by Peter Bowen
A deep musical voice said come on in.
“Don—Eee-Gwah-Gho-Ghe-Wah-Diddy,” says Ely Parker.
“Don—Eee-Gwah-Gho-Ghe-Wah-Diddy,” says this tweedy feller, all spectacles and earnestness.
“No,” says Ely Parker. “Don-Eee-Gwah-Gho-Ghe-Wah-Diddy.”
They recited this gibberish for a few rounds and then the tweedy feller scuttled off and we could hear Don-Eee-Gwah-Gho-Ghe-Wah-Diddy faint off toward the front door.
“You son of a bitch,” I says, light dawning.
Ely Parker was his white name, and when he was Keeper of the Western Door of the Iroquois, he was Donegawha. He’d served with great distinction in the Civil War, and as aide to Grant he had written out the terms of surrender signed by Grant and Lee. His copperplate penmanship was beautiful.
Hay roared with laughter a while.
Digby looked a little puzzled.
“That feller in here was, I’d bet my liver, a pro-fessor. Ely here done instructed him on the proper pronouncement of his name in Iroquois,” I explains.
“Gawd,” says Hay. “How the papers will fly and the debates burst into flames.”
Parker put his boots up on the desk and lit a cheroot.
“Grant me my amusements,” he said. “That pest had been after me for six months for a diction lesson. Of course, all of the time he could have gone up to our reservation and asked anyone, but no, he has to bother me. The director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Of course the bastard really wanted to get an appointment as agent for his brother.”
Now Digby roared.
“I’m leaving anyway,” says Parker. “I’ve had enough.”
He’d got tired of the corruption and the insults from Indian-haters, and so he’d go to being a civil engineer, and he was one of the best in the country.
“Good to see you, Luther,” says Ely Parker. “And give my best wishes to the friends you brought last summer. They’ll need it.”
I nodded. Oh, yes, they would, but they would mostly die anyway.
We all went to Willard’s for a drink and we told a few stories and then we went our ways, me and Digby to the hotel where Alys was now.
We didn’t say anything at all to each other on the way.
38
“MAY GIANT LEECHES DRAIN your blood and rodents new to science gnaw off parts and the hell with you both,” I says pleasantly.
“Now Luther,” says Alys, “neither Digby nor I committed all of the crimes you stand convicted of. By the way, what did you do?”
“I had an attack of the patriotics,” I says, “encouraged by treacherous swine such as yourselves. I got absolutely no interest where that damn canal gets dug. I just don’t. Every time I get my ass caught in the gears of empire I regret it. I am old and battered and wise. I just know this is going to end up with me dead. Which will cause no end of mirth in the White House. Not to mention here.”
“You’re whining,” says Alys.
“I say,” says Digby. “Just how old are you anyway?”
“Twenty,” I says. “I joined the Union Army at fourteen and then I went West and it has been a hard few years. Time I’m thirty I will have not one tooth in my head and cataracts from contemplating my fortunes.”
“I’m twenty-nine,” says Digby.
Alys was somewhere in between but being a lady not a bit interested in pointing out where.
It was on the tip of my tongue to say something really nasty to her, but that wasn’t fair. She was right. No one had been stupid enough to do all them things but me, never mind they was the sort of things at the moment you know you have to do and later you wish you’d stayed to home and been a nice safe clerk in a dry goods store.
Cope’s exhibition was to open in a couple of days, and I hoped we could get the hell out of Washington, D.C., before Grant and that monster Hay dreamed up other useful services for me to perform on the nation’s behalf. I was sure Hay would be president someday and then I thought, no, he’s too smart for that, he’d rather just run whoever has that god-awful job.
Digby was just a tad uncomfortable with being part of the screwing of Luther, not enough to complain, mind you, but he warn’t really snaky enough to enjoy what had been done.
In his boots I would have, and there you are.
I sulked a while till I got bored, and then Alys says brightly that perhaps we’d all like to go and look at all the trash piled in the Smithsonian. I’d heard of it, it was a national attic and anything perfectly useless ended up there for the delectation of scholars present and future. A place whose heart and soul was all thick with moths.
The biggest reason I did not want to go to Nicaragua is that about anything south of the Rio Grande ran on slavery, and they was smarmy enough not to call it that, but there was a loose patchwork of huge plantations and ranches and the common folks was worked to death, overseers and whips and dogs to run down them as left, and if you’re going to have a country like that you’re going to have fellers won’t stand for it and so there was more or less a steady bubbling of revolt which meant bullets flying which meant danger and personally I would take the West, where the jungles wasn’t and them Indians had to pot at you from farther away which gave better odds.
Also there was a lot of maniacs gone down there from here to try and take these little countries over and though none of them had yet succeeded I recalled they’d all been shot and so us gringos wasn’t much loved.
It was no news to me that Alys was a conniving little minx, and I had to respect her skill at it. I cared for her a lot more’n I’d admit, even to myself.
We had a good lunch and then we set off to see the Smithsonian, which was a-building and the mess was stupefying. Boxes and crates and professors hollering and there was a few halls done up but the War had slowed things down there and they never did catch up.
They had a display of fossils, mostly from the Cincinnati hills, and they ran to little wigglers lived in the ocean. Alys found them fascinating and so did Digby, but I could have been some happier playing cards with cheats.
We come back to find there was an invitation from Hay, to come to a costume ball that very night, with apologies, but Alys yelped in delight and rushed off to find some things to wear.
Me and Digby looked at each other and said at the same moment a simple mask would have to do.
Alys come rushing back with no parcels and we both lifted eyebrows but she said she’d recalled she’d packed her harem outfit and she would just wear that.
“THE HELL YOU WILL!” Digby and me roared at the same moment.
“Not that one,” said Alys. “I have a modest one.”
We withheld judgment until she put the thing on and it was simply dazzling without being a bit lewd, or wouldn’t have been if that minx hadn’t been the one in it.
She had a brocaded jacket and gold-cloth pants and a skirt over that and soft boots of red leather and a little conical hat and veil.
Digby rummaged around someplace and come up with a pair of men’s black masks, and we each tucked them in a pocket.
The ball didn’t start until ten, so we rested up, or at least Digby did, and his driver and carriage took us to Hay’s pile, one of them wedding-cake things, all brightly lit. It was a modest place with room for about five hundred people in the ballroom, which had been decked out with expensive trash supposed to remind us of the Arabian Nights.
We come in escorted by a couple flunks in fezzes and white gloves and the place was already fairly well packed. I seen a blue turban across the room which had Masoud under it and his thugs was done up in customary white: other than Rosie’s he seemed unable to piss without company. They was near Hay, who like us wore just a black mask.
There was a big orchestra in formal dress and a conductor on a little stand waving a baton and fast music going and the cream of Washington society was there all dancing and leaking avarice and chicanery.
It occurred to me that a few barrels of powder under the floor in the right places would solve many o
f the nation’s problems, but I hoped maybe that would happen the next time when I warn’t here.
There was booths set up along one wall had fortune-tellers in them and Alys laughed and dragged me off to one, a fat old thing with hairy moles and a dirty caftan and she stank of that damned patchouli oil always makes me sneeze.
We waited while she gabbled at a couple in the two chairs in front of her and when they left, all smiles at the good fortune headed their way, we sat down and Alys stuck out her hand and the woman looked at it and she frowned. She shook her head and pushed Alys’s hand away like it was hot.
Then she motioned to me and I stuck out my paw and she peered at it.
“You are confused with someone else,” she says. And she grabbed a cloth and wrapped it around her crystal ball and she waddled off and was gone, right out the doors, once looking back at us and her eyes rolled.
“What the hell was that all about?” I says.
Alys laughed and said Hay was famous for his jokes.
Heads had turned when she come in and in truth she was the most beautiful woman there, and Digby, eyes full of pride, asked for a dance and I watched the two of them whirl around the floor and right away people pulled back and left them room and they was graceful together. Digby still moved his left leg a little slower but he had an acrobat’s grace and a couple of times Alys threw back her head and laughed at something he said.
The music stopped and a tall slender feller in a long coat, yellow, with a pale blue turban wrapped not only round his head but his face, too, cut in and Digby bowed and the music began again and the stranger and Alys whirled and then I got a feeling in my gut like I’d been kicked.
Blue Fox. He was here, and he was out there with my woman in his arms.
I kept calm and I sidled to Digby and whispered and damned if rather than run to the floor he didn’t whirl and go to Masoud who was right behind us, and the giant A-rab bent down and then his head snapped up and he and his guards moved slowly toward the floor.
The music was winding down and Masoud was close to Alys and the stranger, but he had his back to Masoud and so when the music stopped I saw Masoud gently slide between Alys and the stranger who I was sure was Blue Fox.
Blue Fox staggered back a little then and one of the guards swung his sword and the turbaned head fell away from the boneless body and blood shot out of the severed pipes.
People close screamed as the blood hit them but past that the crowd just tittered, seeming to think that it was part of the entertainment.
Masoud bent graceful-like and he grasped the turban and he walked back to me and Digby, the head in his hand.
We follered him to a side room and he slowly unwrapped the cloth and I gasped.
It was Blue Fox all right, even though he had terrible fresh red scars from the shelling he’d took.
The guards appeared carrying the body which they’d wrapped in a carpet, and they unrolled it and searched and found one of them Eye-talian spring knives, has a long thin killing blade comes out when you press a button.
Hay joined us, cool as ever, though his guests were still yelping out on the floor.
“An assassin,” says Masoud. “Sent here by my enemies.”
Hay looked at us.
“Of course,” he says. “I will announce just that.”
39
“YOU REALLY CAN’T DO this sort of thing!” says Hay. He sounded real vexed. Well, having a head and a body the centerpiece of the entertainment at your costume ball was something Washington hadn’t seen before.
“Oh, hell,” I says. “If you just sort of let Masoud’s fellers run amok in there, the nation would be a much safer place.”
I was looking over Blue Fox’s body. Under this long funny yellow coat he had ordinary clothes on. A flick of the knife, out the door in the confusion, take off the coat, and saunter away. There was always gawkers around, looking at the mansions and especially tonight. He could have been gone in under two minutes and blended right in. He even had a fresh bandage to wrap his face in if he needed to.
A servant was mopping up the trail of blood that led out to the ballroom. After a moment, the crowd went back to admirin’ each other. They’d have gone on doin’ that if the roof fell in on ’em. They was that sort of people mostly.
“When you plant this bastard,” I says, “make damn sure his head is far away and buried deep, where he can’t find it.” Crazy Blue Fox might have been dead, but he was damned good. I didn’t know I could have beat him.
Hay bitched for a while until Masoud gently reminded him that he and his staff had diplomatic immunity and could pretty much do as they pleased. And knocking the knob off Blue Fox pleased him, he added.
John Hay, Esquire, nodded and he went off and I heard him announce to the throng that the unfortunate occurrence was a matter of Turkish politics. You know how them Turks are.
The buzz cranked up and so did the orchestra and other than them folks had their costumes ruined by spurting blood no one seemed to much mind.
Alys peered over my shoulder at Blue Fox’s corpse and carefully scrutinized the bastard’s head.
“A resourceful man,” she says. “We must give him that.”
Alys had little dark speckles on her pretty clothes, and her heart, too, there was something hard in her and if she had any fear I’d never seen it. I thought I knew what she wanted, but then I remembered Spotted Tail, so long ago.
Women are lawless, he said, and only a damned fool of a man would ever think he knew what they wanted.
“Someone put him up to this,” says Digby.
He looked at Alys and she looked back and they both nodded, just the once.
“He was always crazy,” I says. Even the Cheyennes was afraid of him some, though he was one of theirs.
“In my country,” says Masoud, “assassins are best mad, and sent to kill full of hashish. They know nothing, and so cannot reveal who really sent them even under the most terrible tortures.”
“Jonathan isn’t clever enough to be that evil,” says Alys. “If Blue Fox was someone’s agent it would not have been him. He has no more guts than a damned June bug.”
“It does not take courage,” says Digby, “to hire the likes of Blue Fox. All it takes is money.”
He had little patches of white on his face, where blood had drained in his rage. I’d seen them patches on other men, and they was the sort would charge hell with one bucket of water. Some officers would give orders and hide, but I knew Digby would have been right at the head of his charging troopers. Not way out in front, just right where he’d pull them along and all of them crazy and happy to die.
There was a knock at the door and in come some men who was cops and trying not to look it. They had those hard eyes come of seeing awful things, and Hay took them aside and they talked in low voices and then one of them stayed while the others went off.
A couple of orderlies came in through a side door with a cloth and a stretcher and they hauled Blue Fox off; one of them looked at Digby and give a sharp salute and Digby returned it. One of his old troopers, I suspected.
“If we’ve been here long enough not to offend by leaving,” Digby says to Hay, “perhaps it would be best we retired now.”
Hay snorted and nodded.
“Grant sends his best,” says Hay, “and as soon as I can decently leave I’ll go to him.”
Masoud and his henchmen drifted out to the ball, they all walked like their feet barely touched the ground, all coiled and ready. I thought of where he come from. Rich he might be and powerful, but at any moment a knife could find him.
America wasn’t a bit behind in the matter of civilization. You could get knifed here, too. I thought on that.
“It was me he was after,” I says finally, “and Blue Fox being his own self, he was going to kill Alys first. It was a game to him. It ain’t like a Cheyenne. I expect he learned how to think like that at Dartmouth.”
I was in a funk, all the fight had drained out of me, and all I rea
lly wanted was to be in a cabin someplace where there wasn’t nobody, and watch the seasons a while. I knew several in the West and wished heartily I was there.
“We have to see all of this through, Captain Kelly,” says Digby, all colonel now.
I nodded.
We went out together and made our way round the mansion. It had begun to rain, a cold one from the ocean, and the gawkers was still there, dry—they’d brought umbrellas. Digby spotted our carriage and we got in and rolled back to the parlor car. I took off my coat, and Alys laughed.
“My hero,” she says. I looked down. I had one of my little belly guns stuck in my waistband. Well, you never know.
“How grateful I am,” says Digby, “that you did not use that.”
The belly gun wasn’t accurate at more’n about fifteen feet so it was no use to me anyway, not when Blue Fox was waltzing Alys right up to death. I still couldn’t believe how fast the guard had swung his sword—he drew it two-handed with the point down and swung it like that—so fast I still was puzzling on how he managed. Well, Masoud would surely have the best.
We had drinks and cheroots and Alys her Spanish cigarettes and it wasn’t no time before the car jerked a little, a yardpuller was moving us out to a train. Digby hadn’t been out of my sight, so I suspected Grant. He didn’t look like much, as I said, but he had a long damn arm.
“Masoud wished to join us in Wyoming,” says Digby. “Under the circumstances, I told him we’d be delighted.”
I laughed. Well, with the damned A-rab and his pinto elephants and flunks bearing the best of Abercrombie & Fitch, the Sioux and Cheyennes would leave us the hell alone.
Yellowstone Kelly, Gentleman & Scout, leading a goddamned comic opera after bones so long dead they was stone.
“Well,” I says, “I’m all for it. The Sioux and Cheyennes will be laughing so hard it will spoil their aim.”
I’d be ribbed for the rest of my life, what the hell.
A whistle blew and we bumped into a coupling and the steam hoses ran the brakes hissed and a smell of hot metal and rubber rose from underneath the car. We began to move, slow, so the train was a fairly long one.
