The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection

by George MacDonald Fraser

  It was a desperate, horrible gamble – but I knew that if it came to a fight in the end, it was my only hope. I was still shaky from my illness, and even at my best I couldn’t have lived with Vasco in a contest with knives or hatchets. But I was a trained lancer, and guessed that he wasn’t – they use ’em overhead, two-handed, and have no notion of proper management. But with luck and good acting, it need never come to that; by playing the cool, professional hand, I could win without a battle.

  While they were getting the lances and ponies, and a frantic Sonsee-array was shrilly damning Daddy’s eyes for permitting this criminal folly, and he was growling that she’d brought it on herself, and the commonalty were settling down to enjoy the show, I turned to the Yawner and asked him quietly if he could find me three wooden pegs, about so by so. He stared at me, but went off, and presently they brought out my little Arab, apparently none the worse for having been in their hands, and a lance. It was shorter and lighter than cavalry issue, but with a sharp well-set head. Vasco was already aboard a pony, shaking a lance in the air and yelling to the crowd – no doubt assuring them what mincemeat he was going to make of the pinda-lickoyee. They yelled and cheered, and he whooped and cantered about, hurling abuse in my direction.

  I didn’t heed him. I busied myself talking to the Arab, petting him and blowing in his nostrils for luck, and threw away the Indian saddle they had given him; without stirrups, I knew I’d be safer bareback. His bridle, which was the merest crude strap, would just have to serve. I took my time, and ignored the impatience of the crowd, while Mangas stood brooding and silent – and here came the Yawner, with three pegs in his hand.

  I took them, and without a word or a look walked away and set them in the ground, about twenty paces apart, while the mob stared and shouted in astonishment, and Vasco trotted up, screaming at me. Still I paid no attention, but walked back to my pony, picked up the lance, turned to Mangas, and spoke my piece so that everyone should hear; while I was quaking inwardly, I flattered myself I’d kept a steady, careless front; I looked him in the eye, and hoped to God I was right, and that they’d never heard of tent-pegging.

  “I don’t want to fight your brave, Mangas Colorado,” says I, “because he’s a young man and a fool, and I’ll prove nothing by killing him that I haven’t proved already, in defence of your daughter. But if you say I must kill him … then I will. First, though, I’m going to show you something – and when you’ve seen it, you can tell me whether I need to kill him or not.”

  Then I turned away, and damnably stiff and bruised as I was, vaulted on to the Arab’s back. I trotted him about for a moment or two, plucked the lance from the Yawner’s hand, and cantered away fifty yards or so before turning to come in on the pegs at a gallop. My heart was in my mouth, for while I’d been a dab hand in India, I knew I must be rusty as the deuce from lack of practice, to say nothing of my cracked head and groggy condition – and if I failed or made a fool of myself, I was a dead man.

  But it was neck or nothing now – there were the pegs, tiny white studs on the red earth, with the squat colossal form of Mangas close by them, Sonsee-array just behind him, and the watching multitude beyond. The Arab’s hooves were drumming like pistons as I bore in, bringing down the point to cover the first peg as it rushed towards me … I leaned out and down and prayed – and my point missed it by a whisker, but here was the second almost under our hooves, and this time I made no mistake; the bright steel cut into the peg like cheese and I wheeled away in a great circle, the spitted peg flourished high for all to see. What a howl went up as I cantered towards Mangas Colorado, dipped my point in salute, and stuck the spiked butt of the lance in the earth before him. I was a trifle breathless, but nodded cool as I knew how.

  “Now I’ll fight your brave, Mangas Colorado, if you say so,” I told him. “But before I do – let me see that he’s a worthy opponent. There are the little pegs – let him try.”

  Not a muscle moved in that awful lined face, while there was uproar from the watchers; Vasco curvetted about, howling and shaking his lance – protesting, I dare say, that pig-sticking wasn’t his game. Sonsee-array screamed abuse at him, with obscene gestures, the Yawner gaped with laughter till his jaw cracked – and Mangas Colorado’s snake eyes went from me to the spitted peg and back again. Then, after what seemed an age, he glanced at Vasco, grunted, and jerked his thumb at the remaining pegs. The assembly bayed approval, Sonsee-array jumped with glee, and I settled back to enjoy the fun.

  It was better than I could have hoped for. Tent-pegging ain’t as hard as it looks, but you have to know the knack, and it was quite beyond Vasco. He ran half a dozen courses and missed by a mile every time, to renewed catcalls which made him so wild that at the last try he speared the ground, snapped the shaft, and came out of the saddle like a hot rivet. His pals screeched for joy and even the women hooted, and he fairly capered with rage, which made them laugh all the more.

  That was what I’d been after from the start – to make him look so ridiculous that his challenge to a man who was obviously more expert than he would be scoffed out of court. It had worked; even Mangas’s mouth twitched in a hideous grin, while the Yawner gaped and slapped his thighs. Vasco stamped and screamed in rage – and then his eye lighted on me; he shook his fist, sprang to his pony’s back, and made straight for me, yelling bloody murder, drawing his hatchet as he came.

  It was so sudden that he nearly had me. One moment I was sitting my pony at rest, the next Vasco was charging in, hurling the tomahawk ahead of him. His aim was wild, but the whirling haft of the weapon hit my Arab on the muzzle, and as I tried to turn him to avoid being ridden down he reared with the pain, and I came to earth with sickening force. For two or three seconds I lay jarred out of my wits, as Vasco swept past, reined his mustang back on its haunches, and snatched the lance that I had left upright in the ground. Sprawled and helpless as his beast reared almost on top of me, its hooves flailing, I tried to roll away; he raised the lance to let drive, screaming his hate; I heard Sonsee-array’s shriek and Mangas’s bass bellow of rage – and something cracked like a whip, there was a hiss in the air overhead, a sickening thud, and Vasco’s head snapped back as though he had been shot, the lance dropping from his hands. As he toppled from the saddle I had a glimpse of that contorted face, with a bloody hole where one eye should have been – and here was the Yawner, coiling up the thongs of the sling that had driven a pellet into Vasco’s brain.

  There was an instant’s hush, and then uproar, with everyone surging forward for a look, and Vasco’s pals to the fore, clamouring at Mangas for vengeance on the Yawner, who spat and sneered, with one hand on his knife. “The pinda-lickoyee was in my charge!” he snarled. “He was ready to fight – but this coward would have killed him unarmed!” Which I thought damned sound, and Mangas evidently agreed, for he quietened them with a tremendous bellow, stooped over the corpse, and then told them to take it away.

  “The Yawner was right,” growls he. “This one died like a fool and no warrior.” His glance seemed to challenge that ring of savage faces, but none dared dissent, and while Vasco’s remains were removed, the great ghoul turned his attention back to me for a long moment, and then snapped to Sonsee-array, who came quickly forward to his side. He rumbled at her in Apache, indicating me, and she bowed her head submissively; for an awful moment my heart stopped, and then he beckoned me forward, favoured me with another gargoyle stare – and reached out to lay his hand on my shoulder.

  It was like being tapped with a pitchfork, but I didn’t mind that; I could have cried with sheer relief. Sonsee-array was beside me, her hand slipping into mine, the sullen faces round us were indifferent rather than hostile, the Yawner shrugged – and Mangas Colorado gave us a final curt nod and stalked away. Just the same, I couldn’t help thinking that old Morrison hadn’t been such a bad father-in-law.

  * * *

  a Cheyenne.

  Chapter 12

  Possibly because I’ve spent so much time as the unwilling gu
est of various barbarians around the world, I’ve learned to mistrust romances in which the white hero wins the awestruck regard of the silly savages by sporting a monocle or predicting a convenient eclipse, whereafter they worship him as a god, or make him a blood brother, and in no time he’s teaching ’em close order drill and crop rotation and generally running the whole show. In my experience, they know all about eclipses, and a monocle isn’t likely to impress an aborigine who wears a bone through his nose.36 So don’t imagine that my tent-pegging had impressed the Apaches overmuch; it hadn’t. I was alive because Sonsee-array fancied me and was grateful – and also because she was just the kind of minx to enjoy flouting tribal convention by marrying a foreigner. I’d come creditably out of the Vasco business – nobody mourned him, apparently – and Mangas had given me the nod, so that was that. But no one made me a blood brother, thank God, or I’d probably have caught hydrophobia, and as for worship – nobody gets that from those fellows.

  They were prepared to accept me, but not with open arms, and I was in no doubt that my life still hung by a hair, on Sonsee-array’s whim and Mangas’s indulgence. So I must try to shut my mind to the hideous pickle I was in, recover from the shock to my nervous system, and play up to them for all I was worth while I found out where the devil I was, where safety lay, and plotted my escape. If I’d known that it would take me six months, I believe I’d have died of despair. In the meantime, it was some slight reassurance to find that however unreal and terrifying my plight might seem to me, the tribe were ready to take it for granted, and even be quite hospitable about it, white-eye though I was.

  For example, the Yawner made me free of the family pot and a blanket in the wickiup which he shared with his wife Alopay, their infant, and her relatives; it stank like the nation and was foul, but Alopay was a buxom, handsome wench who was prepared to treat me kindly for Sonsee-array’s sake, and the Yawner himself was more friendly now that he’d saved my life – have you noticed, the man who does a good turn is often more inclined to be amiable than the chap who’s received it? He’d evidently been appointed my bear-leader because although he wasn’t a true Mimbreno, he was related to Mangas, and trusted by the chief; he was as much jailer as mentor, which was one reason it took me such a deuce of a time to get out of Apacheria.

  Having taken me on, though, he was prepared to make a go of it, and that same evening he inducted me into a peculiar Apache institution which, while revolting, is about the most clubbable function I’ve ever struck. After we had supped, he took me along to a singular adobe building near the fort, like a great beehive with a tiny door in one side; there were about forty male Apaches there, all stark naked, laughing and chattering, with Mangas among them. No one gave me a second glance, so I followed the Yawner’s example and stripped, and then we crawled inside, one after the other, into the most foetid, suffocating heat I’d ever experienced.

  It was black as Egypt’s night, and I had to creep over nude bodies that grunted and heaved and snarled what I imagine was “Mind where you’re putting your feet, damn you!”; I was choking with the stench and dripping with sweat as I flopped on that pile of humanity, and more crowded in on top until I was jammed in the middle of a great heap of gasping, writhing Apaches; I felt I must faint with the pressure and atrocious heat and stink. I could barely breathe, and then it seemed that warm oil was being poured over us from above – but it was simply reeking sweat, trickling down from the mass of bodies overhead.

  They loved it; I could hear them chuckling and sighing in that dreadful sodden oven that was boiling us alive; I hadn’t even breath enough to protest; it was as much as I could do to keep my face clear of the rank body beneath me and drag in great laboured gasps of what I suppose was air. For half an hour we lay in that choking blackness, drenched and boiled to the point of collapse, and then they began to crawl out again, and I dragged my stupefied body into the open more dead than alive.

  That was my introduction to the Apache sweatbath,37 one of the most nauseating experiences of my life – and an hour later, I don’t know when I’ve felt so splendidly refreshed. But what astonished me most, when it sank in, was how they had included me in the party as a matter of course; I felt almost as though I’d been elected to the Apache Club – which in other respects proved to be about as civilised as White’s, with fewer bores than the Reform, and a kitchen slightly better than the Athenaeum’s.

  I had a further taste of Apache culture on the following day, when with the rest of the community I attended the great wailing funeral procession for the deceased Vasco, and for the victims of Gallantin’s massacre, whose bodies had been brought down from the valley in the hills. That was a spooky business, for there were two or three of my own bagging on those litters, each corpse with its face painted and scalp replaced (I wondered who’d matched ’em all up) and its weapons carried before. They buried them under rock piles near the big hill they call Ben Moor (and that gave me a jolt, if you like, for you know what big hill is in Gaelic – Ben Mhor. God knows if there’s a tribe of Scotch Apaches; I shouldn’t be surprised – those tartan buggers get everywhere). They lit purification fires after the burial, and marked the place with a cross, if you please, which I suppose they learned from the dagoes.

  Speaking of scalps, I discovered that the Mimbrenos had no special zeal for tonsuring their enemies, but they brought back a few from those of Gallantin’s band they’d killed, and the women dressed and stretched them on little frames, to brighten up the parlour, I dare say. One scalp was pale and sandy, and I guessed it was Nugent-Hare’s.

  Meanwhile, no time was lost in bringing me up to scratch. After the funeral, the Yawner told me I must take my pony to Sonsee-array’s wickiup and leave it there – so I did, watched by the whole village, and madam ignored it. “What now?” says I, and he explained that when she fed and watered the beast and returned it, I had been formally accepted. She wouldn’t do it at once, for that would show unmaidenly eagerness, but possibly on the second or third day; if she delayed to the fourth day, she was a proper little tease.

  D’you know, the saucy bitch waited until the fourth evening? – and a fine lather I was in by then, for fear she’d changed her mind, in which case God knows what might have happened to me. But just before dusk there was a great laughter and commotion, and through the wickiups she came, astride my Arab, looking as proud and pleased as Punch, with a crowd of squaws and children in tow, and even a few menfolk. She was in full fig of beaded tunic and lace scarf, but now she was also wearing the long white leggings with tiny silver bells down the seams, which showed she was marriageable; she dropped the Arab’s bridle into my hand with a most condescending smile, everyone cheered and stamped, and for the first time I found Apache faces grinning at me, which is a frightening sight.

  There was even more grinning later, for Mangas held an enormous jollification on corn-beer and pine-bark spirit and a fearsome cactus tipple called mescal; they don’t mind mixing their drinks, those fellows, and got beastly foxed, although I went as easy as I could. Mangas punished the tizwin something fearful, and presently, when the others had toppled sideways or were hiccoughing against each other telling obscene Apache stories, he jerked his head at me, collared a flask, and led the way, stumbling and cursing freely, to the old ruined fort. He took a long pull at the flask, swayed a bit, and belched horribly; aha, thinks I, now for the fatherly talk and a broad hint about letting the bride get some sleep on honeymoon. But it wasn’t that; what followed was one of the strangest conversations I’ve ever had in my life, and I set it down because it was my introduction to that queer mixture of logic and lunacy that is typical of Indian thought. The fact that we were both tight as tadpoles made it all the more revealing, really, and if he had some wild notions, he was still a damned shrewd file, the Red Sleeves. What with the booze and his guttural Spanish, he wasn’t always easy to follow, but I record him fairly; I can still see that shambling bulk, his blanket hitched close against the night cold, like an unsteady Sphinx in the moonligh
t, clutching his bottle, and croaking basso profundo:

  Mangas: The Mexicanos built this fort when they still had chiefs over the great water. The Americanos build many such … is it true that even Santa Fe is a mere wickiup beside the towns of the pinda-lickoyee where the sun rises?

  Flashy: Indeed, yes. In my country are towns so great that a man can hardly walk through them between sunrise and sunset. You ought to see St Paul’s.

  Mangas: You’re lying, of course. You boast as young men do, and you’re drunk. But the pinda-lickoyee people are many in number – as many as the trees in the Gila forest, I’m told.

  Flashy: Oh, indubitably. Perfect swarms of them.

  Mangas: Perhaps ten thousand?

  Flashy (unaware that ten thousand is as far as an Apache can count, but not disposed to argue): Ah … yes, just about.

  Mangas: Huh! And now, since the Americanos beat the Mexicanos in war, many of these white-eyes have come through our country, going to a place where they seek the pesh klitso,b the oro-hay. Their pony soldiers say that all this country is now Americano, because they took it from the Mexicanos. But the Mexicanos never had it, so how can it be taken from them?

  Flashy: Eh? Ah, well … politics ain’t my line, you know. But the Mexicanos claimed this land, so I suppose the Americanos—

  Mangas (fortissimo): It was never Mexicano land! We let them dig here, at Santa Rita, for the kla-klitso,c until they turned on us treacherously, and we destroyed them – ah, that was a rare slaughter! And we let them live on the Del Norte, where we raid and burn them as we please! Soft, fat, stupid Mexicano pigs! What rule had they over us or the land? None! And now the Americanos treat the land as though it were theirs – because they fought a little war in Mexico! Huh! They say – a chief of their pony soldiers told me this – that we must obey them, and heed their law!