“White men, about a dozen I should say. God’s teeth, what a shambles! You have witnessed a perfect example of herd instinct. Take note, my boy, and never ally yourself with any kind of mob when faced with a crisis, real or imaginary. A mob will inevitably worsen any situation by their behavior.”
It took an hour to get the wagons back in line, and after it got done the colonel called a meeting and tonguewhipped everyone that panicked and laid into them so hard they hung their heads. He never mentioned Mr. Connelly by name, but he made it clear who was to blame for the whole thing and says if “the person responsible” tries to load the blame off onto Jeff Trueblood then that person would be a liar, because Jeff Trueblood acted alert and sensible over the whole business. It was enough to make a body blush.
When the riders that begun it all reached us it turned out they’re just gold rushers the same as us, only they can’t be bothered trailing along slow with wagons and lit out with just horses. The colonel had his dander up by then and called them fools to their faces for starting out with no supplies and says he won’t be surprised if we find their corpses one day dead of hunger or killed by Injuns. They took it all good-natured and say they aim to be the first forty-niners to reach California overland. That’s what the newspapers back east are calling the rushers now, forty-niners. They say they passed other trains behind us and all of them has got cholera striking people down, and there’s cholera back in St. Joseph too, which is where it started. It’s heading west along with the trains, which is another reason these men never wanted to join up with one. The news spread fast and you could see the fear on people’s faces when they heard of it, and everyone backed away from the riders like they was covered in cholera too. Some even pointed guns and told them to keep their distance, so they moved on.
After they left the colonel had to give another speech about not panicking.
“The cholera is behind us,” he says. “So long as we keep moving and maintain distance from those following behind there is no reason why the contagion should spread to our train.”
“What about them that just passed through?” says someone. “They might have given it to us already.”
“They seemed hale and hearty enough to me,” says the colonel. “They did not dismount, and no one here laid a hand on them. I believe we can consider our train safe. I say to you once again we must keep calm no matter what dangers face us. Now that it is essential we preserve our lead over the other wagons, there must be no more delays such as the one that has occurred today. We are one hour behind schedule, therefore one hour closer to those stricken with the disease.”
That sent everyone scurrying back to their wagons and we moved off again, but not before Mr. Connelly’s rig got broke up into firewood. Some kindly folks give him a ride in their wagon and a man who was a horse doctor set his arm in splints, and the splints was made from pieces of the busted rig, which struck some as mighty funny. His horse was rounded up and tied behind and I told him soon as he’s able he can use Jim’s saddle to ride with. He never thanked me for the offer, just glared like it’s all my fault. Some people is just naturally mean-spirited.
The train kept moving later than usual to make up for time lost and we had to gather brushwood in the dark. I come across Grace doing the same as me and asked how things was with her. She says:
“Mrs. Shaughnessy thinks she’s got cholera already, silly old biddy. Mr. Shaughnessy thinks she’s got bats in the belfry. Just yesterday she says someone cut a piece out of one of her dresses she keeps in the back of the wagon, but it’s obvious she did it herself when her mind was unhinged. I have to sing her to sleep every night and she always wants to hear ‘Abide with Me,’ nothing else. It’s just so awful living with them. I think I’ll try and find someone else to share a wagon with.”
She rattled on about how Mr. Shaughnessy keeps making sheep’s eyes at her and touching her hair and such, but I warn’t truly listening. If the cloth we used was from Mrs. Shaughnessy’s dress and not Grace’s, maybe the hex is bound to fail. It was bothersome. Then Grace says:
“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“I ain’t given it no deep consideration yet. Maybe a sea captain if I find enough gold a buy a ship.”
“Oh, pooh,” she says. “That’s what all boys want. Don’t you have anything original in your head?”
“I reckon not, if that’s how you put it. How about you, Grace?”
“I want to be rich. I want to have diamonds and emeralds and rubies and pearls all heaped up in a bathtub of gold with little lions’ feet underneath, and I wouldn’t ever bathe again, just wash myself with precious stones the rest of my life.”
“That’s original all right,” says I. “How do you aim to get it?”
“I don’t know yet, but it’ll have to be through men, since men have got all the money in the world. I guess I’ll have to marry a rich man.”
“But you told me you never even liked men, never mind marrying one.”
“Don’t be such a sap-head. You don’t have to like someone to get married to them. It’s all a kind of arrangement. Men want you for something and you want them for something. You just have to tolerate not liking each other for the sake of what you want. It’s what sivilization is all about, and if you were older and smarter you’d see the sense in it.”
“I thought you wanted to be virgin again this side of the Missouri.”
“And so I am,” she says. “At least until I find a rich man, then he can pop my cherry after the wedding. He’ll never know I’m not a true virgin. Ma passed me off as a virgin for close on two years. It’s all just acting.”
I reckon Graces’s cherry must of been popped so many times if they was laid nose to tail it would of sounded like a string of firecrackers. She had mighty fanciful ideas did Grace, and it’s kind of interesting to listen to her, but she ain’t trustable so she’s got to be struck down by lightning. It’s a shame, and I hope she don’t feel no pain when it happens.
When I got back to the wagon, Mrs. Ambrose was scratching around inside and looking vexed.
“Drat that pesky smell. Where is it coming from? Jeff Trueblood, your eyes are younger than mine. Climb in here and see if you can’t find something bad that’s making it so odorsome.”
It’s the turd-clay doll smell coming up through the boards from where we stashed it. I clumb in and sniffed and it was ripe and prime, but I say:
“There ain’t nothing in here smells bad, ma’am. The supplies is mostly drygoods that don’t turn bad except for the bacon. Did you take a sniff of it?”
“Of course I did. It ain’t that at all. Are you sure you can’t smell something … well, like you can get on your shoe?”
“On my shoe, ma’am?”
“Dogs,” she says. “Cattle. You know what I mean.”
“I don’t believe I ever stepped on any livestock, ma’am. My feet don’t lift up that high.”
“Don’t play the fool with me. I’m talking about dung.”
“Dung, ma’am? You can smell dung?”
“A power of it.”
“Well, it ain’t surprising. There’s hundreds of animals right outside.”
“This is inside. Are you sure you can’t smell nothing?”
“No, ma’am, it smells right nice.”
“Fetch the nigger in here. They got keener noses than whites.”
So I went and fetched Jim and he went in the wagon and sniffed and says there ain’t no smell as he can see, and it made Mrs. Ambrose madder than ever.
“There’s got to be a reason for it,” she snaps. “Go under the wagon and look.”
“We already spread our blankets under there, ma’am, and we never smelt nothing.”
“Well look again.”
So we done it, acting the part, and say there ain’t nothing under there. But she warn’t satisfied and wanted to fetch a neighbor in to sniff around. Says I:
“Is that wise, ma’am? If they do smell something it means they’ll figur
e you ain’t houseproud, and if they don’t smell nothing, why, then they’ll think … no, I better not say it.”
“Say what? What are you hiding, boy?”
“Nothing, ma’am. I just don’t want to upset you. Please forget I ever mentioned it.”
“Mentioned what, for gosh sakes? Do I have to beat it out of you?”
“It’s something I daresn’t speak out loud, ma’am, not with other wagons so close.”
“Well whisper it then, only quit mystifying. It gives me the irrits.”
“It’s … well, you made me say it, ma’am. It’s disease.”
“Disease? What’s disease? Stop talking riddles.”
“Smelling things that ain’t there, ma’am. It’s the first symptom. My Uncle Silas is a doctor and he seen a case once, but it’s mighty rare. Only one in ten thousand gets it, he says, and he’s a disease expert with a sign on the wall to prove it.”
“Symptom?…” she says, looking worried.
“Yes, ma’am, the first symptom of the worst disease there is.”
“Not … cholera?”
“No, ma’am, worse. Bubolitis.”
“Bubolitis?…”
“I reckon so, but there ain’t no need to worry. Some folks get over it without losing hardly any parts of their body, but them that gets the full measure of diseasification, well … they’re better off dead. There ain’t much point in being alive if your legs and arms has all fell off.”
“Fell off?…”
“Yes, ma’am. They just wither away like old fruit and drop right off. First it’s the fingers and toes, then the whole limb. But it ain’t fatal, even when it’s bad as it can get. Why, there was one man who lived to be ninety-three, and he was struck down by bubolitis before he was thirty. They just fixed him up with a baby’s pushcart and trundled him around to see the sights and he was happy as can be. Maybe that’s on account of it does considerable harm to the brain too. There was cruel people who reckoned this man warn’t nothing short of a total idiot, but Uncle Silas says it warn’t so. He never dribbled and drooled from idiotness, just had trouble feeding himself without no arms. It all began with him smelling bad smells that warn’t there, ma’am, but look on the bright side. It ain’t catching, so you won’t give it to no one else. Do you still want us to look for something rotten?”
“No,” she says, “just tie the flap back and let some air in.”
I done it and she give a twitching kind of smile and says:
“There now, that’s better. Why, the smell’s practickly gone already, in fact it warn’t nearly as bad as I figured. I just can’t abide smells is all. Well, it’s gone at last and we can get some sleep.”
“Yes, ma’am. Goodnight.”
Me and Jim bedded down with the blankets over our faces to keep out the stink, and before we nodded off we heard Mrs. Ambrose saying her prayers long and loud, which is something she never done before.
12
The Ways of Women—The Hex Undone—Two into One—Injuns!—A Willing Target—A Threat Withdrawn
We was jumpy all next day on account of tonight is the full moon when we bury the doll and say the spell and wait for the lightning. It made us feel just awful. I turned it over and over in my mind about Grace. She ain’t the nice person I judged her to be first off, but then she ain’t the worst person in the world neither. There’s Pap for one that’s way ahead of her; she’s a saint alongside of him. But if I don’t act like her slave, she’ll spill the news about Huck Finn. I was in two minds over the whole thing, but what decided me was the way she treated me that very day. I come riding along the train and passed the Shaughnessy wagon where Grace is sat up front between them, and she called me over and give me a smile and says:
“Jeff, I’ve got a powerful yearning for a bunch of flowers to pin on my dress. Would you be so kind as to fetch me some?”
Mr. Shaughnessy give me a mean look, jealous I reckon.
“Flowers?” says I. “Where?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” she says, smiling still. “Just you trot along and find me some like a good boy.”
“But there ain’t any. It’s all grass and nothing but.”
She give a little pout and says peevish:
“I’ll be ever so upset if I don’t get a sweet little posy before sundown. Ever so.”
“Well, I’ll try,” says I, and off I galloped.
I galloped here and I galloped there and then I galloped back again, but there warn’t no flowers except little budding things that ain’t opened out yet. Thaddeus was at the head of the line same as always so I ask him about it and he says:
“Too soon. Maybe in a week or so. What you want with flowers anyway? You got a sweetheart?”
“No, but I got to have the flowers urgent.”
“Well you can’t have ’em, and nor can she. Whyn’t you give her a kiss instead?”
“She ain’t the kissing type.”
“Never fool with a woman that ain’t the kissing type,” he says. “She’ll make your life a pure misery. You can get more joy out of a rock than a woman that don’t like to kiss.”
Two mile further on he says:
“You can believe me because I done it.”
“Done what?”
“Fooled with that kind. But only the once. A moron might do it twice.”
“What happened when you fooled with her?”
“Nothin’. Then we got hitched. Nothin’ happened after, neither. You take my advice and point your affections somewheres else. Whose idea was these flowers, hers or your’n?”
“Hers, I reckon.”
“Well tell her to look for ’em herself, and when she finds ’em she can eat ’em.”
“She won’t take kindly to getting told that.”
“It ain’t none of my business. You do what you want.”
Awhile later he says:
“You got wide experience of women, boy?”
“I reckon not.”
“Well you’re young still. Sooner or later you’ll get the call and won’t know which way to turn. If I was you I’d turn in the direction of dusky maidens.”
“You mean Injuns?”
“That’s who I mean all right.”
“Do Injuns kiss and such?”
“They ain’t discovered kissing, that’s a white custom, but they do everything else besides. You find yourself a young one that ain’t all run to fat, and she’ll work you till you’re trimmed down to nothing and won’t have the strength to swat a fly.”
“Did you find one like that, Thaddeus?”
“I surely did. How old would you say I am?”
“I don’t rightly know. Maybe forty.”
“Well I ain’t. I’m twenty-three. This Injun gal run me ragged and aged me overnight, but I never regretted it.”
“That’s just amazifying,” says I. Then: “How old would you say I am?”
“You? I reckon around eighty-five or -six.”
Dang him, he stole my joke right out from under me. He’s sly, is Thaddeus. I never had the bravery to go back to Grace without no flowers, and after we made camp I slunk around in the shadows feeling jittery and low, but she found me anyhow.
“Where are the flowers?” she wants to know.
“There warn’t any. They ain’t in bloom yet.”
“I call that a mighty poor showing, Huckleberry Finn.”
“Pardon me, Grace, would you mind not talking so loud. I’m Jeff Trueblood.”
“You’re Huckleberry Finn that’s got a thousand dollars on his head for murder and other criminal things.”
“I know, but it’s our secret, ain’t it?”
“For now it is,” she says, all breezy and stuck up. “The trouble is, I’m just hopeless at keeping secrets from my friends.”
“I’m the only friend you got, Grace.”
“Well aren’t you just the ignorantest little boy. It so happens I made a new friend today.”
“Who?”
“None of your b
usiness, but I’ll tell you this much, you’re not fit to lick his boots.”
“I warn’t aiming to. He can lick ’em himself.”
“Sometimes I think you’re a pain, Huck Finn. Yes indeed, you give me a pain right in the belly.”
Thinks I, it’s the needle we poked through the hex doll. It’s already working and we ain’t even buried it under the full moon yet. I reckon when we speak the spell over it she’s going to get considerable more pain than she’s got.
“I’m real sorry to hear it, Grace,” says I, looking concerned. “Can I get you some castor oil to fix it?”
“No, you can’t. Just remove yourself from my sight,” she says, lifting her nose like the Queen of Sherbert.
“If that’s what you want, Grace, I’ll do it and feel gratified.”
After that we went our different ways. It was just humilerating the way she made me eat crow, but I took comfort from the full moon riding along above the camp.
Later there was a jamboree around the fires. Everyone that brung an insterment along with them hauled it out and strummed or squeezed or sawed away at it full strength. It warn’t the best music I ever heard, but it’s good and loud and folks started dancing. There’s only one woman to every thirty or so men and them that’s female never got a minute’s peace, even Mrs. Ambrose. They was flung around in circles till they dropped, then the men danced with each other till the music players dropped. Then Grace stood up on a barrel and sung “In the Sweet Bye and Bye.” It brung a lump to the throat and a tear to the eye. Then she done a couple more songs, her voice just as sweet and lovely as can be till the water run down their faces in floods and there warn’t a man there that never fell in love with her for being so saintly and pure. It was the funniest sight I ever seen. Even Mr. Connelly disremembered his broke arm and blubbered away with the rest, so you can see how powerful a distraction Grace is. Well, her days was numbered.
Later still when it got quiet again we untied the doll from under the wagon and took it away, which proberly made Mrs. Ambrose give a special thank you to God for saving her from bubolitis now the smell is gone. We snuck past the guards and went a little way off to bury it. Jim bring along a shovel and I picked a spot and he dug a hole, then we took the doll out of the handkerchief and laid it to rest a couple of feet down. I shoveled dirt over it and patted it down and waited for Jim to say the spell, but he only looked at me queer. Says I: