Huck Out West

  Whilst leading Wyndy around the camp, I seen that Eyepatch’s pal, Yaller Whiskers, had took over Zeb’s old shack and turned it from a jail back into a bar again. If Tom wanted his jail back and Yaller Whiskers in it, didn’t nobody have to go too far. It seems that nobody paid him any mind after Tom shot up Eyepatch’s leg, so he just stayed where he was and set himself up back in business again. He somehow found a card table and four chairs and a used slot-machine, and there was already a line waiting for them. He had a new partner, a sleepy-eyed chap with a flabby upper lip hanging down over a tuft of Chinaman’s beard, who ducked when he seen me. He was familiar, but I couldn’t think who he was.

  Toothless old Deadwood, jaw askew, was setting out front on a wooden chair in his filthy union suit, popping his fob watch open and shut, and telling folks passing by how he got so crippled up. Sometimes it was Indians, sometimes it was bandits, sometimes it was wizzerds or that hurry-cane that carried him off to Wyoming, sometimes just his rheumatics. They say the new town was going to be named after him, or else after the same thing he was named for, and he was monstrous proud about it. He’d right away that same night shook off the splints me and Eeteh put on him, so now one elbow and one knee bent up the wrong way and nothing else was exactly right nuther. Deadwood says out the side of his mouth it was that hurry-cane dropped him flat on his backside and scrambled up his bones. When I come towards him to say hello, he yipped and tried to run away. His limbs took him every which way at the same time, making him look like a daddy-longlegs running. “Outen the way or suffer the conSEEquences!” he shouted as he banged up against Zeb’s old shack. The loafers hanging round hooted and clapped.

  When he hit the shack, both Yaller Whiskers and his pard was looking out and they both fell backwards to the floor like they’d been knocked over like duckpins. I reckonized the chinless sleepy-eyed pard now. It was Mule Teeth without his two front teeth. Must a pulled them out and shaved his upper lip to disguise himself when Tom was rounding up all the crinimals that day he come riding in. His Chinaman’s beard warn’t hanging straight under his nose, but was parked back a ways.

  There was talk about the calvary riding thisaway to round up all the loose hoss-tiles and end the Indian problem once and for all. That set off cheers here and there as the word spread round. General Hard Ass was said to be leading them. Eeteh and me didn’t have much time. I looked over my shoulder, but Wyndy was still dogging me. Once when I was telling Tom my troubles with the general, he says, “Hard Ass is the name of every general I ever knowed. On the outside they’re hard as rock, but it’s just a hollow shell. If you say something to them, you can hear your own voice rattle round inside.”

  The picture-taker come out and set up his traps on one of the wooden sidewalks, aiming them at the front door of the generl store. Tom was strolling behind the parked wagons in his white hat and doeskins, looking important, chattering quietly to folks as he passed them by. The drummer was with him, mumbling his drum softly. Then the drummer banged louder and Tom clumb up on the sidewalk, stepped a-front of the camera and raised his hat. Everybody hoorayed. “As I got to be away so often on vital govment business about the hoss-tile problem,” he declares, “I’m today pointing a new deputy mayor-govner, a man who has already contry-BYOOTed to law’n order in the Gulch by setting up the first gallows, and who is himself a prime sample of redemption from a life a grisly wickedness: the famous Black Avenger of the Spanish Main, CAP’N PATCH!”

  The front door of the generl store opened up and Eyepatch stepped out on his new wooden leg, fitted out in black like always, a gold-toothed smirk on his scarred face, gold loops in his ears, his one eye a-glitter with raw meanness. The crowd out front yelled and whooped. They could not get enough of the amazing apparition. His black shirt had been mended, his boot shined, his black hair combed and knotted at the back, and his moustaches trimmed. What was new was the wooden peg and the bear-claw neckless round his throat, the one the tribe give me for good luck, but that fetched me and Zeb so much bad. Two old-fashioned horse-pistols was tucked in his belt, and one a Tom’s gleaming cutlesses was hanging at his side. The picture-taker asked Eyepatch not to move, and he didn’t, snarling steadily at the camera lens till the picture-taker was satisfied. He LOOKED like a bad man and he WAS a bad man. I couldn’t think what Tom was up to.

  So that evening at twilight, whilst setting around the fire after supper, having a smoke, I asked him. “He’s the scoundrel who killed Zeb,” I says. “Shot the old fellow in the back and stole that bear-claw neckless. If you ain’t here, he’s bounden to get into more mischief.”

  Tom didn’t know what old fellow I was talking about at first. “Oh, the whisky-maker, you mean. Never knowed him, so I can’t judge. What I need right now is to find a parrot or a falcon for the Cap’n to wear on his shoulder. I wonder if a chicken-hawk would be like enough? You know how to catch one?”

  “Tom! He’s a cold-bloody killer! After he murdered old Zeb, he tried to hang ME for the awful things HE done! You’re making a hero out a the wickedest varmint I ever SEEN!”

  “I agree he ain’t no angel, Huck. Cap’n Patch was born bad, and he’ll die bad. Can’t help himself. Meantimes, though, I need a chest a gold doubloons to bury, so’s he can dig them up.”

  “You got nothing BUT buried treasure out here. Let him pan for them dern specks. Hang it all, Tom, you ain’t—”

  “No, they got to be doubloons. Maybe I could knock out his gold teeth and CALL them doubloons, then hide them and make him find them.”

  “That name you give him—warn’t that what you called yourself when we was kids together playing pirates?”

  “Might a been. Not important. Don’t even know what the heck a Spanish main is, but it’s a powerful clever name for a pirate.”

  I could see it warn’t no use. He had his mind set on doing whatever it was he was doing. I relit my pipe and laid back against a stone. I was smoking my stone pipe because I wanted to. Me and Eeteh was going soon. Warn’t no reason to hide nothing. And it felt good in my hand. It was still early. I could only see one star. Twilights was peacefully long up here in the Hills this time a year. There was enough light that some of Tom’s pals was still panning gravel at the shore, though they was wading deeper out now. Tom says I been setting on one a the richest plasser gravels on the crick, and he fixed up a claim from the year I first come here. I says he can have it. He also claimed up acres and acres a mud at the emigrant camp above, which he was planning to parcel out into lots once he makes it legal for it to be a town. Noises was drifting down from up there. A gunshot or two. Sivilization. I says he can have that, too.

  Tom had been staring at my stone pipe for a while and now he asked about it. I says it’s the head of a spirit horse and it was give me by the tribe after I rode Ne Tongo back. Big River. So then he wanted to know about Ne Tongo, and I told him about the magic ride and all that happened after. It was darkening up some and a few more stars was showing. I was glad Tom was getting interested in my life, even if he warn’t going to share it.

  “Still got your old pony saddle?”

  “No. Don’t use none.”

  “What happened to the pony?”

  “The tribe et him.”

  Tom clucked as though to say, that’s savages for you. I grinned. I think I felt more at home with the tribe than even Eeteh done. “Where’s the horse now?”

  “Eeteh’s watching over him till we leave.”

  Tom paused, thinking about that, and poured himself some whisky. “Is he riding him?”

  “Can’t nobody ride him. Just me.”

  “Do you think I could? Would he except a western saddle?”

  “No, but you could try him without one like me. Don’t think he’d let you, but mostly anything I can do, you always do better.”

  He sat up and turned to look at me. “You shouldn’t go, Hucky. I need you. I can get the horse back for you.”

  “But what about Eeteh? There’s a bounty on his head now. And the tribe’s
on the warpath. That don’t work for Eeteh. He’s lonely and scared like what I am.” I could hear him now, if it warn’t a real owl. It warn’t a happy hoot. “Him and me can’t stay. But you can come with us.”

  Tom had a thoughtful look on his face like he was considering that. Then the accident he was worried about happened. The robbers’ cave blowed up. The explosion was deefening and sent rock flying all the way down into the crick. Might a been anything blowing up, but I knowed it was the cave.

  Tom and everybody went running up there, and I clumb up, too, though I warn’t running. I was scared at what I’d find. There warn’t no cave, just a pile a rock, dead and stunned bats everywheres. There was a dead body all blowed apart, but it didn’t have Eeteh’s head. It had Peewee’s. I judged he might a been sent to light the fuse, but Tom, who was poking about in the rubble like something might be found in it, says panning the crick for specks probably warn’t fast enough for Peewee. He must a been looking for a shortcut.

  There warn’t no sign of Eeteh. The last thing I heard from him was that owl hoot. If it was him. I had to hope I’d hear another, but I didn’t think I would.

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  WALKED UP TO the cave through the rain the next day to look around. Wyndell tried to stop me, but I pushed him away. Tom once said I knowed how to cuss and fight, but not how to get mad. Maybe he was learning me. The preacher had a grumpy look on his goggled face. He probably wanted to go report on me, but there warn’t more’n one a him, so he only could follow me along. It seemed like it rained every day in the Hills. It was always sloppy and uncomfortable. It was like a wet picture of my squshed-down miserableness inside.

  Before he left crickside that morning to go make himself richer, Tom says he’s sorry to tell me, but he’s afeard my friend is fatally expired. At the cave, Bear says the same. Him and a couple of others was trying to move the rock pile, but he says it was a most nation hard job, and they don’t know if they can do it. Bear showed me a beaded buckskin vest, torn and bloodied, that they found under the rocks. Eeteh’s. He says it was near some body bits, which was probably once part a him. “We ain’t struck no more heads yet, only Peewee’s, but me and the others’re still looking. Don’t hold much hope, but it don’t matter. Jest only an injun. He prob’bly won’t mind being buried right where he’s at.” He give me the vest when I asked for it. “Nice beadwork,” he says. “Needs cleaning up, but it should fit.”

  If the body was dug out, I reckoned I’d put it in a tree in the tribal way. Bodies are set in trees so their souls can fly straight off to the next world without nothing to get in their way. In Eeteh’s Coyote world there ain’t nothing next and no souls neither, only a few comical ghosts, but I’ll do that for him anyhow. We both been good at pretending. I was pretending now, jabbering in a quiet way with Tom and Bear, tolerating Wyndy.

  Whilst I walked sorrowing along, heading back crickside because I don’t know where else to go, I passed a small horse-drawed buggy, and the person inside called out, “Huckleberry! Huckleberry FINN! Is that YOU?” It was Becky Thatcher! “Get IN!” she says with a happy laugh and opened the door for me.

  She give me a big kiss when I squeezed in and laughed again. There was a pretty smell about her and a most wonderful softness. “Tom ain’t here,” I says.

  “I KNOW that, Huckleberry! It’s YOU I want to see! It’s been so LONG!” I asked if she warn’t the person I seen, dressed up so pretty, in that saloon up in Wyoming a few years ago, and she says, “Aw, Hucky, those were my working clothes. I HATE them. Yours are prettier. I LOVE that vest, though it needs a washing. I was still chasing after Tom back then, and I was working that trail, waiting for him to show up on it. I supposed most everybody would, sooner or later. And there was no shortage of customers. Cowboys get lonely.”

  When she says the word “lonely,” I felt the hurt of it and my throat thickened up. “You was riding with cowboys?”

  “Oh, Huckleberry . . .” She sighed and touched my cheek. “I’d just started up my new profession. Cowboys are mostly only little boys, their pants full of ignorant excitement. If they also got money in their pants, I can generally do something about the excitement, and about their ignorance, too. I GUESS you could call it riding with them.” She laughed and clapped her hand on my leg and I jumped. “Aren’t YOU the ticklish one!” she says with a tittery little laugh. “All right. Let me tell you flat out, Huckleberry. Tom left me in St. Petersburg more’n a dozen years ago when I was six months heavy with our baby. I lost it and, when I stopped crying, I came west looking for him. A girl’s not supposed to DO that, but I did. Sometimes I got close, but it was like he’d always catch wind of me somehow and move on. I ran out of money and hope and finally I met Dorie and started doing what I HAD to do or starve. I was just only coming to work that day when you saw me. I didn’t want Tom to know, and I was afraid he might be with you. If he did turn up, I didn’t know if I’d hug his feet or shoot him.” She sighed. “Now, it don’t matter anymore.” She slumped back in the seat like she was thinking over about what she just said. “So, where’ve YOU been, Huckleberry? Did you come here to the Hills with Tom?”

  “No, been here for a time. The Gulch was a most lazy and tolerable place till people like Tom come’n ruined it. Me and a Lakota friend helped an old whisky-maker trade with the tribe and move his goods, and we helped him drink them up, too. I was happy as I ever been. Then a crazy old prospector found a yaller rock and everything changed. Tom he come and saved me from a lynching, but he made a mess out of everything else. Me and my friend was fixing to leave for Mexico or somewheres, anywheres, just so’s we was away from here, but I got sick with the janders. Now, all of a sudden, he’s dead.” I took a deep breath. “Got dynymited.”

  “Oh! Last night! I HEARD it!” Her voice was like a sad little girl’s. “Is that his vest? That’s blood on it, isn’t it?”

  I don’t never cry. But I was crying.

  “Oh, Hucky!” She put her arm around me and kissed me again. She was crying, too. “Look! We’re HERE!” The buggy was stopping. I ain’t even noticed we been moving. “It’s where I live. Come in for some real ’buckles coffee and Dorie’s butterscot cookies.”

  Whilst Becky was giving the driver some money, I crawled out and wiped my eyes and seen that Wyndy been following us on horseback. He did not look a happy man. “Tom hired him to watch me,” I says. “He don’t give up easy.” She waved at him and invited him in. He hollers out from a ways off on his horse that, no, Finn’s got to go back to the camp. NOW! Becky shrugged and took my hand and led me in, put the latch on the door.

  It was the loveliest place I seen since I come west. There was curtains on the windows and pictures on the walls and a cast-iron stove with a big new-fashioned porcelain tub behind it and soft chairs with crocheted doilies on them like in Tom’s aunt’s house. “Old Dorie likes a homey place,” Becky says, stoking up the fire in the wood stove. She poured water in a painted tin coffee pot and set it on.

  “Dorie?”

  “Hunky Dorie. She’s my business partner. She fixed up this house for us because of all the fat boys here in Leed, but we’re looking for a bigger place where we can hire in more girls. And the fat boys are too tight with their money. Can you imagine? They want to KEEP it! So, we been to Stonewall to look around, Hillyo, Camp Crook, all the new shantytowns.” When the water was a-biling, she throwed in a handful a coffee and took the pot off the fire. “Today Dorie’s over in a new town on Rapid Crick. There’s a lot of quick money in the Hills right now, but you have to grab it as it goes flying past, and it helps if you’re where it first sets off.” She poured me a cup a thick barefoot coffee through a silver tea strainer, and laid some cookies on a little tin plate with painted flowers on it. It was the best coffee I ever tasted. “For me, these mining shantytowns are too wild and scary,” she says, then thumbed some snuff up her nose. “I’d like to be in a civiler place like Cheyenne or Abileen or even here in Leed, but Hunky Dorie loves excitement and hates the la
w. She says the law don’t mainly favor the profession. And the miners at least are grateful, while the fat boys think they own you.”

  “Is Tom one a the fat boys?”

  “He’s around. They say he and some other bandits have partnered up, and they mean to grab it all. He pretends he doesn’t see me. Or maybe he’s not pretending.” She sneezed and rubbed her nose. “I was never able to make out how you two got to be friends. He doesn’t have any others. Just only you.”

  “I don’t know nuther. I warn’t nobody, just a dumb leather-headed loafer sleeping on the streets. I never done the things everybody else was doing like church or school. They said I warn’t sivilized. But then Tom took me like a pard. That changed everything. All them stories Tom likes to tell, the Sarah Sod ones with the jeanies? It was like that. So, when he asked me to light out for the Territory with him, there warn’t nothing else I wanted to do. Scouting out here with Tom was the most amazing life I could ever imagine. I wished it would last on forever.”

  “But then I come along,” she says. A kind of sadfulness slid across her face, but then she smiled and says, “Scouts is what me and Dorie are now. It’s why I was over in Deadwood Gulch. We’re not scouting for Indians and robbers, though. We’re looking for stupid horny boys with little bags of gold dust around their scrawny sunburnt necks.” She giggled sweetly, just like she always done as a schoolgirl, then sniffed. “When’s the last time you had a bath, Mr. Huckleberry Finn? By looks and smell, I’d judge at least a month or more.”

  “It’s been some time. Me and my horse used to wash up regular in the crick, but the horse is gone and the crick shore is full of tetchy gold panners who don’t tolerate nobody stirring things around.”

  “I’ll hot up some water.”

  “Well . . . I ain’t partial to baths . . .” She was still Tom’s woman. I was thinking about Coyote and Snake Woman, and where all that ended up.