Huck Out West(24)

I restoked my pipe, tucked the silk drawers under my shirt again, and went for a walk. It was the middle of the night and a million stars was out and it was ever so still and grand. Starlight on the river makes a body feel at home. Starlight on the prairie is dustier and generly makes a body sadful and lonesome. But on that splendid night they was lining out the amazing adventure that me and the girl was starting up that didn’t have no end to it. Only the lonesomeness and sadfulness was ending.

The hard part, I knowed, would be leaving the wagon train without them catching us. We’d have to pack up in secret and sneak out when nobody warn’t watching. Her father was expecting to get rich off of her and might ruther shoot up his property than lose it, and for certain he’d aim to hang me as a common thief if he catched me. And we’d have to borrow another horse from somewheres. Jackson couldn’t even walk with two riders on him. But these problems warn’t no consequence. My hands was inside my shirt and the drawers was sliding and slithering betwixt my fingers. I’d find a way.

I warn’t alone in my restlessness. I come across one of the bullwhackers also out studying the stars. He was sucking from a canteen and he don’t ask me if I want some, he only took it off of his shoulder and handled it to me. I took a swallow and it near knocked me over. He says it was made out of chokecherries, crab grass, rubbing alcohol, and cactus figs, with some molasses throwed in to soothe up the bite, and while I was still wheezing, he took the canteen back and poured down a gulletful. He says him and his missus warn’t members of this congregation, but had joined up back at the railhead on the Missouri border. His druthers was to hurry along on horseback, but his missus had a trunkload of fancy dresses and julery and some quality furniture, so he’d had to buy an old farm wagon and rig it up. He seen that I warn’t part of the holy beseechings neither, and judged I might could use a drop. He offered me the canteen again, and I says I did have a considerable longing, but I warn’t certain I could survive another jolt of that brew.

“What you got there, sport?” he says, squinting. “Is that your guts spillin’ out?”

It was the silk drawers on the move again. I pushed them back in one side and they leaked out t’other, all a-shivery like they was alive. “It’s a poultice for my buboes,” I says, “and there’s too much grease on it.”

“You got buboes on your belly?”

“That probably ain’t how they’re called. That was my pap’s name for them. Of course, he didn’t know nothing.” I shoved the shifty drawers in with both hands and, to change the tune, I asked him why he was a-going west. “You a prospector?”

“Y’might could say so. I been minin’ a deep gully and I ain’t got to the bottom of it yet.” He let loose a mighty belch like a steamboat blowing out its chimbleys, then took another swig. “I met Blanche in Nawlins where she was a workin’ gal. She says she wants to get to Frisco and I says I’d take her there but she’d have to marry me first. So we got hitched and we been on the road ever since. Blanche she is a hellion, but I cain’t live without her. I cain’t live with her, I cain’t live without her, it’s like a question without no answer.”

“I’ve knowed ladies like that out here in the Territories,” I says, still trying to swallow down that first swallow. “But mostly I’ve took up with the older ones who is generly of an easier disposition. I got me a real girl now, though—back home, I mean—who’s most awful sweet and beautiful, with big eyes and little dimples in her cheeks.” I could see her wagon across the way and I had a powerful hankering to go over and crawl into it. “I can’t stop thinking about them dimples.”

“I know what y’mean, scout. My Blanche has got dimples, too. Nothin’ like ’em for rousin’ a man up. Who’s watchin’ over your gal whilst you’re gallivantin’ round out here?”

“Don’t no one need to. There’s only me. She said so. We’ve laid out a plan to run off together.”

“Only you, hunh? Wisht I could say the same. I had to shoot a man in Arkansaw for messin’ with Blanche, and I cain’t really say fer sartin it was his misdoin’. But why run off? Why not jest go home to your cherry’n hook up?”

“She’s got a mean pap who keeps her locked up and beats her most severe.”

“Hm. That old bugger should oughter have his ballocks tore off. Unless she’s like my lady. When I jined up to the wagon train, I seen that these was religious people and Blanche she warn’t of the same style. I didn’t want her leading all these pore rubes into tentation, so I keep her tied up in that wagon over yonder where she cain’t git in mischief.”

He laughed and raised his leg and passed some wind and offered me the canteen again, but what he’d said had just took the tuck all out a me. I turned and upchucked vilently and stumbled back to my tent and throwed myself inside it, him a-laughing drunkenly and shouting out something about my buboes.

I laid there all night worrying this awful news and feeling so desperate sick I dasn’t raise my head. Was his Blanche and the young girl the same person? I couldn’t patch them up. I kept seeing her pretty face, the tears on her cheeks, her little hands bound up so cruel, her innocent smile. Well, maybe not so innocent. If she was the bullwhacker’s missus, she was a married woman and a hellion and a lady of the night and a bare-face liar, there warn’t no use to deny it. But the worse of it was, even if she was, I still wanted to run off with her. The way she looked at me, nobody’d ever done before, even if it was pretend. Maybe if I went on pretending, she’d go on pretending, and we could live a pretend life like that. Warn’t that how most lives was? Just look at all Tom’s yarns.