Golden Face: A Tale of the Wild West

“Oh, yes. We had a talk over old times. By the way, that’s another misnomer. My real name’s Rupert. They used to call me the other for short. Heaven knows why, but they did, and I dropped it when I went West. Shan’t revive it.”

If ever there was a snug family party gathered together, it was that at the Elmcote dinner-table that night, when Rupert Vallance, as we must now call him, yielding to general request, but especially to an appealing glance from Yseulte’s blue eyes, narrated his experiences from the time of his capture to his escape from the camp of the hostiles, only generalising however as to the agency of this latter event, and omitting for the present all mention of poor Geoffry’s horrible death. But when it came to the narrator literally tucking himself in with the grisly denizen of the Indian grave, in the ghostly silence of the darkling forest, Mrs Santorex shivered and announced her intention of fainting; however, this effect was soon dispelled by the more pleasing dénouement of the stirring tale, how just in the nick of time, when alone, dismounted, barely half armed, and the savages still in search of him, he had been found by Smokestack Bill, who all this while, in hourly peril himself, had unweariedly watched his chances of coming to the aid of his friend. Smokestack Bill, too, with no less a companion than old Satanta, who had been wandering the country ever since his escape from the Ogallalla war-party, defying white or red to capture him, until, seeming to recognise his master’s friend, he ran whinnying to the latter of his own accord.

“He’s a grand fellow, that scout,” said Mr Santorex. “Why didn’t you bring him over with you, Rupert?”

“Wouldn’t come. He’s going as chief scout to an expedition just about to be sent against the hostiles. I made him promise, though, to come over directly after the war.”

But the acme of this marvellous and stirring life’s romance was reached when later – after the ladies had retired to bed – Rupert Vallance recounted, in strict confidence, the circumstances of his meeting in the Sioux camp, the unfortunate woman who had ruined his career hitherto by allowing him to suffer for another’s intrigue.

“By Jove!” said George Santorex, junior. “I’ve heard of that party. Always supposed, though, she was a common sort of woman. A lady! and prefers to live among a lot of dirty redskins! Why, the tallest yarn of old Mayne Reid’s is skim-milk to this. But I guess she pretty well wiped out old scores by chousing the reds out of your scalp in that clever way, eh, Rupert!”

He nodded. “That’s so.”

Just then there was an interruption. A messenger had arrived from Lant Hall. The Rev. Dudley was not expected to live through the night, and particularly wished to see Mr Santorex.

“Phew-w!” whistled the latter. “I suppose I must go. What on earth can he want to talk to me about? Perhaps it’s about you, Rupert.”

“Maybe it is,” replied the latter, puffing out a cloud of smoke with as complete nonchalance as though they were discussing the weather. And George Santorex, junior, furtively watching the unconcerned, relentless face, thought he could well understand the reputation which this man had set up in those Western wilds which had been for so many years their common home.

Chapter Forty

Conclusion

Summer has come round once more, and again, amid all the glories of a cloudless evening, we stand beside the banks of the rippling Lant – howbeit not without misgiving, for are we not about to enact the part of eavesdroppers towards those two strolling languidly, contentedly, there by the shining water?

“It strikes me, child, you seem inclined to find life rather a happy thing,” a voice well-known to us is saying. “And you’ve no business to.”

A loving pressure of the strong arm on which she is leaning is the only answer Yseulte deigns at first to make. Then:

“Why not?”

“Because you’ve done a very wrong thing. If the late lamented Dudley were alive, he would tell you that a man may not marry his grandmother, and by parity of reasoning a woman may not marry her grandfather. Now this is just what you have done, and it’s very wrong of you.”

She gave his arm a pinch.

“I never liked – boys!” she replied with a sunny smile. And then she sighed. For it was on this very spot, beneath this same spreading oak here on the river-bank, that poor Geoffry had made his passionate and despairing declaration barely a year ago. And now at the thought of the poor fellow and his miserable end far away in that savage land, she could not repress a sigh.

“By Jove!” cried Rupert Vallance, flinging a stone into the river. “Something here seems to remind me of that evening when I came upon you staving in the red brother’s grinders with the butt end of a fishing-rod. I wonder, by the way, what became of that same weapon? I expect Mountain Cat’s band still keep it as a big medicine-stick. Deuced bad medicine it was for the buck you were laying it into. Ho, ho!”

“Don’t remind me of that horrible moment,” she said, coming closer to him with a slight shiver. “Let us go home, it’s getting cold.”

The Rev. Dudley Vallance was dead. The shock of learning his son’s horrible end had brought on a stroke, and the following day he had breathed his last – not, however, before he had made what reparation he could for the wrong he had done his cousin, who, by the way, had so far relented as to satisfy him that he had borne no hand in poor Geoffry’s death, and, in fact was powerless to prevent it; added to which he had himself rescued him from the same fate on a previous occasion. So on his death-bed he had signed a hastily drawn-up will, bequeathing the Lant property to Rupert Vallance absolutely, save and except a yearly charge on the estate for the support of his widow and daughters. To this Rupert had added with ample liberality. Once “the old man had climbed down,” as he euphemistically put it, he himself was willing to let bygones be bygones, and had endowed the widow accordingly; needless to say, without earning the slightest degree of gratitude from the latter.

They strolled homeward across the meadows in the falling eve, and, lo, as they entered the gate of the home paddock there arose a whinny and a stamp of hoofs.

“Dear old Satanta!” said Yseulte, stroking the velvety black nose which the noble animal thrust lovingly against her hand. “You have well earned your ease for life, at any rate.”

“I should rather think he had. No more arrows flying in his wake. No more brack water or willow-bark provender. All oats and fun for life. We shall have to give the war-whoop occasionally, just to remind him of old times.”

“Please, sir,” said a man-servant, meeting them in the hall. “Postman says was he right in leaving this, sir?”

His master took the letter, glanced at the address, and exploded in a roar of laughter. It bore the United States stamp, and was directed —

“Judge Rupert Vipan, Lant Hall,

Brackenshire County,

Great Britain.”

“Nat Hardroper’s fist! Come along, Yseulte, and let’s see what that ’cute citizen’s got to say. ‘Judge!’ Great Scott! With infinite trouble I got him out of calling me Colonel, and now he’s elevated me to the judicial bench! ‘Vipan,’ too! The old name seems to stick, anyway.”

He broke open the letter and began to read —

Henniker City, Dakota, 14th July, 1876.

Dear Rupe, – Seems to me you’re fixed up pretty tight and snug, after “baching” around all these years. My respects to Madam.

May be you’ll not be sorry to hear I’ve sold your interest in the Burntwood Creek Mine to a New York Syndicate for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and five hundred fully paid-up shares in the new Co. If you weren’t so keen on settling down in Great Britain again I reckon this find would make you more than a millionaire. However, I’ve banked the specie here, where it’ll be safe enough till you undertake to ship it to Great Britain – safe enough, that is, while I’m Sheriff of Henniker City – though they did “hold up” the bank in Jabez Humbold’s time.

The pesky Sioux are still on the war-path, as I judge you’ll have learned even in Great Britain, but they’re in a fair way of being soundly whipped. And now I’ve got to tell you what you’ll be dead sorry to hear.

Yseulte, watching her husband’s face, marked the change that came into it, as he turned the sheet and glanced hurriedly down it. A terrible frown – a frown similar to that which she had seen there when, dismounted and alone, he had turned to face the savage pursuers at the entrance of the cañon that never-to-be-forgotten evening of her escape. Mastering himself, he continued to read:

Your old pard, Smokestack Bill, is rubbed out. He fell at the Little Bighorn with Custer and his command, and I reckon the red devils have had many a dance round his hair by this time. Poor Bill! I allow it’s kinder rough when men have been pardners all the years you and he have; but he fell in fair fight, and that’s better, as he himself would allow, than dying of a slow sickness, or being knifed in the back by some slinking wall-eyed rowdy in a saloon. Well, well! There wasn’t a straighter, stauncher, all-round man, nor a better scout on this continent than Smokestack Bill, and if so be as any man says there was, why he’ll be ill-advised to make the remark anywhere around this section. I judge that’s about all the news you’ll care for just now, and with my respects to Madam, now as ever, old hoss, your sincere:

    Nathaniel J. Hardroper, Sheriff of Henniker City.

For some time Rupert Vallance stared vacantly at the hateful paper in dead silence. All the stirring experiences they had gone through together crowded upon his mind, and the fate of his friend, staunch, unswerving, true as steel, moved him more than he cared to show, even to his wife.

“Ah, well!” he said at last, laying down the letter with a sigh. “It’s bitterly rough on a fellow. For upwards of a dozen years we’ve chummed together like twin brothers, in tight fixes and out of them, and now the poor chap’s wiped out. Yes, it’s rough!” An arm stole round his neck. “Darling, can I forget that the noble, unselfish fellow saved your life and brought you back to me! And don’t think me unfeeling, but if I had never gone out there you might be lying there too, at this moment, having shared the poor fellow’s terrible fate.”

“That’s so,” he assented. “I hadn’t thought of it in that light.”

The End

notes

1

Part of the initiatory festival during which, by virtue of undergoing various forms of ghastly self-torture, the growing-up boys are admitted among the ranks of the warriors.

2

This chief, over and above his skill and intrepidity as a warrior, enjoyed a high reputation among the Indians of the Northern Plains as a magician and a seer – a reputation really due to his astuteness, keen foresight, and extraordinary luck.

3

A cache is a sort of underground storeroom or place of concealment – generally jar-shaped – wherein peltries and other goods are deposited, pending their convenient removal.