by Peter Bowen
When they were both dead, I would be some satisfied.
It would have to do.
50
MASOUD COME IN LATER, moving as he always did, silently, his feet in soft boots with soles thin as glove leather. Not havin’ to walk on anything rougher than his subject’s backs, the wear was slight.
“There is nothing out there you should be looking at now,” says Masoud. “We will play cards.”
Flunks set up a table with best green felt and chips and cards appeared and my goblet was refilled and I got up and went over and slumped in the chair, feeling some better but worn-out.
Masoud shuffled the deck with practiced ease and set the deck over to me and I felt them just for show and lifted up half and there was the black ace, the spade.
“Very good,” says Masoud.
“What game?” I says.
“Five card draw,” says Masoud, “since you don’t seem a man who would enjoy whist.”
I nodded and dealt and Masoud bet and I matched. There’d been no mention of money, I had little and he had so much he didn’t have any idea of his worth.
“Apologies for the guards,” says Masoud, “but I was asked to see you safely to Washington. There was some worry you might slip away.”
I nodded. There sure was.
“You should come to my country,” says Masoud. “Much of it is like your Wyoming, spare and bleak, the people there are fierce and loyal and they ride like centaurs. They live on their herds and flocks and come but once a year to trade their meat and cheese for grain and goods the villagers make. Otherwise, they live in tents and move with the grass and the seasons.”
“Well,” I says, “it’s a nice idea, but I am afraid U.S. Grant is going to shoot me off to Nicaragua.”
“He might,” says Masoud, “but if I were to mention to him that I would appreciate having Yellowstone Kelly an honored guest, he could perhaps find someone else.”
“If he could find someone else,” I says, “then I could go back to Montana this time. They was friends of mine, and I’d sort of like to see no one for a while. I know places there.”
“Four tens,” says Masoud, which went well over my three queens.
We played a while.
“I meant no offense,” I says. “My heart’s black and needs air and country.”
“We have both,” says Masoud.
He didn’t bring it up again, he had most excellent manners and I thought it kind of him to offer me the journey. I like them far places and folks who don’t wear boiled shirts and talk always of money.
“What happened to your people at Digby’s?” I says suddenly. We had wired the terrible news, but I knew of no family they had, not even the name of the lawyers would oversee and take their slice.
“Took ship already,” says Masoud. “Did you know that Alys left something there for you? She asked me to keep it and give it to you in time if anything were to happen to her and Digby.”
I looked up sharp.
“She knew?” I says.
Masoud nodded. “They both did, Kelly. In this world nothing is ever safe, and they both knew their deaths would solve a great problem for Cope and Marsh.”
“You knew about Blue Fox,” I says, “and did not tell me. They knew, too, and if I’d known, I could have maybe done something.”
Masoud shook his head, once.
“What is written will pass,” he says. “Our lives are in the Book and we may not escape them.”
I threw my cards down.
“If I’d have known,” I says, “I would have made it damned clear to those two bastards that ...”
“Of course,” says Masoud. He lit a cheroot.
I suddenly flew hot with rage, at Digby and Alys for playing me like a fool, and all for nothing. My face flushed and I turned and looked again out the window, but it was coming on dark and there was nothing out there not hidden by the night.
I would go into that night let it cloak me, and hunt.
“I am content,” says Masoud, “to let the will of God, Allah, prevail. It will anyway.”
“I ain’t,” I says softly.
“Foolish,” says Masoud. “You will break your teeth for nothing. It is written, Kelly, and no one can see down time.”
Washakie could. He would see me in three years and that was plenty of time to kill Cope and Marsh, even with a side trip to Nicaragua thrown in. Hell, that would take a few months. Better that way, Cope and Marsh would be off guard. Not that I couldn’t see about a pair of shots before we left. The military don’t move fast, for sure.
I wished Sir Henry was still alive. The two of us could have done it, and he’d have jumped at the chance. But Blue Fox killed him, too.
He’d killed a part of me as well.
My mother used to tell me to enjoy my youth, for life will maim you and then kill you. I could go see her, I thought. I had a large family, it went damn near end to end of the town, brothers that was lawyers and other objectionable things. And she wouldn’t let me slip in and out at night.
Hell with that, I thought, I am in no damned mood to make nice and won’t be for a while, and when I am I’d best be a long damn way from the East a while.
“Kelly!” says Masoud. “There is nothing out there you should look for. You are ill. I shall summon my doctor.”
He clapped his hands and the chamberlain appeared, all hunched over, and Masoud said a few words and off the man went and in two minutes a fat, white-bearded little A-rab, some greasy rice still on his robe from the supper he had left so suddenly, appeared. An assistant clanked in, carrying a yoke with bottles and oddments hanging from it in strings of clanking tinkling glass.
Masoud said a few words to the little man, who was facedown on the carpet, and then the prince stood up and glided off, silent as a cat hunting.
Folks the world around expect different things from their quacks, and so I awaited the bedside manner.
First the little fellow packed a pipe with a black gum had white threads in it and he lit it and offered it to me. It smelled sweet and dangerous. I shook my head.
The little doctor looked angry. He clapped his hands and them two monsters usually was waiting to behead them as came near Masoud come up out of the carpet and lifted me off the floor and one held a dagger across my throat and the little doctor stuck the stem of the pipe in my mouth and I sucked rather eagerly, since this warn’t going to end till I’d been cured.
The smoke wasn’t harsh, just thick, and after three deep puffs the little doctor took the pipe back and nodded to the monsters and they peeled off my shirt and flang me down on a divan and then here come the little doctor with the assistant clanking and various oils and ointments was applied here and there.
My head fell off my neck just then, though since I was flat on my back no one noticed. I expected the room to whirl as it rolled off the divan and across the room. The aromatic stinks I’d got on my chest and face was cloying and I choked a little, but the doctor stuck some burning grass under my nose and the stinks left and the room stopped spinning.
I had an instant of feeling myself, and then I fell into a deep pit, down into dreams. I could go on for days about them, they happened fast but was full of the past, recent and far, and the last thing I remembered was Alys waving at me, dressed in the transparent silk harem pants and bustier, as she walked through a spring wood.
How long I slept I don’t know, but when I woke it was bright out and we was clanking across farm country heavy with snow, the cows looking stupidly at the train.
I sat up.
Masoud was sitting at a table, with a roast lamb and rice and some sort of greenstuffs. If you’re rich enough, you can have salads in winter.
I was starving. I sat up and felt all right and I made it to a chair and fell on the food with all the grace and charm of a starving grizzly. Masoud leaned back to escape the sleet of lamb bits and rice kernels I was throwing off.
“Where are we?” I says, when I’d et myself to a standstill.
<
br /> “Virginia,” says Masoud.
I sank back, almost ill from the huge mess of food I’d wolfed down.
A flunk handed me a goblet of whiskey and a lit cheroot. I sank back, and thought about collecting my wits. I hadn’t a lot of time to slip away, what with Washington that close by. I noticed I was wearing a heavy silk robe and soft slippers. I goggled stupidly at them.
The whiskey was scotch, I thought, smoky and pungent. Wyoming was a long ways from this good stuff. I liked it better even than smooth Kentucky bourbon.
I had a good slug and then another and a warm bloom grew in my belly and the cheroot tasted mighty fine.
I stretched and yawned and my fingers began to tingle and then my toes and then my lips.
My head swelled and I started to fall. Strong hands carried me to a bed.
I slid down into that deep sleep.
There was incense burning somewheres.
51
I BEEN DRUNK ENOUGH plenty of times so when I woke up I didn’t know where I was or how I got there, and usually I was in some nice whorehouse smelling of women and lamp oil. Couple times in a jail cell, too, nothing much to that.
But when I come up out of my deep sleep I was real sick to my stomach and I rolled over and began to heave nothing at all into a bucket some soul had thoughtful-like placed there. This exercise lasted some minutes. I was groggy, and it took a while for me to realize I wasn’t light-headed or feverish. I focused my bleary eyes on the room I was in. It was small, and I was in a bunk had a rail on it and I stared stupidly at the shelf over a little washbasin was stuck to the wall. A book on its side slid to one end of the shelf and after a moment when my stomach began to ripple and heave it slid back to where it had been.
I looked at a funny round window up in the wall over my head. It had a brass grip on each side and so I grabbed on and pulled myself up and I looked out dumbstruck.
Gray seas was rolling meanly and a sharp wind cut white spray from the tops of the waves.
Kelly, I thinks, this is the goddamned end. Your good friends, them turds, has you on a boat.
On the goddamned ocean.
Never been on a ship before, or the ocean, but I had read all of these books and I damn well knew that Virginia warn’t cut in half by no large bodies of water.
I was naked, and there was my clothes, all fresh and clean, on a chair had a clotheshanger built into it. I got dressed and pulled on my boots and someone had stuck some sort of sandpaper on the bottoms.
My little belly guns was not in sight. Good thing, too.
I tried the door but some kind soul had locked it from the outside.
“Masoud, goddamn you you heathen son of a bitch!” I roars, pounding on the door. “I am a United States citizen and ...” and it occurred to me that the government I proposed to complain to was no doubt behind my present straits, specifically a short red-bearded seegar-smoking ex-general son of a bitch who I had at least trusted far enough to send me to goddamned Nicaragua, where I could have easily bided for the couple months it would take to tramp across the jungle, before returning here to kill and scalp Cope and Marsh.
Neither of them deserved to live, god damn it.
I cranked up my volume and called Masoud a bunch of really inventive names, pounding on the door all the while, and when I run down and gave a final dispirited whack with the palm of my hand it swung open on to a passageway and there stood Prince Masoud, looking tall and bored.
“If my minions knew the hundredth part of your insults,” he says, “I would barely be able to keep them from slicing you to chops and feeding the sharks. I don’t mind the insults, Kelly, my good friend: in your country they are a mark of esteem and friendship. I especially liked the bit about me fucking pigs. Pigs are thought an abomination in the eyes of Allah, and should the least of my servants hear such an atrocious lie, they would be honor-bound to slit your throat. So shut the hell up and yell about Grant.”
I yelled about Grant for a while. That treacherous ... and so forth and so on but like Washakie the bastard was both a shrewd judge of men and smarter than me.
Masoud nodded happily, agreeing with my every slander of good old U.S. Grant, the Man who won the War.
“You regard him highly,” says Masoud.
“I do when the bastard don’t stick me on some damn ocean liner,” I says. “I don’t think I’m going to like England.”
Masoud clapped his hands and a flunk came with a goblet had some potion in it. I drank it down and my stomach quit heaving.
“Come, Kelly,” says Masoud, “and please keep your head always lower than mine.”
Remembering his absolutely humorless guards, I hobbled along, ducking down when we had to go down two steps. Masoud was so tall I didn’t have to duck much, even if he was standing a good two feet lower.
We went through some doors all blue and gilt and sparkling with gems to a huge stateroom all done up in the manner of style I had seen in his big blue tent.
Masoud motioned me to a divan and he settled on his, a good three feet higher. The chamberlain come in and crawled over.
Masoud said a few words and the man backed away, getting a little higher for each foot he retreated. When he got to fifty feet he stood up and backed out of the room.
There warn’t anyone else visible. But there was a lot of silk curtains around, and servants and them huge bodyguards right there, I was sure.
“Nice stateroom they give you,” I says. It reached across the whole liner. I could see portholes on both side of the giant mess of silk and enamel and odd carved furniture.
Masoud just nodded.
A flunk appeared and filled my goblet with whiskey. I put my nose to it and sniffed suspiciously.
“Nothing in it but whiskey,” says Masoud. “We no longer needed the opium and syrup of lotus.”
“Needed?” I says. “Oh, I see, so you could shanghai me.”
“I suppose,” says Masoud, “I could arrange for you to work as a stoker. Do you like the thought of shoveling coal into the boilers better than lying here, and sometimes playing cards?”
Light dawned.
“This ain’t,” I says, “no British ocean liner or anything like that.”
“No-ope,” says Masoud. He’d been practicing his Wyoming.
I launched into a long recitation of Grant’s oddities and character flaws and various dire acts he had no doubt committed as a farmboy in Illinois, and heavy on the ducks.
“How you admire him,” says Masoud, grinning.
“This is your yacht,” I says.
“Indeed,” says Masoud.
“And what,” I says, half-knowing, “am I doing on it exactly?”
“You are to be the new military attaché,” says Masoud, “to my court.”
“You’re the sultan of Turkey?” I says.
“Heavens, no,” says Masoud. “I am a mere prince of a vassal state. I myself am a Kurd, but many of the Kazakhs are ruled by me also.”
“Military attaché,” I says. Other’n gettin’ shot at, I had little military experience. And, I thought happily, no uniforms.
“Grant,” says Masoud, “asked me to give you your orders when I felt you could be persuaded to read them.” He handed me one of them piss yellow government envelopes just never, ever has good news in it.
Major Kelly,
You are to proceed to the court of Prince Masoud al-Diloof and serve there as sole military attaché, with an eye to trade possibilities. If the prince wishes you to assist his forces in drill or tactics of peaceful nature do so.
Grant
Commander in Chief by JH
“They were concerned that you might try to kill the professors,” said Masoud, “and wished you farther away than Nicaragua. You need time, Kelly, to let those worms die which are eating your intestines. All is written in the Book, and I have found in life that swine such as Cope and Marsh are best left to live their lives. They will do more evil to themselves than you could yourself dream of. It is what
we carry within us, Kelly, the world is but a dream....”
Things flooded back, and tears welled up in my eyes. I had loved Alys and Digby, too, and now they were gone.
I was all set to sob when I got sudden-like distracted and I looked down at my boots in horror.
Them sneaky little sausage dogs had crept up and dashed out from hiding and they was clamped, one upon each ankle, uttering little Kraut cries of happiness.
I made a grab for a tall brass coffeepot, long and slim and heavy, and I got it and swung it up two-handed but Masoud reached over and grabbed it before I could smash the little bastards.
Libretta appeared out of nowhere, waving a large cleaver, and explained in broken but adequate English what would happen to my parts if I ruffled a hair on the little shits.
Stefano burst in next with some demented bird on his fist, a big white-and-black hawk.
“Kell-ee!” the little guinea bastard chortles.
“Kell-ee, we have saltimbocca tonight!” says Libretta.
“SNARL MUNCH SNARL GRRRR....” added the sausage dogs.
“Shit,” I says.
“All life is written in the Book,” says Masoud.
52
WHEN I FINALLY STAGGERED back to my room and got inside there was a package there, in a soft leather briefcase, yellow-brown and waxed and used. It was a thing of Digby’s probably, I thought, and I choked up and wondered what Alys had put inside it and I thought for a while before I undid the three leather straps that held it shut.
There was a book, and a little pocketknife all brave with gold filigree on ebony for the handle, and when I opened it the blade was chased and scribed, a hunting scene, and a woman swinging a shotgun after a flight of birds. And a ring, a heavy gold one with a black stone in it, that fit the middle finger of my left hand.
The book was a privately printed one, excerpts from journals Alys had written, the last three from her summer trip in Wyoming, when she was working for the disagreeable Cope, him of the deadly ambition and the money to poison and destroy lives. In the name of disinterested scholarship.
I would have to read it, I knew, and I left it closed, and knew I would not sleep until I had, at least the last three entries.
