George Fraser - Flashman and the Redskins

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 , fn8as 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.