Huck Out West

  “The Irish girl with the red hair?”

  “Yup, that’s her. Was. The Whore of Babylon got inside the pore thing and it was my Christian duty t’free her up, warn’t it? She had friends who was most prob’bly also infested with demons, and purty soon they was legionin’ up agin me, sayin’ I was a heartlust murderer, when I was only doin’ the best I could to save her black soul from etarnal dangnation. So they didn’t give me no choice, I was obleeged to leave them parts in a hurry.” He twitched his shoulders and thrust up his horny paw to ask for two more, but I shook my head at the barkeep. Charlie was likely disappointed, but his pin dots warn’t very expressive. “So, who you workin’ for now, Huckerbelly?”

  “Whoever’ll hire me.”

  Charlie stuffed a wad of chaw into his cheeks. “Still wranglin’ hosses?”

  “Sure.”

  “The general’s in a fort a-near here now and I heerd tell he was a-lookin’ for scouts and wranglers.”

  “You mean General Hard Ass? Near here?”

  “That ain’t his name, but, yes, that’s the cocky SOB I mean, and I mean that complimentry. He took over a fort up here a coupla years back, and he’s killt slathers a injuns so’s to keep the emigrant wagons rollin’ through. Killin’ injuns is a gift he’s got. He stopped in for a quick snort one day and he says some injun he’s got workin’ for him told him you was on your way here.” Charlie let fly a gob of chaw in the generl direction of the spittoon. “Cain’t trust no dumb injun a course. But if I seen you, I’m obleeged to tell you he might have work for you.”

  I had to get this news to Eeteh and the tribe, so I give Charlie the rest a my drink, good-byed him quickly, and had just went to settle up for the whisky and tobacco, when I seen a pretty lady, dressed ever so grand, coming towards the saloon’s swinging doors. I blinked twice to be sure. Yes, it was Becky Thatcher! I grabbed up my change and goods, but by the time I reached the doors, she was gone. Maybe she seen me, maybe not. She warn’t so schoolgirl-looking like before, but even fancied up, you could see she was still a St. Petersburg girl. So, if she’s out here, I allowed, Tom Sawyer must be, too, and I was most roused up by this possibleness. Her classy outfit made me think Tom’d struck it rich. I judged he was trying to find me, but didn’t know I was traveling with natives. I couldn’t hardly wait to spread him my adventures.

  When I got back and told Eeteh about the general, he cussed in Lakota and says it was that brother that my horse throwed in the cactus. He was the one done the scouting for the tribe and must a lied about Long Hair. Eeteh reckoned his brother was trying to land me in trouble with the general, so I should stay in the camp till he found out more.

  But I was desperate to see Tom again, I’d been dancing about ever since I seen Becky, so I pulled my hat down over my eyes and rode Tongo back into town looking for them. I didn’t find nuther one. Who I found—or who found me—was General Hard Ass. Me and Tongo was resting by a stream, cooling off from the midday heat and calculating where to look next, when I smelt the cinnamon. I looked up and there was the general setting his horse over me, fitted out proud in his red neckerchief and his pressed uniform with its shiny brass buttons and epolets. “Well, well,” he says. He was sporting a broad-brimmed cream-colored slouch hat with the brim turned up on one side and fastened to the crown so’s he could sight his rifle whilst galloping along. His rifle was slung across his lap and he warn’t hiding it. “Our deserter.”

  “I ain’t a deserter,” I says. I got to my feet and so did Tongo. “Sir.” He was still setting a mile above me, his yaller hair curling over his shoulders. “I ain’t never been a soldier. I’m just a plain cowboy wrangler and I only set out to sign on another cattle drive, like I said I’d do. I asked Charlie to tell you.”

  “If you work for the army, son, you’re IN the army.”

  “But . . . well . . .” I had to think up something fast but my brain was froze. I was scared for me, but more for Tongo. Seeing that rifle resting there made me think about Star and how his days ended, which I knowed was how he wanted me to think. We was in trouble. “I was in trouble, sir,” I says, but I didn’t know yet what trouble I meant. I couldn’t use Charlie’s story, because it was likely the general already heard it. He was staring down on me, waiting for more. “There was a man wanted to kill me.”

  “What for?”

  “He kept his lady hog-tied in a covered ammunition wagon and give her wrathful hidings there. He thought I’d been messing with her.”

  “Were you?”

  “No, sir. Not exactly. I was only trying to help the lady in her distressidness.” The general smiled benignly. “She was sweet but she had a dirty mouth. When the man started shooting, I lit out.”

  “I see. You disappointed me, Finn. I had high hopes for you. But I can understand how circumstances might have interfered with your judgment.” I was dressed mostly in cowboy clothes to do the shopping, but I was wearing my beaded buckskin shirt and had my bear-claw neckless on for luck, and the look he was giving them things warn’t a friendly one. “But you can redeem yourself. You’re traveling with Indians. I assume you were captured while running away. No white man would voluntarily live with savages.”

  “No, sir. I wouldn’t never think of it.”

  “In fact, you’re living with a squaw. I’m told Kiwingya is her name.”

  “No, she—”

  “It’s all right. Sometimes it’s a practical thing to do.” I warn’t sure how he knowed all this, but I could guess. “I once had a squaw myself. She was a princess of some sort and was kindly and serviceable. But I’d have happily had her disemboweled and fed to the wolves if that had been a convenient example to others, and I assume you’d do the same.”

  “I hope I don’t never need such samples, General. But I anyways don’t live with her and the tribe no more. She throwed me over and turned the tribe against me.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Finn. I have something for you to do, and it might be useful if you were still living among them. You’ll have to go back to them and make amends.”

  “They’re awful mad at me. They won’t let me back.”

  The general was giving Ne Tongo a long dark study. I took hold of Tongo’s rawhide thong. “I think I recognize this stallion,” he says. “He’s one of the animals that got away during our attack on the Cheyenne, when you couldn’t control your own horse. If so, he’s army property and you, in effect, are a horse thief.”

  “No, sir. Wild Bill give me this horse back in Abileen. Roped it himself up in the Utah Territory. He says it was the wildest horse he ever seen, and when I broke him, he bought me a whisky and says I could keep him. You can ask him.”

  “I will. I know Bill well. What’s the horse’s name?”

  “Big River, sir. Mostly I just call him River.”

  “When you were talking to him just now, he had a different name. An Indian one. And he has been broken the way the natives do it, not like I watched you do it for the army. Why do I get the feeling, Finn, you’re not being honest with me?”

  He was right, I was unloosing one bare-face lie after t’other, and if I could a thought up another one, I surely would a let it out, but before I could roust one up, the general he says: “You’re an American, son, those savages aren’t. You mustn’t betray your own people. That’s treason.”

  My crimes was a-stacking up. There warn’t no more sand in my craw. I could only hold onto Tongo and try not to show how guilty I was.

  “We’re going to lure the Lakota warriors into a cul-de-sac and destroy them, the same way they murdered your friend Corporal Harper and his brave army unit. I also had a young friend in that garrison who was killed. And while the savages are chasing us, their camp will be vulnerable to attack, so it too will be destroyed and all who are in it. That’s what’s going to happen, Finn. And you’re going to help. You’ll return now to the tribe and when we need you, you will be informed and you will lead them to us and us to them.” He smiled down at me. “That’s an order, son
.” He didn’t have to say no more. I knowed what they done to deserters, traiters, liars and horse thieves. General Hard Ass took another long hard look at Tongo, touched the wide brim of his hat and, still smiling his cold fixed smile, slowly rode away.

  CHAPTER XVI

  IDING NE TONGO up to Zeb’s shack in the dark before dawn, I felt like I was returning back to the beginning of my story without going nowheres. Zeb’s was where me and Eeteh met up when I was running away from General Hard Ass three years before, like now I was still running away from him again. What was the same was the running. Started back on the Big River, running from Pap. Ain’t never stopped.

  When the general catched me up in the Wyoming Territory, I didn’t know where to go. I’d told the general that the tribe was mad at me and throwed me out, so if I went back to where they was camped in the mountains, and Eeteh’s pesky brother snitched to him, he’d see I was lying. Of course that wouldn’t change nothing, I was already a low-down liar in the general’s books, heaving stretchers at him by the muck-cartload, and him knowing it. But what if I led his troopers there? Maybe, I thought, looking back over my shoulder, he was only letting me go so’s I could do that, reckoning on my stupidness. So I dasn’t go back, but if I didn’t, Eeteh wouldn’t understand why. He might even calculate I’d been captured and stumble into trouble trying to find me. It was like one a Tom Sawyer’s pair a duckses.

  The first thing I had to do was get word to Eeteh somehow. Maybe he’d know what to do. When him and me wanted to call out to each other without nobody knowing, we always hooted back and forth like owls, so I was listening everywheres for his hoots and I was who-whooing myself, best I could, but I didn’t hear nothing back. Me and Tom mostly me-yowed and I was naturaller at cats. They was more like family. Eeteh says my hoots might be exact, but they warn’t made by any owl he ever heard in these parts. “Then it’s the hoot of an emigrant owl,” I says. “That way, you’ll know it’s me.”

  It was resky, but when it got dark and I hain’t heard from Eeteh all day, I rode Tongo up onto a rocky slope in hooting distance from the camp, done my emigrant owl who-whoos, and this time Eeteh was pretty soon hooting back. I was toting the whisky and tobacco I’d bought in the tavern for the tribe, so when he clumb his pinto up and found me, we settled into some boulders high up on the hillside under the moon to drink and smoke a pipe or two, happy we was both still alive, but not for certain how to stay that way.

  Eeteh had thought I was already completely dead. He says that pestiferous brother told everybody he was scouting for the tribe and he seen Long Hair and his soldiers grab me and drag me off to be shot. He was all alone, he couldn’t do nothing about it. He even said he heard the firing squad before he sneaked away. The brother drooped his head down and says he was terrible sorry about it. I says the general found me all right, but if that sorry brother was watching, he didn’t stay around long enough to see what happened next. Eeteh says that he didn’t see nothing, he just set the general on me, and cut. It’s what the low-down liar fetched the whole tribe there to do, he didn’t care about what trouble he was dragging them into. Eeteh was madder’n I never seen him, and says that brother don’t belong in the tribe.

  I told Eeteh all the general said, how he declared me guilty of an awful sight of hanging crimes, and how he wanted me to repent my wickedness by leading the whole tribe into a death trap. Eeteh nodded and sipped his whisky and says the tribe and me should move separate to the Black Hills, which warn’t fur off, and where the army warn’t allowed. The tribe can send out a decoy to lead Long Hair and his troopers the wrong way, he says, and then, whilst his calvary is a-chasing ghosts, they can haul their lodges over there. He told me about the whisky-maker in the Gulch and drawed a map on birch bark how to find him and says he’d look for me there when the tribe finally reached the Hills.

  So that was how it was I first come to the Hills, which for me, till now, was more like home than home was. Soon as Eeteh got nearby, he brung me my lodge-skins and helped me cut some poles and set up my tepee and move down out a the bat cave where I’d been living. Tepees are the changeablest kind of a layout for living in. They make a body feel at home wherever they are. I’d stayed with the tribe for a few years, moving round, and could a gone back with them again, but they seen I was a Hard Ass magnet, and was afeared a me being too close. I was also a little wearied of them and their peculiars, so both Eeteh and me was agreed it was best to abide in the Gulch on my own.

  When old Zeb first seen me and Eeteh together, he hired us to do his trading with the tribe, and that made it easier for Eeteh to come and go when he wanted to. It was the best time of my life, and of Eeteh’s, too. The Indian-hating emigrants hadn’t arrived yet, and we could set around in my tepee and drink and jabber the night through. Zeb needed grains for his whisky-mash, and meat and fish for himself, turnips, hog nuts, berries, whatever other food the tribe gathered, and he also traded for things he could sell to emigrants passing through. All in all, Zeb was doing tolerable well, he was the richest man in the Gulch, though back then that warn’t saying much. Now, everybody was going to be rich in the Rush and old Zeb maybe the richest of them all. I worried Eeteh’s money pouch wouldn’t mean beans to him.

  It was a cold damp morning and I had my chin tucked down in my buckskin shirt. It was too dark to see nothing, but I could hear the noises of others up sneaking about, stumbling over the bodies lying in the cold mud, cussing back whenever one of the bodies got stepped on and let out a nasty bark. There was an awful stink like everybody was just dropping their pants wherever and doin’ their producin’, as Zeb would say, and it made me push my nose deeper into my shirt.

  Then, just as me and Tongo was pulling up to Zeb’s shack, somebody kicked me in the head and knocked me slap off of the horse into the mud. I sprung up and swung my rifle round in the dark, trying to see who done that. And how. The emigrants in their sivilizing fever had chopped down most of the trees thereabouts, but one out a-front of Zeb’s was still rairing up, and something long and lumpy was a-hanging from it. It was so dark, I had to get right under the muddy farm brogans to see that it was that country jake in the floppy straw who come to the camp with just only a pitchfork and a wheelbarrow. I judged it must be desperate bad luck to get kicked in the head by a dead man, specially one who was wearing your own hat, and I begun to feel worried and shaky about the rest of the day ahead.

  Abaddon, Zeb’s cantankery mastiff, was a-guarding the door, but him and me was old pards, so he only wagged his tail and grinned his devil grin whilst I scratched his pointy ears. Inside, Zeb was already set to work by lamplight on a new batch of liquor. His shack was always in ruins, but it was ruineder than ever. Them strangers piling in last night had wrecked everything that could still be wrecked. “It got purty mean,” he acknowledged, scratching his chin. There was a heap of rifles, pistols and other goods like saddles, spurs and even britches and boots, over in a shadowy corner behind the plank bar, things Zeb had took in exchange for whisky. There was also blood on the dirt floor. “Year’s wuth a whisky. Swallered in a night. Tried t’shut the shack down afore that happened, but they shoved a gun in my face.”

  “I’ve had trouble down at the tepee, too.”

  “Some tough-lookin’ jackasses come askin’ to buy up my stock’n close the place permanent, sayin’ they’ll be tearin’ my old shack down t’build somethin’ fancy with whores’n gamblin’, and I kin work fur ’em. But I ain’t stayin’. I don’t work fur nobody. And after yestidday’s rush, I ain’t got no stock left to sell. Jest the mother. They ain’t gettin’ that over my dead body,” he says, jutting his jaw further out under his nose like he was daring a body to argue with him, his yaller bottom teeth showing like scattered nuggets.

  I asked him about the tree decoration out front, and Zeb says, “Shootout over the last jug a whisky. One of ’em killt t’other one like usual. Committee formed theirselves up, mostly stewed pards a the loser who was a-layin’ there with his mouth open. They poured some whis
ky in it, and when it only filled up like a cup, they says the winner’d committed murder, which they declared t’be a hangin’ offense. They was generous, though. Let the feller have a slug a the whisky he’d fought over afore stringin’ him up, then drunk the rest to his mem’ry.”

  “It was too dark to see clear, but it looked like he still’s sporting his old straw hat.”

  “Heerd one of ’em sayin’ that accordin’ to the laws back home, where they had hangin’s ever week, it was reckoned the most sivilized thing t’do.”

  “All this sivilizing is too many for me and Eeteh,” I says. “We’re moving on, too. If you want, we can scout for you. We’re a-going to Mexico, and we’d be happy to have you and your mother as company all the way, if you wouldn’t care to join along.”

  “I’m headed thataway, but I’ll prob’bly jest go on back home on the river, now the war’s over,” Zeb says, staring off like he was already a-pulling in there. “But I could use a coupla guns breakin’ out a this hellhole’n some help totin’ the provisions.”

  I says we can do that. “But me and Eeteh we can’t leave till after sundown.”

  “Me nuther. Cookin’ up a new batch. More like injun whisky. Givin’ it away free. Git the whole camp fallin’ down stone drunk. Then heel it out.” Injun whisky was brewed from black chaw and pine sap and hot peppers and wood alcohol and other worse pison. Zeb never done that. Seeing him go against his principles only showed how horrible things really was. He give me a list of vittles for the road and of rubbage to add to his devil-brew, if I seen them laying round free, and then he flung me a worried look, his bottom teeth chawing on his flabby upper lip. “This dern stuff rots the head cheese, Huck. Turns some people desprate crazy.”

  “I’ll come watch your back, Zeb. First, though, I need some a them guns piled up over there. I’m organizing a, you know, a vegilanty gang.” I showed him the soft leather pouch Eeteh give me. “I can pay.”