Flashman and the Redskins. George Fraser MacDonald
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
There were three caravans waiting when we reached Council Grove, which proved to be simply a wood with a few shacks and a stable for the new stagecoach line. One of the caravans was a twenty-wagon affair of young fellows, Eastern clerks and labourers, calling themselves the Pittsburgh Pirates; another was a train of some thirty mules and half a dozen emigrant families, also bound for the diggings; the third – and you may not believe this, but it’s gospel true – consisted of two ancient travelling carriages and a dozen middle-aged and elderly valetudinarians from Cincinnati who were making a trip across the Plains for their health. They had weak chests, and the pure air of the prairies would do them good, they said, clinging to their hot water bottles and mufflers and throat sprays as they said it.18 Well, thinks I, captaining a brothel on wheels may be eccentric, but this beats all.
Wootton thought that among us we made a pretty fair train – not as many guns as he would have liked, for the young fellows had set off in the crazy, thoughtless spirit that so many seemed to be possessed by in ’49, and had only about a score of weapons among them, and the emigrant families, although well-armed and with four guards, were few in numbers. The invalids had one fat drunkard of a driver with a flintlock musket; if attacked, they presumably intended to beat off the enemy by hurling steam-kettles and medicine bottles at them. Our own caravan had more firepower and discipline and general good order than all the rest put together, so they hailed us as they might salvation – and elected me captain of the whole frightful mess. My own fault for being so damned dashing in my buckskin shirt and whiskers, no doubt; look the part, and you’ll be cast in it. I demurred, modestly, but there was no competition, and one of the Pittsburgh Pirates settled the thing by haranguing his fellows from a tailboard, crying that weren’t they in luck, just, for here was Captain Comber, by cracky, who’d commanded a battleship in Her Majesty’s English Navy, and fought the Ayrabs in India, and was just the man whose unrivalled experience and cool judgment would get everyone safe to California, wasn’t that so? So I was elected by acclamation – none of your undignified running for office19 – and I read them a stern lecture about trail discipline and obeying orders and digging latrines and keeping up and all the rest of it, and they shook their heads because they could see I was just the man for the job.
Susie,