“You got de sun insider yo’ head again, Huck? Das de bulldog dey done took outer yo’ hair. He ain’t no friender your’n.”
“I know it, but we can’t just let him get tortured and killed. It ain’t right, Jim. Could you live with a thing like that hexing you night and day the rest of your life?”
“I reckon I could give it a try.”
“Well, I can’t. It ain’t fair for Bulldog to get butchered for something he never done.”
“You gone crazy for sure, Huck. I disbelieve what my ears is hearin’.”
“Look at it this way, if we rescue him he’ll be so danged grateful he won’t chase after us no more.”
“He ain’t chasin’ after you now. He goin’ off to get hisself butchered.”
“I can’t let it happen, Jim, not even to the bulldog.”
We argued on it awhile before Jim give in, then we got mounted up and followed the Injuns’ trail over the ridge. Two different bunches of them come and went this way four times in all, so even if we never had eagle eyes it warn’t hard to follow the trail all them ponies left behind. They was way ahead of us, just a dust cloud miles away now, and we trailed them at a steady lick till late afternoon when we seen smoke from their campfires, then we hid among rocks in case they got lookouts posted and waited for dark. Jim was sulking and never talked to me, but it give me the time to ponder what it is I’m aiming to do.
Ever since we started west little pieces has got whittled off the inside part of me that makes me Huck Finn, all the killing and death I seen carving off another piece till I don’t hardly reckernize my old self no more. I could feel it getting smaller and smaller inside me, that part I can’t describe. It’s the part you take for granted, the good part I reckon, and I used to wonder how come men like Pap and Morg and Rufus and Eben and Bob and Jesse don’t have none of it, and now I know it’s on account of having it whittled away by the things they done that they shouldn’t of and the things they never done that they should of. There ain’t no escaping it. If you disbelieve in judgment from above then you got to make up your own mind on what things is good and what’s bad. Leaving the bulldog to die is bad, even if I don’t like him. I never wanted to feel another piece whittled off me. Maybe there’s just so much of it inside you and no more, so you got to be careful how much you let slip away. If you pull out a hair it’ll grow right back, but just try the same thing with a tooth, or chop off your hand and see what happens. So I ain’t doing it for the bulldog so much as for my own self, and if it ain’t possible to rescue him at least I’ll know I give it a try. I ain’t preaching, it’s just how I feel.
We waited till after sundown. I made Jim stay with the horses and left my Hawken there too. I never wanted to kill no one, just get Bulldog free. When it was truly dark I legged it for where we seen the smoke, maybe a half mile away. I hunted around awhile before I found the camp on account of it’s hid down in a little ravine, and it warn’t much to look at neither, just scrappy-looking huts made from skins laid across bent-over poles, not so big as the tepees the plains Injuns uses. There was maybe twenty scattered along the ravine and when I snuck down to them a dog come at me barking, but I planned for that and throwed him some jerked meat which he et quiet-like. I tippy-toed through the village, listening close at every hut for the sound of sobbing or praying, but all I got was snores. The dog come along with me whining for more, so I give him the last of it to keep him hushed and hoped there ain’t no other mutts around, but it looks like it’s just a one-dog village.
Then I seen the bulldog. He’s tied to a pole frame that’s got scalps dangling off it and he’s stood up but spreadeagled, tied by his wrists and ankles, and his head is drooped forward. There warn’t no one on guard so I slid up to him and whisper:
“Bulldog.… Are you alive?”
His head jerked up and I put a hand over his mouth to stop him yelling. There’s blood on his face but far as I can tell he ain’t been tortured and was still dressed except for his hat.
“It’s me, Bulldog.… Huck Finn.”
“Phinnph?…” he says.
“Just hold still while I get you untied and don’t make no noise.”
I went to work on the knots, but untying them was a problem in the dark.
“Stop wasting time,” he hisses. “Cut them!”
“That ain’t the way I got it planned, now hush up.”
It took awhile but I finally got him loose, then I say:
“Take off all your clothes.”
“What?”
“Take off everything, every last stitch.”
“What for, you fool?”
“Listen, Bulldog, it’s the only way to stop them coming after us. If they figure you just got free they’ll chase after you and likely get us all, but if they figure you got away by magic they’ll be too scared to. I lived with Injuns so I know. Get them clothes off, we ain’t got time to argue.”
He done it reluctant, but he done it, and after he took out his wallet to keep I fixed up his clothes and boots in a loose pile and retied all the ropes with open loops where his wrists and ankles was, then pulled the eagle feather out of my hair and stuck it inside his crumpled jacket.
“What are you doing, Finn?” he hisses.
“Making it look like you turned yourself into an eagle and flew off. They’ll talk about it for the next fifty years I reckon.”
“Ingenious,” he says. “You have cloaked the commonplace in the trappings of mystery.”
“This way,” says I, and we snuck back through the village with the dog keeping us company till we was a fair ways beyond. The bulldog give out a cuss whenever he set his feet down on sharp rocks or thorns and it was a slow haul back to Jim and the horses. Bulldog wanted me to tell him how come I knowed the Injuns had him, but I just cloaked it all in the trappings of mystery and told him not to make so much noise. Jim was waiting for us and all set for the getaway. He’s put all the water we got left into two barrels and dumped the other two so Barrett has got a horse. We mounted up and walked the horses away so’s not to make noise by galloping, not till we was miles off.
It must of been the easiest escape in history. Tom Sawyer would of been disgusted and called it a cheat on account of I never let the Injuns know ahead of time I planned on getting the bulldog free and never done it around noon so they can see it happen. He would of left a note to tell which way we’re headed too, just to put ginger in the whole adventure, and I’m mighty glad he ain’t here to snag up things with his cleverness.
When we got far enough away I say:
“Bulldog, get off that horse if you don’t mind.”
“Why?” he says.
‘Just do it, please.”
“You’re going to kill me, aren’t you.”
“I could of let the Injuns do that.”
He got down and stood there all white and naked in the moonlight. Says I:
“Bulldog, you been after me some considerable time now, and seeing as I never done the murder I’m getting mighty irritated by the way you keep hounding me. What I done tonight is save your pesky life, so I reckon you owe me a favor and I aim to claim it right now. You got to quit keeping after me this way. You got to go back to Missouri and tell them you never found me, or found me and killed me or anything you want, but don’t let me catch you on my trail again. I want a new life without no clouds hanging over it, which means you.”
“Finn,” he says, “I’m obliged to you for your timely and audacious rescue, and when we reach Missouri you may rest assured I will tell the story in court as proof that you are not entirely an animal. Your sentence will no doubt be reduced from hanging to life imprisonment as a direct result of my testimony, you have my word.”
There’s gratitude for you. He’s just the most muleheaded person I ever come across, acting like he owns the world even when he’s stark naked in the desert with no horse and no gun.
“See here, Bulldog, if you don’t promise to quit chasing me I’ll have to put a ball into you,” says I, lying.
r /> “I am prepared for death,” he says, “but not for defeat. I have never failed to catch my man and will not do so in the case of a mere boy. I may die in this forsaken place, but my reputation will remain unsullied by failure.”
He’s a lunatic, definite, and there ain’t no point in arguing on it.
“Barrett, see that bluff over yonder that comes to a twin peak? We’ll leave a horse there for you. I reckon it’ll take you all night to reach, and that’ll give me and Jim a chance to put distance between us and you. If you got any kind of sense you’ll head back east, because if I see you ever again I’ll kill you for sure,” says I, lying still.
“I accept your terms, Finn. Wherever you go, always look over your shoulder for me.”
“Jim,” says I, “have you still got the dress Mrs. Beckwith give you?”
He pulled it out of his saddlebag along with the bonnet and I flung them to the bulldog.
“That’s to keep the sun from burning you. We ain’t got no spare boots so you’ll just have to get along without none.”
“You won’t deter me with humiliation, Finn. I am made from stronger stuff than that.”
“Suit yourself, Bulldog. We’ll leave the horse where you can find it easy.”
And we rode off. I figured he’d be more inclined to put the dress on once we was out of sight. Desert nights is surprising chilly. Later on we tethered the horse under the twin peaks then set off north and west to hit the Humboldt River and get back on the California Trail.
24
Samaritans—Two for the Price of One—Hard Times—Snakemeat and Swampwater—Hardest Time of All
We got lost. Lydia’s map told where all the mountains and deserts and such is, but it never told where we was. We never had no compass and wandered off course a couple or three times, once deliberate when we seen a bunch of Injuns way off in the distance from high ground, and it was four days till we come to the Humboldt and seen wagon ruts running alongside the river. The Humboldt don’t have the sweetest water I ever tasted, but our barrels was empty so we’re obliged to drink it.
A few days along the trail we come across a four-horse team and a wagon that’s leaned over with a busted wheel, and when we rode up a man in a suit of clothes that seen better days rushes out and says:
“Welcome, friends, welcome! I have glad tidings for you. The person you seek is but two days ahead of this place where we presently stand.”
“Who might that be?” I ask, wondering if he’s another lunatic, which I had considerable acquaintance with by now.
“The lady … or gentleman did not say, but he … she gave an exact word portrait of you both and seemed anxious to meet up with you again.”
“Was it a lady on a brown and white horse with a beard?”
“The lady was bearded, the horse was not.”
So the bulldog was still after us. Well, it come as no surprise, and now everyone we never wanted to bump into is ahead of us, and I reckon it’s better that way than behind. Says I:
“That’s my Uncle Silas. He ain’t peculiar or nothing, it’s just that our family has got a custom that says all the men has got to wear a costume all the time on account of the family home in St. Louis got burned down in the middle of a costume ball and we never saved nothing but for the clothes on our backs, and we all of us made a vow we’d always wear some kind of costume till the time we get our fortune back again. That’s how come I’m dressed like an Injun. Me and Uncle Silas is on our way to California to get rich so’s we can dress like normal folks again. We’re good and tired of getting stared at in the street.”
“A fascinating story,” he says. “My name is Obadiah Jennings.”
“I’m Jeff Wilson and this here’s Goliath.”
Mr. Jennings ain’t a young man no more, around forty-five maybe, but with only half his hair. He says:
“Are you perchance familiar with the fixing of wheels in a state of bustedness?”
I went over and give it a look. It’s the spokes that broke and they’re hard to fix without you got all the right tools. Says I:
“The easiest thing is to get a whole wheel off a wagon that’s been left behind and fit it on.”
“Alas, young Jeff, my hands are unsuited to such labors, being as you see of artistical configuration.”
And he waggled them at me so’s I can see how long and skinny his fingers is, and his wrists too. He says:
“When the unfortunate accident happenstanced I was pitched from my seat into the dust of the trail and well nigh squashed by oncoming teams, a terrifying moment which will loom large in the corridors of memory-keeping. Only my fleetness of foot saved me. Why, I hear you ask, did my fellow travelers not come to my aid in the matter pertaining to wheel fixation? Because, young friend, I was unloved by that ill-natured throng of gold lusters, a thorn in their miserable sides accounted for by my sensitivity of nature and ill-endowment with the brawny flesh to which all such aspire and are measured against. They went by with not a backward glance to the rear, content if not joyous to leave me stranded in these wildernessy regions frequented by savage redskins. Was ever man more cruel to man? And now here I wait for the arrival of one, or even two, possessed of the samaritan mode of expression, that they might offer assistance renderable without recompense, yours truly being blighted by poverty as well as a busted wheel.”
We got ourselfs in a peck of trouble helping the McSweens with their wagon that time, but they say lightning don’t strike the same thing two times so me and Jim rode back a few mile to where we seen an empty wagon and pulled a wheel off it and brung it back. We jacked up the wagon end with rocks and fitted the new wheel and Obadiah done a little dance for joy. He smelled of whiskey and I reckon he had a jolt while we was away.
“Thank you, thank you.” He smiles, showing off his yeller teeth. “I am much in your debt and appreciable of the time you have spent in this worthy cause. I presume you will not be wending your way west to waylay Uncle Silas.”
I warn’t about to go wending nowhere near him. Says I:
“Me and Uncle Silas ain’t on good terms right now, so I reckon we’ll travel along with you if you ain’t indisposed to the idea.”
“Indeed not, young Jeff. Two days spent in the company of my own self have taught me the burden of lonesomeness, and there is none greater.”
So we unloaded our barrels and supplies into the wagon and hitched the pack horse behind and rode alongside. Obadiah was starved for talk and rattled on all afternoon, most of it the kind of conversation you take in through one ear and let out of the other without troubling your brain in between. He drunk considerable too, reaching behind him now and then for a bottle and gargling on it, but it never made him talk cockeyed or nothing so I reckon he’s used to it. When he drained that bottle dry he flung it aside and struck up a friendship with another, so he’s got a regular supply of drinking partners stashed away in the wagon. Whiskey never brung out meanness in him like it done with Pap. Friendly and cheerful is what whiskey makes Obadiah, only by sundown I kind of wished he’s a mite more quiet and moody like the general kind of drunk that’s poured that much inside of him; my ears was wore out with all that talk, talk, talk.
We made camp and built a fire and et, and afterwards Obadiah offered me and Jim a drink, the first white man that ever done that to Jim except me, and we both drunk deep. Obadiah says:
“My profession back in Springfield, Illinois, was the most fraughtsome and difficult upon the face of the earth, namely and to be specific, intermediary between this world and the next. I consigned the sad deceased that are dead and gone from carefree day to endless night, there hopefully to find rest eternal and not pay rent nor suffer the indignities that are heaped upon us one and all in this life we struggle through.”
“You was a preacher?”
“No indeed, an undertaker.”
“I never met one before,” says I.
“We are a lonely breed, young Jeff, and must endure the separateness that is our daily lot. No m
an, given the preferment, will take an undertaker as his bosom friend, yet when there is death in the family to whom does he rush with flying feet? Why, to me, and upon my shoulders falls the burdensome and thankless task of laying out the dear departed and wiring up jaws left agape in dastardly death. The undertaker plows a distant furrow and carves a lonely turkey unless he takes unto himself a wife of female characteristic for solace and to keep him from abuse of his mortal coil, but alas, it was my misfortune never to meet such an angel of mercy.”
Me and Jim listened awhile longer to stories about what happens to dead folks before they get shoveled under, real hair-raising stuff, then Obadiah says:
“I feel tired …”
And he keeled over on his back directly. Lucky he was sitting down or he could of done himself serious hurt. Says I:
“Do you reckon he’s sick, Jim?”
“Naw, jest drunk is all, lessen his jaw tuckered de rester him out.”
We put him in the wagon and left him snoring and done some of the same.
Obadiah warn’t inclined to wake up next morning so we hitched the team and drove along with him still snoring in the back, and we went along like that all day till it’s time to make camp again. He opened his eyes then and come out of the wagon and says:
“Who are you?”
“Jeff Wilson and Goliath, Mr. Jennings. Don’t you recollect us from yesterday?”
“Yesterday?” he says. “Ah yes, but surely that was today.”
“It was yesterday, honest. You had yourself a heap of sleep.”
“Nonsense,” he says, snappish, and never spoke another word till after we et. Says I:
“You must of been starved for food I reckon, Obadiah.”
“My name is Frank,” he says.
“But you told us you was called Obadiah.”
“No, no, you mistake me for my brother of that name, a name seldom if ever mentioned within the family circle. Into every generation is born a black sheep, and Obadiah has long been the bane of my existence, a sour and withered fruit upon the family tree. Pray do not mention him to me again, as his name causes indigestion.”