Huck Out West(69)

Tom didn’t know what old fellow I was talking about at first. “Oh, the whisky-maker, you mean. Never knowed him, so I can’t judge. What I need right now is to find a parrot or a falcon for the Cap’n to wear on his shoulder. I wonder if a chicken-hawk would be like enough? You know how to catch one?”

“Tom! He’s a cold-bloody killer! After he murdered old Zeb, he tried to hang ME for the awful things HE done! You’re making a hero out a the wickedest varmint I ever SEEN!”

“I agree he ain’t no angel, Huck. Cap’n Patch was born bad, and he’ll die bad. Can’t help himself. Meantimes, though, I need a chest a gold doubloons to bury, so’s he can dig them up.”

“You got nothing BUT buried treasure out here. Let him pan for them dern specks. Hang it all, Tom, you ain’t—”

“No, they got to be doubloons. Maybe I could knock out his gold teeth and CALL them doubloons, then hide them and make him find them.”

“That name you give him—warn’t that what you called yourself when we was kids together playing pirates?”

“Might a been. Not important. Don’t even know what the heck a Spanish main is, but it’s a powerful clever name for a pirate.”

I could see it warn’t no use. He had his mind set on doing whatever it was he was doing. I relit my pipe and laid back against a stone. I was smoking my stone pipe because I wanted to. Me and Eeteh was going soon. Warn’t no reason to hide nothing. And it felt good in my hand. It was still early. I could only see one star. Twilights was peacefully long up here in the Hills this time a year. There was enough light that some of Tom’s pals was still panning gravel at the shore, though they was wading deeper out now. Tom says I been setting on one a the richest plasser gravels on the crick, and he fixed up a claim from the year I first come here. I says he can have it. He also claimed up acres and acres a mud at the emigrant camp above, which he was planning to parcel out into lots once he makes it legal for it to be a town. Noises was drifting down from up there. A gunshot or two. Sivilization. I says he can have that, too.

Tom had been staring at my stone pipe for a while and now he asked about it. I says it’s the head of a spirit horse and it was give me by the tribe after I rode Ne Tongo back. Big River. So then he wanted to know about Ne Tongo, and I told him about the magic ride and all that happened after. It was darkening up some and a few more stars was showing. I was glad Tom was getting interested in my life, even if he warn’t going to share it.

“Still got your old pony saddle?”

“No. Don’t use none.”

“What happened to the pony?”

“The tribe et him.”

Tom clucked as though to say, that’s savages for you. I grinned. I think I felt more at home with the tribe than even Eeteh done. “Where’s the horse now?”

“Eeteh’s watching over him till we leave.”

Tom paused, thinking about that, and poured himself some whisky. “Is he riding him?”

“Can’t nobody ride him. Just me.”

“Do you think I could? Would he except a western saddle?”

“No, but you could try him without one like me. Don’t think he’d let you, but mostly anything I can do, you always do better.”

He sat up and turned to look at me. “You shouldn’t go, Hucky. I need you. I can get the horse back for you.”

“But what about Eeteh? There’s a bounty on his head now. And the tribe’s on the warpath. That don’t work for Eeteh. He’s lonely and scared like what I am.” I could hear him now, if it warn’t a real owl. It warn’t a happy hoot. “Him and me can’t stay. But you can come with us.”

Tom had a thoughtful look on his face like he was considering that. Then the accident he was worried about happened. The robbers’ cave blowed up. The explosion was deefening and sent rock flying all the way down into the crick. Might a been anything blowing up, but I knowed it was the cave.

Tom and everybody went running up there, and I clumb up, too, though I warn’t running. I was scared at what I’d find. There warn’t no cave, just a pile a rock, dead and stunned bats everywheres. There was a dead body all blowed apart, but it didn’t have Eeteh’s head. It had Peewee’s. I judged he might a been sent to light the fuse, but Tom, who was poking about in the rubble like something might be found in it, says panning the crick for specks probably warn’t fast enough for Peewee. He must a been looking for a shortcut.

There warn’t no sign of Eeteh. The last thing I heard from him was that owl hoot. If it was him. I had to hope I’d hear another, but I didn’t think I would.





CHAPTER XXVIII


WALKED UP TO the cave through the rain the next day to look around. Wyndell tried to stop me, but I pushed him away. Tom once said I knowed how to cuss and fight, but not how to get mad. Maybe he was learning me. The preacher had a grumpy look on his goggled face. He probably wanted to go report on me, but there warn’t more’n one a him, so he only could follow me along. It seemed like it rained every day in the Hills. It was always sloppy and uncomfortable. It was like a wet picture of my squshed-down miserableness inside.

Before he left crickside that morning to go make himself richer, Tom says he’s sorry to tell me, but he’s afeard my friend is fatally expired. At the cave, Bear says the same. Him and a couple of others was trying to move the rock pile, but he says it was a most nation hard job, and they don’t know if they can do it. Bear showed me a beaded buckskin vest, torn and bloodied, that they found under the rocks. Eeteh’s. He says it was near some body bits, which was probably once part a him. “We ain’t struck no more heads yet, only Peewee’s, but me and the others’re still looking. Don’t hold much hope, but it don’t matter. Jest only an injun. He prob’bly won’t mind being buried right where he’s at.” He give me the vest when I asked for it. “Nice beadwork,” he says. “Needs cleaning up, but it should fit.”