There’s no question that a public school education is an advantage. It may not make you a scholar or a gentleman or a Christian, but it does teach you to survive and prosper – and one other invaluable thing: style. I’ve noted that Grattan-Hare didn’t have it, and you know what happened to him. I, on the other hand, have always had style by the cart-load, and it saved my life in the Gila forest in ’49, no error.
Thus: any other of Gallantin’s band, given possession of my Apache lass, would have gone at her bull at a gate. I, once I’d decided on reflection that I might as well rattle her as not, set about it with a deal of finesse – chiefly, I admit, because it’s better sport that way. But I knew how to go about it, that’s the point, patiently and smoothly and with … style.
You must understand the effect of this, of Flashy imposing his winning ways on that fortunate native wench. There she was, a helpless prisoner in the hands of the most abominable ruffians in North America, who had butchered her menfolk before her eyes and were about to subject her to repeated rape, possible torture, and certain death. Up jumps this strapping chap with splendid whiskers, who not only kills out of hand the cad who is molesting her, but thereafter treats her kindly, pets her patiently, and absolutely asks permission to squeeze her boobies. She is astonished, nay gratified, and, since she’s a randy little minx at bottom, ready to succumb with pleasure. All thanks to style, as inculcated by Dr Arnold, though I wouldn’t expect him to claim credit for it.
And mark the sequel. When other of her tribesmen, having got wind of the massacre, attack the scalp-hunters by night, she is alarmed for her protector. If he joins in the scrap – the last thing I’d have done, but she wasn’t to know that – harm may come to him, so being a lass of spirit she ensures his neutrality by clouting him behind the ear with a rock. Then, when her tribesmen have wiped out or captured most of the marauders (Gallantin and a few others alone escaped)33 she is at pains to preserve her saviour from the general vengeance. Had he been a man without style, she’d have been the first to set about him with a red-hot knife.
Mind you, luck was on my side, too. Had she been any common Indian wench, it would have been Flashy, b. 1822, d. 1849, R.I.P. and not even a line in the Gazette, for her rescuers wouldn’t have heeded her for an instant; I’d have been just another white scalp-hunter on whom to practise their abominations. But since she happened to be Sonsee-array, the Morning-Star-Takes-Away-Clouds-Woman, fourth and dearest daughter of Mangas Colorado, the great Red Sleeves, chief of the Mimbreno, lord of the Gila, and scourge of plain, forest and mountain from the Llanos Estacados to the Big-Canyon-Dug-by-God, and since she was also famous for having more beads and trinkets than any other female since time began, and for never having worked in her young life – well, even a Bronco brave with blood in his eye takes notice, and decides to humour her.
So they contented themselves with stripping and hanging my unconscious carcase upside down from the cotton-woods, along with those of a dozen other scalp-hunters who’d been unlucky enough to survive the attack. They then built fires under us in the approved fashion, but at Sonsee-array’s insistence refrained from lighting mine until she had stated her case to the great man. Meanwhile they beguiled the time by slowly removing the skins from my fellow-unfortunates, a process in which she and the other squaws gleefully joined. Mercifully, I was dead to the world.
When I came to I was blind, with a thunderstorm drumming in my skull, and my whole body in torment; to make matters worse, a voice nearby was alternately babbling for mercy in Spanish and screeching in agony – that, though I didn’t know it, was Ilario being flayed alive on the next tree. The screams died away to a whimper, with an awful distant chorus of cries and groans and hellish laughter; closer at hand voices were talking in a mixture of Spanish and some language I didn’t understand.
I struggled to force my eyes open, trying to get to my feet but not able to find ground anywhere – that’s what it’s like to come awake when you’re hanging upside down. I was floating, it seemed, while my feet were being torn away; then my eyes opened, I could smell smoke and blood, and before me were human figures the wrong way up – and then I realised where I was, and the ghastly sight of those bodies at the hacienda flashed across my mind, and I tried to scream, but couldn’t.
“Por qué no?” were the first words I made out. “Why not?”, in a double bass croak so deep it was difficult to believe it came from a human being (I’m not so sure, from my later acquaintance with him, that it did). A woman’s voice answered, high and fierce, mostly in Spanish, but there were men’s voices trying to interrupt her, and in shouting them down she sometimes lapsed into the unknown tongue which I guessed must be Apache.
“Because he was good to me! When the others, like that dog-dirt there—” there was a horrid smack, and yells of laughter as she took a swipe at the unhappy Ilario “—would have raped and killed me – he fought for me, and slew a man, and used me gently! Are you all deaf? He is not evil, like these others!”
“He has white eyes!” shouts some curmudgeon. “Why should he be spared?”
“Because I say so! Because he saved me while you cowards were asleep, or hiding, or … or defecating under a bush! I say he shall not die! I ask my father for his life! And his eyes are not white – they are dark!”
“He is pinda-lickoyee – the enemy! He is Americano, scalp-taker, butcher of children! Look at the bodies of our people, mutilated by these beasts—”
“He did not do it – if he had, why should he help me?”
“Huh!” sulkily, and knowing grunts. “All men help you! Evil men as well as good – you know the art of getting help.”
“Liar! Pig! Bastard! Ugly lump of rotten buffalo dung—”
“Basta!” It was the bass voice again. “If he doesn’t die, what will you do with him? Make him a slave?”
That seemed to be a facer for her; she wasn’t sure, and there were sceptical grunts and sneers, which drove her wild. In a passion she cried that she was a chief’s daughter and would please herself. The sense of the meeting seemed to be, oh, hoity-toity miss, and the leader of the opposition said no doubt she would want to marry the white-eyed villain … you understand that I give you the gist of the conversation, so well as I heard and understood it.
“And if I chose to, what then?” cries madam. “He is braver and more beautiful than any of you! You stink! Black Knife stinks! El Chico stinks! The Yawner stinks! And you, Vasco – you stink worst of all!”
“Do we all stink, then, except this creature? Does your own father stink?” The bass voice sounded closer, and through blurred eyes I made out two massive legs beneath a hide kilt, and huge booted feet. “He is big, even for an Americano. Big as a Striped Arrowa.”
“Not as big as you, father,” says she, sweet and tactful. “Nor as strong. But he is bigger and stronger and fiercer and faster and prettier than Vasco. But then – a Digger’s arse is prettier than that!”
I must have fainted, for that’s all I remember until a strange period of half-consciousness in which I was aware of women’s voices muttering, and hands working on my body with what I suppose was grease or ointment, and being given a drink, and the pain ebbing from my head. At one time I was in a wickiup, and a dirty old crone was spooning some mush of meat and corn into me; again, I was being carried on a stretcher, with open sky and branches passing overhead. But it was all confused with evil dreams of hanging upside down among flames, and then I was plunged head-foremost into the icy depths under Jotunberg with Rudi Starnberg’s wild laugh ringing in my ears. Women’s faces swam up through the water towards me – Elspeth blonde and lovely and smiling, Lola sleepy-eyed with lips pursed in mockery, Cleonie pale and beautiful and very close as she hummed softly: “Oh-ho-ho, avec mes sabots!”, and as her mouth closed on mine it was Susie who teased and fondled and smothered me in flesh, which would have been capital if we had not been upside-down with fellows arguing in Spanish, among them Arnold who said that all scalp-hunters at Rugby knew perfectly well that a gerundive was a passive adjective, and Charity Spring shouted that here was one who didn’t, this graceless son-of-a-bitch hung by the heels with his fat whore, and he must die, at which Arnold shook his head and his voice echoed far away: “I fear, captain, that we have failed …”, and Susie’s plump, jolly face receded, her skin darkened, the bright green eyes dissolved into new eyes that were black in shadow and cinnamon as the light caught them, set between slanting lids that were almost Oriental. Lovely eyes, like dark liquid jewels that moved slowly and intently, absorbing what they saw; whoever you are, I thought, you don’t need to talk …
… the chubby-faced Indian girl stood above me, looking solemnly down; I was lying in a wickiup, under a blanket, and the horror of memory rushed back and hit me in the ribs with a boot belonging to one of the ugliest devils I’ve ever seen, who snarled as he kicked: a young Apache in hide kilt and leggings, with a dirty jacket about his shoulders and a band round the lank hair that framed a face from the Chamber of Horrors. Even for an Apache it was wicked – coal-black vicious eyes, hook nose, a mouth that was just a cruel slit and wasn’t improved when he laughed with a great gape that showed all his ugly teeth.
“Get up, perro! Dog! Gringo! Pinda-lickoyee!”
If you’d told me then that this monster would one day be the most dreaded hostile Indian who ever was, terror of half a continent – I’d have believed you; if you’d told me he would be my closest Indian friend – I wouldn’t. Yet both were true, and still are; he’s an old, done man nowadays, and when we met last year I had to help him about, but mothers still frighten their children with his name along the Del Norte, and as for friendship, I suppose one scoundrel takes to another, and we’re the only ones left over from that time, anyway. But at first meeting he scared the innards out of me, and I was deuced glad when the girl cried out before he could kick me again.
“Stop, Yawner! Don’t touch him!”
“Why not? It feels good,” snarls my beauty, with another great gape, but he left off and stepped back, which was a double relief, for he stank like a goat in an organ-loft. I thought I’d best obey nevertheless, and struggled up, weak and dizzy as I was, for I realised that any hope I might have in my fearful plight depended on this girl I’d rescued … it must have been she who had spoken up for me when I was hanging helpless … now she was interceding again, and with authority. Decidedly she deserved all the fawning courtesy I could show her. So I struggled painfully upright, gasping with my aches and holding unsteadily to the blanket for modesty’s sake while I muttered obsequiously, muchas, muchas gracias, señorita. The Yawner growled like an angry dog, but she nodded and continued to inspect me in silence for several minutes, those splendid eyes curious and speculating, as though I were something in a shop and she was trying to make up her mind. I stood unsteady and sweating, trying to look amiable, and took stock of her in turn.
Seen in daylight, she wasn’t unattractive. The chubby face, now that it was washed and polished, was round and firm as a ripe apple, with sulky, provocative lips. In figure she was sturdy rather than slim, a muscular little half-pint under her puppy-fat, for she couldn’t have been over sixteen. She was royally dressed by Apache standards, in a fine beaded doeskin tunic, fringed below the knee, which must have taken a dozen squaws a week to chew; her moccasins had bright geometric patterns, a lace scarf was bound about her brows, and there was enough silver and beadwork round her neck to start a bazaar. She was utter Indian, but there was a cool, almost damn-you air that didn’t sort with the busty little figure and savage finery, an impersonal poise in the way she looked me up and down that would have suited a hacienda better than a wickiup – if I’d known that her mother was pure Spanish hidalga with a name three feet long, I might have understood.
Suddenly she frowned. “You have much ugly hair on your face. Will you cut it off?”
Startled, I said I would, certainly, ma’am, and the Yawner spat and muttered that given his way he’d cut off more than that; he was giving blood-chilling particulars, but she snapped him into silence, took a last long look at me from those slanted pools, and then asked with perfect composure:
“Do you like me, pinda-lickoyee?”
Now, I hadn’t more than a half-notion of what this queer inspection was about, but it was a stone certainty that this young lady’s good opinion was all that stood between me and a frightful death. Ignoring the Yawner’s snort at her question, I fairly babbled my admiration, leering eagerly no doubt, and she clapped her hands.
“Bueno!” cries she, and laughed, with a triumphant toss of her head at the Yawner, accompanied by a gesture and an Apache word which I doubt was ladylike. She gave me one last hot appraising stare before sweeping out, and the Yawner let go a great fart by way of comment, and jerked his thumb at my clothes, which had been thrown in a corner. He watched malevolently as I pulled on shirt and pants and struggled with my boots; I ached with stiffness, but my dizziness was passing, and I ventured to ask him who the señorita might be. He grunted as though he grudged the words.
“Sonsee-array. Child of the Red Sleeves.”
“Who’s he?”
His black eyes stared with disbelief and mistrust. “What kind of pinda-lickoyee are you? You don’t know of Mangas Colorado? Bah! You’re a liar!”
“Never heard of him. What does his daughter want with me?”
“That is for her to say.” He gave another of his gapes of laughter. “Huh! You should have dropped your blanket, white-eye! Vaya!” And he shoved me out of the wickiup.
There was a motley crowd of women and children outside in the brilliant sunlight, and they set up a great yell of execration at sight of me, waving sticks and spitting, but the Yawner drew a sling from his belt and lashed at them with the thongs to make way. I followed him through the cluster of wickiups and across a level space towards a few ruined buildings and a great crumbling triangular fort before which another crowd was assembled. How far we were from the valley of the massacre I couldn’t tell; this was quite different country, with low scrubby hills round the sandy flat, and one great hill looming over the scene; it looked like a permanent camp.34
There must have been a couple of hundred Apaches grouped in a great half-circle before the fort, and if you think you’ve seen ugly customers in Africa or Asia, believe me, there are worse. I’ve seen Fly River head-hunters who ain’t exactly Oscar Wilde, and not many understudies for Irving among the Uzbeks and Udloko Zulus – but they’re merely awful to look at. For an ugliness that comes from the soul, and envelops the stranger in a wave of menace and evil cruelty, commend me to a gathering of Gila Apaches. Or rather, don’t. To have those vicious eyes turned on you from those flat, spiteful brute faces, is to know what hate truly means; you’ll never wonder again why other Indians call them simply “the enemy”.
They watched me come in silence, until the Yawner stopped me before a group seated under the fort wall. There were six of them, presumably elders, since in contrast to the crowd they all wore shirts and kilts and leather caps or scarves. But there was only one of them to look at.
He might have been fifty, and was undoubtedly the biggest man I’ve ever seen. I’m two inches over six feet, and he topped me by half a head, but it was his sheer bulk that took your breath away. From shoulder to shoulder he was three and a half feet wide – and I know that because I once saw him hold a cavalry sabre horizontal across his chest, and it didn’t protrude either side. His arms were as thick as my legs, and bulged under his deerskin shirt; the knees beneath his kilt were like milestones. His head was to scale, and hideous, with black snake eyes that bored out from beneath the brim of his flat hat with its eagle feather. I’ve felt my bowels dissolve in the presence of a few ogres in my time, but none more awe-inspiring than this celebrated Mangas Colorado; he was truly terrific. He surveyed me for a moment, and glanced aside, and I saw that my girl and two other young females were there, kneeling on a spread blanket before the crowd. She was looking bothered but determined.
Now, what I didn’t know was that a heated debate had been in progress, the subject being: what shall we do with old Flashy? The overwhelming opinion had been that I should be slung up by the heels forthwith and given the skin treatment I’d have had days ago but for the unseemly intervention of young Sonsee-array; the only dissenting voices had been those of the lady herself, her girl-friends (who being common women counted for nothing), and her doting father (who being Mangas Colorado counted for everything). But it was widely recognised that he was only humouring her because he was a fond old widower with three married daughters, and she was all he had left, presumably, to fetch his slippers, preside at tea, and torture visitors; his indulgence had limits, however, and he had told her pretty sharp that it was high time she stated her intentions where this pinda-lickoyee was concerned. Was it true that she wanted to marry the brute, foreign white-eye and scalp-hunter that he was? (Cries of “No, no!” and “Shame!”) Let him remind her that she had turned down half the eligible bachelors in the tribe … however, if this gringo was what she wanted, let her say so, and Mangas would either give his blessing or signal the band to strike up the cottonwood polka. (Hear, hear, and sustained applause.)
At this point Sonsee-array, accompanied by the Yawner in case the prisoner proved violent, had flounced off for a final look at me, which I have described. She had then gone back to Papa and announced that she wanted to marry the boy. (Sensation.) Friends and relatives had now urged the unsuitability of the match; Sonsee-array had retorted that there were precedents for marrying pinda-lickoyee, including her own father, and it was untrue, as certain disappointed suitors (cries of “Oh!” and “Name them!”) had urged, that her intended was a scalp-hunting enemy; her good friend Alopay, daughter of Nopposo and wife to the celebrated Yawner, had been a captive with her and could testify that the adored object had taken no scalps. (Uproar, stilled by the arrival of the body in the case, with the Yawner at his elbow.)
If I’d known all this, and the interesting facts that Indians have no colour bar and that Apache girls are given a pretty free choice of husbands, I might have breathed easier, but I doubt it; no one was ever easy in the presence of Red Sleeves. He glared at me like a constipated basilisk, and the organ bass croaked in Spanish.
“What’s your name, Americano?”
“Flashman. I’m not Americano. Inglese.”
“Flaz’man? Inglese?” The black eyes flickered. “Then why are you not in the Snow Woman’s country? Why here?”
It took me a moment to figure that the Snow Woman must be our gracious Queen, so called doubtless in allusion to Canada. I’ve heard Indians call her some odd names: Great Woman, Great White Mother, Grandmother latterly, and even the Old Woman of General Grant, by certain Sioux who held that she and Grant were man and wife, but she’d shown him the door, which I rather liked.
I said I was here as a trader, and there was an angry roar. Mangas Colorado leaned forward. “You trade in Mimbreno scalps to the Mexicanos!” he croaked.
“That’s not true!” I said, as bold as I dared. “I was a prisoner of the villains who attacked your people. I took no scalps.”
Although this, unknown to me, had been vouched for by Sonsee-array and her girl-friends, the mob still hooted disbelief; Mangas stilled them with a raised hand and rasped:
“Scalp-hunter or not, you were with the enemy. Why should you live?”
A damned nasty question coming from a face like that, but before I could think of several good answers, my little Pocahontas was on her feet, fists clenched and eyes blazing, like a puppy snapping at a mastiff.
“Because he is my chosen man! Because he fought for me, and saved me, and was kind to me!” She looked from her father to me, and there were absolute tears on her cheeks. “Because he is a man after my father’s heart, and I will have him or no one!”
Well, this was news to me, of course, although her conduct in the wickiup had suggested that she had some such arrangement in mind. And if it seemed short notice for so much enthusiasm on her part, well, I had protected her, in a way – and there seemed to be a movement for marrying Flashy among North American women that year, anyway. Hope surged up in me – to be checked as dear old Dad climbed to his enormous feet and lumbered forward for a closer look at me. It was like being approached by one of those Easter Island stone faces; he loomed over me, and his breath was like old boots burning. Fine bloodshot eyes he had, too.
“What do you say, pinda-lickoyee?” says he, and there was baleful suspicion in every line of that horrible face. “You have known her but a few hours; what can she be to you?”
If he’d been a civilised prospective father-in-law, I dare say I’d have hemmed and hawed, lyrical-like, and referred him to my banker; as it was, a wrong word – or too fulsome a protestation of devotion – and it would be under the greenwood tree who loves to swing with me. So I forced myself to look manly and simple, with a steady glance at Sonsee-array, and answered by adapting into Spanish a phrase that Dick Wootton had used to the Cheyenne.
“My heart is in the sky when I look at her,” says I, and she fairly shrieked with delight and beat her little fists on her knees, while the crowd rumbled and Mangas never blinked an eyelid.
“So you say.” It was like gravel under a door. “But what do we know of you, save that you are pinda-lickoyee? How do we know you are a fit man for her?”
There didn’t seem much point in telling him I’d been to Rugby under Arnold, or that I’d taken five wickets for 12 against the England XI, so I pitched on what I hoped would be a popular line by telling him I’d served with the Snow Woman’s soldiers in lands far away, and had counted coup against Utes and Kiowas (which was true, even if I hadn’t wanted to). He listened, and Sonsee-array preened at the silent crowd, and then one young buck, naked except for boots and breech-clout, but with silver ornaments slung round his neck, swaggered forward and began a harangue in Apache. I was to learn that this was Vasco, the jilted admirer on whose appearance and aroma Sonsee-array had commented; by tribal standards he was wealthy (six horses, a dozen slaves, that sort of thing), and quite the leading light. I suppose he was sick as mud that a despised white-eye looked like succeeding where he had failed, and while I understood no word, it was obvious he wasn’t appearing as prisoner’s friend; when he’d done bawling the odds he hurled his hatchet into the ground at my feet. There was no doubt what that meant, in any language; the crowd fell silent as death, and every eye was on me.
Now, you know what I think of mortal combat. I’ve run from more than I can count, and lived never to regret it, and this lean ten stone of quivering, fighting fury, obviously nimble as a weasel and built like a champion middleweight, was the last man I wanted to try conclusions with – well, I’d been ill. But with Mangas’s blood-flecked eyes on me, I could guess what refusal would mean – no, this was a case for judicious bluff with my heart pounding under a bold front. So I glanced at the axe, at the furious Vasco, at Mangas, and shrugged.
“Must I?” says I. “I’ve killed a better man than this for her already. And afterwards – how many others do I have to kill?”
There was a creaking snort from behind me: the Yawner was laughing – I wasn’t to know that her disappointed beaux had been legion. There were a few grins even among the crowd, but not from my lady; she was forward in a trice, demanding to know who was Vasco to put in his oar, and why should I, who had counted coup and killed for her, be at the trouble of chastising an upstart who had barely made his fourth war-party?35 She fairly shrieked and spat at him, and the mob buzzed – by no means unsympathetically, I noted; the Yawner grunted that any fool could fight, and a few heads nodded in agreement. The Apaches, you see, being matchless warriors, tend to take courage for granted, especially in big, burly fellows who look as much like a Tartar as I do (more fool they), and weren’t impressed by Vasco’s challenge; rather bad form in a jealous lover, they thought it. But Mangas’s snake eyes never left my face, and I realised in chill horror that I must go on bluffing, and quickly – and run the risk that my bluff would be called, if the plan that was forming in my mind went adrift. So before anyone else could speak I picked up the hatchet, looked at it, and says to Mangas, very offhand:
“Do I have choice of weapons?”
This brought more hubbub, with Sonsee-array protesting, Vasco yelling savage agreement, and the mob roaring eagerly. Mangas nodded, so I asked for a lance and my pony.
It was a desperate, horrible gamble – but I knew that if it came to a fight in the end, it was my only hope. I was still shaky from my illness, and even at my best I couldn’t have lived with Vasco in a contest with knives or hatchets. But I was a trained lancer, and guessed that he wasn’t – they use ’em overhead, two-handed, and have no notion of proper management. But with luck and good acting, it need never come to that; by playing the cool, professional hand, I could win without a battle.
While they were getting the lances and ponies, and a frantic Sonsee-array was shrilly damning Daddy’s eyes for permitting this criminal folly, and he was growling that she’d brought it on herself, and the commonalty were settling down to enjoy the show, I turned to the Yawner and asked him quietly if he could find me three wooden pegs, about so by so. He stared at me, but went off, and presently they brought out my little Arab, apparently none the worse for having been in their hands, and a lance. It was shorter and lighter than cavalry issue, but with a sharp well-set head. Vasco was already aboard a pony, shaking a lance in the air and yelling to the crowd – no doubt assuring them what mincemeat he was going to make of the pinda-lickoyee. They yelled and cheered, and he whooped and cantered about, hurling abuse in my direction.
I didn’t heed him. I busied myself talking to the Arab, petting him and blowing in his nostrils for luck, and threw away the Indian saddle they had given him; without stirrups, I knew I’d be safer bareback. His bridle, which was the merest crude strap, would just have to serve. I took my time, and ignored the impatience of the crowd, while Mangas stood brooding and silent – and here came the Yawner, with three pegs in his hand.
I took them, and without a word or a look walked away and set them in the ground, about twenty paces apart, while the mob stared and shouted in astonishment, and Vasco trotted up, screaming at me. Still I paid no attention, but walked back to my pony, picked up the lance, turned to Mangas, and spoke my piece so that everyone should hear; while I was quaking inwardly, I flattered myself I’d kept a steady, careless front; I looked him in the eye, and hoped to God I was right, and that they’d never heard of tent-pegging.
“I don’t want to fight your brave, Mangas Colorado,” says I, “because he’s a young man and a fool, and I’ll prove nothing by killing him that I haven’t proved already, in defence of your daughter. But if you say I must kill him … then I will. First, though, I’m going to show you something – and when you’ve seen it, you can tell me whether I need to kill him or not.”
Then I turned away, and damnably stiff and bruised as I was, vaulted on to the Arab’s back. I trotted him about for a moment or two, plucked the lance from the Yawner’s hand, and cantered away fifty yards or so before turning to come in on the pegs at a gallop. My heart was in my mouth, for while I’d been a dab hand in India, I knew I must be rusty as the deuce from lack of practice, to say nothing of my cracked head and groggy condition – and if I failed or made a fool of myself, I was a dead man.
But it was neck or nothing now – there were the pegs, tiny white studs on the red earth, with the squat colossal form of Mangas close by them, Sonsee-array just behind him, and the watching multitude beyond. The Arab’s hooves were drumming like pistons as I bore in, bringing down the point to cover the first peg as it rushed towards me … I leaned out and down and prayed – and my point missed it by a whisker, but here was the second almost under our hooves, and this time I made no mistake; the bright steel cut into the peg like cheese and I wheeled away in a great circle, the spitted peg flourished high for all to see. What a howl went up as I cantered towards Mangas Colorado, dipped my point in salute, and stuck the spiked butt of the lance in the earth before him. I was a trifle breathless, but nodded cool as I knew how.
“Now I’ll fight your brave, Mangas Colorado, if you say so,” I told him. “But before I do – let me see that he’s a worthy opponent. There are the little pegs – let him try.”
Not a muscle moved in that awful lined face, while there was uproar from the watchers; Vasco curvetted about, howling and shaking his lance – protesting, I dare say, that pig-sticking wasn’t his game. Sonsee-array screamed abuse at him, with obscene gestures, the Yawner gaped with laughter till his jaw cracked – and Mangas Colorado’s snake eyes went from me to the spitted peg and back again. Then, after what seemed an age, he glanced at Vasco, grunted, and jerked his thumb at the remaining pegs. The assembly bayed approval, Sonsee-array jumped with glee, and I settled back to enjoy the fun.
It was better than I could have hoped for. Tent-pegging ain’t as hard as it looks, but you have to know the knack, and it was quite beyond Vasco. He ran half a dozen courses and missed by a mile every time, to renewed catcalls which made him so wild that at the last try he speared the ground, snapped the shaft, and came out of the saddle like a hot rivet. His pals screeched for joy and even the women hooted, and he fairly capered with rage, which made them laugh all the more.
That was what I’d been after from the start – to make him look so ridiculous that his challenge to a man who was obviously more expert than he would be scoffed out of court. It had worked; even Mangas’s mouth twitched in a hideous grin, while the Yawner gaped and slapped his thighs. Vasco stamped and screamed in rage – and then his eye lighted on me; he shook his fist, sprang to his pony’s back, and made straight for me, yelling bloody murder, drawing his hatchet as he came.
It was so sudden that he nearly had me. One moment I was sitting my pony at rest, the next Vasco was charging in, hurling the tomahawk ahead of him. His aim was wild, but the whirling haft of the weapon hit my Arab on the muzzle, and as I tried to turn him to avoid being ridden down he reared with the pain, and I came to earth with sickening force. For two or three seconds I lay jarred out of my wits, as Vasco swept past, reined his mustang back on its haunches, and snatched the lance that I had left upright in the ground. Sprawled and helpless as his beast reared almost on top of me, its hooves flailing, I tried to roll away; he raised the lance to let drive, screaming his hate; I heard Sonsee-array’s shriek and Mangas’s bass bellow of rage – and something cracked like a whip, there was a hiss in the air overhead, a sickening thud, and Vasco’s head snapped back as though he had been shot, the lance dropping from his hands. As he toppled from the saddle I had a glimpse of that contorted face, with a bloody hole where one eye should have been – and here was the Yawner, coiling up the thongs of the sling that had driven a pellet into Vasco’s brain.
There was an instant’s hush, and then uproar, with everyone surging forward for a look, and Vasco’s pals to the fore, clamouring at Mangas for vengeance on the Yawner, who spat and sneered, with one hand on his knife. “The pinda-lickoyee was in my charge!” he snarled. “He was ready to fight – but this coward would have killed him unarmed!” Which I thought damned sound, and Mangas evidently agreed, for he quietened them with a tremendous bellow, stooped over the corpse, and then told them to take it away.
“The Yawner was right,” growls he. “This one died like a fool and no warrior.” His glance seemed to challenge that ring of savage faces, but none dared dissent, and while Vasco’s remains were removed, the great ghoul turned his attention back to me for a long moment, and then snapped to Sonsee-array, who came quickly forward to his side. He rumbled at her in Apache, indicating me, and she bowed her head submissively; for an awful moment my heart stopped, and then he beckoned me forward, favoured me with another gargoyle stare – and reached out to lay his hand on my shoulder.
It was like being tapped with a pitchfork, but I didn’t mind that; I could have cried with sheer relief. Sonsee-array was beside me, her hand slipping into mine, the sullen faces round us were indifferent rather than hostile, the Yawner shrugged – and Mangas Colorado gave us a final curt nod and stalked away. Just the same, I couldn’t help thinking that old Morrison hadn’t been such a bad father-in-law.
a Cheyenne.