The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection

by George MacDonald Fraser

  Most of her jaunts were close to home, at first – Black Forest, Pyrenees, Italian lakes, the Holy Land and Pyramids, and endless piles of Greek rubble dignified by antiquity, for which she had a remarkable appetite, sketching away execrably under a parasol and misquoting Byron while her maid scampered back to the hotel for fresh crayons and I loafed impatiently, wishing I might slip down to the native quarter for some vicious amusement among the local wildlife. And then one winter’s day early in ’75 she remarked idly that I’d never shown her North America.

  “Neither I have,” says I. “Well, there’s a lot of it, you know. Difficult to take in, and it’s a long way.”

  “I should so love to visit it,” says she, with that faraway imbecile expression that comes of studying engravings in the Illustrated London News, “to venture forth into the New World with its scenic grandeurs and huntsmen in picturesque garb, and the unspoiled savages and the cowboys with their coyotes and lariats,” she babbled on, sighing, “and the Tremont Hotel of Boston is said to be quite superior, while the Society of New England is reputed most select, and there are all those battle-fields with peculiar names where you were so brave which I long to have you show me. The price of passage is also extremely reasonable and—”

  “Hold on, though,” says I, for I could see the cricket season vanishing. “It’s farther than you’ve ventured before, you know – except for Singapore and Borneo – and you didn’t care for that. Or Madagascar. Well, America’s pretty wild, too.”

  “Why, I cared extremely for Borneo and Madagascar, Harry! The voyage was ever so jolly, and the climate agreed with me perfectly.”

  “And being kidnapped by pirates, and chased for our lives by enormous niggers – you enjoyed those, did you?”

  “Some of the people were disagreeable, true, but others were most amiable,” says she, and I knew from her complacent sigh that she was fondly recalling all the randy villains who’d ogled her in her sarong. “Besides,” she went on, glowing, “that was an adventure – do you know, I never was so happy as when we fled through the forest, you and I – and you fought for me, and were so strong, and took such good care of me, and … and …” Her great blue eyes filled with tears, and she pressed my hand, and I felt a sudden odd yearning for her, which was rapidly dispelled as she went on: “In any event, America cannot be as barbarous as Madagascar, and since you have the acquaintance of the President and other persons of consequence, we are sure to have the entrée, especially with our money. Oh, Harry, my heart is set on it, and it will be such fun! Please say you’ll take me!”

  Since she had already bought the tickets, that was how we came to be at Phil Sheridan’s wedding in Chicago a few months later, and there, with a startling coincidence, began the bewildering chain of events which completed the story that I have told you in this memoir so far. (At least, I hope to God it’s complete at last.) Not all that happened in ’49 has a bearing on what I’m about to tell, for life’s like that, but much of it did. I can safely say that had it not been for my odyssey which began in Orleans and ended at Fort Laramie in ’50, the history of the West would have been different. George Custer might still be boring ’em stiff at the Century Club, Reno wouldn’t have drunk himself to death, a host of Indians and cavalrymen would probably have lived longer, and I’d have been spared a supreme terror as well as a … no, I shan’t call it a heartbreak, for my old pump is too calloused an article to break. But it can feel a twist, even now, when I look back and see that lone rider silhouetted against the skyline at sunset, with the faint eerie whistle of Garryowen drifting down the wind, and when I had rubbed the mist from my eyes, it was gone.

  It was sheer chance we were at Sheridan’s wedding. Despite my loved one’s expressed enthusiasm for scenic grandeur and huntsmen in picturesque garb, she’d been content to spend the first months poodle-faking with the smart set in Boston and New York, wallowing at the Tremont and Delmonico’s, and spending money like a rajah in Mayfair. Society, or what passes for it over there, had naturally opened its arms to the beauteous Lady Flashman and her distinguished husband, and we might have been racing and dining and water-partying yet if Little Phil hadn’t got word of my presence, and insisted that we come to Chicago to see him jump off the cart-tail. I’d known him for a good sort in the Civil War, and met him again during the Franco-Prussian nonsense, so to Chicago we went.

  I must digress briefly to remind you of the vast change that twenty-five years had wrought in my own fortunes. Back in ’49, though a popular hero in England, I’d been a nameless fugitive in the States; now, in 1875, I was Sir Harry Flashman, V.C., K.C.B., with all the supposed heroics of the Crimea, Mutiny, and China behind me, to say nothing of distinguished service to the Union in the Civil War. No one had been too clear what that service was, since it had seen me engaged on both sides, but I’d come out of it with their Medal of Honour and immense, if mysterious, credit, and the only man who knew the whole truth had got a bullet in the back at Ford’s Theatre, so he wasn’t telling. Neither was I – although I will some day, all about Jeb Stuart, and Libby Prison, and my mission for Lincoln (God rest him for a genial blackmailer), and my renewed bouts with the elfin Mrs Mandeville, among others. But that ain’t to the point just now; all that signifies is that I’d gained the acquaintance of such notables as Grant (now President) and Sherman and Sheridan – as well as such lesser lights as young Custer, whom I’d met briefly and informally, and Wild Bill Hickok, whom I’d known well (but the story of my deputy marshal’s badge must wait for another day, too).

  So now you see Flashy in his splendid prime at fifty-three, distinguished foreign visitor, old comrade and respected military man, with just a touch of grey in the whiskers but no belly to speak of, straight as a lance and a picture of cavalier gallantry as I stoop to salute the blushing cheek of the new Mrs Sheridan at the wedding reception in her father’s garden.50 Little Phil, grinning all over and still looking as though he’d fallen in the river and let his uniform dry on him, led me off to talk to Sherman, whom I’d known for a competent savage, and the buffoon Pope, whose career had consisted of losing battles and claiming he’d won. They were with a big, abrupt cove, whiskered like a Junker, named Crook.

  “And how the thunder do I keep ’em out of the Black Hills?” he was demanding. “There are ten thousand miners there already, hungry for gold, and I’m meant to say, ‘Now, boys, you just leave the nuggets be, and run along home directly.’ They’ll listen, won’t they?” he snorted, and then Sheridan was presenting me. I expressed interest in what Crook had been saying, and was enlightened.

  It seemed that a few years earlier Washington had made a treaty with the Sioux Indians granting them permanent possession of the Black Hills of Dacotah, which the Sioux regarded as their Valhalla; no white settlers were to come in without Sioux permission, but now that gold had been found in the hills (by a scientific expedition sent out under Custer, in fact) the miners were swarming in, the redskins were protesting, and Crook had been told to get the intruders out, p.d.q.

  “You may imagine, sir,” he told me sourly, “how a hard-case prospector will respond when I tell him that he, a free-born American, can’t go where he damned well pleases on American soil. Even if I do persuade or drive him out, he’ll slip back in again. Can’t blame him, sir; the gold’s there, and you can’t keep a dog from its dinner.”

  “Treaty or no treaty,” says Pope solemnly.

  “Treaty, nothing!” snaps Sherman; he was the same ugly, black-avised bargee who you remember observed that war is hell, and then proved it; I was interested to see that ten years hadn’t mellowed him. “That’s all I hear from the soapy politicians and Bible-punching hypocrites in Washington, and the virtuous old women who get up funds for the relief of our ‘red brothers’ – how our wicked government violates treaties! But not a word about Indian violations, no, sirree! We guaranteed ’em the Black Hills, sure – and they guaranteed us to keep the peace. How do they keep their bargain? – by ripping up the tracks, scalping se
ttlers, and tearing six kinds of hell out of each other after every sun dance! How many of ’em have settled on the reservations, tell me that!”

  Pope wagged his fat head and said he understood that some thousands had come into the agencies, and settled down quietly.

  “You don’t say!” cries Sherman scornfully. “Seen the Indian Office figures, have you? Out of fifty-three thousand Sioux, forty-six thousand are ‘wild and scarcely tractable’ – those are the very words, sir. Oh, they’ll come in to the agencies, and collect the provisions we’re fool enough to hand out to them, and the clothes and blankets and rifles – you bet they’ll have the rifles! For hunting, naturally.” He prepared to spit, and remembered he was at a wedding. “Hunting white settlers and soldiers, I dare say. Know how many thousands of new rifles – Winchester and Remington repeaters, too – were shipped up the Missouri by Indian traders last year? How many million cartridges? No, you don’t know, because Washington daren’t say. And the benevolent government permits it, to hostiles who’ve no least notion of settling on reservations, or turning to farming, or accepting the education offered ’em by a bunch of old women in pants back East who’d never dare put their noses west of St Louis. Is it any wonder the Sioux think we’re soft, and grow more insolent by the day?” He let out a great snort of disgust. “Oh, the hell with it, I need a drink.”51

  He stumped off, and Crook shook his head. “He’s right on one thing: it makes no sense to arm the tribes while we keep our own troops short of proper equipment. Someone is going to have to pay for that policy sooner or later, I fear – probably someone in a blue coat earning $13 a month to guard his country’s frontier.”

  It sounded very much like the usual soldiers’ talk about politicians – except that Sherman and Sheridan at least weren’t usual soldiers. Sherman was commander-in-chief of the U.S. Army, and Little Phil commanded the Missouri Division, which meant the whole Plains country to the Rockies. I didn’t doubt they were well informed on the Indian question, and I knew the government was notoriously corrupt and inefficient, although Grant himself was said to be straight enough. Innocently I said I supposed the business of supplying the Indians was a very lucrative one; Pope choked on his drink, Sheridan shot me a glance, but Crook looked me straight in the eye.

  “That’s the devil of it – a trader can get $100 in buffalo skins for one repeater, and twenty cents a cartridge. But that’s small beer to the profits of contractors who supply the agencies with rotten meat and mouldy flour, or agents who cook their books and grow fat at the Indians’ expense.”

  “Come now, George,” cries Pope, “not all agents are rascals.”

  “No, some of ’em are just incompetent,” says Crook. “Either way, the Indian goes hungry, so I guess I can’t blame him if he prefers not to rely on the agencies – except for weapons.”

  “Forty-six thousand hostiles, well-armed?” says I. “That’s about twice the size of the U.S. Army, isn’t it?”

  “Gentlemen, we have a British spy in our midst!” says Sheridan, laughing. “Yes, that’s about right – but not all of those Indians are truly hostile, whatever Sherman thinks. Only a handful, in fact. The rest simply don’t want to live on agencies and reservations. The few real wild spirits – Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and the like – don’t amount to more than a few thousand braves. There’s no danger of a general outbreak, if that’s what you’re thinking. No danger of that at all.”

  And now came Elspeth tripping radiantly to reprove me for not presenting the famous General Crook – of whom she’d never heard, of course, but the little flirt knew a fine figure of a man when she saw one. So now Crook beamed and made a chest and bowed and called her “my lady” and absolutely behaved like a faithful sheepdog while I admired her performance with a jaundiced eye, and the talk murmured on under the trees in the drowsy summer afternoon; I did the polite with the prettiest bridesmaid at the punchbowl, and forgot all about Indians.

  It came back a few hours later, though, when the coincidence happened. Until Sheridan’s wedding I hadn’t thought about redskins for years, and now, the very same day, the old West laid its horny hand softly on my shoulder for the second time.

  Elspeth and I were going in to dinner at the Grand Pacific, and I had turned into their big public lavatory to comb my whiskers or adjust my galluses; I was barely aware of a largish man who was examining his chin closely in a mirror and grunting to himself, and I was just buttoning up and preparing to leave when the humming ended in a rasping growl of surprise.

  “Inyun! Joll-ee good! Washechuskaa Wind Breaker! Hoecah!”52

  I bore up sharp, for I don’t suppose I’d heard Siouxan spoken in more than twenty years – and then I stood amazed. My companion had turned from the mirror, tweezers in hand, and was regarding me in delighted surprise. I gaped, for I couldn’t credit it; there stood a figure in evening trousers and coat, starched front and all – and above it the bronzed hawk face of a full-blooded Plains Indian brave, with a streak of paint just below the parting of his glossy black hair, which hung to his waist in long braided tails, one adorned with a red eagle’s feather. Well, I’d known American hotels were odd, but this beat all. The apparition advanced, beaming.

  “You remember? At Fort Laramie, the year after the Great Sickness? You, me, Carson the Thrower-of-Ropes? Han?”b

  Suddenly the years fell away, and I was back in the hollow where Wootton and I skinned the buffalo, and that awful visitation … the painted face with the coonskin hanging from its cap … and the feast with the Brulé at Laramie … “joll-ee good! joll-ee good!” … and the same black devil’s eyes glinting at me. By some freak of memory it was his Indian name that I remembered first.

  “Sintay Galeska! Good God, can it be you?”

  He nodded vigorously. “The Spotted Tail. Hinteh,c how long has it been? You have grown well, Wind Breaker – with a little frost in your hair.” He pointed to the grey in my whiskers, chuckling.

  I was still taken all aback – as you would be if you’d met the King of the Cannibal Isles rushing naked round the South Seas, and twenty years later he tooled up to you in the Savoy in full evening fig, and began assailing you in broken English and a native tongue you’d all but forgotten. Why, the last time I’d seen him he’d been in breech-clout and war-bonnet, all smeared with buffalo blood … now he was rumbling on in Sioux, and I was struggling to identify those sonorous vowels, dredging words from the back of my mind.

  “Hold on a moment … er, anoptah!d You’re Spotted Tail, the Brulé? The … the killer of Pawnees?” And instinctively my hand went up to crook a finger at my brow, which is sign-talk for Pawnee, the Wolf-Folk – heaven knew where that memory had come from, after so long. He crowed approvingly, nodding. “But … but what the devil are you doing … here, I mean?”

  “Here? Grand Pacific?” He shrugged massively. “It not so good. Palmer House better – bully girl-servants, joll-ee pretty. But got no rooms, so my people and I come here. Huh!”

  This was a ridiculous dream, obviously. “I mean, what are you doing … far from your lodge? In the city – in those clothes?”

  “Ho!” I could have sworn his eyes twinkled. “The white man’s robes, very proper. I have been to the tipi of the Great Father in Washington. For pow-wow on high matters. Now we return to the place of my people – at my agency, the agency of Spotted Tail, on the White River. Two suns, in the iron horse, How-how! Wait.” And he thrust his great head at the mirror again, breathed gustily, tweaked a hair from his chin, and pocketed his tweezers. As he straightened his coat I saw with alarm that he had a revolver in his arm-pit and a scalping-knife in an embroidered scabbard thrust in his pants waistband.

  “How! We eat now, together. Horse’s doovers and large snow puddings that make the tongue dead. Joll-ee good!” He grinned again and laid a huge paw on my shoulder. “My heart is as the lark to see again a friend from my youth, who remembers the time when the buffalo covered the plains like a blanket. Hunhe!e Come to grub!”

  Sti
ll recovering as I was, I was suspecting that Mr Spotted Tail, chief of the Brulé Sioux, was something of a joker. My gift of language has always been good enough to enable me to turn my mind instantly to any tongue I’ve ever learned, no matter how long ago, so that within a minute of our meeting I was thinking in Siouxan. And while I knew how picturesque it was, with its splendid metaphors, I sensed that he was using them ironically as often as not. He didn’t have to talk to me about “the tipi of the Great Father”, or “snow puddings that make the tongue dead”; he could just as easily have said “White House” or “ice-cream” – he knew the names of Chicago’s hotels well enough, and had a smattering of English. But he was smart as paint, and I guessed it suited him to play the romantic stage-Indian when he came east on the “iron horse” to “pow-wow”.

  But I couldn’t get over our strange meeting, and as we walked to the dining-room I demanded to know what he’d been doing, and where he’d learned English – not that he had much.

  “In prison,” says he calmly. “At Fort Leavenworth, after we slew Grattan’s pony-soldiers and the Isantankaf put me in irons. Yun!g And when the great pow-wows began between my people and the chiefs of the Isanhanska,h they took us to Washington to talk of treaties. Heh-heh!i How they bit through our ears! Now I live at the agency with my people, the Burned Thighs, and they try to make us scratch the ground with iron spikes.” He shook with laughter. “And you, Wind Breaker? You have been beyond the big water all these years among the Washechuska? Tell me of …” He stopped abruptly, staring, and then like a big cat slid aside behind a potted palm, peering ahead over its fronds. “Hinte! Hoecah! Wah!”