Huck Out West(30)

The moon was rising ever so peaceful over the lake in a sky all speckled with stars when we started back down, and I was just setting back for the dreamy ride, when we was suddenly moving flat out again, ripping through the night like we’d ripped through the day. But I warn’t hanging on to his neck no more. I warn’t scared. I was leaning into him, urging him on, slapping his shoulders and haunches, feeling him under me like a part of me. I didn’t know where we was, but I didn’t care, so long as I could stay with the horse. I ain’t never been happier. I didn’t want the night never to end.

We run all night and some a the next day. The rising sun ca’med the horse’s excited spirit and by and by he slowed to a canter and then to a brisk walk. He seemed mighty pleased with himself. Maybe he reckoned he’d won the race after all.

There was a river up ahead, glittering in the morning sunlight, and I walked him over to it. I found I could do this with nothing but my knees and a little tug on the thong. We got down into the water up to his withers and freshed ourselves up. I nearly drownded on the Big River back home, but I didn’t. Instead, I come to love the river, though the river never loved me. That’s how it was with this horse. Ever so splendid and mighty, but indifferent as running water.

Even when it was wet, his coat warn’t a shiny dark, but one that was murky like a secret or like a river at night, witch-dark as Jim would say, and it had lighter flecks like when shore lights glimmered on the Big River’s surface. I knowed his name then.

We moved towards the sun as it rose up over us, and directly we could see the tribe’s encampment. It was scattered out over the plains like pointy pegs on a giant cribbage board. Hundreds of horses wandered among the lodges and in and out of them. It was a welcome sight, but it warn’t home. I didn’t have none. Wouldn’t never.

I was saddle sore without no saddle, beat out and well broke in even if the horse warn’t, but I was setting tall and easy as we entered the camp. They come running out of their lodges to meet us. They all wanted to touch the horse, as if they warn’t for certain he was real, and the horse snorted and shook his head and scared them. They wanted to know what I had seen on t’other side. I says it was mighty lively. They nodded very solemn at that, though I didn’t know what I meant and I didn’t know what they meant nuther.

Later, Eeteh says he was glad I come back, but he didn’t expect me to, so he told them when we went tearing off that we was going to the land of the dead. Coyote was disguised as a horse and he was taking me there to show me the sights. Now they’ll ask me what I seen there, he says, so I should think up what stories I could tell them. I don’t have to make nothing up, I says. I really was somewheres else.





CHAPTER XIII


HEN THE GENERAL left the Gulch and went back east with Deadwood’s glittery rock, he wrote up about it and took the credit, though it was really the loony old prospector who set off the Black Hills Gold Rush. Not that he had no profit in it but a tale or two. It swept right over him like that hurry-cane of his, but this time it didn’t pick him up, it knocked him down. A body has to live in one to know why they call it a rush. One day there’s a few shaggy sad-eyed loafers setting in a shanty sucking up home brew and wondering how the heck they’ll ever get back home again and what they’d do if they got there, and the next day there’s a million people stampeeding in and crowding up the crick shores and hillsides, claiming one patch or nuther with handwrote wooden stakes and fighting each other over them, and then another million comes piling in right afterwards with their wagons and pack mules to try to make money off the first million.

I’d waked before sun-up that morning and had set out my trot-lines and clumb up on Ne Tongo with a couple of whisky-jugs and rode out through the hills to the tribe’s lodges to do some trading for Zeb and have a smoke with Eeteh and maybe some a them fried turnips they’re so proud of. But the lodges warn’t there. Only ashes from small cooking fires spotted about, a few still smoldering like the tribe had packed up and left in a hurry.

I warn’t certain what made them decamp like that, though I could guess, and when I rode back to the Gulch I seen I guessed right. There was tents and lean-tos and wagons and mules and people swarmed up everywheres, with more rolling in every minute. And noise. The Gulch was the silentest place I’d knowed since back on the Big River deep in the night, and now there was hammering and clanging and sawing and horses whinnying and donkeys hee-hawing and all manner of shouting and cussing and arguing, a general lunatic hubbub. Everybody wanted to get rich but only a few would, if any, so they warn’t polite. I heard the crackle of gunfire going off somewheres, sounding like a prairie brush fire, and I knowed it warn’t the last I’d hear.

When I reached my tepee, there were three raggedy men squeezed into it, frying up a pan of fish which I reckoned come direct off of my trot-lines. The tepee was smoky because they hadn’t opened the tent flap above the fire. One of them had a black eyepatch and a row of gold teeth like he was doing his banking there, and another with a wooden leg was smoking my stone pipe. They was all three sporting scars got from fights or from getting catched thieving. Pegleg’s greasy hair hung down over his ears which was both cut off. Their guns was close to hand, but they seen the rifle I was carrying and where my finger was.

“This yer tent is occupied,” Eyepatch says in the snarly way like old Pap used to talk. His black hair was tied into a knot at the back and hung to his shoulders like the tail of a pony. He wore a black bandanna round his head and gold loops in his ears like a river pirate, and his shirt was black. All he lacked was his pal’s wooden leg. All three was trying to look like they warn’t about to jump for their guns the moment I blinked. “That’s right,” I says, “I live here.” They says they judged it was only some damn injun’s and was surprised a white man, if I WAS white, was living such savage ways. “But we left you a corner over there by the back flap, chief. It ain’t exceedin’ clean, but it’s all yourn.” They laughed a mean laugh at that.