Huck Out West(68)

Old grizzled red-eyed Doc Molligan says maybe I won’t never be over them. On t’other hand, he says, maybe they’ll go away tomorrow. Science don’t know much about the yaller janders, he says. For sure, HE don’t know NOTHING about them. He come by the tent most every day to help himself to a cup a Tom’s whisky and jaw awhile about the horrible diseases and beautiful women he’s knowed. Both diseases and women was always mysteries to him, he says, which was considerable better’n knowing too much about neither of them. A mistake he never made a-purpose. He often described them both by how they smelt and tasted. He called it his prog-noses.

Molly says carpentery’s more his line. He says he sawed off the ruined part below Eyepatch’s knee and strapped Pegleg’s wooden one onto the stump, and the Cap’n was near as good as new, though he warn’t a satisfied man. His prog-noses for Eyepatch ever being satisfied was the same as for my yaller janders. Not likely, but you never know. Dad-fetched mystery, like the rest of life.

Whilst leading Wyndy around the camp, I seen that Eyepatch’s pal, Yaller Whiskers, had took over Zeb’s old shack and turned it from a jail back into a bar again. If Tom wanted his jail back and Yaller Whiskers in it, didn’t nobody have to go too far. It seems that nobody paid him any mind after Tom shot up Eyepatch’s leg, so he just stayed where he was and set himself up back in business again. He somehow found a card table and four chairs and a used slot-machine, and there was already a line waiting for them. He had a new partner, a sleepy-eyed chap with a flabby upper lip hanging down over a tuft of Chinaman’s beard, who ducked when he seen me. He was familiar, but I couldn’t think who he was.

Toothless old Deadwood, jaw askew, was setting out front on a wooden chair in his filthy union suit, popping his fob watch open and shut, and telling folks passing by how he got so crippled up. Sometimes it was Indians, sometimes it was bandits, sometimes it was wizzerds or that hurry-cane that carried him off to Wyoming, sometimes just his rheumatics. They say the new town was going to be named after him, or else after the same thing he was named for, and he was monstrous proud about it. He’d right away that same night shook off the splints me and Eeteh put on him, so now one elbow and one knee bent up the wrong way and nothing else was exactly right nuther. Deadwood says out the side of his mouth it was that hurry-cane dropped him flat on his backside and scrambled up his bones. When I come towards him to say hello, he yipped and tried to run away. His limbs took him every which way at the same time, making him look like a daddy-longlegs running. “Outen the way or suffer the conSEEquences!” he shouted as he banged up against Zeb’s old shack. The loafers hanging round hooted and clapped.

When he hit the shack, both Yaller Whiskers and his pard was looking out and they both fell backwards to the floor like they’d been knocked over like duckpins. I reckonized the chinless sleepy-eyed pard now. It was Mule Teeth without his two front teeth. Must a pulled them out and shaved his upper lip to disguise himself when Tom was rounding up all the crinimals that day he come riding in. His Chinaman’s beard warn’t hanging straight under his nose, but was parked back a ways.

There was talk about the calvary riding thisaway to round up all the loose hoss-tiles and end the Indian problem once and for all. That set off cheers here and there as the word spread round. General Hard Ass was said to be leading them. Eeteh and me didn’t have much time. I looked over my shoulder, but Wyndy was still dogging me. Once when I was telling Tom my troubles with the general, he says, “Hard Ass is the name of every general I ever knowed. On the outside they’re hard as rock, but it’s just a hollow shell. If you say something to them, you can hear your own voice rattle round inside.”

The picture-taker come out and set up his traps on one of the wooden sidewalks, aiming them at the front door of the generl store. Tom was strolling behind the parked wagons in his white hat and doeskins, looking important, chattering quietly to folks as he passed them by. The drummer was with him, mumbling his drum softly. Then the drummer banged louder and Tom clumb up on the sidewalk, stepped a-front of the camera and raised his hat. Everybody hoorayed. “As I got to be away so often on vital govment business about the hoss-tile problem,” he declares, “I’m today pointing a new deputy mayor-govner, a man who has already contry-BYOOTed to law’n order in the Gulch by setting up the first gallows, and who is himself a prime sample of redemption from a life a grisly wickedness: the famous Black Avenger of the Spanish Main, CAP’N PATCH!”

The front door of the generl store opened up and Eyepatch stepped out on his new wooden leg, fitted out in black like always, a gold-toothed smirk on his scarred face, gold loops in his ears, his one eye a-glitter with raw meanness. The crowd out front yelled and whooped. They could not get enough of the amazing apparition. His black shirt had been mended, his boot shined, his black hair combed and knotted at the back, and his moustaches trimmed. What was new was the wooden peg and the bear-claw neckless round his throat, the one the tribe give me for good luck, but that fetched me and Zeb so much bad. Two old-fashioned horse-pistols was tucked in his belt, and one a Tom’s gleaming cutlesses was hanging at his side. The picture-taker asked Eyepatch not to move, and he didn’t, snarling steadily at the camera lens till the picture-taker was satisfied. He LOOKED like a bad man and he WAS a bad man. I couldn’t think what Tom was up to.

So that evening at twilight, whilst setting around the fire after supper, having a smoke, I asked him. “He’s the scoundrel who killed Zeb,” I says. “Shot the old fellow in the back and stole that bear-claw neckless. If you ain’t here, he’s bounden to get into more mischief.”