The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection

by George MacDonald Fraser

  There, I admit, they do it in style. That feast lasted three days, all round the fire, stuffing down the sweet roasted agave leaves from the mescal-pits, and baked meats, corn bread, chile, pumpkins and all the rest, with vast quantities of a special wedding brew to wash it down. And d’you know, they don’t let you near your bride in all that time – we sat on opposite sides of the fire, in a great circle of relatives and friends with the lesser mortals pressed behind (I suppose we must have left off feasting from time to time to sleep or relieve ourselves, but I swear I don’t remember it) and she never looked in my direction once! Myself, I think they’re damned cunning, the Apaches; you may know that in Turkey at wedding feasts they have a plump and voluptuous female who writhes about half-naked in front of the groom to put him in trim for the wedding-night; it’s my belief that the Mimbreno are far subtler than that. Maybe there’s something in the drink, maybe it’s the repetition of the dancing that goes on during the feast, with those bucks in their animal heads chasing (but never catching) the young females, who flee continually (but never quite out of reach); perhaps it’s just the three days’ delay in getting down to business – whatever it may be, I found myself eyeing that white figure through the flames, and starting to sweat something frightsome.

  I know she was no great beauty – not to compare with Elspeth or Lola or Cleonie or the Silk One or Susie or Narreeman or Fetnab or Lakshmibai or Lily Langtry or Valla or Cassy or Irma or the Empress Tzu’si or that big German wench off the Haymarket whose name escapes me (by Jove, I can’t complain, at the end of the day, can I?) – but by the time the third evening was reached if you had asked me my carnal ideal of womanhood I’d have described it as just over five feet tall, sturdy and nimble, wearing a beaded tunic and white doeskin leggings, with a round chubby face, sulky lips, and great slanting black eyes that looked everywhere but at me. God, but she was pleased with herself, that smug, dumpy, nose-in-the-air wench, and I must have been about to burst when the Yawner tapped me on the shoulder and jerked his head, and when I got up and panted my way out of the firelight, no one paid the least notice.

  Possibly I was drunk with liquor as well as lust, for I don’t remember much except riding into the night with the Yawner alongside and the shadowy form of Quick Killer ahead; the nightwind did nothing to cool my ardour either, for it seemed to grow with each passing mile through the wooded hills, and by the time we dismounted, and they and the ponies had faded tactfully into the darkness, I could have tackled the entire fair sex – provided they were all short and muscular and apple-cheeked. Through the trees I could see the twinkle of a fire, and I blundered towards it, disrobing unsteadily and staggering as I got my pants off, and there was the little wickiup, and no doubt the flowers were flapping about somewhere, but I didn’t pause to look.

  She was reclining on a blanket at the door of the wickiup, on one elbow, that sturdy little brown body a-gleam in the fireglow as though it had been oiled, and not a stitch on except for the patterned head-band above the cinammon eyes that gleamed like hot coals, and the tight white leggings that came up to her hips. She didn’t smile, either; just gave me that sullen stare and stretched one leg while she stroked a hand down the seam of tiny bells, making them tinkle softly. My stars, I thought, it’s been worth it, coming to America – and that’s when I remember the pine-needles under my knees, and the smell of wood-smoke and musk, and deliberately taking my time as I stroked and squeezed every inch of that hard, supple young body, for I was damned if I was going to give her the satisfaction of having me roar all over her like a wild bull. I’d been teased and sweated by her and her blasted tribal rituals too long for that, so I held off and played with her until the sulky pout left her lips, and those glorious eyes opened wide as she forgot she was an Apache princess and became my trembling captive of the scalp-hunters’ camp again, and she began to gasp and squirm and reach out for me, with little moans of querido and hoarse Apache endearments which I’m sure from her actions were highly indelicate – and she suddenly flung herself up at me, grappling like a wrestler, and positively yowled as she clung with her arms round my neck and her bells pealing all over the place.

  “Now, that’s a good little Indian maid,” says I, and stopped her entreaties with my mouth, while I went to work in earnest, but very slowly, Susie-fashion, which was a marvel of delightful self-restraint, and I’m sure did her a power of good. For as the warm dawn came up, and I was drowsing happily under the blanket and deciding there were worse places to be than the Gila forest, there were those little lips at my ear, and those hard breasts against me, and the tiny whisper: “Make my bells ring again, pinda-lickoyee.” So we rang the changes for breakfast.

  * * *

  b Gold; literally “yellow iron”.

  c Presumably copper, since this was mined at Santa Rita. Kla-klitso, literally, is “night-iron”.

  Chapter 13

  There’s nothing like teaching a new bride old tricks, and by the time our forest idyll was over I flatter myself Sonsee-array was a happier and wiser woman. Ten days was enough of it, though, for she was an avid little beast who preferred quantity to quality – unlike Elspeth, for example, whose beguiling innocence masked the most lecherously inventive mind of the last century, and whose conduct on our honeymoon would have caused the good citizens of nearby Troon to burn her at the stake, if they’d known. No, young Sonsee-array was more like Duchess Irma, who on discovering a good thing couldn’t get enough of it, but where rogering had melted Irma’s imperious nature to the point where she was prepared to await her lord’s pleasure, my spirited Apache knew no such restraint. When she wanted her bells rung, she said so – she was tough, too, and discovered a great fondness for committing the capital act standing up under a waterfall in our stream; no wonder I’ve got rheumatism today, but it’s worth it for the memory of that wet brown body lying back in my supporting arms while the water cascaded down over her upturned face, with me grinding away up to my knees in the shallows.

  For the rest, she was an affectionate, cheerful little soul, so long as she got her own way – for she was damnably spoiled, and immensely vain of her Spanish blood, regarding the true-bred Mimbrenos with great condescension, even her terrible father. I remember the contempt with which she spoke of his habit of calling her by the pet-name of Takes-Away-Clouds-Woman, which she said was just what you might expect of a sentimental old savage, instead of by her proper name, Morning Star, which she thought much more fitting for an Apache princess.

  “But it suits you,” says I, stroking away at her leggings. “You take away my clouds, I can tell you. Besides, I like your fanciful Indian names – what’s mine, by the way, apart from white-eye?”

  “Don’t you know? Why, ever since you rode with your lance at the pegs, everyone calls you by a fine name: White-Rider-Goes-So-Fast-He-Destroys-the-Wind-with-His-Speed.”

  It sounded not bad, if a bit of a mouthful. “They can’t call me all that every time,” says I.

  “Of course not, foolish one – they shorten it. He-Who-Breaks-the-Wind, or just Wind Breaker.” She was in dead earnest, too. “Why, don’t you like it?”

  “Couldn’t be better,” says I. Just my luck to get one of their names that contracts to something frightful when translated. I knew an Oglala once whose full name was Brave-Pursues-Enemies-So-Fiercely-He-Has-No-Time-To-Change-His-Clothes – that came out as Stinking Drawers, and I can give you chapter and verse if you doubt it. I said I’d rather she chose me a pet name.

  “Let me think,” says she, nestling. “A name … you should win it by some great and wonderful deed.” She giggled, and her hand strayed mischievously. “I know … it should be Man-Who-Rings-Her-Bells-Makes-Her-Heart-Melt.” Her mouth trembled and her lids narrowed. “Ah, yes …! Win your new name … please … now, Wind Breaker!” I reckon I did, too, so far as she was concerned – but the Yawner was still calling me Wind Breaker last year, damn him.

  Sonsee-array and I returned to the Copper Mines just as the community was moving int
o winter quarters in the hills, and if you wonder why I hadn’t taken advantage of our solitary state on honeymoon to make a break for freedom – well, I still didn’t know where I was, even, and although we’d been undisturbed. I’d had a shrewd idea that the Yawner and Quick Killer were never far away. Now, to make matters worse, the tribe moved about thirty miles south-west, farther than ever from the Del Norte and safety, into a mountainous forest where if I’d been fool enough to run I’d have been lost and recaptured in no time.

  So there was nothing for it but to settle down, with a heavy heart, and wait through those awful months, telling myself that the chance of escape must come in the spring. When I thought back to the snug billet I’d abandoned at Susie’s in Santa Fe, and the foul luck that had led me to Gallantin and this nightmare, I could have wept – but at least I was still whole, and no worse off than I’d been in Madagascar, and I’d got out of that, in the end. Now, as then, I forced myself to remember that there was a world outside this stinking collection of native huts and neolithic brutes, a world with Elspeth in it, and white faces, and beds and houses and clean linen and honest food and drink and civilised whores. I must just wait and watch, keep my Arab up to strength, learn everything I could, and when the time came, ride like the devil, leaving the latest Mrs Flashman and her charming relatives forever.

  The more I saw of them that winter, the more I grew to detest them; in case you suppose from the recent tender passages that marriage and kinship had made me at all “soft” on Apaches, let me put you right. I became fairly well acquainted with Mangas Colorado, perforce, and quite friendly with the Yawner, while Sonsee-array was a charming and energetic bedmate – but they were monsters, all of them, and I include my dear little wife. Loving and even captivating she could be, with her pretty ways and fluent Spanish and a few civilised habits (like washing regularly) picked up from her unfortunate mother, but at heart she was as vicious and degraded an Apache as any of them. I shan’t forget the night when she snuggled up telling me Indian legends, like The Boy Who Could Not Go West, and some reference to a villain’s sticky end reminded her of the fate of those members of Gallantin’s band who’d been taken prisoner. There’d been fifteen of them, and the Mimbreno Ladies Sewing Circle had held a contest to see who could keep a victim alive longest under torture; the other women’s patients, Sonsee-array told me proudly, had all expired after a few hours, but she had kept that poor devil Ilario lingering in unspeakable agony for two solid days – she described it in gruesome detail, chuckling drowsily, while I lay listening with the sweat icy on my skin. Having known Narreeman and good Queen Ranavalona and Gezo’s Amazons, I had no illusions about the fair sex’s talent for tickling up the helpless male – but this was the sweet child of sixteen whom I’d married and sported with in sylvan glades like Phyllis and Corydon! I tupped her with no great ardour that night, I can tell you.

  But it was of a piece with all that I knew, and was still to learn that winter, of the Apache: they truly enjoy cruelty, for its own sake – and incidentally they are a living contradiction of the old fable (although it happens to be true in my own case) that a bully who delights in inflicting pain is invariably a coward. For if they have a virtue – in most folk’s eyes, anyway – it is courage; you never saw a scared Apache yet. It’s been their downfall; unlike the other tribes, they never knew when to quit against the pony soldiers; my old pal Yawner fought on until there was only a tattered remnant of his band left to be herded on to the reservation (which, be it noted, was more mercy than ever he’d shown to a beaten foe; if Apache custom had been applied to the ’Pash, there wouldn’t be one left).

  They knew how to fight, too, after their fashion, far better than the Plains Tribes; given numbers, they might be holding out in Arizona yet, for bar the Pathans they were the best guerrillas ever I saw. They train their boys from infancy in every art of woodcraft and ambush and decoy (and theft), which is the way they love to make war, rather than in open battle. That winter in the Gila hills I saw lads of six and seven made to run up and down mountains, lie doggo for hours, spend nights half-naked in the snow, track each other through the brush, run off horses, and exercise constantly with club and knife, axe and lance, sling and bow. Damned good they are, too, but best of all – they could vanish into thin air.

  The Yawner himself showed me this, one day when I’d admired his skill in stalking a deer; he said it was nothing, and if I wanted to see how good he was, let me turn my back and count my fingers ten times. So I did, and when I looked round the little bastard had simply disappeared – this on a bare plain without a scrap of cover for half a mile. He absolutely wasn’t there – until he stood up at my elbow, with his huge gaping grin, and showed me the shallow trench he had scraped in silence and in less than two minutes, within a few yards of me; he’d pulled tufts of grass and earth over his body, and although I’d looked directly at the spot, I’d seen nothing. No one ever believes that story, but I’ve watched as many as twenty ’Pash at a time vanish in that way, and there are US Army scouts who’ll vouch for it.43 It’s one of the first lessons they teach their boys; it was after seeing it that I began to suspect that they might give the Yanks a run for their money – and they did, didn’t they?

  Apart from these warlike activities, I learned many curious things about them that winter – their love of sports, such as running and swimming, horse-racing, and shooting or throwing lances at rolling hoops; the women have a game much like hockey, at which Sonsee-array excelled, but the great pastime is dice, for all Apaches are inveterate gamblers. They’re also highly superstitious – an Apache will never speak his name (I’m told the Chiricahua never speak to their mothers-in-law, either, sensible chaps), or hunt a bear, and they think rattlesnakes are inhabited by lost souls; they regard fish as unclean meat, never drink milk, can’t multiply or divide – although some of them can count higher than any other Indians I met – and speak a language which I never mastered. That was partly because most of them spoke Spanish, more or less, but also because it’s damned complicated, with five times as many vowel sounds as we have, and the ’Pash, unlike most Indians, are the worst mutterers you ever heard, and nineteen to the dozen at that.44 But the main reason I never learned Apache was that I disliked them and everything about them too much to want to.

  From all this you’ll gather that it was a damned long winter, and made no easier by the fact that a male Apache does nothing in all that time except a little light hunting; for the rest he loafs, eats, sleeps, drinks, and thinks up devilment for the spring, so that in addition to being miserable and fearful, I was also bored – when you find yourself glad even of Mangas Colorado to talk to, by God you’re in a bad way. The only worthwhile amusement was teaching Sonsee-array new positions – for there was no question of so much as looking at another female, even if I’d dared or wanted to; they’re fearfully hot against adultery, you see, and punish it by clipping the errant female’s nose off – what they do to the man I was careful not to inquire.

  But one thing that interminable season of waiting certainly did accomplish: they got used to me, and by the time the snow melted in the lower valleys I doubt if it occurred even to the shrewd, suspicious Mangas that I might be preparing to slip my cable. I’d been a model, if reserved, son-in-law, Sonsee-array was clearly infatuated, and what pinda-lickoyee, honoured by admission to the Mimbreno and marriage to the Morning Star, would be so half-witted as to want to return to his own people? At any rate, when the first big war-party was formed to open the season with a descent on the Del Norte, it was simply assumed that I would take my part; Mangas even returned to me the revolver I’d lost when I was captured, and Sonsee-array herself painted the white stripe across my nose from ear to ear and gloated at the thought of the booty I’d bring home: jewellery was what she wanted, but silk or lace would be acceptable, too, and a couple of Mexican boys as domestic slaves – I can’t think why she didn’t ask for girls.

  “And some new bells, for my moccasins,” says she, with that slow po
uting smile that was the only thing that had made life endurable through that awful winter. “To make her heart melt.” D’you know, it was ridiculous, but as I took my arm from round her waist, mounted the Arab, and looked down into those lovely cinnamon eyes for what I hoped to God would be the last time, I felt a pang? There were great tears in them, and I don’t care – it may be as hellish a place as that camp was, with those painted apemen jabbering as they swung aboard their ponies, the women clustered round the hovels, the place foul and stinking with the winter’s filth, the dogs yapping among the piles of refuse, the acrid smoke of the morning fires catching at your throat, and the horror of that captivity burned into your mind, but when your woman sees you away, and cries over your departure, and reaches up to catch your hand and press it to her cheek, and you look back and see the little white figure among the pines, waving you out of sight … well, I thought, I’ve ridden worse, waterfalls or not, and the next buck that gets you is going to be a lucky man, for you’re the best-trained red romp in North America.