Huck Out West(58)

“Are you talking about Jim?”

“You remember how he always knowed when it was going to rain? Even when the sun was out in a blue sky and blazing away? Well, Jim waited till one hot day the signs was all lined up, then he got all them redskins into a rain dance. It warn’t nothing like their own dance, but he got everybody dancing like him, and down come the rain.” Tom laughs sleepily. “They always done it Jim’s way after that,” he says, “and sometimes Jim jumped in, but only when he was pretty sure there was rain a-comin’.”

I says it warn’t like that, but Tom was already snoring, his moustaches rising up and down like the tail of a cantering pony. “I seen Jim,” I says, “when I guided some missionaires north. That hellion was with them. Jim was their cookie. His biscuits and flapjacks was the best I ever et anywheres. He showed me the stripes on his back where his white masters, the ones before the missionaires, whopped him. They knocked out some of his teeth with whip handles. He was already free then, but they didn’t respect it. He’s free now again for the second time and a-looking for his wife and children. He’s got religion and, with his big singing voice, they all listen to him.” I was talking to the tent, filled now with Tom’s snores.

Though I ain’t slept in two days, I warn’t so sleepy no more. I picked up the whisky bottle and stepped out a the tent. The fire under the spit was just red ashes now. The tents by the shore was all dark. I was hearing some owl hoots I judged warn’t made by owls. They seemed to be coming from above the crick, high in the woods, from the direction of the robbers’ cave where I first lived when I come to the Gulch. They was asking questions. Or the same question over and over.

I wanted to crawl up there, but Bear was setting guard outside. I handled him the whisky bottle and says it’s a beautiful night and he guzzles and grunts and then acknowledges it is. I made an answering emigrant hoot to the hoot across the crick, and got a happy hoot in reply. Bear laughed. “Them owls is middling smart, Bear, they’re famous for it,” I says. I was ever so glad to know that Eeteh was alive and looking for me. “Out here in the Black Hills, they’re so smart, they sometimes even answer back, like that one just done for me. Try it yourself.”

Bear hooted, but there warn’t no reply. “Like this, Bear,” I says, and sent out another hoot. This time there was an answer. So Bear and me set about practicing hoots, and finally Bear got an answering hoot. “That’s it, Bear! But watch out. That old bird may reckon you’re his missing wife and come try to make you a mother.” Bear laughed hard and tried again. I taught him happy hoots and watch-out hoots and see-you-tomorrow hoots, though he didn’t know that was what they was. Sometimes he was answered, most times he warn’t.

Bear says, “That was fun. But maybe I ought to shoot that owl.”

I says that shooting owls was a sure way to bring on bad luck. It was worse’n black cats, touching a snake-skin with your hands, and looking at the moon over your left shoulder, all at the same time. “And owls ain’t good eating. They’re mostly all feathers and their meat has a high smell.”

Then somebody did shoot, cussing the owl for the noise it was making. “Hey! Y’all shot my pal!” somebody else hollered, and next thing, they was all shouting insults into the night and shooting at each other.

“What did I tell you about bad luck, Bear?” I says, and him and me had a laugh about it, and that owl across the crick also let out a happy hoot. I left the whisky with Bear and stumbled back inside the tent. I couldn’t hardly make it back to my cot.





CHAPTER XXIV


WAS IN A tight place. I’d crawled into an empty hogshead behind the slaughter-house and fell asleep and now I was stuck. Somebody must a nailed the lid on. Sleeping on the street or in the woods, I always waked up with the sun, but there warn’t no sun in here. It was dark and hot and stunk a stale whisky. I couldn’t breathe. I had to get out. Someone was waiting for me. Then I seen a way to crawl out, but somebody was a-holding me back and I had to fight him off. It was Tom. “Easy, Huck,” he says.

The fat cannibal doctor was there, too, trying to pour something biling hot down my throat. He was devilish red-eyed and his grizzled face hairs sprung random and weedy on his fat jowls like a wolf’s. “Willow bark tea,” he says. “Drink up, boy. It’s good for you.”

“You catched a fever, Huck,” Tom says, his hand on my forehead. “You’re burning up.”

I was laying on my cot in the big tent in a heavy sweat. “Blame it all!” I says. I felt all quivery. “What time is it?”

“A little past noon,” says Tom. “I come back from exploring up the Gulch and found my old pard thrashing away in a sorry state. Now, drink some a Doc Molligan’s tea. It’ll bring the fever down.” Whilst I was trying to do that, Tom showed me a rock that looked like Deadwood’s. “Turned up this morning down at the crick. It’s mainly what we was looking for. I traced it back upstream. I think I seen the blowup where the old sourdough’s rock might a broke off and fell from, then washed down here. But people was following me, so I had to act disgusted and walk on by. Others may a seen what I seen, though. Quartz is hard to miss. Caleb has staked a claim for us, it’s ourn now, we got it legal, but we may have to shoot a few thieves and yokels who don’t know where the claims office is. This ain’t only plasser gold, Hucky, this may be the tarnal mother lode herself! If we can hang on to her, we’re rich! Richer’n you and me can’t never imagine!”