Huck Out West(64)

“I hope I ain’t held responsible for his bad shooting, too,” I says, worrying if I could make it back down to the crick or not. “I been thinking about what if he’d missed the hanging rope and only shot me in the leg like Eyepatch.”

“He wouldn’t never a done that, though I cain’t say he shouldn’ta,” says Caleb flatly. He lifted up his orange too-pay to scratch his balditude, set it back down again. “Why’re you such a favrit a his?”

“Been pards since we was little.”

“Well, you ain’t wuth it.”

I had to find Eeteh before Sunday, but by the time I stumbled down the hill to the tent and fell over a couple a times on the way, I couldn’t do nothing more’n flop half-dead onto my cot. I maybe waked up enough to hear some owl hoots, but I might of only dreampt them. I was pretty sure when Tongo come and talked to me about freedom and power, it was a dream, if it warn’t his ghost ha’nting me. Tom’s horse come in to join the palaver, and probably he warn’t a ghost. Tom himself come back late and helped himself to a bedtime suck on a whisky bottle and says I should not go gallivanting off nowheres on my own whilst he’s away. Gallivanting ain’t my best trick right now, I says, or might a said, and the next thing I knowed it was morning and rain was drumming on the tent canvas and Tom was gone.

Everybody was staying in out a the rain, so there warn’t Peewee or nobody else down at crickside. Tom and Bear was both away. It seemed like a good time to go search out Eeteh. I reckoned it best to start with the robbers’ cave in the hills above, which was where Eeteh first found me living when I come to the Gulch and where some of his hoots lately seemed to of come from. I could go up there and send off some hoots a my own, and see what happened.

It warn’t an easy hike, but I was rested up from sleeping most of a day and was feeling generly less peculiar. Before leaving the tent, I was even able to eat a dry biscuit dipped in fresh milk from an emigrant cow, and I pocketed a couple extra biscuits to munch on the way up. I still couldn’t tolerate whisky, but I fetched along one a Tom’s bottles in case Eeteh showed up. If he didn’t, I could leave it behind for him like a kind of eagle feather.

It was a slow plod up to the cave. I warn’t customed to it, my legs was rubbry, and my boots was soon heavy with caked mud, but climbing into the hills chippered me up considerable. There was a soft light everywheres and the rain was hushing down through the leaves and pine needles and the forest was ever so cool and lovely.

The cave stunk the same as it always done and thousands of bats was still hanging upside down in there, packed together, their wings shuttered up for their daytime doze, but I was glad to reach it. I was dog-tired from the climb and needed to set somewheres out a the weather and rest a spell. But first I stepped to the mouth of the cave to let out a hoot—and all of a sudden there was a hand smacked on my mouth!

The ROBBERS was back!

NO! It was EETEH! I was so happy to see him, I nearly shouted out, but he shushed me and led me to a chink in the cave wall where I could peek out. “Tu’wayuh,” he whispers, pointing. There he was, the spy Eeteh seen, far off down the gulch, creeping through the woods with a rifle, peering up through the rain in our direction: Tom’s heavy-bellied pal Oren.

“Eeteh!” I whispered. “They had a meeting! They’re going to—”

He clapped his hand over my mouth again. He pointed at me, at himself. “Kho-LAH.” Friends. Then he shook his head, pointing down at Oren. “Tu’wayuh shnee!” He grinned through the webby tangle of black hair that hung over his face. “Mah-kocheh!”

I nodded. We warn’t scouting for nobody no more, not the Americans, not the tribe. We warn’t belongers to none a that now. We was only pards, running off on our own to Mexico. It was dangersome, but staying here was dangersomer, and leastways we could watch out for each other.

Eeteh says the worse thing for him right now was Sitting Bull’s army. The Lakota camp was full of strange warriors from other tribes, who don’t respect a poor fool’s privileges. They was forever slapping him about for not braiding his hair or for dancing when it warn’t proper or for telling stories out a season or not wanting to cut himself in their war dance rituals, and his brothers was out-powered and couldn’t do nothing to protect him, or didn’t want to. The others say they’ll make a warrior out of him or kill him. They was all planning to move west directly to join up with Sitting Bull’s army on the Heyhakha River. He says he ain’t going with them.

Eeteh had brung me my stone pipe, the one with the carved head of a spirit horse on it that his war-chief brother give me. Feeling it in my hand remembered me how much I’d missed it. I fetched out the whisky bottle and biscuits, and thumbed tobacco from my vest pocket into the pipe bowl, feeling rich as a duke again. We watched Oren thrashing about in the wet bushes, looking for a way up. Eeteh uncorked the bottle, took a sniff, smiled, tipped it back for a swallow, then handled the bottle to me. It looked like melted gold and was a sore trial for me, but I handled it back. “Don’t set well with the yaller janders,” I says, and he looked closer at me and nodded.

“Ne Tongo?” I asked. I was scared to ask. I was missing that horse more’n I ever missed nothing before, and I was still afeard I might a seen a dead horse’s ghost.

Eeteh says Tongo was a heap of trouble that night and wouldn’t do nothing like he wanted him to do, but with a lot of tugging and talking and begging, he somehow got him and my goods back to where the tribe was camped. I was awful happy to hear it, and I says so, and thanked him, and then thanked him again, and struck a match over my stone pipe bowl. He says there warn’t nobody could ride Tongo, not even himself, but the tribe treated him like a Great Spirit and he could have anything he wanted from them. The new braves riding in warn’t so respectful, though, and they sometimes laid a whip on him when he didn’t do what they wanted him to. He says Tongo don’t have much to say, but a body could see he was restless to break out a there and shove for Mexico or wherever.