“Mother’s notion, not mine,” says he. “When I told her in Denver last year that I’d seen you in Chicago, she …” He paused. “I wondered if she’d gone a little mad. I’d always known that it was one of her fondest dreams that some day I’d be the one to pay you out for what you had done to her – sometimes I used to think it was the only use she had for me. Anyway, when I went to see her, she was like a crazy woman. She was always hard – cruel, even, but I’d never seen so much hate and spite in anyone – and I’ve lived half my life among the Sioux.” He looked up at me curiously. “What was she like … when you first knew her?”
“Beautiful. Angelic, almost – to look at. Oh, but charming, bewitching, clever – quite calculating. Immensely vain.”
He nodded cheerfully. “You’re a yard-wide son-of-a-bitch, aren’t you, Papa? Did you love her – at all?”
“No. I liked her, though.”
“But you liked two thousand dollars better. Well,” says this dutiful child, “I don’t know that I liked her even that much. Certainly not enough, when I was little, to hate you the way she wanted me to. Why should I? You’d done nothing to me – hell, I didn’t even know you! And Susie Willinck liked you.”
“Good God!”
“Oh, sure. Susie used to laugh about you, and make you sound a jolly person. ‘Proper young scamp, your old man was,’ she used to say, and tell me I was another, a chip off the old block.” He laughed, shaking his head. “I really liked Susie.”
“So did I. Ah … how is she, d’you know?”
“She died four years back. She’d gotten married—” He stood up from the fire with his tongue in his cheek, “—again.”
“I’m sorry – that she’s dead, I mean.” I was, too. I thought of that handsome happy face, the wanton lip and gaudy dresses, and … aye, well. Dear old Susie.
“Anyway, when I saw mother in Denver, it never even crossed her mind that I might not share her feelings about you. Later, when she’d laid her plans, and sent word – and two thousand dollars, you’ll be interested to know – to Jacket and his people, she also sent word to me. I was to be the instrument of vengeance, if you please, and reveal my identity in your last painful moments.” He shook his head in cynical wonder. “Honour bright, that’s what she wanted. She’s a Creole, all right – very passionate and dramatic, and a shade meaner than a sick grizzly.” He shrugged. “Well, then I knew she was crazy, and I wanted none of it. One reason I joined up with Crook was to be out of the way. Not that I bore you any good will,” he added pleasantly, “and I won’t say I’d have shed many tears if I’d arrived on Greasy Grass an hour later – but as it is …”
I was beginning to like this lad. “What’ll your mother say?” I wondered.
“She won’t know. She’ll think you died in the fight. Not quite as fancy as she’d have liked, but I guess she’ll be satisfied. How come you got into the battle, anyway – didn’t Jacket have you hog-tied?”
I told him about Walking Blanket Woman, and he raised an eyebrow and looked at me for the first time with what might have been some respect, but probably wasn’t. Yes, decidedly he had style, and watching him in the firelight it sent a tremor through me yet again to think that this splendid brave, with his paint and feathers so at odds with his nil admirari airs and crooked smile, was … who he was.
“You got me out, though,” says I. “Why … Frank?”
He considered me with what I can describe only as impudent gravity. “Well, it seemed a sensible thing to do, on the spur of the moment. I had joined in, like a good little Sioux, hunting Long Knives – and suddenly there you were. Now that was a miracle, if you like, spotting you in all that – it was when we closed on the ridge, and that sergeant broke out, and you rode down the hill, so I followed on – you can ride some, though, can’t you? I thought you were going to win clear, but I kept up, and when you went down …” He shrugged, and seeing me intent on him, grinned in pure mockery. “Well, now – what would you have done … if it had been your own dear Papa?”
I would get no change out of this one. So I must just play him at his own game – my own game. It took me a moment, so as not to choke or waver, but I managed it.
“Ah, well, now,” says I, looking doubtful. “That’s another matter, you see. You didn’t know my guv’nor – your grandfather. You might have thought twice about him, you know.” I nodded amiably, like the proud father I was. “Anyway … thank’ee, my boy.”
“Filial duty, Papa,” says he. “I wonder if Joe Bright Deer has anything for supper?”
It isn’t every day you find a son, and if you ask me what I thought about it, I can’t rightly tell you. It was just damned odd, that’s all. I’d found myself stunned and disbelieving and convinced beyond doubt, all in a few moments, and after that, well, there he was – a walking contradiction, to be sure, but real for all that. I’d been shocked, almost repelled, by him, once or twice; I’d liked him, once or twice, and admired him, but mostly I’d just wondered at him. It was so strange to meet and talk to … me, if you follow. He acted like me, he thought like me, and take the paint and braids off him, and by God he looked like me: even the red skin was just weather, and I’ve been darker myself out east. If there was a difference, it was that I suspected (after Greasy Grass) he was brave, poor lad. I think he probably was; got that from Cleonie’s side, no doubt. As to his deep nature, though, I can’t tell; I doubt if he was as big a blackguard as I am, but then he was only half my age. And being so like me, he undoubtedly had the gift of concealing his character.
We set out from the cave two days later, the two of us. As Frank put it, having come this far he might as well see me to one of the Black Hills settlements, whence I could travel east; from the cave in the Big Horn foothills it was close on a week’s ride. Crook was chasing hostiles somewhere, and Frank figured they’d be rounded up before winter, unless they made for the British border, which seemed likely. The Custer fiasco had evidently scared the Indians more than the Army, for they knew what the harvest would be, and the whisper was that only Crazy Horse was likely to fight it out. In the meantime, we went warily, Frank in his paint and me in buckskin, so that we’d be ready for either side.
It was a strange trip, that, across the High Plains; it has a sense of dreaming, as I look back on it. Considering our histories, our somewhat irregular kinship, how we’d met, and the initial difficulties of getting acquainted – which we’d managed pretty well, I thought, in our fashion – it was astonishing how easy we dealt. We were still taking stock, the first day or so at the cave – I’d catch him glancing sidelong as though to say, this big file with the whiskers, that’s the guv’nor, God help us, and I’d think, well, I’ll be damned, that’s young Flashy. I probably found it odder than he did, since he’d known about my existence, at least, for more than twenty years. Yet sometimes it seemed as though we’d known each other all the time – and when we rode out it was a growing wonder and delight to see him, such a tall brave, so sure and easy, straight as a lance, and rode like a Cossack. I didn’t look better myself at his age, by George I didn’t.
We talked all the time, from sun-up till the fire burned low and the white wolves howled, and the days flew past. I can’t think of all we said, but I know one of his first questions was whether he had any step-brothers or sisters, and I told him about my son Harry, the curate (now a bishop, and a praying one at that, heaven help the Church), and my daughter Jo, who was then eighteen and my alternate joy and despair – joy because she was as beautiful as a Flashy-Elspeth child could be, and despair for the same reason, young men being what they are. And one of my first questions was about his alter ego, Frank Grouard, and what did he purport to be, to Crook and other white folk.
“Back east I was French-American,” says he, “but there were some Boston mamas who didn’t care for that. So nowadays, when I cut my hair and put on a coat, I’m a Kanaka, son of a white father and Polynesian mother, born in the South Seas and brought to the States by Mormons, which is very
respectable, and no one knows what a Kanaka is, anyway.”
“They’ll never swallow that,” says I, “and the Boston mamas won’t fancy Polynesian a bit, you know.”
“They’ll swallow it easier than if I tell ’em I’m half English soldier, half Haitian-French freed slave,” says he smartly. “As to Boston, it’s what the daughters fancy that matters, not the mamas.” I warmed to the lad more and more.
He, in turn, betrayed a flattering interest in me. Once he’d discovered that Flashy was the Saxon in the woodpile, he’d read up about me what little he could, and now asked many questions; I dare say he learned more about me in a week than anyone else has in a lifetime; I recall he was curious to know how I’d come by the nom de guerre of Beauchamp Millward Comber, so I told him – most of it. But I remember far better what he told me: about his childhood among the Sioux, about Broken-Moon-Goes-Alone, who seemed a decent, dull sort; about his days at Harvard; about what it had been like to be an Indian among white boys and men, and a white man among Indians (of which I knew something myself); about books he’d read, and music he liked, and plays he’d seen, all that kind of thing. But always he returned to the West, and talk of the tribes and hunters and the hills and the great plains, and I noted a strange thing. We spoke English all the time, in the same bantering, half-serious way that comes natural to me, and obviously came as easily to him, with wry comments and understatements – but when he talked about the West, it was in pretty plain English, with a phrase of Sioux here and there, and sometimes lapsing into the language altogether. I knew there was something there I couldn’t touch, for it goes beyond blood, to country and the place where you were little. And when he talked of them there was something growing in my mind, but I didn’t like to speak of it, for fear.
Until the last evening, when we’d ridden south and east all day towards the dark outline which is the Black Hills of Dacotah, the slopes of dark conifer which were so still and mysterious in those days. We rode into a long reach of prairie with tongues of woodland on either hand, in the summer gloaming, and Frank was whistling Garryowen, which might be odd in a Brulé warrior, but not in the American son of an English soldier. I was just casting about for a snug corner to camp when he reins up, and says:
“Well, d’you know, I think I should turn around here.”
“What’s that? Why, we’re just going to camp! And what about Deadwood tomorrow? Good Lord, you can’t just pop off now – it’s far too late, for one thing, and we’ve had no supper.”
“Well, I shan’t be coming into Deadwood, anyway,” says he. “I doubt if they’re welcoming Sioux just now.”
“Nonsense! Put your braids under your hat, if you like – or better still, cut ’em off – and who’ll know the difference? A suit of buckskins—”
“No, I’d best be going now.”
“But, dammit all, we haven’t had any time to … well, to say goodbye, and so forth. And there are things I want to ask you, Frank, you know. Rather important things—”
“I know,” says he. “Better not, really.”
“You don’t know what they are, yet! Now, see here, let’s light a fire, and have some grub, and a smoke, and talk things over …” And I stopped, because in the dusk I could see he was shaking his head with the two eagle feathers, and when I reined closer I saw that half-smile with the look that I hadn’t been able to fathom that first night in the cave.
“We’d better say goodbye now, Papa,” says he.
I took hold of his rein. “Now, hold on, Frank,” says I, and ordered my thoughts. “It’s like this. I don’t think we should say goodbye at all, d’you know what I mean? I think … look, I want you to come back with me.” There, it was out now. “Back east, and then perhaps back to England. I … well, here’s the way of it – there are things I can do for you, Frank; things that no one out here can do, if you understand me. Now, for example, if you wanted, I could get you into the Army. The British Army – or the American, if you’d rather. I know people, you see – like the President, and the Queen, you know. Well, you could make a simply splendid career as a soldier—”
“Fighting the Sioux for Uncle Sam?” says he lightly. “Or a half-caste officer in one of your exclusive cavalry regiments?”
“Half-caste be damned! You look no more like a half-caste than I do – and even if you did, it makes no odds. But it wouldn’t have to be the Army, if you didn’t care for it. Why, you could go to Oxford – or back to Harvard, perhaps – work at the languages, go into the diplomatic! Or anything you fancy – it would be nuts to a chap like you! I’ve got some standing, you see – and money.” Elspeth’s, but what the devil. “I want to help you … to get on, you know.”
He touched his pony’s mane. “Why? D’you think you owe it to me?”
“Yes, but that’s not why! You saved my life, and I can’t pay that back, but it ain’t for that—”
“Is it because of what you did to my mother?”
“Good God, no! Look, my lad, I’ll tell you something about me, which you may well have gathered already. I don’t know what conscience means – or rather, I do, but I haven’t got one, and I don’t give a damn! Your mother – I played her a damned shabby trick, and we both know it. She tried to play me an even shabbier one in return – and it’s only the grace of God and you that she didn’t succeed. But it’s nothing to do with any of that. You’re my son.” I found I was grinning hugely, with a great lump in my throat. “Such a son. And – there you are.”
The light was fading fast, but I heard him chuckle. “Serve you right if I took you up on it. But it wouldn’t do.”
“In God’s name, why not? If you didn’t like it, you could chuck it, couldn’t you? Look, my boy, you simply have to say what you’d like to do best – and we’ll do it. Or rather, you will, and I’ll help any way a father can – I mean, I know what strings to pull, and corners to cut, and palms to grease – and backs to stab—”
“D’you mean it? What I’d like to do best?”
“Absolutely! Anything at all.”
“Well, Papa,” says he, “the thing I’d like best is to ride back over the ridge there.”
I sat for quite a little while after he’d said that, and then I said: “I see.”
“No, you don’t, either,” says he dryly. “It’s nothing to do with my mother – or with you. I said I didn’t care for her much – don’t care for anyone, specially. Except old Susie, bless her black heart. She was the nearest thing to a mother I’ve had. And God knows why, but I’ve no remarkable objection to my father.” He laughed at me. “D’you know, after Greasy Grass, when I went down and the Sioux were breaking camp, I was wishing I could lay claim to you publicly. There were only two warriors they were talking about – apart from themselves, naturally: the soldier with the three stripes, and the rider with the long knife on the sorrel horse. What d’you think of that, now?”
God, the irony of it. And if I’d said I was screaming scared, neither he nor the Sioux would have listened for a second. The same old deception, the same old false appearance – but I was glad he believed it.
“So it’s nothing personal, you see,” says he, and turned his face to the Western sky, where the flame and gold and pale blue were fading as the day died. “It’s just that over there is where I live.”
“But Frank,” says I, earnest and a shade hoarse. “Frank, boy, what’s over there? Crook won’t need scouts much longer, and you ain’t going to rot on an agency, and there’s nothing yonder you can do as Frank Grouard that you can’t do far better and bigger – and richer – out in the wide world! Truly, you don’t belong here, even if you think you do. You’re half me and half your mother, and we ain’t Westerners—”
“But I am,” says he. “I’m not English or French or black. Or American. I’m Sioux.”
I can see that stark profile now, the raised head with the feathers behind it, outlined dark against the evening light, and remember how my heart sank, and the emptiness within me as I made my last thr
ow.
“You’re nothing of the damned sort! There ain’t a drop of Indian in you, whatever you feel … because of how you grew up. That’s natural – but it’ll pass, you know. And if you was Sioux to the backbone, don’t you see? – the life you’ve talked about so much, this past week … well, in a few years it will have gone.” I was leaning forward in my saddle, positively pleading at the dark figure. “Believe me, boy, I saw this country when hardly an axe or a wheel had been laid on it. I rode with Carson from Taos to Laramie, and we never saw a house or a wagon or crossed a road or a rail the whole damned way! That was the year you were born – just yesterday! How long d’you think it’ll take before it’s all gone – vanished? Greasy Grass was the last kick of a dying buffalo – the Black Hills have gone, the Powder will follow, there’ll be no more free plains any more, no game, no spring hunt, no …”
My voice trailed away, and I shivered in the cool night wind. He took up his reins.
“I know.” His head was turned towards me, and I saw the crooked grin in the shadow. “I was at Greasy Grass, too, you know. And I’m glad – for your sake. But not just for your sake. Not by a damned sight.”
Before I knew it he’d wheeled his pony and was off up the darkening slope, the hooves hollow in the turf.
“Frank!” I roared.
He checked at the crest and looked back. I felt such a desolation, then, but I couldn’t move after him, or say what I wanted to say, with all the sudden pain and regret for lost years, and what had come of them. I called up to him.
“I’m sorry, son, about it all.”
“Well, I’m not!” he called back, and laughed, and suddenly lifted his arms wide, either side. “Look, Papa!” He laughed again, and then he had ridden over the skyline and was gone.
I sat and looked at the empty ridge for a while, and then rode on, feeling pretty blue. I’d only known him a week, and he was a Sioux Indian to all intents, and when you thought of all the bother there had been about him, with every Deadly Sin, I suppose, for his godparents … but if you could have seen him! By jove, he looked well.
Flashman Papers Omnibus Page 216
