Huck Out West(20)
“Any Indians?”
“Yes, sir. You’ll find them whichever way you go. The Lakota killed some folks up there a few years back and burnt a couple of towns down, but mostly they ain’t much bother.”
“We ain’t afeard. It is our mission to bring them pore ignorant savages to the loving booz’m of our Lord Jesus.”
I seen they was a group who had their own milk cow and chuck wagon, so whilst they was struggling to wind their oxes around, I walked over to see if the cookie couldn’t find me a biscuit or at least some coffee. He was a tall Negro fellow with curly gray frizzle above his big ears, and when he turned around, my heart jumped in my chest like a poked frog.
“You looks dog-hungry, Huck honey,” Jim says with a big gaptooth grin on his face. “What you says to a stack uv flapperjacks?”
CHAPTER IX
ELL, I AIN’T never been more joyfuller surprised. I give Jim a big hug, I couldn’t help myself. He’d took on a few pounds and give up some hair and teeth, but it was old Jim his own self! I begun crying and Jim he was crying, too. We hugged again and some a the emigrants was watching us like it was a scandal to them, but we couldn’t give a dead rat what they thought. “Lawsy!” Jim says. “I never jedged to lay eyes on you agin, chile!” At that moment, we was all by ourselves on the Big River again.
Jim offered me to stow my rubbage behind the chuck box to ease up Jackson’s load, and let me hitch the old fellow alongside, so I done that whilst he was cooking up the flapjacks, the two of us blattering away without stopping. We both had a thousand things to tell. I told him about the Pony and Tom and Becky and about Ben Rogers and Dan and General Hard Ass, and he told me about life with the Cherokee and the wicked slave owner he got sold to and how the reverend and his missus saved him and set him free again and how he got lost but Jesus found him somewheres and fetched him home again.
I tucked into his flapjacks and told him they was the best thing I ever tasted since before we all come west, and he spread his gaptooth grin again and cooked up another stack. It was like when we was back on the river and Jim was waking me up with a catfish fry. I showed off my own gaps and let out a little whoop. It just popped out. I was feeling mighty peaceful. Even if the general come to hang me, I could die a contented man.
I told him how I went looking for him at the Cherokee Nation to try and buy him back, but they says he was sold already to some bounty hunters. Jim says them traders parsed him on to a white slaver downriver from where the war was happening, and even if he was a freedman, he warn’t sad to get sold back there because it warn’t fur from where he last seen his wife and children, and he was worried about them. But his new owner had a mean streak a yard wide, and he treated him real bad. Jim pointed to his missing teeth and raised his shirt to show me the welts on his back. “He warn’t nuffn like ole Miss Watson. She uz a considable sour ole thing, but she never k’yered to harm a soul.” I says I was nation sorry and tried to tell him it warn’t me who sold him, but he only smiled and says, “S’awright, Huck honey, nemmind. I’se free now’n I done found the Lord. I forgives you.”
He told me how the reverend and his missus had bought him and freed him and led him to Jesus, because that was what the reverend done for a living. Folks still bossed him around and he had to work for next to nothing, but the missus wouldn’t ’low nobody to beat him nor call him names no more, he was only just Jim, and that made him comfortabler. The reverend took him to go looking for his family and says he’d buy them, too, if he could, slaves was going cheap by then, but all three of them had got sold to some miners heading to the gold fields in the Montana Territory.
He still hoped to find them, though, and he ’lowed Jesus’d help him out it he didn’t sin no more. “I ax him ever night, Huck. Ain’ no magic dat genlman cain’ do.” He asked me if I’d found Jesus yet. I says I warn’t looking for him, and he says he warn’t neither, Jesus just kinder slid up and knocked him off of the stool he was setting on. “I reck’n’d ’at he was agwyne to fetch me off to de yuther side, so I run fer de reverend, en he tuck en rassled wid my sins for mos’n hour en arter dat Jesus’n me was bes’ frens.”
When the war was ended and all the slaves was freed, the reverend and his missus told him he had their blessing if he wanted to leave, but as they was fixing to go preach out west, he asked to join along with them so’s to search out his family. I told Jim I wouldn’t leave him till he found them, and I meant it, but at the same time a sadful feeling leaked in on my happiness. The adventures I’d had with Jim were the wonderfullest I ever had, but they was over. If we found his wife and children there wouldn’t be no more. It’d have to be the best one.
The missionaires had got their animals and wagons faced around in the right direction, so I went back out to lead them up towards the Trail. Their ox-drawed wagons lazed along inch by inch, nubbling away at eternity, which would a suited me fine if the general’s fort warn’t still so close by, so I done what I could to hurry them along. The missionaires was heading out to spread their fancies amongst the heathen tribes, and maybe pocket some gold and silver for the faithful whilst they was at it. They was guilty of a power of camp-meeting praying and singing whilst they was rolling along and they was all teetotalers, but other ways they was decent enough and, after what they done for Jim, I took a liking to them.