Huck Out West Read online

  Before I left him to come up to Zeb’s, he told me another Coyote story. There was a time, he says, when things was going poorly for Coyote. He had the earache, the toothache, the bellyache, and monster boils under his tail, but the worse thing was the rash of pustulous sores that broke out in his crotch. His wife was disgusted when she seen them and left him to go live with Snake, but he couldn’t a done nothing with her anyways. A woman come to take care of him, but she pisoned him with an evil potion that left his innards twisted wrongside out, and then robbed him of all his money, tobacco, and spirits. He knowed that Snake had powerful medicines and “speak great wisdom,” as Eeteh put it, so he decided to go visit him. Snake might a s’posed Coyote was a-coming to kill him on account of the cheating wife, but by then Coyote was so sick he could only crawl like a worm (Eeteh imitated this), so Snake laughed and took him in and doctored him and talked to him whilst he was getting cured. The peyote that Snake et give him visions of the beginnings and endings of things, and those visions led him to concluding that nothing mattered in the world no more and everything, even boils and pustules, was funny. Coyote laughed along with him, and then when he was well again, he killed both Snake and his woman and cooked them up with prairie onions, wild mushrooms, and buffaloberries, and et them, saying he hoped Snake got the joke and didn’t take revenge whilst he was passing through. Eeteh was telling me this story in Lakota, and I had to stop him now and again to ask him what some words meant. I had the feeling that whenever I done that, he was changing the story a little.

  Things was a-biling up now in Zeb’s shack. Folks was turning testy and old Zeb was nerviouser’n I never seen him. The drummer in the derby was pounding the skin of his insterment like he was trying to bust it, and the fiddler was scratching his strings and screeching away through his nose like something of his’n down below was a-getting twisted. A new emigrant come in wearing a string a black-haired scalps on his belt, some of them with their ears still on. He knocked over a drunken loafer who was in his way and opened up his pants and let fly against a wall. One of Zeb’s regulars took offense at that and was just sober enough to take aim and shoot the emigrant’s pecker off. That crazied the new emigrant so, he fetched out two six-shooters and he might a hurt somebody if the others hadn’t stopped him dead with twenty or thirty shots before he could start blasting away. “Thanks, boys,” Zeb says, crawling out from under the bar plank. “Some people ain’t got no manners.”

  With guns going off, them who had give up their weapons the night before was worried they didn’t have nothing to fire back with. They wanted to know when the vegilanties was going to get armed up. Zeb says he put the vegilanty guns in a safe place on account of he didn’t want no more weapons here tonight, but some a them had got stole. Eyepatch’s pal, the one with the scattered brown teeth and bandaged hand, says it must a been the injuns. They was on the warpath and scrouging for weapons. Zeb says maybe, but he don’t think so. “All these here wagons rollin’ in has skeered the breechclots off a them heathens. No, I warrant it was prob’bly somebody in the camp what collared ’em. Somebody maybe right here in this shack tonight.”

  The drunks didn’t have much reason left and was most open to sejestion, so they begun staring around at each other in a suspicioning way. Best they COULD stare, for most of them warn’t focusing too good. Some says they reckonized the guns others was carrying as their own, and fights broke out. Some joined in only because they couldn’t get out a the way. Things was a-darkening up pretty quick.

  “It was injuns,” Eyepatch says, glaring at Zeb with his one eye. “We seen them crawlin’ outa the crick over on t’other side this mornin’ and scamperin’ away. We fired some shots and chased ’em off and maybe might a killt a couple.”

  “That must a been when you was trying to burn down my tent,” I says. “I hid some of the guns in there for Zeb, and when I got the fire out so’s I could see, they warn’t there no more. You never said nothing about Indians.” Eyepatch started up like he’d set on a cactus. Mean murmurs started going round. Eyepatch’s two pals Bill and Pegleg was already out the door.

  Zeb was holding back a final jug of his vegilanty pison and he fetched it out now. One of Zeb’s old regulars beside me took a swig and near choked to death on it. “This wretchid forty-rod ain’t like Zeb’s likker at all. It’s wuss’n runny dogshit,” he says, staggering around and wheezing like he’s got a burr in his throat. “Shore got a kick, though.”

  The fiddler was still torturing his music box. He was too drunk to do more’n snort a loud racket through his nostrils over’n over that was s’posed to be singing but warn’t a near neighbor to it. It was enough, though, to set two men a-dancing together. One of them was wearing his vest like an apron, but both was still sporting black hats over their beards and they was dead serious. There warn’t much room in the shack and there was bodies all over the dirt floor, but they went kicking out just the same, and the others made room for them and pulled the bodies out of the way and clapped them on, and some was grinning, though most was church-going solemn like the dancers.

  Deadwood was so drunk he couldn’t hardly stand, but he wobbled and wove amongst the two dancers, his eyes crossing and uncrossing, a ten-penny glass a Zeb’s brew in one hand, spinning his fob watch on its chain round and round with t’other. The old regular a-near me says Deadwood should oughter hide that gewgaw and keep his head down not to get it shot off. “See them two rough old dead beats over there by that Yankee drummer?” I seen them. Pock-faced fellows with squinty eyes peering out from under slouch-hat brims, dressed in white shirts yallered with age and tattered black waistcoats. One a them had his long hair knotted at the back like a horse’s tail. They warn’t drinking, only chawing and spitting. “Highwaymen t’hear ’em talk. One of ’em says he reckonized that fob watch from a stagecoach holdup and was a-wonderin’ where was the rest a their truck.”

  “I could tell Deadwood,” I says. I been afraid of them robbers turning up, and here they was. I had to haul Deadwood out somehow. “But he don’t listen.”

  “I know it,” says the old regular.

  Just then one a the drunks stomped over betwixt the two dancers, pushed the “man” away, and set to dancing with the “woman.” The “man” pushed him back and they got in a fight. Another emigrant stepped in and took the “woman” for his own partner, and then all three of them was at it. The “woman” just watched haughty-like, then danced with the next drunk to claim him. Others was fighting over what was left in the special jug or over one insult or t’other. There was a generl wild-eyed bust-up winding up. Next to me, Zeb leans onto his short leg and whispers, “We got to go now! I ain’t got nothin’ more to hold ’em off with!”

  “Let’s go get Eeteh,” I says.

  Punches was being throwed all around, and they was kicking out with their boots and clubbing heads with whatever come to hand. Some was going crazy with the whisky and was down on their hands and knees, screeching and bawling, and others was rolling round and round and screaming that devils had got a-holt on them. The drum was still getting banged somewheres by someone, but there warn’t no rhythm to it. The plank bar crashed over and drunks tumbled over it. I looked for Deadwood to pull him out, but he seemed to of used his head for once and was already ducked out. Nor else he was one of the bodies on the floor that everybody was falling over. Eyepatch was gone, too. I worried that him and his pards might be down at the tepee again where Eeteh was all alone. I had to whack a few of the drunks with my rifle butt for me and Zeb to shove through and make it out the door.

  We hurried over to where Abaddon was penned and found him laying dead with his throat slit. Zeb groaned an awful groan and fell down to his knees and hugged the dead dog and bitterly cussed out whoever done it. Then, his eyes still tearing up, he unhitched his mare and his old packhorse, and we struck for the tepee. His goods was already packed up on the horse, and the saddlebags on the mare I was leading was loadened down, too. His stinking bucket a spent mash, the precious whi
sky-mother that give it its special taste, was sealed up inside a box with leather straps made for it by the coffin maker. The brawl was spreading outside where all the wagons was parked and the country jake was a-hanging, so we ducked down through a dark tangled ravine back a the shack towards the crick and tepee below.

  About halfway down, I heard a most woeful moan and fetched up short. I thought it might a been a wild animal and I spun around with my rifle pointed at it, but it was Deadwood a-laying there in a patch a moonlight, looking half-ruined. His face was just raw meat, he was a-bleeding round the ears, and at least one of his arms was broke; a leg, too, looked like. He didn’t have many teeth before, now he didn’t have none. “Deadwood! Who done this to you?” I asked. He couldn’t talk, he could only groan. Anyways I knowed who. His fob watch was gone. Looked like his jaw might be busted. He needed a doctor, but there warn’t none anywheres I knowed of. Unless Eeteh could help. I started up my emigrant owl hoot.

  Zeb limped up with the packhorse behind me. “We don’t have no time for this!” he says. You could still hear the hollering and the guns popping, but not so loud down here. “If that damfool’s in trouble, it’s trouble he’s made for hisself! WE GOT TO KEEP MOVIN’!”

  “It was the fob watch, Zeb. Them robbers reckonized it. It’s them that’s done this. I told Deadwood to show it, so’s we could get everybody up to your shack tonight. He done it for US! And he ain’t got nobody else to help.” I could hear Eeteh far off answering me. I let out some more urgent hoots.

  “We AIN’T takin’ that crazy old liar WITH us!”

  “No, we ain’t. He’s anyways too beat up to travel. He might not even make it through the night. But we can’t leave him here to die where they throwed him!”

  Me and Eeteh kept on hooting, and soon he was down in the ravine and crawling up. Zeb was still complaining, and when Eeteh took one look, he says he don’t know no medicine powerful enough for the mess Deadwood was in. “Zeb right, Hahza. We leave now.”

  “You know some things that might help,” I says, staring into his black eyes, shining out from behind their curtain of ropy black hair like from behind hanging vines. “You and Coyote. You know.” Eeteh shrugged and looked down at the old prospector. “Leastways we can try to set what’s broke and carry him back to his shack where he can rest more easier. After that he can take care of himself.”

  Eeteh sighed and shook his head. “Is right thing to do, Hahza,” he says solemnly in Zeb’s language and mine. “Is wrong thing to do. But I do what you do.” Zeb grunted irritably.

  “You’re pulling a slow packhorse, Zeb,” I says. “You can get a head start.” I took off the bear-claw neckless I was wearing under my shirt, and give it to him. “This is for good luck, Zeb. It ain’t done me no favors, but maybe it’ll work for you. Watch you follow that back trail like we said, so’s we can find you. Me and Eeteh will settle Deadwood and catch you up before dawn.”

  Zeb looked like his spirits was sunk in his boots, but he dropped the bear claws in his jacket pocket and clumb up into the mare’s saddle. He reached into his saddlebag and give me a small flask a that black rum he’d used for the vegilanty brew. “I was keepin’ this for the road,” he says. “But Deadwood’s gonna need it more.” Then, leading the packhorse behind him, he trudged off slowly, climbing up into the dark.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  HILST WE WAS setting Deadwood’s broke bones in the moonlight, using sticks and branches tied with rags tore from the shirts of emigrants laying dead-drunk in the mud up the hill above us, Eeteh got to telling the story of how Coyote tricked Time. Deadwood was favorably busted up, but he warn’t feeling no pain. He didn’t know where he was and he probably wouldn’t never know again. His nose was squashed and Eeteh had molded up a new one, pushing his fingers up the nostrils to press the inside papery bits back together. We scooped up mud and grass to make a cast for it.

  When Eeteh was resetting Deadwood’s toothless jaw, I sneaked back up to Zeb’s to pry the bar plank out from under the drunks who’d fell over on it. Things was still pretty crazy in there, but sinking towards a generl stupidness. The hooting and hollering and gunshots was mostly moved outside where it warn’t so crowded up with bodies.

  We strapped Deadwood down to the plank like a litter, and betwixt the old prospector’s scrawny shoulder blades, we stuffed a shirt I’d hived off of a fallen emigrant. We stripped off his filthy old coat and pants, leaving him in a kind of handmade union suit he probably hadn’t took off since he put it on, and begun trying to do something about his busted bones. It was slow work, stretching all the bones apart and settling them back together best we could, then splinting and bandaging them up, and time was exactly what we hadn’t got near enough of. Which was why Eeteh was gabbling on about it. We was both scared, but we neither of us was trying to show it.

  Eeteh says that Time used to be lost in empty space and nobody growed old, until Sun and Moon come along. Sun and Moon they worked for Time. Time was the boss. He could talk to you, mostly just to push you around, but you couldn’t talk to him. There warn’t no stars yet and Moon was always either shining or not shining, so there was only two days in each month and they flew by, tick-tocking back and forth like Deadwood’s fob watch. People growed old so fast they didn’t hardly have time to get born before they was dying. It was how Time wanted it. Dying warn’t a particular concern a his and he didn’t have to learn to count past two.

  Coyote was feeling very sad about it, Eeteh says, so sad he thought he might kill himself to stop growing older, but he was a coward as bad as we was and couldn’t make himself do that. He reckoned the only other solution was to stop Time or at least stretch him out somehow like we was doing to old Deadwood.

  Time kept Sun and Moon apart, they lived in separate lodges and warn’t noway allowed in the same one together. Only one a them was let out into the sky at the same time, though Moon sometimes lurked about like a shy ghost in Sun’s sky, wishing Sun would look her way. Wishing didn’t do her no good. Sun was only in love with his own self. This was before Coyote sent Turtle diving down in the ocean to bring up earth for people to live on, Eeteh says, so the world was still slopped over with water, and Sun spent all his days smiling down at his own reflection. He would a kissed it if he could. Moon stared at her reflection, too, but only because her sky was dark and there warn’t nothing else to look at. Her reflection was pale as death, a-floating in pure blackness, and it only made her feel more lonelier’n ever.

  I says I thought it was Duck dove down. Eeteh, making a sling out a some loafer’s muddy shirt, says he didn’t know for sure if Coyote ordered Turtle down or else it was Duck or Water Beetle or Muskrat, or even if he went himself, like Kiwi always said. Kiwi was a Crow and Eeteh reckoned the Crows knowed more about the beginnings and endings of things than the Lakota done, so he thinks maybe Coyote swum down himself. I says that either way it sounded like right down bullwhacky to me, even though it warn’t near so foolish as the stories folks back in St. Petersburg took stock in, declaring them to be the Gospel Truth, and Eeteh says stories is stories and got their own rules about the truth.

  The tribe was most always all asleep when Moon was let out in the sky, and people never even seen her, Eeteh says, easing Deadwood’s shoulder bone into its socket with a crunchy noise, but Coyote he stayed up and watched. We put the broke arm in the sling and strapped it to his chest and Eeteh set about working on the fingers. They was most all busted. Sun was proud like a warrior chief, Eeteh says, and he lit up the water world like it was on fire. He lorded it over everybody and didn’t need nobody else. But Moon she was lonely and sad and was always chasing after Sun, Coyote seen that.

  Eeteh made a little ball out a mud and leaves and fitted Deadwood’s fingers round it, pinching each bone carefully into place. It was like he could see Deadwood’s bones with his own fingers. The problem, Coyote judged, was dawn. It there warn’t no dawns, people wouldn’t have to die no more. So he stitched up a curtain of rain and fog so’s Sun couldn�
�t see himself on the waters no more and nobody couldn’t see him. That was how clouds and rain begun, Eeteh says, wrapping a rag round Deadwood’s balled hand and settling it into the sling. His hair, hanging loose and tangly from the headband, kept getting in his face, but he let it.

  Then we set about working on the busted leg, which was a good sight harder. Deadwood was a sinewy old bird, and pulling his leg bones apart to refit the broke ends was most more’n we could do. We needed eight hands, not only four. Sun was terrible lonely, Eeteh went on, grunting from the stretching work, and he went hunting around for that bright face he admired so. He couldn’t find it. It had plain disappeared. But Sun seen a face looking like it, Eeteh says, only ghostlier and sadder and beautifuller in a less showy way, and he could not only look at it, he could kiss it, and he knowed then he warn’t never going to be lonely again.

  We was both straining hard and could feel the bone pieces fitting back. There was a little click like maybe the bone ends was coming together and maybe they warn’t. Maybe they was only breaking off worse. Meantimes, Eeteh grunts, reaching for the splint, Time kept stubbornly plodding on, too stupid to be able to change his ways. Like most a the Great Spirits, he didn’t really have no brain of his own. Without Sun and Moon to help, he was lost and fuddled and didn’t know where he was.

  It was desperate hard work, but we somehow got Deadwood’s thigh bone put together and the splint tied up and we set to work on the lower part, while Eeteh, stubborn as Time was, kept on with his story. Moon knowed twenty-eight ways of hugging and kissing, Eeteh says, and she learned Sun all of them, showing him a different piece of herself each time to rouse him up, and then she learned him them all again, and all over again, and again, and that was how the stars was born and the year was made. If she’d knowed a hundred ways to do that, then months would have been even longer, and lives, too, Eeteh says, but she couldn’t think up no more. Sometimes she made Sun think up one of his own, and they added that in, but mostly he choosed things he used to done by himself when he only had his own reflection to stare at, and he let her do it to him, and that’s how the Spirit Road got made. “You have better name for Spirit Road,” Eeteh says.