Huck Out West(34)

I traveled with the tribe for many seasons, mostly hunting down the last of the buffalo herds, having about as good a life as I ever had. Me and Eeteh, we spent hours talking and riding together, sipping whisky, and beguiling ourselves by matching up Coyote against the Great Spirits, tripping them up and making clowns like us out a them so’s they’d be more tolerable. Eeteh, who don’t believe in nothing, not even Coyote, says it was Coyote who hitched him up again to his spirit side and helped him to see and hear with the eyes and ears of his heart. “Laughing all we have, Hahza. No Great Spirits. Only laughing.” I amenned him and laughed and raised the whisky-jug at him, then drank from it and passed it over.

Leaning there now against Tongo, I was just sinking into a muddled doze with my eyes open but not seeing nothing, my thoughts not thoughts no more, just pictures, mostly of me and Eeteh or of them young widows, when a crunching noise and a curse over by the tepee startled me up again. I grabbed my rifle and hunkered down and stared into the dark trying to make out who it was and what they was doing over there. There was a dark shape thrashing about a-near the opening like a wounded bear and I took aim at it. “Dag NAB it!” it cried out. “Somebody HELP me!”

I lowered my rifle and went over to give old Deadwood a hand. When I lifted him to his feet, he just sunk down again. “It’s the dern rheumatics,” he whimpered.

“You’re so blamed drunk, Deadwood,” I says, “I’m surprised you was able to find your way down here.” The old prospector mumbled something about worrying about me and coming to protect me, but a body could see how lonely and scared he really was. I lifted him inside and wrapped him in a blanket. There warn’t much of him, just pointy bones with dry skin stretched over.

“I’m cold!” he says, shivering. “Cain’t you set a fire?”

“Them new rapscallions up there mostly ain’t been round long enough to know where I’m living at, Deadwood, and I ain’t setting out a lantern for them. Many of them’s worse’n road agents, they ain’t even prospectors, just pure robbers and murderers, but you already know that.” Which give me a notion about collecting the rifles Eeteh needed without having to let out who they was for. “Some of us is joining up a vegilanty gang to do something about them varmints, Deadwood. We need good shooters like you, so we’d be honored to have you in the gang.” This chippered him up some. “I’ll be gathering up rifles for the shooters. But it’s a secret and you mustn’t tell no one.” Which was like telling a mosquito (I’d just got bit) it mustn’t bite no one. You can slap at it (I done that), but it’s always too late.

To give Deadwood a little more to think about, I sejested a secret signal for who’s a friend and who ain’t, knowing he’d get it mixed up and tell everybody. “Just show them your fob watch. If a body don’t ask you where you got it, that’s a clue they’re in on the secret and you can tell them about the rifles. But if they do ask, watch out, don’t let on about the vegilanty gang. Just tell them that the railroad bosses give you the watch, like you done before.”

“Railroad bosses?”

“You know, like you was saying.”

“What was I saying?”

“For helping them spike the rails together on their new train tracks.”

“Oh. The RILEroad bosses. Yup, I prob’bly done that. It’s why they gimme this fob watch.” He showed it to me.

“And one other thing I got to tell you about, Deadwood. My brother Jacob he come a-visiting and he died of the pox here in the tepee.”

“Your brother—?”

“You recall Jake. The tall skinny baldy with wire spectacles.”

“No front teeth?”

“That’s him.”

“He was your brother? I didn’t know he catched the pox.”

“Sure, you remember, Deadwood. He broke out in all them runny green sores from head to foot. You SEEN him. It was horrible. Both him’n his dog Ranger.”

“His dawg?”

“They was laying dead right there where you’re setting.” Deadwood stared down in alarm at the ground betwixt his legs. “But it’s all right now. They both got buried proper up on the hill and everything in here’s all cleaned up.”

Deadwood worried this over. I could see he was already remembering Jacob into his yarns. I reckoned to take the tepee cover with me when me and Eeteh lit out, and Deadwood, I knowed, wouldn’t even notice I was gone. He’d only miss the tepee and make up stories about who lived in it and what outrageous things they done. “Afore Jake got ruint by the pox,” he mumbled, though his voice was so slurry you had to’ve heard the yarn or one like it a thousand times before to understand a word of it, “me’n him useter do shootin’ contests.” His eyes was closing, and he was snoring and mumbling at the same time. “He’d throw a silver dollar in the air’n shoot it’n afore it come down I ud . . . I ud . . .”

I left Deadwood sleeping in the tepee and walked down to the crick to wash some cold water on my face. Deadwood’s snores might keep wild beasts away, but human beasts was likely to get drawed to them, so I’d have to keep awake. The next thing was to find some rifles for Eeteh and stow them in the tepee. Zeb is always up hobbling round before dawn, so I reckoned I’d start there, maybe get it all done before the sun come up.