Huck Out West(67)

I laughed. Eeteh always told comical stories. “Of course, he COULD be put back together, and that’s how the next story begins. That lying sneakthief Snake is in trouble!”

Eeteh shook his head. He warn’t smiling. He says it’s the end of Coyote and his stories. There ain’t no more. All stories now will be Snake stories.

It was an awful story. I don’t know why he told it to me.





CHAPTER XXVII


AIN’T QUICK AT ciphering things out, but with Eeteh’s help it fin≤ally come to me that there warn’t going to be no attack on the tribe that Sunday morning. They was just trying me out to see if I’d spill their plans and rile the natives up into their warpaint. To do that, I’d need Eeteh, and they hoped I’d lead them to him. They hoped right. Eeteh was smarter, but they made a fool out a me. I warn’t happy about that, so before dawn I holstered up and took up my rifles and went over to roust out Tom and ask him, tarNATION, pard, when does the danged Black Hills Brigade ATTACK begin? He’d got in overnight and was sleeping like a dead man. He was madder’n the dickens and roars at me didn’t nobody tell me, dammit, there warn’t no attack, it was called off. “Besides, you’re still the color a week-old horse piss, Huck, you oughtn’t to be going nowheres.” And he rolled over in disgust and set to snoring again.

Later, when he was drinking coffee out by the spit and chawing on a cold mule-deer leg for breakfast, I asked him why he sent Oren chasing after me. “Clumsy numskull,” he grumbled. “Fell’n broke his damn arm. Don’t know WHAT the leather-head was doing up there, any more’n I know what YOU was doing.”

“He says you sent him. To protect me.”

“Well, Hucky, you do need protection. Sometimes you ain’t got no common horse sense. Getting over-friendly with the enemy whilst a war’s on, a war we ain’t even winning yet, just ain’t rattling smart.”

“Seemed like Oren was up there to kill somebody. Hope it warn’t me.”

Tom sighed, took a sip a coffee, poured more from the tin pot resting in the coals. “You remember when I took Becky’s whipping for her? It was in that old one-room schoolhouse a-front of everybody, a gloriful moment, which you ain’t able altogether to ’preciate because you was luckier’n me and warn’t never penned up and tortured in there. Ornery old Dobbins really laid on the hickry that day and Becky begun bawling for what she’d got me into, but she got pretty excited too, as she told me later, feeling a vilent tingle on her own bum whilst mine was getting publicly flayed. To keep my mind off it, I read all the signs in the room I could see from the position I was in, and one of them says KNOWLEDGE IS POWER. At the time, getting flogged by a schoolmaster, I took that as a mean low-down joke, but later it become a kind of golden rule for me.” Tom tossed out his coffee and poured more and says, “That’s what Oren was doing up there.”

“What? Getting his backside whacked?”

“No, listen at what I’m saying, Huck. Knowledge is power.”

“Well, I wouldn’t know. I ain’t had much a nuther a them things, nor really cared to have some,” I says.

“Which is why you need me, Hucky. I know all we need to know and I got enough power for both of us. Without power, you ain’t nobody, and you ain’t free nuther.”

“Your horse told me the same thing.”

“My horse?” Tom rolled his eyes like he was talking to a crazy man. “You must of catched a bad dose a brain-fever on top a your yaller janders, Huck,” he says. “I hope it ain’t fatal. See Wyndy over there with goggles on, watching you? I got to spend some time at the claim. He’ll be keeping an eye on you whilst I’m gone, so’s you don’t get in more trouble. Do me a favor and don’t sick your bats on him.” He give me a long look and then says he’s been to the cave himself. “I found one a my own whisky bottles up there, mostly drunk.”

“That was me. Don’t tell Molly. The cave stinks because a the bats, but it’s comfortable for me when I’m off by myself. Used to be where them two robbers you hanged stowed their plunder.”

“Well, please to don’t go up there no more, pard. I don’t want no accidents to happen to you. When you’ve shook off the janders, I’m going to need your help. If you want whisky, help yourself right here in the tent. I don’t give a hang if you want to make yourself sicker’n you already are.”

“What kind of accident you reckon might happen?”

“Hain’t no idea. But look at poor Oren. Who’d a guessed a bat attack?”

After what Tom said, I had to see Eeteh again, but, with Wyndell watching me all day long and sleeping outside the tent flap at night, there warn’t nothing I could do, not even when Tom was away, like he mostly was. I couldn’t even answer Eeteh’s lonesome hoots. Wherever I went, Wyndy was right behind me. When I turned around to talk to him, he only smiled sadfully and waited for me to start moving again. I’d begun shoving things we’d need for our travels to Mexico under my cot, like tarpolins and coffee and tin cups and ammunition, but now it was harder to collar things, with him always watching me. I dragged him around through the whole camp, hoping he’d get tired, but he never did. I did. I still warn’t over the janders.