure whore; by George, I tingled as if I’d been stung. ‘But I should not stay here,’ and she was making past me when I caught her arm again.

‘Now look here, Cleonie,’ says I. ‘You’re a good girl, I see … so at the evening halt, you follow me down to the river – carefully, mind – and we’ll … have a little talk. And you tell the others that … that if anyone blabs, it will be the worse for them, d’you hear?’ I almost added the threat I’d prepared in case she’d been difficult: that if she didn’t play pretty I’d tell Susie she’d made advances to me. But I guessed it wasn’t necessary.

‘Yes, Master Beauchamp,’ says she, very demure, and turned her head languidly. ‘And Aphrodite?’

‘To hell with Aphrodite!’ says I, and took hold of her, nuzzling. She gave a little laugh and whispered: ‘She smells so! Does she not?’ And then she slipped out of my grasp and was away.

Well, here was capital news, and no mistake. Jealous of Aphrodite, were they? And why not, the dear creatures? Mark you, while I’ve never been modest about my manly charms, I could see now what it was: they were a sight more concerned to be in my good books than in Susie’s – being green wenches, they supposed that I would be calling the tune henceforth, and no doubt they figured it was worth the risk of her displeasure to keep in with me. That was all they knew. In the meantime, Miss Cleonie was obviously more than willing, and they’d never dare to peach … on that score, would it be a good notion to scare ’em sick by telling Susie that Aphrodite had tried to seduce me? Susie would flog the arse off her, which would be fine encouragement pour les autres to keep their traps shut. On t’other hand, Aphrodite would certainly tell the truth of it, and Susie just might believe her; it would sow a seed for sure. No, best leave it, and make hay with my high-yaller fancy while the sun shone.

And I did. She was a smart girl, and since I was sleeping out most of the time, it was the simplest thing for her to slip over the tailboard in the small hours, creep into my little tent, and roger the middle watch away. We were very discreet – not more than twice a week, which was just as well, for she was an exhausting creature, probably because I was more than a mite infatuated with her. The plague was, it all had to be in the dark, and I do like to see the materials when I’m working; she had a skin like velvet, and poonts as firm as footballs with which she would play the most astonishing tricks; it was a deuced shame that we couldn’t risk a light.

But her most endearing trait was that while we performed, she would sing – in the softest of whispers, of course, with her mouth to my ear as we surged up and down. This was a new one to me, I’ll own: Lola and her hair-brush, Mrs Mandeville and her spurs, Ranavalona swinging uppercuts and right crosses – I’d experienced a variety of bizarre behaviour from females in the throes of passion. (My darling Elspeth, now, gossiped incessantly.) With Cleonie, it was singing; a lullaby to begin with, perhaps, followed by a waltz, and the ‘Marche Lorraine’, and finishing with the ‘Marseillaise’ – or, if she was feeling mischievous, ‘Swanee River’.²⁰ Thank God she didn’t know any Irish jigs.

She was an excellent conversationalist, by the way, and I learned things (in whispers) which explained a good deal. One was that the whores were by no means in mortal dread of Susie, who had never caned one of ’em in her life, for all her stern talk. (The one who’d been sold downriver had been a habitual thief.) Indeed, they held her in deep respect and affection, and I gathered that being bought for her bordello was a matter of close competition among the Orleans fancies, and about as difficult as getting into the Household Brigade. No, the one they were in terror of, apparently, was – me. ‘You look so fierce and stern,’ Cleonie told me, ‘and talk so … so shortly to the other girls. Aphrodite says you used her most brutally. Me, I said, mais naturellement, how else would Master use an animal? – with females of refinement, I told her, he is of an exquisite gentleness and tender passion.’ She sighed contentedly. ‘Ah, but they are jealous of me, those others – and yet they cannot hear enough about you. What? But of course I tell them! What would you? Scholars talk about books, bankers about money, soldiers about war – what else should our profession talk about?’

Never thought of that; still, even if she was delivering a series of lectures on Flashy et Ars Amatoria to her colleagues, I can say that I had an enchanting affair with Cleonie, grew extremely fond of her, and place her about seventh or eighth in my list of eligible females – which ain’t bad, out of several hundreds.

But it wasn’t all recreation along the Arkansas that year. I beguiled the long hours of trekking with Wootton, whose lore included a fair fluency in the Sioux language, and the Mexican savaneros²¹ who had charge of our mules, and naturally spoke Spanish. As I’ve already said, I’m a good linguist – Burton, who was no slouch himself, said that I could dip a toe in a language and walk away soaked – and since I had some Spanish already, I got pretty fluent. But Siouxan, although it’s a lovely, liquid language, is best learned from a native Indian, and Wootton taught me only a little. Thank heaven for the gift of tongues, for a few words can mean the difference between life and death – especially out West.

Of course, things were going far too well to last. Aside from our first alarming meeting with the Brulés, and the night scare with the Pawnees – which I slept through – we’d had nothing worse than broken axles by the time we got to Fort Mann, the new military post which lay in the middle of nowhere on the Arkansas, about half way to Santa Fe by the shortest route. That was where the trouble started.

For the past week we had become aware of increasing numbers of Indians along our line of march. There had been, as Wootton predicted, villages of Cheyenne and Arapaho near the Great Bend, but they’d mostly been on the southern bank, and we had kept clear of them, although they were reputedly friendly. We would see parties of them on the skyline, and once we met a whole tribe on the move, heading south across our line of march. We halted to let them go by, a huge disorderly company, the men on horses, the women trudging along, all their gear dragged on the travois poles which churned up the dust in a choking cloud, a herd of mangy ponies behind being urged on by half-naked boys, and cur dogs yapping on the flanks. They were a poor, ugly-looking lot, and their rank stench carried a good half-mile.

There were more camped about Fort Mann, and Wootton went out to talk to them when we laagered. He came back looking grim, and took me aside; it seemed that the party he’d talked to were Cheyenne from a great camp some miles beyond the river; there was a terrible sickness among them, and they had come to the fort for help. But there was no doctor at the fort, and in despair they had asked Wootton, whom they knew, for assistance.

‘We can’t do anything,’ says I. ‘What, doctor a lot of sick Indians? We’ve nothing but jallup and sulphur, and it’d be poor business wasting it on a pack of savages. Anyway, God knows what foul infection they’ve got – it might be plague!’

‘’Pears it’s a big gripe in their innards,’ says he. ‘No festerin’ sores, nuthin’ thataway. But thar keelin’ over in windrows, the chief say. En he reckons we got med’cine men in our train who cud—’

‘Who, in God’s name? Not our party of invalids? Christ, they couldn’t cure a chilblain – they can’t even look after themselves! They’ve been wheezing and hawking all the way from Council Grove!’

‘Cheyenne don’t know that – but they see th’ gear en implements on the coaches. See them coons doctorin’ tharselves with them squirt-machines. They want ’em doctor thar people, too.’

‘Well, tell ’em we can’t, dammit! We’ve got to get on; we can’t afford to mess with sick Indians!’

He gave me the full stare of those blue eyes. ‘Cap’n – we cain’t ’fford not to. See, hyar’s the way on’t. Cheyenne ’bout the only real friendlies on these yar Plains – ’thout them, ifn they die or go ’way, we get bad Injun trouble. That the best side on’t. At wust – we give ’em the go-by, they don’t fergit. Could be we even hev ’em ki-yickin’ roun’ our waggons wi’ paint on – en thar’s three thousand on ’em ’cross the river, en Osage an’ ’Rapaho ter boot. That a pow’ful heap o’ Injun, cap’n.’

‘But we can’t help them! We’re not doctors, man!’

‘They kin see us tryin’,’ says he.

There was no arguing with him, and I’d have been a fool to try; he knew Indians and I didn’t. But I was adamant against going down to their camp, which would be reeking with their bloody germs – let them bring one of their sick to the far bank of the river, and if it would placate them for one of our invalids to look at him, or put up a prayer, or spray him with carbolic, or dance in circles round him, so be it. But I told him to impress on them that we were not doctors, and could promise no cure.

‘They best hyar it f’m you,’ says he. ‘You big chief, wagon-captain.’ And he was in dead earnest, too.

So now you see Big Chief Wagon-Captain, standing before a party of assorted nomads, palavering away with a few halting Sioux phrases, but Wootton translating most of the time, while I nodded, stern but compassionate. And I wasn’t acting, either; one look at this collection and I took Wootton’s point. They were the first Cheyenne I’d ever seen close to, and if the Brulé Sioux had been alarming, these would have put the fear of God up Wellington. On average, they were the biggest Indians I ever saw, as big as I am – great massive-shouldered brutes with long braided hair and faces like Roman senators, and even in their distress, proud as grandees. We went with them to the river bank, taking the Major commanding the fort in tow, and the most active and intelligent of our invalids – he was a hobbling idiot, but all for it; let him at the suffering heathen, and if it was asthma or bronchitis (which it plainly wasn’t) he’d have them skipping like goats in no time. Then we waited, and presently a travois was dragged up on the far bank, and Wootton and I and the invalid, with the Cheyenne guiding the way, crossed the ford and mud-flats, and the invalid took a look at the young Indian who was lying twitching on the travois, feebly clutching at his midriff. Then he raised a scared face to me.

‘I don’t know,’ says he. ‘It looks as though he has food poisoning, but I fear … they had an epidemic back East, you know. Perhaps it’s … cholera.’

That was enough for me. I ordered the whole party back to our side of the river and told Wootton that right, reason or none, we weren’t meddling any further.

‘Tell them it’s a sickness we know, but we can’t cure it. Tell them it’s … oh, Christ, tell ’em it’s from the Great Spirit or something! Tell them to get every well person away from their camp – that there’s nothing they can do. Tell ’em to go south, and to boil their water, and … and, I don’t know, Uncle Dick. There’s nothing we can do for them – except get as far away from them as we can.’

He told them, while I racked my brain for a suitable gesture. They heard him in silence, those half-dozen Cheyenne elders, their faces like stone, and then they looked at me, and I did my best to look full of manly sympathy, while I was thinking, Jesus, don’t let it spread to us, for I’d seen it in India, and I knew what it could do. And we had no doctors, and no medicines.

‘I told ’em our hearts are on the ground,’ says Wootton.

‘Good for you,’ says I, and then I faced them and spread my arms wide, palms up, and the only thing I could think of was ‘For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful, for Christ’s sake, amen.’ Well, their tribe was dying, so what the hell was there to say?²²

It seemed to be the right thing. Their chief, a splendid old file with silver dollars in his braids, and a war-bonnet of feathers trailing to his heels, raised his head to me; he had a chin and nose like the prow of a cruiser, and furrows in his cheeks you could have planted crops in. Two great tears rolled down his cheeks, and then he lifted a hand in salute and turned away in silence, and the others with him. I heaved a great sigh of relief, and Wootton scratched his head and said:

‘They satisfied, I rackon. We done the best thing.’

We hadn’t. Two days later, as we were rolling up to the crossing at Chouteau’s Island, four people in the caravan came down with cholera. Two of them were young men in the Pittsburgh Pirates company; a third was a woman among the emigrant families. The fourth was Wootton.

I’m well aware that, as the poet says, every man’s death diminishes us; I would add only that some diminish us a damned sight more than others, and they’re usually the fellows we took for granted, without ever realising how desperately we depended on them. One moment they’re about, as merry as grigs, and all’s as well as could be, and the next they’ve rolled over and started drumming their heels. And it hits you like a thunderbolt: this ain’t any ordinary misfortune, it’s utter catastrophe. That’s when you learn the true meaning of grief – not for the dear departed, but for yourself.

Wootton didn’t actually depart, thank heaven, but I’ve never seen a human being so close to the edge. He hovered for three days, by which time he was wasted as a corpse, and as I gazed down at him shivering in his buffalo robe after he’d vomited out his innards for the twentieth time, it seemed he might as well have gone over, for all the use he would be to us. The spark was flickering so low that we didn’t dare even move him, and it would plainly be weeks before he could sit a pony, assuming he didn’t pop off in the meantime. And we daren’t wait; already we had barely enough grub to take us to Bent’s, or the big cache on the Cimarron; there wasn’t a sign of another caravan coming up behind, and to crown all, the game had vanished from the prairie, as it does, unaccountably, from time to time. We hadn’t seen a buffalo since Fort Mann.

But grub wasn’t the half of our misfortunes; the stark truth was that without Wootton we were lost souls, and the dread sank into me as I realised it.

Without him, we didn’t have a brain; we were lacking something even more vital than rations or ammunition: knowledge. Twice, for example, we might have had Indian mischief but for him; his presence had been enough to make the Brulés let us alone, and his wisdom had placated the Cheyenne when I might have turned ’em hostile. Without Wootton, we couldn’t even talk properly to Indians, for Grattan’s guards and the teamsters, who’d looked so useful back at Westport, were just gun-toters and mule-skinning louts with no more real understanding of the Plains than I had; Grattan himself had made the trip before, but under orders, not giving ’em, and with seasoned guides showing the way. Half a dozen times, when grazing had been bad, Wootton had known where to find it; without him, our beasts could perish because we wouldn’t know there was good grass just over the next hill. If we hit a two-day dust-storm and lost the trail; if we missed the springs on the south road; if we lost time in torrential rain; if hostiles crossed our path – Wootton could have found the trail again, wouldn’t have missed the springs, would have known where there was a cache, or the likelihood of game, would have sniffed the hostiles two days ahead and either avoided them or known how to manage them. There wasn’t a man in the caravan, now, who could do any of these things.

He had lucid moments, on the third day, though he was still in shocking pain and entirely feeble. He would hole up where he was, he whispered, but we must push on, and if he got better he would make after us. I told him the other sick would stay with him – for one thing, we daren’t risk infection by carrying them with us – and the stricken woman’s husband and brothers would take care of them. We would leave a wagon and beasts and sufficient food. I don’t know if he understood; he had only one thing in his mind, and croaked it out painfully, his skin waxen and his eyes like piss-holes in the snow.

‘Make fer Bent’s … week, ten days mebbe. Don’t … take … Cimarron road … lose trail … You make Bent’s. St Vrain … see you … pretty good. ’Member … not Cimarron. Poor bull²³ … thataways …’ He closed his eyes for several minutes, and then looked at me again. ‘You git … train … through. You … wagon-cap’n …’

Then he lost consciousness, and began to babble – none of it more nonsensical than the last three words he’d said while fully conscious. Wagon-captain! And it was no consolation at all to look about me at our pathetic rabble of greenhorns and realise that there wasn’t another man as fit for the job. So I gave the order to yoke up and break out, and within the hour we were creaking on up the trail, and as I looked back at the great desolation behind us, and the tiny figures beside the sick wagon by the river’s edge, I felt such a chill loneliness and helplessness as I’ve seldom felt in my life.

Now you’ll understand that these were not emotions shared by my companions. None of them had seen as much of Wootton as I had, or appreciated how vitally we relied on him; Grattan probably knew how great a loss he was, but to the rest I had always been the wagon-captain, and they trusted me to see them through. That’s one of the disadvantages of being big and bluff and full of swagger – folk tend to believe you’re as good a man as you look. Mind you, I’ve been trading on it all my life, with some success, so I can’t complain, but there’s no denying that it can be an embarrassment sometimes, when you’re expected to live up to your appearance.

So there was nothing for it now but to play the commander to the hilt, and it was all the easier because most of them were in a great sweat to get on – the farther they could leave the cholera behind them, the better they’d like it. And it was simple enough so long as all went well; I had taken a good inventory of our supplies during the three days of waiting to see whether Wootton would live or die, and reckoned that by going to three-quarter rations we should make Bent’s Fort with a little to spare. By the map it couldn’t be much over 120 miles, and we couldn’t go adrift so long as we kept to the river … provided nothing unforeseen happened – such as the grazing disappearing, or a serious change in the weather, or further cases of cholera, or distemper among the animals. Or Indians.

For two days it went smooth as silk – indeed, we made better than the usual dozen to fifteen miles a day, partly because it never rained and the going was easy, partly because I pushed them on for all I was worth. I was never out of the saddle, from one end of the train to the other, badgering them to keep up, seeing to the welfare of the beasts, bullyragging the guards to keep their positions on the flanks – and all the time with my guts churning as I watched the skyline, dreading the sight of mounted figures, or the tiny dust-cloud far across the plain that would herald approaching enemies. Even at night I was on the prowl, in nervous terror as I stalked round the wagons – and keeping mighty close to them, you may be sure – before returning to my tent to rattle my fears away with Cleonie. She earned her com, no error – for there’s nothing like it for distracting the attention from other cares, you know; I even had a romp with Susie, for my comfort more than hers.

Aye, it went too well, for the rest of the train never noticed the difference of Wootton’s absence, and since it had been an easy passage from Council Grove, they never understood what a parlous state we would be in if anything untoward arose now. The only thing they had to grumble at was the shorter commons, and when we came to the Upper Crossing on the third day, the damfools were so drugged with their false sense of security that they made my reduction in rations an excuse for changing course. As though having to make do with an ounce or two less of corn and meat each day mattered a curse against the safety of the entire expedition. Yet that is what happened; on the fourth morning I was confronted by a deputation of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Their spokesman was a brash young card in a cutaway coat with his thumbs hooked in his galluses.

‘See here, captain,’ says he, ‘it’s near a hundred miles to Bent’s Fort – why, that’s another week with empty bellies! Now, we know that if we cross the river on the Cimarron road, there’s the big cache that Mr Wootton spoke of – and it’s less than thirty miles away. Well, me and the boys are for heading for it; it’ll mean only two more days of going short, and then we can replenish with all the grub we want! And everyone knows it’s the short way to Santa Fe – what d’you say, captain?’

‘I say you’re going to Bent’s.’

‘Why so? What’s the point in five days o’ discomfort?’

‘You ain’t in discomfort,’ says I. ‘And your bellies aren’t empty – but they would be if we went the Cimarron road. We’re going to Bent’s as agreed; for one thing, it’s safer.’

‘Who says that, now?’ cries this barrack-room lawyer, and his mates muttered and swore; other folk began to cluster round, and I saw I must scotch this matter on the spot.

‘I say it, and I’ll tell you why. If we were fool enough to leave the river, we could be astray in no time. It’s desert over yonder, and if you lose the trail you’ll die miserably—’

‘Ain’t no reason ter lose the trail,’ cries a voice, and to my fury I saw it was one of Grattan’s guards, a buckskinned brute called Skate. ‘I bin thataways on the cut-off; trail’s as plain as yer hand.’ At which the Pittsburgh oafs hurrahed and clamoured at me.

‘We’re going to Bent’s!’ I barked, and they gave back. ‘Now, mark this – suppose the trail was as good as this fellow says – which I doubt – does anyone know where Wootton’s cache is? No, and you’d never find it; they don’t make ’em with finger-posts, you know. And if you did, you’d discover it contained precious little but jerked meat and beans – well, if that’s your notion of all the grub you want, it ain’t mine. At Bent’s you’ll find every luxury you can imagine, as good as St Louis.’ They still looked surly, so I capped the argument. ‘There’s also more likelihood of encountering hostile tribes along the Cimarron. That’s why Wootton insisted we make for Bent’s – so you can yoke up and prepare to break out.’

‘Not so fast, there!’ says the cutaway coat. ‘We got a word to say to that, if you please—’

I turned my back. ‘Mr Nugent-Hare, you can saddle up,’ I was saying, when Skate pushed forward.

‘This ain’t good enough fer me!’ cries he. ‘You don’t know a dam’ thing more’n we do, mister. Fact, yore jest a tenderfoot, when all’s said—’

‘What’s this, Mr Nugent-Hare?’ cries I. ‘Have you no control of your rascals?’

‘Easy, now, captain,’ says he, pulling his long Irish nose. ‘You’ll mind I said we weren’t in the army.’

‘I say we take a vote!’ bawls Skate, and I noted that most of the guards were at back of him. ‘We all got a say hyar, jest as much as any high-an’-mighty lime-juice sailor – oh, beg pardon, Captain Comber!’ And the scoundrel leered and swept off his cap in an elaborate bow; the Pittsburgh clowns held on to each other, guffawing. ‘En I kin tell yuh,’ continued Skate, ‘thet Dick Wootton wuz jest as consarned ’bout Ute war-parties up on the Picketwire, as ’bout any other Injuns by Cimarron. Well, Picketwire’s nigh on Bent’s, ain’t it? So I’m fer the cut-off, en I say let’s see a show o’ hands!’

Of course the Pirates yelled acclaim, sticking both hands up, and Skate glared round at his mates until most of them followed suit. Grattan turned aside, whistling softly between his teeth; the fathers of the emigrant families were looking troubled, and our invalids were looking scared. I know I was red in the face with rage, but I was holding it in while I considered quickly what to do – I was long past the age when I thought I could bluster my way out of a position like this. In the background I saw Susie looking towards me; behind her the sluts were already seated in the wagons. I shook my head imperceptibly at Susie; the last thing I wanted was her railing at the mutineers.

The Pittsburgh Pirates made up about half our population, so a bare majority was voting for Cimarron. This wasn’t enough for Skate.

‘Come on, you farmers!’ roars he. ‘You gonna let milord hyar tell you whut you kin en cain’t do? Let’s see yer hands up!’

A number of them complied, and the cutaway coat darted about, counting, and turned beaming on me. ‘I reckon we got a democratic majority, captain! Hooraw, boys! Ho for Cimarron!’ And they all cheered like anything, and as it died down they looked at me.

‘By all means,’ says I, very cool. ‘Good day to you.’ And I turned away to tighten the girths on my pony. They stared in silence. Then:

‘What you mean?’ cries Skate. ‘We got a majority! Caravan goes to Cimarron, then!’

‘It’s going to Bent’s,’ says I, quietly. ‘At least, the part of it that I command does. Any deserters—’ I tugged at a strap ‘—can go to Cimarron, or to hell, as they please.’

I was counting on my composure to swing them round, you see; they were used to me as wagon-captain, and I reckoned if I played cool and business-like it would sway them. And indeed, a great babble broke out at once; Skate looked as though he was ready to do murder, but even some of the Pirates looked doubtful and fell to wrangling among themselves. And I believe all would have been well if Susie, who was fairly bursting with fury, hadn’t cut loose at them, abusing Skate in Aldgate language, and even turning on the sober emigrants, insisting that they obey me.

‘You’re bound on oath!’ she shrilled. ‘Why, I’ll have the law on you – you treacherous scallawags, you! You’ll do as you’re bidden, so there!’

I could have kicked her fat satin backside; it was the worst line she could have taken. The leader of the emigrant families, who’d been muttering about how the wagon-captain was the boss, wasn’t he, went dark crimson at Susie’s railing, and drew himself up. He was a fine, respectable-looking elder and his beard fairly bristled at her.

‘Ain’t no hoor-mistress gonna order me aroun’!’ says he, and stalked off; most of the emigrants reluctantly followed him, and the Pittsburgh boys hoorawed anew, and began to make for their wagons. So you see the wagon-captain with his bluff called – and not a thing to be done about it.

One thing I knew, I was not crossing the river. I could see Wootton’s face now. ‘Not Cimarron … poor bull.’ The thought of that desert, and losing the trail, was enough for me. It was all very well for Skate and his pals; if they got lost, they could in desperation ride back to the Arkansas for water, and struggle down to Fort Mann – but the folk in the wagons would be done for. And our own little party was in an appalling fix; we had our eight wagons and the carriage, with their drivers, but we faced a week’s trip to Bent’s without guards. If we met marauding Indians … we would have my guns and those of the teamsters and savaneros.

But I was wrong – we also had the invalids. They approached me with some hesitation and said they would prefer to continue to Bent’s; the air on the north bank of the river was purer, they were sure of that – and they didn’t approve of Skate and those Pittsburgh rapscallions, no, indeed. ‘We, sir, have some notions of loyalty and good behaviour, I hope,’ says the one whose diagnosis of the Cheyenne had proved so accurate. His pals cried bravo and hear, hear! and flourished their sprays and steam-kettles in approval; dear God, thinks I, whores and invalids; at least they were both well-disciplined.

‘I’d better see to the rations, or friend Skate’ll be leaving us the scrapings of the barrel,’ says Nugent-Hare.

‘You’re not going with them?’ says I, astonished.

‘Why would I do that?’ says he. ‘I hired for the trip to California, and I keep my engagements.’ D’ye know, even then, when I should have been grateful at the thought of another good pair of hands, I didn’t believe a word of it. ‘Besides,’ says he, with a gallant inclination to Susie, who was now standing alarmed and woebegone, ‘Grattan’s never the boy to desert a lady in time of trouble, so he’s not.’ And he sauntered off, humming, while my fond spouse assailed me with lamentations and self-reproaches – for she was sharp enough to see that her folly had tipped the balance. If I’d had less on my mind I’d probably have given vent to my feelings, full tilt; as it was I just told her, pretty short, to get into the coach and make sure Skate’s bullies didn’t try to run off any of our crinoline herd.

There was a pretty debate going on round our supply-wagons; Skate was claiming that he and his mates were entitled to food since they had been part of our caravan; Grattan was taking the line that when they stopped working for us, they stopped eating, and if they tried to pilfer he’d drop the first man in his tracks. He pushed back his coat and hooked a thumb in his belt beside his Colt as he said it; Skate bawled and gnashed a bit, but gave way, and I judged the time right to remind the emigrants that if they wished to change their mind, they’d be welcome. None did, and I believe it was simply that they clung to the larger party, and to the firepower of Skate’s fellows.

They were just starting to struggle over the crossing when our depleted party rolled off up the Arkansas, and I scouted to a ridge to see what lay ahead. As usual, it was just rolling plain as far as you could see, with the muddy line of the Arkansas and its fringe of cottonwoods and willows; nothing moved out on that vastness, not even a bird; I sat with my heart sinking as our little train passed me and pitched and rolled slowly down the slope; Susie’s carriage with its skinner, and the servants perched behind; the four wagons whose oxen had been exchanged for mules, and the other four with the cattle teams, all with their drivers. The covers were up on the trulls’ wagons, and there they were in their bonnets against the early sun, sitting demurely side by side. The Cincinnati Health Improvement Society came last in their two carriages, with their paraphernalia on top; you could hear them comparing symptoms at a quarter of a mile.

We made four days up the river without seeing a living thing, and I couldn’t believe our luck; then it rained, such blinding sheets of water as you’ve never seen, sending cataracts across the trail and turning it into a hideous, glue-like mud from which one wagon had to be dragged free by the teams of four others. We took to what higher ground there was, and pushed on through a day that was as dark as late evening, with great blue forks of lightning flickering round the sky and thunder booming incessantly overhead. It died away at nightfall, and we made camp in a little hollow near the water’s edge and dried out. After the raging of the storm everything fell deathly still; we even talked in undertones, and you could feel a great oppression weighing down on you, as though the air itself was heavy. It was dank and drear, without wind, a silence so absolute that you could almost listen to it.

Grattan and I were having a last smoke by the fire, our spirits in our boots, when he came suddenly to his feet and stood, head cocked, while I whinnied in alarm and demanded to know what the devil he was doing. For answer he upended the cooking pot on to the fire with a great hiss and sputter of sparks and steam, and then he was running from wagon to wagon calling softly; ‘Lights out! Lights out!’ while I gave birth and glared about me. Here he was back, dropping a hand on my shoulder, and stifling my inquiries with: ‘Quiet! Listen!’

I did, and there wasn’t a damned thing except my own belly rumbling. I strained my ears … and then I heard it, so soft that it was hardly a noise at all, more a vibration on the night air. My flesh prickled at the thought of horsemen – no, it might be buffalo on the move … too regular for that … and then my mouth went dry as I realised what it must be. Somewhere, out in that enveloping blackness, there was a soft, steady sound of drums.

‘Jesus!’ I breathed.

‘I doubt it,’ whispered Grattan. ‘Say Lucifer, and ye’ll be nearer the mark.’

He jerked his head, and before I knew what I was properly doing I was following him up the slope to the west of our hollow; there was a little thicket of bushes, and we crawled under it and wormed our way forward until we could part the grass on the crest and see ahead. It was black as the earl of hell’s weskit, but there, miles ahead in the distance, were five or six flaring points of light – Indian camp-fires, without a doubt, along the river bank. Which meant, when you thought about it, that they lay slap on our line of march.

We watched for several minutes in silence, and then I said, in a hoarse croak: ‘Maybe they’ll be friendlies.’ Grattan said nothing, which was in itself an adequate answer.

You may guess how much we slept that night. Grattan and I were on the watch as dawn broke, when their fires had disappeared with the light and instead we could see columns of smoke, perhaps five miles away, along the river; it looked like a mighty camp to me, but at such a distance you couldn’t tell.

There was no question of our stirring, of course. We must just lie up and hope they would move, and sure enough, about noon we realised that the dark strip which had been the camp was shifting – downriver, in our direction. Grattan cursed beneath his breath, but there was nothing for it but to lie there and watch the long column snaking inexorably towards us past the cottonwood groves. It wasn’t more than a mile away, and I was all but soiling myself in fear, when the head of the column veered away from the river, and I recollected with a surge of hope that our hollow lay in a wide bow of the river; if they held their march along the bowstring, they might pass us by, damnably close, but unless one of them scouted the bank they would never realise we were there.

We scurried down and had the teamsters stand by their beasts, enjoining utter silence; my chief anxiety was the invalids, who were such a feckless lot that they might easily blunder about and make a noise, so I ordered them into their carriages with instructions to sit still. Then Grattan and I wormed back to the crest, and took a look.

That was a horrible sight, I can tell you. The head of the column wasn’t above three hundred yards away, moving slowly past our hiding place. There was a great murmur rising from it, but not much dust after the rain, and we had a clear view. There were warriors riding in front, some with braided hair and coloured blankets round their shoulders, others with the lower part of their skulls shaved and top-knots that bristled up, whether of hair or feathers I couldn’t tell. Then came what was either a chief or a medicine man, almost naked, on a horse caparisoned in coloured cloth to the ground; he carried a great staff like a shepherd’s crook, ribboned and feathered, and behind walked two men carrying little tom-toms that they beat in a throbbing rhythm. Then more warriors, with feathers in their hair, some in blankets, others bare except for breech-clouts or leggings; all were garishly painted – red, black and white as I recall. Almost all were mounted on mustangs, but behind came the usual disorderly mess of travois and draught animals and walking families and cattle and dogs and general Indian foulness and confusion. Then the rearguard, after what seemed an interminable wait; more mounted warriors, with bows and lances, and as they drew level with us I found myself starting to breathe again: we were going to escape.

Whether that thought travelled through the air, I don’t know, but suddenly one of the riders wheeled away from the others and put his pony to the gentle slope running up to our position. He came at a trot, straight for us, and we watched, frozen. Then Grattan’s hand came out from under his body, and I saw he had his Bowie turned in his fist; I clapped a hand over it, and he turned to stare at me: his eyes were wild, and I thought, by gum, Flashy, you ain’t the only nervous one on the Plains this day. I shook my head; if the savage saw us, we must try to talk our way out – not that there’d be much hope of that, from what we’d seen.

The Indian came breasting up the hill, checked, and looked back the way they had come, towards the camp-ground, and I realised he was taking a last look-see. He wasn’t twenty yards away, close enough to make out every hideous detail of the buffalo-horn headdress, embroidered breech-clout, beaded garters wound round his legs above the moccasins, the oiled and muscular limbs. He had a lance, a little round shield on his arm, and a war-club hung from his belt. He sat at gaze a full minute, and then rode slowly along just beneath our hide, with never an upward glance; he paused, leaning down to clear a tangle of weed from his foot – and in the hollow behind us some fool dropped a vessel with a resounding clatter.

The Indian’s head lifted, the painted face staring directly at our bush; he straightened in his seat, head turning from side to side like a questing dog’s. He looked after his party, then back towards us. Go away, you awful red bastard, go away, I was screaming inwardly, it’s only a kettle or a piss-pot dropped by those infernal hypochondriacs; Christ, it’s a wonder you can’t hear the buggers wheezing … and then he trotted down the hill after the retreating column.

We waited until the last of them were well out on the plain and vanishing into the haze before we even stirred – and then I made the terrifying discovery that while Grattan and I had been lying too scared to breathe, and Susie had been sitting tight-lipped in her coach with her eyes shut, three of the sluts – Cleonie, black Aphrodite, and another – had crawled up to a point on the crest to watch the passing show! Giggling and sizing up the bucks, I don’t doubt; how they hadn’t been spotted …

We moved out in some haste. You ain’t seen galloping oxen? Within the hour we had passed through the appalling filth and litter of the deserted Indian camp, and it seemed reasonable to hope that a band of such size would be the only one in the vicinity. I asked Grattan who they were; he thought, from the bright-coloured blankets and the buffalo-scalp cap, that they might be Cumanches, but wasn’t sure – I may tell you now, from a fairish experience of Indians, that they’re a sight harder to identify by appearance than, say, Zulu regiments or civilised soldiers; they ain’t consistent in their dress or ornament. I remember Charley Reynolds, who was as good a scout as ever lived, telling me how he’d marked down a band as Arapaho by an arrow they’d fired at him – he found out later they’d been Oglala Sioux, and the arrow had been pinched from a Crow. That by the way; Grattan didn’t cheer me up much by remarking that the Cumanche are cannibals.

We pushed on, and towards evening I smelled smoke. We went to ground at once, and camped without fires, and in the morning moved ahead cautiously until we caught the scent of charred wood. Sure enough, there it was, a little way off the trail – the blackened shell of a wagon, with little drifts of smoke still coming from it. There were three white corpses sprawled among the wreck, two men and a woman; all had been shot with arrows, scalped, and foully mutilated. Grattan went round the wagon, and cursed; I went to look and wished I hadn’t. On the other side were two more bodies, a man’s and a young girl’s, though it wasn’t easy to tell; they had been spreadeagled and fires lit on top of them. If that Indian in the buffalo cap had ridden a few yards farther, we would have been served the same way.

We buried them in a cold sweat, and pressed on quickly; oddly enough, though, the knowledge of our escape raised our spirits, and it was with cries and hurrahs that afternoon that we passed the mouth of the Picketwire,²⁴ which joins the Arkansas about fifteen miles below Bent’s. One or two of the savaneros were uneasy that there was still no sign of civilised life so close to the fort; there were normally bands of trappers and traders to be seen, and friendly Indians camped on the Picketwire, they said. But Grattan pointed out that with so large a band of hostiles on the prowl, the normal traffic wasn’t to be expected; they’d be staying snug behind the wall at Bent’s.

We were all eager to see this famous citadel of the plains, and in camp that night Grattan entertained Susie with a recital of its wonders; to hear him it was like finding Piccadilly in the middle of the Sahara.

‘You’ll be wonderstruck, ma’am,’ laughs he. ‘You haven’t seen a building worth the name since we left Westport, have you? Well, tomorrow, after a thousand miles of desolation, you’ll see a veritable castle on the prairie, with towers and ramparts – oh, and shops, too! It’s a fact, and all as busy as Stephen’s Green. This time tomorrow you’ll be watching the captain here playing skittle pool in the billiard-room, with a wee man in a white coat skipping in with refreshment, and you’ll sleep on a down mattress after a hot bath and the best dinner west of St Louis, so you will.’

We were off at dawn of a brisk, bright day with the breeze fluttering the cottonwoods as we rolled along by the river at our best pace. We nooned without incident; just an hour or two, thinks I, and we’ll be through this horror and can lie up until other trains appear, and then head for Santa Fe in safety, with some other idiot riding wagon-boss. We were all in spirits; Susie was laughing and listening to Grattan as he rode by the carriage, the tarts had their wagon-covers up and were chattering like magpies in the sunshine, and even the invalids had perked up and were telling each other that this was more bracing than Maine, by George; I caught Cleonie’s demure glance as I rode by her wagon, and reflected that Bent’s must be big enough to find a more comfortable private nook than a prairie tent. And then I saw the smoke.

It was a single puff, above the gentle crest to our right, floating up into the clear sky, and while I was still gaping in consternation, there they were – four mounted Indians on the skyline, trotting down the slope towards us. Grattan swore softly and shaded his eyes, and then swung to the coach driver.

‘Keep going – brisk, but not too fast! Easy, now, captain – that smoke means there’ll be others coming lickety-split; you’ll note we’re only worth a single puff, bad cess to ’em!²⁵ So we must keep ’em at a distance till we get within cry of Bent’s; it can’t be above a couple of miles now!’

My instinct was to turn and ride for it, but he was right. The four Indians were coming on at a brisk canter now, so with Grattan leading we rode out to head them away, me with my sweat flowing freely – the sight of those oily copper forms, the painted faces, the feathers, and the practised ease with which they managed ponies and lances, would have turned your stomach. They rode along easily, edging only gradually closer.

‘They won’t show fight till the regiment arrives,’ says Grattan. ‘Watch in case they try to side-slip us and scare the wagon-beasts – ah, you bastard, that’s the trick! See, captain!’

Sure enough, they had their blankets ready in their hands; their leader, riding parallel with us about twenty yards off, raised his and shouted ‘Tread!’, which I took to mean ‘trade’ – a likely story.

‘Give ’em a hail,’ says Grattan, so I shouted ‘Bugger off!’ and made gestures of dismissal. The brave shouted something back, in apparent disappointment, turned his pony slightly aside – and then without warning wheeled sharply and, with his mates following suit as smart as guardsmen, made a dart across our rear towards the wagon-train.

‘Donnybrook!’ yells Grattan, and I heard his Colt bang at my elbow. An Indian twisted and fell shrieking, and as the leader’s horse sped past me I gave it a barrel in the neck – in a mêlée you shoot at what you’re sure to hit – and then my heels went in and my head down as I thundered for the wagons.

The two remaining braves were making for the rear wagon, swooping in, flapping their blankets at the beasts. I roared to the teamsters to whip up; they shouted and swung their snakes, and the wagons lurched and bounced in the ruts as the beasts surged forward. Grattan fired and missed one of the Indians; a teamster, reins in his teeth, let fly a shot that went nowhere, and then the two had wheeled past us and were racing out and away.

I galloped up the train, all eyes to see where the next danger was coming from. By God, I didn’t have to look far – on the crest to our right there was a round score of the brutes, swerving down towards us. They were perhaps two furlongs off, for the crest had swung away from the river, which was inclining in a big loop to the left, so that as the wagons veered to follow its course, they were also turning away from our pursuers. But in less than three minutes they would close the gap with the lumbering train.

Ahead of me, Grattan was swinging himself from his saddle over the tailboard of a wagon, and farther ahead the savaneros of the mule-train were doing likewise, their mules running free. In among them came the two braves with blankets, screeching and trying to drive the leaderless brutes in among the wagons; Grattan’s rifle boomed and one of the braves went down; the other tried to throw himself at one of the wagon-teams, but must have missed his hold, for as I galloped by he was losing an argument with a wagon-wheel, and being deuced noisy about it.

The savaneros were firing now; Grattan yelled to me, pointing forward, and I was in solid agreement, for up yonder somewhere was Bent’s, and I didn’t mind a bit if I was first past the post. Half a dozen revolving rifles were letting go as I thundered up the train, which is just the kind of broadside you need when twenty painted devils are closing in; they weren’t more than two hundred paces off our rear flank now, whooping like be-damned and firing as they came. I was abreast the leading wagon, with only the two invalid carriages and Susie’s coach leaping along ahead; at my elbow the sluts were squealing and cowering behind the wagon-side; I saw a shaft quivering in the timber, and another hissed over my head; it’s time to get off this pony and under cover, thinks I – and in that moment the brute stumbled, and I had only a split second to kick my feet clear and roll before she went headlong.

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