by Peter Bowen
Maybe the Indians will get tired of having to ride out and all the way up to the mountains to cut new warpoles, I thinks, and maybe scalps can pall just like too much butterscotch fudge.
Alys cranked up the screams each day as the flies piled up higher and higher, finally reduced to blubbering DO SOMETHING!
“Well,” I says, “Boston got them sea breezes and not so many flies, you know.”
She flung her cup and saucer at me, and I looked at the tea staining my shirt.
Just then I looks out the window and there was a sight, ladies and gentlemen, that even I, hardened by years of idiots coming West, found hard to credit.
There was these three big boxcars, much taller than the usual and painted purple with gold stars and some sort of emblem. I could have managed that, but there was this elephant coming down a ramp.
The elephant had been painted. It was pinto. It had a big headdress on and ostrich plumes waving from the top.
“Gawd,” I says, goggling a little, “lay the track and the circus comes.”
Alys looks where I was staring.
“It’s not the circus,” she says. “It’s Masoud.”
“Of course it’s Masoud,” I says.
“Remember the tall man in the silk turban at the debate in New York?” says Alys.
I nodded. Him with the giant A-rabs to each side.
“He’s unbelievably rich and terribly bored,” says Alys. “And I’ll bet he’s here to collect fossils.”
Another elephant was coming down the ramp. Painted pinto. Headdress and a mahout in a rag of a loincloth waving a hooked stick at the beast.
There was a little hill not far away, and there was about forty A-rabs putting up a huge blue tent. Camels. A flock of sheep.
Mrs. McGinniss got up, there was a knock at the door. She opened it. There was a lawyer there. I can spot ’em easy. They stand crooked.
“He wanted to speak to you, Mr. Kelly,” says Mrs. McGinniss.
I went to the door, one hand on my pocket gun. Some folks like to shoot gophers for sport, but I ... never mind.
“Lucious Hooper,” says the shyster, “I represent Prince Masoud al-Diloof.”
“How nice for you,” I says, searching for the outline of a gun on the bastard. I could claim he was a-drawing down on me.
The lawyer cocks one of his two glass eyes on me.
“Prince Masoud wishes to engage your services,” says the lawyer.
“I’m engaged,” I says.
“He will double your pay,” says the lawyer.
“Not enough,” I says.
“Triple,” says the lawyer.
A shot rang out and the lawyer’s hat flew off his head and he retreated out the door and took cover behind a stack of boxes on the platform.
I turns and looks at Alys, who had her little pistol in hand, wisps of blue smoke wafting up from the bore.
“He was getting close to your price,” she says.
A clever girl, that Alys.
“Masoud is so rich,” said Alys, “that he’ll buy you if he has to buy Rosie’s and deed it over to you.”
“Really?” I says, looking interested.
Alys smiled at me cheerily. She walked over to me, her lips puckered for a kiss. I bent down to taste those lovely lips and a bang and a flame missed my balls by not much. I hopped around with my hands on my crotch for a while, bellering that she’d lost her damned mind and what the hell ...
Alys lunged a dainty linen napkin into a pitcher of water and she wrang it out and offered it to me.
“Cold water is good for burns,” she says, “and I will thank you to act a gentleman. Deal’s a deal and all that.”
“I was just funnin’,” I whined.
“Ho ho ho,” says Alys. “Now, you miserable bastard, you better remember this. Masoud may be rich, but I am merciless. I know you, Kelly. You are not backing out or sneaking off. Don’t disappoint me.”
The lawyer was hollering from behind his boxes, and I noted for purely scholarly reasons that we was up to ten times what I was bein’ paid. I thought of hollering throw in Rosie’s and I’m your man but Alys gave me one of them looks says you’d ... better ... not and she walked back to the door and shot at the lawyer till he scampered off.
“Won’t do no good,” I says. “He’ll just come back. And if you kill that one, there’ll be another. They’s kinda like cockroaches.”
Just then there was a god-awful eruption of noise, trumpets and cymbals and drums sounded like they was about twelve feet across and an elephant much bigger than the first two passed by. There was a howdah on its back the size of a steamboat cabin and a gold throne which Prince Masoud was holding down. He looked straight ahead, the world was down there to him and always would be.
The three elephants squelched through the mud and went over to the huge tent, and then the damnedest thing happened. Masoud’s flunkies all lay flat a moment, and then some made steps out of theirselves, five people high on hands and knees, and the Prince regally walked down the naked backs of his subjects and put his booted foot on a gold carpet and he sauntered into his tent and the flaps closed.
“You know,” I says to Alys. “Wind comes out and up about dusk and that damned tent is going to be headed for Mexico.”
“Fine,” says Alys, “but you’re not.”
My nuts itched a little, but the cold water helped. She didn’t really try to hurt me, not that accidentally made much difference.
Watch yer Irish mouth, I thinks, yer balls depends on it sticking shut.
I went off to put on a pair of trousers didn’t have powder burns at the crotch and I inspected my privates for damage. Just a little red. Well, she did have an interest in their continued good health.
“Kelly,” Alys says from the doorway, “there’s an envoy here. You had better speak to him.”
“Why not you?” I says. “It’s your house.”
“I’m a woman,” says Alys, “and he wouldn’t deign to hear me. Women in their world are beneath notice and can’t speak unless spoken to.”
“Damn,” I says. “Tell me more.”
“Get your Irish ass out there before I give up and just kill you,” says Alys. “The gunsmoke gave me a headache and I MAY JUST KILL YOU FOR THE PEACE!”
So I moseys out to the door and I can see a gent standing in it, or most of him anyway, he was so tall that the jamb cut him off at the shoulders. Big necklace of assorted gems and a green sash.
The feller steps back when I come to the door and I crane my neck and look up at his nose hairs.
“Prince Masoud commands you to dine with him,” rumbles the feller in perfect English.
Those two huge A-rabs been on either side of Prince Masoud at the debate in New York was now on either side of his butler, here.
“Please tell the prince thanks,” I says, “but I can’t.”
There was a ringing of steel and two scimitars was lightly touching respective spots, jugular and lower lip.
“Delighted,” I says.
“Come alone,” says the giant butler, “at eight sharp.”
22
IT LOOKED TO BE a long night ahead, so I took a nap and I woke up some when Alys slipped into bed with me. Then I sank back down and was resting pleasant when a jolt of electricity run through me, I knew what it was because a piece of ball lightning had bounced right into me on a mountain in Montana once and it felt like that.
I done rose about four foot straight off the bed and saw Alys down there looking at a couple of wires with a puzzled frown on her face.
“What the hell?” I roared when I come down.
“Maybe I hooked it up wrong,” she says. “I ordered this Patent Electrical Stimulator some time ago and it just got here.”
“Jaysus Christ, woman, why are you trying to kill me?”
“Oh, Luther,” says the wench, “I just wanted to please you. Rosie mentioned these the other day.”
“I will ride north alone,” I says. “I will carry a red fla
g so I am not missed. The Indians will sweep down to kill me. AND IT WOULD BE A HELL OF A LOT SAFER THAN I AM HERE.”
“Well,” says Alys, “why don’t you look at the directions?” and she offers me a couple sheets of paper.
Liddell’s Patent Electrical Stimulator for the Relief of Neuralgic Complaints.
I gathered up the wires and such and the battery and I threw them out in to the mud.
She looked so melting and lovely I had a go right then and it was a while ’fore we wound down.
Electrical Stimulator indeed.
“Alys,” I says, her breath sweet on my neck, “will you quit. I got it. No Rosie’s. I got it.”
“Go and look over toward Masoud’s tent,” she says.
I did. There was a big yellow one set up now, right next to his blue one.
“The yellow tent is a place Luther Kelly does not go,” says Alys.
“What’s in it?” I says innocently. Masoud’s concubines, for sure.
“Your death,” says lovely Alys, “is in that yellow tent. Masoud is well-mannered. He will offer you your choice of pleasures. Girls or boys.”
“Waste not, want not,” I says.
She didn’t rise to the bait and so I went off to take a bathe and shave and put on my best duds, which was what I always wore.
Eight o’clock was nigh when I went out the door into the dark and found Masoud’s flunks and a big white horse saddled with a golden saddle looked like a hurdle. I stepped on the back of the flunk in the mud to mount and another led the horse along and we went over the golden carpet to the front door of the huge tent. I got down and a flunk motioned me to a chair and he pulled off my boots and I went on in in my socks.
The tent smelled of incense, curry, and unwarshed feet.
Masoud was on a reclining sofa-looking sort of thing, sipping from a golden goblet. The giant butler took me over, patting me a bit on the way for arms, but I’d left my guns on the dresser.
The butler fell on his face and crawled forward when he got close to Masoud and I was damned if I was going to follow suit till I felt a pair of sharp steel tips digging a little into the back of my neck and though they was men of few words I knew it was them guards, who seemed always to have just the right gestures to get the message over.
I wriggled over toward Masoud, glancing back once to see my chums with the scimitars, and there they was, standing loose, their big curved swords point down and their hands atop the hilts.
The butler announced me in some lingo I didn’t know and then he wriggled off.
“Please take the other couch,” says Masoud. “But take care not to let your head rise higher than mine. A stupid custom, but my people have seen so for a thousand years. I apologize. Nothing would please me more than to come and ride as a cowboy, but I cannot.”
The accent was British and when I slid on to the couch I saw Masoud’s eyes, black and twinkling. He was holding a sheaf of magazines or catalogs.
“Are you hungry?” says Masoud. “Or thirsty? You drink whiskey, I believe?”
A hand appeared with a gold cup and half a bottle in it and I took it.
“Thanks,” I says. “I ain’t especially hungry.” Having my balls damn near shot off and then waking up electrocuted had damped my appetite.
“Apologies for my assistants,” says Masoud. “In my country my every wish is instantly taken for granted. I know you are obligated to Professor Cope, even more so to Miss de Bonneterre. If you would explain to my chamberlain that you have taken an oath to your God, promising to guide Cope, that will be enough so they will understand.”
Masoud snapped his fingers and the giant chamberlain crawled over and he listened while I laid it all off on God, nodded, and backed away.
“This catalog,” says Masoud, “fascinates me.”
It was from Abercrombie & Fitch.
Masoud had already marked a bunch of stuff, elegant, expensive, and perfectly useless, but he was eager for my suggestions and we settled on their Patent Highly Revolving Automatic Duck Plucker, the illustration showing a fat fool in hunting togs gaily turning a crank whilst lots of floppy little rubber fingers ripped the feathers off a canvasback.
Never head West without one.
I also modestly recommended their Pneumatic India-Rubber Raft as just the thing for crossing rivers dry-shod. Masoud ordered ten of them. Then he clapped his hands and a flunk crawled in and took the marked catalog off to the telegraph office and the delight of Abercrombie & Fitch.
The important business done, we ate, and it was delicious, I enjoy hot spicy foods and this was some of the best. We had some sweetmeats and little cups of strong black coffee.
He asked me to recommend a guide or two for him, and I says he could do worse than Buffalo Bill, who was down in Denver whoring through the winter as was his custom. He couldn’t do much worse, but I thought that overdressed son of a bitch would truly enjoy Masoud’s notions of roughing it in the wilderness, especially with a tent full of houris along.
I was much gratified when the chamberlain was summoned and ordered to fetch Cody, and I positively grinned when he went out the front door with the two thugs close behind. Nothing I like better than doing a favor for a friend, especially one like Buffalo Bill, since the stupid son of a bitch had about got me killed on several occasions, worrying about his public whilst I was left to worry about the goddamned Sioux closing in.
Don’t get me going on that bog Irish bastard.
It was a fine evening with thoughts of Cody either being beheaded for insolence or fucked to death.
Masoud still hadn’t offered me the pleasures of the yellow tent, and though I wasn’t inclined to partake—my balls still burned a little from Alys’s near miss—I was curious to see what Masoud had by way of ladies in there.
Finally, Masoud allows as how if I would perhaps like to look over the ladies in the yellow tent and see if anything suited my fancy, he would be delighted and honored and so forth and so on.
I allowed as how I would be delighted and honored and so forth and so on merely to see the lovelies and so forth and so on.
Masoud highly recommended a lovely Circassian girl, blond and blue-eyed, who had just arrived.
“Circassian?” I says.
Part of Turkey, says Masoud, and famous for the beauty of their women, a tribute of girls was sent along each year.
If she’d just arrived, I says, didn’t he want first dibs?
Oh, no, says Masoud, the guest is to be so honored.
Perhaps, I says, and no insult meant if I felt the time was not right.
Fine, says Masoud, and let us away.
He got up and we strode over to a tented passageway and a pair of giant black guards by the far door fell flat on their faces and we went past through a thick hanging cloak of fine silk sheets.
I damn near dropped my jaw. There was about thirty of the loveliest women I had ever seen, wearing jewels and little bustiers and transparent silk pants loose and blooming but tight at the ankles and waist.
“Beautiful,” I says to Masoud.
I wasn’t supposed to be in the yellow tent at all, but, hell, how I could be rude and refuse after such a generous evening.
“The lovely Circassian is in that little pavilion,” says Masoud, pointing to a small silk tent over against the wall.
Years and years dodging death on the Plains had give me a sixth sense, and now it was flat screaming at me.
“Oh, I thank you,” I says to the Prince, “but I mustn’t, for my heart is given to lovely Alys.”
“You live, Kelly,” she says, holding the curtains open. She was dressed like the houris in the main part behind me.
“Many thanks, Masoud,” I says, heading right in.
23
ALYS AND ME SPENT the night in the tent, a fine Arabian night, and we slipped away under the new moon before the sun come up.
Turned out Masoud came to Rosie’s, but that he got to do alone, something about how the place was one of our temples and t
he whores was temple servants. Well, that’s true enough.
Masoud would sit in the room in back with Rosie and Alys and they’d chaff him and he’d laugh. The poor son of a bitch had to come to Wyoming find a place to be just another feller. I didn’t envy him his god-king’s job. Had more rules than a prison.
Him and Rosie and Alys had decided to set ol’ Luther up, and if Masoud and Rosie was funnin’, Alys was surely not and it was only my quick wits saved my arse.
Highly Revolving Duck Plucker indeed. If my wits hadn’t kicked in Alys would have hooked the damned thing up to a steam engine and skinned me with it.
The chamberlain arrived back three days later from Denver with Cody in tow, all flowing blond hair and big white teeth, and them ridiculous thigh-high cavalry boots that fill up with scorpions so nice.
I had a drink with Bill and we talked old times, which we surely remembered much differently. You had to like him, all that drivel about honor and the Code of the West, Cody actually believed and practiced. His word was good as his bond, any friend in need was welcome to the ruffled silk shirt off his back, and he was very brave, I suspected because he knew he was destined for Great Things and no bullet would touch him.
Masoud and Company left the next morning, three elephants in the lead and fifty wagons and the whole damned mess was made perfect when I spotted two Krupp cannon bouncing along behind with some out-of-work Pickelhaubes on the limbers to man them. Even had a tiger in a cage—everybody needs a house cat, I guess.
Cope had been heard from, and was to arrive in two days, and it was about right that he hadn’t been heard from for months and now everything had to be ready to go almost the moment he got there.