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Thereafter Flashman spent several eventful months in the Mississippi valley, frequently in headlong flight. For a time he impersonated (among many other figures) a Royal Navy officer; he was also a reluctant agent of the Underground Railroad which smuggled escaped slaves to Canada, but unfortunately the fugitive entrusted to his care was recognised by a vindictive planter named Omohundro, and Flashman abandoned his charge and beat a hasty retreat over the rail of a steamboat. He next obtained employment as a plantation slave-driver, but lost his position on being found in compromising circumstances with his master’s wife. He subsequently stole a beautiful octoroon slave, Cassy, sold her under a false name, assisted her subsequent evasion, and with the proceeds of the sale fled with her across the ice-floes of the Ohio River, pursued by slave-catchers who shot him in the buttock; however, he succeeded in effecting his escape, and Cassy’s, with the timely assistance of the then Congressman Abraham Lincoln.
With charges of slave-trading, slave-stealing, false pretences, and even murder hanging over his head, Flashman was now anxious to return to England. Instead, mischance brought him again to New Orleans, and he was driven in desperation to seek the help of his former commander, Captain Spring, who had been cleared of slave-trading by a corrupt American court and was about to sail. Flashman, who throughout his misfortunes had clung tenaciously to certain documents from the Balliol College – documents proving the ship’s slaving activities with which Flashman had hoped to blackmail his detested father-in-law – now offered them as the price of his passage home; Captain Spring, his habitual malevolence tempered by his eagerness to secure papers so dangerous to himself, agreed.
At this point, with our exhausted narrator quaking between the Scylla of United States justice and Charybdis in the person of the diabolic Spring, the third packet of the Flashman Papers ended – and the next chapter of his American adventure begins.
THE FORTY-NINER (#ulink_c8f69f4e-0c27-55bb-a421-5cbeec4e9867)
I never did learn to speak Apache properly. Mind you, it ain’t easy, mainly because the red brutes seldom stand still long enough – and if you’ve any sense, you don’t either, or you’re liable to find yourself studying their system of vowel pronunciation (which is unique, by the way) while hanging head-down over a slow fire or riding for dear life across the Jornada del Muerto with them howling at your heels and trying to stick lances in your liver. Both of which predicaments I’ve experienced in my time, and you may keep ’em.
Still, it’s odd that I never got my tongue round it, for apart from fleeing and fornication, slinging the bat
is my strongest suit; well, I speak nine languages better than the natives, and can rub along in another dozen or so. And I knew the ’Paches well enough. God help me; I was even married to one for a spell, banns, beads, buffalo-dance and all, and a spanking little wild beast she was, too, with her peach-brown satin skin and hot black eyes, and those white doeskin leggings up to her thighs with the tiny silver bells all down the sides … I can close my eyes and hear them tinkling yet, sixty years after, and feel the pine-needles under my knees, and smell the woodsmoke mingling with the musky perfume of her hair and the scent of the wild flowers outside her bower … the soft lips teasing my ear, murmuring ‘Make my bells ring again, pinda-lickoyee
…’ Aye, me, it’s a long time ago. But that’s the way to learn a language, if you like, in between the sighs and squeals, and if it didn’t happen in this case the reason is that my buxom savage was not only a great chief’s daughter but Mexican hidalga on her mother’s side, and inclined to put on airs something peculiar, such as speaking only Spanish in preference to the tribal dialect of the common herd. They can be just as pert and hoity-toity in a Mimbreno wickiup as they can in a Belgravia drawing-room, believe me. Fortunately, there’s a cure. But that’s beside the point for the moment. Even if my Apache never progressed far beyond ‘Nuetsche-shee, eetzan’, which may be loosely translated as ‘Come here, girl’, and is all you need to know (apart from a few fawning protestations of friendship and whines for mercy, and much good they’ll do you), I still recognise the diabolical lingo when I hear it. That guttural, hissing mumble, with all its ‘Tz’ and ‘zl’ and ‘rr’ noises, like a drunk Scotch-Jew having trouble with his false teeth, is something you don’t forget in a hurry. So when I heard it in the Travellers’ a few weeks ago, and had mastered an instinctive impulse to dive for the door bawling ‘’Pash! Ride for it, you fellows, and save your hair!’, I took stock, and saw that it was coming in a great spate from a pasty-looking specimen with a lordly academic voice and some three-ha’penny order on his shirt front, who was enthralling a group of toadies in a corner of the smoking-room. I demanded to know what the devil he meant by it, and he turned out to be some distinguished anthropologist or other who had been lecturing to the Royal Geographic on North American Indians.
‘And what d’you know about them, apart from that beastly chatter?’ says I, pretty warm, for he had given me quite a start, and I could see at a glance that he was one of these snoopopathic meddlers who strut about with a fly-whisk and notebook, prodding lies out of the niggers and over-tipping the dragoman on college funds. He looked taken aback, until they told him who I was, and that I had a fair acquaintance with North American Indians myself, to say nothing of other various aborigines; at that he gave me a distant flabby hand, and condescended to ask me an uneasy question or two about my American travels. I told him I’d been out with Terry and Custer in ’76 – and that was as far as I got before he said: ‘Oh, indeed?’ down his nose, damned chilly, showed me his shoulder, and began the most infernal prose you ever heard to the rest of the company, all about the Yankees’ barbarous treatment of the Plains tribes after the Uprising, and their iniquitous Indian policy in general, the abominations of the reservation system, and the cruelties practised in the name of civilisation on helpless nomads who desired only to be left alone to pursue their traditional way of life as peaceful herdsmen, fostering their simple culture, honouring their ancient gods, and generally prancing about like fauns in Arcady. Mercifully, I hadn’t had dinner.
‘Noble savages, eh?’ says I, when he’d paused for breath, and he gave me a look full of sentimental spite.
‘I might call them that,’ snaps he. ‘Do I take it that you would disagree?’
‘Depends which ones you’re talking about,’ says I. ‘Now, Spotted Tail was a gentleman. Chico Velasquez, on the other hand, was an evil vicious brute. But you probably never met either of ’em. Care for a brandy, then?’
He went pink. ‘I thank you, no. By gentleman, I suppose,’ he went on, bristling, ‘you mean one who has despaired to the point of submission, while brute would no doubt describe any sturdy independent patriot who resisted the injustice of an alien rule, or revolted against broken treaties—’
‘If sturdy independence consists of cutting off women’s fingers and fringing your buckskins with them, then Chico was a patriot, no error,’ says I. ‘Mind you, that was the soft end of his behaviour. Hey, waiter, another one, and keep your thumb out of it, d’ye hear?’
My new acquaintance was going still pinker, and taking in breath; he wasn’t used to the argumentum ad Chico Velasquez, and it was plainly getting his goat, as I intended it should.
‘Barbarism is to be expected from a barbarian – especially when he has been provoked beyond endurance!’ He snorted and sneered. ‘Really, sir – will you seriously compare errant brutality committed by this … this Velasquez, as you call him – who by his name I take it sprang from that unhappy Pueblo stock who had been brutalised by centuries of Spanish atrocity – will you compare it, I say, with a calculated policy of suppression – nay, extermination – devised by a modern, Christian government? You talk of an Indian’s savagery? Yet you boast acquaintance with General Custer, and doubtless you have heard of Chivington? Sand Creek, sir! Wounded Knee! Washita! Ah, you see,’ cries he in triumph, ‘I can quote your own lexicon to you! In face of that, will you dare condone Washington’s treatment of the American Indian?’
‘I don’t condone it,’ says I, holding my temper. ‘And I don’t condemn it, either. It happened, just as the tide comes in, and since I saw it happen, I know better than to jump to the damnfool sentimental conclusions that are fashionable in college cloisters, let me tell you—’
There were cries of protest, and my anthropologist began to gobble. ‘Fashionable indeed! Have you read Mrs Jackson,
sir? Are you ignorant of the miserable condition to which a proud and worthy people have been reduced? Since you served in the Sioux campaign, you cannot be unaware of the callous and vindictive zeal with which it and subsequent expeditions were conducted! Against a resistless foe! Can you defend the extirpation of the Modocs, or the Apaches, or a dozen others I could mention? For shame, sir!’ He was getting the bit between his teeth now, and I was warming just a trifle myself. ‘And all this at a time when the resources of a vast modern state might have been employed in a policy of humanity, restraint, and enlightenment! But no – all the dark old prejudices and hatreds must be given full and fearful rein, and the despised “hostile” annihilated or reduced to virtual serfdom.’ He gestured contemptuously. ‘And all you can say is that “it happened”. Tush, sir! So might Pilate have said: “It happened”.’ He was pleased with that, so he enlarged on it. ‘The Procurator of Judea would have made a fit aide-de-camp to your General Terry, I daresay. I wish you a very good night, General Flashman.’
Which would have enabled him to stalk off with the honours, but I don’t abandon an argument when reasoned persuasion may prevail.
‘Now see here, you mealy little pimp!’ says I. ‘I’ve had just about a bellyful of your pious hypocritical maundering. Take a look at this!’ And while he gobbled again, and his sycophants uttered shocked cries, I dropped my head and pulled apart my top hair for his inspection. ‘See that bald patch? That, my industrious researcher, was done by a Brulé scalping knife, in the hand of a peaceful herdsman, to a man who’d done his damnedest to see that the Brulés and everyone else in the Dacotah nation got a fair shake.’ Which was a gross exaggeration, but never mind that. ‘So much for humanity and restraint …’
‘Good God!’ cries he, blenching. ‘Very well, sir – you may flaunt a wound. It does not prove your case. Rather, it explains your partiality—’
‘It proves that at least I know what I’m talking about! Which is more than you can say. As to Custer, he’s receipted and filed for the idiot he was, and for Chivington, he was a murderous maniac, and what’s worse, an amateur. But if you think they were a whit more guilty than your darling redskins, you’re an even bigger bloody fool than you look. What bleating breast-beaters like you can’t comprehend,’ I went on at the top of my voice, while the toadies pawed at me and yapped for the porters, ‘is that when selfish frightened men – in other words, any men, red or white, civilised or savage – come face to face in the middle of a wilderness that both of ’em want, the Lord alone knows why, then war breaks out, and the weaker goes under. Policies don’t matter a spent piss – it’s the men in fear and rage and uncertainty watching the woods and skyline, d’you see, you purblind bookworm, you! And you burble about enlightenment, by God—’
‘Catch hold of his other arm, Fred!’ says the porter, heaving away. ‘Come along now, general, if you please.’
‘—try to enlighten a Cumanche war-party, why don’t you? Suggest humanity and restraint to the Jicarillas who carved up Mrs White and her baby on Rock Creek! Have you ever seen a Del Norte rancho after the Mimbrenos have left their calling cards? No, not you, you plush-bottomed bastard, you! All right, steward, I’m going, damn you … but let me tell you,’ I concluded, and I daresay I may have shaken my finger at the academic squirt, who had got behind a chair and was looking ready to bolt, ‘that I’ve a damned sight more use for the Indian than you have – as much as I have for the rest of humanity, at all events – and I don’t make ’em an excuse for parading my own virtue while not caring a fig for them, as you do, so there! I know your sort! Broken treaties, you vain blot – why, Chico Velasquez wouldn’t have recognised a treaty if he’d fallen over it in the dark …’ But by that time I was out in Pall Mall, addressing the vault of heaven.
‘Who the hell ever said the Washington government was Christian, anyway?’ I demanded, but the porter said he really couldn’t say, and did I want a cab?
You may wonder that I got in such a taking over one pompous windbag spouting claptrap; usually I just sit and sneer when the know-alls start prating on behalf of the poor oppressed heathen, sticking a barb in ’em as opportunity serves – why, I’ve absolutely heard ’em lauding the sepoy mutineers as honest patriots, and I haven’t even bothered to break wind by way of dissent. I know the heathen, and their oppressors, pretty well, you see, and the folly of sitting smug in judgement years after, stuffed with piety and ignorance and book-learned bias. Humanity is beastly and stupid, aye, and helpless, and there’s an end to it. And that’s as true for Crazy Horse as it was for Custer – and they’re both long gone, thank God. But I draw the line at the likes of my anthropological half-truther; oh, there’s a deal in what he says, right enough – but it’s only one side of the tale, and when I hear it puffed out with all that righteous certainty, as though every white man was a villain and every redskin a saint, and the fools swallow it and feel suitably guilty … well, it can get my goat, especially if I’ve got a drink in me and my kidneys are creaking. So I’m slung out of the Travellers’ for ungentlemanly conduct. Much I care; I wasn’t a member, anyway.
A waste of good passion, of course. The thing is, I suppose, that while I spent most of my time in the West skulking and running and praying to God I’d come out with a whole skin, I have a strange sentiment for the place, even now. That may surprise you, if you know my history – old Flashy, the decorated hero and cowardly venal scoundrel who never had a decent feeling in all his scandalous, lecherous life. Aye, but there’s a reason, as you shall see.
Besides, when you’ve seen the West almost from the beginning, as I did – trader, wagon-captain, bounty-hunter, irregular soldier, whoremaster, gambler, scout, Indian fighter (well, being armed in the presence of the enemy qualifies you, even if you don’t tarry long), and reluctant deputy marshal to J. B. Hickok, Esq., no less – you’re bound to retain an interest, even in your eighty-ninth year.
And it takes just a little thing – a drift of woodsmoke, a certain sunset, the taste of maple syrup on a pancake, or a few words of Apache spoken unexpected – and I can see the wagons creaking down to the Arkansas crossing, and the piano stuck fast on a mudbank, with everyone laughing while Susie played ‘Banjo on my knee’ … Old Glory fluttering above the gate at Bent’s … the hideous zeep of Navajo war-arrows through canvas … the great bison herds in the distance spreading like oil on the yellow plain … the crash and stamp of fandango with the poblanas’ heels clicking and their silk skirts whirling above their knees … the bearded faces of Gallantin’s riders in the fire glow … the air like nectar when we rode in the spring from the high glory of Eagle Nest, up under the towering white peaks to Fort St Vrain and Laramie … the incredible stink of those dark dripping forms in the Apache sweatbath at Santa Rita … the great scarred Cheyenne braves with their slanting feathers, riding stately, like kings to council … the round firm flesh beneath my hands in the Gila forest, the sweet sullen lips whispering … ‘Make my bells ring again …’ oh, yes indeed, ma’am … and the nightmare – the screams and shots and war-whoops as Gall’s Hunkpapa horde came surging through the dust, and George Custer squatting on his heels, his cropped head in his hands as he coughed out his life, and the red-and-yellow devil’s face screaming at me from beneath the buffalo-scalp helmet as the hatchet drove down at my brow …
‘Well, boys, they killed me,’ as Wild Bill used to say – only it wasn’t permanent, and today I sit at home in Berkeley Square staring out at the trees beyond the railings in the rain, damning the cramp in my penhand and remembering where it all began, on a street in New Orleans in 1849, with your humble obedient trotting anxiously at the heels of John Charity Spring, MA, Oriel man, slaver, and homicidal lunatic, who was stamping his way down to the quay in a fury, jacket buttoned tight and hat jammed down, alternately blaspheming and quoting Horace …
‘I should have dropped you overboard off Finisterre!’ snarls he. ‘It would have been the price of you, by God! Aye, well, I missed my chance – quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus.’
He wheeled on me suddenly, and those dreadful pale eyes would have frozen brandy. ‘But Homer won’t nod again, Mister Flashman, and you can lay to that. One false step out of you this trip, and you’ll wish the Amazons had got you!’
‘Captain,’ says I earnestly, ‘I’m as anxious to get out of this as you are – and you’ve said it yourself, how can I play you false?’
‘If I knew that I’d be as dirty a little Judas as you are.’ He considered me balefully. ‘The more I think of it, the more I like the notion of having those papers of Comber’s before we go a step farther.’
Now, those papers – which implicated both Spring himself and my miserly Scotch father-in-law up to their necks in the illegal slave trade – were the only card in my hand. Once Spring had them, he could drop me overboard indeed. Terrified as I was, I shook my head, and he showed his teeth in a sneering grin.
‘What are you scared of, you worm? I’ve said I’ll carry you home, and I keep my word. By God,’ he growled, and the scar on his brow started to swell crimson, a sure sign that he was preparing to howl at the moon, ‘will you dare say I don’t, you quaking offal? Will you? No, you’d better not! Why, you fool – I’ll have ’em within five minutes of your setting foot on my deck, in any event. Because you’re carrying them, aren’t you? You wouldn’t dare leave ’em out of your sight. I know you.’ He grinned again, nastily. ‘Omnia mea mecum porto
is your style. Where are they – in your coat-lining or under your boot-sole?’
It was no consolation that they were in neither, but sewn in the waistband of my pants. He had me, and if I didn’t want to be abandoned there and then to the mercy of the Yankee law – which was after me for murder, slave-stealing, impersonating a Naval officer, false pretences, theft of a wagon and horses, perjury, and issuing false bills of sale (Christ, just about everything except bigamy) – I had no choice but to fork out and hope to heaven he’d keep faith with me. He saw it in my face and sneered.
‘As I thought. You’re as easy to read as an open book – and a vile publication, too. We’ll have them now, if you please.’ He jerked his thumb at a tavern across the street. ‘Come on!’
‘Captain – for God’s sake let it wait till we’re aboard! The Yankee Navy traps’ll be scouring the town for me by now … please, Captain, I swear you’ll have ’em—’
‘Do as you’re damned well told!’ he rasped, and seizing my arm in an iron hand he almost ran me into the pub, and thrust me into a corner seat farthest from the bar; it was middling dim, with only one or two swells lounging at the tables, and a few of the merchant and trader sort talking at the bar, but just the kind of respectable ken that my legal and Navy acquaintances might frequent. I pointed this out, whining.
‘Five minutes more or less won’t hurt you,’ says Spring, ‘and they’ll satisfy me whether or not you’re breaking the habit of a lifetime by telling the truth for once.’ So while he bawled for juleps and kicked the black waiter for being dilatory – I wished to God he wouldn’t attract attention with his high table manners – I kept my back to the room and began surreptitiously picking stitches out of my flies with a penknife.
He drummed impatiently, growling, while I got the packet out – that precious sheaf of flimsy, closely written papers that Comber had died for – and he pawed through it, grinding his teeth as he read. ‘That ingrate sanctimonious reptile! He should have lingered for a year! I was like a father to the bastard, and see how he repaid my benevolence, by God – skulking and spying like a rat at a scuttle! But you’re all alike, you shabby-genteel vermin! Aye, Master Comber, Phaedrus limned your epitaph: saepe intereunt aliis meditantes necem,
and serve the bastard right!’ He stuffed the papers into his pocket, drank, and brooded at me with that crazy glint in his eyes that I remembered so well from the Balliol College. ‘And you – you held on to them – why? To steer me into Execution Dock, you—’
‘Never!’ I protested. ‘Why, if I’d wanted to I could have done it back in the court – but I didn’t, did I?’
‘And put your own foul neck in a noose? Not you.’ He gave his barking laugh. ‘No … I’ll make a shrewd guess that you were keeping ’em to squeeze an income out of that Scotch miser Morrison – that was it, wasn’t it?’ Mad he might be, but his wits were sharp enough. ‘Filial piety, you leper! Well, if that was your game, you’re out of luck. He’s dead – and certainly damned. I had word from our New York agent three weeks ago. That takes you flat aback, doesn’t it, my bucko?’
And it did, but only for a moment. For if I couldn’t turn the screw on a corpse – well, I didn’t need to, did I? The little villain’s fortune would descend to his daughters, of whom my lovely simpleton wife Elspeth was the favourite – by George, I was rich! He’d been worth a cool two million, they reckoned, and at least a quarter would come to her, and me … unless the wily old skinflint had cooked up some legal flummery to keep my paws off it, as he’d done these ten years past. But he couldn’t – Elspeth must inherit, and I could twist her round my little finger … couldn’t I? She’d always doted on me, although I had a suspicion that she sampled the marriage mutton elsewhere when my back was turned – I couldn’t be sure, though, and anyway, an occasional unwifely romp was no great matter, while she’d been dependent on Papa. But now, when she was rolling in blunt, she might be off whoring with all hands and the cook, and too much of that might well damp her ardour for an absent husband. Who could say how she would greet the returning Odysseus, now that she was filthy rich and spoiled for choice? That apart, if I knew my fair feather-brain, she’d be spending the dibs – my dibs – like a drunk duke on his birthday. The sooner I was home the better – but Morrison kicking the bucket was capital news, just the same.
Spring was watching me as he watched the weather, shrewd and sour, and knowing what a stickler he could be for proper form, murderous pirate though he was, I tried to put on a solemn front, and muttered about this unexpected blow, shocking calamity, irreplaceable loss, and all the rest of it.
‘I can see that,’ he scoffed. ‘Stricken with grief, I daresay. I know the signs – a face like a Tyneside winter and a damned inheriting gleam in your eye. Bah, why don’t you blubber, you hypocritical pup? Nulli jactantius moerent, quam qui loetantur,
or to give Tacitus a free translation, you’re reckoning up the bloody dollars already! Well, you haven’t got ’em yet, cully, and if you want to see London Bridge again—’ and he bared his teeth at me ‘—you’ll tread mighty delicate, like Agag, and keep on the weather side of John Charity Spring.’
‘What d’you mean? I’ve given you the papers – you’re bound to see me safe –’
‘Oh, I’ll do that, never fear.’ There was a cunning shift in those awful empty eyes. ‘Me duce tutus eris,
and d’ye know why? Because when you reach England, and you and the rest of Morrison’s carrion brood have got your claws on his fortune, you’ll discover that you need an experienced director for his extensive maritime concerns – lawful and otherwise.’ He grinned at me triumphantly. ‘You’ll pay through the nose for him, too, but you’ll be getting a safe, scholarly man of affairs, who’ll not only manage a fleet, but can be trusted to see that no indiscreet inquiries are ever directed at your recent American activities, or the fact that your signature as supercargo is to be found on the articles of a slave trader—’
‘Christ, look who’s talking!’ I exclaimed. ‘I was shanghaied, kidnapped – and what about you—’
‘Damn your eyes, will you take that tone with me?’ he roared, and a few heads at the nearest table turned, so he dropped his voice to its normal snarl. ‘English law holds no terrors for me; I’ll be in Brest or Calais, taking my money in francs and guilders. Thanks to those misbegotten scum of ushers at Oxford, who cast me into the gutter out of spite, who robbed me of dignity and the fruits of scholarship …’ His scar was crimsoning again, as it always did when Oxford was mentioned; Oriel had kicked him out, you see, no doubt for purloining the College plate or strangling the Dean, but he always claimed it was academic jealousy. He writhed and growled and settled down. ‘England holds nothing for me now. But your whole future lies there – and there’ll be damned little future if the truth about this past year comes out. The Army? Disgrace. Your newfound fortune? Ruin. You might even swing,’ says he, smacking his lips. ‘And your lady wife would certainly find the social entrée more difficult to come by. On which score,’ he added malevolently, ‘I wonder how she would take the news that her husband is a whoremongering rake who covered everything that moved aboard the Balliol College. By and large, mutual discretion will be in both our interests, don’t you think?’
And the evil lunatic grinned at me sardonically and drained his glass. ‘We’ll have leisure to discuss business on the voyage home – and to resume your classical education, whose interruption by those meddling Yankee Navy bastards I’m sure you deplore as much as I do. Hiatus valde deflendus,
as I seem to remember telling you before. Now get that drink into you and we’ll be off.’
As I’ve said, he was really mad. If he thought he could blackmail me with his ridiculous threats – and him a discredited don turned pirate who’d be clapped into Bedlam as soon as he opened his mouth in civilised company – he was well out of court. But I knew better than to say so, just then; raving or not, he was my one hope of getting out of that beastly country. And if I had to endure his interminable proses about Horace and Ovid all across the Atlantic, so be it; I drank up meekly, pushed back my chair, turned to the room – and walked slap into a nightmare.
It was the most ordinary, trivial thing, and it changed the course of my life, as such things do. Perhaps it killed Custer; I don’t know. As I took my first step from the table a tall man standing at the bar roared with laughter, and stepped back, just catching me with his shoulder. Another instant and I’d have been past him, unseen – but he jostled me, and turned to apologise.
‘Your pardon, suh,’ says he, and then his eyes met mine, and stared, and for full three seconds we stood frozen in mutual recognition. For I knew that face: the coarse whiskers, the scarred cheek, the prominent nose and chin, and the close-set eyes. I knew it before I remembered his name: Peter Omohundro.
You all know these embarrassing little encounters, of course – the man you’ve borrowed money off, or the chap whose wife has flirted with you, or the people whose invitation you’ve forgotten, or the vulgarian who accosts you in public. Omohundro wasn’t quite like these, exactly – the last time we’d met I’d been stealing one of his slaves, and shots had been flying, and he’d been roaring after me with murder in his eye, while I’d been striking out for the Mississippi shore. But the principle was the same, and so, I flatter myself, was my immediate behaviour.
I closed my mouth, murmured an apology, nodded offhand, and made to pass on. I’ve known it work, but not with this indelicate bastard. He let out an appalling oath and seized my collar with both hands.
‘Prescott!’ he bawled. ‘By God – Prescott!’
‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ says I, damned stiff. ‘I haven’t the honour of your acquaintance.’
‘Haven’t you, though, you nigger-stealin’ son-of-a-bitch! I sure as hell got the honour o’ yores! Jim – git a constable – quick, dammit! Why, you thievin’ varmint!’ And while they gaped in astonishment, he thrust me by main strength against the wall, pinning me there and roaring to his friends.
‘It’s Prescott – Underground Railroader that stole away George Randolph on the Sultana last year! Hold still, goddam you! It’s him, I say! Here, Will, ketch hold t’other arm – now, you dog, you, hold still there!’
‘You’re wrong!’ I cried. ‘I’m someone else – you’ve got the wrong man, I say! My name’s not Prescott! Get your confounded hands off me!’
‘He’s English!’ bawled Omohundro. ‘You all hear that? The bastard’s English, an’ so was Prescott! Well, you dam’ slave-stealer, I got you fast, and you’re goin’ to jail till I can get you ’dentified, and then by golly they gonna hang you!’
As luck had it, there weren’t above a dozen men in the place, and while those who’d been with Omohundro crowded round, the others stared but kept their distance. They were a fairly genteel bunch, and Omohundro and I were both big strapping fellows, which can’t have encouraged them to interfere. The man addressed as Jim was hanging irresolute half way to the door, and Will, a burly buffer in a beard and stove-pipe hat, while he laid a hand on my arm, wasn’t too sure.
‘Hold on a shake, Pete,’ says he. ‘You certain this is the feller?’
‘Course I’m sartin, you dummy! Jim, will you git the goddam constable? He’s Prescott, I tell you, an’ he stole the nigger Randolph – got him clear to Canada, too!’
At this two of the others were convinced, and came to lend a hand, seizing my wrists while Omohundro took a breather and stepped back, glowering at me. ‘I’d know the sneakin’ blackguard anywhere – an’ his dadblasted fancy accent—’
‘It’s a lie!’ I protested. ‘A fearful mistake, gentlemen, I assure you … the fellow’s drunk … I never saw him in my life – or his beastly nigger! Let me loose, I say!’
‘Drunk, am I?’ shouts Omohundro, shaking his fist. ‘Why, you brass-bollocked impident hawg, you!’
‘Tarnation, shet up, can’t ye?’ cries Will, plainly bewildered. ‘Why, he sure don’t talk like a slave-stealer, an’ that’s a fact – but, see here, mister, jes’ you rest easy, we git this business looked to. And you hold off, Pete; Jim can git the constable while we study this thing. You, suh!’ This was to Spring, who hadn’t moved a muscle, and was standing four-square, his hands jammed in his pockets, watching like a lynx. ‘You was settin’ with this feller – can you vouch for him, suh?’
They all looked to Spring, who glanced at me bleakly and then away. ‘I never set eyes on him before,’ says he deliberately. ‘He came to my table uninvited and begged for drink.’ And on that he turned towards the door, the perfidious wretch, while I was stricken speechless, not only at the brute’s brazen treachery, but at his folly. For:
‘But you was talkin’ with him a good ten minutes,’ says Will, frowning. ‘Talkin’ an’ laughin’ – why, I seen you my own self.’
‘They come in together,’ says another voice. ‘Arm in arm, too,’ and at this Omohundro moved nimbly into Spring’s path.
‘Now, jes’ you hold on there, mister!’ cries he suspiciously. ‘You English, too, ain’t you? An’ you settin’ all cosy-like with this ’bolitionist skunk Prescott – ’cos I swear on a ton o’ Bibles, Will, that Prescott agin’ the wall there. I reckon we keep a grip o’ both o’ you, till the constable come.’
‘Stand out of my way,’ growls Spring, and although he didn’t raise his voice, it rasped like a file. Will gave back a step.
‘You min’ your mouth!’ says Omohundro, and braced himself. ‘Mebbe you clear, maybe you ain’t, but I warnin’ you – don’t stir another step. You gonna stay here – so now!’
I wouldn’t feel sorry for Omohundro at any time, least of all with two of his bullies pinioning me and blowing baccy juice in my face, but I confess to a momentary pang just then, as though he’d passed port to the right. For giving orders to J. C. Spring is simply one of the things that are never done; you’d be better teasing a mating gorilla. For a moment he stood motionless, while the scar on his brow turned purple, and that unholy mad spark came into his eyes. His hands came slowly from his pockets, clenched.
‘You infernal Yankee pipsqueak!’ says he. ‘Stand aside or, by heaven, it will be the worse for you!’
‘Yankee?’ roars Omohundro. ‘Why, you goddam—’ But before his fist was half-raised, Spring was on him. I’d seen it before, of course, when he’d almost battered a great hulking seaman to death aboard ship; I’d been in the way of his fist myself, and it had been like being hit with a hammer. You’d barely credit it; here was this sober-looking, middle-aged bargee, with the grey streaks in his trim beard and the solid spread to his middle, burly but by no means tall, as proper a citizen as ever spouted Catullus or graced a corporation – and suddenly it was Attila gone berserk. One short step he took, and sank his fists left and right in Omohundro’s midriff; the planter squawked like a burst football, and went flying over a table, but before he had even reached the ground, Spring had seized the dumbfounded Will by the collar and hurled him with sickening force against the wall.
‘And be damned to all of you!’ roars he, jerking down his hat-brim, which was unwise, for it gave the fellow Jim time to wallop him with a chair. Spring turned bellowing, but before Jim could reap the consequences of his folly, one of the coves holding me had let loose, and collared Spring from behind. If I’d been wise I’d have stayed still, but with only one captor I tried to struggle free, and he and I went down wrestling together; he wasn’t my weight, and after some noisy panting and clawing I got atop of him and pounded him till he hollered. Given time, I’d have enjoyed myself for a minute or two pulping his figurehead, but flight was top of the menu just then, so I rolled off him and came up looking frantically for the best way to bolt.
Hell’s delight was taking place a yard away; Omohundro was on his feet again, clutching his belly – which must have been made of cast-iron – and retching for breath; the fellow Will was on the floor but had a hold on Spring’s ankle, which I thought uncommon game of him, while my other captor had Spring round the neck. Even as I looked, Spring sent him flying and turned to stamp on Will’s face – those evenings in the Oriel combination room weren’t wasted, thinks I – and then a willowy cove among the onlookers took a hand, shrieking in French and trying to brain my gallant captain with an ebony cane.
Spring grabbed it and jerked – and the cane came away in his hand, leaving the Frog holding two feet of naked, glittering steel, which he flourished feebly, with Gallic squeals. Poor fool, there was a sudden flurry, the snap of a breaking bone, the Frog was screaming on the floor, and Spring had the sword-stick in his hand. I heard Omohundro’s shout as he flung himself at Spring, hauling a pistol from beneath his coat; Spring leaped to meet him, bawling ‘Habet!’ – and, by God, he had. Before my horrified gaze Omohundro was swaying on tiptoe, staring down at that awful steel that transfixed him; he flopped to his knees, the pistol clattering to the floor, and fell forward on his face with a dreadful groan.
There was a dead silence, broken only by the scraping of Omohundro’s nails at the boards – and presently by a wild scramble of feet as one of the principal parties withdrew from the scene. If there’s one thing I know, it’s when to leave; I was over the counter and through the door behind it like a shot, into a store-room with an open window, and then tearing pell-mell up an alley, blind to all but the need to escape.
How far I ran, I don’t know, doubling through alleys, over fences, across backyards, stopping only when I was utterly blown and there was no sound of pursuit behind. By the grace of God it was coming on to evening, and the light was fading fast; I staggered into an empty lane and panted my soul out, and then I took stock.
That was escape to England dished, anyway; Spring’s passage out was going to be at the end of a rope, and unless I shifted I’d be dancing alongside him. Once the traps had me the whole business of the slavers Cassy had killed would be laid at my door – hadn’t I seen the reward bill naming me murderer? – and the Randolph affair and Omohundro would be a mere side-dish. I had to fly – but where? There wasn’t a safe hole for me in the whole damned U.S.A.; I forced down my panic, and tried to think. I couldn’t run, I had to hide, but there was nowhere – wait, though, there might be. Susie Willinck had sheltered me before, when she’d thought I was an American Navy deserter – but would she do it now, when they were after me for the capital act? But I hadn’t killed Omohundro – she needn’t even know about him, or Spring. And she’s been besotted with me, the fond old strumpet, piping her eye when I left her – aye, a little touch of Harry in the night and she’d be ready to hide me till the next election.
But the fix was, I’d no notion of where in New Orleans I might be, or where Susie’s place lay, except that it was in the Vieux Carré. I daren’t strike off at random, with the Navy’s bulldogs – and the civil police, too, by now – on the lookout for me. So I set off cautiously, keeping to the alleys, until I came on an old nigger sitting on a doorstep, and he put me on the right road.
The Vieux Carré, you must know, is the old French heart of New Orleans, and one gigantic fleshpot – fine houses and walks, excellent eating-places and gardens, brilliantly lit by night, with music and gaiety and colour everywhere, and every second establishment a knocking-shop. Susie’s bawdy-house was among the finest in New Orleans, standing in its own tree-shaded grounds, which suited me, for I intended to sneak in through the shrubbery and seek out my protectress with the least possible ado. Keeping away from the main streets, I found my way to that very side-alley where months earlier the Underground Railroad boys had got the drop on me; it was empty now, and the side-gate was open, so I slipped in and went to ground in the bushes where I could watch the front of the house. It was then I realised that something was far amiss.
It was one of these massive French colonial mansions, all fancy ironwork and balustrades and slatted screens, just as I remembered it, but what was missing now was signs of life – real life, at any rate. The great front door and windows should have been wide to the warm night, with nigger music and laughter pouring out, and the chandeliers a-glitter, and the half-naked yellow tarts strutting in the big hall, or taking their ease on the verandah like tawny cats on the chaise-longues, their eyes glowing like fireflies out of the shadows. There should have been dancing and merriment and drunken dandies taking their pick of the languid beauties, with the upper storeys shaking to the exertions of happy fornicators. Instead – silence. The great door was fast, and while there were lights at several of the shuttered windows, it was plain that if this was still a brothel, it must be run by the Band of Hope.
A chill came over me that was not of the night air. All of a sudden the dark garden was eerie and full of dread. Faint music came from another house beyond the trees; a carriage clopped past the distant gates; overhead a nightbird moaned dolefully; I could hear my own knees creaking as I crouched there, scratching the newly healed bullet-wound in my backside and wondering what the deuce was wrong. Could Susie have gone away? Terror came over me like a cold drench, for I had no other hope.
‘Oh, Christ!’ I whispered half-aloud. ‘She must be here!’
‘Who must be?’ grated a voice at my ear, a hand like a vice clamped on my neck, and with a yap of utter horror I found myself staring into the livid, bearded face of John Charity Spring.
‘Shut your trap or I’ll shut it forever!’ he hissed. ‘Now then – what house is that, and why were you creeping to it? Quick – and keep your voice down!’
He needn’t have fretted; the shock of that awful moment had almost carried me off, and for a spell I couldn’t find my voice at all. He shook me, growling, while I absorbed the dreadful realisation that he must have been dogging me all the way – first in my headlong flight, then on the streets, unseen. It was horrifying, the thought of that maniac prowling and watching my every move, but not as horrifying as his presence now, those pale eyes glaring round as he scanned the house and garden. And knowing him, I answered to the point, in a hoarse croak.
‘It … it belongs to a friend … of mine. A … an Englishwoman. But I don’t know … if she’s there now.’
