Huck Out West(17)
“Theirs is a sad life,” I says, thinking about what Dan said.
“Yup,” says Charlie. He leaned over to spit into the snow. “And it’s ’bout to git sadder.”
When I asked him what happened to Homer, he says, “That dang blowhard run off with some other mizzerbul buggers. I gotta go catch ’em and hang ’em, nor else shoot ’em if they take a vilent dislike to the rope.” He peered over his shoulder, twitching like he often done, and he made that good luck sign again. “Fallen angels,” he says. “Ain’t nuthin more wickeder.” It had got dead quiet with only the push-push of the horses plodding in the snow. “The general was mighty inpressed by your bronc busting, Hucklebelly,” Charlie whispers. “I told him you was planning to join another cattle drive in the spring, but he wants you to stay. He’s took a liking to you. You’re a lucky feller.”
“Why don’t I feel lucky, Charlie?”
“Well, it ain’t easy when your arse is froze,” he says with a grunt, and him and four others turned and struck backwards into the snowfall.
What happened a few minutes later come to be called a famous battle in the history books and the general he got a power of glory out of it, but a battle is what it exactly warn’t. Whilst me and Star watched over the spare horses, the soldier boys galloped howling through the burning tents and slaughtered more’n a hundred sleepers, which the general called warriors, but who was mostly wrinkled up old men, women, and little boys and girls. I seen eyes gouged out and ears tore off and bellies slit open with their innards spilling out like sausages.
When I turned my head away from the distressid sight, there was General Hard Ass a-setting his horse behind me. “Sorry about your soldier friend,” he says. Nothing on his face seemed to move when he spoke, except his frosty moustaches, a little. “Maybe this will help you feel that some justice has been done.” Under the stony cheekbones, there was a thin sneaky smile on the general’s face that seemed like it was chiseled there. “After we’re done punishing the Cheyenne,” he says, “we’ll go after the Lakota. I promise. Now come along. There’s something I want you to do.”
The tribe had roped up near a thousand ponies and what the general wanted was for me to shoot them all. It seemed such a rotten low-down thing to do. They was good ponies and hadn’t hurt nobody. I says I could herd them all back to the fort, but he reckoned I couldn’t, and anyways there warn’t no use for horses broke in Indian-style. “They’re enemy weapons,” he says, “and they must be destroyed.”
He rode off to roust me out some extra shooters and to tot up the numbers of the killed and captured natives. There warn’t no wounded ones. They was all summerly dispatched, which he said on such a night was an act of mercy. Whilst he was busy with that, I loosed up the corral ropes best I could, trying to think what Tom Sawyer would do to stir up a restlessness. He’d like enough have thought about it back at the fort and fetched along a pocketful of black pepper, but I ain’t so smart as Tom and didn’t have no pepper.
The soldiers the general volunteered me come over from the blazing lodges, wiping their knife blades off on the seats of their pants and sucking from flasks of hard liquor. They was a most horrible sight to see. There was blood all over their hands and faces and bellies, and their shirttails was out and their eyes was popping and their teeth was showing and they was snorting and wheezing like they’d run a mile. They didn’t waste no time. They was all fired up and set right to pushing their hot gun barrels against the ponies’ heads and sending the piteous creturs crumpling to their knees. It was too many for me, I couldn’t stand it no more, but I couldn’t see no way out.
Then, all of a sudden, Star took to bucking and kicking and I don’t know if I set him off or the flames from the camp did or if he done it himself, but the next thing all them horses was busting through the loosed ropes and bolting in all directions. I was hanging on to Star’s neck for dear life, scared of falling off and getting tromped in the stampeed. Some of the soldiers did get stomped on, but others further off was shooting at the runaway ponies, and some got away but most of them was murdered.
Star warn’t rearing and kicking no more, but he was trembling all over, and his eyes was wild. I stroked his sweaty neck with my gloves and talked quiet in his ear, trying to steady him. I felt like him and me was drawing close and understood each other. General Hard Ass come over on his horse through the smoke and stared hard at us for a moment, and then, still smiling his frozen smile, he raised up his pistol and shot Star in the head. He looked down at me where we’d fell and says to get on one of the horses I’d led here, we was going back to the fort.
The snowflakes was still a-drifting down in the early morning light, falling on hundreds of dead ponies and dead Indians and smoldering tepees, as we got back on the trail we’d laid down on the snow going there. I was shaking and needed a pipe, but it was too cold to take my hands out of my gloves, and my teeth was clattering so, I’d a likely bit clean through the pipe stem.
On the way back we passed a lonely stand of froze-up cottonwood trees where the deserters was hanging. Homer, being a stout fellow, hung lower’n the others, and the snow had shook out of his thick red beard. Homer always said place never stuck to him; instead, it was him who’d got stuck to place. Their horses was standing round looking downhearted and guilty and half-froze. The officers ordered me to gather them in with the others and take them to the fort, whilst they cut down the bodies, and I done that.