Huck Out West(63)
“It’s like that fat little Irisher general says,” shouted Oren, putting in his shovel. “The only GOOD injun’s a DEAD injun!”
Bear hollered out something from the door of Zeb’s shack, but there was so much yelling and cussing and cheering and carrying on, he couldn’t be heard, so Tom asked him to come up closer. He squeezed his bulk in with the crowd surrounding us and says, “You and Huck’re acting in a most sivilized manner, Tom, and we all appreciate that and thank you for it! But them savages don’t deserve it! Like you said yourself, they ain’t even completely human!”
“Well, I have said that, Bear, and I do believe it, but I am prepared to change my mind if it ain’t true, or if it’s true, but inconvenient.”
You couldn’t hardly hear him. They was shouting him down again. He done his best but they was all against him. Poor Tom. He looked sadful and defeated. His best friends! He turned to me and shrugged.
Then suddenly, with Bear away from the door, Eyepatch and Yaller Whiskers broke out! Tom raired up with his gun and the judge spun around and throwed himself back into the shack and covered his head, but Eyepatch unfurled his heels and kept right on shoving. Tom shot—but MISSED! He only hit him in the LEG! Eyepatch stumbled and fell, staggered to his feet, limped away in a mad panic. Tom drawed a bead and emptied his revolver, but only hit him in the leg every time! Even Tom Sawyer warn’t perfect!
We all stepped down off the raised sidewalk to go look at Eyepatch. He was laying in the mud, snarling like old Abaddon, his left peg ruined from the knee down. Tom reloaded his revolver and put the barrel of it to Eyepatch’s head. Eyepatch spitted at him through his mouthful a gold teeth and throwed some mud at him. Tom grinned. “Sorry, Cap’n. That leg’s a sickly mess. Bad case a lead pisoning. Don’t leave us no choice. Go fetch Molly, Oren. Tell him supper’s on.”
CHAPTER XXVI
YEPATCH WAS LUCKY that Tom’s aim was off that day, because it give Tom the idea of making him into a pirate stead of hanging him. The emigrants was probably more hoping for a hanging—some a them was so new they hadn’t seen a single one yet—but they all cheered Tom when he brung down Eyepatch. They had a hoot at the rascal’s sass and they was mostly happy to have him around to look at a while longer, specially when they learnt Tom’s plans for him. Tom was also lucky for having saved Pegleg’s wooden leg stead of burying it with him, if he ever did get buried, which just goes to show it was always good to hang on to such things as wooden legs in case a body needed them later. First, though, Eyepatch’s shot-up leg had to get chopped and healed, so they dragged him off, howling and cussing, to Doc Molligan.
Whilst they was doing that, Tom and his pals gathered round the claims table on the raised wooden sidewalk to talk about what Tom called their stragety. The others wanted to attack the redskins right then and there, hitting them with all they got, and bring the calvary into it, too. But Tom he didn’t like the idea and says they ought to powwow again with the tribe first and see if they couldn’t be learnt to be more friendlier if maybe they paid them some money or beads. Nobody thought this was a good idea, so Tom looked at me sadfully and shrugged and says, “What do you reckon, Huck?”
“I don’t see nobody getting out a nobody’s way,” I says. “So, what I reckon is that something really bad is a-going to happen.”
Some a the others yayed at this, judging something bad was good, but Tom only nodded and sighed like to say he done all he could, and he ain’t been left with no choice. Tom says if they was meaning to attack the tribe, though he wishes they warn’t, they should choose a day when the enemy ain’t expecting it, like when it’s snowing or hurry-caning or some Sunday morning before dawn. I says we should wait for the hurry-cane, but nobody else was of that opinion. Caleb he says he don’t read the weather, so he don’t know about snow in June, but there was a Sunday coming up, three days away, and Tom says that should give him enough time. He says there’s been troubles at the claim, he already had to shoot at some pesky claim-jumpers, and though he had business partners now, he didn’t trust them, so him and Bear had to go make sure it didn’t all get stole away from him. But if Caleb could plan out the attack and round up a proper Black Hills Brigade and make sure all the best shootists was there, he’d get back before dawn Sunday. He looked at me and winked over his bushy moustaches and says he knowed the greatest injun hunter in the Territories wouldn’t want to miss a chance for a few more scalps, and he hoped I was out a my sickbed by then.
Then Tom put on his white hat and slung a lecture about gold and freedom, and how a body could stake a claim to them and keep the claims safe, which I warn’t listening to. I was beginning to feel muddly and weak in the knees. After Tom had spoke, everybody got up and left except me and Caleb and Wyndell and a long line of miners waiting outside the claims registry office. Tom slapped my back before he stepped down into the mud and says I should go get some rest, I looked like a Chinaman with consumption. Somewheres further off, Eyepatch could be heard screaming and wailing and cussing the world and everybody in it. There warn’t much out here to heal with, and most of it hurt like the blazes.
Whilst we was moving the table back into the office, Caleb says he ain’t never seen Tom so charged up on peace-talking the savages, I must be having a bad influence on him.