The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection

by George MacDonald Fraser

  “Don’t you give a damn ’bout that, then? You don’t car’ that them red snakes butcher an’ burn our folks? You one o’ these bastard Injun-lovers, seem-like! Hey, boys; hyar’s a feller sweet on th’ Pashes!”

  There was a growl from the assembled riders, but the sober card shouted above it. “I give a damn, too! But I ain’t no scalp hunter! There’s a law fer them redsticks, an’ I rackon th’ Army can deal with ’em—” This was drowned in a roar of derision, Gallantin’s eyes rolled with rage, and he fairly spat his reply.

  “Th’ Army, by Christ! A sight o’ good th’ Army done this place! You ain’t no scalp-hunter, says you! Then what the hell you jine wi’ us fer?”

  “We didn’t know what you wuz!” cries the youth.

  “You thunk we wuz some ole ladies’ knittin’ party, by the holy?”

  “Come on, Lafe,” says the sober card in disgust. “Let ’em git their blood-money ifn they wants.” He swung into his saddle, and the young fellow followed suit. “Scalp-hunters!” growls the other, and swung his mount away.

  “Whar th’ hell you think you goin’?” bawls Gallantin, in a huge fury.

  “Away from you,” snaps the youth, and followed his partner.

  “Come back hyar! You ain’t goin’ ter put the sojers after us, by God!” And he would have spurred after them, I believe, but Ilario snapped his fingers at one of the Indians, and quicker than light the brute whipped out his hatchet, and flung it after the departing pair. It hit the youth square in the back with a sickening smack; he screamed, and pitched from the saddle with that awful thing buried in his spine, and as his partner wheeled Ilario shot him twice. The sober chap rolled slowly past his horse’s head and fell beside the other; his horse whinnied and bolted; Ilario spun the smoking pistol in his hand, and Gallantin cursed horribly at the two fallen men. The youth was flopping about, with awful gasps, then he was still. No one moved.

  “They’d ha’ put the sojers on us,” says Gallantin. “Waal, thar they be! Any other chile o’ thar mind?”

  I knew one who was – not to notice, though, and if any others shared my doubts they kept quiet about it. It had happened with such fell speed, and now it was done there was only stony indifference on the bearded, savage faces of the band. Not all were indifferent, though; the Indian retrieved his hatchet, and called an inquiry to Ilario, who nodded. The Indian drew his knife, stooped over the youth, grunted with disgust, and stepped instead to the corpse of the older man. He knelt, seized the hair, made one swift circle with his point, and dragged off the scalp with brutal force. He stuffed the awful bloody thing into his belt, and then one of the hunters, a huge, pock-marked ruffian, slipped from his saddle.

  “This coon don’t see three hunner’ dollars goin’ ter waste!” cries he, and no one said a word while he scalped the dead youth. “Rackon it’s good as Mimbreno ha’r, boys!” He grinned round, bloody knife in one hand and dripping scalp in the other.

  “Good as squaw’s ha’r, mebbe,” cries another. “Kinder fine, Bill!” A few of the others laughed, and I noticed Grattan was wearing that foxy half-grin as he sat and tugged at his long nose. Myself, I reflected that here was another good anecdote for the next church social, and studied to look unconcerned. What else was there to do?

  For like it or not, I was fairly stuck, and while I had much food for thought as we headed westward into the evening sun, there could be only one conclusion. Here I was, by the most awful freak of chance, among a band of those scalp-hunters of whom young Harrison had spoken, but whom I had supposed no longer existed now that American law governed the land; it was flattery of a kind, I supposed, that Gallantin had looked me over and thought me worth recruiting – I recalled our brief conversation of last night, and the way he had spoken his name; he wasn’t to know that he was addressing perhaps the one man in New Mexico to whom it meant nothing. I’d ride along with him, I’d said in my innocence, and there was nothing else for it. Even without the fearful example of those two scalped deserters, I’d never have dared to quit, in a countryside alive apparently with the kind of fiends who had wrought the destruction of the hacienda. It was an irony that I was too terrified to appreciate, that my one hope lay in the company of these foul brutes who were carrying me mile by mile closer to battle, murder, and sudden death which I could only hope would not be mine.

  We rode the sun down, and pushed on into steep country of hills covered with pine and cedar, with only the briefest of halts while Gallantin and Ilario conversed with our Indians. Mile after mile we went, through that fragrant maze, and the order came back to eat from our saddle-bags as we rode, for Gallantin had the scent and knew exactly where he wanted to go. God knows how many miles it was, or how he and the others were so sure of the way; I can night-foray as well as most by the stars, but in those dense bottoms and ravines, or along those precipitous hillsides, thick with trees, I lost all sense of direction. But I know we rode fourteen hours from the hacienda, and I was beginning to believe my Arab must founder under me when a halt was called.

  But even then it was only to take to the woods on foot, groping through the night with your hand at one man’s belt while another held you behind, trying for dear life not to thrash about like a mad bear in a cane-break, gripping your rifle and gritting your teeth against the pain of saddle-sore buttocks. I became aware that the sky was getting lighter, and Ilario, who led my line, urged us on with whispers; once he stopped and pointed, and over the bushy ridge ahead was a dim reddish glow that was not of the dawn. Oh, Jesus, thinks I, now for it, as we pressed forward slowly up the slope, testing each step before we took it, no longer in touch but each for himself with Ilario ahead. Then it was down on our bellies and crawl; the dark was thin enough to see the man either side and Ilario in front, as he motioned us forward. We reached the summit of the ridge, and lay screened among the bushes, drenched in sweat and like to drop – but in no danger, I assure you, of dozing off.

  To explain, as I understood the thing later: Gallantin had identified the marauders as Mimbreno Apaches of the Santa Rita Copper Mines, which lay some distance to the south. He had suspected the presence of a camp of them in this fastness of the Gila forest, a sort of temporary base to which this particular band had moved, no doubt for game; Apaches, you must know, are almost entirely nomadic, and will move on after a week or a few months, as they feel inclined. They build no permanent houses; their home, as they say, is their fireplace. Gallantin had further calculated that after their successful attack on the hacienda, they would return to camp, there to whoop it up in celebration and gorge and booze on tizwin and cactus-juice, and keep the girls in stitches with accounts of how their flayed victims had wriggled over the fires. By dawn he reckoned they would be well under – and here it was dawn, the rays striking down through the trees into the little valley, and on the heights about Gallantin and Co. were ready to go into business. (I wondered if Lieutenant Harrison knew that the going rate for Apache hair was now $300 a pelt. Better than beaver, indeed.)

  Beneath us was a narrow, rocky defile, with a brook running through it, broadening into a goodish stream at a point where the defile itself opened out briefly into a level space of about an acre before it closed again to a rocky gorge. On the level space was the Indian village, and behind it rocks rose almost sheer for seventy feet to a forested lip. On our side, the slope down was steep, and studded with bushes; the ends of the defile were thick-wooded clefts. A splendid lurking-place, in fact, provided it was never found; Gallantin had found it, and so it had become a death-trap. If the Apaches had posted sentries, I suppose they had been dealt with – but I doubt if they had. Flown with triumph, confident of their remote security, they wouldn’t see the need.

  I half-expected that we would rush the place at dawn (and wasn’t relishing a mêlée in the valley-bottom) and indeed that is what would have happened if the village had been in an open place with avenues of escape. What I had overlooked was that this wasn’t a military or punitive expedition: it was hunting. The one a
im was to kill the quarry and take its pelt, at sixty quid the time. If your game can scatter, you must pounce and take it by surprise; when it’s fish in a barrel, your best road is to sit safe on the edge and destroy it at leisure. (I tried to explain this once in an article to The Field entitled “The Human Quarry as Big Game, and the Case for and against Preserving”, in which I laboured the point that to scalp-hunters the Apaches were no different from bear or wolf or antelope – of course they hated the brutes, but they ain’t too sweet on wolf or lion, either, and a hunter’s hate tends to be in proportion to his fear of the quarry. Oh, there were some to whom the lust of slaughter was sweeter than the scalp-price – folk who’d had families murdered and tortured and enslaved by these savages, or those, like myself that day, who perfectly enjoyed paying back what had been done at the hacienda – but for most it was a matter of business and profit. I cited the case I’ve described to you in which the hunters scalped two of their own kind, and pointed out that there were those in New Mexico at that time who claimed that Gallantin’s practice of selling any hair he could get – Mexican, American, friendly Indian, and the like – was ethically unsound; it gave scalp-hunting a bad name, they said. The Field didn’t print my piece; limited interest, you may say, but I hold that it’s a matter worth serious discussion, and would have provoked a fine correspondence.)

  So we waited, as the light grew until we could easily see the sprawl of wickiups on the level ground beyond the stream – they’re big skin igloos with willow frames, perhaps twenty feet across, and can hold a family with ease, with a hole on top to let out smoke and stink. The whole place was filthy with refuse, and a few curs were prowling among it; here and there a human being was to be seen – a couple of braves sprawled and presumably drunk in the open; an old woman kindling a fire; a boy playing at the stream. Down near the gorge end was a rough corral in which were about a hundred ponies. Ilario passed whispered word of the range: a hundred and twenty yards. I looked to my caps, eased out my pistol, and examined my revolving rifle, head well down in the rough grass of the crest. There were about fifteen of us spread along it, five yards apart; the remainder of our band were evenly divided among the trees at either end of the defile. Nothing could get in or out. Nothing did.

  The place began to stir, and I got my first look at the famous Apaches – the Sheeshinday, “Men of the Woods”, or as they are widely and simply known, “the enemy”. I’d had an impression that they were small, but not so. These, being Mimbreno of the Copper Mines, were not among the largest; even so, they were sturdy, well-made brutes, ugly as sin, and lithe and easy in their movements. Their hair was long and undressed, and while some wore it bound in a scarf, most were bare-headed except for a brow-circlet; a few were in shirts and leggings, many wore only the breech-clout. The women, in tunics, were buxom peasants – no tall, willowy jungle princesses here; their voices, shrill and sharp, floated across the stream as they fetched water or busied themselves at the fires, with the kidneys and kedgeree, no doubt. A few braves sauntered down to the corral, others sat outside the wickiups to yawn and gossip, and one or two began to paint, an operation which seemed to call for much care, and criticism from bystanders.

  There must have been more than a hundred and fifty in view when one fellow in fringed leggings and a blanket stood forth and told the others to fall in, at which most of the men drifted in his direction to listen – the hunter next to me snapped his fingers softly and nodded, cocking his piece; I passed the signal on, and lay with my heart thumping. At a whispered word I pushed the rifle cautiously forward, covering a stout savage on the edge of the main group, my foresight just above his rump; I won’t pretend I had a vision of those bodies at the hacienda, or any nonsense of that sort – he was a target, and any soldier, from the saintly Gordon downwards, would tell you the same … crack!

  The shot came from the gorge, and the whole rim of the valley exploded in fire and smoke. I squeezed off, and saw my savage leap and topple sideways; around him they were falling, and the whole camp boiled with dust and re-echoed with screams and the boom of shots as we poured our fire into them point-blank; I missed a tall fellow, but spun another round as he bolted towards the corral, and then I was firing steadily into the brown.

  It was deadlier than a Gatling, for here each man was a marksman, and there were forty of us with six-shot rifles, except for one or two long-gun eccentrics who never missed anyway. A Sharp’s fires six to the minute, and a Colt rifle considerably faster. Within two minutes there wasn’t a live male Indian to be seen, and the ground was littered with bodies, none of ’em wounded, for any that kicked became instantly the target for half a dozen rifles. About a dozen had reached the corral, and came out like bats along the stream, but they got no distance; a few more dashed frantically through the water towards our position, and were cut down before they’d got half way up the hill. The slaughter was all but complete.

  There remained the wickiups, and now our own Indians emerged at either end of the defile, with burning arrows which they shot methodically into the skins. There were shrieks from within as the lodges began to burn, and out dashed the females, with here and there a brave among them; the men were picked off while the women screamed and milled about like ants; one or two may have been hit as they ran blindly among the flaming wickiups, or cowered at the foot of the cliff behind. Round the lip of the valley hung a great wreath of powder smoke as our fire ceased; now there was no sound except the dry crackle of the burning wickiups, and the muted wails of terrified women and children.

  Parties of hunters broke from the trees at either end of the defile, and Ilario stood up and waved us down the hill. We went quiet and careful, without whoop or halloo, because there had been no victory, and hunters don’t yell and caper when they’ve downed their quarry. There were one or two shots, as victims were made certain, and a few shouted commands; for the rest we splashed in silence through the stream to the corpse-strewn camp, where Gallantin was waiting.

  Guards were posted on the women and horses, and then out came the knives as they prepared to do what they had come to do. I shan’t horrify you with more detail than I must, but one or two points should be recorded for history’s sake. One was made by a buckskin hunter who was divesting a corpse of all the skin and hair above its ears, at which his mate, neatly removing the top-knot from another head, remarked that the first chap was being unnecessarily thorough, surely, to which the buckskin man replied that the Chihuahua authorities liked to see a full scalp.

  “Ye see, some sonsabitches,” says he as he panted and sawed away, “has bin takin’ two scalps offn wun haid, so the Mexes is grown chary o’ leetle scalps. Yew want yore full money, yew tek th’ hull shebang! Come hup, ye bastard! Thar, now!”

  Another thing I noted was that all scalps went into a common pile, which a popular novelist would no doubt describe as “reeking” – heaven knows why. They don’t reek; en masse they look like a cheap and greasy black rug. Gallantin stood by and kept careful count as they were salted; there were a hundred and twenty-eight all told.

  You may wonder if I took a scalp. The answer is no. For one thing, I wouldn’t touch an Indian’s hair on a bet, and for another, it’s a skilled job. It did cross my mind, though, as something to have done, if you follow me – as I wrote for The Field, it’s a nice point which trophy on your wall does you greater credit, the head of a pretty, gentle impala, or a switch of hair marked “Mimbreno Apache, Gila Forest, ’49”. I even wandered across the stream to one of the bodies that had fallen on the hillside, and considered it a moment, and then came away quickly. He must have been all of eight years old.

  That was the point at which I was sickened, I confess – by that and the cold, brisk efficiency with which the scalpers worked. There were a few crazy ones who obviously enjoyed it – I was intrigued to see Grattan red to the wrists, with a wild look in his eye – but for most of them it was no more than chopping wood. And if you cry out on them, as you should – well, be thankful that you weren’t b
orn along the Del Norte, and the matter never arose for you.

  As for the massacre itself, I’ve been on t’other end too often to worry overmuch. The scalping was beastly, but I couldn’t regret the dead Apaches, any more than Nana’s people regretted us at Cawnpore. And if you’ve marched in the Kabul retreat, or fled from Isandhlwana, or scaled the Alma – well, the sight of six score Indians piled up without any tops to their heads may not be pretty, but when you reflect on what deserving cases they were, you don’t waste much pity on them.

  I won’t say I was at my cheeriest, though, or that I ate much at noon, and I was quite happy to be one of a party that Gallantin sent out to circle the valley for Indian sign. There wasn’t any – which is the worst sign of all, let me tell you – and we came back at evening to find the camp cleared up, with a great fire going, and the real devil’s work about to begin.

  You will remember that the women had been rounded up, more or less unharmed, and if I’d thought about them at all I dare say I’d have concluded that they would be spared, give or take a quiet rape or so. In fact, I discovered that the habit of Gallantin’s gang of charmers was to while away the night with them, and then slaughter and scalp them the next day – along with the children. If you doubt me, consult Mr Dunn’s scholarly workh, among a score of others, and note that the proyecto made distinctions of age and sex only by price.

  I was eating my stew like a good lad, and washing it down with more corn beer than was good for me, when Ilario came over to where I and a couple of others were sitting; he carried a leather bag, which he shook and proffered; not thinking, I reached in like the others, and came out with a white pebble; theirs were black, at which they cussed roundly, and Ilario grinned and jerked his thumb.