Huck Out West(33)

The Gulch’s easeful stillness was also gone, another unspiriting thing. Sounds was more muffled down by the crick, but there was still a power of sawing and hammering and hollering and cussing pouring down from up where Zeb’s old whisky shack was, and where a whole new town was suddenly festering up like a rash of warts on a toad’s back. There was shouts and twinklings of kerosene lanterns in the hills around and along the crick shore, and gunshots was going off everywheres like strings of firecrackers. Eeteh’s people could hear the racket, too. I don’t hold to nothing sacrid, but I knowed how they felt about the Hills—it was like how I felt about the Big River—and so they was suffering and resenting and a ruckus was a-biling up.

Mostly, though, I couldn’t sleep for thinking about what was going to happen next. I’d growed comfortable in the Gulch, but it was plain ruined and was getting ruineder by the hour. It was filling up with something that was alive and looked human, but that warn’t human. Something older’n meaner. People was wearing it, but like they was wearing their grandpaps’ noses.

Even worst, General Hard Ass was close by, and he couldn’t be happy till he seen me dangling. I had to get to somewheres he wouldn’t find me, but running away from him, I could as easy run into him like I done before, and if I did, mercy warn’t in his alphabet. I couldn’t be comfortable again till we crossed into Mexico, if we ever did. I warn’t sure they talked American there, but I’d cipher out their blatter like I done with the Lakota. And at least I’d be with Eeteh and not so lonely no more, and that was good, but thinking about all that couldn’t let me sleep, too.

Tongo was snorting in a nervious way, fretting just like I was, so I took a blanket and the whisky and my rifle and went out and rested against him. Laying there under the open sky, I didn’t hear strangers sneaking about no more. Maybe the rustlings I heard was only how the breezes blowed on the tepee cover. We’ll be all right, Tongo, I says, and stroked his trembly neck. I don’t know if he believed me or not—if he was like me, he didn’t believe me—but he was breathing in his ca’m steady way again, and directly I begun to ease up, too.

When I rode back to the tribe after that amazing adventure Tongo took me on, me setting native fashion a big wild horse who didn’t seem so wild no more, my ruputation raised up considerable. They treated me more solemner and fetched me buffalo meat and wild bird eggs and give me a bear-claw neckless for good luck and a beaded buckskin shirt like Eeteh’s vest, though without the porkypine quills. His warchief brother Rain-in-the-Face give me a pipe with a stone bowl carved like a horse’s head, but more like a spirit horse from t’other world with its mane flying behind like a war bonnet and its toothy jaws dangersomely a-gap.

The Lakota call their horses medicine dogs, meaning they got some kind of unnatural powers. That’s too many for me, but it’s true that Ne Tongo warn’t like any horse I’d ever rode before. I thought I knowed everything about horses and riding, but all I really knowed before was my saddle. I had to learn horse all over again from Tongo.

Tongo never tolerated nobody else to ride him, so if I warn’t on him, he was wild as he ever was. Some of the braves was jealous and pushed at me to take a turn, but he throwed or kicked anybody who tried him, and they warn’t always happy about that. One of Eeteh’s brothers decided I warn’t worthy of a horse like Tongo and claimed him for himself. He shoved me away and made to mount him, but Tongo galloped a few yards, stopped, and bucked him heels high into a cactus patch, making the whole tribe laugh. That brother blamed me and turned against me, and in the end he turned against the tribe, too.

They all wanted to know what was so lively about t’other side, so with a little help from Eeteh I unloosed a few friendly stretchers about dancing with the dead, and got to know Coyote better that way, though I’d still never met him nor warn’t likely to. For the Lakota, Eeteh says, the next world was just like the one we was in, which was a considerable improvement over harps’n angels. Except IF it’s like this world, Eeteh says, he don’t know what they do with all the enemies they kill. Maybe there was another next world for them that gets killed twice. And so on . . .

So I told them how Coyote and me met up with all the dead chiefs in their splendid lodges and went to their wild parties and et and drunk with them, though it was like eating and drinking air. The dead was all having a most joyful time, but when me and Coyote tried to join in the fun, they warn’t really there, just pictures of them that could talk to you, but didn’t have no surfaces you could lay your hands on. Being dead looked like a lot of fun, but they told us we warn’t ready for it. They laughed at our meatiness and sent us back to this side again. I did kiss one of the ghosty maidens, I says, and felt her lips for a minute, so maybe I was half-ready, and the tribe give me a few haws for that.

Kiwi, who thought all the Lakota was crazy and me worse’n all them together, left me not long after that and moved in with the two old tyrants again, or maybe the joke was over and they made her do it. The tribe had plenty young widows of warriors who was killed in battle or in ambushes by settlers and soldiers or just betwixt theirselves—even the games they played for fun was mighty rough—and these widows come to my lodge from time to time to take care of me. They sometimes wanted to make a family, but I warn’t never a family man—Pap had cured me of that—so I didn’t let none of them move in. Some of them did try to ruin the lodge by cleaning it up all over, but it warn’t hard to mess it up again after I’d chased them out.