She wasn’t in our quarters, Mrs Mills hadn’t seen her, and I was making for Terry’s billet to inquire when I saw the ambulance driver, a bog Irish private, puffing his cutty by the stables. I hailed him, and he stared like a baffled baboon.
“Her leddyship, sorr? Now, an’ Oi hivn’t seen hem nor hair of her since ye putt her in me cart.”
“You mean since you brought her back?”
“Oi didn’t bring her back,” says he, and the icy shock stopped me in my tracks. “Shure an’ didn’t she hop out agin to see the show, jest after ye’d sated her down? I thought she was wid yourself, Colonel sorr, or the t’other gintlemen—”
“You bloody fool!” I was absolutely swaying. “D’you mean she’s still back yonder?”
He gabbled at me, and then I was running for the stables in such panic as even I have seldom known. She was out there, among that savage, wicked horde – Christ, what might not happen in their present mood? The thoughtless, blind, stupid little – and on my unbelieving ears fell a sound that brought me whirling round with such a flood of relief that I almost cried out.
“Harry! Harry, dearest! Coo-ee!”
She was riding across the parade, touching her pony to hasten it to me, smiling brilliantly and not a thing out of place except her hat, which she had taken off so that her hair blew free about her face. I stood shaking with reaction as she slipped from the saddle and pecked me on the cheek. Instinctively I clamped her to me, shuddering.
“Why did you all hurry away so quickly? I thought I had been quite deserted,” cries she laughing, and then opening her eyes wide in mock alarm. “All alone and defenceless among wild Indians! It gave me quite a start, I can tell you!”
“You … you got out of the ambulance … after I told you—”
“Well, I should just think so! I wanted to see what was happening. Was it not thrilling? All of them running to and fro, and making those whooping cries and shaking their feathers? Why were they in such a commotion? I hoped,” she added wistfully, “that they might do a war dance, or some such thing, but they didn’t – and then I noticed that you were all gone, and I was quite alone. I called out after the ambulance, but no one heard me.”
“Elspeth,” says I weakly. “You must never, never do such a thing again. You might have been killed … when I found you weren’t here, I—”
“Why, my love, you are all a-tremble! You haven’t been fretting about me, surely? I was perfectly well, you know, for when a number of them saw me and brought their ponies about me, grunting in that strange way, and of course I couldn’t make it out, I was not in the least alarmed … well, not more than a wee bit …”
She wouldn’t be, either. I’ve known brave folk in my time: Broad-foot and Gordon, Brooke and Garibaldi, aye, and Custer, but for cold courage Elspeth, Lady Flashman, née Morrison, could match them all together. I could picture her in her flowered green riding dress and ribboned straw hat, perfectly composed while a score of painted savages ringed her, glowering. I choked as I held her, and asked what had happened.
“Well, one of them, very fierce-looking – he had two pistols and was painted all red and yellow—” for God’s sake, it must have been Little Big Man himself “—he came and snapped at me, shaking his fist; he sounded most irritable. I said ‘Good morning’, and he shouted at me, but presently he got down and was quite civil.”
“Why on earth—”
“I smiled at him,” says she, as though that explained it – which it probably did.
“—and he made the others stand back, and then he nodded at me, rather abruptly, and conducted me to Mr Spotted Tail. Then, of course, everything was right as could be.”
My alarm, my agonised relief, my sudden welling of affection, died in an instant. I swung round on her, but she was prattling on, one hand round my waist while she tidied her hair with the other.
“And he seemed so glad to see me, and tried to speak in English – ever so badly, and made us both laugh! Then he sent the others away, and managed to tell me that there had been some confusion, and we should wait a little and he would have sent me back to the camp. So that was all right, you see, and I’m sorry if it caused you any anxiety, dear one, but there was no occasion.”
Wasn’t there, though? She’d been with Spotted Tail an hour and better, with the others away, and not a civilised soul in sight … I knew what he was, the horny savage, and that she’d been pouting and ogling at him … All my old, well-founded suspicions came racing back – that first day, thirty-odd years ago, when she swore she was in the Park, and wasn’t, and frolicking half-naked with Cardigan while I lay blotto in the wardrobe, and cuddling with that fat snake Usman, and … oh, heaven knew how many others. I fought for speech.
“What did he do with … I mean, what did you … I mean … dammit, what happened?”
“Oh, he showed me to such a pretty little grove, with a tent, where I should be comfortable while he went to business with his friends. But presently he came back and we chatted ever so comfortably. Well,” she laughed gaily, “he tried to chat, but it was so difficult, with his funny English – why, almost all he knows is ‘Joll-ee good!’”
Was she taunting me with mock-innocent hints, the damned minx? I can never tell, you see. I craned my neck as we walked – hell’s teeth, there was loose grass sticking to the back of her gown, almost to the collar – there was even a shred in her hair! D’you get that with chatting? I gave a muffled curse and ground my teeth, and was about to explode in righteous accusation when she glanced up at me with those wondrous blue eyes, and for the hundredth time I knew that no one who could smile with that child-like simplicity could possibly be false … could she? And the fact that she’d patently been rolling in grass, positively wallowing in the stuff with her hair down? Eh? And Spotted Tail had had the cheek to tell me he was slavering for her … and they’d been alone for an hour in such a pretty little grove … Jesus, it must be the talk of the tipis by now!
“And then, after a little while, he bade me good-bye ever so courteously, and two of his young men conducted me home.”
What the devil was I to say? I’d no positive evidence (just plain certainty), and if I accused her, or even voiced suspicion, there would be indignation and floods of tears and reproach … I’d been through it all before. Was I misjudging her by my own rotten standards? No, I wasn’t either – I knew she was a trollop, and her wide-eyed girlishness was a deliberate mockery. Wasn’t it? No, blast it, it wouldn’t do, I’d have it out here and now—”
“Oh, please, Harry, don’t look so angry! I did not mean to cause you distress. Were you truly anxious for me?”
“Elspeth,” I began thunderously.
“Oh, you were anxious, and I am a thoughtless wretch! And I am selfish, too, because I cannot be altogether sorry since it has shown me yet again how you care for me. Say you are not angry?” And she gave me a little squeeze as we walked along.
“Elspeth,” says I. “Now … I … ah …” And, as always, I thought what the devil, if I’m wrong, and have been misjudging her all these years, and she’s as chaste as morning dew – so much the better. If she’s not – and I’ll be bound she’s not – what’s an Indian more or less?
“I am truly penitent, you see, and it was perfectly all right, because Mr Spotted Tail took such excellent care of me. Was it not fortunate that he was there, in your absence?” She laughed and sighed happily. “‘Joll-ee good!’”
* * *
q Who shall guard the guardians?
Chapter 17
If, as I strongly suspect, that turbulent afternoon’s work was a pleasant consummation for Lady Flashman and Chief Spotted Tail, it wasn’t for anyone else. The Black Hills treaty died then and there, slain by Senator Allison and Little Big Man. There followed another meeting at Camp Robinson – which I didn’t attend because I’d have exploded in his presence – at which Spotted Tail announced the Sioux’s formal rejection of the offer; Allison warned him that the government would go ahead anyway
, and fix the price at six million without agreement, but the most they could get from him was a promise to send word of the offer to Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, and if they accepted it then he and Red Cloud would give it their blessing. Which was so much eyewash, since everyone knew the hostiles wouldn’t accept. Standing Bear was to be the ambassador to the hostile chiefs, since he was apparently a protégé of Sitting Bull’s and well thought of by him.
“So nothing remains,” says Allison resentfully afterwards, “but for this commission to bear the bitter fruit of failure back to Washington. All your care and arduous labour, gentlemen, for which I thank you, have been in vain.” He was fuming with inward rage at being rebuffed by mere aborigines, and him a Senator, too; for the first and only time I saw his pompous mask drop. “These red rascals,” he burst out, “who wax fat on government bounty, have set us at defiance – defiance, I say! Well, the sooner they’re whipped into line, by cracky, the better!”
I’ve wondered since how much either side really wanted a treaty. I believe Red Cloud and Spotted Tail were ready for any terms that even looked honourable, and if Allison had been more tactful and offered a half-decent price, they might have won over enough Sioux to make the opposition of the hostile chiefs unimportant. I don’t know. What I can say is that the Indians went away from Camp Robinson in bitter fury, and while Allison was personally piqued I’m not certain he was altogether surprised, or that Washington minded too much. I’ve wondered even if the commission wasn’t simply a means of proving how stubborn the Indians were, and puting ’em in the wrong; perhaps of testing their mettle, too. If so, it failed disastrously, for it led Washington and the Army to draw a fatally wrong conclusion: after Camp Robinson it became accepted gospel that whatever happened, the Sioux wouldn’t fight. I confess, having seen the way they didn’t cut loose at the grove, it was a conclusion I shared.
So now, with all the treaty nonsense out of the way, the government set about bringing them to heel, ordering them to come in to the agencies before February of 1876. The message didn’t reach them all until Christmas, which meant it was next to impossible for them to comply, with the Powder country deep in snow. Shades of old Macaulay’s Glencoe, if you like – an ultimatum to wild tribes delivered late and in dead of winter, culminating in massacre. Whether the intentions of the U.S. Government were any more honourable than William III’s I can’t say, but they achieved the same result, in a way.
However, I wasn’t giving much thought to Indians that winter. Elspeth and I had concluded our western tour with a rail journey through the Rockies, a week’s hunting in Colorado, and then back to New York before the snow. I received a handsome testimonial from the Indian Bureau, and notes from Grant and Fisha thanking me for my services, which I thought pretty civil since the whole thing had been a fiasco – only a cynic like me would wonder if that’s why they thanked me. In any event, I was ready to wend our way home to England, and we would have done if it hadn’t been for the blasted Centennial.
1876 being the hundredth anniversary of the glorious moment when the Yankee colonists exchanged a government of incompetent British scoundrels for one of ambitious American sharps, it had been decided to celebrate with a grand exposition at Philadelphia – you know the sort of thing, a great emporium crammed with engines and cocoa and ghastly bric-à-brac which the niggers have no further use for, all embellished with flags and vulgar statuary. Our princely muffin the late Albert had set the tone with the Crystal Palace jamboree of 1851, since when you hadn’t been able to stir abroad without tripping over Palaces of Industry and Oriental Pavilions, and now the Yankees were taking it up on the grand scale. Elspeth was all for it; she suffered from the common Scotch mania for improvement and progress through machinery and tracts, and had been on one of the Crystal Palace ladies’ committees, so when she fell in with a gaggle of females who were arranging the women’s pavilion at Philadelphia, it was just nuts to her. She was in the thick of their councils in no time – republican women, you know, love a Lady to distraction – and there could be no question of our going home until after the opening in May.
I didn’t mind too much, since New York was jolly enough, and Elspeth was happy to divide her time between Park Avenue and Philadelphia, where preparations were in full cry, with Chinks and dagoes hammering away, for the whole world was exhibiting its Brummagem rubbish, and great halls were being built to house it. I even attended one of Elspeth’s committee teas, and as a traveller of vast experience my views were ardently sought by the organising trots; I assured them that they must insist on the Turks bringing a troupe of their famous contortionist dancers, a sorority akin to the ancient Vestal Virgins; the religious and cultural significance of their muscular movements was of singular interest, I said, and could not fail to edify the masses.59
Mostly, though, we were in and about the smart set, and New York society being as small as such worlds are, the encounter which I had just after Christmas was probably inevitable. It happened in one of those infernal patent circular hotel doors; I was going in as another chap was coming out, and he halted halfway, staring at me through the glass. Then he tried to reverse, which can’t be done, and then he thrust ahead at such a rate that I was carried past and finished where he had been, and he tried to reverse again. I rapped my cane on the glass.
“Open the damned door, sir!” cries I. “It’s not a merry-go-round.”
He laughed, and round we went again. I stood in the lobby as he tumbled out, grinning, a tall, lean cove with a moustache and goatee and a rakish air that I didn’t fancy above half.
“I don’t believe it!” cries he eagerly. “Aren’t you Flashman?”
“So I am,” says I warily, wondering if he was married. “Why?”
“Well, you can’t have forgotten me!” says he, piqued-like. “It isn’t every day, surely, that you almost chop a fellow’s head off!”
It was the voice, full of sharp conceit, that I remembered, not the face. “Custer! George Custer. Well, I’ll be damned!”
“Whatever brings you to New York?” cries he, pumping my fist. “Why, it must be ten years – say, though, more than that since our encounter at Audie! But this is quite capital, old fellow! I should have known those whiskers anywhere – the very picture of a dashing hussar, eh? What’s your rank now?”
“Colonel,” says I, and since it seemed a deuced odd question, though typical of him, I added: “What’s yours?”
“Ha! Well may you ask!” says he. “Half-colonel, and on sufferance at that. But with your opportunities, which we are denied, I’d have thought you’d have your brigade at the least, by now. But there,” cries he bitterly, “you’re a fighting soldier, so you’d be the last they’d promote. All services are alike, my boy.”
Here was one with a bee in his bonnet, I saw, and could guess why. In the war, you see, he’d been the boy general – I’m not sure he wasn’t the youngest in the Union Army – but like all the others he’d had to come down the ladder after the peace, and like a fool he was letting it rankle. I’d heard talk of him in the West, of course, for he’d been active against the Indians, and that he’d come under a cloud for dabbling in politics. Grant, they said, detested him.
“But see here,” he went on, “I’ve been itching to see you for ever so long, and wishing I’d looked you out after the war. You see, I never knew then, that you’d been in the Light Brigade!” I was mystified. “Balaclava! The noble Six Hundred!” cries he, and shot if he wasn’t regarding me with admiration. “But I hadn’t the least notion, you see! Well, that’s something I shall want to hear all about, I can tell you, now that chance has brought us together again.”
“Ah, well yes,” says I uncertainly. “I see …”
“Look here,” says he, sporting his ticker, “it’s the most confounded bore, but I have to call on my publisher … oh, yes, I’m more of a writer than a fighter these days, thanks to the Stuffed Gods of Washington.” He grimaced and took my hand again. “But you’ll dine with me, this evening? I
s your wife in New York? Capital! Then we’d better say Delmonico’s – Libby will be head over heels to meet you, and we’ll make a party. Fight our battles o’er again, eh? First-rate!”
I wasn’t sure it was, as I watched him striding off through the falling snow. Aside from the Audie skirmish, Appomattox, and an exchange of courtesies in Washington, I’d hardly known him except by reputation as a reckless firebrand who absolutely enjoyed warfare, and would have been better suited to the Age of Chivalry, when he’d have broken the Holy Grail in his hurry to get at it. And while I’d met scores of old acquaintances in America, for some reason running into Custer recalled my meeting with Spotted Tail, with its uncomfortable consequences.
We dined at Delmonico’s, though, with him and wife, a bonny, prim woman who worshipped him, and his brother Tom, a handsomer edition of the Custer family who got on famously with Elspeth, each being an accomplished flirt. Custer was all high spirits and presented me to his wife with:
“Now, here, Libby, is the English gentleman who almost made a widow of you before you were married. What d’you think of that? Sir Harry Flashman, Victoria Cross and Knight of the Bath—” he’d been at the List, by the sound of it “—also formerly of the Army of the Confederacy, with whom I crossed sabres at Audie, didn’t I, old fellow?” The truth of it was that he’d been laying about him like a drunk Cossack among our Johnnie cavalry, and I’d taken one cut at him in self-defence as I fled for safety to the rebel lines, but if he wanted to remember it as a knightly tourney, let him. “Ah, brave days!” cried he, clapping me on the shoulder, and over the soup he regaled us with sentimental fustian about the brotherhood of the sword, now sheathed in respect and good fellowship.
He was all enthusiasm for Balaclava, demanding the most precise account, and vowing over and over that he wished he’d been there, which shows you he should have been in some sort of institution. Though when I think of it, the Charge was ready-made for the likes of him; he and Lew Nolan would have made a pair. When I’d done, he shook his head wistfully, sighed, regarded his glass (lemonade, if you please), and murmured:
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