Huck Out West(43)

With guns going off, them who had give up their weapons the night before was worried they didn’t have nothing to fire back with. They wanted to know when the vegilanties was going to get armed up. Zeb says he put the vegilanty guns in a safe place on account of he didn’t want no more weapons here tonight, but some a them had got stole. Eyepatch’s pal, the one with the scattered brown teeth and bandaged hand, says it must a been the injuns. They was on the warpath and scrouging for weapons. Zeb says maybe, but he don’t think so. “All these here wagons rollin’ in has skeered the breechclots off a them heathens. No, I warrant it was prob’bly somebody in the camp what collared ’em. Somebody maybe right here in this shack tonight.”

The drunks didn’t have much reason left and was most open to sejestion, so they begun staring around at each other in a suspicioning way. Best they COULD stare, for most of them warn’t focusing too good. Some says they reckonized the guns others was carrying as their own, and fights broke out. Some joined in only because they couldn’t get out a the way. Things was a-darkening up pretty quick.

“It was injuns,” Eyepatch says, glaring at Zeb with his one eye. “We seen them crawlin’ outa the crick over on t’other side this mornin’ and scamperin’ away. We fired some shots and chased ’em off and maybe might a killt a couple.”

“That must a been when you was trying to burn down my tent,” I says. “I hid some of the guns in there for Zeb, and when I got the fire out so’s I could see, they warn’t there no more. You never said nothing about Indians.” Eyepatch started up like he’d set on a cactus. Mean murmurs started going round. Eyepatch’s two pals Bill and Pegleg was already out the door.

Zeb was holding back a final jug of his vegilanty pison and he fetched it out now. One of Zeb’s old regulars beside me took a swig and near choked to death on it. “This wretchid forty-rod ain’t like Zeb’s likker at all. It’s wuss’n runny dogshit,” he says, staggering around and wheezing like he’s got a burr in his throat. “Shore got a kick, though.”

The fiddler was still torturing his music box. He was too drunk to do more’n snort a loud racket through his nostrils over’n over that was s’posed to be singing but warn’t a near neighbor to it. It was enough, though, to set two men a-dancing together. One of them was wearing his vest like an apron, but both was still sporting black hats over their beards and they was dead serious. There warn’t much room in the shack and there was bodies all over the dirt floor, but they went kicking out just the same, and the others made room for them and pulled the bodies out of the way and clapped them on, and some was grinning, though most was church-going solemn like the dancers.

Deadwood was so drunk he couldn’t hardly stand, but he wobbled and wove amongst the two dancers, his eyes crossing and uncrossing, a ten-penny glass a Zeb’s brew in one hand, spinning his fob watch on its chain round and round with t’other. The old regular a-near me says Deadwood should oughter hide that gewgaw and keep his head down not to get it shot off. “See them two rough old dead beats over there by that Yankee drummer?” I seen them. Pock-faced fellows with squinty eyes peering out from under slouch-hat brims, dressed in white shirts yallered with age and tattered black waistcoats. One a them had his long hair knotted at the back like a horse’s tail. They warn’t drinking, only chawing and spitting. “Highwaymen t’hear ’em talk. One of ’em says he reckonized that fob watch from a stagecoach holdup and was a-wonderin’ where was the rest a their truck.”

“I could tell Deadwood,” I says. I been afraid of them robbers turning up, and here they was. I had to haul Deadwood out somehow. “But he don’t listen.”

“I know it,” says the old regular.

Just then one a the drunks stomped over betwixt the two dancers, pushed the “man” away, and set to dancing with the “woman.” The “man” pushed him back and they got in a fight. Another emigrant stepped in and took the “woman” for his own partner, and then all three of them was at it. The “woman” just watched haughty-like, then danced with the next drunk to claim him. Others was fighting over what was left in the special jug or over one insult or t’other. There was a generl wild-eyed bust-up winding up. Next to me, Zeb leans onto his short leg and whispers, “We got to go now! I ain’t got nothin’ more to hold ’em off with!”

“Let’s go get Eeteh,” I says.

Punches was being throwed all around, and they was kicking out with their boots and clubbing heads with whatever come to hand. Some was going crazy with the whisky and was down on their hands and knees, screeching and bawling, and others was rolling round and round and screaming that devils had got a-holt on them. The drum was still getting banged somewheres by someone, but there warn’t no rhythm to it. The plank bar crashed over and drunks tumbled over it. I looked for Deadwood to pull him out, but he seemed to of used his head for once and was already ducked out. Nor else he was one of the bodies on the floor that everybody was falling over. Eyepatch was gone, too. I worried that him and his pards might be down at the tepee again where Eeteh was all alone. I had to whack a few of the drunks with my rifle butt for me and Zeb to shove through and make it out the door.

We hurried over to where Abaddon was penned and found him laying dead with his throat slit. Zeb groaned an awful groan and fell down to his knees and hugged the dead dog and bitterly cussed out whoever done it. Then, his eyes still tearing up, he unhitched his mare and his old packhorse, and we struck for the tepee. His goods was already packed up on the horse, and the saddlebags on the mare I was leading was loadened down, too. His stinking bucket a spent mash, the precious whisky-mother that give it its special taste, was sealed up inside a box with leather straps made for it by the coffin maker. The brawl was spreading outside where all the wagons was parked and the country jake was a-hanging, so we ducked down through a dark tangled ravine back a the shack towards the crick and tepee below.