Huck Out West(5)

I opened the smoke flap in the tepee and stirred up the fire, and then took my pole down to the crick to catch us some supper. Dusk’s half-light is always prime for fishing. Hardly before I’d begun I had me a handsome black crappie close to a forearm long to go with the half-dozen panfish on my morning trotlines, some of them still snapping their tails about in a kind of tragic greeting when I hauled them up. I know it don’t make them happy, but it seems only fair for us fellow creturs to give up our bodies to others’ appetites. I don’t want to get et by mountain lions, but I wouldn’t hold it against them.

I larded up a frypan and set it on the fire, throwed in some salt and the cleaned fish, and set back to enjoy an evening pipe. The Lakota had gave me a carved stone pipe which was soft and smooth and warmed the hand. I kept it in the tepee where I wouldn’t lose it. It was what I had for good luck when the world was mostly throwing bad luck at me. It was such moments as made me feel I’d finally come to the right place. Plenty grub and an easy life, ain’t no bad thing, as that humbug king we traveled the river with was like to put it.

At the same time, I misdoubted it could last. Though I didn’t know it at the time, Deadwood’s unlucky find would make sure it wouldn’t, but you had to be blind in both eyes not to see there was already changes happening. The Gulch when I first slid into it felt like it was fixed here forever, but it warn’t. There was always new fortune-hunters riding in, discovering their way to the whisky in Zeb’s shack, and there was ever more and more of them, prowling the hillsides and crick beds. Some had staked claims, others just swarmed round to see what they could steal. They was tramping up the place and every day it looked ever more wore down and sivilized. These new folks warn’t near as friendly as the old ones. Of course they was just like the old ones, warn’t no beauties in the Gulch before them, only these new ones hadn’t got rectified yet by failure and disappointment. And none of them was reckoning with Eeteh’s people when their dander’s up. For the Lakota, these scoundrels was all trespassing. Any fool could see, rough times was a-coming.

I’d just pocketed my pipe and took the fish off of the fire, when all of a sudden there was a muffled gunshot and a ball ripped through the tepee one side and out t’other, missing me by a whisker. Deadwood was screaming. “HALP! HALP! I been SHOT! I’m DYIN’!” I grabbed my rifle and dove under the cover at the rear, rolled over towards the woodpile, firing into the woods above us. I couldn’t see nothing, so I listened as hard as I could, but I couldn’t hear nothing neither because Deadwood was still thrashing around and howling and groaning pitifully. I shushed him, warning him he’d just draw more fire, but he yelped more louder’n ever.

“MY POKE! MY POKE! THEY’VE TUCK MY POKE!”

I always had enough trouble finding my way back to the tepee at night, even knowing where it was, so I was surprised that them new-comers had somehow tracked us here in the dark. Well, they hadn’t. Nobody had. It turned out that Deadwood in his drunk befuddlement had rolled onto his old fowling piece and set it off, sending that shot through the tepee. He was laying on his coin sack. When I finally dragged him and his truck inside and stirred up the fire for a look, I seen there was a hole burnt in his new vest. He was likely burnt and bruised under the hole, but he warn’t bleeding.

“Did ye git any of ’em?” he groaned.

“Get who?”

“Why, them dern robbers that was attackin’ me! I lay I musta ruint at least six of ’em.”

“I don’t know about them, but your shot near took my ear off. Look at them holes in the tepee cover.”

“That warn’t me, it was them robbers. That just shows you they was out thar. But where was you when I needed you? I had to stand off that whole pestiferous gang alone!”

“Deadwood, I know it won’t do no good telling you, but there warn’t no firefight. You rolled over on your gun and set it off.”

It was so, it didn’t do no good. He carried right on. I could see he was contriving up a new tale for the loafers at Zeb’s. When I says if he killed some of them, maybe we should go look for their bodies to bury them, he says, “No, they’ll of drug ’em off by now.” When I asked him where was the bullet hole if he got shot, he says his old ribs is so petterfied the bullets just bounce off. But then he groaned and his eyeballs crossed till they most joined together, like he was trying to stare backwards into himself. “But they shore do sting!” he wheezed. “Hurts worse’n the time I got shoved off of Pike’s Peak by a claim-grubber!”

He was drunk enough to not feel too much pain, but sober enough to smell the fish and he et a couple of the panfish, bones and all. I was hungry and the crappie I’d catched was near as tasty as a Big River catfish, and it washed down smooth with Zeb’s prime whisky.

“Them robbers, you know, they may come back looking for their truck,” I says.

“Well,” he says, “ef they do, maybe we can foller ’em, see where that rock come from.”

“Maybe you should look right where you found it.”

“But you put it thar.”

I’d disremembered that. “Well, you always say I’m lucky, maybe the right place just come to me.”

He pulled the gold fob watch out again to study it. I knowed that watch face didn’t mean nothing more to Deadwood than higher-cliffs, so I asked him what time it was. “I dunno,” he says. “It ain’t that kinder watch. It’s tellin’ me other things.”