Huck Out West(59)

That warn’t all Tom done that morning. Bear told me later that, first thing at dawn, Tom led a posse out to defend some arriving emigrants from an attack by the tribe. Bear had fetched me some fresh water and was helping me drink it by holding my head in his big paw. Tom tried to roust me out to ride along, Bear says, but I was like dead. Nobody knowed yet about the fever, but Tom called Molly to come take a look. He says it must be the yaller janders, though he warn’t sure. “There was wagons a-pulling in by the minute, and then suddenly there warn’t,” Bear says. “So us and Tom we rode out to see what was wrong, and we come on a wagon train being set on by the bloody Sooks. Folks was a-laying dead all over the place. ’Twarn’t fair, attacking them innercent white folk like that! Tom he rode straight at them savages on Storm, his cremson bandanna flying and guns a-blazing, and they was most astonished and couldn’t turn tail fast enough. Tom killt at least three of ’em and prob’bly hurt a dozen more. Now he’s laying plans for a revenge raid on the tribe.” Big Bear’s black brows frowned down his warty nose so low, his eyes had to peek out from below them like they was hiding under a woodpile. “We’re at WAR!” he growls.

Bear was right, the war was begun. I knowed that, even in my fever. Emigrants was still a-rolling in like they owned the place and battles was happening all across the Territory. There were rumors that Sitting Bull was gathering the tribes up in a big army, and the price on Indian heads was shooting up. Didn’t matter who you killed or how, so long as they was Indians. I heard all that from my cot. I tried to get up, I needed to find Eeteh somehow, but I kept falling over. All I could do was crawl back up in my cot again, ready to die some more.

There was several days a-going by like that, and I couldn’t really tell which was which. On one of them, Tom put on his white hat and led the settlers in a raid on the tribe. Everyone was amazed how brave Tom was, but this one didn’t turn out so good. Two emigrants was killed and Bear got a pison arrow in his rear and was sick for a time with the jimjams.

Tom was spending most of his days at his new claim, so he moved out and let Bear have his cot, Oren taking over guarding Zeb’s old shack, where Eyepatch and the judge was being bunkhoused till they could be tried and hanged. Bear was shouting out that scorpions and rattlers and mad dogs was after him. There was times he jumped out a the cot and throwed himself about like he was rassling with the wild things. Everyone down at the shore was afraid he was going to bring the tent down, so they dragged him out into the open air where he could rassle with the trees. Sometimes he bawled like a baby and called out for his ma. Once, he screamed he was being pecked to death by owls.

When he’d swallowed enough a Doc Molligan’s tea to ca’m down for a spell, he says that just THINKING about shooting that owl must a fetched him the bad luck. He swore never to think bad thoughts about owls again. He’d just quietly kill them all till they warn’t no more. Doc come every day to what he called the camp horse-pistol and fed us both thin brothy soup. I hoped there warn’t nobody’s remainders in it. Doc warn’t the only visitor. We warn’t never lonesome. There was a passel a folks living down by the crick now, and one or t’other of them was dropping in on us most all the time, mostly to sample Tom’s whisky. The crick was swoll up with the spring rains and getting harder to work.

One day when Bear was out rassling with the trees again, Tom comes in and sets on my cot and says he had more to say about Jim. “We was having such a good time that night, I didn’t want to spoil it,” Tom says. “But one day Jim’s rain dance worked TOO good and the tribe got flooded. They warn’t dressed proper and some a them drownded. They thought Jim may a done it a-purpose and that made them mad, so they sold him off to some missionaires passing by. Them holy rollers believed in saving souls by whopping folks and busting their teeth out. Jim got saved and become a preacher and they respected him like they ain’t done before, but all he could eat afterwards was flapjacks and biscuits.” Tom must a been half-awake behind his snores that night. He was telling awful lies again, but I let him.

The picture-taker come to see me after Bear’d got better and moved out. Somebody told him I was dead. When he seen I was still blinking, he says he already wasted a glass plate on me when I was on the gallows, so this time he’ll wait. “I ain’t feeling so good,” I says. “Hang around ten minutes and see what happens.” He drawed close to squint into my eyes and trace the rope burns. I opened my mouth and he peered into it and shook his head gloomily. “Meantimes, help yourself to a glass a Tom’s whisky,” I says. It was what he was waiting for. He was one a them lantern-jawed fellows whose grins split their faces. He set down with just such a grin breaking his face in two and turned his billed cap backwards and poured himself a glassful. “How long you been traveling with Tom?” I asks him.

“Since Yankton.” He swallowed the whisky, poured himself another. “My workshop’s thar. Mostly I done pitchers a dead people. Tintypes a dead babies is my famous speciality. If I get the little tykes quick enough, I prop them up like they was still alive. I keep straw dolls in the workshop to stick in their tiny fists. Old folks is mainly easier if they ain’t got stiffened up, but they ain’t as purty. I made pitchers a live people, too, but they warn’t so popular.” He showed me a photograph he’d took of Tom in his all-white rig with his hand tucked in his shirt, setting Storm like a general. He tucked a cheroot in his wide lips, lit it and smiled. “The Amaz’n Tom Sawyer he come’n found me there, and I been out on the trail with him ever since. I take his pitcher wherever he goes, fighting injuns and highwaymen and injustice and hunting for gold and hanging crinimals, but mostly when he’s having a rest on his horse in his white hat and doeskins. He’s the Sivilizer of the West, he told me so. He’s making a famous book about hisself.”