Читать книгу Flashman and the Redskins - George Fraser MacDonald - Страница 16

Fifteen dollars a bottle they were charging for claret at the Planters’ Hotel in St Louis that year, and it was like drinking swamp-water when the mules have been by; I’ve tasted better in a London ladies’ club. But you daren’t drink anything else because of the cholera; the good folk of St Louis were keeling over like flies, the whole town stank of camphor and burning bitumen, you could even find bodies lying in the street, and the only place more crowded than the Planters’ must have been the cemetery – which was probably as comfortable.

It wasn’t only the plague that worried me, either; St Louis was the town where a few weeks earlier they’d been posting rewards of a hundred dollars for my apprehension, describing me to a T and warning the citizenry that I had Genteel Manners and spoke with a Foreign Accent, damn their impudence. But the Choctaw Queen went no farther, and we had to wait a day for a vessel to carry us up the Missouri to Westport, so there was nothing for it but to venture ashore, which I managed in safety by purchasing one of the new ‘genuine cholera masks, guaranteed to prevent infection’ for two bits, and sneaking into the Planters’ looking like a road-agent.

There I had further proof, if I’d needed it, of my new wife’s strength of character, and also of the length of her purse. Would you believe it – she had bespoken half a dozen rooms, and when the manager discovered that four of them were to be occupied by twenty nigger wenches, he had the conniptions; by thunder, he’d swim in blood before any black slaves stank up his rooms, no matter their airs and refinements. Unfortunately for him, Susie had the girls settled in and their doorkeys in her reticule before he realised it; he and she had a fine set-to in our parlour, while I kept safely out of view in the bedroom, and she told him that since her ‘young ladies’ were on no account going to be herded in the pens with fieldhands and such trash, nor in quarantine neither, he’d better put a hundred dollars in his pocket and forget it. I’d have let ’em go to the pens myself, but it was her money, and after some hem-haw he took it, and retired with a grovelling request that the ‘young ladies’ keep to their rooms, for his reputation’s sake.

But what with the din of the overcrowded hotel, the stink of sulphur smouldering in the fireplace, and the fear that some sharp might discover Mr Comber was the notorious slave-stealer Tom Arnold, I was mightily relieved when we boarded the Missouri packet next evening, and I felt it safe to drop my cholera mask over the side – the passengers included sufficient tall dark strangers with every kind of accent, whether their manners were genteel or not. She was a smaller and much dirtier vessel than the Choctaw Queen, and the girls had to make do in steerage among all the roughs and roustabouts and gamblers and frontier riff-raff; Susie just singled out the four biggest and ugliest and paid them handsomely to keep the wenches safe in a corner – which to my astonishment they did, for four days up to Kanzas Landing. The first drunk who tried to paw a crinoline was tipped over the side without ceremony, and the gamblers haw-hawed and laid bets whether he’d float or sink. After that our Magdalenes were left alone, but they had a miserable passage of it, even under the lean-to which the toughs rigged up to keep out the fog and drizzle, and they were a doleful and bedraggled jam of tarts by the time we tied up. Susie and I shared a cramped and stuffy saloon on the texas with about seventeen snoring merchants and dowagers with bad breath, but for once I didn’t mind the lack of privacy; I needed the rest.

They tell me that Kansas City nowadays covers the whole section, but in those days the landing and Westport and Independence were separated by woodland and meadow. And I wonder if today’s city contains more people than were crowded along the ten miles from Independence to the river when I first saw it in ’49: there were thousands of them, in tents and lean-tos and houses and log shacks and under the trees and in the few taverns and lodging-places; they were in the stables and sheds and shops and storehouses, a great swarming hive of humanity of every kind you can imagine – well, I remember the Singapore River in the earlies, and it was nothing to Westport-Independence. The whole stretch was jammed with wagons and carts and carriages, churning the spaces between the buildings into a sea of mud after the recent rain, and through it went the mules and oxen and horses, with the steam rising from them and the stench of hides and dung and smoke filling the air – but even that was nothing to the noise.

Every other building seemed to be a forge or a stable or a warehouse, a-clang with hundreds of hammers and the rasp of saws and the crack of axes and the creak of wheels and the thump and scrape of boxes and bales being loaded or unloaded; teamsters snapped their whips with a ‘Way-hay, whoa!’, foremen bellowed, children shrilled, the voices of thousands of men and women blended with it all in a great eager busy din that echoed among the buildings and floated off to be lost in the surrounding forest.

I daresay it was nothing to what it must have looked like a year or two later, when the gold-fever was at its height and half Europe came pouring to America in search of fortune. But in that spring every human specimen in North America seemed to have assembled at Kanzas Landing for the great trek west – labourers white and black and olive, bronzed hunters and pale clerks, sober emigrants and raffish adventurers, harassed women with aprons and baskets prodding at vegetables set out before the store-fronts and slapping the children who bawled round their skirts; red-faced traders in stove-pipe hats and thumbs hooked in fancy weskits, spitting juice; soldiers in long boots and blue breeches, their sabres on the table among the beer-mugs; Mexicans in serapes and huge-brimmed sombreros leading a file of mules; farmers in straw hats and faded overalls; skinners with coiled whips, lounging on their rigs; bearded ruffians in greasy buckskins bright with beadwork, two-foot Bowies gleaming on their hips, chattering through their noses in a language which I recognised to my amazement as Scotch Gaelic; bright-eyed harpies watchful in shack doorways; Spanish riders in ponchos and feathered bonnets, their sashes stuffed with flintlock pistols; a party of Indians beneath the trees, faces grotesquely painted, hatchets at their belts and lances stacked; silent plainsmen in fur caps and long fringed skirts, carrying buffalo guns and powder horns; a coach guard with two six-shooters at his hips, two five-shooters in his waistband, a slung revolving rifle, a broad-sword, and a knife in his boot – oh, and he was gnawing a toothpick, too; an incredibly lean and ancient hunter, white-bearded to the waist, dressed in ragged deerskin and billycock hat, his ‘nail-driver’ rifle across the crupper of his mule, staring ahead like a fakir in a trance as he rode slowly up the street, his slovenly Indian squaw at his stirrup, through the crowds of loafers and porters and barefoot boys scuffling under the wagons, the swaggering French voyageurs, gaudy and noisy, the drummers and counter-jumpers and sharp-faced Yankees, planters and crooks and rivermen, trappers and miners and plain honest folk wondering how they’d strayed into this Babel – and those are only the ones I noticed in the first mile or so.

But soft! who is this stalwart figure with the dashing whiskers so admirably set off by his wideawake hat and fringed deerskin shirt, a new patent Colt repeater strapped to his manly rump, his well-turned shanks encased in new boots which are pinching the bejeezus out of him? Can it be other than Arapaho Harry, scourge of the plains? – that alert and smouldering eye must oft have hardened at the sound of the shrill war-whoop, or narrowed behind the sights as he nailed the rampant grizzly – now it is soft and genial as he chivvies the dusky whores into the back of the cart, an indulgent smile playing across his noble features. Mark the grace with which he vaults nimbly into the driver’s seat beside the bedizened trot in the feathered bonnet – his aunt, doubtless – and with an expert chuck on the reins sets the team in motion and bogs the whole contraption axle-deep in the gumbo. The whores squeak in alarm, the aunt – his wife, you say? – rails and adjusts her finery, but the gallant frontiersman, unperturbed save for a blistering oath which mantles the cheeks of his fair companions in blushes, is equal to the emergency; for two bits he gets a gang of loafers to haul them out. The western journey is not without its trials; it is going to be a long trek to California.

But at least it looked as though we were going to make it in some style. Once we’d got the rig out of the stew, and rattled through Westport and the great sea of emigrant tents and wagons to Independence – which was a pretty little place then with a couple of spires and a town hall with a belfry, of which the inhabitants were immensely proud – we were greeted by the celebrated Colonel Owens, a breezy old file with check trousers full of belly and a knowing eye; he was the leading merchant, and had been commissioned to outfit Susie’s caravan. He and the boys made us welcome at the store, pressed sherry cobblers on me, bowed and leered gallantly at Susie, and assured us that a trip across the plains was a glorified picnic.

‘You’ll find, ma’am,’ says the Colonel, ankle cocked and cigar a-flourish, ‘that everything’s in real prime train. Indeedy – your health, sir. Yes, ma’am, six Pittsburgh wagons, spanking new, thirty yoke of good oxen, a dozen mules, and a real bang-up travelling carriage – the very best Hiram Young⁴ can furnish, patent springs, hand-painted, cushioned seats, watertight for fording streams, seats half a dozen comfortable. Fact is,’ with a broad wink, ‘it’s one of the new mail company coaches, but Hiram procured it as a personal favour. Indeedy – you won’t find a more elegant conveyance outside Boston – am I right, boys?’

The boys agreed that he was, and added in hushed tones that the mail company intended to charge $250 a head for the three-week non-stop run to Santa Fe, and how about that?

‘We’re goin’ to take three months,’ says Susie, ‘an’ ten cents a pound for freight is quite dear enough, thank you. To say nothin’ of fifty dollars a month for guards an’ drivers, who’ll eat like wolves if I know anythin’.’

‘Well, now, ma’am, I see you’ve a proper head for business,’ chuckles the Colonel. ‘An’ a real pretty head it is, too, if I may say. But good men don’t come cheap – eh, boys?’

The boys swore it was true; why, a good stockman could make two hundred a week, without going west of Big Blue.

‘I’m not hirin’ stockmen,’ snaps Susie. ‘I’m payin’ high for reliable men who can look after theirselves, and me.’

‘And you shall have the best, ma’am!’ cries the Colonel. ‘Say, I like your style, though! Your health again, Mr Comber! Indeedy – eight outriders, each with a revolving rifle and a brace of patent pistols – why, that’s a hundred shots without reloading! A regiment couldn’t afford better protection! A regiment, did I say? Why, three of these men rode with Kearny in the Mexican War – seasoned veterans, ma’am, every one. Isn’t that so, boys?’

The boys couldn’t fault him; dogged if they knew how the Army would have managed without those three. I remarked that so much firepower was impressive, and seemed to argue necessity – I’d been noting a bill on the store wall advertising:

Ho! Hist! Attention!

Californians! Why not take, among other necessaries, your own monuments and tombstones? A great saving can be effected by having their inscriptions cut in New York beforehand!!!⁵

The Colonel looked serious and called for more cobblers. ‘Indian depredations this past ten years, sir, have been serious and multiplying,’ says he solemnly. ‘Indeedy – red sons-o-bitches wherever you look – oh, beg pardon, ma’am, that runaway tongue of mine! However, with such vast convoys of emigrants now moving west, I foresee no cause for apprehension. Safety in numbers, Mr Comber, hey? Besides, the tribes are unusually peaceful at present – eh, boys?’

The boys couldn’t remember such tranquillity; it was Sunday afternoon the whole way to the Rockies, with all the Indians retired or gone into farming or catching the cholera. (That last was true enough, by the way.)

Susie inquired about a guide, reminding the Colonel she had asked for the best, and he smacked his thigh and beamed. ‘Now, ma’am, you can set your mind to rest there – yes, indeedy, I reckon you can, just about,’ and the boys grinned approval without even being asked.

‘Is it Mr Williams?’ says Susie. ‘I was told to ask for him, special.’

‘Well, now ma’am, I’m afraid Old Bill doesn’t come out of the mountains much, these days.’ The boys confirmed that indeed Old Bill was out west with Fremont. ‘No, I’m afraid Fitzpatrick and Beckwourth aren’t available, either – but they’re no loss, believe me, when you see who I’ve engaged – subject to his meeting you and agreeing to take the command, of course.’ And he nodded to one of the boys, who went out on the stoop and bawled: ‘Richey!’

‘Command!’ says Susie, bridling. ‘Any commandin’ that’s to be done, my ’usband’ll do!’ Which gave me a nasty start, I can tell you. ‘He’s in charge of our caravan, and the guide’ll take ’is pay ’an do what he’s told! The idea!’

The Colonel looked at the boys, and the boys looked at the Colonel, and they all looked at me. ‘Well, now, ma’am,’ says Owens doubtfully, ‘I’m sure Mr Comber is a gentleman of great ability, but—’

‘’E’s an’ officer of the Royal Navy,’ snaps Susie, ‘an’ quite accustomed to command – aren’t you, my love?’

I agreed, but remarked that leading a caravan must be specialised work, and doubtless there were many better qualified than I … which was stark truth, apart from which I’d no wish to be badgering roughriders and arguing with drunk teamsters when I could be rolling in a hand-painted, watertight coach. Seeing my diffidence, she rounded on me, demanding if I was going to take orders from some grubby little carter? I said, well, ah … while the Colonel called loudly for cobblers and the boys looked tactfully at the ceiling, and just then a burly scarecrow came into the store – or rather, he seemed to drift in, silently, and the Colonel introduced him as Mr Wootton, our guide.

I heard Susie sniff in astonishment – well, he was grubby, no error, and hadn’t shaved in a while, and his clothes looked as though he’d taken them off a dead buckskin man and then slept in them for a year. He seemed diffident, too, fiddling with his hat and looking at the floor. When the Colonel told him about my commanding the caravan he thought for a bit, and then said in a gentle, husky voice:

‘Gennelman bin wagon-captain afore?’

No, said the Colonel, and the boys looked askance and coughed. The clodpole scratched his head and asks:

‘Gennelman bin in Injun country?’

No, they said, I hadn’t. He stood a full minute, still not looking up, and then says:

‘Gennelman got no ’sperience?’

At this one of the boys laughed, and I sensed Susie ready to burst – and I was about fed up being ridiculed by these blasted chaw-bacons. God knows I didn’t want to command her caravan, but enough’s enough.

‘I’ve had some experience, Mr Wootton,’ says I. ‘I was once an army chief of staff—’ Sergeant-General to the nigger rabble of Madagascar, but there you are ‘—and have known service in India, Afghanistan, and Borneo. But I’ve no special desire—’

At this Wootton lifted his unkempt head and looked at me, and I stopped dead. He was a ragged nobody – with eyes like clear blue lights, straight and steady. Then he glanced away – and I thought, don’t let this one go. It may be a picnic on the plains, but you’ll be none the worse with him along.

‘My dear,’ says I to Susie, ‘perhaps you and the Colonel will excuse Mr Wootton and myself.’ I went out, and presently Wootton drifts on to the stoop, not looking at me.

‘Mr Wootton,’ says I, ‘my wife wants me to command the caravan, and what she wants she gets. Now, I’m not your Old Bill Williams, but I’m not a greenhorn, exactly. I don’t mind being called wagon-captain – but you’re the guide, and what you say goes. You can say it to me, quietly, and I’ll say it to everyone else, and you’ll get an extra hundred a month. What d’you say?’

It was her money, after all. He said nothing, so I went on:

‘If you’re concerned that your friends’ll think poorly of you for serving under a tenderfoot …’ At this he turned the blue eyes on me, and kept them there. Deuced uncomfortable. Still he was silent, but presently looked about, as though considering, and then says after a while:

‘Gotta study, I reckon. Care to likker with me?’

I accepted, and he led the way to where a couple of mules were tethered, watching me sidelong as I mounted. Well, I’d forgotten more about backing a beast than he’d ever know, so I was all right there; we cantered down the street, and out through the tents and wagons towards Westport, and presently came to a big lodge with ‘Last Chance’ painted in gold leaf on its signboard, which was doing a roaring trade. Richey got a jug, and we rode off towards some trees, and all the time he was deep in thought, occasionally glancing at me but not saying a word. I didn’t mind; it was a warm day, I was enjoying the ride, and there was plenty to see – over by the wood some hunters were popping their rifles at an invisible target; when we got closer I saw they were ‘driving the nail’, which is shooting from fifty paces or so at a broad-headed nail stuck in a tree, the aim being to drive it full into the wood, which with a ball the size of a small pea is fancy shooting anywhere.

Richey gave a grunt when he saw them, and we rode near to where a group of them were standing near the nail-tree, whooping and catcalling at every shot. Richey dismounted.

‘Kindly cyare to set a whiles?’ says he, and indicated a tree-stump with all the grace of a Versailles courtier; he even put the jug down beside it. So I sat, and waited, and took a pull at the jug, which was first-run rum, and no mistake, while Richey went over and talked to the hunters – fellows in moccasins and fringed tunics, for the most part, burned brown and bearded all over. It was only when some of them turned to look at me; and chortled in their barbarous ‘plug-a-plew’ dialect which is barely recognisable as English, that I realised the brute was absolutely consulting them – about me, if you please! Well, by God, I wasn’t having that, and I was on the point of storming off when the group came over, all a-grin – and by George, didn’t they stink, just! I was on my feet, ready to leave – and then I stopped, thunderstruck. For the first of them, a tall grizzled mountaineer, in a waterproof hat and leggings, was wearing an undoubted Life Guards tunic, threadbare but well-kept. I blinked: yes, it was Tin Belly gear, no error.

‘Hooraw, hoss, howyar!’ cries this apparition.

‘Where the devil did you get that coat?’ says I.

‘You’re English,’ says he, grinning. ‘Waal, I tell ye – this yar garmint wuz give me by one o’ your folks. Scotch feller – sure ’nuff baronite, which is kind of a lord, don’t ye know? Name o’ Stooart. Say, wasn’t he the prime coon, though? He could ha’ druv thet nail thar with his eyes shut.’ He considered me, scratching his chin, and I found myself wishing my buckskin coat wasn’t so infernally new. ‘Richey hyar sez he’s onsartin if you’ll make a wagon-captain.’

‘Is he, by God? Well, you can tell Richey—’

‘Mister,’ says he, ‘you know this?’ And he held up a short stick of what looked like twisted leather.

‘Certainly. It’s cured beef – biltong. Now what—’

‘Don’t mind me, hoss,’ says he, and winked like a ten-year-old as he stepped closer. ‘We’re a-humourin’ ole Richey thar. Now then – how long a hobble you put on a pony?’

I almost told him to go to the devil, but he winked again, and I’ll say it for him, he was a hard man to refuse. Besides, what was I to do? If I’d turned my back on that group of bearded grinning mountebanks they’d have split their sides laughing.

‘That depends on the pony,’ says I. ‘And the grazing, and how far you’ve ridden, and where you are, and how much sense you’ve got. Two feet, perhaps … three.’

He cackled with laughter and slapped his thigh, and the buckskin men haw-hawed and looked at Richey, who was standing head down, listening. My interrogator said:

‘Hyar’s a catechism, sure ’nuff,’ and he was so pleased with himself, and so plainly intent on making game of Richey that I decided to enter into the spirit of the thing. ‘Next question, please,’ says I, and he clapped his hands.

‘Now, let’s calkerlate. Haw, hyar’s a good ’un! Hyar’s a night camp; I’m a gyuard. What you spose I’m a-doin’?’ He looked at a bush about twenty yards away, walked a few paces aside, and looked at it again, then came back to me. ‘Actin’ pee-koolyar, hoss – you reckon?’

‘No such thing. You’re taking a sight on that bush. You’ll take a sight on all the bushes. After dark, if a bush isn’t where it should be, you’ll fire on it. Because it’ll be an Indian, won’t it?’ We’d done the same thing in Afghanistan; any fool of a soldier knows the dodge.

‘Wah!’ shouts he, delighted, and thumped Richey on the back. ‘Thar, boyee! This chile hyar’ll tickle ye, see iffn he doan’t. Now, whut?’

Richey was watching me in silence, very thoughtful. Presently he nodded, slowly, while the buckskin men nudged each other and my questioner beamed his satisfaction. Then Richey tapped my pistol butt, and pulling a scrap of cloth from his pocket, drifted over to the tree and began to snag it on the half-driven nail. My tall companion chuckled and shook his head; well, I saw what was wanted, and I thought to blazes with it. I’d taken as much examination from these clowns as I wanted, so I decided to put Master Richey in his place.

The tall chap had a knife in his waistband, and without by your leave I plucked it out. It was a Green River, which is the best knife in the world, and just the article to practise the trick that Ilderim Khan had taught me, with infinite patience, on the Kabul Road almost ten years before. As Richey adjusted his target, I threw the knife overhand; my eye was well out, for I was nowhere near the mark, but I damned near took his ear off. He looked at the blade quivering in the trunk beside his face, while the tall buffoon cackled with laughter, and the buckskin men doubled up and haw-hawed – if I’d put it through the back of his head, I daresay that would have been a real joke.

Richey pulled the knife free, while his pals rolled about, and drifted over to me. He looked at me for a moment with those steady blue eyes, glanced at the tall chap,⁶ and then said in that gentle husky voice:

‘I’m Uncle Dick. An extra hunnerd, ye said – cap’n?’

The men hoorawed and shouted, ‘Good ole Virginny! How’s yer ha’r, Dick?’ I nodded and said I would see him at sunrise, sharp, bade them a courteous good-day and rode back to Independence without more ado – I know when to play the man of few words myself, you see. But I didn’t delude myself that I had proved my fitness to be a wagon-captain, or any rot of that sort; all I had shown, through the eccentric good office of our friend in the Tin-Belly coat, was that I wasn’t a know-nothing, and Wootton could take service under me without losing face. They were an odd lot, those frontiersmen, simple and shrewd enough, and as easy – and as difficult – to impose upon as children are. But I was glad Wootton would be our guide; being a true-bred rascal and coward myself, I know a good man when I see one – and he was the best.⁷

We started west three days later, but I am not going to take up your time with wordy descriptions of the journey, which you can get from Parkman or Gregg if you want them – or from volume II of my own great work, Dawns and Departures of a Soldier’s Life, although it ain’t worth the price, in my opinion, and all the good scandal about D’Israeli and Lady Cardigan is in the third volume, anyway.

But what I shall try to do, looking back in a way that Parkman and the others didn’t, is to try to tell you what it meant to ‘go West’ in the earlies⁸ – and that was something none of us understood at the time, or the chances are we’d never have gone. You look at a map of America nowadays, and there she is, civilised (give or take the population) from sea to sea; you can board a train in New York City and get off in Frisco without ever stepping outside, let alone get your feet wet; you can even do what I’ve done – look out from your Pullman on the Atchison Topeka as you cross Walnut Creek, and see the very ruts your wagon made fifty years before, and pass through great cities that were baldhead prairie the first time you went by, and vast wheatfields where you remember the buffalo herds two miles from wing to wing. Why, I had coffee on a verandah in a little town in Colorado just last year – fine place, church with a steeple, schoolhouse, grain warehouse, and even a motor car at the front gate. First time I saw that place it consisted of a burning wagon. Its population was a scalped family.

Now, you must look at the map of America. See the Mississippi River, and just left of it, Kansas City? West of that, in ’49, there was – nothing. And it was an unknown nothing, that’s the point. You can say now that ahead of the Forty-Niners stretched more than two thousand miles of empty prairie and forest and mountain and great rivers – but we didn’t know that, in so many words. Oh, everyone knew that the Rockies were a thousand miles off, and the general lie of the country – but take a look at what is now North Texas and Oklahoma. In ’49, it was believed that there was a vast range of mountains there, blocking the way west, when in fact the whole stretch is as flat as your hat. Somewhere around the same region, it was believed, was ‘the great American Desert’ – which didn’t exist. Oh, there’s desert, plenty of it, farther west; nobody knew much about that either.

I say it was unknown; certainly, the mountain men and hunters had walked over plenty of it; that crazy bastard Fremont was exploring away in a great frenzy and getting thoroughly lost by all accounts. But when you consider, that in ’49 it was less than 60 years since some crazy Scotch trapper⁹ had crossed North America for the first time – well, you will understand that its geography was not entirely familiar, west of the Miss’.

Look at the map again – and remember that beyond Westport there was no such thing as a road. There were two trails, to all intents, and they were just wagon-tracks – the Santa Fe and the Oregon. You didn’t think of roads then; you thought of rivers, and passes. Arkansas, Cimarron, Del Norte, Platte, Picketwire, Colorado, Canadian – those were the magic river names; Glorieta, Raton, South Pass – those were the passes. There were no settlements worth a dam, even – Santa Fe was a town, sure enough, if you ever got there, and after that you had nothing until San Diego and Frisco and the rest of the cities of the west coast. But in between, the best you could hope for were a few scattered forts and trading posts: Bent’s, Taos, Laramie, Bridger, St Vrain, and a few more. Hell’s bells, I rode across Denver when the damned place wasn’t even there.

No, it was the unknown then, to us at least; millions of square miles of emptiness which would have been hard enough to cross even if it had truly been empty, what with dust-storms, drought, floods, fire, mountains, snow-drifts that could be seventy feet deep, cyclones, and the like. But it wasn’t empty, of course; there were several thousand well-established inhabitants – named Cheyenne, Kiowa, Ute, Sioux, Navajo, Pawnee, Shoshoni, Blackfeet, Cumanche … and Apache. Especially, Apache. But even they were hardly even names to us, and the belief – I give you only my own impression – in the East was that their nuisance had been greatly exaggerated.

So you see, we started in fairly blissful ignorance, but before we do, take one last look at the map before Professor Flashy endeth the lesson. See the Arkansas River and the Rockies? Until the 1840s, they had been virtually the western and south-western limits of the U.S.A.; then came the war with Mexico, and the Yankees won the whole shooting-match that they own today. So when we jumped off for California, we were heading into country three-quarters of which had been Mexican until a few months before, and still was in everything but name.¹⁰ Some of it was called Indian Territory, and that was no lie, either.

That was what lay ahead of us, gullible asses that we were, and if you think it was tough you should have seen the Comber caravan loading up in the meadow at Westport. I’ve squared away, and ridden herd upon, most kind of convoys in my time, but shipping a brothel was a new one on me. Visiting ’em in situ, you don’t realise how elaborately furnished they are; when I saw the pile of gear that had come ashore off the steamboat, I didn’t credit it; a stevedore would have taken to drink.

For one thing, the sluts all had their dressing-tables and mirrors and wardrobes, stuffed with silks and satins and gowns and underclothes and hats and stockings and shoes and garters and ribbons and jewellery and cosmetics and wigs and masks and gloves and God knows what beside – there were several enormous chests which Susie called ‘equipment’, and which, if they’d burst open in public, would have led to the intervention of the police. Gauzy trousers and silk whips were the least of it; there was even a red plush swing and an ‘electrical mattress’, so help me.

‘Susie,’ says I, ‘I ain’t old enough to take responsibility for this cargo. Dear God, Caligula wouldn’t know what to do with it! You’ve had some damned odd customers in Orleans, haven’t you?’

‘We won’t be able to buy it in Sacramento,’ says she.

‘You couldn’t buy it in Babylon!’ says I. ‘See here; two of the wagons must be given over to food – we need enough flour, tea, dried fruit, beans, corn, sugar, and all the rest of it to feed forty folk for three months – at this rate we’ll finish up eating lace drawers and frilly corsets!’ She told me not to be indelicate, and it would all have to go aboard; she wasn’t running an establishment that wasn’t altogether tip-top. So in went the fancy bed-linen and tasselled curtains and carpets and chairs and chaise-longues and hip-baths, and the piano with candlesticks and a case of music – oh, yes, and four chandeliers and crystal lampshades and incense and bath salts and perfumes and snuff and cigars and forty cases of burgundy (I told the demented bitch it wouldn’t travel) and oil paintings of an indecent nature in gilt frames and sealed boxes of cheese and rahat lakoum and soap and pomade, and to crown all, a box of opium – with Cleonie’s parrot in its cage to top everything off. In the end we had to hire two extra wagons.

‘It’s worth it,’ says Susie to my protests. ‘It’s all investment, darlin’, an’ we’ll reap the benefit, you’ll see.’

‘Provided the gold-fields are manned entirely by decadent Frog poets, we’ll make a bloody fortune,’ says I. ‘Thank God we shan’t have to go through Customs.’

The whores were another anxiety, for while Susie had them thoroughly chastened, and kept them dressed like charity girls, they wouldn’t have fooled an infant. They were all coloured, and stunners, and they didn’t walk, or even sit, like nuns, exactly. You just had to look at the stately black Aphrodite, regarding herself in a hand-mirror while the pert creamy Claudia dressed her hair, or Josephine perched languidly on a box, contemplating her shapely little feet with satisfaction, or Medea and Cleonie sauntering among the wildflowers with their parasols, or the voluptuous Eugenie reclining in a wagon, sultry-eyed and toying with her fan – no, you could tell they weren’t choir-girls. I took one look at the score of drivers and guards that Owens had hired for us, and concluded that we’d have been a sight safer carrying gold bullion.

They were decent men enough, as hard cases go, half of them bearded buckskineers, a few in faded Army blues, and all well-mounted and armed to the teeth with revolving pistols and rifles. Their top spark was a rangy, well-knit Ulsterman with sandy whiskers and a soft-spoken honey-comb voice; his name, he informed me, was Grattan Nugent-Hare, ‘with the hyphen, sir – which is a bit of a pose, don’t ye know, but I’m attached to it.’ There was a dark patch on his sleeve where chevrons had been; when he dismounted, it was like a seal sliding off a rock. Gentleman-ranker, thinks I, bog-Irish gentry, village school, seen inside Dublin Castle, no doubt, but no rhino for a commission. A very easy, likely lad, with a lazy smile and a long nose.

‘You were with Kearny,’ says I. ‘And before that?’

‘Tenth Hussars,’ says he, and I couldn’t help exclaiming: ‘Chainy Tenth!’ at which he opened his sleepy eyes a little wider. I could have bitten my fool tongue out.

‘Why, so it was. And you’re a naval gentleman, they tell me, Mr Comber – your pardon … captain, I should say.’ He nodded amiably. ‘Well, well – d’ye know, I’d ha’ put you down for cavalry yourself, by the set of the whiskers? I’d ha’ been adrift there, though, right enough.’

It gave me a turn; this was a sharp one. The last thing I wanted just then was an old British Army acquaintance – but I’d never known the Tenth except by name, which was a relief.

‘And how far west did you go with Kearny?’ I asked.

‘Gila River, thereabout … that was after Santa Fe, d’ye see? So it’s not new country to me, altogether. But I apprehend you’re all the way for California – with the ladies.’ And he glanced past me to where Susie was chivvying the tarts out of sight into the wagons. He grinned. ‘My stars, but they’re as bonny as fluffy little doe rabbits on the green, so they are.’

‘And that’s the way they’ll stay, Mr Nugent-Hare—’

‘Call me Grattan,’ says he, and grinned as he patted his pony’s muzzle. ‘I’m up the road ahead of you, Mr Comber. You were about to say, I think, that after a few weeks those boys of mine might feel the fever, and those charming little maids – if ye’ll forgive the term – would prove a temptation? Not at all, at all. They’ll be as safe as if they were in St Ursula’s.’ He tilted his hat back, not smiling now. ‘Believe me, if I didn’t know how to manage rascals like these – I wouldn’t be here, would I now?’

He was a cocksure one, this – but probably, I reflected, not without cause; the Army had left its stamp on him, all right. I reminded him that military discipline was one thing, and these were civilians, out on the plains.

He laughed pleasantly. ‘Military discipline be damned,’ says he. ‘It’s simple as shelling peas. If one of ’em so much as tips his tile to your young ladies, I’ll blow the bastard’s head off. And now, sir … the order of march … what would ye say to a point rider, a rearguard, two to a flank, and myself riding loose? If that would be agreeable … And you’ll be riding herd yourself? Quite so …’

If his nose hadn’t been quite so long, and his smile so open, it would have been a pleasure to do business with him. Still, he knew his work, and he was being well paid; captain or no captain, it struck me I might spend most of the trip lounging in the carriage after all.

However, when the great moment of starting came I was in the saddle, in full buckskin fig, for one has to show willing. With Wootton silent alongside, I led the way down the meadow and into the trees, and after us trundled the carriage, with Susie fanning herself like Cleopatra, and her nigger maid and cook perched behind, and then the eight big schooners, flanked by Nugent-Hare’s riders; their canvas covers were rolled up like furled sails in the spring sunshine, with the tarts sitting primly two by two; in the rear came the mules, with a couple of Mexican savaneros, the three-hundred-pound loads piled incredibly high and swaying perilously. It was a well-rutted trail, and the schooners rolled now and then, which caused some flutter and squeak among the girls, but I noticed that the guards – who might have taken the opportunity to render gallant assistance – barely glanced in their direction; perhaps Grattan was as strong a straw-boss as he made out, after all.

Once through the timber, we came out on the prairie itself, all bright with the early summer flowers, and I galloped ahead to a little hillock for a look-see. That’s a moment I remember still: behind lay the woods with the smoke haze rising from Westport; left and right, and as far ahead as the eye could see, was limitless rolling plain, dotted with clumps of oaks and bushes, the grass blowing gently in the breeze, and fleecy clouds against a blue sky that seemed to stretch forever. Below, the wagons crawled along the trail, its furrows running clear and straight to the far horizon, where you could just see the last wagon of the caravan ahead. And I absolutely laughed aloud – why, I can’t tell, except that in that moment I felt free and contented and full of hope, with my spirits bubbling as high as they’ve ever done in my life. Others, I know, have felt the same thing about starting on the trail west; there’s an exhilaration, a sense of leaving the old, ugly world behind, and that there’s something splendid waiting for you to go and find it, far out yonder. I wonder if I’d feel it now, or if it happens only when you’re young, and have no thought for the ill things that may lie along the way.

For it’s an illusion, you know – the start of the trail. Those first ten days lull you to sleep, as you roll gently down over that changeless plain, through the well-used camp-places to Council Grove, which is the great assembly point where little caravans like ours form themselves into regular wagon-trains for the long haul to the mountains – there! I’m writing in the present tense, as though it were all in front of me again. Well, it ain’t, thank God.

But it soon becomes dull; the only notable thing happened about the third day, when we came to a little stream and copse where there was a fairish assembly of wagons, and the trail divided – our fork continuing south-west, while the northern trail branched up towards the Kansas River, and then to the North Platte, and eventually to Oregon. As we were breaking camp, with several other California-bound parties, the Oregon folk were already setting out, and there was great badinage and cheering and singing as they got under way.

They were a serious lot, those Oregoners, being mostly farm folk intent on honest work – not like us California scamps off to the gold-fields. We were a raffish crew, but they were sober men and grim women, with never a tin pan or a rope out of place, everything lashed down hard and the kids peeping solemnly over the tailboards. They had an American flag on their lead wagon, and their captain was a bearded Nemesis in a tail coat, his harsh voice echoing down the mule lines: ‘One train, are ye set? Two train, are ye set?’ and every arriero sang out in turn, ‘All set! All set!’, which was the signal to go, for you don’t loaf about with a laden mule, and you don’t stop for a noon halt, either, or the brute will never start off again. So now it was ‘All set!’ and the whips cracked and the skinners yelled and the wheels groaned, and the great train rolled away and the mules plodded forward with their bells jingling, and all the California people yelled and waved their hats and hurrawed and fluttered their handkerchiefs and cried: ‘Good luck! Oregon or bust! Take care, and God bless you!’ and the like, and the Oregon folk waved back and began to sing a song that I’ve forgotten now, except that it went to the tune of ‘Greensleeves’ and was all about how the Lord would have a land of milk and honey flowing for His children, over there – and the women from the California wagons began to cry, and some of them hurried after the Oregoners, with their aprons kilted up, offering ’em last gifts of pies and cakes, and the children went scampering along after the wagons, whooping and cheering, except for the little ones, who stood with their fingers in their mouths staring at an old minister who sat astride a mule beside the trail and blessed the Oregon people, with his Bible held above his head. And the caravan wound over the ridge and out of sight, and there was a sudden stillness in the camp-site under the trees, and then someone said, well, better git started ourselves; come on, mother …

And they cheered up, for they were a jolly, carefree lot that went to California that year, with their wagons piled any old how with all sorts of rubbish that they thought might prove useful at the diggings, like patent tents and mackintosh boats (‘Gold-seekers, take heed! Our rubber boats and shelters are unsurpassed!! You cannot face the chill of the gold rivers without a rubber suit!!!’) and water-purifiers and amazingly fangled machinery for washing gold dust. And they didn’t sing any hymns about milk and honey and Canaan, either; no, sir, it was a very different anthem, plunked out on a banjo by a young chap in a striped vest, with his girl dancing impromptu on a packing-case, and everyone thumping the tailboards – I daresay you know the tune well enough, although it was new then, but I’ll be bound you don’t know the words the Forty-Niners sang:

I’ll scrape the mountains clean, my boys,

I’ll drain the rivers dry,

A pocketful of rocks bring home,

Susannah, don’t you cry!

Oh, Californey!

That’s the land for me,

I’m off to Sacramento

With my wash-bowl on my knee!

(omnes, fortissimo)

Oh, Susannah, don’t you cry for me,

I’m off to Sacramento

With my wash-bowl on my knee!

It was a raucous, ranting thing, but when I hear it now in imagination it’s just a ghostly drift down the wind, fading into a whisper. But it was hearty enough then, and we sang it all the way down to Council Grove.

I promised not to do a Gregg or Parkman, but I ought to tell you something of how we travelled.¹¹ When we camped at night, we set guards; Wootton insisted, but I was all for it anyway, for you must do things right from the start. Susie and I slept in the carriage, which was as comfortable as Owens had promised, and the tarts slept in two of the wagons close at hand. The drivers and guards had a couple of tents, although some preferred to doss down in the open. At breakfast and supper, and at the noon halt, Susie and I were waited on by her nigger servant, the tarts ate in their own wagons, and the guards messed at a discreet distance – oh, we were a proper little democracy, I can tell you. I suggested that we might have Grattan over for supper one night, since he was a bit of a gentleman, or had been, but Susie wouldn’t hear of it.

‘They’re our work-folk,’ says she, holding a chicken leg with her pinkie cocked, and guzzling down the burgundy (now I saw why we’d brought such an unconscionable lot of it). ‘If we encourage familiarity, they’ll just presume, an’ you know where that leads – you finish up ’avin’ to call in the militia to put ’em in their place, like New York.¹² Anyway, that Nugent-Thingummy looks a right sly smart alec to me; whatever ’e may say about lookin’ after my wenches, an’ keepin’ them randy guards at arm’s length, I’m glad I’ve got Marie an’ Stephanie on the cue vee.’

‘What’s this?’ says I, for I took a fatherly interest in the welfare of our fair charges.

‘Marie an’ Stephanie,’ says Susie, ‘would rat on their own mothers, an’ the other little trollops know it. So there’ll be no ’anky-panky – or if there is, I’ll soon ’ear of it. An’ Gawd ’elp the backslider; she won’t be able to sit down between ’ere an’ Sacramento, I promise you that.’

So two of the tarts were Susie’s pet spies, were they? That was useful to know – and lucky I’d found out before I’d done anything indiscreet. I could foresee circumstances where that knowledge might be useful.

One acquaintance that I did cultivate, though, on the quiet trek to Council Grove, was Uncle Dick Wootton. He was a strange case; after our first meeting he’d hardly said a word to me for days, and I wondered was he sulking, but I soon discovered it was just a pensive shyness; he kept very much to himself with new acquaintances, although he could be genial and even garrulous when he got to know you. He was younger than I’d thought, and quite presentable when he’d shaved. However, down to Council Grove he had no proper duties anyway; Grattan and I set the guards, and halts and starts seemed to determine themselves; when anything out of the way happened, like a river-crossing, the teamsters and guards saw to it, and since there were good fords and the weather was dry, all went smoothly enough.

So Wootton had no guiding to do, and he spent the time riding far out to flank, or some way ahead; he had a habit of vanishing for hours at a time, and once or twice I know he slipped out of camp at dusk only to reappear at dawn. He ate all on his own, looking out across the prairie with his back to camp; sometimes he would sit on a hill for hours at a time, looking about him, or wander silent round the wagons, checking a wheel or examining the mule-loads. I would catch his eye on me, occasionally, but he would turn aside and go off again, humming quietly to himself, for another prowl over the prairie.

Then one day just after a noon halt he trotted up to me and said: ‘Buffler, cap’n’, and I rode out with him a couple of miles to where a small herd of the beasts were grazing – the first I’d ever seen. I was for taking a shot at once, but he bade me hold on.

‘Got to pick a tender cow. Bull meat tough enough to build a shack, this time o’ summer. Now, see thar; you take a sight a half finger width down from the hump, an’ a finger from the nose, or she’ll cairry your lead away for ye. Gotta hit hyart or lungs. Now, cap’n; you blaze away.’

So I did, and the cow took off like a rocket, and ran quarter of a mile before she suddenly tumbled over, stone dead. ‘Gone under,’ says Wootton. ‘You shoot sweet’, and as he skinned the hump very expertly, and removed the choicest meat, he explained to me that a buffalo was damnably hard to kill, unless you hit it in a vital spot; I gathered I had gone up in his estimation.

I thought we would drag the carcase back to the caravan, but he shook his head, and set to roasting hump steaks over a fire. I’ve never tasted meat like that first buffalo-hump; there’s no beef to compare to it, and you can eat it without bread or vegetable, so delicious it is. Wootton also removed the intestines, and to my disgust grilled them gently by pulling them through the embers, whereafter he swallowed them in a great long string, like some huge piece of spaghetti. I watched him in horror – or rather, I didn’t watch him, for I couldn’t bear the grisly spectacle. Instead, I turned my head aside, and saw something infinitely worse.

Not twenty yards away, on the lip of a little grassy ridge looking down on the hollow where we’d built our fire, three Indians were sitting their ponies, watching us. I hadn’t heard them or had the least intimation of their approach; suddenly, there they were – and I realised that the wretched dirty creatures I’d seen at Westport, and scavenging round our train on the way down, were mere cartoon. These were the real thing, and my heart froze. The foremost was naked to the waist, with braided hair hanging to his belt, and what looked like a tail of coonskin round his brows; the face beneath it was a nightmare of hooked nose and rat-trap mouth crossed by stripes of yellow paint. There were painted signs on his naked chest, and his only clothing was a white breech-clout and fringed leggings that came to his knees. He had a rifle across his saddle and carried a long lance tufted with buffalo hair – at least, I hoped it was buffalo hair. The other two were no better; they had feathers in their hair, and their faces were painted half red and white; they carried bows and hatchets, and like their leader they were big, active, vicious-looking sons-of-bitches. But what truly scared me stiff was their sudden apparition, and the silent dreadful menace in the still figures as they watched.

I suppose it took me a couple of seconds to recover – but as my hand went to my pistol Wootton’s fingers closed on my wrist.

‘Set froze, cap’n,’ says he softly. ‘Brulé Sioux. Friendly … kind of.’

A fine reassurance, but Wootton seemed untroubled – you’ll notice that even with his back turned he knew they were there, and what they were. Now he turned his head and called to them, and after a moment they dismounted and came slowly down to us. They looked even wickeder at close quarters, but they squatted down, and the leader raised a hand to Wootton and grunted something that sounded like a mortal insult, but was presumably a greeting. Wootton responded, while I sat stone still and kept my hand close to my pistol-butt, nonchalant-like – which ain’t easy with the fiend incarnate hunkered down a yard away, glaring with basilisk eyes out of a mask of paint, and you’re uncomfortably aware that he’s a muscular six feet of oiled and smelly savagery, with a hatchet like a polished razor on his hip.

He and Wootton grunted some more at each other, and presently Wootton introduced us. ‘This hyar Spotted Tail,’ says he. ‘Big brave.’ How-de-do, says I, and to my surprise he shook hands, and made a noise between a snarl and a belch which I took for civility. While he and Wootton talked, I studied the other two – if I’d known that the red dots on their feathers signified enemies killed, and the notches stood for cut throats, I’d have been even uneasier than I was. For that matter, Spotted Tail himself had five eagle feathers slanted through his pigtail; each one, I learned later, stood for a scalp taken.¹³

Wootton was plainly asking questions, and the Indian answered with his slow grunts, accompanied by much deliberate gesture – mighty graceful it was, too, and expressive. Even I could tell when he was talking of buffalo, just by the rippling motion of his hand, so like a bison herd seen from far off; a gesture which I noticed he repeated more than once was a quick cutting motion with his right fingers across his left wrist, which I later learned meant ‘Cheyenne’, whose nickname is ‘Cut Arms’.¹⁴ Then Wootton invited them to join him in his awful mess of buffalo guts, and much to the amusement of the other two, he and Spotted Tail had a nauseating contest in which each took an end of an immensely long intestine and gobbled away to see who could down the most of it. The Indian won – I spare you a close description, observing only that they swallowed whole, without chewing, and Spotted Tail, by suddenly jerking his head back, regained a fair amount that Wootton had already eaten!¹⁵

There being no dessert, I gave each of the three a cigar, at Wootton’s prompting. They ate them, and presently went off, taking the remains of our buffalo carcase without a by-your-leave; I’ve never been happier to get rid of dinner guests, and said so.

‘I seen thar sign last night, an’ figgered they’d show today. Huntin’ party – fust time I ever see Brulés east o’ the Neosho,’ says Wootton. ‘In course, they dog the buffler – but since they say tharselves that thar’s heap big herds all along th’ Arkansas, my guess is thar takin’ a lick at the Pawnees. That a powerful lather o’ vermillion thar wearin’, fer hunters – an’ I read sign o’ fifty ponies last evenin’. Yup. I rackon thar be a few Pawnees talkin’ to th’old gennelman ’fore long.’

Which meant the Pawnees would be dead and in hell. But were the Sioux liable to attack us? Wootton considered this long enough to give me the shudders.

‘Cain’t say, prezackly. Spotted Tail has a straight tongue; then agin, Sioux kin be mean varmints – ’thout I wuz here, they’d ha’ had yore hoss an’ traps for sho’, mebbe yore ha’r, too. But I guess tha’r peaceable ’nuff. Uh-huh. Mebbe.’

Now, this had me in a rare sweat. I don’t suppose until that day I’d given Indians a thought, not seriously – it had been such a pleasant jaunt so far, and everyone in Westport had been so jolly and confident, and we still weren’t more than a few days away from civilisation, with its steamboats and stores and soldiers. And then, suddenly, those three painted devils had been there – and they were the peaceable ones, Wootton reckoned – and there were a thousand miles of wilderness between us and Santa Fe, crawling with tribes of the dangerous bastards who might be anything but peaceable. Stories and rumours and tall tales – you can take those with a pinch of salt, and remind yourself that your caravan is well-armed and guarded. And then you see the living peril, in its hideous paint and feathers, and your dozen rifles and revolvers and eight frail wagons seem like a cork bobbing out on a raging ocean.

So I put it to him straight – what were our chances of winning as far as Santa Fe without serious … interference? Not that it could make a dam’ bit of difference to me now – I was launched, and I daren’t have headed back to be hunted in the Mississippi valley. He scratched his head, and asked me if I had my map.

‘Look thar,’ says he. ‘Clar across to th’ Arkansas we kin rest pretty easy – Spotted Tail sez thar plenty Cheyenne an’ ’Rapaho lodges at Great Bend, an’ thar not hostile, fer sartin. But he talk of Navajo, Cumanche, Kiowa war-parties in the Cimarron country to th’ west – sez thar be ’Pashes up as fur as th’ Canadian, an’ Utes on the Picketwire. Even talk o’ Bent an’ St Vrain leavin’ the Big Lodge. I b’leeve thet when I see it. But it’s all onsartin; we cain’t tell hyar.’

Jesus, thinks I, so much for our picnic on the Plains. But he cheered me up by remarking that Spotted Tail might be lying, it being well known that no Indian told the truth unless he couldn’t avoid it;¹⁶ also, we would be part of a much larger caravan from Council Grove onwards, and too powerful for any but a very large and reckless war-party.

‘We see when we git ter the sojers’ new place, at Fort Mann. Then we tek a sniff at the wind, an’ decide whether we go across the Cimarron Road ter Sand Crik an’ th’ Canadian, or cairry on west fer Bent’s and down th’ Ratone.’ He raised the blue eyes and suddenly smiled. ‘Made the trip ter Santy Fee more times ’n he recollects, this chile has. An’ ev’y time he got thar – an’ cum back. If he cain’t make it agin this time, cap’n, he kin slide!’¹⁷