The Yellowstone Kelly Novels

by Bowen, Peter

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t like cities,” says she.

  “Me neither,” says I. Our love-talk was downright Shakespearean.

  So it went. We slept under the stars rolled in our arms and we’d ride here and there and point and say look at that and spend a lot of time just sitting. I remember the time, and even now it causes me pain to do so, but I can’t actually say what we did. It is lost in some sort of golden fog.

  “I got to go,” I said one morning.

  She nodded.

  I saddled up and rode away. I should have broken her leg.

  Chelmsford had crossed the Buffalo River two days before I got there. He wouldn’t get to Ulundi much before the first of July because he had chosen a longer, safer route over more open country. One more disaster and they’d promote him.

  I finally found Buller, who was with what was now called the Flying Column, Irregulars officered by Imperial officers. Very few of the fresh-faced young men who had ridden off to war last January looked anything like their old selves. They had seen too much.

  Buller clapped me heartily around the shoulder and said that young Ansall had healed marvelously—he would limp for the rest of his days. The drunken surgeon had got a bad case of the DTs one night and wandered out of camp. A lion got him. This news cheered me up some.

  “The leg has healed well,” Buller said. “Good. Good.” Not a word about the fact I had spent over a month in Durban, and he surely would have heard about Gussie.

  “Well, well,” said Buller, “well, well. Harford will be delighted to see you. We have need of good scouts. Look him up and be responsible to him.”

  I launched into a stream of profanity, one I learned from a buffalo skinner who could burn the air for five minutes without repeating a phrase.

  Buller stood there nodding his head and grinning, and when I was through he congratulated me on my performance and pointed out Harford heading this way. This set me off again but Buller just walked on and Harford sauntered up. He smelled very strange.

  I couldn’t help wrinkling my nose at the smell. It was horribly pungent. And I have smelled some things ... Never mind.

  Harford looked at me, puzzled.

  “You stink,” I said, “in a proper, insufferable manner, of course.”

  “Oh, that,” said Harford. He fingered the uniform he was wearing. It was a dark brown corduroy. “We were so ragged that we had to be issued new uniforms. The British being who they are, they bought these from a wog named Mr. Ghopal. We got them two weeks ago—the smell was much stronger, I assure you. There has been endless speculation on what Mr. Ghopal used for dyestuffs. The consensus is that it is a half-and-half mixture of hyena shit and buzzard vomit. ...”

  “I ain’t scouting with you in that,” says I. “We’re close enough in size so you can just take some of my spares.”

  “What a nice idea,” says Harford.

  “Wearing that in the damn dark wouldn’t be a lot of good to us. You, rather. Smell you for miles. Zulus do have noses. Maybe it would be better if you kept ’em come to think of it. ...”

  “Don’t be unchristian, Kelly.”

  It took me a few moments.

  “My name is James Adendorff,” says I, “no matter what that little bastard George Hanks says.”

  “’Fraid not,” says Harford. “The three Uys boys who survived Hlobane came to see you as you lay—mildly concussed, I suppose, which is why I suspect you were telling the truth. Hans asked you some questions—he is the only one with much English, and you answered them. Including admitting that you are the famous Yellowstone Kelly. I happened to be there. Now, Kelly, neither I nor Buller nor Chelmsford gives a damn why you are here. We have a war to fight.”

  He stripped off the vile corduroys and took the clothes I gave him—I even said he could have one of the rifles after he stared at it, politely clearing his throat for maybe fifteen minutes. Maybe I was still in shock.

  That done, we stowed my extra gear in one of the commissary wagons and went out to look to the north and west—there were scattered parties of Zulus striking in groups of from two to ten, armed with the Martini-Henrys and sometimes even mounted. There would be only one more pitched battle with the Zulu army, and that at the gates of Ulundi, and I suppose both the Zulus and ourselves knew it.

  We rode off, unconcerned, until we could drop down into a donga and sort of cut our way out of the line of sight for a few miles, and then creep up a hill with good cover and take a look.

  I suppose we rode for four hours like that, slowly and as quiet as we could. Then we decided that we would go up a little donga and tie the horses, and creep up to the hilltop and take a look. One of us take the horses, and hold them quiet, the other take his shielded binoculars and carefully look.

  The donga wasn’t very deep, maybe ten feet, but it had steep walls.

  The problem with this sort of thing is that it may occur to someone else. So I come round a corner and here is this gigantic Zulu, creeping quietly. We stare at each other for about half a minute.

  The Zulu is carrying both a Martini-Henry and a spear, and while he’s figuring out which one he wants to use I blow his brains out with my Winchester. He has five friends behind him who take exception to this.

  For a few seconds the donga roars with fire. Three more Zulus drop—Harford moves up beside me, and then he drops his rifle and drops to the ground on his hands and knees.

  The other two Zulus are about eight feet from us, spears up and shields forward. I have no time to go to Harford. I knock one Zulu down with the rifle and desperately grab my pistol and the Zulu stabs at me twice before I can knock him over and finish him off. I jam shells into the rifle and my pistol and look around for any more Zulus. I can’t hear very well. I hear a voice behind me.

  “Kelly,” shouts Harford happily. “Look at this, entirely new to science.”

  He was holding up a beetle about four inches long, bright emerald green.

  “It’s a Findibulus Harfordi,” says Harford.

  I walked over to the bastard, cracked him on the forehead with my revolver, and spent the next two minutes in Zululand hopping up and down on his damn bug.

  Then I went and got the horses.

  45

  CHELMSFORD GROUND ON TOWARD Ulundi, and we of the Flying Column went off to Chelmsford’s left, presenting a threat, offering a smaller possibility of battle. The Zulus had had it, and they knew it, but the war wouldn’t be over until Ulundi had been burned and the King had been captured. They would fight there.

  Harford and I kept going out, sometimes right close to Ulundi itself. We worked well together and after I stomped on his goddamn beetle, he at least knew how not to provoke me. I found two more and stomped them, too.

  The Zulu army wasn’t massed at Ulundi—they were off to their home kraals, as much as a hundred miles away, tending their wounds. We had their scouts to contend with—I taught Harford a few things about night killing and tracking, and he taught me a lot more about Africa and how to avoid trouble.

  The last week in May we come back for one of our rare evenings in camp, when for the sake of our comrades we would chew—seemed like for hours—on a stringy slaughter beef and eat lots of bread. One of General Wood’s peculiarities was that he demanded fresh bread for his troops, and there were two mobile bakery wagons, and even one fit out as a hen house. It had a milk cow tethered to the back of it.

  One evening Buller summoned me and Harford to his tent. Buller was awfully jovial, which in commanding officers means that they are about to hand you a wildcat, a red-hot knitting needle, and a pat of butter, and ask you to stuff the butter up the wildcat’s ass with the needle, if you please. Or I’ll hang you. Which is what Buller did.

  “What in Christ’s name is he doing here?” I snarled. “No. No, god dammit. NO, NO, NO.”

  “Can’t be helped,” said Buller. “You two are the best we have, and he would be safest with you.”

  This put a
new light on things. If we were to keep Napoleon the Fourth alive and in good health we would, therefore, keep ourselves alive and in good health. As much as I hate Frogs, this put a somewhat greater value on the health of Frogs than I’m inclined to give, as a usual case.

  “Sergeant Aden ... Kelly,” Buller said, waving the brandy at us, “may I remind you that you are addressing a superior officer.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, watching my glass as it filled. “Fuck you, sir.”

  Buller roared with laughter at that. Harford joined in.

  “I suppose,” said Harford, “we are, I gather, to let the little fool think that he is actually at war without letting him get anywhere near it.”

  “Quite,” said Buller.

  “Can’t we take him down to Durban and keep him drunk for a month or two or however long it takes to get this fool war over with?” I says.

  “His mother would hate you for it, and she is a Queen,” said Buller. “He is an earnest young chap. Just can’t afford to let anything happen to him. If he stays near to camp the young fool will chase every Zulu scout he spots and he don’t listen to orders very well. Born to the purple, you know.”

  “He’ll damn well listen to me or he’ll be wearing his ass for a hat,” says I. “I don’t like Frogs to begin with and the Head Frog starts off lowest of all.”

  We went back and forth for a while, and finally it was agreed that it would be smarter to have young Napoleon do something useful. With an escort, of course. Like making maps.

  We had come close to Chelmsford, very close now—we had been drifting northeast and would be up to him in a couple of days. The Flying Column would join the procession and on we would go to the final act.

  That evening, late, we was introduced to the future emperor of France, if they’d have him, which weren’t likely. He turned out to be a nice feller, even for a Frog. I had expected some insufferable little bastard—more like an Englishman—but Napoleon was a bright, self-effacing young subaltern who wished only to do his job well. He was eager, I could tell that, but honestly wished to be no trouble. I should have broken his leg, too.

  Buller sent us out the next day, with an escort for Napoleon of a sergeant and four troopers, and Harford and me had left in the night and scouted the area that they were going to map. We did this for several days.

  The Flying Column had grown to about fifteen hundred men by now—guards from Natal had been released, and scattered units that had been raiding into Zululand, stealing cattle and burning small outlying kraals, came in as we closed with the main body.

  I had wore my boots about out and needed to touch up my tack. I was sitting there crosslegged, sewing away, when a shadow fell across my work. I looked up and there was Napoleon IV. He was a slender boy of twenty or so, with a cheerful face, and he squatted down on his haunches and watched me for a moment.

  “I understand you are an Indian scout in America’s Wild West,” he said, with the faintest French accent. “I have read about you, I think. I would very much like to come and see your West and hunt your buffalo.”

  “Well,” says I, “don’t believe that pack of lies you read, and if you come and I’m there look me up and we’ll go hunt something. The buffalo will likely be gone by then.”

  “Pardon?”

  “The Plains Indians depend on the buffalo for everything,” I said, “so it was the thought that if they destroyed the buffalo they would destroy the Plains tribes. Millions are being killed, the hides taken, the rest left to rot. The tribes are broken. This is called statecraft in some circles, I believe.”

  “That’s terrible,” he said.

  “Ain’t no different from what we are doing right now,” says I. “We’ll destroy the Zulu army and take all their cattle and land and make beggars out of ’em.”

  “But these are savages,” said Napoleon.

  “Horseshit,” I said. “They’re a different color, and they’re in the way. They don’t have good guns and we do. That’s history. How would you feel if the Zulus invaded France, and their weapons were better than yours and they just took it?”

  “I would fight to the death,” he said.

  “That’s just what they’ll do,” says I.

  We went on to other things. He asked me about what I was doing—being a Prince Imperial you never get to do anything for yourself, not even wipe your own ass, I suppose. Napoleon was a splendid horseman, and I saw him do a demonstration of work with what turned out to be his great-uncle’s sword that still makes my head shake. He rode flat out at an orderly, who threw two potatoes in the air, and he sliced them both from horseback, one on each side, so fast I didn’t really see the blade.

  Anyway, we spent a pleasant afternoon, him asking questions about tracking, and the Plains tribes, and what guns I used and why, and why I had a knife in my boot (it’s called a slip, long and thin and double-edged. You slip it into a man’s heart from the back, striking up) and how the Indians trained their horses—I told him that they sometimes break colts by riding them in the water, which makes it less dangerous for both the horse and rider. He said he thought it lacked courage.

  He invited me to have dinner with him and his colleagues in the Officers’ Mess, and so I went. The officers were a bit put off by having a mere volunteer foisted off on them, but no one was out-and-out rude and Buller was so jovial to me they finally warmed. We ate the same thing everyone else did, but the officers had a lot of claret and brandy, and after the mess was cleaned away we sat on camp stools and talked.

  Everyone but Buller and me was eager to impress Napoleon—the British are that way about royalty. But there was one feller there, a Lieutenant Carey, who was downright groveling. He followed Louis around, offering him seegars, and once when I was standing near, talking to Buller, I heard Carey say something that damn near made my jaw drop off.

  “Here,” said Carey, holding a crumpled daguerreotype, “are my dear wife and daughters. Are they not lovely? I shed tears each time I think of them (he commenced to snuffle); they are such perfect examples of sweet Jesus’s creations.”

  He went on in that vein for some time, with Napoleon being kind to him. I had to leave, but before I went I stopped by Buller and asked for a word.

  “Certainly, Kelly,” said Buller. “We’ll step outside.”

  We stood under the stars—we was up high enough so that the night was cold.

  “I have scouted here for nearly five months now,” I says, “and though Harford and I ain’t turning up a damn thing I have this feeling. It’s a feeling that I have learned to trust, one that I can’t really explain. They are around, we just haven’t found them. Just make sure Louis has a strong escort. And have whoever is running the damn thing stay the hell away from that tambookie grass. A whole damn imPi could be in one of them stands and you could be ten feet away and not know it. The grass rustles in the smallest breeze and puts out a hell of a clatter.”

  “I will see to it,” says Buller. “Carey will receive his instructions

  “Carey?” says I. “That godwalloping bastard?”

  “His turn,” said Buller.

  The officers had been taking turns squiring Napoleon around. Never know when a little sucking up to royalty will stand you in good stead.

  “Send Groves or ...”

  “It’s settled,” said Buller. “I’ll talk to Carey myself.” Buller strode back into the tent, and I looked up Harford. We slipped out and commenced to ride in the direction that tomorrow would be taken by the Prince Imperial and his escort.

  46

  HARFORD AND I SLIPPED along in the dark, sniffing the air for woodsmoke, looking for a tiny point of light, checking at the places where trails cross for any sign. We found some, though not a lot. We found a good place to hide in while the dawn rose—the dew steams off and makes a fog for about an hour—and I held the horses while Harford slithered up an acacia tree to glass the countryside. He was up there longer than he usually was, and when he come down he looked puzzled.

 
“It doesn’t seem that unusual,” he said, “but about five miles ahead I saw a flight of ducks taking off. Anything could have startled them, I suppose.”

  We didn’t know exactly where the Prince’s party was headed; they would map for a bit, look for campsites for the supply train, and whether they went left or right was purely a matter of whim. I kept telling myself that Lieutenant Carey knew what he was doing, and then I would answer myself: the hell he does.

  Some ten miles out, which was as far as the wagons could hope to go, I saw some crushed grass in a little hidden meadow, up ahead of us. Harford saw me stiffen, we saw to our guns. I dropped the reins of my horse on the ground and went back to him and put my face close to him and whispered that I thought it best we not just ride through it, but come on it sort of sideways-like. And quiet.

  Harford held the horses, and I went forward to look, sliding through the acacia and come-hither thorn. That sort of bush is full of little pepper-ticks, but they ain’t as lethal as assegais or the 480 grain lead bullets from Martini-Henrys. It took me a couple of hours to convince myself that there was nothing there now, though I was damn sure that there had been.

  The tracks was of maybe a dozen Zulus, four or five hours old. It was easy two in the afternoon by now, maybe later, and the days were getting shorter as we got toward the twenty-first of June, which is the shortest day of the year down here.

  “There were some here,” I said, “and I don’t think we can handle a dozen.”

  We wondered a bit. Then we decided to get up high and devil damn the thought of Zulus seeing us, we could outride them or hold them off with the Winchesters. We would try to spot the Prince’s party and tell them to get the hell back to the main group.

  That decided, we rode ridges, only plunging down into the dongas at bare places to get up top the next one.

  I saw them finally, about five o’clock. They was maybe five miles away, and they dipped out of sight as soon as I laid eyes on them. But at least now we knew which direction they was in. I rode flat out, with Harford behind me, cursing Carey for not having headed back an hour ago. It would be damn dark in an hour and there was high cloud moving in from the Indian Ocean, so there would be no light from the stars.