The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection

by George MacDonald Fraser

  To my right the west end of the fort was an inferno. I knew the magazine had gone, and most of the north-west angle with it, but the northern rooms were blazing too, and the thatched arcade across the square was beginning to burn. The gate was unscathed, but there were eighty kegs of powder in the tower at the far end of it, and with flaming wreckage all over the courtyard they might blow any instant. I plunged forward and fell with the sickening pain in my ankle, but I crawled feebly on, through the fiery reek, coughing and swearing and, I don’t doubt, praying; the roar of burning seemed to be everywhere, but not twenty yards ahead was the yawning gateway, if I could only scramble to it before the mine went up, and didn’t lose consciousness on the way.

  I learned something that day. If you’ve a sprained or broken leg, and want to make haste, don’t crawl – roll. Your leg will give you gip at every turn, especially if your way is strewn with flaming rubble, but if you’re lucky, you’ll get there. I don’t know how long it took; perhaps a minute, though it seemed an eternity, through which I babbled in terror and shrieked with agony. My clothes were smouldering, but now I could see, with my eyes streaming, through the gateway to the prairie beyond. I half-got to my feet and fairly threw myself under the arch, rolling for dear life; I remember a massive iron hinge at which I clutched, dragging myself by sheer main force of my arms, and rolled again; I must be beyond the gates, but even then I struggled ahead, my face in the dust, inching on to try to escape the horror behind me.

  Perhaps I fainted, more than once; I can’t tell. I thought I heard a muffled crash from behind, but I didn’t mind it. I dug in my fingernails and pulled, until I could no more. I rested my face on one side, and above the scrubby grass in my line of sight there were the legs of a pony, and I hardly had time to think, oh, dear Jesus, the Indians! when a hand took me by the shoulder, and rolled me over, and I was blinking up into a monstrously-bearded face under a fur cap, and I pawed feebly at a fringed buckskin shirt that was slick with wear, and then the beard split into a huge grin of white teeth, and a voice said:

  “Waal, ole hoss, what fettle? How your symptoms segashooatin’? Say, ifn thar wuz jest a spoonful o’ gravy to go with ye, I rackon yore baked jest ’bout good enough to eat!”

  Chapter 8

  It’s a curious distinction, on which I have dined out in Yankee clubs more than once, that I was the last man in Bent’s Fort, for it’s never been rebuilt, and when I saw it a few years ago it was just a heap of ruins, with the white wolves prowling through it. What caused me to reflect, though, on the damnable unfairness of things, was that I could have been last out in perfect safety, if I hadn’t been so set on preserving my own skin. There’s a moral there, I suppose, but not one I’ve ever paid the least heed to.

  What had happened was this. Just as the second wagon emerged, and the Indians were preparing to give it toco, who should heave in view down the trail but a party of Mountain Men, drawn by the smoke and sound of general uproar. They don’t stand on ceremony, those fellows; one swift survey and they were charging in like the Heavy Brigade, and since there were two score of them, the Indians had lost no time in making tracks, leaving a fair few of their number on the grass. So our chaps in the wagons, whom I’d supposed were going to likely death or capture, had enjoyed a grandstand seat in perfect safety, while poor old Flashy had been browning nicely, and damned lucky not to be overdone.

  Mind you, there were compensations. As the one serious casualty on our side – for it’s a remarkable thing that out of all who’d been in the fort, only one of the savaneros had taken an arrow in the leg, and Claudia had broken her wrist when the second carriage foundered – I was the centre of attention. Susie, who had borne up like Grace Darling all through, went into floods at the sight of my poor singed carcase, and the invalids bustled about with hot fomentations and bread poultices and sound advice which I daresay would have carried me off if the Mountain Men hadn’t patiently lifted them aside, bandaged my sprained ankle, and soothed my burns with a most disgusting mixture of herbs and bear’s grease.

  The most signal behaviour, though, had been Cleonie’s. She had gone into hysterics when I was borne down to the carriages, still smoking gently, and had had to be restrained from flinging herself on me. Well, I hadn’t known the wench cared that much; it wasn’t like the cool Cleonie’s style at all, and gave me some pause. Susie seemed too distraught about me to notice the signal display of concern for Massa by his handmaiden, which was just as well. My burns were trivial enough, by the way, but my ankle kept me coachbound for a fortnight, by which time we were on our way again.

  With the Mountain Men was one Fitzpatrick, who was a big man in those parts,26 and on his advice we waited until a caravan arrived from the east, which he and the Mountain Men joined for Santa Fe. There was every kind of Indian trouble to the south, apparently, but in a train that was eventually a hundred wagons strong we had no fears. We learned from Fitzpatrick that the big tribe of Indians we had seen on our way to Bent’s were Cumanches, who were celebrated both as bitter enemies of the Cheyenne and for their medical skill; whether they were out to take their foes at a disadvantage or study the cholera epidemic was a moot point. The fellows who had besieged us at Bent’s were a mixed band of Utes (who hated everybody), and ChiefDog Kiowas (who were reckoned friendly but had not been able to resist the temptation of our small caravan). But from now on, whenever Indians were mentioned, we began to hear a new and ominous name: ’Pashes; even the sound of it was vicious, and the Mountain Men would growl and shake their heads.

  I didn’t care if I never saw a red hide again, but in fact Fitzpatrick swore that we’d been lucky. We’d lost three teamsters and two wagons on the mad career into Bent’s, but nothing except a little gear in the destruction of the fort itself. By a freak of the explosion the south wall had collapsed, exposing the wagon park, and the Mountain Men and savaneros had taken advantage of a change in the wind to haul our last four wagons clear. So apart from one load of claret and another of food, our goods were fairly intact, much to Susie’s relief.

  But Bent’s was a sorry sight. The explosion had razed a third of it, and the fire eventually destroyed the rest, including the south-east tower and its powder kegs, which oddly enough never blew up, but burned like an enormous roman candle that I’m told was seen by the soldiers at Fort Mann, more than 150 miles away. The Mountain Men were fearfully cut up about it; to them it was as great a thing as the destruction of St Paul’s or the Tower would be to us; perhaps even greater.27 I remember three of them talking softly near the coach at sundown, the night before we pulled out for Santa Fe, smoking their pipes as they watched the ruins silhouetted against the purple sky as the last of the light faded.

  “’Member when I fust see Bent’s – cummin’ down wi’ the Green River boys f’m South Park nigh on fifteen years ago. Didn’t rightly b’lieve my eyes –’speckted a giant ter cum out on’t hollerin’ ‘Fee-fye-fo!’ Didn’t think nuthin’ cud tumble it down.”

  “Goin’ ter be right lonely, ’thout th’ Big Lodge.”

  “Lonely? Why, ye jackass, how you talk! How kin ye be lonely for a place? Lonely is fer folks.”

  A long pause. “Mebbe so. All this coon know, ifn you scrapin’ fer beaver on the’ Powder, or bogged in a Blackfeet village in the Tetons come winter, you kin git right desolated – jes’ a-wishin’ you could walk in under thet gate, see St Vrain en Maxwell laughin’ on th’ verandie en smokin’ them big seegurs, en th’ Little White Man hisself a-settin’ by th’ hide-press countin’ the pelts jealous-like, or Ole Bill cussin’ en yarnin’ wi’ th’ smith.”

  “Or feel the taste o’ Black Sue’s punkin pie, ye mean!”

  “Shore ’nuff. This chile cud swaller a buffler bull, horns, tail, en snout, en still hev room fer thet pie.”

  “Thet’s whut I’m a-sayin’, though – tain’t th’ place yore hankerin’ fer – it’s the folks. En the pie, seemin’ly. Waal, th’ folks is still around, ain’t they?”

  “Rackon. Howsumever
they cain’t cum t’ Bent’s no more, cuz tain’t hyar. En … they won’t be, seems like, ’thout Bent’s.”

  “In course they will, ye durned ole fool! They be until they die, leastways. Cain’t be any longer’n thet!”

  “They cud be,” insists the Prairie Plato, “if Big Lodge wuz. Now it gone, an’ soon nobody ’member it – like not many ’member th’ ole Rondayvoos up on th’ Green en Big Horn, back afore th’ Santy Fee traders cum.”

  “Why, I ’member those! Whut special ’bout them?”

  “Nuthin’ – ’ceptin’ they ain’t, nowadays. En this ole hoss kin git lonely fer them, too. Thet’s my p’int.”

  “I rackon you cud git lonely fer th’ ole price o’ beaver!”

  “Kin thet, en hev done since ’36.” They all laughed. “Git lonely fer all th’ things thet’s a-changin’. Why, it gittin’ so a cuss cain’t walk fifty mile ’thout seein’ a sojer or a himmigrant. But makes me feel right skeery hyaraways –” tapping his breast “– ter think o’ Big Lodge gone. Place en folks. Seems it wuz kind o’ … like home.”

  “Home! Why, yore home wuz in Kaintuck’ – till you bust the minister’s winder en had ter vamoose! Since when home’s bin wharever ye found a fat squaw en a good fire!”

  “Them’s th’ places I used ter start yearnin’ fer Bent’s!” cries the old chap. “Thet proves it! Thet’s my p’int! Thet’s why I’m grievin’ ter see it all broke down like thet.”

  “Waal, so’m I. But the way you talk, you’d ha’ bin happier ifn Big Lodge’d never bin builded in the fust place.”

  “No! Don’t ye see? Then, why – there’d be nuthin’ to … remember not to fergit!”

  The grass was beginning to brown when our reinforced train rolled down the Timpas towards the distant mountains. It was a shame that our invalids, having had as much of the West’s health-giving properties as they could stand, had turned back from Bent’s, for there’s no air in the world as invigorating as New Mexico’s. We journeyed across prairie bright with flowers, and it was bliss to lie in the coach watching the girls running and laughing among them like muslin butterflies, gathering them in great armfuls and filling our coach with their fragrance. Even when we began to climb into the craggy forest hills that lead up to the Raton Pass, and the going got slower, the land was still beautiful, with its winding wooded valleys; there’s a fine toll road now, I believe, but in my time there was hardly a visible trail, and once or twice the wagons had to be carried bodily over rocky barriers.

  Then it was prairie again, to the heel of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, and since all this had recently been Mexican territory, there were more olive faces than white in the little settlements, and that unwashed languor inseparable from dagoes began to pervade the scene. There were other branches of the trail now, and other caravans were commonplace; at Wagon Mound, a great grassy bottom surrounded by trees, we found more than three hundred vehicles assembled, some of which had come down the Cimarron route – and with them, hollow-cheeked from illness but laconic as ever, was Wootton. He had forced himself into the saddle and come on a week behind us, but a friendly Indian had misled him into thinking our whole train had crossed the river to the cut-off. He had followed and made a dreadful discovery: our deserters had lost the trail, sure enough, and split into two parties after a violent quarrel; Wootton came on one group, more dead than alive, and had brought them safe to the Canadian river, but the other party, including Skate and many of the Pittsburgh Pirates, had been less lucky. “’Pashes catched ’em on th’ Cimarron. Buffler hunter seen the wagons all burned, our folks massacred.”

  It was a sobering reminder of what might lie over the next hill, but it would have taken every Indian in America to make an impression on the vast stream of wagons and immigrants now converging below Wagon Mound. It was an endless procession, and at Las Vegasa we met some of the trains which had been pouring across the southern plains all summer from Fort Smith. Spirits were sky-high now as we passed over rolling downland covered with trees and bushes and dwarf cedars sprung from earth that was red and rich, and one afternoon there was a great whooping and cheering as we sighted conical hills ahead, and the cry of “Santy Fee! Santy Fee!” re-echoed along the line. Sure enough, as we passed the great scrubby cones, there lay a vast plain, and before it, the little city that was the first in all western America, built by the conquistadores, and God bless ’em, says I. There are bigger, finer, richer towns in the world, but precious few that so many weary folk have been so glad to see.

  On Wootton’s advice we camped near the soldiers’ fort on the slope just north of the city, and that evening Susie and I drove in to take a long slant at the place, for we must break our journey here and take order for the final stage to the coast.

  It was like Calcutta in fair week. The town itself was no size at all, some adobe houses and one or two fairly decent courtyards all grouped round a fine plaza containing the governor’s palace, which was a long, low colonnaded building, and the bishop’s house, and dozens of stores and posadas. But to get to this you had to pass through a positive forest of wagons and shanties and huts, and the paths through, like the streets of the town itself, were swarming with people. We were told that the usual population was about a thousand; in the fall of ’49 I’d wager it was ten times that, most of them emigrants who, for one reason or another, found themselves stranded in the place, with no notion of how they were going to get out.

  The truth was, they couldn’t afford it. They had swallowed the gold bait back east, listened to the rosy lies of those who made a fortune from outfitting and transporting them, and then discovered after a journey far slower and longer and more expensive than they’d expected (five hundred miles to Santa Fe, the Fort Smith sharps had told them; it was eight hundred), that they were out of cash, out of provisions, and out of luck. What little money they had left was swallowed by prices that were plain foolish – flour at $1 for ten pounds, sugar at 25 cents a pound, corn at $2.50 a bushel, firewood at 25 cents – even grass was being offered in the streets by peasant hawkers at 20 cents the bunch, for there wasn’t a mouthful of grazing for miles, and something like 6000 cattle to feed.

  So the poor emigrants were reduced to selling even their rigs to buy food and shelter – and lo! a wagon that had cost them $200 now brought $50 if they were lucky, their horses and oxen they could hardly give away, and the household goods and mining gear they offered in desperation fetched only cents. Many were plain destitute, unable to go forward or back – for now they learned that it would take another six months at least to California, that the routes (which no one was clear about) lay through terrible desert alive with hostiles, and that no military escorts could be provided.

  This alarming news we learned from an earnest young subaltern of dragoons called Harrison with whom we dined in the best of the plaza’s restaurants – for with the press of customers it was six to a small table even there, and a handsome bribe to the jefe at that.

  “I doubt if one in ten of these poor souls will ever see California,” says he. “Even if they had the money, and sure guides on good, well-guarded trails, it would be bad enough; as it is …” He shrugged, and recommended wine of El Paso (which was excellent), and a fricassee of tender buffalo hump with fiery peppers, called chile colorado (also first-rate, if your belly happens to be lined with copper; if I’d eaten it at Bent’s Fort I could have blown the place up without gunpowder). I asked him why no escorts, when the town was filled with soldiers, and he laughed.

  “You hardly saw an Indian south of the Raton, I’ll be bound? No, because the trails were full. Well, in Santa Fe you’re living in an armed camp, with hostiles all around you – Cumanches and Kiowas to the east, Utes to the north, Navajos to the west, and – worst of all – Apaches to the south. The reason we can’t spare a single sabre for escort is that we’re never done just holding the brutes at bay, protecting the Del Norte settlements, and punishing their raids – when we can find ’em. Yesterday I came back from the Galinas, where we
lost two troopers in a skirmish with the Black Legs; in three hours’ time I’ll be riding out again with fifty men because there’s word of a big band of Mescaleros coming up the Pecos. No, sir – there isn’t much time for escorts.”

  “Well!” says Susie. “That’s fine, I must say! An’ wot’s the … the government doin’ about it, may I ask?”

  Harrison shook his head. “If by the government, ma’am, you mean the governor, Colonel Washington – well, he came back to town yesterday, having spent five weeks chasing Navajos.28 With four hundred infantry and troops of artillery. That’s what the government spends its time doing, in these parts.”

  As Susie had said, this was fine. “Some trains must be reaching California, surely?” says I.

  “Oh, certainly, they have been. Those that are large, and well-armed, and properly planned; why, this summer they’ve been pouring down the Del Norte in thousands, floating across the Rio Grande on rafts and flatboats, taking any route west they can find – and getting there, I don’t doubt. But there’s no question Indian trouble’s becoming worse, and I wouldn’t advise anyone right now to try any but two roads: Kearny’s trail down to Socorro and west, but …” he glanced at Susie “… that’s a man’s road, if you’ll forgive my saying so, ma’am. The other is down the Del Norte valley beyond Socorro to Donna Ana, and west to the Gila and San Diego. It’s a long, hard haul, and I’d hate for my family to have to travel it. But if you provision for the desert, and arm for the Indians, and don’t mind heat and dust, you’ll get there.”

  Susie wondered, thoughtfully, if it wasn’t possible to hire a military escort, and Harrison smiled patiently.

  “One escort did go out last month, to convoy the new Collector of San Francisco – but even he had to wait quite a time. I’m sorry, Mrs Comber, there just aren’t enough soldiers to go around.”

  The truth was, it became plain, that in taking over the vast Mexican territory, the Yanks had bitten off more than they could comfortably chew, and like all governments, were trying to run things at the cheapest rate – which was why this lad at table with us had lines on his face that shouldn’t have been there for another twenty years, and was punishing the El Paso vintage as though it were water, without visible effect. Far from pacifying the land, American occupation had made it worse, especially now that the great immigrant incursions were making the redskins sit up and take notice – not that they needed much encouragement. They had been ripping the country to shreds for centuries during the Spanish and Mexican rules, murdering and plundering at will, exacting blackmail, inflicting frightful tortures on prisoners, carrying off the peons as slaves and concubines, breaking treaties when it suited, and the dagoes had been powerless to stop them.