Huck Out West(73)

“The Cap’n has pointed hisself mayor, sheriff, tax collector and judge!”

“They been stringin’ people up by threesomes every thirty minutes!”

“They got Molly! He’s NEXT! The Cap’n’s mad about what he done to him and wants to lop off both a Molly’s legs with his cutless’n THEN hang him!”

“Who they ain’t hangin’, they’re FLOGGIN’!”

“The whores is gettin’ flogged NEKKID! The Cap’n is layin’ it on the pore things personal!”

“They jest got here and don’t know what the heck’s happening!”

“They got nuthin on ME! I been here a month and I don’t know nuther!”

There was more desperate crowds heeling it up our way. Looked like the whole camp might be emptying out. But just then the picture-taker come a-galloping in from the opposite direction, hauling all his apparatuses. “THE AMAZ’N TOM SAWYER’S A-COMIN’!” he shouted as he clopped past. “THE SIVILIZER OF THE WEST!”

And sure enough, there he was, riding towards us in white pants and shiny boots, chest bare, his cremson bandanna tied round his head, long curly hair gathered up in a knot behind. A black skull-and-crossbones flag was a-flying from Storm’s pommel like from a ship’s mast, and there was a cutless slapping at Tom’s side. Bear rode right behind him, looking mostly like himself.

Tom stopped long enough to give the picture-taker time to set up his camera down at the camp and to order everybody up here not to shoot, no matter what happens. “Just don’t get in HIS way, or MINE! Bear’s got orders to shoot ANYBODY that butts in or raires a gun! TELL EVERYBODY!” Then he snatched Eeteh’s vest out a my hands, and he and Bear galloped away. We chased after them, fast as we could, but we knowed he’d wait for us. We was his audience.

Three poor fellows was a-dangling from the gallows as we come riding in. Molly was up on the platform, next in line, along with that twangy fiddle-player and a Chinese fellow who’d been selling grilled beefsteaks and fried rabbits in the street, which everybody judged was really hammered buffalo hide and mud rats. The fiddler was the gent who serenaded me on the gallows with a whiny song about jumping off into the other world, but he warn’t singing it now, without his teary whimpering were such a song.

The stubby yaller-whiskered tavern-keeper and his toothless pal Mule Teeth was holding Doc Molligan up, and Cap’n Patch was standing over him with his cutless raired high. The Cap’n was wearing the bear-claw neckless the tribe give me and I give to Zeb, and the neckless and the blood spattered on him give him a most savage look. The army drummer in the goggles and black derby was playing a drumroll. Molly’s left leg was already chopped off below the knee, the blood tied off above it, and the Cap’n was taking aim at the other one. Molly’s eyes was crossed with fear or drunkness or most probably both. When the Cap’n seen the picture-taker setting up his camera, he stopped still for a moment, blade in the air, looking like he warn’t sure whether to hold his pose, whack off Molly’s other leg, or bust out a there.

The emigrants who hadn’t run off was cheering Cap’n Patch, just like they’d cheered Tom, but now they started cheering Tom again as he come galloping in on Storm, Eeteh’s raggedy vest flapping behind him, black jack a-flutter from Storm’s pommel. “AARRRGH!” Tom roared from deep in his throat, and whushed his cutless round in the air. “AVAST, ye filthy bilge rat! Prepare to DIE!”

Cap’n Patch only grinned in a mean bloody-face gold-tooth way, the loops in his ears glinting in the sun. He dropped his cutless, ca’mly hauled out his horse-pistols, aimed them both at Tom, and fired. Little flags popped out the barrels that said BANG! and GOT YOU! Yaller whiskers and Mule Teeth dropped Molly and cut. The Cap’n rolled down off of the platform to follow them, but now there warn’t no way through the whooping crowd. He backed up against the gallows like a snarly trapped rat, rocking unsteady on his pegleg. Tom sprung off of his horse and stepped up to the Cap’n through the gawkers and poked at his chest with the curved point of his cutless blade. “Man your weapon, you scurvy one-eyed dog!” he growled down deep in his chest. “Or be ye too afeard?”

It took Cap’n Patch a moment to cipher out Tom’s intentions. Then he grabbed up the cutless where it had fell and spun round on his peg to face Tom. He growled like a mad bear, holding his cutless out with both hands. Tom grinned and growled back, and swung at the Cap’n. The Cap’n jerked his cutless up to meet the blow and there was a powerful clash of steel, and Tom grinned again. The Cap’n took a swing at him, his blade swishing through the air, Tom jumping back and clattering his cutless against the Cap’n’s.

And now the battle begun in earnest. There was a grand battering of steel on steel, Tom and the Cap’n a-growling and a-grunting, ducking and swinging, their hairknots flying. The emigrants was all yowling, nor else standing spillbounded with their jaws gapping like in Tom’s Sarah Sod stories.

Then all of a sudden Cap’n Patch stumbled on his wooden leg and fell into the mud! He was at Tom’s mercy! But Tom backed off, used his cutless blade to bat the Cap’n’s weapon over where he could reach it, waited till he was up on his peg and foot again, and then they went at each other like before. First, one of them was near killing t’other, then it was t’other way around. People was whooping and screaming. Tom and the Cap’n was staggering about in the mud, cussing, flailing, their blades flashing about. Both of them was leaking blood variously. Sometimes they slapped down into the mud, but they always sprung up again with cutlesses clanging and with throaty growls.